The Classroom of Life

Again and again blog posts pop up that suggest public schools need to "stick to the basics" of reading, writing and arithmetic and not waste so much time on other things that have little or nothing to do with education. These kinds of posts tend to make it into my Other Posts of Note.

And today I came across a post about students taught to Twitter in school. It sounds like it's part of a "social media 101" course, or something.

My thought is this: Perhaps educators have realized that life makes for a great classroom and there is much to be learned in this great wide world of daily living, and so they must get involved in helping their students grow in all aspects of life.

Which would be great if they could get through the lessons they are supposed to be teaching in four hours a day so they could spend the rest of the time experiencing the joy of life-long learning with their students.

But they can't.

So in trying to help kids succeed in all areas of life, they end up with only 36% of their students proficient in the basics (like my local public school).

In trying to teach kids to tweet, they fail to teach children to write.

Thankfully, as a homeschooler, you have the opportunity to get through your "required" lessons quickly, and if you want to turn your child's blog and Twitter account into "Social Media 101" for credit... you can.