Dusting off the soapbox

It has been a bit since I rambled/ranted so here goes, recently I have been hearing a lot about how public school is determinatal to children. I have been thinking a lot about that and I have come to one conclusion- no it isn’t. I will agree that currently in some areas there are some things taught in public school that I do not want my future children to be a part of, but that isn’t what I am talking about. I have heard that children that attend public school suffer emotionally because of untrained teachers, sexual harassment, embarrassment, boring classes and competition. While I will agree that the first two are determinantal, I would have to say the number of children subjected to that is so small that I think I will take my chances, I don’t understand the others. Yes, school can be boring at times, and yes the most embarrassing moments in my life occurred in public school, and yes it can be a competitive environment, but I honestly don’t think that those things have negatively impacted me. Sure it would have been nice to be told I was fantastic all the time, but that wouldn’t have encouraged me to strive to be better, and yes it would have been nice if I didn’t trip in the 10^th grade trying to get a note back from the guy I liked, and yes it would have even been nice if every single class I ever took was taught by a well qualified intellectually stimulating instructor- sadly life isn’t perfect, sometimes you trip, sometimes math class is mind numbingly boring, and yes sometimes someone else gets a better grade than you did, but that is life- life is tough. I don’t think the solution to these items is to remove your child from the world (although you are entitled to do so). Despite the stats that show that homeschooled kids perform better academically (which I have a hard time believing) they lack other essential skills, like dealing with peers, handling disappointment, and learning to cope when mommy isn’t there. Besides missing out on essential social development (which is necessary to function in the real world, get  an actual job, and become a well adjusted adult) I wonder what else homeschooled kids are missing. How well trained are their parents to teach them? I would say that in many cases they aren’t well trained, or at least they aren’t as well trained as Miss Jones the  high school algebra teacher. I can say this for a certainty, if Brian and I were to homeschool our children they would be missing out on a lot, even with our soon to be 2 Masters degrees I don’t think we would be as effective as a trained teacher, we wouldn’t know how to plan lessons, grade papers (although to be fair this is what I currently do ), and make sure that our children are meeting their academic milestones. So we will stick with public school, we will get to know their teachers (or so we say about a decade away from ever having to do it), pay attention to what is going on at school, and live in an area where the lessons taught in school mesh with the lessons taught in our home, community ISD here we come.