The Ways of Knowing

As I reviewed my blog yesterday I noticed I had fallen into a theme. The ways of knowing. I should really say the ways of learning. This past week has taught me so many things. I have wasted a lot of hours just reading various news clippings and posts on many subjects and one thing I read in the news was how upset people are becoming over the subtle return of segregation of public schools. What exactly does that mean? Do we run around with our hands flailing in the air and crying boohoo my child will be stupid because there is predominantly on race in the school?

One article alluded to the fall back before desegregation and they are afraid. I know we tend to think the lack of school supplies and money in the schools will make children ignorant. Does the affluence of a school really determine the knowledge a child attains? I have always believed the absorption of intelligence is an individual thing. A child absorbs his environment and unfortunately the walls have been built around the individual teacher and sometimes blocks out the parent. Education began failing when the teaching of the child was handed over to the public school system. When the parent, regardless of their race, pushed the child through the doors of the building and backed away from their responsibility of making sure they and their child participated in the learning process, the education system began its spiral downward.

I may not have a degree of my own (even though I could print off a gorgeous one from the computer), but I have home-educated the infant to the recipient of a Master's Degree and I am not talking about just my  children. I have helped adults gain their high school diploma and wrote papers for others who have received their Master's (a story I will share some other time)and are now working in the counseling fields.  Though education can not be taken lightly I just can't get on the side of the color of the people in the school. Does learning stop because you only see one or two races in the hallway? Does learning stop because there are not a lot of supplies? Does learning stop because Johnny is not sitting in the front row and having a stranger teach him to read? I have cared for a lot of children and many of them had parents whose profession was public school teacher and yet those teachers would not help educate their own children. I have often wondered how they could feel justified teaching an outsider and not feel guilty about their lack of dedication to their young.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud very loudly anyone who works in the public school system. I also feel sorry for them. Nothing breaks my heart more than to hear a four year old unable to recite the alphabets correctly or not know their colors or even write their name. Let alone be able to sit quietly for five minute. I may only work with babies and preschoolers, but I believe the foundation for superior intelligence begins with the infant mind. The best time to mold learning habits and self control. What I have learned is a child's education begins in the arms of the parents and it should end in the hands of the child. We can give the child every conceivable aid for knowledge, put them in the finest building with the smartest classmates varying in every color or race and they will still fail if they don't have the positive influence of the people that matter most in their lives, belief in themselves, and the urge, thirst, most important the 'want' to learn.