Pro-Homeschooling: Intermission – Our Ideal Educational System
Guest Post by Josh, who says that his real reply will not appear for a while, but I can be satisfied with an official intermission. So much for maintaining the passion of the fight!
Disclaimer: Yep, still short.
I just thought I should point out that while Rae and I disagree on how desirable homeschooling is, our ideal educational system for our children actually looks pretty similar.
It involves a Montessori (coeducational) preschool taught by Carmelite nuns, two Latin tutors (one for ecclesiastical and one for classical), and high school at a Carthusian monastery (for the boys) or by the Cloistered Discalced Cistercian Sisters of the Strict Observance (for the girls) and a Harkness table. And occasionally dropping into Maimonides School for classes on Rabinnic interpretation of scripture.
What about you? What is your ideal educational system?
I am still not quite entirely certain about high schools conducted in complete silence, but at least you’re not suggesting that we allow the Dominicans to educate our children. I want to make sure that we get them back after school is out!
Switch the Carthusians to Norbertines, Also drop the classical Latin tutor(it just confuses the kids, and classical Latin pronunciation gives me the willies) other than that it’s perfect.
Seven. Seven is the number of words/terms used in your very short post that I would like to wiki because I have no clue what you are talking about. I’m on a plane, so I can’t wiki it this second – but I don’t know if your answer is 1.) an impossible dream, 2.) sarcastic, 3.) realistic…
For my husband and I, the ideal education for our future children would be a public school, diverse student body (ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status), year-round schooling, uniforms, a safe environment, a wide range of advanced and specialized coursework, mix of both younger and older highly paid teachers with advanced degrees, competitive arts and sports programs, high rate of acceptance at top-tier universities, and located a short commute from our home. Just writing this makes me realized how stereotypical we are (see: Stuff White People Like dot com) and I have no idea whether that list is realistic, and I fear that the first thing that will end up sacrificed is socio-economic diversity. Maybe a public charter school will help us check all of the boxes. **The list is in no particular order.
It is a slightly tongue-in-cheek admission of our idealism.
I wonder about diversity and what counts as enough. Does a school count as socio-economically diverse if they have 10% of the students come from homes with household incomes below the mean? Is it racially diverse if there are 3 black students in each class? My hope is that we can get meet most of our goals by being open to different schools for different stages of education. But I suspect that we will have to put a lot of effort in just to make sure that our children get something close to what we would consider to be a “good” education.
My ideal education is that my children learn to love God and learn how to learn. My husband’s ideal is that they are advanced, college bound and make lots of money.
He thinks my ideal is weak and will have them making babies at 15.
And seriously, I have no idea what those words are, either!