Synthesis Essay

Third essay of the month...ah!
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“According to Francine Prose, ‘Education, after all, is a process intended to produce a product.’ Examine your school or another part of an educational system (for example, your school district, a Montessori class, a private religion-affiliated school). Describe specific parts of the educational process, and the ‘product’ they strive to produce. Think of this as a cause-effect essay, with the process as the cause and the product as the effect.”:

Education has been around for so long that I don’t think it ever occurred to us why we need it. All types of education whether public, private, or homeschool are very important for life. Education is the main source for training children into the adults they will be in the future. It is a process intended to produce a product. I have had the joy of being homeschooled for almost 11 years of my life and it has greatly influenced me. It has expanded my vocabulary, assisted me in math, given me clarity in chemistry and helped me in many other ways.

When people think of homeschooling they think of school in your pajamas, snow days whenever you want them, extra credit for just picking a flower during science, and so on. But actually, being homeschooled is just as difficult as going to public or private school. Kids can’t sleep in late and they don’t get snow days because all of their school is done at home! I know from experience that being homeschooled is not easy. You still have the same amount of school as other kids. And since there is no nailed-down schedule you have to create one and train yourself to stay on it.

Some people may disagree with homeschooling because they feel it does not prepare young people for the world. But this would not be accurate. One of the great benefits of being homeschooled is the fact that your parents are your greatest influences. No teacher can better instruct you in how to face the world than your parents. In homeschooling, the amount of time children spend with their parents and siblings is greater than in public or private school. With the amount of homework kids receive in school it can become very difficult to find enough time for family and homework. I’m not saying that homeschoolers have it easy and never have a lot of homework. Absolutely not! I am always busy and I constantly have many late nights filled with school. But it is a blessing to be home throughout the day and be able to have lunch with my mom and periodically interact with my siblings. This is especially helpful to young girls, who instead of being away from the home all day, can interact with their mothers and learn basic skills in the home as well as school. This is one of the main reasons I have never gone to school. In being homeschooled, I have earned the same education but also homemaking skills from my mom!

Over time, homeschooling has become more co-op based than home based. Now-a-days there are many outside classes provided to students. Many wonderful people are willing to take a bunch of kids and conduct a class for them that will help them grow intellectually. When I was in 7th and 8th grade I was involved in a history and literature co-op called Tapestry of Grace. You may have heard of it or maybe you have even done it. That class introduced me to many books and topics that I had never really given any thought to. In those 2 years I learned so much about our culture and the world around us. Leon Botstein in Let Teenagers Try Adulthood said, “Beginning with seventh grade, there should be four years of secondary education that we may call high school.”1 I am sure that not only me, but my other classmates, are so grateful that we were not in high school during those two years because those are the years that really helped us get a grasp on what we would be learning in the coming years of high school. If I had entered high school when I should have been entering 7th grade, I would not have been ready for the amount of information that a high school student has to acquire and remember.

One of the great blessings of being homeschooled is the opportunity to take AP classes. Public and private school students typically only have one or tow choices available, as opposed to homeschoolers who have vast choices of AP classes available to them. AP classes not only go deeper than the basics in a certain subject, but they are college-level classes. One of the greatest pros to AP classes is the fact that they prepare you for college level work. Another great think about AP classes is that some of them give college credit on the AP test if you score high enough. The students who work hard in those classes are rewarded by not having to take as many core college classes.

Education is meant to produce a product. If education had no purpose, no value, no point, it would have been figured out by now. Francine Prose says in I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read that, “Education, after all, is a process intended to produce a product.”2 Many students do not see education as enjoyable because they don’t position themselves to see learning as a process intending to produce a product. They view homework as a burden and boring, when, in fact, it is one of the most important keys to learning. Some students just do enough studying and work to “get by” instead of taking ownership of the opportunity they have been given to learn. These students – public, private, or homeschooled – have the view in mind that school is about getting good grades and passing the SATs. However, we know that school is so much more than that. It’s about learning and developing kids and teens into adults ready to make change happen, be a part of a new discovery, perform surgery, study the heavens, and the like.

Over the years, education has taught students simple facts like long division and complex equations such as how to find the equilibrium in a chemical reaction. Subjects like math, science, history, and writing are very important in the life of a student. Homeschooling is one of the ways to produce students who are ready to face the world and all of its joys and challenges.