The more answers in To Our Childrens Children I answer, the more I realize how many of my problems stem back to the public schools I went to.
Trouble with self-discipline. Trouble with self-motivation. Low self-esteem. All are items that I can pretty much point to the schools and say, "there's where it started."
I went to college having never learned any real study skills. School taught me how to take multiple-choice tests. As far as I'm concerned it failed in almost every other way.
Questions I've been answering recently (I'm a bit behind Amy) have been about school. Today's was about gym class specifically. I've been trying to do two or three a day to catch up, but I think it's only going to be one today. Here's part of what I said on the matter:
In grade school was dodgeball. I wasn't good at throwing, and I wasn't good at catching. I can't ever recall any gym teachers trying to help me learn. Dodgeball in particular emphasises those two skills. If you catch a ball that someone throws at you, they're out and have to go stand aside somewhere. They're eliminated for a round. If you get hit, you're eliminated. If you get a ball but can't throw it hard enough, it'll get caught and you're out. If you can't catch, you're an easy target. When you're out you're not safe, you just stand at the wall instead of in the middle arena area. People tend to pick on the easy targets, even those standing against the wall (out). Most of what I remember about it is shielding my face with my hands a lot. The more that happened, the worse my flinch reflexes got, and the harder a time I had catching anything. From as early as second or third grade I was the one people enjoyed picking on.
Part of me has struggled my whole life because of that. And other, similar things. Sometimes school comes up in conversations, and I talk about how much I dislike them, at how strongly I disapprove of the Lake Zurich shool system (and the public school system at large by extension). I talk at those times about how badly it failed in many ways. And every time I downplay just how strongly I feel about it. I still have a lot of anger, a lot of hurt from it, that I still haven't been able to address and deal with.
Amy and I plan to home-school Jareth. When we explain why I always try to find some better way to explain it than, "I won't send him there because I think that child abuse is wrong." But child abuse is about the level I put the public education system that I went through at.
I can't picture myself as one of those parents proud of the school my kids are going to. Because I was never, ever, proud of mine. I didn't graduate. I survived it, at best. The school system I was in was a god-awful, miserable failure that no one deserves to be subjected to.
Posted by fictionman at September 13, 2004 06:37 AM | TrackBack (0)