On Their Way On Their Own
This is a neat story about students from a school in a blue-collar area of Miami who have decided to band together and study for the SAT themselves, in hopes of scoring at least 700 on each of the test's three sections. (800 is a perfect score.)
These students have taken responsibility for their own learning and are, in essence, homeschooling themselves since the education they received at their school was inadequate.
Instead of complaining (like a certain politician's wife does frequently), they're simply doing. And I'd venture to guess they'll be very successful.
I believe that writing about this learning experience on college application essays will also help these students achieve their goals. My daughter shared her own experience self-studying for the Advanced Placement European History exam in some of her college applications.
Universities are interested in motivated, self-starting learners, as this recent Washington Post article on homeschoolers illustrates. The Post article makes a number of excellent points and is well worth reading.
(Hat tip re SAT article: Betsy's Page.)
posted by Laura @ 2:35 PM
4 Comments:
Excelent articles, Laura, which clearly demonstrated not only the beauty of living in America where the ability to make one's own doors open is a very real possibility but also showed what perserverance begets. Its a quality of character that seems to be in short supply but this certainly was encouraging.
These kids must make the NEA cringe, as well as the homeschooling family. How can they possibly argue with the evidence?
I'm glad you enjoyed these too, Dana. I particularly enjoyed some of the comments in the last half of the homeschooling article, such as this:
"Conventional schools are like the nation's Rust Belt companies, designed in the 19th century but struggling to meet the standards of international competition today. School boards and administrators should be concentrating on ways to make schools more like home-schooling -- not on ways to force home-schooled children to go back to schools. People who are free to think for themselves usually get together and find solutions that are better than what bureaucrats can devise."
Best wishes,
Laura
Unfortunately, I don't believe the powers that be in public education that are at the top have this concern on their agenda. From what I see in our district, its basically lets just keep a lid on everything and acquiesce to anone threatening a lawsuit.
Thanks for this Laura. Articles like these renew my faith in America's upcoming generation. Hopefully, the attention these Miami kids are getting will inspire others to follow suit and take responsibility for their own education. They need to know it isn't necessary to lean on the government for everything in life.
Holley
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