We are all homeschool parents now!
As parents take a larger role in the direct education of their children, I would like to share something I wrote about two years ago that details my personal vision for my children’s education. I think it is important that parents think about the educational goals for their children and now is a perfect time because parents can have more input than ever. In my dissertation I studied homeschool families and one thing I learned was that learning at home could often take less time than in a traditional school. That provides parents some flexibility to focus on topics not covered in their children’s traditional school. Maybe, this exercise in autonomy will spill over into the traditional school once we resume our normal lives and our kids go back to school. Maybe out of all of this, parents will maintain their increased role in their children’s education. However, to do this, parents need to think about the education they desire for their children. What follows are my thoughts about these topics in the form of a letter to my children.
May 1, 2018
Alexandria, Egypt
Dear Isabelle and Timothy,
Tonight I’m sitting in bed at the Helnan Palestine Hotel in Alexandria, Egypt thinking about you and your education. This hotel is literally on the edge of the African continent. If I open the door to the balcony I can hear the waves of the Mediterranean Sea crash on the shore. The hotel was built to house the heads of state and kings of Arab nations during a summit in 1964. The Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded during the summit. Why does this matter to your education? I guess because I’m here. When I think back to my education, it prepared me to be here.
Some background. By all accounts, Kenny Anthony was an average or a bit below average student. I consistently scored at the 50th percentile on every California Achievement Test I took in elementary grades. I was forced to attend summer school after 1st grade because I had not met the reading benchmarks. I made Ds and Fs in math on my report card during 5th, 8th, and 11th grade. In 11th grade, I failed the first semester of Algebra II and had to retake the first half of Algebra II my senior year in order to graduate. I should have failed chemistry in 11th grade, but my teacher had mercy or maybe she didn’t want to teach me again. I scored at the national average on my ACT. By all accounts, I was average as measured by grades in school and nationally normed tests. However, I don’t feel average and I never have.
Tonight I was eating dinner in the hotel restaurant and the host sat a stranger at my table. I was writing you a letter, so I said hello and continued to write my letter since I felt no strong obligation to engage him in conversation immediately. Once I finished my letter, I began to make polite conversation with him and learned that he was from Bosnia. I know a good bit about Bosnia because I was deployed there for about seven months in 2001- 2002. I was able to talk to him about Bosnia and we had a pleasant conversation. The interesting thing is that I learned about Bosnia many years ago when I was in school. What I learned about Bosnia in my social studies class in 7th grade helped me as a soldier in Bosnia and then helped me tonight make polite conversation with this stranger. I can say the same about other places I have been- Iraq, Italy, Germany, Rwanda, South Africa, Korea, Thailand, Romania, Hungary, Mexico, Canada. All of these places were familiar to me because I had learned about them as a child in school or in my own personal reading. I was comfortable with these places because they were familiar. I knew their geographies, histories, and knew how my country was connected to each country. I felt a connection to them. Now I wasn’t an expert and am not an expert (don’t trust experts), but I could have a conversation and place these countries and others in an historical, political, and geographical context. The world is not a stranger to me. How did that happen?
I was given a world class education in Tupelo, Mississippi. More specifically, I was given a world class education in the Tupelo Public Schools. How was my education world class? Because my education opened the world to me. My teachers from the very beginning gave me the keys to learn about the world that I still use today. My teachers read to me and made me read about the world. It was in Mr. Watkins’ 7th grade history class that I learned about the conflicts in the Middle East and about the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He didn’t teach me specifically about the Middle East conflict, but the US News and World Report magazines he brought to class and put on the back shelves did.
Now Mr. Watkins taught me a lot about the world. I first learned about Islam in his class which helped me in 2005 in Iraq when I worked to connect with the people there. I learned about the world through geography. My teachers explicitly and implicitly taught me about the world. In school, I had time to look at maps and globes. I was encouraged to read about the world by librarians. Reading wasn’t connected to points on an AR test. Reading was connecting me to the world. I learned about the world in so many different ways. In sixth grade, Mrs. Lawson taught me about Canada and South America. I learned about the world in literature classes. The great literature of the world, including poetry, is important because it teaches us about the world and the people in it. I learned about the world reading the philosophers. I learned about the world in elementary music and art classes. I learned about Renaissance art and remembered what I learned from 6th grade when we went to Rome in 2012. What I knew about Michelangelo and other artists didn’t come from college, it came from my 6th grade art teacher. I love music because of Mrs. Scales my music teacher at Thomas Street Elementary School. It was there I first encountered the Beatles and Woodie Guthrie. I majored in history in college, but I knew I had a world class education, when in an upper level history class about Early Modern Europe, my professor asked me what prep school I attended. I laughed. I had read Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau at Tupelo High School. I had read 90% of the college reading lists in both American and English literature classes in high school. I could go on, but I don’t want to belabor the point. So what is my point?
My point is that I want you to have the education I did. My education prepared me to go out into the world and be successful. Whether that was as a teacher in a 7th grade English classroom in Natchez, Mississippi; as a scholar/researcher at a national conference in Boston, Massachusetts; as an intelligence officer in Bosnia during a peace keeping mission; as an infantry platoon leader in the war in Iraq; as an English teacher in Korea; as a tourist in Rome; on mission trips to Mexico and Rwanda; as a professor at a university. This average man was well prepared as an average boy.
Earlier I wrote that I don’t feel average. I don’t and it’s because I feel comfortable in my world and I feel I can thrive in my world because of my education. I was comfortable making conversation with the man from Bosnia who sat at my table. I’ve always been comfortable in the world because I have my education to draw on. My education wasn’t elite but it was complete.
How do you get the education I got? Demand it. Demand your teachers show you the world. I will do a better job of demanding it of them. The tests be damned. Forget the tests. Read. Study. Do your best. The tests will take care of themselves. Open up atlases and look at globes and learn where countries are located. Read about those countries. Read about the people who live in those countries. Read about their histories. Their struggles. Read about Rwanda. Read about Rome. Read about all the places you’ve visited and want to visit. Read about your own country. Read its history and literature and learn about its politics. Read poetry and literature. Learn about people and how they think and act. Read Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge. Learn about different cultures. Learn about different languages. Learn about different art, music, food. Of course, learn math. I use it all the time as a professor and as an officer in the military. But remember math and reading aren’t life. They are tools that you will use to understand your world. They open many doors, but they aren’t the doors. To get a world class education, you have to go beyond reading and math. You have to learn about the world and the people who live on it. Then you will have a world class education.
Love,
Daddy
For information on homeschool parents and autonomy check out this article I wrote several years back
https://jual.nipissingu.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2015/03/v9183.pdf