According to the American Heritage Dictionary, exacerbate means “to make worse or more severe”.
Because many problems in public education have been exacerbated through time and by societal changes, many people have chosen to educate their kids at home. This movement toward home education introduces a completely new set of potential problems.
‘After all, homeschoolers are just everyday parents, how can they possibly teach their own kids,’ asks the education experts. ‘If they say there is a problem in education, they will only exacerbate it.’
The arguments rather make sense. We were educated, (or mis-educated) by the education experts. How could we possibly pass on what we have learned, and probably even not retained? I contend that we have an easy time educating our own because public education did not work for us. Yes, we can read, write, conjecture, and many of us have advanced degrees. Nevertheless, during the education process, something just felt not quite right.
Many of us finished our education and thought “is that it”? This uncompleted feeling was exacerbated by the fact that we found ourselves ill equipped for life in the real world. We were too inexperienced for most of the jobs we sought, and over qualified for the jobs we were willing to settle for. We were confused and disillusioned. We carried these feelings with us until we had kids of our own.
Somewhere along the way, we met some homeschoolers, or heard about this growing phenomenon called homeschooling. We thought, ‘certainly these people are nuts’. Then we put our children in school and hoped for the best. However, during this process of educating our kids, something just did not feel quite right… and we began to think.
At some point, a light bulb came on. “If it (school) did now work for us, why are we repeating this cycle? Considering the fact that time had exacerbated problems in education, and society as a whole, how in the world, could our children get a better education that I”, we thought. Maybe those homeschoolers aren’t so nuts after all. Perhaps I should look into it.
(This essay is an exercise in vocabulary. I encourage you to pick a new word each day and have your children to write an essay. Choose the number of required words according to grade level, age, or ability. Perhaps you will want to do this exercise yourself.)