Textbooks >5yo No Good for Teaching...

[TCoppock]

My sister is a public school teach and is against the fact I homeschool. She generally is very passive-aggressive about the situation making sarcastic remarks here and there but today she really upset me. DS and I were at my mother's house and he had a school book with him (it was a R&S grammar book) and she questioned me about the copyright date. I opened the book and told her and she said, "We don't use anything more than five years old at my school." I said that I thought it was wasteful considering the basic information doesn't change and she went off on me. She was telling me that there are "new" ways to teach subjects and children have to know the "new" ways to do the work because that is what is tested. I argued that 1+1 still equals 2 and A still comes before B and I taught DS in the way I thought he was best able to learn not the "new" way. She was so snotty about everything and was acting like I was ruining my son because I didn't know this new teaching method and had books older than 5 years. I honestly think she feels the need to put me down every chance she gets to prove she is a better teacher than me. Am I ruining DS for college entrance tests or is this garbage the public school system has filled her brain with?

 

 

I guess I will go and toss out all the classic books I own since apparently the information is useless.:tongue_smilie:

[Lolly]

:lol:That is funny! Your ds will be fine. He will not be harmed by using these ancient textbooks. In his grammar, just make sure it has the current recommendations for addressing envelopes.

[Pam Wilhelm]

Tell her to kiss your fuzzy hiney and worry about her own students and you will worry about yours.

 

I have a brother who speaks disdainfully about my homeschooling...... his girlfriends family is deeply entrenched in the Woodstock, GA public school system. I guess he is trying to impress them, etc. :lol: He's a bozo and I just ignore him.

[elegantlion]

My knee jerk reaction would not to have engaged her at all, but to simply state "No wonder school taxes are so high!" or "I don't suppose your high school students read any literature older than five years?" or "My goodness your kids never will read Shakespeare?"

 

Seriously, there are areas that at some point in homeschooling you'll probably wanted the most updated, like high school biology or geography.

 

I have plenty of old textbooks, including algebra copyrighted before I was born (I'm 42) and I'm using Harvey's Grammar this year.

 

You are not ruining your child. I have a sister who also thinks I'm ruining my child. Thankfully we live very far away from one another. :D

[BabyBre]

Am I ruining DS for college entrance tests or is this garbage the public school system has filled her brain with?

 

 

 

I do hope you're joking!

 

While I was reading your post I kept thinking that she's likely a newer teacher (within 10 years or so) who's just gobbled up everything they've told her and hasn't had lengthy experience yet to show her otherwise. The education system has been government run and thus politically aimed for decades, and part of that is getting rid of the old in favor of "progress". So it sounds like she's doing a great job.

 

With regard to testing I can say, at least in our state, that only our state standardized tests are geared to test those "new ways". This assures good scores to show the fed. When our high school grads get to college, huge percentages of them are placed in remedial classes because they don't score highly enough on entrance exams.

 

So, just curious, how long has it been since your sister got her teaching certificate?

[NorthwestMom]

That is hilarious considering the large controversy aroud reform math and whole/word phonics. The new methods are just rehashed versions of ideas that are about 60 years old. There's nothing new under the sun. I guess your sister does not know much educational theory. Maybe SHE needs to go back to school. Yes, she is just torturing you with modern ed theory. Ignore it!

 

I will eat my hat if your sister's district continues to buy all new books every 5 years in this current economic crisis. As a matter of fact, California is going to all ebooks. Can anyone predict how that will play out? LOL

[Nicole M]

Sounds like it's time to set some boundaries with this sister. Be a b*tch and set down the law. "You do things your way, I do things mine. Do not criticize my choices, and do not try to engage me in any conversation about this, since your passive aggressive sarcasm leads me to believe you are not open to a true conversation at all."

 

You gals who have such snarky relatives... gosh! I'm sorry about that. No one gives a rat's heinie what I do with my children, so maybe I simply can't relate, and wouldn't be as gutsy as I advise if I were to face this situation in real life.

[TCoppock]

So, just curious, how long has it been since your sister got her teaching certificate?

 

She's been teaching for just over 10 years. However, she has only been at the public school for two years.

[ma23peas]

There are two issues going on here...

 

1. Your sister's superiority complex (The whole, "I went to college to learn how to teach, how in the world can she get by saying she can 'teach' a child")

 

2. Your inferiority complex (Your newness to homeschooling (under 5 years) also means always questioning yourself, about the 5 year mark you're going to handle these situations so much easier (meaning less reaction and comments)...I received some of this when we started 9 years ago, but they see the fruit of our schooling..now those who were opposed are actually seeing the benefits and celebrating all our successes and those of our family who do attend traditional school. We have nieces that beg us to convince their parents to homeschool them...

 

Just give it time, let it roll off your back, but regardless of the subject, you should never be subjected to snarkiness...if she gets that way, don't defend it, simply light up the fact that she's not being very considerate.

 

This time will pass! :)

 

Tara

[Guest janainaz]

This reminds me of marketing and how a product claims to be the best, to do x, y, and z and then it comes out with "new and improved" - basically saying it was not really doing it's job to begin with.

 

I would have told her that if her curriculum was working so well, it would not need to be changed every 5 years.

[StartingOver]

www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

 

She is just reacting from the way she was taught !

 

home.comcast.net/~llefler/clavell.htm ( Not exactly the same, but an example of how easily children can be lead. I would keep mine far from her )

[ConnieB]

My sister is a public school teach and is against the fact I homeschool. She generally is very passive-aggressive about the situation making sarcastic remarks here and there but today she really upset me. DS and I were at my mother's house and he had a school book with him (it was a R&S grammar book) and she questioned me about the copyright date. I opened the book and told her and she said, "We don't use anything more than five years old at my school." I said that I thought it was wasteful considering the basic information doesn't change and she went off on me. She was telling me that there are "new" ways to teach subjects and children have to know the "new" ways to do the work because that is what is tested. I argued that 1+1 still equals 2 and A still comes before B and I taught DS in the way I thought he was best able to learn not the "new" way. She was so snotty about everything and was acting like I was ruining my son because I didn't know this new teaching method and had books older than 5 years. I honestly think she feels the need to put me down every chance she gets to prove she is a better teacher than me. Am I ruining DS for college entrance tests or is this garbage the public school system has filled her brain with?

 

 

I guess I will go and toss out all the classic books I own since apparently the information is useless.:tongue_smilie:

 

 

Well, consider for a moment how many of us on this board were taught "new" math.....and worry that we don't know math well enough to teach our children! Oh yeah, and then remember that the schools stopped teaching the "new" math and went back to the old math.

 

Sorry, the only school items that I would even check the copyright date is science and history. And being old doesn't necessarily mean that I'd not use it....I'd just be mindful of new scientific information and new findings in historical evidence.

 

Math, language arts, I would never even both to check.

 

And....unless your child is currently in high school, remember that the information on those all-holy tests will change a half dozen times before this year's Kinders reach it!

 

As for throwing out your classics......heavens, don't do that until you've had a chance to preview some of the "new" classics. We on this board call most of it "mind candy" or "twaddle". It's ok to read, but if you want your child to really enjoy quality literature and gain something from their reading.....you pretty much gotta go back 50 or more years for it, lol. There are some books in the last 50 years that are worthwhile, of course, and many of those will be considered a "classic" by our great grandkids, lol....but for the most part, they are the story of the year and next year no one will be reading them or even remember their titles. Same goes for movies.

 

I agree with the other folks who warn against letting your sister eat away at your budding confidence. If your son is learning his ABCs, his numbers, reading books that you consider quality.....then guess what you're giving him a quality education. The college exams don't test on what method you learned to use to add/subtract/multiply....it wants to know if you can come up with the correct answer. Those tests don't require (or even have a place) to "show your work". The lit portions provide you with an essay/excerpt to read and test your comprehension skills. The writing portion gives you a topic and requires you to write an essay. Nouns, verbs, adverbs, sentence structure hasn't changed much over the years, though the methods of teaching it may have.....but again, the test doesn't have any way to test whether you learned in a public school or through IEW or Writeshop or any of the other hundreds of programs out there that in the end teach the same basics.

 

Definitely time to learn what this board calls "pass the bean dip"....which if you haven't seen yet, is basically a phrase that we throw around that means that sometimes it's best to just nod and change the subject. "Hmmm, ok, yes, I'll check my copyright to be sure I don't have any 6 year old books......would you like some of this bean dip? How about dem Red Sox?"

 

Oh....and part of the reason public schools change books so often.....the book companies work very hard to convince them that the information is more up to date....so they buy new books from the book company! And often those same book companies no longer have available additional copies of a 5 year old textbook, specifically so that schools have to replace ALL their books, rather than just the ones damaged, or get extra copies for a larger class.

 

And with all love and respect to our dear Susan Bauer......remember that each time she has issued a new edition of her Well Trained Mind book there are lengthy threads about the fact that the new information may be nice to have, but it's not worth throwing out your old edition to buy the new one. The general consesus with both the 2nd and 3rd edition have been if you're buying WTM for the first time, get the most up to date....if you already have the 1st or 2nd edition, you probably don't need the newer one. Her wisdom about the basics hasn't changed, almost verbatim even, in the new editions....what has changed is her recommendations for books, because some of the original recommendations are no longer available, or newer books have come out that more closely follow her advice, or are just "new". I still remember the old boards when she was on them more often and she'd often say that there wasn't a science curriculum that she wholeheartedly liked....in fact I remember at one time it was on the top of her list to find someone to write one, but that never came to be that I'm aware.

 

And....most of the old timers here realize that her recommendations are just that.....recommendations that are wonderful for a newbie to use as a jumping off point....but as you read this board more you'll see that there are very very few who use her recommendations for every subject....most of us read threads voraciously and overbuy curriculum trying to find the "right" one for our family. New curruciulum come and go rather quickly here.....if you really want to know the "best" you'll read some of the oldest threads and see what is being recommending then and still being recommended now.....those are probably as close to "best" as your going to get. Hmmmm, and that brings us full circle, because many of those are definitely over 5 years old, lol.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

:grouphug:

 

My dear parents are well meaning as well and have a hard time accepting our schooling choice as well.

 

As far a textbooks, I do believe it is one way for schools to save money by not getting the latest and greatest textbooks every year or so especially in topics that are not going to change any time soon such as reading, spelling, grammar, and math. In fact, I think there are many excellent choices for the above for free on google books. I also believe that some of the newer techniques such as whole language and balanced literacy have been disastrous IMHO.

 

In regards to science, I think it is more important to have a textbook that is within 5 years old. However, for young children this may not be even that critical IMHO.

[TCoppock]

Thank you all for replying. I thought this was a bit absurd when she was talking to me. However, I had to stop and think because, according to her, curriculum would have changed at least 3 times since I was in high school. I had absolutely no intention of changing any of the textbooks I use based on this 5 year rule. DS is a bright child and I don't think I am going to ruin him because I am using a 1991 copy of Rod and Staff. Like someone mentioned, I am still new to homeschooling (going on our 3rd year) so my confidence isn't very high. We switched textbooks for some subjects based on DS needs and it never occured to me to check the copyright date.

 

The more I think of it she borrowed some of my Abeka phonics readers to use for tutoring and they are definitely more than 5 years old. I think I bought them when my DS was going into K-4, 6 years ago. Maybe I should warn her she is damaging her students.:tongue_smilie:

[tmulcahy]

I argued that 1+1 still equals 2 and A still comes before B:tongue_smilie:

 

Are you sure???:lol:

 

Yes, your sister really needs some boundaries as far as her "input" goes....like none unless you ask for it.

 

R&S is solid. You are not depriving your children. Don't let her sway you and stay strong in knowing that you are educating "your child" to fit her own needs and not "the mold".

[kalanamak]

Its a pass the bean dip moment.

 

Can you vomit on cue? Set a small fire? Scream "ohmygod I left my cat trapped in the toilet tank!" and run out to the car and leave?

 

A few episodes of this and she will be operantly conditioned to never-bring-it-up.:D

[TCoppock]

:grouphug:

 

In regards to science, I think it is more important to have a textbook that is within 5 years old. However, for young children this may not be even that critical IMHO.

:iagree:DS is learning basically the same things I did in science except the fact Pluto is now demoted to a minor planet. I think fairly current science and history texts are important but one could get by with an older book if they kept up with current events and supplemented with libraries and newspapers.

[swellmomma]

Its a pass the bean dip moment.

 

Can you vomit on cue? Set a small fire? Scream "ohmygod I left my cat trapped in the toilet tank!" and run out to the car and leave?

 

A few episodes of this and she will be operantly conditioned to never-bring-it-up.:D

 

:lol: I am so using that line tonight if things get hairy with my family (having dinner with my folks and my siblings/their spouses). I really only want to see my nephew, so it is good to have a line waiting just in case ;)

[FO4UR]

Her goals in "educating" are getting scores on a test. I'm guessing yours are not.

 

Who cares!?!

 

The proof is in the pudding...in the meantime, pass the bean dip!:D

[Rosie_0801]

Hang on. I heard of this book, right. Called "The Well Trained Mind," I think it was. Pretty sure that was reprinted within the last 5 years.

 

;)

Rosie

[TCoppock]

Oh no, I only have the 2004 edition. I knew I NEEDED the new one. :D

 

Hang on. I heard of this book, right. Called "The Well Trained Mind," I think it was. Pretty sure that was reprinted within the last 5 years.

 

;)

Rosie

[lapsetmom]

If it helps you feel better, I used to be a public school teacher, have a degree in education, and am working on my masters in education. Rod and Staff is excellent. IMO, resources for homeschool may need to be different than a public school classroom. Working one on one with your own well behaved child to reach individual and family goals in education is much different than working with large class sizes of sometimes ill behaved students with little background knowledge (if they come from impoverished areas that is) who are gearing up for state mandated tests. In your situation, the real problem is not homeschooling versus public schooling, but an obviously insecure and/or prideful family member. You might just respond next time that not all public school teachers feel the way she does, that if she has anything truly helpful to share, you are willing to listen, but to remember that homeschooling is an entirely different kind of learning environment than public schooling.