Guest post by Debbie Ralph Burks
I love teaching. In a school classroom, you usually get fresh faces in your classroom each year, and fresh minds and hearts to influence. A homeschooling parent quickly loses their classroom after a couple of decades. When my youngest started college one fall, I started in January.
I found that homeschooling had not only been beneficial to my children, but had kept my math skills sharp, and I had learned a lot of useful facts along the way. I tested out of all of the math that I needed until my education courses, and I CLEPed out of a semester’s worth of classes. I entered my junior year education blocks with a 4.0, and continued that way just until student teaching.
We were taught in education classes a continual message of change: changing curricula, changing methodology, changing assessment, and changing methods on how to express those assessments. Constructivism ruled the new classroom; we were to teach children to construct their own knowledge, and “facilitate” their learning. We were to assess their learning in nontraditional ways. We were to concern ourselves with their emotions, their culture, their home lives as we considered those assessments.
I didn’t find that this new way of assessment and teaching affected me as a college student directly. We were in a university setting where the A-B-C scale still ruled, and at least 2 grades had to be given in a class. A midterm grade helped students know how things were going in the class, and the final grade was the one that was recorded permanently. In spite of all the change, the 4.0 and I were still together.
One particular professor didn’t give the midterm grade, simply saying that we were “all doing well.” I wondered if “doing well” was C work, B work or A work. She told us not to worry about it. She also said—at the end of the semester—she would look at our portfolios and give us a grade based upon the “overall feeling” she received from our work, and from watching us teach. Rather subjective, touchy-feely assessments!
We were also placed in small working groups over which we had no say. Preparation for the working world was the reason we were told. We needed to learn to collaborate well, and would often not be able to choose whom we would have to collaborate. I was placed with one person who was a really good worker and student, two who did as little as possible to get by. And then there was me: Mrs. 4.0, who wanted to keep it because I had earned it so far, and who wanted to glean the most of every class so that I could be a more excellent teacher.
We worked in these groups for our education classes that semester. The other education teachers were more traditional in their grading, more individualistic. All of our work wasn’t a group effort. And all of our grading was over our own work, not only the group’s work. And then there was that one class where the feel-good teacher gave us a group grade.
There went my 4.0.
One B+ in college (and 2 A+’s that didn’t count towards my grade point average, which is not how most universities do things.) kept me from that 4. And that grade was given to me because this professor “felt like it.” Those are the professor’s words.
And I really didn’t learn anything in that class.
Except how NOT to teach;
how NOT to assess;
and the importance of individual grading.
So this professor was helpful after all, just not in teaching the subject listed on my transcript.
As you look at the new diploma requirements, the new STEM rubric, the tiered system, you will find one thing that permeates the new system of education: collaboration.
Your children (and you, yourself if you are going to school) will be forced into collaborative efforts, not individual efforts. You will be forced into “consensus” for the good of the group, and not for your own good. You won’t be graded on your work: you will be graded on the groups’ work. Who cares that you might be the only one doing any work, or that the group didn’t use any of your ideas, because you think differently than the group. (like Edison? Einstein? Newton?).
This will result in the stunting of the development of the individual. And the stunting of society. I think that is their purpose.
But if your child’s collaborative group doesn’t meet the touchy-feely standards of those grading their projects for graduation, will they be able to graduate? You may be saying, “I homeschool. It won’t affect me.” Don’t be so sure. We don’t know how all of this will affect homeschoolers as yet; all we know is that we have to offer an “equivalent” education to our children.
When our children earn a Core 40 diploma, it is easy to document. Go to the Indiana Department of Education website and look at the requirements for the new diplomas. They are not so easy for homeschoolers (or private schools, or even small, rural public schools) to accomplish.
We need to be in prayer about this. We also need to contact our legislators, and the governor, and speak out about this. Our children’s futures are at stake.
“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Debbie Ralph Burks is the wife of a godly, sweet husband of 38 years, the mother of 3 amazing adults, and grandmother of 5 (who are homeschooled.) She started teaching when she was 5: she taught herself to read, and then her 3 year old sister. She homeschooled her children, and then earned a degree in elementary education, and 1st-9th grade science. Her honors coursework was mostly done in collaboration with Indiana Partnership for Young Writers. She taught science in the middle school and elementary school at Hasten Hebrew Academy. Her allergies are so severe that she no longer teaches in the classroom. She has continued teaching in her church, and teaching writing to small groups of homeschoolers, where she can better control her teaching environment so that she will not have severe allergic reactions.