.schooling...

I went to a meeting last night between Saugerties parents and a panel of local education figures- it was set up to be a roundtable discussion of questions, ideas, and possible solutions to the current budget crisis. I went as a home schooling mom because I think it is important for all of us in the community to work together to educate our children, regardless of whether they attend public school or not. I was deeply dismayed by the lack of discussion- last night- of education, children's needs, or the need for creative solutions and community involvement. It seemed the primary topic was numbers, numbers, and more numbers. While I understand that these numbers must be dealt with, I think we are, as a community and a culture, losing sight of the real problems of education...which should and do revolve around creating and nurturing an environment that fosters learning and the love of learning. This is one of the primary reasons Zzoe and I have chosen to home school our kids. We have seen, over and over, evidence that public school creates distrust in the learning process- tossing it over in favor of a highly artificial model whose primary functions are to teach children to follow directions, transfer information onto endless worksheets, and constantly prove, again and again, that they know what they know. As a culture, we are setting our children up for failure by entrenching them in a system whose primary concern is numbers and taxpayer dollars. Our kids will be facing huge environmental, economic, and ethical decisions when they enter the adult world, and if we don't start restructuring our public education system NOW, they will be without any effective tools to make these decisions.