Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Our Students' Potential Gap

This weekend my niece, a first-grader, picked up Ralph Ketcham’s biography of James Madison from my shelf, and began correctly and unaided to read it aloud. As she is early in her education, she is not yet corrupted by public school and eagerly competes with her older siblings to demonstrate her own individual capacity.

Within that book, I recently found an interesting observation by the author about Madison’s pre-collegiate education:
    A student of Madison’s endowments can sometimes overcome a series of poor teachers; that he was blessed with good ones at almost every step of his education undoubtedly contributed importantly to the characteristic discipline, keenness, and polish of his intellect.
In today’s era of egalitarian public schools with reportedly poor teachers, are our current students overcoming these limitations to achieve their own individual potential to develop their capacity for applying their own mind to the fulfillment of their lives? Despite these limitations, some students excel either without competent teachers, or with the benefit of a rare competent educator.

Primarily, this potential gap ignored by ineffective publicly hired specialists is bridge by the parents; thus, those professionals frequently fault their clients for failing to perform the job for which the educrats are paid.

Given limited time resources, expertise, and private secular alternatives, how can loving parents assist the educational development of their children? At this point, I conclude that hiring a mature and professional tutor focused upon your individual child’s development and personal goals is needed to supplement the time and money wasted in public schools.

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