Education is a right that belongs to everyone in this world. Male and female alike are entitled to learn as much as they possibly can, regardless how it is guided. Some children are homeschooled, some are sent to private schools, and some are sent to public schools. I may have a biased few on where kids are educated, but that is because I went to a public school and received an excellent education and a great foundation for college and the rest of my life. Either one can provide a child with quality direction. Just get them into one of these situations.
You may wonder why I bring this up. Tonight, I watched the latest episode of Our America with Lisa Ling. The topic was “Extreme Parenting.” Lisa discussed the parenting decisions with three couples.
The first couple was obviously pushing their children a bit too hard to learn…even to the point of mental exhaustion. I was impressed, however, to see that the child, before first grade, could do multiplication. I cannot say I did the same thing. At that time in my life, I wasn’t really concerned. It was later that I was pretty much forced to learn the tables or get my behind torn to shreds.
Another family, mostly the father, was pushing his son to be “more of a man and able to protect himself.” The father had once been a member of a gang and I can understand how he would not want his child to follow in that footstep. I did not agree with his views because he kept spitting out NFL. “Oh, he’s going to the NFL!” he said over and over again. He pushed him in the gym to get pumped. At 14, he was short, but he had muscle definition. My issue: you can have all the muscles in the world and still have a small brain. The brain overrules the muscle. If you can’t think, what are those muscles going to accomplish?
The third couple pissed me off to the point that I was screaming at the television. The other half hates when I do that and reminds me over and over. Tonight, he even stuck his fingers in his ears. OK, it was a bit drastic as I wasn’t screaming as much as I was yelling. There’s a difference! LOL.
This couple decided that they were going to do a new thing called unschooling. They believed that their children would not learn much from a standard curriculum compared to learning from their life experiences. I will be 34 years old on Sunday. I’ve had life experiences…many of them. A six year old child is not going to have life experiences where they are going to learn the necessary tools to live a successful life. They haven’t had the lifetime needed to learn life lessons. This lady said that the standard way of teaching crippled the learning capabilities of her children. Right after she said this, they showed her children sitting around a TV playing video games. The one child even told Lisa that he was learning hand/eye coordination when she asked him what he was learning.
Is that game going to help you get a job when you’re old enough? Is that game going to help you in everyday life when you need to make an informed decision? Oh, is that game going to help you work off that childhood obesity you obviously inherited from your lazy parents? After showing the kindergarten child doing multiplication, they showed this woman standing in the kitchen with her oldest son. She said he just “loved” to cook and he learned math skills from various things dealing with cooking. The only thing I saw was a lazy mother who was having her son cut vegetables in halves so she didn’t have to worry about it. She also said that her children wanted to be at home instead of go to school. It was so sad.
I think it is criminal to purposefully keep your children out of a learning situation. I also think it is criminal to allow children to tell you what is better for them. As I’ve said. That child doesn’t know any better. As long as mom and dad cater to the wants of the child, they will never see that child live a structured life…unless that structure happens to be a prison designed by someone else’s child. I was beside myself with pity for those kids. Before the show ended, the cameraman filed outside the home. At that moment, I had no pity at all for the parents. That house looked run down and the yard wasn’t clean. I was like, you can decide not to send your kids to school, but damn it, get their asses outside to clean up some before a national cable channel gets there to film.
The third couple could cause me to write a book, but I will not. I will only say this: That crown on your child’s head only means that someone thought it was pretty, not because they thought it was smart. Spending $10,000 in a single year entering your child in beauty pageants is ridiculous. You need to safe the money in a savings account so you can pay for that child to get a college education. Looks can…and most often do…fade. Bank on education instead of good looks. Education can get you far, but when time runs across your body, your looks go to hell along with all those fake crowns you were given to pick your feelings off the ground.
Education, especially in our country, could be made better by motivated teachers. When you don’t give those motivated teachers kids willing to learn, you cause the world to lose a valuable mind. This day in time…we can’t spare those…in the slightest.
