A note to my daughter's teachers

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Tarka the Duck (here)
... I sometimes feel there is an "us and them" mentality when people talk about teachers - we are not (in my experience anyway!!) part of the PTB. We care sincerely about what we do and the children we have in our care -- but our hands are firmly tied and we are under great pressure to "perform" and meet "targets". ...

It is not an indictment, per se, but a recognition. Just as doctors that do not question the authority that oversees them (in the US , it's the AMA) and do not investigate the corporate interests that massively influence them (Big Pharma and insurance lobbyists, in the case of medicine), teachers that merely go along with the flow, with mouths firmly closed because they feel their hands are tied, are a part of the problem. Teachers who don't know any better (do not think outside the box, do not investigate the boundaries of the education paradigm) are definately part of the problem, but teachers who do know better and who have investigated - and yet remain silent - are fully complicit. Even though we love and respect teachers (and I do), we must not give awake and aware teachers a pass for feeling impotent, just as we must not give any other awake and aware member of society a pass who feels impotent.

Dennis

[Carmen]

Haven't read all the posts here Dennis, but I want to encourage readers to google Sir Ken Robinsons name. He is an educationalist and 'man' what a switched on, inspirational speaker/teacher he is. Sorry haven't supplied any links. I found him on an education thread here on Avalon, also TED.

To my mind, education in the world today, is for the most part, a load of crap. A deliberate load of crap, designed to produce standardized minions with no idea how to think for themselves. What education does with bright young minds is criminal!

[Tarka the Duck]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Tarka the Duck (here)
... I sometimes feel there is an "us and them" mentality when people talk about teachers - we are not (in my experience anyway!!) part of the PTB. We care sincerely about what we do and the children we have in our care -- but our hands are firmly tied and we are under great pressure to "perform" and meet "targets". ...

It is not an indictment, per se, but a recognition. Just as doctors that do not question the authority that oversees them (in the US , it's the AMA) and do not investigate the corporate interests that massively influence them (Big Pharma and insurance lobbyists, in the case of medicine), teachers that merely go along with the flow, with mouths firmly closed because they feel their hands are tied, are a part of the problem. Teachers who don't know any better (do not think outside the box, do not investigate the boundaries of the education paradigm) are definately part of the problem, but teachers who do know better and who have investigated - and yet remain silent - are fully complicit. Even though we love and respect teachers (and I do), we must not give awake and aware teachers a pass for feeling impotent, just as we must not give any other awake and aware member of society a pass who feels impotent.

Dennis

What, on a practical level, would you suggest that these investigative, awake and aware teachers do? You seem to feel that the responsibility lies with them...

[Dennis Leahy]

Well, it's been 8 years, and my daughter is now in college - still dealing with the same institutionalized education paradigm, just a new venue. The carrot dangling from the end of the stick changed from gold stars to a "degree", an expensive piece of paper with much less power than advertised.

Thought I'd bring this old thread forward, to give more people a chance to relate their stories and opinions.

[Constance]

John Taylor Gatto - A former school teacher

A brilliant brilliant soul. Incredibly inspiring!

John has also written a book called Dumbing us down - The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling


Attachment 41067

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XaO7Ms55Dn0

Weapons of Mass Instruction - John Taylor Gatto - GREAT! - 2004 - AERO Conference

[Patient]

Posted by TWINCANS (here)
Great topic .... but don't get me started. It all began with Magical Child and Magical Child Returns by Joseph Chiltern Pierce, then Montessori and Rudolf Steiner, then Holt ...

Suffice to say our family has opted out of institutionalized childhood and we homeschool. This interesting article agrees with my view that real change will never come by people sending their kids to school. Change and solutions will only happen when more people detach from the industrial-aged anachronism that is schooling, because they see that learning is all around, and that adults don't teach - children learn, and that children are being abused by a left-brain dominant system and that a society is poor indeed that isolates its most precious children, and... (sorry, no more soapbox).

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ible-if-so-how


And this is about the growing trend to unstructured learning styles, broadly categorized as Unschooling. Here again pioneers are plowing new ground.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/em/74411

The school system has been the root of many of my problems that I have had to face.

With 2 children harmed by vaccines and then they were not properly supported by the school system - I had a fight on my hands from the very beginning. Moved locations and then gave another school district an opportunity only to have them attack us with CAS because my autistic child had messy hair - didn't matter to them that he rubs his head when he is stressed from people attempting to make him communicate.

School systems so messed up.

[Constance]

Posted by Patient (here)

Posted by TWINCANS (here)
Great topic .... but don't get me started. It all began with Magical Child and Magical Child Returns by Joseph Chiltern Pierce, then Montessori and Rudolf Steiner, then Holt ...

Suffice to say our family has opted out of institutionalized childhood and we homeschool. This interesting article agrees with my view that real change will never come by people sending their kids to school. Change and solutions will only happen when more people detach from the industrial-aged anachronism that is schooling, because they see that learning is all around, and that adults don't teach - children learn, and that children are being abused by a left-brain dominant system and that a society is poor indeed that isolates its most precious children, and... (sorry, no more soapbox).

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ible-if-so-how


And this is about the growing trend to unstructured learning styles, broadly categorized as Unschooling. Here again pioneers are plowing new ground.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/em/74411

The school system has been the root of many of my problems that I have had to face.

With 2 children harmed by vaccines and then they were not properly supported by the school system - I had a fight on my hands from the very beginning. Moved locations and then gave another school district an opportunity only to have them attack us with CAS because my autistic child had messy hair - didn't matter to them that he rubs his head when he is stressed from people attempting to make him communicate.

School systems so messed up.

I'm so so sorry to hear this Patient

[Valerie Villars]

Patient, I can relate. When my son was nine, I was working three jobs and back to college for nursing. I was a divorced Mom.

I lost a fiance' by accident, suddenly. I went to California for a week to regroup after the death, with my son staying with my Mom.

In spite of how busy I was, we still did Indian Guides together, and he did baseball, basketball, etc.

My son had a will of iron and would refuse to wear a coat when it was cold and would repeatedly go outside with socks and no shoes on, so no matter how much I bleached and washed his socks, they would be stained. The child had a nice home, nice clothes, plenty to eat and a good extended family.

When I got home my mother told me the school had called and said unless I resigned from college, they were going to call Child Protective Services on me.

So there went a way for me to effectively make our lives better, by being a nurse.

I don't trust the system for a second.

[Hym]

Dennis's intro post on this thread will always be relevant and useful when we make those choices about who we entrust our children to. Thanks Dennis.

In some instances we cannot compromise with others who teach a very dishonest curriculum to our children. As much as we recognize the need for socialization, it is at times not worth the price the child pays when being taught by the ignorant and those who have no deep respect for the power of questioning or the value of invention.

I, too, see no easily found solutions to the indoctrination into ignorance suffered by many school aged children. Charlotte Iserbyt's book "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" is a good place to start when we make choices as parents on what systems serve the nurturing of our children. From there we look for solutions and get on with the joys inherent in the challenges ahead.

I've always taken the responsibility for my son's education on myself and it was difficult for the 10 years I had to work-school with him. To this day I still take him to math tutoring for the dyslexically gifted. It's worthy to note that even with these problems, he is insightful, brilliant, mentally gifted, intense, kind and caring. Like all of the dyslexic, though "dyslexia" is not really a good description of the variances in this condition, the common gift is the ability, when nurtured, of the plasticity of the brain to adapt the thought process into invention and great, insightful creativity.


While doing so much to give him a real world, balanced and honest base to see the world as it really is, the isolation of being a single, sole custodial parent, since he was 5, created some gaps in his growth. Because there was not one school, nor any close social structure willing to take on his dyslexia we had to do what we could on our own. When the local Waldorf school failed to offer help during his first year there, I was surprised to find out that the local Montessori school would not take dyslexic kids who had attended Waldorf.

With no help from his estranged mother I was unable to take on anything but small jobs as a contractor, necessitating I take him along on every small job I could find. I look back and see I could have dug much deeper than all of the constant searching I did to find more balanced social solutions, looking further to find competent educational and social solutions in this area to get him the help he needed, also freeing me up to take on the larger works needed to insure our future choices. I do see that the area we lived in had few options available, for a variety of reasons.

Also, I was too heavy on him during the years it took to comprehend his severe dyslexia, a fact finally realized fully when his mother, leaving our area, revealed her meth use during pregnancy. Before he was in the picture, I had such a strong sense of something being so wrong with her that I planned a trip to the place of our wedding to tell her we were going to be divorced. When we arrived and I was planning to be as kind as I could be telling her, we found out she was pregnant.

I said nothing and I stayed for him, never to leave. I should have talked with her about my suspicions, but how would that have made her feel during her pregnancy? She died 3 years after leaving the area, a result of alcoholism and the deep depression it grew in her living without the love of her estranged son.

If you know of anyone who has used meth during pregnancy and they have had children it is important for the other parent, the caretakers and even the child themselves, in some cases, to know what they are up against. It is the worst deception in service for the child to hide the cause of the problem.

Dyslexia is the most common condition amongst the children of meth using mothers. Problems faced can turn into blessings, but those things hidden can only make life worse, taking years to understand, with many unnecessary mistakes made, like mine. Those mistakes weren't caused by the educational systems I had to work so hard to avoid, but an honest and open, creative and nurturing school would have made our lives and his future much better... ...... .........I just didn't find it, or call out loudly enough to create it.

Choose wisely from an open heart and, even in the midst of knowing as much as we do, allow the openness of humility to provide solutions. My prayers are with you as much as my mistakes are with me, waiting to offer advice to those in the same situations.