Common Sense

Now that I am older and more attentive I’ve realized some crucial facts. Reshaping my life. Making me value my childhood and the care my parents put into raising my siblings and myself properly. Recently while examining my sister and two brothers and a few of my personal life experiences, caused me to conclude that all adults but

Common Sense is not as common as it‘s inferred to be.

My sister and I were having a conversation about how our parents raised us to be aware and respectful of common sense, reality and whats right. To be simple my parents inforced logic as we were growing.

• Teaching us that feelings do not out way the truth.
• That we should be able to reason outside of our feelings.
• State how we feel in a calm way.
• Discuss differences without getting heated, offended or left feeling rejected.
• Accept the truth, and let the lie’s go.

Unfortunately not all parents have this mindset, or attention span to nurture their children through all their mental and emotional development stages in life.

Somehow others either abandoned some wise teachings, or their children just threw it out of the window. Right along with all the basic necessities required for living and sustaining a high value life.

After some reflecting I realized that common sense isn’t what we may have learnt socially. Common knowledge and skills that every human being should have mastered or at least a manageable ability to sustain their life.

People have lost hold of the craft we call survival. We hear the term it’s a dog eat dog world”, and Survival of the fittest”. Yet we raid our children e the people that I’ve met in my life have been the most illogical people on the planet.

One conversation that will always come to mind. One of my sister’s friends and I was conversing about homeschooling. The pros and cons, including the misconceptions about homeschooling and public school.

I don’t think I stated this but I’m one of the few to have been homeschooled. But not for all of my education. I started at 6th-grade entering middle school. So I believe that I have a decent perspective on schooling.

In our conversation, it was Missouri trying to inform this gentleman that public schools waste a ton of students time every day. Barely making process in teaching and then throwing them into college. After babying them for years.

America’s nagging problem with college dropouts managed to get worse this year. The National Student Clearinghouse reports that 55 percent of first-time undergraduates who matriculated in the fall of 2008 finished a degree within six years, versus 56.1 percent of those who began in fall 2007.

U.S. high school graduation rate is up — but there’s a warning label attached. President Obama has been talking up the newly released U.S. high school graduation rate of 83.2 percent, with the White House noting in an announcement that the rate has grown by about four percentage points since the 2010-2011 school year.

homeschool students scored exceptionally high on test scores, in the 80th percentile, in comparison with the public school average of the 50th percentile.

Also, a study was done in 1997, of 5,402 homeschool students showed that on average, their scores were 30-37 percentile points higher than their public school counterparts. The study also showed that the longer a child was homeschooled the better the score was. For example, a first-year homeschool student scored in the 59th percentile, while a student homeschooled two or more years prior to taking the test score in the 86th to 92nd percentile (www.hslda.org).

A study published in July 2010, by Dr. Michael Cogan, studied homeschool students at one Mid-west college. While this small study won’t have the reaching impact of a larger study, here are his findings.

• The homeschool students had a slightly higher retention rate, 88.6% compared to the counterpart at 87.6%.
• There was a higher graduation rate for homeschooled students (66.7% compared to the counterpart at 57.5%).
• The homeschooled students came in with a higher ACT score (25.0 compared to 14.7).
• Slightly higher Grade Point Averages were held throughout the college years by the homeschooled students. (Fourth year previously homeschooled college students had a 3.46 average compared to the previously traditionally schooled students at 3.16).

He simply refused the option of homeschooling his daughter because he was afraid she wouldn’t have good social skills.

This is how our conversation went.

“Do you think I have bad social skills?”

No, but others do and she might.”

“Have you meet any homeschooled students before who lacked social skills?”

“NO”

“Have you ever even meet a homeschooled student before?”

“Nope.”

And this is where I knew this conversation was over, it was pointless to continue. I said mind and I tried. He simply could not acknowledge the advantage he would give his daughter by homeschooling her.

I was amazed that this was his biggest concern when he could simply take his child to the park and let her socialize, join social groups sports. ( And I know this does not reflect all public schoolers. This is just a literal conversation that bugged me about less than sensible people)

But these facts are a little besides my point. The guy could not and simply would not accept that homeschool students start off life at an advantage while public students don’t.

They have less time to volunteer for scholarships, internships, and part-time jobs to gain real-world experiences. To travel, and to simply go outside.

I learned from this conversation that everyone ain’t trying to live their lives with sense.

If someone is about to present something to me and it make s sense, why deny its existence. What because it goes against what I thought to be true, and what makes me feel good?

No thank you.

Sense, logic, reasoning, and facts are synonyms to my definition of life. wi=hich equal evolving. Learning through experiences. I don’t have to break my wrist to find out that it hurts, I’ll listen to others and not get hurt.

You take the pain and I’ll make the gain.

There’s no point in the both of us being in the ditch.

You trip now I know to jump.

And that’s life. But not everyone lives accordingly. They believe falling, struggling is what makes them strong. But baby I don’t need the battle scars. It ain’t about just being alive, it’s about being wise, and avoiding a ditch so I try to open my eyes.

Now I know that Common Sense ain’t as common as I was told.