The primary role of parents applies also to teachers and world leaders:
Dear Madame President [though of course, you may turn out to be a man]:
Teaching and teacher education have traditionally been viewed as women’s work and practiced by women. Like nursing, teaching has never been taken seriously among the more august professions….
I suspect that most of my fellow correspondents will urge you to pass new legislation to encourage young people as well as career switchers to become teachers by improving salaries and working conditions, by removing the oppressive sanctions associated with No Child Left Behind (while I hope retaining its emphasis on standards, attention to groups traditionally underserved, and the need for well prepared teachers who can assume professional responsibility for learning) and by developing a federal education policy that works through rewarding good work rather than by punishing “evildoers.”
I have a somewhat different request of you, Madame President. I want you to support the work of teachers at all levels by serving as a persistent, relentless, and self-conscious model of an educated person. I further implore you to define the president’s role as the principal teacher of our nation, the model educator, whose responsibility is to exemplify the habits of mind, habits of practical judgment and action, and habits of the heart that we associate with our ideal for all well-educated citizens in a democracy. Even more important, I implore you to define your role as the principal learner in our society, taking every opportunity to make your own intellectual and moral development visible and transparent to your fellow citizens.
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Messiah College professor Milton Gaither, author of Homeschool: An American History, reviewing a study of the effectiveness of the Building Strong Families parent education program:
…this study serves as a good reminder that “home schooling” doesn’t have to mean a mother teaching her own children in the kitchen as an alternative to formal schooling. For centuries the home has been used by private tutors, circuit-riding teachers, clergy, and, as this study reminds us, extension agents and social workers, to offer education to family members, both children and adults. Today’s homes are if anything even more important in the educational ecosystem of most Americans….the home is the location of so many of the commonplace educational practices in which so many engage — adults taking correspondence or online courses, living room reading circles, “cell groups,” a good documentary or quiz show on television–one could multiply examples. When thought of like this we’re all home schoolers in one way or another.
Find the secret key to learning at Janice Campbell: The Overstuffed School Schedule vs. The Learning Lifestyle:
Over time, I learned that we could study any number of topics without weariness if we did two essential things:
- Eliminate busywork
- Live a learning lifestyle
While you’re there, take time to follow the link to The Core Curriculum Teaches Connections:
I first discovered the web of great ideas through books I read on my own, rather than through the dessicated textbooks and neatly segregated subjects I encountered in school, and I suspect that it’s the same for many of you.
It’s hard for a humble blogger to keep up with everything, but I didn’t want to let today pass without recognizing, and celebrating, that today is Juneteenth!
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect on January 1st, 1863, but it took two and a half years, until June 19th, 1865, for that proclamation to be announced publicly and enforced in Galveston, Texas by General Gordon Grainger and his 2,000 Union troops. Ever since then, “Juneteenth” has been a day to celebrate this proclamation of freedom to the captives. It has been an official state holiday in Texas since 1980, and as of this year is officially recognized in 28 other states. It is also a day to reflect on the two and a half year delay, and on the patience, persistence, and force needed to establish justice in our society.
Also celebrated in June is Loving Day, which I only know about by the grace of the amazing street photographer Michael David Murphy of While Seated. The U.S. Supreme Court case of Loving vs. Virginia finally established the legality of interracial marriage in the United States (which was then illegal in Virginia and 16 other states), as of June 12th, 1967. Yes, you read that right: 1967.
More suggested reading, for adults and kids:
The women who have paved the way for the first Madam President
