-=> Quoting Sondra Ball to Jim Casto <=-
 SB> I found that biographies and stories and field trips and stuff like
 SB> that worked ever so much better than text books at the elementary
 SB> school level.
 That kinda sorta sounds like what the New History Standards are all about.
 Getting the young people out of the textbooks in various ways, but with a
 classroom flavor.
 SB> I don't know about high school yet.  I still haven't
 SB> done that. Rob enters nineth grade in September.
 Don't use any of the history textbooks surveyed by James Loewen in "Lies My
 Teacher Told Me". 
 
 SB> And even those channels need to be supervised so the kid isn't
 SB> watching them all day.  Kids need time to do other things, like explore
 SB> and read and daydream.
 
 Yep.
 SB> But even television might be preferable to public schools.
 In, some cases I'm sure that's true. It still depends on what the child is
 allowed to watch.
 SB> Purely
 SB> anectdotal of course, since it's a study of one; but I know of at
 
 
 SB> done wonderful in home schooling every since (minus the unlimited
 SB> television viewing).
 
 My _hunch_ is that the child does better because of the individual
 attention provided by homeschooling. Public education might be better,
 too, if the classroom size was reduced to one or two. But it's pretty
 tough to "tailor" a classroom of twenty children and meet all their needs.
 I remember one of my boys and the fourth grade. The school said he was a
 "poor learner". That wasn't true at all. It was simply the fact that the
 teacher (and the rest of the class) couldn't keep up with _him_.  To
 "solve" their "problem" the school decided that we lived on the "wrong
 side of the street" and therefore my son _then_ had to go to a _different_
 school. He did better there. The teacher wasn't as "slow". 
 SB> I think the most interesting case, however, involved a family who
 
 
 SB> time because they were not qualified to teach a gifted child.
 
 Sounds like a typical bureaucracy to me.
 Jim
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