Certified to teach our OWN kids??

A woman named Jody posted this to a message board I am on, and I just thought it was brilliant! So I copied and pasted it here:


"A thought that has often occured to me about teachers of other people's children having to be "certified": part of the reason is precisely because they are teaching OTHER people's children. As parents, WE are primarily responsible for raising, feeding, housing, clothing, and EDUCATING our children.

Sometimes we "outsource" one or more of these things to others, as when we sign the child up for gymnastics lessons, or music lessons, or art classes, or whatever. When we do that, we want to know that the person teaching our child has some kind of qualifications to do so, ie I wanted to know that the person teaching my children to ride horses actually knew how to ride horses! Or I might want to know what kind of safety measures are in place where my girls took gymnastics lessons. If I send them into a school, it's good to know that the hiring process included some kind of background check so that a known child molestor is not teaching my child.We require people who do these jobs for others to demonstrate some kind of competence to do so. Because as the parents we are responsible for seeing to it that our children are in safe situations, or at least as safe as possible.

As parents, we do not have to be certified, though, because we are not teaching/caring for somebody else's child(ren), but rather our own.We don't need to be "certified" to feed our own children, but a restaurant needs to be inspected and approved by the health department because we can't see the kitchen and inspect it for ourselves; and also to protect the workers there. These issues don't exist in our homes unless we are cooking for others for pay. By the same token, companies that make clothing to sell are regulated to make sure employees there are in safe working conditions, but those who make their own clothes in their own homes for their own use are not regulated.

Teachers of other people's children in schools are certified to (attempt to) insure that they know the subject they are teaching (because parents are not likely to interview personally every single teacher at the local public school to determine this!), and to insure that they are not known child molestors (parents would have a hard time doing this kind of background check, we expect the school to do so on behalf of all of us).

If we are acceptable as parents to raise our own children (we do not certifiy couples before they can have children), then we should not have to "prove" our qualifications to teach them either. We teach them things like how to dress themselves, how to count, maybe how to play the piano if we can; all without being "certified", why should something like teaching them to read be different? "

Jody, who thinks that children who are Shining Beacons of Joy somehow make many adults suspicious..... :(