Thursday, November 02, 2006

Overachieving children

I just finished reading a facinating book, The Overachievers, by Alexandra Robbins. She goes into a very competitive high school and shows how driven the top-tier of American children have become. They take 6+ AP classes in a year, obsess about the SATs, and participate in so many extracurricular activities it made me sweat just reading about their busy scheldules. The mental and physical trama was mind-boggling, including eating disorders, drinking and drug binges, suicide attempts- all because of the drive to get into the "right" college. This sort of hysteria begins with parents who drill flash cards in front of their babies and subject 3 year olds to preschool entrance exams (some of which are more difficult to get into than Harvard).

The whole book made me so glad we homeschool.

At first glance, it might appear that homeschooling parents are more obsessed than these parents- after all we control almost everything in our children's lives. We don't just hover over them while they do their homework, we sit at the table with them while they learn every subject. We make sure they don't watch TV, listen to popular music, hang out with the "wrong" crowd.

The difference is the motive.

Why do we homeschool? Do we do it to get them into a good college, to get a good job, to impress the neighbors? Or do we do it so our children will get a classic education, to understand the world around them from a Christian perspective, to raise saints?
Miss Robbins gives steps that schools and parents can take to reduce this pressure on our children to be overachievers and I think most homeschoolers can take pride in that most of these suggestions are already incorporated into our lives: drop class rank, deemphasize testing, reinstitute recess, limit young children's activities, scheldule family time, place character above performance, carve an individual path, ignore the neighbor's comments, and reclaim summer vacation.

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