Reason #912 to homeschool
Courtesy of Lynn, fellow homeschool mama: The New Gender Gap
The “earliness” push, in which schools are pressured to show kids achieving the same standards by the same age or risk losing funding, is also far more damaging to boys, according to Lilian G. Katz, co-director of ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. Even the nerves on boys’ fingers develop later than girls’, making it difficult to hold a pencil and push out perfect cursive. These developmental differences often unfairly sideline boys as slow or dumb, planting a distaste for school as early as the first grade.Instead of catering to boys’ learning styles, Pollock and others argue, many schools are force-fitting them into an unnatural mold. The reigning sit-still-and-listen paradigm isn’t ideal for either sex. But it’s one girls often tolerate better than boys. Girls have more intricate sensory capacities and biosocial aptitudes to decipher exactly what the teacher wants, whereas boys tend to be more anti-authoritarian, competitive, and risk-taking. They often don’t bother with such details as writing their names in the exact place instructed by the teacher.
Read more here.
I actually read that story this weekend, courtesy of the parent of one of Bobby’s classmates. I have found that Sam’s teachers in particular seem fixated on his lack of fine motor coordination. I shrug and say, “Whatever,” because boys–damnit–don’t necessarily have good fine motor skills until they are older.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with him next year, and that worries me. I don’t think the Crunchy Granola Charter School is going to suit my needs. I think I could homeschool him. I think. I think …
Reasons # 1000 and 1001 to Homeschool
In the footsteps of Dawn Friedman, who’s been collecting reasons to homeschool, I bring you two more: Parents furious as Pentagon slides recruiting officers into classrooms.An obscure rider in President Bush’s sweeping overhaul of the education system …