Question Homeschooling?

[HalloweenRain]

[MENTION=11846]Vamp Jenny[/MENTION]: It's not just those two topics that make people choose to home-school they were just the two highlighted in the last few posts. Of course bullying can be solved in other ways than homeschooling and sex ed can be waved if the parent so chooses, like Flannen said. It is the sum of all other reasons along with these. But I feel that you shouldn't need an argument to home-school. If you can provide a good education for your children, and you want to than you should.

 

[patriot1123]

I know people who strongly favor homeschooling, and I believe it can be done very well and produce very capable, disciplined, well-rounded individuals.

That said, I oppose it strongly. In my own experience and in what I observed of my son's experience, being at school every day, surrounded by structure, teachers, peers, rules, activities, and resources was richly life-shaping. There is no substitute for it IMO.

 

[VisionGirl]

Great to hear! I think sex is one of those things to be taught a home and not at school.

With my career I wont have time to homeschool but I've heard private school is better in terms of education.

This is not necessarily the case. I am a product of public education. I have a master's degree and a successful career. I have been working in the public schools for 19 years. Because of the nature of my job, I serve multiple school sites every year so that gives me the opportunity to work in many, many schools. There are some that I wouldn't choose for my kids to attend if I lived next door, & there are others whose excellence rivals local private schools. the great majority of teachers & staff I have worked with over the years are hard-working & dedicated. I choose to send my own 3 children to public schools. Private school tuition would be difficult but not impossible for us, but that's not my choice. One of the biggest reasons is lack of diversity. I think that it's good for my children to be exposed to and have friends from different backgrounds (race, ethnicity, SES).

Unfortunately, public education is sorely unfunded & unsupported by those in power in the United States. In fact there is a large movement that I believe seeks to destroy public education. I won't go into it all right now, but teachers feel more pressure now than ever. A lot of them leave the profession not because they dislike it, but because they feel demoralized by administrators & legislators.

That being said, I support a parent's right to homeschool. I don't have a problem with it. I don't bash homeschoolers or homeschooling so I would ask others to please not bash teachers & the teaching profession.

---------- Post added at 04:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:56 PM ----------

I am just as capable to teach my child about sex than a stranger. My children wouldn't need to take a class to learn about the body and their sexuality. Besides, school don't teach abstaining until marriage, and that is something I feel very strongly about for my children.

There are many states that do teach abstinence-only sex Ed. My state is one of them. Of course we have one of the higher teen pregnancy rates. Not coincidental, since I don't think that abstinence-only sex ed works. But if that's what you believe then that fine. I jut don't see it as a sole reason to pull kids out of public school: sex ed is a teeny tiny part of the curriculum (were talking about one week and not until 5th & 6th grade, taught by the school nurse), and parents have to give permission.

 

[EvilWillow]

There are many states that do teach abstinence-only sex Ed. My state is one of them. Of course we have one of the higher teen pregnancy rates. Not coincidental, since I don't think that abstinence-only sex ed works. But if that's what you believe then that fine. I jut don't see it as a sole reason to pull kids out of public school: sex ed is a teeny tiny part of the curriculum (were talking about one week and not until 5th & 6th grade, taught by the school nurse), and parents have to give permission.

I never said that was the reason I didn't want them to go to public school.

 

[VisionGirl]

I never said that was the reason I didn't want them to go to public school.

I didnt say that you said that. I said that I didn't think that was a reason that children should be homeschooled, in a general sense. I didn't specify that to you. But I realize that it wasn't clear, since in the same paragraph I disputed your statement that public schools don't teach abstinence only. Sorry about that!

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

I was home-schooled up until high school, when I decided to attend at my own will because I wanted to be "normal." I turned out alright.

 

[caritas08]

I was homeschooled my whole life and now teach 4th grade in a public school. It's hard to generalize about homeschooling because each person's experience will be as unique as the family that is homeschooling them.

As far as the argument that parents don't have the same training that professionals do, that's a fair point, except that most teachers have 30+ students at one time, are dealing with students with much worse behavioral or learning challenges than your own child, and it's difficult for them to give each student the one on one time they need (not impossible, but difficult). If parents take the time to work one on one with their children, I think that can easily make up for the lack of professional training in most cases. I admit I was nervous when I took the SAT's (not knowing I would stack up compared to public schooled kids) but found them (and all tests in college) to be extremely easy.

The social argument has bugged me for years. Where is the proof that the best socialization for a 13 year old is other 13 year olds? What is so bad about having people in your social circle of different ages, backgrounds and experiences? Do most adults socialize with people of their exact same age? I had plenty of friends through extra-curricular activities and I was able to avoid getting caught up in a lot of the drama, bullying or peer pressure that kids get exposed to in public school (I'm not saying everyone who has been to public school takes part in this, I'm just saying it was something I didn't have to deal with). I also feel I have a much broader range of friends now because I never had a small group of high school friends that I was codependent on and afraid to step outside of (something I've seen many public schooled, small town kids fall victim to).

The only "odd" thing I would say about myself socially is I have always preferred to hang out with people who are 5+ years older than me. I don't know if this is a product of homeschooling or just my natural personality but I'm happy with my social circle and it has never bothered me.

However, I don't know if I would homeschool my children unless I was in a position where we moved around a lot. I like to work and it would be difficult for me to give up my career and stay home with my kids (that may change when I actually have kids, and I sympathize with stay at home moms who decided they couldn't juggle career and family and did what they thought was best for their kids). I think most public schools are okay if you add your own knowledge to what children are learning in school (standardized testing are crowding out a lot of important historical, cultural and world news information that children need to know).

Having said all of this, I've known a few homeschool students who (in my opinion) were too pampered and not academically challenged enough in their homeschool environment and struggled in college because of it (the same can be said for many public school students). I think it really just depends on the family and the individual.

 

[Sweet J]

"Blind respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."-Albert Einstein.

Public schooling, at the high school level has virtuous aims but ultimately fails, and when it does 'succeed' all it has done is produce drone like replicated children all with the same knowledge and skill sets, just like everyone else, like good worker bees in a colony. This is to be expected when there are standardized tests.

I was public schooled in the most underfunded secondary school in the country. We even made the national news for just how bad the school was. Despite this I am now in Trinity College, which has a reputation of being esteemed and the best University on the Island. However both these opinions are meaningless metrics as university learning is driven even moreso by self learning than being intrinsic in the high school environment.

In saying that there were some outstanding teachers and some horrendous ones in public school. I enjoyed the personality and tenacity of the outstanding teachers, but did I perform better in their classes? No, I performed best in the subjects I enjoyed, like Physics, Chemistry, Maths, and Engineering.

The single greatest task of an educator is to instill the curiosity to want to know more. Regardless of homeschooling or public schooling.

In sum, I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education.

Let's have a look at Einstein and see what made him great. He neither enjoyed public schooling nor revelled in it. Instead he was mostly self taught at home:
http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/Einstein.htm

''Einstein again did not like school. Believing that his professors only taught old science, Einstein would often skip class, preferring to stay home and read about the newest in scientific theory. When he did attend class, Einstein would often make it obvious that he found the class dull.''

http://www.parentsnschools.com/?p=276
He once asked C.P. Snow, the British writer and scientist, whether he was familiar with the German word Zwang. Snow allowed that he was; it meant constraint, compulsion, obligation, coercion. Why? In his Munich school, Einstein answered, he had made his first strike against Zwang, and it had helped define him ever since.

[GLO "” perhaps all school council, PTA or parent-populated school committees should have as a fundamental part of their bylaws or rules declaring themselves to be a "Zwang Free Zone".]

Education is not a 9 to 3 affair, it is a life long endeavour.

 

[Vamp Jenny]

"Blind respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."-Albert Einstein.

Public schooling, at the high school level has virtuous aims but ultimately fails, and when it does 'succeed' all it has done is produce drone like replicated children all with the same knowledge and skill sets, just like everyone else, like good worker bees in a colony. This is to be expected when there are standardized tests.

Same knowledge and skill sets is what make a society. We need standardization(sp??) somewhere. Personnality is what will make children different and that is the parents job, imo. To teach them that they can be themselves in society, but still respect others and help build/maintain the society.

 

[VisionGirl]

[MENTION=11786]Sweet J[/MENTION], you make some good points, but I'd like to know what your proposed solution is? A solution that would allow a free education for ALL students regardless of income or disability.

We can talk about philosophies and methodology all we want, but the bottom line is however wonderful homeschooling can be (& I know fabulous homeschooling families!), it is not a viable option for the great majority of families.

I read recently that while American students' test scores are lower than some others in the world (I think it was referring to Asia specifically), those same students do better on tasks requiring flexibility, critical thinking, problem solving and other higher order skills. Of course now I can't remember where I read that and it's driving me crazy! I'll try to find it but right now I'm trying to get kids to bed so it will be later. 🙂

 

[Flannen]

Sweet J agrees: Police officers in schools? sounds more like a prison than a school.

It's just one relatively friendly police officer who helps keep children safe and also helps to deal with bullying in the serious way it should be handled. It has the added benefit of removing the stigma of police officers and deals with the misconceptions about the police force.

I appreciate your point about Einstein and him not going to public school but there are thousands of brilliant, revolutionary and creative people who did.

My job isn't to reproduce a class of the same kids. Like I said, one of the most important parts of my job is to bring each individual out of themselves get them to a point where they are comfortable and confident with themselves. Plus, if that standard set of skills is making sure all pupils are literate (and numerate) by the time they leave me, I'm okay with that.

 

[dexeded]

I think it really all depends on the circumstances. It's not fair to generalize on the standard of teachers, or the prevalence of bullies, or creative vs drone, especially since we all come from different parts of the world.

 

[Tueuse de Vampires]

I am just as capable to teach my child about sex than a stranger. My children wouldn't need to take a class to learn about the body and their sexuality. Besides, school don't teach abstaining until marriage, and that is something I feel very strongly about for my children.

The thing with abstinence is, a lot of the time it doesn't work. Children (-> teenagers) get to an age where they get curious, where they get feelings they want to act on. And if that point arrives someday, do you really want your children to be out of options because they didn't follow the path of abstinence? Honestly, I think that's just setting them up for failure.

I personally feel that abstince is ridiculous anyways. Sex is just one of the human innate drives, like the drive to eat. You wouldn't put yourself on a diet for 20+ years, just until you think you're ready to eat chocolate, to put it methaphorically. That, plus my strong dislike of the instution of marriage altogether equals pretty much 'senseless' for me.



But see, this is a perfect example of why homeschooling might not be the best idea. Like Vamp Jenny said, you need to give your children the chance to make up their own minds about these issues. Who knows, your children might agree more with my viewoint than with yours, and would you really want them to be unhappy because you forced your view, attitude and values, on them?

 

[Buffy Summers]

Let's just remember that the point of this thread is not to tell other people how to raise their children. 🙂

 

[Willow My Love]

For me personally, I would never home school. I feel like school taught me very valuable social skills that I wouldn't have gained at home. It also taught me a lot about diversity, and different people. Plus, I went to an alternative high school. We got a lot more freedom than most high school kids. It was a lot of responsibility, and really prepared you for what college is like. You scheduled your classes according to your needs, you got a lot of free time, and had to learn to manage it properly, and any help you needed you had to ask for. It made me a LOT less shy than I was.

As for the sex ed issue, I've know about sex since I was about 5. I asked my mom the "where do babies come from?" question, and my mom, being a nurse, got out the medical books and showed me diagrams. I have no doubt that my mom was fully capable of homeschooling us, because she never hid or sugarcoated anything. Any question I asked was answered honestly. Actually, my friends would come to my house just to ask my mom things because she treated us like people, not like we were too fragile to know the truth. It's one thing I've always loved about my mom. She's always been extremely honest with me. The good thing about Mom being so honest is that I always knew how to protect myself, and I always did. Always have. She taught me about drinking in moderation. I've never had a hangover, and I've never blacked out. She really taught me to be responsible. But I feel like there were things she could never teach me, which I got at school.

 

[Kairos]

I was homeschooled from fifth grade through high school. My parents were active and involved and all of us learned a lot about the process, its pros and cons, and, unfortunately, the stereotypes.

Academically, homeschooled children in America have been out-performing students from public and private schools for years. The statistics on this are plain, but there's still an automatic assumption from skeptics that nobody can learn unless it's under the direction of a certified teacher. Education is considered as a set of facts which everyone needs to memorize according to a preconceived curriculum. The truth is much larger than that; every human begins learning at infancy and continues his or her entire life, motivated by curiosity and compounded by experience. The rate at which we absorb knowledge drops dramatically right around the age at which we enter the school system.

I don't place the blame on school for diminishing a child's desire to learn, but I don't trust it to foster it, either. Schools have motives beyond teaching, and even the most intelligent, devoted, and talented teacher needs to contend with the problem of having thirty young people with vastly different personalities and needs all trying to process the same bit of information in the same way - when none of them was particularly interested in it in the first place.

Homeschooling is less about the parents-as-teachers and more about the child, teaching herself because she can and she wants to and she knows herself best. Some families do badly with this approach; it's inevitable just as bad schools mixed in with good schools are inevitable. The philosophy behind homeschooling, though, is sound: children are natural autodidacts and we need to respect that. I'll readily admit that it's not for everyone, not only because it's difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, but because some children learn better in groups. I'm glad for those children, but I see no reason to overlook the others.

 

[EvilWillow]

The thing with abstinence is, a lot of the time it doesn't work. Children (-> teenagers) get to an age where they get curious, where they get feelings they want to act on. And if that point arrives someday, do you really want your children to be out of options because they didn't follow the path of abstinence? Honestly, I think that's just setting them up for failure.

I personally feel that abstince is ridiculous anyways. Sex is just one of the human innate drives, like the drive to eat. You wouldn't put yourself on a diet for 20+ years, just until you think you're ready to eat chocolate, to put it methaphorically. That, plus my strong dislike of the instution of marriage altogether equals pretty much 'senseless' for me.



But see, this is a perfect example of why homeschooling might not be the best idea. Like Vamp Jenny said, you need to give your children the chance to make up their own minds about these issues. Who knows, your children might agree more with my viewoint than with yours, and would you really want them to be unhappy because you forced your view, attitude and values, on them?

First of all, I have said more than once I don't think I would homeschool my children, because of the career that I have, and because of the amount of time and energy it requires. I would have to be a stay at home mother, and I don't wish to do that if I don't have to.

Second of all, what gives you the right to tell me what I should and shouldn't do to raise my children?

I pride myself on my moral standing and I would very proud to have my children follow that example. Believing in God has helped me overcome some very big challenges in my life, and if I want to teach it to my children, that's not any of your business.

My children are 4 and 2. They are incapable of making their own decisions, and until that time comes, I am the one that makes the choices for them, and I'm going to do what I can to make the ones that are in their best interest. Children don't know what is in their best interest, which is why they have parents their to teach them and guide them.

 

[Buffy Summers]

Okay, so just as I already suggested that people do not tell each other how they should raise their children, the same goes for making assumptions about people and theirs (and whether they have them or not.)

---------- Post added at 02:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:36 PM ----------

EvilWillow agrees: I removed the last part, is that better?

It would have been better if it hadn't been posted at all.

 

[Harley]

The only thing I want to add to this discussion is a comment about teacher vs parent qualifications. There are so many resources (e.g books and internet) at a parent's reach that I do believe they can be qualified to teach without having a degree.

 

[Flannen]

The only thing I want to add to this discussion is a comment about teacher vs parent qualifications. There are so many resources (e.g books and internet) at a parent's reach that I do believe they can be qualified to teach without having a degree.

I don't disagree with you considering how much you rely on these a teacher. I also fully appreciate the ideas about the benefits of having a one-to-one education; teaching 30+ kids each lesson, is tough. You rely on your data and assessment in order to be able to target and support particular kids depending on whether the focus of your lesson is a strength or weakness for them as individuals. In any given lesson I can have at least 3 different activities and sets of questions aimed at individuals and groups of students to ensure they are being supported and challenged every lesson. It's a tough job! lol so I do see that it'd be a real benefit to have someone focus solely on your obstacles and talents.

Out of interest, and linking back to something I asked earlier in the thread, for those of you who were homeschooled by their parents, do you recall a lot of focus on exam specs, mark schemes and assessment objectives etc when you were being taught? While I agree that you don't have to be qualified in the subject area, the volume of material you need to know in order to meet the expectations of an examiner is huge. More than anything, a more efficient way of preparing for it and getting to grips with it would be awesome! 😀