Son of Homeschooling

Sewing class, Washington, 1899.

As there seems to have been significant interest in my recent post on homeschooling, perhaps it is worth answering the question with which I ended that post.

Question: how can the teaching profession actually manage, as shown by comparison with the results of home schooling, to do worse in their chosen line of work than people pulled randomly off the street?

Here's why. First, all modern, secular approaches to education are based on the premise that teaching should be a “science.” This is a false premise. It is false because science is designed expressly to study nature, the sensory world of objects. 1. the human mind (other than our own) cannot be directly observed, and can never be observed with the senses. 2. it necessarily cannot comprehend itself, any more than we can eat our own bodies or pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and 3. the mind, and the student, is not an object. He is an independent subject.

Using science here is like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver. And the nail is in a painting.

The problem is made worse because each new theory of education, each new “-ism” necessarily must distinguish itself and its practitioners by doing something, in common teaching practice, that violates common sense. If they did not, there would be no way of telling if a given teacher was applying “the method,” nothing to check off in a classroom observation, and there would be nothing in practice for the new theory to teach in an ed school.

Given that the theories are themselves false, any departure from common sense for their sake is sure to produce inferior teaching.

Moreover, the testimony of the great teachers of the past is unanimous on one point: the essence of good teaching is loving your students and loving to teach. But this is the opposite of what the secular educational theories say: they say, chapter and verse and in fine detail, to treat your students like objects, moving too slowly along an educational assembly line.

Hence again, they are certain to produce bad results.

They are also perfectly designed to weed the best teachers out of the profession. Anyone who truly loves students, and would therefore be a good teacher, will instantly balk at the proposition that they are objects to be viewed scientifically. They will be repelled by ed schools. Even if they can stand to sit through them, they will be weeded out by them for having the wrong attitude.

There are further problems with the ed schools. For one thing, they—and the premise that expertise in teaching can be taught—replace emphasis on knowledge of the subjects being taught. Unsurprisingly, studies show, as does common sense, that you can't teach nearly as well what you don't know.

For whatever reason, ed schools in the US also attract those with the lowest SAT, GRE, and IQ scores among all those proceeding to higher education. This is disastrous, because it means those graduating from ed schools into teaching are those who are least successful themselves in any possible learning technique.

Not knowing the subjects, and not knowing how to learn, they have nothing to contribute to the child's education. Crowd control and baby sitting is all they have left to offer.