Let's Google and Yahoo Our Kids' Education
By Joel Turtel (06/28/06)
I love Google and Yahoo. With Google and Yahoo I can search the Internet on any subject that interests me, at any time day or night, in the comfort of my home. I was thinking how much fun it is to learn new things with Google or Yahoo, compared to the boredom or learning torture that public schools put millions of kids through every day. Let's consider the differences in how a typical child (we'll call her Jenny) learns when she uses Google or Yahoo, compared to how she 'learns' in her public-school classroom.
First, with Google or Yahoo, Jenny can explore any subject that fascinates her. She literally has the whole world at her fingertips. She can learn about tulips, cooking, dinosaurs, fashion, arithmetic, model airplanes, how to play the piano, or story books by thousands of authors. When she is older, she can search dozens of Internet libraries, including the Library of Congress, for information on any subject under the sun.
In contrast, in her public-school classroom, Jenny must study only the subjects the teacher or school principal says she must study, even though these subjects might bore her to death.
Second, with Google or Yahoo at home, Jenny can spend as many hours as she wants studying any subject that fascinates her. If she is fascinated by flowers, she can spend all day learning about different flowers, how they grow, the best season to plant them, how sunlight helps them, or how much water each flower needs.
In contrast, in public school, Jenny usually spends about 50 minutes on each subject the school forces her to study. She has to go to a different class on a different subject every 50 minutes, even if she was interested in the subject she was studying in her previous class. This can strangle her interest in any one subject. For Jenny, public school turns learning into broken, disconnected bits of knowledge on subjects that often bore her.
Third, with Google and Yahoo, Jenny learns at her own pace. If she doesn't understand something she reads about, she can ask her Mom or search Google and Yahoo to find the answer. She can spend as much time as she wants with a problem that intrigues her. Because she can learn at her own pace, she feels safe and comfortable learning with Google and Yahoo.
In her public-school class, however, Jenny has to learn all the material the teacher gives her in the specific time the teacher allows. Then (in later grades) the teachers will test her. If Jenny didn't like to study the subjects the teacher told her to learn and did bad on her tests, she can feel hurt and humiliated. She then associates learning with pain and humiliation. This in turn can extinguish Jenny's joy in learning.
With Google and Yahoo, Jenny finds learning a constant joy. With public schools, more often than not, learning becomes a boring drudge or worse.
Bureaucratic, government-controlled public schools will never give your kids the kind of joyous education they deserve, the kind your children can get in a homeschooling environment. At home, your kids can learn from Google, Yahoo, learning software, or hundreds of other low-cost education resources available to you right now.
So how can we Google and Yahoo our children's education? Parents, you might seriously consider taking your children out of public school, permanently. Let your kids once again discover the joy of learning with education alternatives like Google and Yahoo, homeschooling, or low-cost, quality, Internet private schools. Don't your kids deserve the best, most rewarding education you can give them?
© 2006 Joel Turtel - All Rights Reserved
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