Fight Club

When students go to another venue for an education that is filled with other students, crazy things can happen. I am sure you have memories from your own educational experience that would illustrate this point to some degree. I was reading the headlines on the Fox News website when I came across this leading story. A teacher encouraging his elementary students to form a "fight club". And even teaching the kids how to lie to school nurses and their parents about their injuries.

These news articles remind me of the insanity of placing kids in these situations when they are not able to stand up for what is right. Can we expect elementary aged students to stand up to their teachers and classmates? That is something that very few students would have the courage, bravery, and maturity to do. More importantly, why should they have to? These are children that are being forced to stand up to adults. The adults should be standing up and protecting these children.

These are random stories that are unfortunately becoming more and more common. But what really bothers me is the lack of focus in the school system. The goal in any setting that has the goal of educating, should be educating. All of the social situations should be on the back burner.

But how can students be expected to have this focus with so many distractions around them? When you went to school were you only thinking about the math problem in front of you? I doubt that you were. Most likely you were thinking of the math problem, the kids sitting next to you, the friends you were meeting at lunch, the fight going on between two of your friends, the note you needed to write to your buddy, the enemy that you were trying to avoid..the list is endless. How can we expect students to succeed when they are bombarded with all this junk?

Homeschooling takes all that extra junk and throws it out the window. When my son does his math problems, he is thinking about math.