Luke, in his latest post at the Sonlight blog, writes about a conversation he had with a friend who appears to work at a traditional school. The whole post is great with one minor caveat which I will discuss in a bit. Here is a bit that nails the whole government school socialization conundrum:
“This one school has an assembly every Thursday morning.” He looks at me, inviting me to ask.
“What do they talk about every week?”
He produces a gorilla shrug. “Exactly!” He’s as excited now as he was when talking about the affection his kids have for him. “I have no idea! In fact, in a school that large, it takes a ton of time just to file all the kids in and out. It’s an hour of that, every week, for 36 weeks, for every single student. File in. File out. And when you have a mass of kids like that…” he pauses. “Large groups of children do not tend to propagate maturity.”
The post describes concepts that are easy to understand, but that many are willfully unwilling, if you will, to acknowledge.
The only part of the post with which I have a quibble is the quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson that advocates for the idea that schools should teach empathy along with reading, writing and arithmetic. As is usually the case with Tyson, he has made what, on the surface, appears to be an enlightened statement, but that is monumentally wrong. The last people who should be assigned to teach children empathy in the current government school educational environment are teachers. It is not that some teachers might not be be great at it–it is that the system ties the teachers’ hands and often advocates for the teaching, even bullying of students with Christian world views on things like homosexuality, sex and origins. Too often, the empathy only travels one direction. Maybe we should change the system and/or let the parents manage how their children get taught empathy.
Luke — Thanks for another great post. Please forgive the quibble!
Betty Blonde #263 – 07/22/2009
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
I don’t mind quibbles one bit [smile].
I actually expected a tad more push back on the link. I agree with you that the system too often does it wrong. So, for me, I took the quote as aspiration rather than instructive. I would love it if kids — and, indeed, schools and those in charge of them — learned true empathy. But for us, as homeschoolers, I saw this as a great point of agreement as parents who also teach: Empathy is a good thing. …and, as I alluded, currently not what is taught in schools at all.
Thanks for reading, sharing, and providing conversation [smile]. I very much appreciate your insights.
~Luke