I LOVE THE MOVIE “AUNTIE MAME” — the Rosalind Russell version. It was a joyous romp through life that showed that education can come in many forms, and sometimes the best forms are those that “society” does not generally understand or accept.
In the movie, a young man loses his parents and is sent to live with his eccentric aunt. One of the more unusual places he is sent for his education is a school loosely based on an ancient Greek format One of the activities the boys engage in is naked wrestling. In the movie, this is of course absolutely shocking to the stuffy lawyer who acts as the boy’s financial guardian. Being a very traditionally trained lawyer, he arranges for the boy to go to a “proper” school.
The college I went to was not a proper college. At least not according to the mass production mentality that controls the educational programs in our country. It was a little liberal arts school on the banks of the Severn River in Maryland. We students were generally the bookish geeks and outcasts of the larger high school society. In this school students read books, and then engaged in conversation with between 15 and 25 other students over a table, all of which was moderated by a “tutor”who gently guided the conversation, but in no way had a set agenda.
In four years of school I had two tests, one in French and one in math. The rest of the time my grades were based on my participation in class, and an annual paper. At the end of each semester we went through Don Rags, this is a process where all of your tutors are gathered and they discuss you in the third person and your performance. It is all very British in that regard.
I have high school friends who went to more traditional schools, they would speak to me of their English classes of 400 people and their world history classes of 600 people. I couldn’t relate.
My entire graduating class was 85 people. My tutors really knew me well, they knew my strengths and weaknesses.
The foundation I received was not in data that was memorized and spit back in some robotic fashion, but rather, it was in how to approach problems, how to have conversations, how to explore a difficult situation. In short, it was how to think critically.
Today, I have a very easy time learning new material, which is due to the way I was taught in college to absorb material, to make it have life.
This past week the California Court of Appeal issued a ruling which reaffirms that parents who homeschool their children must be credentialed teachers. The case confronted California’s compulsory education statutes which require that students be enrolled in a public or private school or tutored by a teacher who holds a state credential for the child’s grade level. Justice Croskey wrote “California courts have held … that parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children.”
Parents who fail to properly educate their children can be prosecuted criminally under the state’s statutes. The court’s stated purpose for this is to train students in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation.Which sounds a lot more like indoctrination, than education to me.
I have no children, hence I have no dog in this fight. At least not directly. However, I feel that since we encourage people to have children, we should allow them to educate those children as they see fit. Granted there are certain basic skills like reading and writing and arithmetic, which should be a standard baseline. After that, if we truly want to encourage free thinking and the open exchange of ideas in a free society, we should not be dictating every data point that a student must learn.
We are lucky in Santa Monica to have an excellent school system, and access to many cultural and educational venues that are free or nearly free to the public. If I had a child, I would enroll them in the public schools here, but as good as our schools are, that would not be the end of my child’s education.
I believe that it is a parent’s duty to expand their child’s mind, and the state should only demand that the very basics be taught for those who are choosing to go a different route. The option to teach my child Homeric Greek or geometry from Euclid should be my right, and I shouldn’t need a teaching credential to do so.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 11, 2008. Read the original PDF.