What's Wrong with this Picture?

When my oldest child was in the Public School System, I never really gave much thought to who decided what he was going to learn in each subject.  I guess I just assumed that there was a standard store of information that every schooled person had to learn before they were declared "educated".  In retrospect it is amazing how many things I never really thought about in my own and my children's education.

Since I began homeschooling one of the big questions I am constantly asked is "How do you make sure your children are learning everything they are supposed to be."  This question assumes my early outlook that there is a certain amount of information that has to be gathered in specifically measured increments, or else your child will be "behind".  If they fall behind, good luck ever catching them up again.  The longer I have been homeschooling the more I have come to realize that education is a life-long endeavor, and no grade or certificate can identify a truly educated person.  The highest goal of any "teacher" should be to teach their students to love to learn and how to teach themselves.  Once that is accomplished the path is paved for life-long learning and you will have gotten them as close to success as any "third person" can.  Remember the adage, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."  A great teacher makes that water look so good that their students naturally want to drink and never turn back.

Unfortunately that is not the case with our current education system.  For some reason, the prevailing philosophy is that we can make a student drink and we need to shove it down their throats and make sure they can spit the right information back up when it's asked for.  Learning isn't looked at as an exciting adventure, with different treasures to be found by each individual who determines to seek for them.  Instead it is something the teacher holds in her hands and rations out to each individual in equal proportions at the same time, whether they are ready for it, or are even interested in it or not.

Yesterday I came across this article that reflects how truly arbitrary and ridiculous educational "standards" are.  I had never really thought about it until last night, but it struck me how silly they are when I realized that a handful of "experts" in Texas (each with their own political, social, religious, and educational agendas mind you)  are deciding what every child in the country is going to have to "learn" each of the 13 years they spend in a Public School Classroom.  Even if they are "experts" (please define that for me), and even if they aren't swayed by personal agendas (which they most certainly are. Who isn't?), how could they possibly know what my individual child needs to learn, with his varied interests and abilities?  The answer is, they couldn't.  It's hard enough for a teacher of 25 students who spends 9 months with her class to figure that out, let alone for some removed group of people.  It is hard enough for me as a mother of only 4 who spends practically the entire day, every day of the year with them, to know that.  Luckily I realize I don't have to know.  I just have to help them acquire the tools they need and spark the fires in their minds and stand back and watch them go.

In the words of Plutarch, "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."

If all of us interested in educating children would spend more time trying to kindle fires, than attempting to fill vessels, this world would be filled with many more truly educated people.  Heaven knows we could use them.