homeschooler created mini documentary about the dangers and history of public school

Sapphire - posted on 06/24/2011

Well as a public school educator, I honestly do have a huge issue with this “documentary”.
1) “The Dark Intentions of Public Schooling” Purely propaganda of BASHING the public school system. Is this REALLY the message of home schooling families? Let’s bash the public schools since we are so much better?

2) I do appreciate the author’s viewpoint of picking and choosing excerpts and quotations of American’s EARLY years of educational development, and focusing on a specific time frame in American history. But when the “documentary” quotes are 50-100+ years old and archaic, that is the message the viewer is left with: quotes from 1930! Pictures and graphics that absolutely show negative connotations. Message achieved-I understood the point of view. However, this is not an accurate portrayal of TODAY’S educational system. The entire video left me with such a negative, sour vibe since it solely focused on archaic viewpoints and had no sense of “closure”. A slide or 2 that indicated that this was the past, and while things in the present are not perfect either, our system most definitely has improved since these quotations from the 50’s.

3) America’s early educational system was far from perfect. That’s a no-brainer. It would have been a more impressive video if there were a time-line on how the early educational system improved over decades.

4) Statistics at the end of the video have no sources attached. To me, I simply question how accurate that data is and from how many sources. I’m not necessarily disputing all of it because I am not blind enough to know that America has a huge illiteracy problem. I just want to know where the author got his/her information.

5) I think a more effective video would include a bridge or transition from the past to the present. The video is nothing but selected quotations and pictures in a biased presentation on early American education. All of this can be found if you simply Google it. To bridge past to present, I might have interviewed a home schooling parent. Interview several home schooled children. Interview a public school teacher & public school students. Do a compare/contrast on the 2 groups. An “epilogue” of sorts.

6) I personally don’t see what is so fantastic about the message of degrading the public schools in a video that has no relevant, current content.

In contrast, many of my students also make videos as part of our projects. 3 sad instances of American history is something we focused on this past year: Salem Witch Trials, Child Labor in America, & Japanese Internment Camps during WWII. Students who contributed videos did an excellent job in bridging the past to the present with closure-the resolution. What happened “in the end”.

Please know I am NOT against home schooling in the least bit, as long as a child is truly educated and not plopped in front of a computer for an hour or 2. I do believe in a parent’s choice to decide what is best for their child’s education. But I do believe this video can be more harmful than beneficial.