{"id":247,"date":"2005-08-06T20:46:43","date_gmt":"2005-08-06T20:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/?p=247"},"modified":"2010-05-08T20:47:21","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T20:47:21","slug":"dumbing-us-down-schools-weaken-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/dumbing-us-down-schools-weaken-families\/","title":{"rendered":"Dumbing Us Down: Schools Weaken Families"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Schools, I hear it argued, would make better sense and be better  value as nine-to-five operations or even nine-to-nine ones, working  year-round. We\u2019re not a farming community anymore, I hear, that we need  to give kids time off to tend the crops. This new-world-order schooling  would serve dinner, provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical  attention, and a whole range of other services, which would convert the  institution into a true synthetic family for children, better than the  original one for many poor kids, it is said; and this will level the  playing field for the sons and daughters of weak families.<\/p>\n<p>Yet is appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a  major cause of weak families and weak communities. They separate parents  and children from vital interaction with each other and from true  curiosity about each other\u2019s lives. Schools stifle family originality by  appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to  develop\u2014then they blame the family for its failure to be a family. It\u2019s  like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing  chemicals too early, then pronouncing the photographer incompetent.&#8221;  (John Taylor Gatto,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=mjtate-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/0865714487\/qid=1123213605\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1?v=glance%26s=books%26n=507846\"><span style=\"color: #000066;\">Dumbing Us Down<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=mjtate-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, p. <\/span>74)<\/p>\n<p>Not being separated from vital interaction with my children is one of  the things I love most about educating them at home. There are many  reasons why I homeschool, but\u00a0a major factor in the initial decision  was\u00a0how natural it seemed to keep them home and how unnatural to send  them away. Homeschooling was simply a logical extension of being a mom  at home with my children during their infancy, toddlerhood, and  preschool years.<\/p>\n<p>Mary Jo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Schools, I hear it argued, would make better sense and be better value as nine-to-five operations or even nine-to-nine ones, working year-round. We\u2019re not a farming community anymore, I hear, that we need to give kids time off to tend the crops. This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, &#8230; <a title=\"Dumbing Us Down: Schools Weaken Families\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/dumbing-us-down-schools-weaken-families\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Dumbing Us Down: Schools Weaken Families\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}