On my high horse

I have a dear friend that is a home schooling mom. Don't be judgemental people. I get why she started doing all those years ago with her first and why she continues to do it with some of the kids. Especially boys.

There is a HUGE flaw in the way our boys are taught. Let me go ahead and state for the record that my boys are smart. VERY smart. Pootie is in Honors classes in middle school doing very well, and Crash is doing fabulously in 4th grade. So I'm not making excuses for them.

For the most part female teachers have NO idea how to teach boys, especially if they do not have boys at the age they are teaching. And I am speaking more specifically about middle school teachers at this moment.

If I hear of one more "cute" little book report or project coming home for Pootie, I am going to scream. SERIOUSLY!!! It has been one ridiculous "cute" project after the other since school started in August.

For the most part - boys do not like to color, cut paper and make little collages about themselves. IT IS STUPID!! Girls do, that is a girl thing - hello, I remember doing it even into high school for some of my friends. I even cross stitched a thingy for one friend (IN HIGH SCHOOL) of all of the things that meant something to us.

Back to the subject at hand.

My son is being inundated by this one teacher and her cutsie ways. If she thinks she is making the work more interesting, more exciting, SHE IS NOT!!!!! He would rather write a paper. Ahhhh- or is it that in an Honors Language Arts class you, as the teacher, don't want to grade papers, but would rather grade them on their ability to draw?

Umm, maybe I have hit on something. It is easier to grade a picture than it is to read a flippin paper! I am not exaggerating. The last book report was to create a quilt square about the book....and all the pictures had to be hand drawn and colored. No clip art.

How stupid is that. What does that tell the teacher that the student learned from the book? Dare I say NOTHING?

And don't even get me started on how far this school is behind in the technology department. Our elementary school is packed with the latest advances in technology. The use SmartBoards. Last year Pootie had the ability to create a power point presentation as a book report. OR not, they could choose to do an old fashion poster board if that was more to the child's liking. None of them did. They loved using the power point software, adding clipart, typing up snippets, adding music and animation. That to me, makes sense. Coloring a quilt square?????? In middle school? We are going backwards here folks!!!

Wake up - smell the dirty sweaty boys in the classroom, catch up to 2009.

Add stupid cutsie girlie projects to the list of reasons why I think about home schooling.