Academic captivity

I have a theory. I think home schooling is more native to childhood development than the classroom. If you took a random sample of home-schooled children I think you’d find the same incidence of so-called ‘learning problems’ coupled with higher levels of achievement. That’s because dedicated parents, tuned to the strengths and weaknesses of their children, can overcome many problems ordinarily associated with classroom learning ..and do so without drugs. I’m talking about problems with attention span, short-term memory, and communication. Public education in the US is way behind the learning curve and traditional classrooms are designed to tap only a limited range of childhood potential. For instance, the kind of focused attention ordinarily required in a classroom is not all that helpful overcoming obstacles found outside the classroom. There are many instances where a wider focus of attention, which is usually associated with ADD, is way more adaptive [link]. This is also true of other developmental disorders, including autism. I know of a mother who taught her son to communicate even though he was in the most disabling range of the autistic spectrum. He’s now a prolific writer with several published works to his credit [link].