This article has been floating around various homeschool email groups and I wanted to put in a few words on it.
Excerpt:
Home Schools Run By Well-Meaning Amateurs
Schools With Good Teachers Are Best-Suited to Shape Young Minds
By Dave Arnold
There's nothing like having the right person with the right experience, skills and tools to accomplish a specific task. Certain jobs are best left to the pros, such as, formal education.
There are few homeowners who can tackle every aspect of home repair. A few of us might know carpentry, plumbing and, let’s say, cementing. Others may know about electrical work, tiling and roofing. But hardly anyone can do it all.
Same goes for cars. Not many people have the skills and knowledge to perform all repairs on the family car. Even if they do, they probably don’t own the proper tools. Heck, some people have their hands full just knowing how to drive.
This is actually an old argument that pops up from time to time in various forms. The most common one I heard is the "Surgeon" analogy. You know - "You wouldn't want an amateur performing surgery on your child, so why would you want someone untrained molding his or her minds?" In every form it relies on false analogies that are easily refuted. Usually, simply modifying the analogy to actually fit a school situation is a very effective method of refuting it.
For example, the author started with the analogy of home repair, so lets extend it to fit the situation.
1. For the author's analogy on home repair to apply to school, first the "home repair expert" should be repairing thirty houses at once. He will do this not by applying individual attention to the needs of each house, but by instructing the owners to perform each task in unison themselves with his instruction.
2. Each home repair will be conducted on every house whether the house needs the repair or not. The owner will be punished for "failing" to adhere to this. working ahead will be discouraged except possibly for a selected few owners who will be allowed to have "advanced home repair" for one hour a week.
3. Each home repair will be conducted within the same time frame and the next repair will start whether the home repair has been finished or not. Any resulting problems with this will be blamed on the home owner.
4. The scope and sequence of home repairs will be decided by politicians and administrators who have not actually examined the houses in question. This will be nationalized and local variables such as climate and resources will not be taken into account.
5. The bulk of the "expert's" training will be in methods of controlling the various owners to submit to this process - the actual home improvement portion of his training will be a few general classes on industrial construction and highway repair.
6. Any tests of the "expert's" knowledge of specific home repair will show that it is no greater than that of the average homeowner. Any efforts to mandate scores in this area would result in massive job losses and will, of course be fought by the unions.
7. In addition to the regular course of home improvement, the home owners will be subject to sociali... er.. "interior decoration" by the other homeowners. This will result in - at best - interiors that reflect the values of the other homeowners instead of the owner of the actual home and at worst, vandalization and theft.
8. In an attempt to mitigate the worst of point 7, a counse... excuse me - interior consultant - will be employed to whitewash any obvious damage and - in extreme cases - refer the owner to a certified (and expensive) interior decorator.
9. Any "unique" home designs will be discouraged since they are not mainstream and therefore would make the "home repair" process more difficult for the "professional."
10. If by some chance the results of the above results in a large number of homes being "not to code," the home owners will be blamed and the home repair industry will call for more tax money to be collected and spent to provide adequate shelter for home owners. The
poor results will also be used to discourage any "do it yourself" home owners by offering it as proof that home improvement is too difficult to be handled by amateurs.
Oh, by the way - did anyone else notice that the actual author is "head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois?" Probably not a leading expert on education in general. Sometimes, when evaluating information, you need to consider the source.
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