Sayonara

This will be my last post on this blog. It has been an interesting venture, but I need to invest my time in better things. I will continue writing about education, but on a different site, to which I will NOT provide a link from this site.

I have had a few months to reflect on why I should make this change. Educators consider this a worthwhile practice, reflecting on and crystallizing what we have learned from a given experience. I can summarize what I learned and why I will not continue to blog here in three topics: Those I hoped to speak to; Those who responded; My essential message.

Those I had hoped to speak to

1. Parents who were not certain they were doing the best thing for their chidlren by sending down the street to look for a yellow bus every day, but needed someone with credentials to provoke them to stop and think hard about this.
2. Teachers who still have a glimmer of hope that there is an option for educating children without the bureaucracy, political correctness, and sense of inefficacy which accompany public school teaching.
3. People who have already seen these problems intuitively, but needed someone to help them articulate why they have ambivalent feelings toward public schools in America.

Those who responded

1. The "Choir" (those who already know and agree with the things I am saying).
2. People who have had a bad experience with private education, and have an ax to grind.
3. Folks in need of the eighth grade Formal Logic class I used to teach (with which most eighth graders have no problem).

Since one must assume there are readers who did not post responses, I have no idea whether I reached any of the folks in the three target groups. But I have learned enough over the past year to have a pretty good idea how I can locate them more effectively.

And now, in parting, here is my essential message about education in the United States:

1. Parents are the first and best educators. They should continually be educating themselves so that they may educate their children. If they decide to entrust their children to an outside educational choice, they should investigate it carefully and hold it accountable.

2. The United States Constitution is silent about education, as it should be, since free adults can make these decisions without government control or expense.

3. There are courageous Americans who are providing quality education in their own homes and in schools of choice. These are national treasures.

4. An education is only as valid as the truth assumptions on which it is built. Most public educators are woefully unprepared (through little fault of their own) to confront truth claims and make responsible decisions. No one holds them accountable for faulty thinking, unless they are so unwise as to make politically unacceptable remarks.

5. Educating chldren should not be "rocket science," but every day in this country there are more follies committed in the name of education than one blog can record. What generally results when these follies are exposed is a lot of finger-pointing, and very little personal involvement in helping a child learn - without "dumbing it down."

Picture a wide-eyed child on the threshhold of a world teeming with adventure and excitement. Erase, from that world, all the busses, buildings, and bureaucracy dedicated to "education." Take the child's hand and walk into the world. Welcome the adventure that Aslan has prepared.