By: Linda Schrock Taylor

Linda Schrock Taylor — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:00:34 +0000

Ilana is correct and those who are wise will carefully heed her advice. We allowed our son to attend public school in the early 1990s for Kindergarten through half of 3rd grade. I knew better but thought that we could protect him from the bad effects because my mother was teaching right in my son’s building and I was teaching in the same district, just down the street in the high school. It was the same district, the same building, actually, where my parents and about every relative on both sides had gone to school! We tried hard to stay on top of things but so much of the harm is carried on so slyly that it is hard to catch. The phonics books, displayed so proudly at registration, disappeared once the parents left, but I only realize that much later because my son learned phonics from me. The reading books did not come home…”We are afraid kids will lose them.” No, they didn’t want us to notice that all kids were being held back to the below-basic reading level of the lowest child so as not to hurt feelings but I didn’t notice because D was reading well at home but why was he getting in so much trouble? (Bored.) Still working on only simple addition and subtraction in 2nd grade? Yes, that lowest performing child was still setting the parameters. Again and again we went for meetings with the principal to demand more challenging lessons. When “People will come one morning a week to talk to the kids about not touching poisons and more” began talking about sexual preferences, instead, we insisted that our child not attend any more of those “informative” classes. We only found out about the Topic Shift when our son came home with age inappropriate questions which meant that he sat through a couple inappropriate “lessons” before we were alerted, but never by the school. Another meeting was held with the principal to complain, “Your school is teaching our son about things that we actively shelter him from at home!” Then, believe it or not, Second grade was ten times worse!! D was reading at the 11th grade level but not allowed to check out any “chapter” books because the “school policy” was that a child had to be in third grade for chapter books. (But first grade, remember, was ok for discussing homosexuality.). The principal assured our son that he would love Third grade because he would easily qualify for Odyssey of the Mind with his superior brain and powers of invention. Come third grade. The very fine near-retirement teacher had to teach second grade material (which was never done at the appropriate time) before she could teach third grade material, thus wasting yet more of d’s time and life. But the worst lesson that my son learned, the lesson that I have never been able to completely help him un-learn, is that teachers and staff cannot be trusted to be fair and honorable. At the tryout for OM, the kids were divided into groups and given small squares, about 4-6″ in size, of construction paper and told to build the tallest tower possible. The other members of D’s team quickly piled the flat pieces of paper in a flat pile then expressed their disappointment in their tower that measure less than one-quarter of an inch. D started folding the corners of the pieces of paper so that each piece could be set atop the one below it and he built a tall tower. But, when I picked him up at the end of the auditions, he was very dejected because … he had NOT qualified for the Odyssey of the Mind team. He, brilliant, able, and inventive, had been shunned and blackballed by the teachers because…”He was not a team player.” It was the most memorable, burnt-into-his-soul lesson he learned in public school. The poor readers and poor thinkers who had piled flat sheet upon flat sheet did make the OM team. I pulled him out of public schools and we never looked back. Do not ever underestimate the damaging lessons, no matter how subtle and seemingly trivial at the time, that those schools will teach/convey/foist upon your children. YOU are your child’s advocate. Take that role very seriously and do not assume that schools mean well. They have an agenda which usually the teachers, themselves, so not even recognize or understand. It is built into curriculums like Common Core which teachers are forced to teach in unquestioning lockstep. Linda Schrock Taylor. (Readers are welcome to contact me at readinglessons@hotmail.com)

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By: Linda Schrock Taylor