Learning differences aside, sometimes it’s the pace of the class that can be detrimental to a child. I’ve been thinking a lot about a comment a mom made on my blog. This courageous mom withdrew her 8-year-old son because he wasn’t fitting in in the classroom. The child, who has won awards for his creative writing, told his mom that he was no longer good at writing. He deduced this because in school he was always last to finish…or, not at all.
As his mom put it, “The class had to move on….”
Mom could have insisted that her boy buck up. Pick up the pace! She could have pressured him, after all…this is the “real” world. He’s going to have to face it sooner or later, right?
But she did something a cookie cutter system will never be able to do: She treated him as an individual. And he is flourishing once again and writing creative stories.
As the pressure increases through standardized testing and No Child Left Behind, I would imagine there are many, many more children like this. Will they be labeled as “slow?” (Of course, the moniker would have to be much more scientific sounding than slow.)
Certainly, the child is aware and ashamed of their “slowness” like this poor kid was.
A factory approach to educating children is detrimental and assembly lines are best utilized in factories. Well, sometimes. Even Lucy had a hard time keeping up.
Filed under: education, homeschooling, Labels are for Soup Cans, parenting, Public schooling, Special Needs' Kids | Tagged: education, Labels are for Soup Cans, learning differences, slow learners | Leave a Comment »
