This actually turned into an interesting thread. two items - self-esteem and "education". Self-esteem as something to be concerned with came out of the 1960s generation when people were claiming that minorities can't do well because they were not held in high regard by "society". And that was expanded to cover all of the precious children, to the point that competition in any form was frowned on, whether it be baseball or academics. But self-esteem is self-reinforcing IF the child actually deserves to esteem himself or herself. As an example, I once asked my younger brother how he got to be so good in math. He wasn't sure, but he did mention that when he was hospitalized for a few weeks in third and fourth grades, there was talk of holding him back because of all the school he missed. That meant his twin sister would move ahead and he was going to have none of that. So he asked for his schoolbooks. Having no idea what the assignments were, he simply learned everything in the books. When he returned to school, he was so far ahead that they gave him the next year's assignments. He didn't particularly love math at that point, but with the students and teachers thinking he was so good, he liked the feeling and made sure to maintain it. Ended up getting masters degrees in math and electrical engineering and a PhD in physics. That was all of course, reinforced at home, but students end up living up or down to their definitions. So the idea was to boost self-esteem. And I think the big problem was that the boosters were looking at a result, not the means of getting there. So about 12 years ago Charles Kruthammer wrote an article titled something like "Feeling Good about Being Bad" and the gist of it was that he was quoting studies that showed Americans as failing when compared to European and many Asian children, but feeling prouder of themselves than any of those children. So I've always thought that the self-esteem thing was BS - get students good at something, anything, and self-esteem takes care of itself. As far as "education", that can be obtained in so many ways. I was one of the world's worst students for a number of reasons. I hated authority, didn't want to follow in the mold of my older or younger siblings, didn't respect my teachers, and was all around trouble. Initially I was miserable but when I started getting peer respect for being able to disrupt class cleverly, I spent all of my time figuring out how to cause trouble until I was finally kicked out for a while. I can't remember anything that I really learned in school after fourth or fifth grade except typing, which was the single most useful subject I ever took. But I had an advantage that most people didn't. My father was a world traveler fluent in about 9 languages and my mother was fluent in 3. Both of them were readers and when we were sitting around the dinner table my father would ask us what the capital of Turkey was or how to spell Bucharest or he would tell us about some historical event or something political or explain how something worked. From childhood, I would always read for a while before going to sleep. So when I was in 10th grade I knew as much about American history as our student teacher and I frequently corrected her and the other students laughed and I lost respect for her and that cycle wound ever tighter. It was stupid not least because I never really learned how to study "properly" and that put me at a disadvantage later in grad school and in law school. The point is that education can come from any number of sources. I've always felt, and still do, that for many people, schools are not the best way to provide an education. They work for a certain type of person. I'm certainly not knocking them or criticizing all teachers - I've even dated a few. But we waste a lot of money and talent by not looking for better ways to teach. The idea of one person talking to a room full of students has been around since Plato's time except that in his time, only the people who were greatly interested would be part of the group. So it was self-selected. What do we do with the others? Why can't we take a group of kids and have them build a boat? They can learn about wood, about engineering, about tools, about the seas, about history, about weather, and who knows what else? Or have them build a house? Note - my cousin, who is a builder but was a teacher for a while, actually did this. And I'm not talking about a "shop" class. I'm talking about a year-long project that will require calculating, writing, etc. They could even have a foreigner teach it and communicate only in another language. The closest to these things were maybe the yearbook or the school newspaper - both of which provided more in the way of "education" than the simple formal schooling did. We're smart in the US. It seems like we should be able to find some better way of providing education to more people.

Just heard from the principal - form letter he has to send out, no ramifications, he just wanted to make sure we were aware in case we were keeping DS home from school if/when he just was too tired or vague "didn't feel well." Said he might have to contact me again and discuss the "problem" if DS misses school regularly (he gave example of a couple of days each week!) for the rest of the school year, but if he gets sick again and he has to be out 3 days next month, no problem, just call in each day like we've been doing, no dr's note required, no summer school, nothing. He said the average number of sick days (roughly, off the top of his head) in his school was 5! With the flu and the stomach bug going around this year, I find it hard to believe that was it, though like I said it's been a rough year (not just for DH - some schools around here closed in October since over 30% of the students had the flu).

Has anyone used Continental Academy for home schooling? I need to figure something out for my girl; have to get her back in school. The year we moved she was in vo-tech; they taught 3 subjects in the 1st 1/2 of the year, then the others at the 2nd 1/2 of the year. I ended up pulling her out & putting her in high school; she then had mono, right before exams (sold house). The new school would not register her because they did not have her complete records so she missed finals. She repeated 9th grade; then had a bad year medically (fell down steps, had no air way due to tonsils which were taken out during winter break; then had medical issues due to the mono; lost about 80 pounds. School wanted "chronic illness notes" which I got, but it did not cover a few days because of wording & there was no time to fix due to school ending. They kept her back again. She refused to go in September. I didn't have time to fight them because of hubby's cancer. My plan is to have her get the credit she needs to get put back into school so she can graduate. Continental academy was suggested to me.

One of the things that we would love to see changed, would be that ALL children take the SAME standardized tests. As a parent, it makes it very difficult to compare between a public and private school because the students do not take the same test. So you cannot compare whether the students in the private school are actually scoring higher, and getting a better education. IMO, there are some private schools handing out A's because they want the parents happy so that the tuition/donations they are counting on, keep coming in. The parents end up with more power than they should have, because they threaten to pull their kids out, and the school does not want to lose the tuition/donations, so in some cases they "cater" too much to these parents. Many of the public schools have their classroom sizes way down, so you may be surprised at the number of students in a class. Also, public or private, much depends on how good the teacher is. Both private schools and public schools have good and bad teachers. We panicked with our first born and put her in a very elite private school, foolishly worried about the influence of children from the guests on the Jerry Springer show.LOL We then started hearing so many great things about a certain public school, that we decided two years later to just try it for one year. We were so worried that if we gave up our "spot" at the private school, that we would not be able to get her back in. But we took the chance. We never regretted the change, and the public school has been every bit as good as the private school (with the exception of one teacher two years ago, but the rest have been truly excellent teachers). Granted that this is a public school with alot of parental involvement, in a better neighborhood. Our state grades the schools in how well they are doing, and this school was rated an A. If you have really good public schools in your area, take a look at them. Talk to other parents. What are they happy with? What would they change? But find out how their students/school as a whole scored on the standardized tests.