From O'Donnell Web

Thanks COD.
Orson Scott Card on the public schools and home education.

There is no such thing as an "educational expert."

There are people who have snookered us into paying them a lot of money because they claim to be experts on education, but it's all a game. They collect degrees by taking classes from people who don't know how to teach and don't recognize good teaching when they see it. Then they come to the school districts and get ridiculously high salaries for thinking up ways to keep teachers from doing their jobs.

Do you know what I find, as a college teacher? That the best writers, the best thinkers, the most broadly educated among my students are the ones who were home-schooled.

Think about that. And then think about this: Most of those home-schooled kids get their schooling in a few hours a day. By noon, most of them are done. Then they have time to live together with their families. To read or play on their own. To have a childhood.

Meanwhile, the educational establishment makes ironclad, unbreakable rules about how many days and hours our children must be put under the control of the "experts," who march them through the halls in lines, refuse to let them use the toilet without being punished for it, and inflict group punishments like "silent lunch" for the crime of sitting near other kids who were daring to talk to each other. (I'm describing one of the "better" middle schools in our district.)

And as if that weren't enough, they're maneuvering to take away our summer again

Read the full article here.