Taxpayer Funded Preschool?

When we looked at preschool, we decided not to do it at all. I could easily teach everything that my children would learn in preschool. I made sure my children had many opportunities to be around other children at church, play groups, story times at the library, and classes through Polk County Conservation. We talked, read books, travelled, played games, explored different places and ideas, and we loved our time together. When it came time for my kids to start school, we put them in, because that's what everybody did. After a couple of years, we took them back out. We decided to follow a different path, as many have before us. I am raising thinkers and learners of things. My children will stick out in a crowd. They won't fit in with kids their ages, and I am so proud of that fact.

People around here are talking about the need of taxpayers to pay for preschool for all 4 year olds. They think by putting kids in school earlier, the end product will be better. These are our children, not cattle being taken to a feed lot. You can not force education. It is a journey that one takes, because they find value in it. It is not a race. Starting earlier does not mean finishing earlier. It is learning. Why the hell would you ever want to finish learning? The early years should be devoted to play and exploration. A young child should not be prepared for factory style education at ages of 3 and 4, and taxpayers should not be paying for it. If you feel the need to teach your child to ask permission to pee, to sit on the floor, and to never speak without first raising their hand, by all means teach them these lessons at home, but that is not an education that I want for my children.

At the same time people are discussing making taxpayers pick up the bill for what parents should be doing at home on their own, they are also complaining that taxpayers currently pay for some highschool students to take college entrance exams. Some students are even taking classes at their local community colleges that are not offered in their highschools. This has some people really upset. They don't want to be paying for somebody else's college education. I am confused. It is okay to pay for preschool, to push children whose brains are not yet developed to learn in a style in which they are being taught, but we shouldn't encourage and help pay for young adults who wish to continue their education by taking classes that are not offered at their high schools? This type of thinking is one of the many reasons that this country has serious problems.

Gone Fishing

As moms in the area are debating if it is ever okay to allow children to skip school, I took mine fishing with their grandma and aunt. Is that so wrong? Really? We got to look at worms and fish. I showed them how to cast and they learned a little about patience. It was rainy and cold. I caught a baby fish, less than four inches long. We came home and had hot chocolate and storytime.

One local mom, who also happens to be a teacher, says that she spends a good portion of her class time getting kids who miss school up to speed. She claims that it is due to this that classes can't cover as much material as they need to and aren't getting the test scores that they should be getting. I'm going to have to disagree on this one. My kids don't spend any time in a classroom, at all. We spend a lot of time working in a garden, helping my mom, hanging out with my grandpa. We watch movies and play on the computer a lot. The kids play imaginative games. They spend very little time looking at a math book when I think about it. They do read a lot, and I read to them. We do not ever play catch up. Education is a journey, not a race. What you get out of it sometimes depends on your ability to stop and smell the roses, or learn how to grow them.

The same woman says that by allowing my children to not go to school on a schedule, I am teaching them that an education is not something of value. Again, I disagree. I believe that by teaching children from a very young age that education is something that you have to leave home for, that it starts at 8:00am and ends at 4:00pm, that you take a vacation from it, and you get weekends off from it, I believe that is teaching children not to value an education. My children enjoy learning. It comes natural for a child to ask questions. They want answers and they don't want to be told, "You don't need to know that now. You'll learn that in 7th grade." They will learn every minute of every day if you allow them to, if you don't train them to shut off their brains when the school bell tells them to do so.

In a time when public schools have no money to take kids to the zoo, or local fire station, it is up to parents to fill those gaps. We have to look for opportunities for our kids. I don't mean to sign them up for every club and sport, dance and art class. You don't have to go into debt to make learning fun and interesting for all involved, but sometimes you just might have to take some time out of a child's regularly scheduled day of answering questions from a book to get them interested enough to ask some questions of their own.

Moral of the story: Play hooky more often. You'll be glad you did.