For many people, that is.
This article from the New York Post blew my mind.
“The four-year college degree has come to cost too much and prove too little. It’s now a bad deal for the average student, family, employer, professor and taxpayer.”
As a home educator, curious parents will often ask, “what about college?” Many are surprised by my answer when I tell them that unless my kids are interested in pursing nursing, engineering or some other applied knowledge field, I discourage notions of college.
This article packs quite the punch in explaining my convictions.
As parents, it is incumbent upon us to allow our children the time and space to explore their passions and giftings. THIS is the foundation for education. (Not to be confused with “schooling.”)
I was going to mention the Lemming phenomena here. You know—those little rodents that will bungee jump off cliffs without the bungee cord?
Well, a quick Google on the topic reveals that they’re not quite as suicidal as once thought and I thought my analogy was finished. But wait! Look what else I found on Wikipedia:
While many people believe that lemmings commit mass suicide when they migrate, this is not the case. Driven by strong biological urges, they will migrate in large groupings when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can and do swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat.[7] On occasion, and particularly in the case of the Norway lemmings in Scandinavia, large migrating groups will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming, sometimes to exhaustion and death. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore.[8]
What a descriptive picture of the machinery of compulsory education which marches on urging our children to goosestep mindlessly into a losing proposition.
Filed under: education, homeschooling, Public schooling | Tagged: college, compulsory education, homeschooling, identity direction education, schooling | Leave a Comment »
