I just argued myself out of existence
Posted by TFG on June 6th, 2008
My Beloved Daughter is struggling with those Questions of Life, like where to buy a house so the kids have the best school system possible for the next 20 years. I told her that no matter where she chooses to call home that the best bet for her kids is to have those Jesuit monks teaching them. I worry, though, that this is bad advice because all the Catholic-schooled kids I know are, while smarter than a whip, your basic potheads. None of them are unhappy, though, and that’s semi-important in life. My other advice was to just dump them into whatever school system was convenient to the business that puts food on the table, and then stay on the trough-hog teachers like ticks on a coon dog.
I still don’t know what is best. If I were a better man, I’d pay to have them schooled by Oxfordish tutors from Great Britain and Australia, with a heavy dose of rodeoing for sport, and cattle-raising for science projects, and some stock-car mechanics on the side. And I’d be checking the curriculum, making sure it’s heavy on the math. You can’t ever go wrong with a lot of damn math. One of my minor regrets in life is not knowing how stupid electricity works.
I think I mainly want to short-circuit that 47 years of working for somebody else for those two little shits. Whatever gets them there the quickest with a sharper mind than mine. I’m the poorest I’ve ever been in since my 20s, but I’m happier than heck.
I think. Lemme check…yep, pretty happy.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Mine are getting math and How to Start Your Own Business books for Christmas every year until they graduate.
June 7th, 2008 at 5:40 am
By the time they have their own kids, mostly, the parent’s advice is just advice. To be taken into account or nodded and smiled indulgently at, then ignored, because we are old farts who have little idea of the real world of young adults.
Course, you aren’t as old as I, yet.
June 7th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Number 1 criteria in picking a school: See how involved the parents are. The greater the parental involvement, the better the teachers, the better the students, and the better the results. There are no guarantees, but this is the best indicator I know of.
June 7th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Sounds like plan to me. Be happy if my grandkids followed your curriculum. The social engineering elites are working to outlaw homeschooling. That’s the scary part. Parental rights are under siege, but then, what isn’t?
June 8th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
The du Toits (despite their irritating Europhilia of late and “The Mrs.’ ” irritating shit about how a real lady would never ride in a pickup truck)had a post called “Real Education” on June 2 that summed up the core of what they considered vital in homeschooling that I really liked, and it honestly looked like what I’d gotten from my parents before I started Kindergarten, and the stuff they kept re-enforcing with my little brother and me. I can see lots of public schools working for most kids, more or less, but there’s a lot of wasted time and then, the Police State employees who run the schools are often pretty concerned with teaching “diversity” and making sure the kids come out Leftist/Gay/Anti-Gun/World Citizens before anything useful, or, in rural areas like where I spent grades K through 5, they have this Hank Hill-like reverence for sports and the God-like pronouncements of “Coach,” despite the fact that he may sound like the crack-addled love child of a drunken John Madden and a senile Ozzy Osbourne and not know his arse from his elbow.
But I’m guessing with a very caring and involved Grandpa and two serious (and loving, caring, involved, and so forth) parents, your Grandsons will do very well indeed-no reason they shouldn’t, gummint be damned.
The R Man
June 9th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Thank you R Man - I agree, my grandsons will be fine and absolutely - “gummint be damned”