High Cognitive Minds

I was about to write that I stumbled, literally, over a fascinating blog. But does that make sense in a virtual world? I “stumbled” over Astronomy Buff, using the Stumble button on my Stumbleupon toolbar. Literally or not, I’ve been finding a lot of fascinating blogs, web sites, short films, article, you name it, ever since jumping to the luxury of broadband. If my Stumble button was real, it would probably be just about worn out by now.

Back on topic — Tony Darnell, the astronomy buff, decided that he’s going to homeschool his son in science this year. He couldn’t figure out why a kid who loves science and does well at it was consistently getting a C- in his science class. The reason is one that I suspect many parents of gifted children have run into—his grades had nothing to do with his test scores or how well he did his assignments. 80% of his grade was based on filling out his science notebook properly.

“What this teacher really wanted was the students to do all of her work for her. She didn’t want to have to search through reams of paper to try and figure out what the student knew. She just wanted to open the notebook and start checking off the existence of items, each containing the proper words so she could get through the grading as fast as possible.

“She wasn’t the slightest bit interested in whether or not the kids learned anything, only that the notebooks were in proper order.”

This blog post was written in June, so Tony and his son are probably well into the home schooling experiment by now. There are additional posts about the curriculum Tony was working on, and the evolution of the project into a mini-school, with five additional students.

Anyone who’s unhappy with the education their children are getting and wonders what alternative options are available should take a look at these posts. This is a subject dear to my heart and one I’ll be writing about off and on.

http://www.astronomybuff.com/why-im-homeschooling-my-kid-in-science-next-year/