On educating our children

On educating our children

       At age 65, I now have the advantage of age

I also have the advantage of attending many different education schools throughout the USA when I was growing up, and also have lived around the world enough to be confident in my observations about how others educate their children.

And I think I was reasonably well educated.

And I remember when the new math teaching method came in, and I could quickly see the differences in what was being taught.

And I think I had some indoctrination, too. I remember attending a John Birch rally as part of a school trip.

My oldest child once took a high school elective in "pet care", which still grosses me out for two main reasons. One is that she could actually take the course, and second, that the school system actually hired someone and offered the course.

So on to my recollections.

Halloween was no big deal at my schools. That day was always a simple education day. Everyone wore regular school clothes. Any Halloween celebrations would occur late after the regular school day and after school activities had concluded. That was just usual to me. For Christmas, we might have a tree put up, and maybe a school play with a Christmas theme, but that was about it. Again the priority was still basic education.

Said another way, we only have so many hours in the school year to teach our children to provide them the opportunity to be happy and successful in life, and the priority at school was always on education, vice indoctrination.  There were definitely no courses on "pet care".

We still had some practical courses in wood working and home economics, too.

So people could do simple home skill things like basic mechanics and balancing a check book once they flew the nest.

Was it perfect. No. Was it probably better than what we subject our kids to today, most likely.

            Later I attended Georgia Tech, even taught there for three years, and even both attended and taught at some professional schools. At all times, the priority was always on education, with testing to evaluate how well we learned the subject. The higher up I rose, the more the education seemed to focus more on human leadership and organization skills, and less on subject skills, which came earlier in my life.

So last, when a young person at a McDonalds Drive Through lane could not even make change with a machine to help her, I first got mad and frustrated, followed by some pity as to how bad she had been set up in life as she moved on.