What Makes People Think They Are Qualified To Teach Their Own Kids?

[Johnny Rico]

68. Robert A. Heinlein on education:

From "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" (1958)

I felt shocked. "Why, Dad, Center is a swell school." I remembered things they had told us in PTA Auxiliary. "It's run along the latest, most scientific lines, approved by psychologists, and —"
"— paying excellent salaries," he interrupted, "for a staff highly trained in modern pedagogy. Study projects emphasize practical human problems to orient the child in democratic social living, to fit him for the vital, meaningful tests of adult life in our complex modern culture. Excuse me, son; I've talked with Mr Hanley. Mr Hanley is sincere – and to achieve these noble purposes we are spending more per student than any other state save California and New York."
"Well... what's wrong with that?"
"What's a dangling participle?"
I didn't answer. He went on, "Why did Van Buren fail of re-election? How do you extract the cube root of eighty-seven?"
Van Buren had been a president; that was all I remembered. But I could answer the other one. "If you want a cube root, you look in a table in the back of the book."
Dad sighed. "Kip, do you think that table was brought down from on high by an archangel?" He shook his head sadly. "It's my fault, not yours. I should have looked into this years ago –I had assumed, simply because you liked to read and were quick at figures and clever with your hands, that you were getting an education."
"You think I'm not?"
"I know you are not. Son Centerville High is a delightful place, well equipped, smoothly administered, beautifully kept. Not a 'blackboard jungle,' oh, no! –I think you kids love the place. You should. But this" Dad slapped the curriculum chart down angrily. "Twaddle! Beetle tracking! Occupational therapy for morons!"
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To remedy the problem, Kip's Dad starts him on an intense course of self study. Kip begins to learn Latin, solid geometry, trigonometry, calculus, physics and chemistry. He doesn't have a lab, but he has the use of the barn behind the house, so he does his own experiments. "Mother was perturbed when I blew out the windows and set fire to the barn –just a small fire– but Dad was not. He simply suggested that I not manufacture explosives in a frame building."

(more on the novel at http://roborant42.appspot.com/show/entry/6024;jsessionid=1a573nrhi12cz)