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For What Purpose Do We Educate Our Children?

EducationEducating our children seems to be a no-brainer when you contemplate the reasons behind this procedure. First, we want them to be able to grow up and support themselves. Next, we’d like to think that they will become discriminating intelligent thinkers. Third, we hope that they will be responsible citizens who care about others. Fourth, we assume that when they become parents, they will have the skills they need to be successful. We’d like for them to be able to manage their money so that when they retire, they will be able to enjoy their senior years.

We don’t want our children to become slaves.

In other words, we want them to become successful human beings with a social conscience and an understanding of what has gone on in the world prior to their entry so that they will make intelligent decisions about the future. We pray that they will be able to have and use some common sense.

Let’s look at a few of the ways we are now going about educating children in our schools at the present time.

How many people in the workforce today are tested from 50 to 75 per cent of the time they are working? “What?” you ask. “How could you accomplish anything at work if you were taking tests all the time?”

Three guesses at what children are doing in the classroom these days….taking tests constantly. Is this preparing them for life in the ‘real world’ or is it just making them test takers?

Next, how many people in the work force use algebra, chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and other forms of higher math and science on a daily basis? “Very few,” you reply, “and certainly not me!”

Laws are now being put into place to require that all students take higher math and science classes. Yes, it’s critically important that our engineers, research scientists, and other people who do use higher math and science daily understand these concepts and are able to use them correctly. On the other hand, how many jobs not in these fields require their use? Not everyone is a rocket scientist nor should they be.

Here’s what’s happening. Algebra is being taught even in first grade these days. These kids (who, by the way, are in a developmental stage where if they see a cat mask on a dog will identify the animal as a cat!) don’t even know basic addition and subtraction facts yet. Do they really need to try to understand an “unknown” in an equation?

Does this give you a hint at why the guy at the cash register can’t figure out your change if the cash register doesn’t provide the information?

Reasoning skills come from practice. With pressure to teach facts that have to be regurgitated on standardized tests in the forefront of teaching, classrooms are conducted with single subjects one at the time—i.e., language arts from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., math from 9:45 to 10:30 a.m., etc. That means that children tend to think of these subjects in isolation. Some of the difficulty many students have with word problems stems from the lack of ability to bridge the gap between subjects.

In the early days of public schools in this country, children were in the same classroom with older students. They heard the lessons the older kids were taught on a daily basis; increased learning took place.

Any good educator will tell you that repetition is the key to learning. That’s why music teachers excel in communicating a song that is to be learned; the song is sung repeatedly until the child knows it. In modern classrooms, there is little time for repetition. So much information is required on standardized tests that repetition time is minimal. Skills are presented and are practiced briefly and then it’s time to go on.

A teacher who is the mother of a third-grader told me recently that her child who is quite intelligent is having a hard time in school this year because they have to push constantly to get all the “standards” covered in time for TCAP. This is not an isolated incident.

Is this really the way to provide an education for our children?

What about the kids who are adept at working with their hands? What about the people who are going to need facility with machinery to accomplish their jobs when they grow up? What is going to happen when lack of physical education on a daily basis is going to produce an obese workforce where people miss work because of resulting health problems?

Parents need to find out what the interests and aptitudes of their children are in order to see that they have the right preparation for life. Not everyone is going to college. Some people are going to require education in ways that are not being offered in school.

I have read about a school in a European country where children run a retail business as their training. They order the goods, sell them, and do all the paperwork required to make a success of the business. They are living life as they learn. Most kids in our society think of school and then of life as a whole different world.

Parents have to become involved in their children’s education. Not only do they need to oversee homework, but they need to find out what else the child needs to know. Teaching children about handling money begins at home. Learning how to do simple home, clothing or car repairs means everything if Mom or Dad is the one who teaches you.

Education is the work of a lifetime. Schools can’t do it all. Politicians who keep creeping into the education process don’t have all the answers (and may be causing quite a few of the problems!) We have to use common sense in deciding what is important to teach.

It takes not only a village, but an aware populace to rear a child. Get involved and do your part. We all need our children to succeed and we are responsible for bringing that about.

The challenge is to get involved. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” It’s a lot easier to let someone else do it that to get off the couch and make a difference ourselves.

Sue Freeman Culverhouse
Sue Freeman Culverhousehttp://culverhouseart.com/
Author of Tennessee Literary Luminaries: From Cormac McCarthy to Robert Penn Warren (The History Press, 2013) Sue Freeman Culverhouse has been a freelance writer for the past 36 years. Beginning in 1976, she published magazines articles in Americana, Historic Preservation, American Horticulturist, Flower and Garden, The Albemarle Magazine, and many others. Sue is the winner of two Virginia Press Awards in writing. She moved to Springfield, Tennessee in 2003 with her sculptor husband, Bill a retired attorney. Sue has one daughter,  Susan Leigh Miller who teaches poetry and creative writing at Rutgers University. Sue teaches music and writing at Watauga Elementary School in Ridgetop, Tennessee to approximately 500 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. She also publishes a literary magazine each year; all work in the magazine is written and illustrated by the students. Sue writes "Uncommon Sense," a column in the Robertson County Times, which also appears on Clarksville Online. She is the author of "Seven keys to a sucessful life", which is  available on amazon.com and pubishamerica.com; this is a self-help book for all ages.
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1 COMMENT

  1. Of course all students should be taking mathematics and science classes!

    We don’t live in the 1950s, when a 6th grade education was good enough to land you a factory job for the rest of your life.

    We live in an increasingly technological age where math and science skills are a requirement, not an option.

    The US is already seriously lagging behind other countries in this, that last thing we need is to fall behind even more.

    Number sense is being incorporated into younger grades and I applaud this step in the right direction. First-graders are not learning the “algebra” that past generations may have taken in high school, they are learning algebraic skills so that when they do reach high school, they are able to make their way through mathematics classes with more ease.

    I tutor mathematics at my college and can tell you that the students who are entering college now, who did not learn these early skills, enter college unable to pass a class that is equivalent to what my sixth-grade son can do (and do with ease, and no, not because he is a rocket scientist, it is because he was taught number sense from the earliest grades).

    We, as a species, are facing complex issues, issues that require problem-solvers. Math and science classes teach problem-solving skills, critical thinking and logic.

    I don’t know why there is this mis-perception in the US that only “rocket scientists” can learn algebra or even trig or calculus. Anyone can learn mathematics, and everyone should.

    These are all normal academic subjects in primary and secondary schools in other countries, so are you saying that American children are too stupid to learn the things that students in other countries are learning? I think not.

    Sure, we can sit back and waste time with our video games and reality TV shows, lower academic standards for American students even more than they already have been, and continue to watch the rest of the world smoke us in leading the world, but is that what we really want for America?

    It’s time to put America back into a leadership position.

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