From: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu (michael bruce mcdonald)
Subject: Re: Homeschooling
Reply-To: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 07:54:12 GMT

In article <C05u5C.1zD@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca>, msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:
>                                   Thursday, the 31st of December, 1992
>
>Steve Pope writes:
>   There is a LOT of waste in public schools, and that
>   is at the heart of the problem.
>
>   What I claim is that the *prevalent* fantasy -- about
>   "liberals with social agendas" being the ones at fault --
>   is blinding the public to the actual nature of the
>   waste of resources, thus preventing solutions from occurring.
>
>Since I have just indicated my wife's and my intention to
>homeschool our own children, let me respond to this, Steve,
>lest you were misunderstanding my position.
>
>(In the first place, I cringe at the usage ``liberals with
>social agendas'', since I consider myself liberal and yet opposed
>to social engineering wherever I see it. But, that's terminology,
>and I think I understood what you mean.
>
>I *do* think social agendists are at the root of the problem,
>but I think this far from the kind of conspiracy theory you
>seem to be asserting is the prevalent fantasy. (I might
>agree with you that in the conspiracy-theory form it is a common
>enough right-wing belief, and that in this form it is a fantasy.)
>In any event, *I* certainly do not believe that teachers are
>all in league plotting carefully the overthrow of the republic.
>Nor do I believe that all the public-education campaigns (safe sex,
>harassment, drugs, drinking and driving, the environment, whatever
>have you) take up that much of the schoolday. What I do believe
>rather is that it is a commonly held belief that these manipulation
>campaigns, like Coca-Cola advertising campaigns, *work*. Since I don't
>believe that they *really* do work, or rather, since I do not believe if
>citizens were educated to a responsible democratic citizenship
>they *could* work, I regard the pernicious thing that's being
>taught is not so much ``the agenda'' as reinforcement for the
>widely held societal faith in the ad man. It is this faith
>(in the environmental determinism of human behaviour) that I think
>schools of sociology, psychology, social work, and education
>propagate (and it's not so much a dark design, it just makes
>them feel like they're doing something real, something scientific).
>Anyway, I think this faith is very widely held, is preached in the
>public schools, and is almost the antithesis of responsible democratic
>citizenship.
>
>Note that I said that I don't really believe the ad campaigns
>take up that much time. But I do believe that if *professional
>educators and parents* would drop all the sociological and
>psychological baggage that goes into ``teaching teachers how to teach''
>and concentrate instead on *what* is being taught, insist that kids
>learn it and believe that kids can---I mean calculus, mechanics and e&m,
>two years each of chemistry and biology, world and American history,
>great books (world and American surveys), 12 years of Spanish, 6
>of another language like French, German, Latin, or Japanese, for
>*every* American schoolchild by the end of high school---, I think 
>things would be a whole lot better. But, since no one's making me
>education tsar (I shuddered to hear that Donna Shalala's been
>appointed to the cabinet), I'll stick to my own kids for now.
>
>                      Mike Morris
>              (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)
>

Well said, Mike! (I'm getting a clearer sense of your position with every
post.)  Why do you shudder at the prospect of Donna Shalala, dare I ask?

michael mcdonald
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books