Last night was a very interesting night. Christian and I went to a swim meet at a YMCA north of Raleigh while Lorena took Kelly to her piano mini-camp. There are four other girls in the camp with Kelly. They are about the same age as Kelly and they are very serious about their studies, both of piano and at their government schools. All four of them have Asian parents–three from China, one from Korea. They are part of a government school subculture to which Kelly has not really had a lot exposure. Lorena talked to their mothers before and after the class. It dawned on me that we probably have similar thoughts about each others’ schooling methods. They asked Lorena how I could possibly teach all the high school subjects Kelly needs to get into college. There are so many subjects it is not possible to know them all well. When she told me that, I marveled that people who had such a profound interest in the education of their children were so unaware of the abysmal state of the government school teacher education and certification system.
While I might not be perfect in all the subject areas, I work hard to select good programs and materials to help us. The bar is not very high to be better than even the very best government schools. They also wondered how Kelly could get into college without a high school transcript, but they did not know about CLEP testing. They did not know that homeschoolers have better academic and social preparation for college in addition to their well documented superior performance on nationally normed standardized tests. The funny deal is that they were all talking about this while Kelly was taking a class from an absolutely stellar teacher in music, the one subject I am most horribly unqualified to teach. Thankfully, the least of their worries was whether or not Kelly was well “socialized.” Nevertheless, it is great for Kelly to be around nice girls whose families are very interested in assuring their children get the best education they know how to give.
Note: After I wrote the above harangue, I found this article. Boy did this guy get it right.