Why do you feel you are a "victim of schooling?"


Your question; "how do I as an educator (not a teacher) nuture the characteristics in my children in order to make them successful?"

Is this one of the questions you have to answer on your thesis?

I'd love to be more helpful Shuron but I'm choked with your "MY CHILDREN" mention........ Try and remember that the children aren't yours.

WHEN you become a certified teacher, you don't have options, YOU teach how they tell YOU to teach...There was a time back in the olden daze when teachers had a say in what was taught and what curriculum was chosen. Not so anymore..... What I may suggest is you spend some time in classrooms. Schools always need free help, and you'd learn a lot, I did.

Ditto on most of what Bobby said. I think just about everyone who has ever "attended" pubic schools has been victimized psychologically by them. That people accept the mere concept that schools have some superior/special authority or knowledge to decide what and how kids should learn is the first step towards the mental slavery we "agree to" when we matriculate into the system. Innocent children, without experience and knowledge to advocate for themselves are handed over to the schools by their parents (for various reasons) with the hope (illusion) that they will get an "education". It's truly sad if you think about it.
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Perhaps some quotes from Gatto's speeches:
o "Children do best when you stop teaching them, and you let them learn"

o "Can you build a house or a boat?
Can you sing a song--your own song?
Can you start and run your own business?
Can you grow a garden?
Can you cook?
Then what business do you have with my child!
...over my dead body!!!...I wish I had said that when the schools came to take my children..."

o "..there wasn't a year, when I had the hootzfa(sp?) to teach kids without going into each of their homes and letting their parents know who I was...and since some of those years I taught in the center of Harlem, I suppose there were some risks..."

o "...we have too many people employed in interfering with the way children grow up and that all this money and all these people, all the time we take out of children’s lives and away from their homes and families and neighborhoods and private
explorations gets in the way of education.”
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IMHO, it is nearly impossible to become an "educator" (vs. teacher) these days. You'd have to disregard every bit of behavioral psychology training you've gotten thus far and be continually vigilant/conscious (it is often very subtle) of the obedience training
you will be required to provide for students. You MUST understand that humans, like animals, can be trained to think and act.

Human behavior can be conditioned through repetition of exercises that are used to obtain certain results over time. Animals can be trained in a short amount of time, but it takes much longer to train and condition humans. 12 years of forced schooling is
usually enough time to shape or mold a person into the desired citizen, employee and consumer.

Read all you can written by Gatto but also include John Holt and Ivan Illich.
If you wish to empower children, you'd have to be extremely subversive, but even then....
Think about this: If most teachers were like John Gatto, John Holt, Ivan Illich, Marva Collins and Jaime Escalante, would there still be harmful and pernicious aspects of public schools? I'm afraid the answer is YES, MANY!

That's my rant,
Raul

You also might want to read Grace Lewellyn in The Teenage Liberation Handbook, something of an underground classic. She includes her own story, which starts out much like where you are right now--young and idealistic and wanting to be a teacher who does good, not harm. Anyway, you really need to read it if you are going to make an informed decision about your future.
Leslie in KY
ps my unschooled daughter just graduated from Stephens in Missouri. She has a talent with children and would like someday to do some sort of drama program work with kids, outside of the public school structure, of course. There are many avenues for helping children grow outside of the limitations of schools.
And I should add, I am a speech-language pathologist who absolutely will not work in the school system ever again-- and I will tell you that you will have even less freedom as a teacher than I had as a therapist (administration really doesn't give a rip about speech therapy so you do get left alone to a large degree).