Harrrumph!
My son could read, write and do basic addition and subtraction before he started 1st grade. He wanted to learn to play Magic The Gathering so he could play with me and my friends. We told him he'd have to be able to read the cards and do the math if he wanted to play with us (mean big kids!!) so he learned to read and do addition and subtraction. As a reward I had a friend custom build him a deck. He was so proud of himself. He'd come to our evening games, stay up far too late, and beat us at our own game! (I gotta say it was great fun to show up at a game store with a 5yo and have him beat all the "expert" teens).
At the end of 1st grade, we went to England for a visit to my mom. Went to a bookshop to get something to read, he chose for himself a book on multiplication (a coloring book: do the math, color in the picture according to the number key) Over the 3 weeks we were in England he worked his way happily through the book, at his own pace. No supervision or teaching required apart from answering the occasional "what does this say?" or "how does this work?" question.
Back in the USofA, off to 2nd grade. SIX WEEKS of going over what they learnt in 1st grade. Even though I spoke to his teachers, showed them the book (completed and 100% correct), had him recite his the multiplication tables he'd decided to learn, he had to sit quiet and pay attention. That was when he decided he'd had enough of public school and stopped trying. Shame it's taken me to 10th grade to catch up with his enlightenment.
Riiiiiiight we need teachers.
There are a few though. My high school French teacher remains one of my formative influences. My son's English teacher (who sounds as if he'd be quite at home here, so what he's doing in public skool is a mystery to me) and his Art teacher, but other than that the rest are all forgettable in the extreme.
And my dad - elementary school prinicple in a poor rural area where many of the kids came from homes with no books, pens, paper or art supplies and who purchased supplies to give away as prizes out of his own money. His idea of teaching the physics of flight was to build and fly model airplanes and borrow a neighbor's parakeets and let them loose in the classroom. None of this dreary stuff, let's see if we can make this work ourselves!
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Topic: PS Teacher Justifies Existence (Read 3885 times)