A pox on public schools.

I came home from work today, feeling like I'd been at war.  I was working with a 12 year old bilingual boy who has yet to learn to write in cursive.  Therein lies my title, "A Pox on Public Schools."  Children are no longer being taught to write in cursive, probably because computers are so handy. "Experts" think they'll never need it.  OK, so in 20 or 30 years, we'll have a few who can write (my boys) and the rest of the population will have to type their name and put an "X" beside it.  Shades of the Wild West 150 years ago!

To make matters worse, tiny little hands that can't even reach the keys are expected to learn on computers, meaning they can't type, either.  I don't care what you say, "Hunt and Peck" is not as fast or nearly as accurate as learning the keyboard properly because it's type a letter and backspace, type a letter and backspace.  Once "Hunt and Peck" is learned, though, it becomes harder to learn to type properly.  I have to undo the wrong they've learned before I can teach them to do it right.

This idea that kids are going to "Catch on as they go along" is for the birds.  I've worked with this boy on his cursive, but he's advanced in other ways and so we had to do the literature essay before he's comfortable with writing in cursive.  It was so confusing for him.  It was bad enough that he's yet to have a good grasp of English, but his cursive was a problem, too.  His sentences showed confusion about verb tenses and syntax.  His cursive was write a letter and erase, write a letter and erase.  He confused "b" with "f," "a" with "o," "u" with "v". The list goes on.  It took 1 1/2 hours to write 2 1/2 paragraphs.

It's not his fault.  He's not the only one who's told me his teachers would explain something and move on.  Repetition is vital to learning, but it's not happening in our schools.  I'm not blaming the teachers. They have no support from the parents, or the board, and the kids are constantly pushing the envelope. Teachers have no authority to discipline.  One obstreperous can ruin a classroom.  Plus, teachers are so busy with so many other things.  Move 'em along, pass 'em up the line.  There's no time to teach.  May I remind anyone who's put up with this rant so far, "If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught."?

I feel sorry for these precious, precious boys.  They have so much to learn just to catch up to their grade level.  Very few of them graduate from here.  When they get old enough, they want girlfriends, sports, and a car-none of which is available to Shiloh, so they go back to public school.  The principal has indicated that sometimes he has to try to teach a boy 2 years in one just so he'll be at grade level when he goes back to public school.

And, we get it done.  One mother called the public school to learn about Shiloh.  The school told her they didn't know much about the Shiloh, except that when the boys came back, they were better behaved and better students.  I'm blessed and privileged to work with these boys, but how many more are getting into trouble at school because they're frustrated?

Refugio wants to learn and he's a smart boy.  I'm sure there's hundreds of thousands of Refugios out there  who haven't learned because they haven't been taught.  Instead, they've been written off as "trouble makers."  Their troublesome ways are a cry for help.  Wake up, America!