What's wrong with Home Schooling? [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

Lacunae Matata

01-26-2011, 08:18 PM

j666

01-26-2011, 08:23 PM

There is no need for it for average children and few homes are qualified to do it.

I can see that kids on either edge of the curve might benefit from it.

Dangerosa

01-26-2011, 08:44 PM

School is a shared cultural experience. Isolating kid in families or in small self selecting communities isn't good for ideas like tolerating diversity, or gaining an understanding of a variety of ideas - and if school doesn't do that, it at least give you the opportunity. And while it certainly isn't an absolute that homeschoolers miss out (many homeschooled kids get an excellent education, and excellent socialization, and get exposed to a much wider variety of experiences than they'd get in a traditional school) - many parents who homeschool choose to do so in part in order to isolate their children from the larger culture.

I wouldn't outlaw it though. Under the right circumstances, I might even consider doing it.

Xema

01-26-2011, 08:57 PM

some kids aren't socialized properly.
Wouldn't the same be true of kids in typical schools? And it would also seem to be true that some common forms of social interaction found in schools (e.g. bullying) are not exactly "proper".

So I'm not sure how you'd go about making the case that the average socialization of kids in school is superior to that of home schoolers. Do comparative statistics exist on such things as crime, drug use, teen pregnancy, and other "social pathologies"?

handsomeharry

01-26-2011, 09:03 PM

In many ways it is a blatant rejection of societal norms. In that, I see it as similar to the '60s commune culture.

People do it for a variety of reasons, but many boil down to "I don't want my kids exposed to those people!" Well, the rest of us are those people, and we are not the monsters you think we are.

Also, there are a segment of people who do this who are basically filling their kids heads full of crap and nonsense. I don't want a lot of people walking around with their heads filled with crap.

Am I the only person here that noticed...?

Best wishes,
hh

whiterabbit

01-26-2011, 09:35 PM

I must say that the socialization I got in school, on balance, was pretty effin' negative. I'd have been thrilled to have been homeschooled. Those three years of middle school harassment were unspeakably bad.

I think it can be fine, given a few things: a) the parents are educated enough to know what they know and what they don't, b) same parents know where to go to find the stuff they don't know to teach their kid, a class or another parent or whatever, c) the kids have to have activities outside the house and d) it's not done for the purposes of religious brainwashing, education not being the priority.

I do think to do it well is much, much harder than a lot of people think; sure, I could teach a first-grader given appropriate materials to work with, but a ninth-grader? Especially math? Yikes! I'd be way out of my depth. No thanks.

Rushgeekgirl

01-26-2011, 09:43 PM

Absolutely nothing. There isn't even anything wrong with unschooling. All I can guess is it's related to the frustration with the fundamentalist Christian mentality. It seems that people are concerned that these fundamentalists aren't giving their children a proper education, and I agree completely after being in one of their HS groups. They don't want their children exposed to anything that contradicts their religion's doctrines.

But we aren't all like that and we shouldn't all be filed together. Even then, I can't help but think it's not nearly as common as assumed, and why does everyone have to believe the same things anyway? My entire life I was taught about Creationism and gays R evil and we're all going to be raptured away on a fluffy cloud. I wasn't homeschooled but it was bashed into my head on a daily basis. And yet by the age of eighteen I already knew better. I had the capacity to understand the stories were just stories. Not everyone will have that no matter what kind of education they receive. The most aggressively militant Christian I know had a regular public school education with two entirely indifferent parents. She picked up going to these youth groups on her own. Kids are like that. They learn a lot more on their own than we give them credit for.

Some people who claim to be all liberal and rant about the government sticking their noses in people's bedrooms don't think twice about raising other people's children. My daughter's home education is a success story I will brag about shamelessly. She is a healthy happy well-adjusted adult (and posts here occasionally: BloodyL) whose college entrance scores were above the average for our school district. She has a wide variety of friends and activities and I'm one proud mama.

The problem with this socialization issue is that you have to work extra hard to make sure they do develop healthy social skills. You have to put them out there in situations beyond what you're accustomed to. This goes for all parents though. Your kids aren't necessarily learning any special social skills in school. If you lock them away after school or only allow them to have certain friends or certain types of friends you are slacking and your children will suffer.

SciFiSam

01-26-2011, 10:22 PM

Well, I'll answer for what could be wrong with some homeschooling:

Subjects not covered in enough depth, esp. at middle school level and beyond.

Not enough resources for some subjects.

Not enough socialisation with a wide variety of people, similar to what's available within your local school district.

Deficient education in general.

Too much indoctrination into a particular credo without many (or any) external influences.

Just letting the kids do nothing all day.

It being used as an excuse, so that the kids' abuse won't be noticed.

Not having enough adult influences beyond the parents.

Not getting the kids used to a regular routine of getting their arses out the door and into school whether they like it or not.

Hi, Opal! [/oldschool] [/wrongnumber] :D

However, good homeschooling doesn't have those problems. The UK is not ideal WRT homeschooling, but it does at least check for items 1-7 above. The routine bit is more nebulous - there can also be advantages to learning to work without a routine - and the 'other adults' bit would generally be fine if points 1-7 were OK.

Homeschooling shouldn't be a free-for-all - there should be standards; kids are our collective responsibility, not just the parents'.

Only a country or state which provides state schooling which is definitely appropriate for every single child, no matter their needs, should ban home schooling. I don't know of any such place.

Germany pretty much bans homeschooling, which I find bizarre.

rowrrbazzle

01-26-2011, 10:27 PM

Bertrand Russell, The Functions of a Teacher (http://books.google.com/books?id=qmFQlCiXZHIC&lpg=PA124&ots=JETDFYD2fn&dq=russell%20%22functions%20of%20a%20teacher%22&pg=PA125#v=snippet&q=%22more%20highly%20organised%22&f=false) (1950)In our more highly organised world we face a new problem. Something called education is given to everybody, usually by the State, but sometimes by the Churches. The teacher has thus become, in the vast majority of cases, a civil servant obliged to carry out the behests of men who have not his learning, who have no experience of dealing with the young, and whose only attitude towards education is that of the propagandist...

State education is obviously necessary, but as obviously involves certain dangers against which there ought to be safeguards. The evils to be feared were seen in their full magnitude in Nazi Germany and are still seen in Russia.Of course, nowadays teachers take more courses in near-worthless "pedagogy" than they do in the actual subjects they teach.

Don't get me wrong. Teachers are on the front lines, and even an average teacher does a valuable job. But they have to put up with a lot of shit, and not just from kids and parents.

Peremensoe

01-26-2011, 10:50 PM

People do it for a variety of reasons, but many boil down to "I don't want my kids exposed to those people!" Well, the rest of us are those people, and we are not the monsters you think we are.

Some "homeschooled" kids actually get out into the world and exposed to culture much more. And they don't necessarily spend all their time with their own families.

I've been told by a couple homeschooling parents that it's easy to cover all the standard and required academic stuff in no more than half a year's school days if you're serious. Homeschoolers can avoid a lot of the inefficiencies of institutional schools, and of course they get superlatively personal attention in class. The real trea and the real value of HS, though, is what what one then makes of the rest of the time, to take on scores of the "extra" experiences that kids in institutional schools might get to do once in a while if they're lucky.

Of course it takes smart, creative, and exceptionally dedicated parents to make it work as well as all that.

suranyi

01-26-2011, 11:19 PM

It doesn't have to be bad, but in the US, it's often isolationist and antisocial and amounts to little more than religious brainwashing.

My niece is home schooled. Her parents (my sister and brother-in-law) are atheists.

Also, her parents are probably a bit unusual when it comes to home schooling parents. Her mother has a PhD in molecular biology, and her father IS a high school teacher.

My niece (she's 16 now) has turned out to be about the least antisocial teenager I ever knew.

Peremensoe

01-26-2011, 11:34 PM

Uh, that should be,

The real treat and the real value of HS, though, is what use one then makes of the rest of the time...

SleepyDuck

01-27-2011, 12:18 AM

Two words: Taylor. Swift.

Superhal

01-27-2011, 12:51 AM

Quite simply: most (not all) parents aren't qualified to be teachers.

dangermom

01-27-2011, 01:13 AM

I homeschool my kids. They seem to be doing pretty well. But if I want to do a good job at it tomorrow I have to get to bed now. More later, perhaps. (I'm happy to answer questions, but I'm also very very busy ATM.)

Gatopescado

01-27-2011, 01:47 AM

In many ways it is a blatant rejection of societal norms..
(Didn't read the other thread)

Yeah, my kid gets up at 8am (not crack-of-fucking-dawn like the "stand in the frost to ride the bus for an hour only to get to school to wait for class to start in 45 minutes" crew). He gets a proper breakfast of cereal, eggs, bacon or sausage and fruit. He helps do laundry and take care of the livestock before the "book lurnin" starts.

At no point does he have to go thru a metal detector.

He gets a butt-load of reading, math and science. No prayers, no pledges, no asskickings from unqualified PE teachers or other campus bullys.

If the snow is fresh, he can take a day or two or three and ski. Catch up on the book smarts when the sun done gone down.

Natural history? Fuck it! Load up in the camper and lets go to the Grand Canyon! Bring your note pad! And don't forget your vest that has your Junior Ranger patches/pins/badges you earned at all the other National Parks.

Unfortunatly, he is only 2 grade levels ahead in some subjects, unlike the 3-4 in math and reading. Fucking slacker!

The real problem is that he will grow up not knowing what, or how to administer a "wedgie" or "swirlie". Whats wrong with Homeschooling? What could possibly be right?

Lynn Bodoni

01-27-2011, 02:32 AM

My niece will be 20 in April. She was homeschooled by her grandmother for her entire education before starting college. Her grandmother was not just full of crazy religio-scientific theories (you know, evolution vs. creation and stuff,) she was also one of the most all-around ignorant people I ever met. (Honest to goodness, I once heard her warn my late sister that eating uncooked oats would kill her. As would slightly under-ripe bananas. Believe me, that's not what killed my sister.) Unfortunately, standards for homeschooling in my state still allowed that ignorant old bitch to be "qualified" to teach her granddaughter. My niece is still taking remedial algebra classes in college. She's a perfectly bright kid, with ENORMOUS gaps in her academic and social knowledge, and it's all the fault of the grandmother who wanted total control of what her precious grandbaby was exposed to. (And the same ignorant old bitch prevented contact between my niece and any of my side of the family, else I'd have been glad to tutor her in algebra or English or whatever.)

That said, I homeschooled my own son from ages 5 through 8. He is very advanced academically, but I enrolled him in public school after I realized that his social skills were beginning to lag. Some parents are excellent teachers who have well-rounded educations, and who can acknowledge the gaps in their knowledge. These people can make excellent homeschoolers.

However, most of the homeschoolers that I know of are like Grandma there. They believe that everything worth knowing comes from the Christian Bible (and probably only the KJ version, at that) and that they must protect their precious snowflakes from the evil libruls and the heathen notions that infest the public school system. They tend to be EXTREMELY ignorant of many subjects, and so how can they teach subjects if they themselves can't solve a quadratic equation?

Let me point out that most of the really conservative Christians are homeschoolers for precisely that reason.

I don't have any problems with homeschooling, just the people who practice it and who are not competent to do so. I would love to see some sort of tests, administered annually to both the teachers and pupils who do home schooling. If the teachers can't demonstrate competence in the subjects that the students need to learn this year, then they'll have to hire tutors or get those kids in class (public or private). And if the students can't demonstrate that they've actually learned what they need to know for the year, then they either have to repeat the subjects at home until they pass, or they have to enroll in public schools. As it is now, those who want to homeschool don't have to show ANY knowledge of the subjects involved. http://www.main.org/aah/legal.html

Nava

01-27-2011, 02:40 AM

I must say that the socialization I got in school, on balance, was pretty effin' negative.

Same here.

I'd have been thrilled to have been homeschooled.

Christ, NO!

I think that having homeschooling as an option is good; part of my problems at school stem from my mother's rejection of the notion that her round peg of a daughter did not fit well into the normal educational process; she rejected any attempts at performing "special ed" inasmuch as that was available in Spain at the time: sending me to a special boarding school or moving me ahead were rejected in favor of "proper socialization with her peers" (they were my age. They were not my peers. D'uh!).

But I also think that, same as any other exceptional educational methods, it's got to be handled very carefully. Being homeschooled by my mother would have been even worse than school was! Oh, and she was a certified teacher: if homeschooling had been legal in Spain at the time, she was qualified for it *shiver*.

needscoffee

01-27-2011, 02:44 AM

I've known people who did it because the local schools were either sub-par, or their kids were just way beyond their grade level and they were bored and unchallenged in school. Many homeschoolers do excellent jobs. They also have their kids enrolled in after-school activities with other kids, and on school sports teams and in school bands. They are able to teach them far more than the local schools do, just because of time efficiency. The problem is the rest of them. I've been on homeschooling website forums where the mothers were ignorant and stupid and stated outright that they were teaching their kids at home because the schools didn't have enough religion or discipline in them. And they wrote at maybe a fifth-grade level. I feel very sorry for their kids.

Lacunae Matata

01-27-2011, 03:03 AM

You know, when I began homeschooling my son, it was largely because of the backwards nature of the school district where we then lived. Eldest was a bright kid, given to questioning everything, and I really didn't want him to become bored with school based on that situation. When we began, it seemed so very simple: I knew perfectly well that, up to a certain grade level, I could teach him more than he would learn in public school (and the only private schools - not that I could have afforded them - were all of the "we rich folk started a school back in '65 because we don't want our young 'uns associating with them Negro sorts of folks" or the "we don't need your stinking science, because we have the Old Testament" types.) Before I began, I did my research - on his school subjects, and on applicable state law, and on other people's experiences.

As we progressed, I found that my big ideas on creating networks with other home-schooled kids/families didn't work too well. In the surrounding four counties, I could not find one single "secular" home-schooled kid. All of the home-schooling social groups were pretty much Duggar East: evolution (if taught) was a damned lie, the Old and New Testaments were the be-all and end-all, and no one had even bothered to read the freaking Testaments - they just relied on what they thought the preacher said last Sunday. Socializing with other homeschoolers became not just difficult, but downright painful (in that my choices for my son's schooling boiled down to education, not isolation.) I guess that experience, along with that of my niece, colored my opinion in a very negative way.

On a purely selfish note, I will say this: When I finally sent my son to public school (at age 8), I was so, so, so glad that someone else took over a 7-hour shift of answering "Why?" If I learned anything about homeschooling and kids, it's that "Why?" never ends, and that it's really hard to shift from Frustrated Mom mode ("Because I said so!") to Teacher mode ("Because [insert factual answer here].")

BigT

01-27-2011, 07:44 AM

I've never really noticed homeschoolers being unintelligent, but, then again, I only met them in college. I have noticed a few being less social, but it's not that common. The one thing I have noticed is a naivete. They seem to much less cynical than my other friends, which would be a good thing, except they also seem to be more easily misled, often being quite gullible.

Usually, though, after a couple years of college, they lose the gullibility, but don't gain that much cynicism. And that's why they are my friends.

Shodan

01-27-2011, 07:59 AM

Do comparative statistics exist on such things as crime, drug use, teen pregnancy, and other "social pathologies"?
There are lots of statistics on the academic achievements of home schoolers, nearly all of it showing that home schooled students do significantly better than publicly schooled pretty much across the board (cite (http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp)). Pretty much the same is true of socialization - home schooled students tend to have better social outcomes than those in public school. (Cite. (http://www.hslda.org/research/ray2003/Socialization.asp))

Which contradicts all the anecdotes in this thread.

:shrugs:

Regards,
Shodan

Kolga

01-27-2011, 08:45 AM

Back home (SC), most of the homeschoolers I know do it in order to protect their children from the Devil. They are overwhelmingly fundamentalist Christian, and their children go to fundamentalist Christian colleges if they go to college at all.

Out here, most of the homeschoolers I know are Pagan. They homeschool in order to protect their children from perceived bad school systems or to protect their children from "mainstream education that destroys children's precious creativity." Most of them are unschoolers, allowing their children to play video games all day. Their children may be creative, but few of them understand science, preferring to believe in woo. If they go to college, they rarely get a four-year degree.

As a professors, I've had a few professed homeschoolers in my classes. They've been mixed. Some of them have been highly successful, extremely self-motivated, and good critical thinkers. Others...have not been. I'm sure I've had a few that haven't self-identified.

I feel that the majority of parents who homeschool are not qualified to teach their children things like science, literary analysis, history, etc.

jsgoddess

01-27-2011, 08:49 AM

The only homeschoolers I know are a couple with six young children who have decided that Catholic school is too liberal and permissive. The man works. The woman spends all day, every day, with six kids under twelve in an isolated house in the country.

My mom had six kids under ten at one point and she has often told me that being able to send the kids to school was the only thing that kept her sane. I don't like to tell her it didn't do that great a job... :D

Bridget Burke

01-27-2011, 09:04 AM

There are lots of statistics on the academic achievements of home schoolers, nearly all of it showing that home schooled students do significantly better than publicly schooled pretty much across the board (cite (http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp)). Pretty much the same is true of socialization - home schooled students tend to have better social outcomes than those in public school. (Cite. (http://www.hslda.org/research/ray2003/Socialization.asp))

Which contradicts all the anecdotes in this thread.

:shrugs:

Regards,
Shodan

Do you have any articles from sources other than the Home School Legal Defense Association (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_School_Legal_Defense_Association)?
The organization is known (and often criticized, from both inside and outside the larger homeschooling movement) for its ties to the Christian Right and its staunch advocacy for various conservative political and religious causes, some of which are not directly related to homeschooling.

ZPG Zealot

01-27-2011, 09:17 AM

Is having children either educated at home or while traveling with family by tutors considered home schooling or is it considered something else?

Scumpup

01-27-2011, 09:23 AM

Of course, nowadays teachers take more courses in near-worthless "pedagogy" than they do in the actual subjects they teach.

Bullshit. (http://www.uic.edu/ucat/catalog/LACHEMISTRY.shtml) The linked example shows the requirements to be a chemistry teacher. You will find, with a minimum of searching, that requirements for secondary education degrees where one becomes certified to teach a particular subject have similar requirements in most any college or university. Primary and middle level requirements are a little different. (http://www.clarion.edu/1093/) Once again, the link is typical of similar institutions across the country.

elbows

01-27-2011, 09:24 AM

I wouldn't make it illegal but I would require kids to spend like, at least 3 yrs, in the public system. Parent can pick which 3 yrs if they like. That way, kids being cloistered will get to see some of the real world, get some socialization in, some exposure to others outside their culture.

dangermom

01-27-2011, 09:36 AM

Our local schools are adequate, I suppose--though the math is horrifying. But quite frankly, in many ways I can do better with my own kids. Nope, I'm not qualified to be a classroom teacher, but then I'm not trying to manage a classroom, and homeschooling is an entirely different venture. Teachers who homeschool usually find that they need to un-learn a lot of assumptions, because it's not the same thing.

The reasons that we homeschool have little to do with the public schools or the (very lovely) people in them. What it comes down to is that this is what works for our family. I love homeschooling my daughters and I feel privileged to be able to do it. I have my own vision of what a good education looks like (we are classical homeschoolers, which means a lot of academics, done differently) and we get to pursue that together. And as a bonus, we have lots more time to do interesting and fun stuff--with family, with friends, with new people.

Homeschooling gives my kids the freedom to work at their own pace and challenge themselves without being constantly compared to other kids. The result seems to be that my 10yo enjoys studying science, history, and Latin. Math is one of her favorite subjects! And at the same time, she doesn't see the social barriers that rise up in school in the same way schooled kids do. She doesn't think of herself as extra-smart (thank goodness) or other kids as smart or dumb--she is open to friendships with everyone she meets. She is far more socially adept and less awkward than I was at her age--I think she would be anyway, but the lack of the bullying that beat me down into a protective shell is a big help. Little sister, age 7, is a natural-born geek; she might as well have been born in a Tron t-shirt. And she is confident in herself and her friends. It's interesting to watch her happily play fairies with the friends who prefer that (she also loves fairies, unicorns, and purple sparkles) and then run around the yard with a bunch of screaming boys playing Jedi at other times. It has never occurred to her that she can't be anything she happens to feel like being--that a girl can't wear lace and embroidery, or a Darth Vader t-shirt and ripped jeans, both on the same day if she feels like it.

We hang out with interesting folks. Several comments here show a belief that homeschooling is anti-diversity, but in an awful lot of ways it is, itself, a diverse thing. Besides the fact that a lot of different kinds of people homeschool, it fosters independent thinking in different ways than public school encourages. Homeschoolers are adding to diversity, not detracting from it, if not always in ways that people approve of (apparently because we're different, which strikes me as a little ironic). At any rate, we're the only homeschoolers like us that we know, and our friends tend to be of the hippie/pagan/Buddhist type, though sometimes they are some flavor of Christian homeschoolers--to my surprise, none of them have ever accused me of being in a cult or disallowed their children from playing with us--and sometimes they're just middle-of-the road folks who happen to homeschool.

A couple of years back we joined a charter school that allows us to educate the way we like, but (happily, since we have been utterly broke for some time) pays for books, materials, and outside lessons. I still pay for a few things myself, because, for example, my favorite grammar program is published by Mennonites and of course the state doesn't fund that. It's been great. We can get as many science kits as we want--I never did any dissecting in school, and we can get anything!!-- and lessons we could not afford otherwise (we start riding lessons in 10 days). I'm sure it will relieve everyone's mind to know that we are required to do state testing. I don't mind the testing, but I sure appreciate the lack of pressure around it. We don't have to spend hours of instruction time drilling, and my kids think tests are fun.

Homeschooling isn't for everyone, and it's not the perfect system. Neither is public school. We like the freedom to choose for ourselves what will work for our family.

msmith537

01-27-2011, 09:54 AM

Two words: Taylor. Swift.

That's a terrible example. Taylor Swift is incredibly successful and from what I can tell, seems like a pretty sweet girl.

But I would agree. Taking your kid out of the local retard factory will place them at a distinct disadvantage when they are starting their careers working in our nations chain restaurants, bars, nail salons, mailrooms and shopping mall retail outlets.;)

A lot has been said about missing out on proper "socialization". Unless things are radically different from when I was in school, proper socialization in high school and college seems to consist of getting wasted, figuring out how to knock some girl up, picking on anyone who is different and otherwise engaging in activities that are likely to get you injured, arrested or sued. How will a kid mature if he doesn't learn the valuable lessons of beating up kids who are smaller then him and getting beat up by kids who are bigger?

I'm sort of half joking, but I can see how some kids might benefit from not going through the institutional grind of the public school system. Provided that they are homeschooled according to some strict standards.

pyromyte

01-27-2011, 09:57 AM

Also, there are a segment of people who do this who are basically filling their kids heads full of crap and nonsense. I don't want a lot of people walking around with their heads filled with crap.

Not a reply directly to Icarus, but i felt that quote is the basic argument most of you have against home schooling. That and a fear of a lack of socialization (I know too many counter examples..either sociable home schoolers, or anti social public schoolers).

I like that we, in the USA, have the option to home school. I think we should have that option, and that we should let parents choose how to educate their children. Of course we need some minimum standards for math, reading, etc. and for the most part I think we do have those standards through current federal and state laws. Actually, I'm a little worried that the minimum standards could even be manipulated toward a particular viewpoint, and maybe should be limited to the most basic of skills.

I think having the option is important, because I think it is fundamental to our freedoms and protections in this country. It is a given that we will have to put up with some people that make poor choices, such as choosing to home school their child when they are barely competent themselves, but this is part of the price one pays for freedom. If you believe your children are being indoctrinated in some way, whether its toward a religion, away from religion, to some political philosophy, whatever, you have the right to remove them from that system, and I think that is an important freedom.

Xema

01-27-2011, 10:04 AM

dangermom

01-27-2011, 10:05 AM

I just had to come in and put in a little note. Just got a blog post from a homeschooling friend (online, not IRL) of mine. She and her husband just took the whole family to Kyrgyzstan to live, for the second time. They homeschool because they like to, and because they move around between the US, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. They study the languages intensively and do a lot of things you just can't do in public school.

My friend is kind of unusual, but her family's adventurous ways aren't. Homeschoolers are the ones taking their kids on bike rides across the US, or living for a month on a boat, or moving to Malaysia to run a school, all that sort of thing.* Us more mundane stay-at-home types are, at least, reaping the benefits of not being tied to a school schedule by going to Disneyland when it isn't crowded or taking our kids on long trips to visit colonial history sites. :D Me, I'm too broke lately, but I do at least get to spend a day next week doing living history at Sutter's Fort and go to a lot of Gold Rush sites.

*RL examples

dangermom

01-27-2011, 10:16 AM

Dangit, I have to go start school, but one more RL example. A friend of mine is considering homeschooling her child. They live in a podunk little town and worry that the child will be bullied, because she has two mommies. If they lived in my town they'd have way more options, but they don't. I have to say I think the local homeschooling community is more likely to accept them.

chizzuk

01-27-2011, 10:40 AM

Germany pretty much bans homeschooling, which I find bizarre.

Perhaps, but if any country has a reason to be fearful of children possibly being inculcated with radical, extremist philosophies without anything to counter them, it would be Germany. I'm not saying I agree, but I understand where they're coming from.

Really Not All That Bright

01-27-2011, 10:54 AM

Question for those who cite socialization for opposing homeschooling:

Communities like the Amish have separate schools, and perhaps the main reason is they want to insulate their children from "mainstream" social values. Should this not be allowed?
That depends on what those mainstream values are. I personally disapprove of the tendency of the Amish and similar communities to disassociate themselves from the mainstream, but I don't think it should be illegal, per se.

Markxxx

01-27-2011, 10:57 AM

There's nothing wrong with home schooling if it's done right.

The same that has been said here against home schooling can easily be applied to the Chicago Public Schools. I've seen people that have high school diplomas from the CPS and could not even read this sentence.

How do you get a high school diploma and can barely read? It happens.

There are good and bad reasons for home schooling. Just the same way as two children in public school will have the same classes and one will do well and the other will fail.

Some kids can take minimal guidance and take it to the end. Others need to have their butts jumped on constantly to achieve. Taking a home school kid and putting him in public school or private school may not help at all if the problem is with the kid.

I for instance, skipped a year in school and graduated early, putting me in college by the time I was 16. But I also learned quickly how to do the minimum to get by and get good grades. That didn't help me at all once I got to college where everyone was as naturally smart as I am and actually WORKED at it.

Like most things in life you will find bad apples mixed in with the good.

BrotherCadfael

01-27-2011, 11:07 AM

Obligatory Buffy quote:

"What about home schooling? It's not just for scary religious types anymore!"

Shodan

01-27-2011, 11:12 AM

Do you have any articles from sources other than the Home School Legal Defense Association (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_School_Legal_Defense_Association)?Sure. (http://www.isil.org/network/us/C5/T17.2/)

I will note for the record that none of those critical of home schooling in this thread have provided any studies at all. If anecdotes are all you want, no problem - home schooled kids win a hugely disproportionate number (http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/hslda/200305/200305300.asp) of spelling and geography bees at the national level. Our next-door neighbors home-schooled both their sons. One is learning disabled. The other decided not to pursue his Ph.D. in mathematics, and is some kind of super-high-powered insurance actuary or something similar.

Regards,
Shodan

Icarus

01-27-2011, 11:14 AM

If you believe your children are being indoctrinated in some way, whether its toward a religion, away from religion, to some political philosophy, whatever, you have the right to remove them from that system, and I think that is an important freedom.

Honest question - Based on your statements, would you support Madrassa as the sole education offered in Muslim communities in the US?

Really Not All That Bright

01-27-2011, 11:21 AM

I think the point if home schooling is that it isn't the sole education offered.

Filbert

01-27-2011, 11:41 AM

Well, I'll answer for what could be wrong with some homeschooling:

...

However, good homeschooling doesn't have those problems. The UK is not ideal WRT homeschooling, but it does at least check for items 1-7 above.

Curious about this- is this being enforced now? It's about 8 years ago now, but I used to live with an ex who's kid sisters (and their baby brother) were being home 'schooled', in the UK. The elder could not read at all, at 10, the younger could just about manage to identify most single letters if asked, at age 9. I lived in the same house (most of the time) for several years, and know they had no 'lessons' of any kind, that is, at no point did any of their parents or misc. hippies who also hung around the house set aside any time to educate them in.. well.. anything, apart from watching TV. And possibly lesbian issues.

They didn't go on trips to interesting places, they didn't go to the library, they didn't have homework, or work of any kind (well, I did once see their dad trying to read a book with one of them, for about 10 minutes) they just went wherever the adults did, and messed around.
The whole set-up seemed to be so that they could be passed randomly between the two households they were part of, whenever any of the adults felt like it without anyone in authority being able to keep track of them at all.
They didn't have any outside activities at all, and no child friends. I really hope there's more checks on parents who homeschool now, but even the most basic checks could have picked up on their appalling level of ignorance.

Mtgman

01-27-2011, 11:47 AM

I find this interesting. Here's a couple of starting points.

Individuals should have as many freedoms as practicable. Freedoms produce diversity. Diversity is good for society.
Mandatory public education in the US is not fulfilling its promise.

Given these two starting points, what is the argument against homeschooling? Everyone screws up their kids in some way or another. You want to know what someone's head is filled with? You're out of luck. No one ever knows that. Everyone has crap in their head that someone else would consider freaky and scary. You want people to have a shared childhood experience of mandatory public education? Well, that society would have to forbid immigrants pretty much by default. The Indian person down the road has a far larger variance in their early childhood development and socialization than a US-raised homeschooler. If there is value in society to have this homogeneous type of childhood, then immigrants(being both more different and far more numerous) are a much larger threat to it than homeschoolers. What makes a immigrant who was raised very differently, acceptable but a homeschooler who was raised differently unacceptable?

As to the second point. Given the abysmal results of public education in the US I won't turn my nose up at ANYTHING that may help. The stellar academic records of homeschoolers are not something to be handwaved over unquantified fears of some sort of poor socialization. These kids are beating the pants off of the publicly educated in pretty much every comparison ever done and they're doing it on the family's dime, not the taxpayers. Why the fuck would I want to outlaw that? If some subset of those parents want to teach their kids bullshit it's no worse than some subset of lousy teachers teaching them bullshit except they probably won't get the side order of bullying and humiliation which seem such an integral part of public education.

Enjoy,
Steven

Ivorybill

01-27-2011, 12:24 PM

Gah. This is likely to be a drive-by as I'm slammed at work and just dropped in on the Dope at the end of lunch. I have not read the whole thread, just about the first third, and there's so much prejudice and venom directed at home school and home education that there's too much ignorance to be fought on the subject for Cecil, even.

We have homeschooled all our four children for some part of their lives. The eldest is a junior in HS; the next is an 8th grader. Both transitioned to "school school" in 8th grade. The younger two are still with us.

We have experienced everything from the ultra right to the far left in meeting with homeschool groups in south Louisiana and western North Carolina since we started home schooling in 2002. Our experience is unique to us of course, but in general we have found home educators of all stripes to be concerned that their children get the best education they can get. Sure, people on the left stress the things they care about; so do people on the right. Unschooled children can be undisciplined little hellions, big C "Christian" kids can be idotic angels. That can happen if kids like that go to public school too, of course, as it's not like those parents don't listen to NPR or skip Fox News if their kids go to public school.

Those who think that socialization is the problem shouldn't worry. Most often there are too many social outlets for home educated kids and it can be a struggle not to overcommit to outing clubs, PE clubs, Lego Leagues, etc. etc. Most home educated kids know how to get along in society.

What they may lack is the habit of sitting in math class every day from 0800 to 0930 with the rest of the 20 - 40 kids their age while watching one teacher work on the board for most of that time period. Home educated kids have the flexibility to move their day around and spend more time on history one day and more time on math the next, and do that at the dining table and or the couch and or the school room. The adjustment to middle school, high school, or college sit-lecture-listen-homework is the biggest challenge facing home schooled kids, IMHO, as they have not had to experience it. That's the biggest reason we transition our kids to school school in 8th grade.

Those who think that it's better that kids leave their homes and spend the day mostly indoors with whatever other neighborhood kids happen to share a similar birthday should keep in mind that for most of human history children didn't get that kind of education. It's not at all clear that the model that developed in the industrial revolution is the best approach. Also, there's bullying, cliques, and other social ills in schools that kids are exposed to that aren't that great for social development. For example: I was picked on for most of my elementary school years and it sucked and I hated school and I dreaded going. Was that good for me from a socialization standpoint?

I find manyof the arguments against home education presented in the first third of the thread to be full of generalizations and suspictions and, in some cases, are hypocritical. Kind of like and earthy friend at college who complained how the sorority girls made fun of her clothes, but then a few moments later related how she'd just come back from a Grateful Dead show and how there was this one girl there in penny loafers, jeans, and a green cable knit polo sweater and how stupid that girl looked in the sea of tie-dyed Deadheads. Pot meet kettle; kettle pot.

AlienVessels

01-27-2011, 01:22 PM

Sure. (http://www.isil.org/network/us/C5/T17.2/)

I will note for the record that none of those critical of home schooling in this thread have provided any studies at all.

If they're of the quality of your cites, I'm glad they refrained.

For example, I note in this literature review: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED424922.pdf methodological problems exist in many of the "homeschooled is better" studies. Note this review is dated 1994, *after* the date of most of the cited studies in your second link.

IMO, homeschooling is fine if the homeschoolers can demonstrate they meet the minimum education and knowledge requirements of the full curriculum, the students meet the testing requirements of the standardized tests available, and the students can demonstrate reasonable proficiency in non-standardized skills from a typical public school environment.

I'd be very surprised if the top end homeschooling results didn't drastically affect the "average" results of homeschooling.

AlienVessels

01-27-2011, 01:30 PM

Those who think that it's better that kids leave their homes and spend the day mostly indoors with whatever other neighborhood kids happen to share a similar birthday should keep in mind that for most of human history children didn't get that kind of education. It's not at all clear that the model that developed in the industrial revolution is the best approach. Also, there's bullying, cliques, and other social ills in schools that kids are exposed to that aren't that great for social development. For example: I was picked on for most of my elementary school years and it sucked and I hated school and I dreaded going. Was that good for me from a socialization standpoint?

Most of human history is irrelevant. Kids might as well get used to sitting in cubicle like environments where bullying and cliques happen.

Trying to raise kids in an idealized bubble is a mistake IMO. They'll learn how to behave in a privileged state, but unless they manage to stay in that strata, they'll be ill-equipped to deal with what is the normal for the "rest of us".

That said, I don't think homeschooling should be outlawed. It should be carefully regulated. My worry there is that the homeschools most in need of oversight, i.e. rural areas, are the ones that would be least likely to get it.

Ivorybill

01-27-2011, 01:44 PM

Most of human history is irrelevant.Really?

Trying to raise kids in an idealized bubble is a mistake IMO. They'll learn how to behave in a privileged state, but unless they manage to stay in that strata, they'll be ill-equipped to deal with what is the normal for the "rest of us".This is an assumption and generalization that home educators across the board are trying to isolate themselves and their children from society. That's not the case with the home school families I have been around. Most of my experience has been with folks who have looked at the quality of the educational opportunities around them and have decided that they can do a better job.

Peremensoe

01-27-2011, 01:48 PM

I'm glad dangermom is in the thread. Her comments ring very true to me.

The couple of homeschooled folks near my own age that I met around and shortly after the time of my own high school graduation struck me not only by their broad competence, but by their easy (not smug) confidence. These were kids who had grown up with the simple understanding that they belonged in every scholarly or cultural pursuit they might turn their minds toward. They were also notably comfortable and happy to interact with people of all ages and backgrounds.

Maybe I'm still a little jealous.

BetsQ

01-27-2011, 02:07 PM

Bridget Burke

01-27-2011, 02:09 PM

Sure. (http://www.isil.org/network/us/C5/T17.2/)

I will note for the record that none of those critical of home schooling in this thread have provided any studies at all. If anecdotes are all you want, no problem - home schooled kids win a hugely disproportionate number (http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/hslda/200305/200305300.asp) of spelling and geography bees at the national level. Our next-door neighbors home-schooled both their sons. One is learning disabled. The other decided not to pursue his Ph.D. in mathematics, and is some kind of super-high-powered insurance actuary or something similar.

Regards,
Shodan

OK, a Libertarian thinktank. Thanks a lot.

I haven't said anything against homeschooling--just the quality of your cites. I'm sure it works out fine when the family has a big enough income that an educated woman can afford to devote all her time to the kiddies. And all those field trips around the country! Sounds like more fun than actually getting a job. My own public school experience wasn't 100% perfect, but Mom was a widow who had to work.

Then, there are folks like the Duggers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_Kids_and_Counting). It's one thing to see how well some homeschooled kids do in college. But some of them will never be given the chance to apply for higher education. Especially the girls. (No Doper Homeschoolers in that group, of course!)

By the way, as a renter I only pay school taxes indirectly; but my landlady indicates that I do pay! As a non-parent, I'm glad to contribute to public education. And to the Texas Freedom Network (http://www.tfn.org/site/PageServer?pagename=TFN_homepage), to keep an eye on the antics of the Governor, Legislature & State Board of Education--which has been known to make buzzards gag. Surely, homeschoolers don't try to duck out of their community responsibilities!

AlienVessels

01-27-2011, 02:22 PM

Really?

Yeah, really. In preindustrial times kids that can walk and carry become part of the labor force for the most part. Not a lot in common with modern times of near universal education in 1st world countries.

This is an assumption and generalization that home educators across the board are trying to isolate themselves and their children from society. That's not the case with the home school families I have been around. Most of my experience has been with folks who have looked at the quality of the educational opportunities around them and have decided that they can do a better job.

They are isolating their children from the school environment where the vast majority of children are socialized. "Protecting" children from the realities of that social environment will not equip them to deal with people that learned to thrive in that environment.

Deciding you can do a better job is great if you're qualified to make that judgment. Most people are not qualified.

dangermom

01-27-2011, 02:31 PM

My issue with homeschooling is that it's an individual solution to a social problem. If the local schools are inadequate, having the most involved parents withdraw their children from the school systems just lowers the quality of schools for the kids whose parents are unable or unwilling to be as involved. If every parent who homeschooled spent the same amount of time and energy volunteering at the local public school, how awesome would that be?

(And then maybe I'd stop getting e-mails begging me to volunteer! Everyone wins!)
But that's not quite how it really works. I have many friends who have spent years volunteering their hearts out at the schools, only to find that their child is still being badly served no matter how much they try to work for change within the system. How many years do you spend hoping that next year, your child will be assigned to a teacher that fits and maybe make some academic progress? Many homeschoolers are made, not born.

My neighborhood school--one of the best in the district--is overflowing with volunteers, as are the magnet programs (such as open structure, GATE, or Spanish immersion) at certain schools. They don't actually need me-- I've been of much more use doing field trip tours of the public library for hundreds of public-schooled kids, which not everyone could do. And the place is overcrowded as it is. (I should also note that my neighborhood school is overwhelmingly white and middle-class--hardly a beacon of diversity and tolerance. Our homeschooling park group--heck, my own family--is more diverse in every way.)

I'm sure it works out fine when the family has a big enough income that an educated woman can afford to devote all her time to the kiddies. And all those field trips around the country! Sounds like more fun than actually getting a job. My own public school experience wasn't 100% perfect, but Mom was a widow who had to work. Bridget, you might be surprised at how many people committed to homeschooling manage to do it despite low incomes. I know single moms who homeschool. I know one woman who has lived on almost nothing for the past 3 years, since her husband is a real estate agent in Las Vegas. Her ingenuity is dumbfounding. I'm not sure that anyone in our park group doesn't have serious money worries these days. And as I've mentioned, our own financial state has been problematic for the past couple of years. I do have a part-time job; I just do it as well as the homeschooling. Homeschooling is not only for the wealthy.

suranyi

01-27-2011, 02:35 PM

dangermom

01-27-2011, 02:41 PM

Several people here have commented that they believe that homeschooling should be tightly regulated, or that parents should have credentials, or something along those lines. I'd like to ask a little bit about the differences between private schools and homeschooling.

Private schools are not required to hire accredited teachers or give their pupils standardized tests. There are no particular requirements for a private school at all. In California, where I live, a homeschooler is (legally speaking) a private school. We fill out the same forms.

So, do these same opinions apply to private schools? There are a lot more children in private schools in the US. Have those parents also abandoned the public schools--should they be volunteering their time? Do you also blame them for exercising an option that is not open to all, that is in fact far more financially difficult than homeschooling?

Kolga

01-27-2011, 03:26 PM

The only homeschooler I know is my sister, who has homeschooled my niece for her entire education. My sister, as I've said, has a PhD in biology. I think she's qualified.

You will, of course, note my use of the phrase "the majority."

And your sister's PhD in biology doesn't guarantee her ability to homeschool adequately in every subject area.

Kaio

01-27-2011, 04:07 PM

raspberry hunter

01-27-2011, 04:18 PM

Well, okay, I'll contribute my anecdotal evidence! Woohoo!

Before I moved here, I knew very few people that homeschool. Now, I work with a bunch of engineers, several of whom homeschool their children. These kids are the smartest kids their age I've ever met. At least two of them have won a number of local awards for academics and music. Spending some time with one of them made my husband decide maybe we should homeschool! Their fathers, at least, are all well equipped in math, science, and English (otherwise they wouldn't be working at our company, which in addition to engineering work requires a lot of writing proposals and such), and usually in other areas as well (most of them have a very good grounding in current events, have some experience with a foreign language, etc.).

A couple of people at church homeschool their kids as well. These actually tend to be the families who are a bit more hippie and liberal; the conservative ones tend to have too many kids to want to homeschool. Their kids are also just amazing. I used live very close to and frequently visit one mom who was homeschooling, and on a shoestring budget -- they raised chickens and a huge vegetable garden and recycled their wash water to get by, and her kids convinced me maybe we should look into homeschooling. Very smart, very interested in things, do all sorts of interesting activities, don't seem to have much trouble with socialization because they have a good homeschool network around here as well as lots of church events. And as teachers she and her husband are at least as well equipped as the engineers I know.

One more anecdote. The other kid I know who's been homeschooled goes to the (extremely conservative) church my husband used to attend. She seems like she might be smart, but is kind of scary with the spouting her parents' opinions thing, and does not appear to talk at all other than the aforementioned spouting her parents opinion.

So, yeah, if that's the only kind you'd ever met I can see how you'd be against it. But my anecdotal experience has been almost all positive.

ETA: Most of these people sent/are planning to send their kids to the public school system starting in high school.

Peremensoe

01-27-2011, 04:57 PM

I'm just not seeing how any single person (mom, dad, grandma, whoever) is qualified to teach all subjects in all grades from K-12.

I agree. But homeschooled kids need not rely on any single person's qualifications.

From here (http://ezinearticles.com/?Homeschool-Group-Classes&id=4027441),
The dominant image of homeschooling involves one child, or several siblings, studying with their mother in a socially isolated household. While those homeschoolers exist, they appear to be a definite minority, at least among New York City homeschoolers. One reason that most homeschoolers are far less isolated than many people assume is the popularity of small group classes.

Group classes take many forms. Some are taught by parents, others are taught by professionals; some are highly academic in nature, others are primarily intended to be social; some are traditional in their format, others are highly innovative. As a tutor who serves many homeschool families, I have come to strongly support group classes, since they provide an opportunity for a dynamic exchange of ideas among students and an affordable way for parents to ensure that their children are well educated, even in areas where the parents may not be comfortable teaching the material.

But even homeschooling parents who don't have the benefit of partnerships with other homeschooling parents, or hired tutors, can do an acceptable job, I think. Suppose you wanted to learn a subject outside school; how would you go about it? What resources would you seek out for yourself, and how would you measure your own progress? Whatever your answers--those things can be put in service of a homeschooling program. Sometimes the parents learn right along with the kids, which can be an important lesson in itself.

Shodan

01-27-2011, 05:04 PM

If they're of the quality of your cites, I'm glad they refrained.

For example, I note in this literature review: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED424922.pdf methodological problems exist in many of the "homeschooled is better" studies. Note this review is dated 1994, *after* the date of most of the cited studies in your second link.I assume you believe the link you provided is better. It repeats what I said, and even cites some other studies that say the same thing.

Regards,
Shodan

Mtgman

01-27-2011, 05:07 PM

For example, I note in this literature review: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED424922.pdf methodological problems exist in many of the "homeschooled is better" studies. Note this review is dated 1994, *after* the date of most of the cited studies in your second link.I read the linked document and I'm not seeing anything which invalidates the research. Are there specific sections you believe support your view that existing research on the quality of home education is fatally tainted by methodological errors? I'll reproduce most of the summary and conclusion from that paper here because I don't think it makes the point it seems to me you're trying to make.As a result of reviewing the literature, we believe that the homeschooling movement will benefit society as a whole. Among the positive results are (1) the strengthening of the family, (2) the clarification of values and goals of parents as they decide what to pass on to the children, (3) families and groups of homeschoolers learning to work together, and (4) the contact, exploration, and problem solving of various other groups working together, for example schools with families and New Agers with fundamentalist Christians.

Research on Homeschooling is in its infancy. Many samples are small and done mainly by proponents of homeschooling. In all but the Alaska study the subjects were self-selected. Almost all of the areas which have been researched are quantitatively testable in some way. Children test high, but the parents are doing the testing in most instances, and one wonders what would be the results if variables could be better controlled. What is needed in homeschooling research is more longitudinal studies, with the results being reported often. A problem with the frequent reporting of results might be the invasion of privacy which may affect the children involved. This would have to be dealt with in a sensitive manner. Other qualitative analysis of all kinds would be valuable both to educational researchers and to those interviewed, giving homeschooling families an opportunity to clarify goals and to express themselves. We believe, along with several researchers cited in this review, that the information gained through the "experiments" of individual homeschools will, in the end, benefit all areas of education.Everything I quoted is verbatim(typos are my own). Exactly what part of this review do you believe invalidates the cites provided by Shodan? The authors say there should be better controls, but they stop way short of saying the studies are invalid, and in fact they reiterate their belief, based on their review of dozens of studies, that positive effects for all of society result from homeschooling.

Enjoy,
Steven

ETA: Ninja'ed! Oh well. Having a partial transcript of the cite will be useful to the discussion as a whole I think.

dangermom

01-27-2011, 05:25 PM

I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I'm just not seeing how any single person (mom, dad, grandma, whoever) is qualified to teach all subjects in all grades from K-12. But they don't. Virtually no one actually tries to teach their child every subject for 13 years. And no one has to do it alone, from just their own knowledge. The resources out there are incredible.

People put homeschooling co-ops together.
They ask a relative, friend, or neighbor to teach something.
You can hire a tutor or take classes.
You can take video/online courses in anything. (My daughter wants to take a Latin translation/music course next year--first she has to finish her computer typing course.)
If you belong to a charter school, like we do, you can ask your overseeing teacher to do some teaching.
You can read a bunch of books and learn how to do something together. (My Latin is not much better than my 10yo's.)
You can take courses at the local community college, which is how many high-school age homeschool kids do it.

By the time a kid is in high school, she needs outside classes anyway. Colleges don't usually accept recommendation letters from parents. At the very least, lab science courses and higher math are usually outsourced (though actually my husband is an excellent calculus and physics teacher; between the two of us, we actually could handle high school coursework, but we don't plan to do it alone).

You should also keep in mind that an awful lot of homeschoolers don't go through high school. In fact, quite a few only do it for a year or two, on an emergency basis to deal with some situation in their lives. Many stop after 6th grade, and more after 8th.

Myself, I want to continue through 8th grade unless something fairly dire happens. That will get us out of the awful math curriculum, and through the shark-infested pit that is junior high. After that we'll see; I think there are pros and cons on either side, but I think it would be an awful lot of fun to homeschool in high school. There is so much freedom! Our local high school is pretty good, certainly much better than mine was, and I haven't got much objection to it except that we could be doing more interesting stuff.

elbows

01-27-2011, 05:48 PM

AshenLady

01-27-2011, 06:04 PM

If people want their kids to be schooled at home, no problem with me. Less costs for public education and more money for the rest of the kids.

AlienVessels

01-27-2011, 06:30 PM

ITR champion

01-27-2011, 06:42 PM

So as not to hijack this thread.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=594198&page=2

At least two people stated this as something they'd outlaw if they ran their own country. I have very little experience with it, but why is it so bad?
Do you really have to ask?

The public schools in the United States do a lousy job in most places. Not in all places, but in most places. Consequently supporters of public schools have a strong reason to want the competition outlawed. It's a lot easier to make money if everybody has to buy your product. Coke would outlaw Pepsi if they could. Microsoft owuld outlaw Macs if they could. Public school supporters would outlaw homeschooling if they could, and probably private schools well.

I teach at a private high school and many of my students have been homeschooled. I have yet to see a single one who lags academically or socially in any significant way. On the whole, they seem to be about average by our school's standards. Needless to say, that puts them above average by public school standards.

I find comments such as "many parents are not qualified to be teachers" to be highly amusing. Many teachers in public schools are not qualified to be teachers. Perhaps we should solve that problem first.

Kaio

01-27-2011, 07:14 PM

But even homeschooling parents who don't have the benefit of partnerships with other homeschooling parents, or hired tutors, can do an acceptable job, I think. Suppose you wanted to learn a subject outside school; how would you go about it? What resources would you seek out for yourself, and how would you measure your own progress? Whatever your answers--those things can be put in service of a homeschooling program. Sometimes the parents learn right along with the kids, which can be an important lesson in itself.

Well, I don't know how you do it, but short of some bit of trivia that can be looked up on Wikipedia, if I want in-depth learning on a subject I take a class (or a series of classes) on it, from people or organizations that have a reputation for teaching it well. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here? If they don't hire tutors or otherwise learn from people qualified to teach the subject, then I still don't see how an unqualified parent can adequately teach their child.

Kolga

01-27-2011, 07:14 PM

My parents were incredibly dysfunctional, there was addiction and mental health issues, all of it invisible to the outside world. I barely got out with my life.

If they had chosen to home school, (a choice my mother would have loved, had she had the option!), I would not have made it out. For a lot, A LOT, of children, school is the only respite from the horror that is life at home. Might as well shut down the children's help lines, cut the counselors in half, nobody is going to be able to report anything, anyway.

I had forgotten a story that my dad's current wife, a retired elementary school teacher, told me about a student in her third grade class years ago. She said the girl contacted her later, after graduating high school, to say that she (the girl) had been brutally sexually abused throughout her childhood at home, and felt that the only safe place she had was school. She thanked my dad's wife for giving her a safe space.

Interestingly, my dad's current wife once "diagnosed" a girl in her third grade class as lesbian and told the other children to stay away from her, and regularly read the Bible as literature to her class, so there's that.

I teach at a private high school and many of my students have been homeschooled.

Private high schools can be selective about the students they admit. Selection bias.

CaveMike

01-27-2011, 07:18 PM

My parents were incredibly dysfunctional, there was addiction and mental health issues, all of it invisible to the outside world. I barely got out with my life.

If they had chosen to home school, (a choice my mother would have loved, had she had the option!), I would not have made it out. For a lot, A LOT, of children, school is the only respite from the horror that is life at home. Might as well shut down the children's help lines, cut the counselors in half, nobody is going to be able to report anything, anyway.

You gotta know that the families teetering on the brink, the first time they have to answer to why Johnny has bruises, or Susie hasn't eaten in 24hrs, are going to 'homeschool'. Shudder.I'm not sure what your argument is here. Home schooling is bad because there are terrible parents that don't home school? Or that abusive parents will home school their kids so that they don't get caught abusing them? Is that even common?

Home schooling isn't a trivial thing to set up. There are hoops to jump through and over-sight. It's not something a lazy, selfish, abusive parent is going to go through just to cover their butts. These types of parents might encourage their kids to ditch school or call them in sick, but they're not going to the trouble to set up home schooling.

Just from the anecdotes in this thread, most home schooling parents are highly motivated to do it. They might not be motivated by reasons we all agree with, but they aren't entering into it lightly. It is not the easier of the two options by any measure.

Manda JO

01-27-2011, 07:23 PM

Well, I don't know how you do it, but short of some bit of trivia that can be looked up on Wikipedia, if I want in-depth learning on a subject I take a class (or a series of classes) on it, from people or organizations that have a reputation for teaching it well. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here? If they don't hire tutors or otherwise learn from people qualified to teach the subject, then I still don't see how an unqualified parent can adequately teach their child.

I dunno. I started teaching AP Economics when I didn't know a damn thing about it. I read corresponding sections from four college textbooks every morning before class for a year. My kids did fine on the exam, and I have former students who are econ majors at Harvard, Brown, UVA and UT, and none of them found themselves less prepared than their peers. Honest to god, all the way through Freshman college classes, the material kids learn just isn't that hard. What they need to learn in a semester, a parent can teach themselves in a couple weeks.

The average parent may not remember 7th grade math, but if they sat down and tried to figure it out--if they were really committed to the idea--I bet they could. It's not rocket science.

Peremensoe

01-27-2011, 07:25 PM

Well, I don't know how you do it, but short of some bit of trivia that can be looked up on Wikipedia, if I want in-depth learning on a subject I take a class (or a series of classes) on it, from people or organizations that have a reputation for teaching it well.

Right. Some homeschooled kids do take independent classes like that.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here? If they don't hire tutors or otherwise learn from people qualified to teach the subject, then I still don't see how an unqualified parent can adequately teach their child.

I'm trying to say that--in the ideal, which I realize doesn't represent all homeschooling situations--they do learn from qualified people. Some of those qualified people are "teachers" teaching organized classes of one sort or another, some are just folks who have knowledge and skills they can impart. For example, I know of a woodworker near here, in business for himself, who has taken on homeschooled kids as junior apprentices. They get something like a woodshop class, but better.

Kaio

01-27-2011, 07:26 PM

You can hire a tutor or take classes.
You can take video/online courses in anything. (My daughter wants to take a Latin translation/music course next year--first she has to finish her computer typing course.)

Is taking bunches of individual courses (or hiring a number of tutors) somehow less expensive or better than a private school, then? (Taking it as a given that one homeschools because they don't like public school.)

If you belong to a charter school, like we do, you can ask your overseeing teacher to do some teaching.

I thought charter schools were a part of the public school system?

You can read a bunch of books and learn how to do something together. (My Latin is not much better than my 10yo's.)

If you have a question, who do you ask?

You can take courses at the local community college, which is how many high-school age homeschool kids do it.

Perhaps this is an issue of definition, then, because I wouldn't call taking classes at college to be homeschooling, I'd call it going to college.

Kolga

01-27-2011, 07:34 PM

A related issue, for me, is auto-didactism. I'm supportive of and admiring of people who are auto-didacts, for the most part. I learned a lot that way myself.

However, and it's a big however, one issue is that if one is self-taught in a particular area, either as a parent homeschooling children, or as children teaching themselves in a Montessori-style homeschooling situation or an "unschooling" situation, it's very easy to fall into the tendency of reading or exploring only the things that one finds easy, or most interesting, or that one agrees with. Most people (possibly people on this message board excepted) will naturally engage with information that pleases them in some way - it's fun, it tells them that their personal opinions about the world are correct, etc.

I happen to believe that there is value to studying things that are difficult that you might not like. A person naturally drawn to math might therefore, in an auto-didactic situation, avoid studying literature or poetry. Some might say "well, what's wrong with that?" Nothing, particular, except that I think there's value in having a broad education rather than a narrow one.

In my own experience, I am glad I was "forced" to study people like Freud during my psychology degree, if only due to the fact that it gave me an understanding of how ridiculous he was :) I'm not sure I would have chosen to read his writings if it had not been required of me, due to them being outside of my field of interest, but I feel that reading them was valuable to me. I recognize that NOW, but would not have recognized that THEN.

And I think that for some people who are homeschooling, they might have the tendency to not recognize what is and is not valuable about information outside of their area of interest.

dangermom

01-27-2011, 07:43 PM

Is taking bunches of individual courses (or hiring a number of tutors) somehow less expensive or better than a private school, then? (Taking it as a given that one homeschools because they don't like public school.)

That assumption right there is a problem. Homeschooling parents do not, by and large, spend all their time thinking about the public school system and how scary it is. An awful lot of them homeschool because they enjoy it and think it fits their family best. That's why I do it.

Anyway, the costs of homeschooling vary wildly depending on how you want to do it and how much time vs. money you want to invest. You can homeschool practically for free--or you can spend thousands. It's quite difficult, however, to spend anywhere near what the public or private schools cost. Our charter school gives us $800 per kid per semester. It's hard to spend that much, until a kid gets to high school. The school district makes a profit, so public schools are starting ISPs in droves.

I thought charter schools were a part of the public school system?

Perhaps this is an issue of definition, then, because I wouldn't call taking classes at college to be homeschooling, I'd call it going to college.

At its core, homeschooling is the family being in charge of a child's education rather than another governing body, such as the state. (I don't say just the parent, because that's not how it mostly works.) If you're a high school student doing some coursework at home, taking 2 courses at the CC, doing another one online, and apprenticing somewhere else, you're a homeschooler. Many of us don't actually spend a lot of time at home. It is what you make it, and what you want to do.

Charter schools are indeed part of the public school system. Homeschoolers may be independent, or they may do part or all of their education through some sort of school or umbrella system. There are arguments in some homeschooling circles over whether belonging to a charter constitutes "real" homeschooling, but on the whole, folks agree that if you're in charge and your base is at home, you're a homeschooler.

If you have a question, who do you ask?I'm a librarian. Finding answers to questions is pretty much my specialty in life, and I'm good at it. :cool:

missred

01-27-2011, 09:20 PM

As someone who has dealt with entry level employees for the past several years, here's my take on it. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly coming out of home schools, public schools and private schools.

The majority of the homeschooled young people tended to be bright enough, but many times had issues with time management. Doing things on someone's schedule who may not be as flexible as Mom or Dad is problematic in many cases. A lot of times they are also ill prepared to deal with others on their team who are 180 degrees from their experience (although this often isn't limited to homeschooled workers to be fair). Fortunately, a couple of years down the road in the real world, a lot of these issues are minimized in all but the most sheltered. This is in comparison to people coming from public or private schools.

I realize that I'm seeing, for the most part, a different group than who are accepted into Harvard. My experience is skewed to tech production environments, with young people coming straight from high school and/or going to college/tech school part time. YMMV.

Left Hand of Dorkness

01-27-2011, 09:40 PM

As a public school teacher, unlike ITR's bizarre near-conspiracy theory, I've got no problem with homeschoolers. I'm well aware that I don't offer the ideal educational environment: because we take all children and do so with limited resources, I've got to teach multiple lesson plans simultaneously, ensuring that the child with superb writing skills can learn something at the same time as the child who struggles to spell 3-letter words correctly learns something at the same time as the child with no ability to sequence a story can learn something. I'd be a much, much better teacher if I had one student (or even three or four students).

Homeschooling, when done right, is of course going to be better than nearly any public schooling done right, by virtue of having a smaller class and a teacher who knows the student extremely well and a flexible schedule. As a society we're unwilling to invest the resources to offer such an education to every child.

The only time I'll get my back up is if people suggest that homeschooling should replace public schooling. Homeschooling is incredibly intensive resourcewise for most people; we offer public schooling because it requires a much lower amount of resources. And, when done well, it can offer a great education. Just not as good as that same teacher could offer to an individual student.

pyromyte

01-27-2011, 10:18 PM

Honest question - Based on your statements, would you support Madrassa as the sole education offered in Muslim communities in the US?

First of all, I support giving options. So, no, I do not support any one sole educational option being offered in any community within the US. Secular public school should be one option. the other option would be for parents to provide an alternative education privately (either home or an organized private school).

So if I understand your real question which I interpret as:
Q: "Would you still support private or home schooling, even if it meant all (or nearly all) Muslim Americans chose to educate their children in Islamic religious schools?"
A: Yes, I've got no problem with Muslims educating their children any way they see fit, even if none choose public school. As long as the education meets the minimum standards such that the children can become self sufficient adults.

raspberry hunter

01-27-2011, 10:19 PM

Is taking bunches of individual courses (or hiring a number of tutors) somehow less expensive or better than a private school, then?

If we were to homeschool -- which we haven't decided to do, but is under consideration-- we would have all subjects covered except foreign language (and some electives like art). That we would outsource (and even there, I am good enough at languages that I could help with homework and so on; it's more pronunciation and grading and so on that I wouldn't feel competent to do). This, in fact, would be cheaper than either private school OR the increased cost we would have to buy a house in the best school district around here. (Though if you take into account the fact we'd essentially be losing one income of a fairly highly paid engineer, the economics don't work out at all. It would only be something we'd do because we thought our kid would learn better that way.) Most of the families I know who homeschool have a similar kind of deal, where most core subjects are covered and they really only outsource one or two if any, plus electives.

Perhaps this is an issue of definition, then, because I wouldn't call taking classes at college to be homeschooling, I'd call it going to college.

What would you call a student who attends public high school and takes two classes at the local community college? I'd call her a high school student. Same deal.

suranyi

01-27-2011, 10:32 PM

You will, of course, note my use of the phrase "the majority."

And your sister's PhD in biology doesn't guarantee her ability to homeschool adequately in every subject area.

It doesn't guarantee it, but things seem to be working out. My niece, who is 16, just started taking some math courses in the community college. She had to take a placement test and placed into Trig/Pre-Calculus, which is just about right for her age, maybe a little advanced.

Ann Onimous

01-27-2011, 10:43 PM

We started homeschooling in December, and it's already been a huge help for our two. Our daughter is one grade level ahead in math, which she absolutely adores: our son, who has struggled with math, is almost up to his grade level. They have an online curriculum, and they can repeat the lessons as often as they need to so they can fully understand.

Between my husband and I, we're comfortable enough with most subjects to teach ourselves: however, we are part of a homeschool group, and we know enough to realize when we need help. I majored in music, but my children play trombone. I know very little about the trombone, and I definitely do not know how to teach it. So we have a college student that gives them private lessons so they can continue.

The most important thing? Our daughter's blood glucose is better controlled, and she's not missing 2 hours of class daily because the district nurse is freaking out about an occasional 240 BG. She's hitting puberty, which does a number on your hormones and your insulin resistance. That's why we did it: to keep her healthy.

We're willing to go to any length to make sure our children have a good, solid education. We are Christian, but our schoolwork is separate from church. They are expected to learn science from a scientist's point of view, as I did in school. And I had to sit down with our son last night and debunk some stuff about Muslims and Islam that he learned in his church group. It was a good, frank discussion. As someone who has always been interested in other religions, I really enjoyed being able to discuss it with my son.

That's it in a large nutshell.

Kolga

01-27-2011, 11:20 PM

It doesn't guarantee it, but things seem to be working out. My niece, who is 16, just started taking some math courses in the community college. She had to take a placement test and placed into Trig/Pre-Calculus, which is just about right for her age, maybe a little advanced.

You are aware that I am talking about large numbers of people? Larger, I mean, than a sample size of one?

I mean, I'm happy for your sister and niece and all - but I'm not convinced that this is typical or possible for homeschoolers as a group.

Lacunae Matata

01-27-2011, 11:23 PM

I think that maybe I should clarify my position regarding home schooling:

I don't have anything against home schooling per se. There are many, many parents who can and do achieve fantastic outcomes by choosing to teach their children at home (or at home plus other community resources.) As I mentioned earlier, I taught my own son for almost 4 years, until I began to see some serious consequences of that choice. (Academically, he did - and still does - really, really well. Socially, though, I just couldn't find an adequate - my definition of adequate - peer group for him, and I also faced a lot of challenges in teaching him time management - the sort of stuff you'd figure out quickly in a school setting, but maybe not at home. Doesn't help that I can be a serious procrastinator, so I was afraid I was passing that habit along to him.)

I think that I'd have more success now as a home schooling parent than I did then, simply because I live in a far more urban and urbane area than I lived when I was home-schooling, and I'm a bit more stable, financially. Here, I could easily find social groups, museums, library programs, music education opportunities, and so forth. There (and then), it would have been a 120-mile round trip drive just to find a home school group that wasn't explicitly Fundie. There was exactly ONE museum in the town where we lived then - a poorly-run and -organized crapfest of a local "historical society." I had access to a dial-up internet service that was crappy even by dial-up standards. It was a real struggle, and at the time, finances were pretty damned tight for me, so I was hamstrung by things like that long round-trip to find peer support or the added cost of music lessons. ($20 for gas to go to home-school group was about 40% of my weekly grocery budget at the time, if that adds perspective.)

So now, my two older kids attend public schools (although I've chosen to pay a bit more for housing in order for the two of them to be in top-quality public schools.) Both are honor students, and have been since day one of enrollment. The seventh-grader is taking advanced math, science, and Spanish. I could provide him with advanced lessons on math and science, but I only know a smidgeon of French and whatever Spanish I recall from Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street. The fourth-grader is the two-time school spelling bee champ, and will compete at the county level next week. She will perform with the district Honor Choir next month. She excels at art and dance - both offered at no extra charge by her (awesome!) neighborhood school. They've both been on multiple field trips this year - to the local arts museum, to a number of historical sites, to the state capital, and so forth. They both perform with their school choirs and drama groups, and each have substantial roles in their spring musicals - scenes from Broadway for the fourth-grader, and "Grease" for the 7th-grader. These are "bonuses" that I simply wouldn't be able to facilitate if I were still home-schooling.

All of that said, though, I'm of the firm opinion that most educational outcomes are dependent on more than just the quality of whatever school a kid attends. Parents who value education create an atmosphere conducive to learning. Kids who want to learn (either intrinsically or because they want to please their parents) will learn. Teachers can (and often do) create great atmospheres for learning. Schools (even within crummy systems) can become communities wherein learning is valued and encouraged. Even a peer group can create a situation where academic performance is valued or devalued. In home-schooling situations, the failure of even one side (parent or student) can create disastrous outcomes. In a school situation, there are more variables - great school, great parents, smart kid, but friends who thing that learning is "not cool?" Maybe the kid underperforms. Or maybe a good learning environment can overcome indifferent parenting. Like all aspects of parenting, there's no one "right" way to ensure your kids' educations.

The only real problem I have with home schooling is that so many people do it for the wrong reasons - they don't want their kids exposed to "those people," or to actual science, or so forth. And isn't that really what education is all about? It's not just a Joe Friday "Just the facts, ma'am," but an exposure to new things and different points of view and the encouragement of critical thinking. I truly don't think that I have the right to tell any other parent how he should raise his child, but I also think that his child has an inborn right to learn and grow and explore. Balancing those rights can be a problem...

BaneSidhe

01-27-2011, 11:32 PM

I had a friend who homeschooled both of her sons due to the horrible schools in her area. Both of the boys were given the choice to attend regular schools full time, or part time with homeschooling. I think the elder boy went to one year of high school but went back to homeschooling, and the younger went for the final 2 years. Both of them are very intelligent young men, have great manners and all around good kids. The eldest graduated last year with a degree in nuclear engineering and the youngest was getting ready to graduate with honors and thinking about going to a college with a strong agricultural sciences program. They're the examples I tell people when I come across conversations on homeschooling. J and her husband worked their asses off making sure their sons had an all-around, balanced education with being involved with 4H, Little League baseball and football, all kinds of activities where they'd be interacting with kids their age and older.

If daHubby and I had decided on having kids, I know we'd have homeschooled them for at least part of their school years. Part of that decision came from my own nightmare years of education, and the other from the BS that our local school system has become. They're teaching to the absolute lowest common denominator while smart kids get shoved aside.

I think we should have the choice, but there need to be standards.

Full Metal Lotus

01-27-2011, 11:38 PM

I used to do childrens programming at a small rural museum, in southern Alberta. we were used as a resource by a number of home schoolers. They basically fell into two groups.
There were those who felt the local school system was lacking in academic rigour, or were concerned that their children faced up to 3 or even more hours on a shool bus (total) each day due to the distances involved.
Then there were those who chose to home school so as to save their kids minds (and presumably souls) from such evils as sex education, evolution and history and science that discussed events before 4004 BC.
The parents of the first group would generally use the museum as a socialization opportunity - arranging with other like minded home schoolers to arrive for a "group' based activity. These kids loved the museum, we had many hands on and interactive displays, and they would enthusiastically make great and positive use of them. Their questions were insightful and generally very well spoken. behavoir was rambunctious, but generally with in limits of good manners. I do not recall having to ever ask anyone to "behave". When left alone in a n area, there was never anyproblems with behavoir or rudeness.
The religious home schoolers were another collection indeed. They never made appointments, and seldom showed up as part of a larger group. They huddled around their parents, and had to be essentially prompted to touch, interact and even examine visually any of our exhibits. You could tell they had probably faced or witnessed fairly intense ciorporal discipline at home, and were so lacking in socialisation skills that they mumbled and refused to make eye contact. Oddly enough, if they were left alone in a gallery, they were the ones who would instantly be attempting to go "out of bounds" or even damage items. The parents would interupt/over ride the interpreters with such germs of infectious wisdom as "the indians died out because they they were not of Christ", or "that isn't a dinosur bone, cause they're ain't no such things..." My favorite was "archeologists go to university so they can learn how to carve Dinosaur bones out of rock".
Additionally, the non-religious homeschoolers always made sure that their kids put something in the doination boxes and wrote something in the visitor book. I actually caught religious home school kids trying to jimmy the donation box.

Your milage may vary, but from what I have experienced, religious home schooling only exists to reinforce the bigotry, small mindedness and insular points of view that the parents of these poor children have.

Regards
FML

Mtgman

01-28-2011, 01:02 AM

The authors' belief is irrelevant as other than their personal opinions if the research data, as they conclude, suffers from "mostly" poor methodology. That isn't "my" view, it's the conclusion of the literature review.

Just the fact that the samples are self-selecting renders the cites little better than anecdote.I'm finding your takeaway from this review of the literature difficult to reconcile. Firstly the only language I can find in the document which resembles your statement is the last sentence of the abstract where the authors sayMost research indicates that home schooled children perform at higher academic levels than non-home schooled children. However, many of the existing studies have methodological problems.This is not the same as your characterization of "most suffer from poor methodology." Methodological problems exist in pretty much all sociological studies. I'm not finding the conclusion you're finding, meaning that the authors say the level of problems are severe enough to invalidate the conclusions of the studies being reviewed. You are welcome to your own standard, as you articulate in your second paragraph, but there isn't anything I can find in the article which resembles your claim of what the authors of the review conclude. Are there specific pages and paragraphs you're drawing this from?

More puzzling to me is why you believe the negative remarks in the review's abstract outweigh the positive remarks in their conclusion so severely that it creates a net result of a clear dismissal of the reviewed studies. Again, you're welcome to dismiss the conclusions of the studies presented because you don't accept self selected respondent groups, but without some sort of direct quotes from the review I'm not seeing the authors doing that.

Enjoy,
Steven

AlienVessels

01-28-2011, 03:27 AM

More puzzling to me is why you believe the negative remarks in the review's abstract outweigh the positive remarks in their conclusion so severely that it creates a net result of a clear dismissal of the reviewed studies. Again, you're welcome to dismiss the conclusions of the studies presented because you don't accept self selected respondent groups, but without some sort of direct quotes from the review I'm not seeing the authors doing that.

I explained that. Page 16 of the document (17 of the pdf). Nearly all the samples were self-selected. That's all I need to know to categorize these studies as slightly better than anecdotal.

It's not about me not accepting self-selected groups. It's about that not being acceptable scientific methodology.

There are objective standards in psychological and social science research. This review makes it clear that as of that point in time, the research was "in it's infancy".

All that a reasonable scientist looking at that data could conclude is that the area was worth further study. Which they did.

The whole "we think this would be a good thing for society" did not address under what conditions and frequency they thought it would be good.

Nava

01-28-2011, 06:05 AM

Private schools are not required to hire accredited teachers or give their pupils standardized tests. There are no particular requirements for a private school at all. In California, where I live, a homeschooler is (legally speaking) a private school. We fill out the same forms.

In Spain (a country which doesn't accept homeschooling except in extreme medical cases), that above doesn't apply. Wholly-private centers, as well as being a tiny, tiny minority, must still have certified teachers and follow the general curriculum - although more loosely than the much-more-common "concertados", which have to follow the official curriculum completely but may enhance it (for example, when I was in school the official starting age for a second language was 9th grade: my schools required one starting in 4th; when the official age became 4th, those schools started requiring it in 1st).

Here, getting schools to the darkest corners of the country and to children of any extraction was a centuries-long aspiration; it only was achieved in the 20th, and still not completely - but nowadays, the biggest problem is immigrant kids and kids of immigrants, many of whom aren't in school because they/their parents don't know they can/should be there (once someone can get them to understand that yes, their kid can go to school every day and get the books and notebooks and pens and one square a day from the school and come back home every day at 6pm and nobody will take the kid away, they're happy to send them - it's a lot harder with the "wetback kids"); others, because the parents want to raise the kid in the old country's culture (hint: if what you want for your children is the old country, stay in it).

I think it's good to have more than one "track" available, including home schooling... but any and all of those tracks need to be monitored and to have standards beyond "can read? can write? can find ass with both hands and the light on?"

Bridget Burke

01-28-2011, 07:42 AM

....Myself, I want to continue through 8th grade unless something fairly dire happens. That will get us out of the awful math curriculum, and through the shark-infested pit that is junior high. After that we'll see; I think there are pros and cons on either side, but I think it would be an awful lot of fun to homeschool in high school. There is so much freedom! Our local high school is pretty good, certainly much better than mine was, and I haven't got much objection to it except that we could be doing more interesting stuff.

You certainly seem to be giving your children an excellent education. But, at a certain point, they need to be able to have "fun" away from home, on their own. If your local high school is good, that might be the time to let them test their wings. Since they'll still be living at home, your family activities can have educational & interesting aspects.

Please consider how you are going to fill your days after they have gone off to college & started living independently.

Ruken

01-28-2011, 07:44 AM

I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I'm just not seeing how any single person (mom, dad, grandma, whoever) is qualified to teach all subjects in all grades from K-12. State licensing requires teachers in schools to have spent a number of years learning how to teach, and learning the subject they teach, and getting certified to teach; and even after all that, they teach one grade, or one subject. I just don't see how we could possibly reasonably expect someone without an education agree to do better than certified teachers.

I mean, just from my own experience, I could no longer ask my own parents to help with my math homework by 7th grade, because I was taking more advanced math than they remembered how to do themselves. They would NOT have been able to teach me 12th grade calculus.Given that most kids come out of high school knowing jack shit about most topics they covered in K-12, I don't really see much need for these supposed qualifications. As mentioned previously, they aren't required for private school, and those kids seem to turn out fine. Furthermore, teaching one-on-one is much different than teaching a classroom. Sticking me in front of a classroom would be a bad move, but I can teach your kid chemistry if you sit him down with me 3 hours a week, provided he doesn't have huge deficits in other areas that would make that an extra challenge (the kid who couldn't figure out that 2 molecules of water have four hydrogens and two oxygens was difficult :smack:). Now granted, I have a PhD in chemistry (oh whoops, I taught myself chemistry in high school, so I guess I shouldn't have learned anything), but the idea that I'm not able to teach a child (or a small group of children) a range of topics better than the average public school teacher is laughable, especially given that this country's teaching programs aren't exactly known for taking in our best and brightest.

Now granted, I can't teach everything. You mentioned 12th grade calculus (why 12th grade, I don't know, and not the greatest example since most kids don't take it, but let's go with that.) I'm not qualified to teach calculus, unless I were relearning with the kid. There would be lots of "I'll get back to you on that" as a response to questions. My parents were not qualified to teach me advanced math either. I took two years of math online, one super cheap one with a group of homeschoolers and another through some general correspondence program. It seems to have worked out ok because I started college with credit for those two math classes (not to mention whatever I got from the other 8 AP tests I took.) There are workarounds when you're in over your head.

Scumpup

01-28-2011, 08:22 AM

Now granted, I have a PhD in chemistry (oh whoops, I taught myself chemistry in high school, so I guess I shouldn't have learned anything), but the idea that I'm not able to teach a child (or a small group of children) a range of topics better than the average public school teacher is laughable, especially given that this country's teaching programs aren't exactly known for taking in our best and brightest.

Get back to me when you've done it successfully and we'll talk about what is "laughable." Right now, I'm just absolutely tittering.

PunditLisa

01-28-2011, 08:24 AM

Please consider how you are going to fill your days after they have gone off to college & started living independently.

Ah, and some argue that homeschooled children need to learn better social skills.

MsWhatsit

01-28-2011, 08:25 AM

Now granted, I can't teach everything. You mentioned 12th grade calculus (why 12th grade, I don't know, and not the greatest example since most kids don't take it, but let's go with that.) I'm not qualified to teach calculus, unless I were relearning with the kid. There would be lots of "I'll get back to you on that" as a response to questions. My parents were not qualified to teach me advanced math either. I took two years of math online, one super cheap one with a group of homeschoolers and another through some general correspondence program. It seems to have worked out ok because I started college with credit for those two math classes (not to mention whatever I got from the other 8 AP tests I took.) There are workarounds when you're in over your head.

What a weird way to defend homeschooling. "My parents couldn't effectively teach me certain subjects, so I had to take classes instead, but because I didn't go to school I had to do this via online correspondence classes." Yes, good workaround. Another good workaround I can think of is called "school".

Ruken

01-28-2011, 08:31 AM

Get back to me when you've done it successfully and we'll talk about what is "laughable." Right now, I'm just absolutely tittering.Perhaps I wasn't clear. Been there, done that. Teaching one kid isn't the big deal people here like to make it out to be.

Scumpup

01-28-2011, 08:54 AM

Perhaps I wasn't clear. Been there, done that. Teaching one kid isn't the big deal people here like to make it out to be.

Depends on the kid, doesn't it? Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, I'd find you less of an Il Capitano if you weren't making such sweeping generalizations based on that experience. But what the hell do I know? I've taught several thousand kids over the last 25 years, individually, in small groups, and in large groups. They been from across the spectrum in ability and needs. They been from all kinds of different cultural and economic backgrounds. Many of them did not have English as a first language. I taught these kids chemistry, biology, and physical science, as well as doing tutoring in English and mathematics.
But hey...you have a PhD in Chemistry and you taught a kid once.

Ivorybill

01-28-2011, 09:19 AM

I just don't understand the venom from the people here who are find fault with home education. It does good things for some kids and does a disservice to others. The same thing can be said for public and private school education. There are lots of variables to consider with home education and with classroom education. Why the ire?

Antinor01

01-28-2011, 09:23 AM

dangermom

01-28-2011, 09:24 AM

You certainly seem to be giving your children an excellent education. But, at a certain point, they need to be able to have "fun" away from home, on their own. If your local high school is good, that might be the time to let them test their wings. Since they'll still be living at home, your family activities can have educational & interesting aspects.

Bridget, you really don't need to condescend to me quite so much. My kids have fun away from home and on their own now. If we homeschool through high school, I will expect them to be quite independent--and given my 10yo's recent enthusiasm when community college courses were mentioned, I don't think it will be a problem. I was an exchange student myself and would very much like to see my girls do something similar, or perhaps take a gap year and do some of those volunteer positions in India kids can do now. My ambitions in that area have taken a hit because of my oldest girl's severe food allergies--once upon a time we had hoped to 'trade' cousins with her uncle in Japan once she was 13 or so, and that is turning out not to be possible--but I hope we can figure something out.

I'm not sure you realize how much homeschoolers focus on independence. We're not raising our kids to stay home forever; we're raising them to be successful and adventurous adults.

Please consider how you are going to fill your days after they have gone off to college & started living independently.:rolleyes: That is a very funny comment that gave me the giggles. Don't worry, I have plenty to do.

Peremensoe

01-28-2011, 09:31 AM

I just don't understand the venom from the people here who are find fault with home education.
...
Why the ire?

I think Icarus had a good point early in the thread, though he too was presenting it as a negative.

In many ways it is a blatant rejection of societal norms. In that, I see it as similar to the '60s commune culture.

People do it for a variety of reasons, but many boil down to "I don't want my kids exposed to those people!" Well, the rest of us are those people, and we are not the monsters you think we are.

Institutional schooling is a large part of most people's formative experience. An apparently blanket rejection of the experience and its assumed values can feel like a rejection of the people.

PunditLisa

01-28-2011, 09:48 AM

I, too, am amazed at the level of anger and suspicion re home-schooling. If you cannot fathom that there is more than one effective method for educating a child, then you are no different from the fundamentalists who believe that they have discovered the Truth, and that there is no other route for achieving it.

Public school worked for you? Bully for you. Now let others choose their own path.

kushiel

01-28-2011, 10:43 AM

Ruken

01-28-2011, 12:16 PM

What a weird way to defend homeschooling. "My parents couldn't effectively teach me certain subjects, so I had to take classes instead, but because I didn't go to school I had to do this via online correspondence classes." Yes, good workaround. Another good workaround I can think of is called "school".I was enrolled at a "school" at the time. We only homeschooled full time for a few years, since we eventually moved somewhere with schools that weren't completely useless. "School" didn't offer calc 2 or statistics, so I took them over the internet in 11th and 12th grade. This isn't all that rare, and I wasn't the only student at the school to do it. Again, these are not usually required courses in high school. I taught myself chemistry (another class that not all high school students take) because the teacher was a moron. Every single other student in the class failed the AP test. This is not difficult chemistry we're talking about. The other students were not stupid either, just merely victims of a teacher doing more harm than good. She was fired after that year.

We discussed taking classes at EPCC or UTEP, but they're both pretty abysmal* and transportation would have been problematic. The online classes were great because they took less time than a typical class does. Obviously I learned what I needed to learn.

*And of course, that's where most of the local teachers come from.:smack:

Czarcasm

01-28-2011, 12:18 PM

This being the Dope, most people here are are intellectually curious and socialize with like-minded people. I'd hardly say we're the 'average'. I want to see this same question asked somewhere more representative of the average.Good point here. The type of person that would be a poor choice for homeschooling is probably not the type that would post on this board, leading to a skewing of results.

dangermom

01-28-2011, 12:21 PM

This being the Dope, most people here are are intellectually curious and socialize with like-minded people. I'd hardly say we're the 'average'. I want to see this same question asked somewhere more representative of the average.
Yep, we're pretty special folks all right. If you'd like to mingle with some more ordinary plebes, you could always find some homeschooling message boards and look around.

Mtgman

01-28-2011, 02:15 PM

I explained that. Page 16 of the document (17 of the pdf). Nearly all the samples were self-selected. That's all I need to know to categorize these studies as slightly better than anecdotal.

It's not about me not accepting self-selected groups. It's about that not being acceptable scientific methodology.

There are objective standards in psychological and social science research. This review makes it clear that as of that point in time, the research was "in it's infancy".At this point I think it's only us who are interested in this topic, so unless others weigh in that they're following this with interest I think we've hashed most of our differences out.

I'm more accepting of self-selected study participants in sociological studies. They're the norm really. Everything from focus groups to political polls are self selected. A pollster approaches someone and asks if they want to participate, if they say no, that's it. Homeschoolers were asked if they wanted their kid to take the test, some said yes, some said no. That's it. Social sciences don't have the kind of rigor the hard sciences have, and that's just part of the nature of the beast. The parents administering the test was a bigger problem to me than the subject selection process.

Maybe the horrid homeschoolers are avoiding becoming data points in these kinds of studies. If so, then we have no data on what's happening to them and their children. Why should we restrict the rights of those who appear to be doing just fine because of our fears of some unknown, possibly nonexistent or negligible group of crappy home educators? If all the data we have, and it isn't perfect, shows a positive impact on society(echoing the review's authors) then why should we sacrifice that because of what may or may not be happening in the gaps in the research?

I don't think that review supports a logical case for restricting homeschooling. If anything it supports additional support for it and encouragement for home educators to help flesh out the data pools.

Enjoy,
Steven

Kolga

01-28-2011, 02:55 PM

Yep, we're pretty special folks all right. If you'd like to mingle with some more ordinary plebes, you could always find some homeschooling message boards and look around.

Actually, I would say that most Dopers are not average. My concerns with homeschooling probably don't apply so much to homeschoolers on this board as they do to homeschoolers that might post on mothering.com, for example. Or the Huffington Post "Health" section.

Kaio

01-28-2011, 02:56 PM

Sticking me in front of a classroom would be a bad move, but I can teach your kid chemistry if you sit him down with me 3 hours a week, provided he doesn't have huge deficits in other areas that would make that an extra challenge (the kid who couldn't figure out that 2 molecules of water have four hydrogens and two oxygens was difficult :smack:). Now granted, I have a PhD in chemistry (oh whoops, I taught myself chemistry in high school, so I guess I shouldn't have learned anything), but the idea that I'm not able to teach a child (or a small group of children) a range of topics better than the average public school teacher is laughable, especially given that this country's teaching programs aren't exactly known for taking in our best and brightest.

Well, it seems you missed the point of my question (which has been answered already by others, thank you). No doubt someone with an advanced degree in chemistry can teach chemistry to a high schooler without a problem. Can you teach literature? History? Sociology? Government/poli sci? Physics? Theatre? Music? Visual arts? Can you teach ALL of those in addition to chemistry?

Since "homeschooling" apparently has a broader definition than I was aware of, of course, the fact that it's impossible for a single person to adequately cover all of this, is less relevant. (Aside from cases where it really is just a single, unqualified parent trying to teach this stuff. Or trying to avoid teaching this stuff.)

Now granted, I can't teach everything. You mentioned 12th grade calculus (why 12th grade, I don't know, and not the greatest example since most kids don't take it, but let's go with that.)

Because I was using myself as an example (parents couldn't help with 7th grade algebra), and I took Calculus in 12th grade. (Also, if homeschooling is supposed to be more personalized, it's going to need to account for students who do take Calc in 12th grade. I personally would have loved the opportunity to learn more advanced topics than I did. I just don't think I could have done so through homeschooling, because my parents would not have had the resources to do better than the public high school.)

BTW, I don't know if it was different back then, but I took all of the state standardized tests in private school when I was a kid. Maybe it wasn't "required," but they did it anyway. On the other hand, the curriculum was not nearly as broad/advanced as in public school (I guess they had a decent remedial program, though), so I was bored out of my mind by 5th or 6th grade, and got transferred to public school in 7th.

raspberry hunter

01-28-2011, 04:14 PM

Well, it seems you missed the point of my question (which has been answered already by others, thank you). No doubt someone with an advanced degree in chemistry can teach chemistry to a high schooler without a problem. Can you teach literature? History? Sociology? Government/poli sci? Physics? Theatre? Music? Visual arts? Can you teach ALL of those in addition to chemistry?

I have an advanced degree in physics, and... Yes, to all except Theatre and Visual arts, and even there I'd be able to put together a curriculum as long as it was heavy on studying it (e.g., watching and analyzing plays, or analyzing photographs/paintings) rather than performance/execution (which is often an extracurricular activity anyway). If I was allowed to focus on (say) photography/graphic design I could do a pretty good job with that.

I'd do a better job of teaching history and government than my high school teachers did, too -- for example, my history teacher thought the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis were the same thing.

You didn't mention foreign languages -- that's the one thing I am fairly sure I, and my husband, could not do to the level I would want my kid to learn it.

Of course, it would be extremely time-consuming to do this! I've already got some lesson plans for physics, math, music, and literature/writing in my head from other teaching stints I've done in tutoring and church, but to really sit down and think about a year-long course in history or biology would take quite a bit of time and energy for me -- although I could do it, I'm not sure I would want to. Which is why, I think, a lot of people don't homeschool as much at the high school level.

I wonder, though, if a lot of people who do decide to homeschool their kids are the sort who think a lot of things are interesting, and are therefore educated in a fair number of subjects.

Lynn Bodoni

01-28-2011, 04:27 PM

Well, it seems you missed the point of my question (which has been answered already by others, thank you). No doubt someone with an advanced degree in chemistry can teach chemistry to a high schooler without a problem. I disagree. Just because someone knows a subject thoroughly, doesn't mean that this person is an effective teacher, in this or any other subject. And this is one of the problems with homeschooling...many of the people who decide to teach have no idea how to go about it.

I'm an excellent reader, and I can do just about all arithmatic and even some real mathematics. However, I am a lousy teacher in just about every academic subject. I can teach someone to knit or crochet or how to play FRPGs. When my daughter needed help learning to read, though, I had to get a tutor for her.

I acknowledge my shortcomings as a teacher. Many homeschoolers, though, don't even realize that they are barely literate and have problems with any math beyond simple addition and subtraction. And yet they think that they are great teachers!

Kolga

01-28-2011, 04:30 PM

I acknowledge my shortcomings as a teacher. Many homeschoolers, though, don't even realize that they are barely literate and have problems with any math beyond simple addition and subtraction. And yet they think that they are great teachers!

EVERYBODY thinks that they are great teachers. At least, everybody (or a significant percentage of people) think that they are better teachers than people who do it for a living. They especially think that they are better teachers than people who took classes in teaching theory (granted, not all of that information is helpful or decent). Otherwise, we wouldn't be having societal conversations all the damn time about how teachers suck.

dangermom

01-28-2011, 04:54 PM

Because I was using myself as an example (parents couldn't help with 7th grade algebra), and I took Calculus in 12th grade. (Also, if homeschooling is supposed to be more personalized, it's going to need to account for students who do take Calc in 12th grade. I personally would have loved the opportunity to learn more advanced topics than I did. I just don't think I could have done so through homeschooling, because my parents would not have had the resources to do better than the public high school.)

My girls are both on track to finish calculus by 12th grade, and I certainly plan on having them do so. Whether that will be a CC course, a home study course taught by their dad, or at the local high school, we don't know yet--but there are a lot of options.

AlienVessels

01-29-2011, 02:04 AM

At this point I think it's only us who are interested in this topic, so unless others weigh in that they're following this with interest I think we've hashed most of our differences out.

I'm more accepting of self-selected study participants in sociological studies. They're the norm really. Everything from focus groups to political polls are self selected. A pollster approaches someone and asks if they want to participate, if they say no, that's it. Homeschoolers were asked if they wanted their kid to take the test, some said yes, some said no. That's it. Social sciences don't have the kind of rigor the hard sciences have, and that's just part of the nature of the beast. The parents administering the test was a bigger problem to me than the subject selection process.

I'm not accepting. I spent too much time doing research as an undergrad and later with graduate work in Psychology to give credit to research that barely explores the issues.

Social sciences do have rigor, they just explore issues that are more abstract and have more variables to control for. Rigor is about the tools and methodology, not the subject.

Maybe the horrid homeschoolers are avoiding becoming data points in these kinds of studies. If so, then we have no data on what's happening to them and their children. Why should we restrict the rights of those who appear to be doing just fine because of our fears of some unknown, possibly nonexistent or negligible group of crappy home educators? If all the data we have, and it isn't perfect, shows a positive impact on society(echoing the review's authors) then why should we sacrifice that because of what may or may not be happening in the gaps in the research?

The default is public school. If you can demonstrate you can do better, great. Otherwise, the kids get the resources of many different teachers, students, and educational tools a single private family is unlikely to be able to provide.

I don't think that review supports a logical case for restricting homeschooling. If anything it supports additional support for it and encouragement for home educators to help flesh out the data pools.

We don't have to present a case for restricting homschooling. They have to demonstrate they can do the job and your random family is not equipped to do so.

The warm and fuzzies of a couple of researches that would love to get grants to study homeschooling don't even hit my radar.

Little Nemo

01-29-2011, 04:36 AM

Justin_Bailey

01-29-2011, 10:16 AM

The majority of the homeschooled young people tended to be bright enough, but many times had issues with time management. Doing things on someone's schedule who may not be as flexible as Mom or Dad is problematic in many cases. A lot of times they are also ill prepared to deal with others on their team who are 180 degrees from their experience (although this often isn't limited to homeschooled workers to be fair). Fortunately, a couple of years down the road in the real world, a lot of these issues are minimized in all but the most sheltered. This is in comparison to people coming from public or private schools.

YMMV.

I deal with a lot of employees who have been homeschooled and I agree 100%. The people who are homeschooled are the ones that are always taking long breaks or showing up late and taking a lot of extra time on a project that doesn't require it. I've also heard "My parents don't want me working this shift" given as an excuse. Honestly, that's just unacceptable.

But I think the biggest thing with homeschooled kids is that they just seem "off" in some way I can't put my finger on.

Peremensoe

01-29-2011, 10:23 AM

dangermom

01-29-2011, 10:57 AM

Some people seem to be saying that one of the advantages of home schooling is being able to avoid the often hostile atmosphere of the student peer group. It's true that home schooling does avoid this but is it really an advantage?

The problem is that most social groups don't become less hostile as its members become adults - they just get more subtle. So if you're ever going to function is a social setting, you're going to have to learn the skills. Most people start learning those skills in recess when they're five years old. Home schoolers are going to be several years behind.

I'm not sure that I have seen much of that in this thread; could you point me to it? I did say that I think my child has a bit of a social advantage over me since she hasn't been unmercifully bullied since the age of 6, but I never said that she doesn't face any social difficulties or ever hang out with other children. She just doesn't do it in a public school setting. As I said, she's more socially adept than I was at her age. I have a hard time believing that small children need to be bullied in order to grow into competent adults; IME it has the opposite effect, slowing social development because of fear.

Little Nemo

01-29-2011, 11:05 AM

dangermom

01-29-2011, 11:07 AM

I'd say many of the homeschooled kids I have known have been ahead of other kids in social skills, because they've had more experience dealing with adults outside "conventional" relationships.I don't know about that very much, but I do know that my kids are not afraid to interact with kids different than themselves. In particular, I've noticed that they have no reluctance in hanging out with kids with autism or other difficulties. In our group, we have some kids with varying levels of autism or Asperger's, and one kid with a disorder that seems to be something like what Gary Coleman had; he's 11 but smaller than my 7yo. They just hang out and play. From what I recall of my own school days, I'm not sure that would be the case at a public school.

Some people here have commented that Doper homeschoolers are probably of a higher quality than others. I'd just like to say that I don't consider myself to be a particularly amazing homeschooling mom. I know many who are far better at it than I am, who do incredibly cool things. I hope to be more like them, but I'm distracted and selfish much of the time. And all of us are only human, doing our best for our kids with what we've got like all the other moms.

Little Nemo

01-29-2011, 11:07 AM

I'd say many of the homeschooled kids I have known have been ahead of other kids in social skills, because they've had more experience dealing with adults outside "conventional" relationships.Let's face facts, adults are not going to interact socially with a child the same way they would interact with another adult. Children get a sheltered version of interaction from adults. To get real social interaction you have to be in a peer group - which for children is a group of other children.

dangermom

01-29-2011, 11:09 AM

Nobody needs to be bullied. But people are bullied. And that continues throughout a person's life - it's just that the form of bullying will change. So what people need to do in order to become competent adults is learn how to deal with bullies, whether it's a fifth grader who wants your chocolate milk or a boss who's pressuring you to work outside your contract.We're all going to run into them; they don't only live at public school. Personally I think that if you're lucky enough to get bullied when you're 10 or older and more equipped to deal with it--as I think my kid is--then it's better than getting beaten down at 6 or 8.

I'm not sure why you seem to feel that groups of children only happen at public schools. They are all over the place.

Antinor01

01-29-2011, 11:15 AM

This thread reminded me to call my Mom and thank her for home schooling me. I truly believe it was the best choice. As any parent does, I know she has sometimes wondered if they made the right decisions in raising us so she really appreciated that. Thanks all for the reminder to do that.

Little Nemo

01-29-2011, 11:32 AM

I'm not sure why you seem to feel that groups of children only happen at public schools.I never said that. But for most children, school is going to be a substantial portion, most likely a majority, of their social interchange with a large group of other children.

YogSosoth

01-29-2011, 11:43 AM

The only people who homeschool are crazy. That is not a generalization, they are all crazy

Peremensoe

01-29-2011, 12:40 PM

I don't know about that very much, but I do know that my kids are not afraid to interact with kids different than themselves.

To be clear, my own experience with homeschooled kids began when I was near the end of my own high school time, and the kids I met then were at least 15 or 16.

But now I know parents who are homeschooling younger kids, and I have seen exactly the dynamic you describe with them.

Left Hand of Dorkness

01-29-2011, 12:41 PM

Thanks, YogSosoth--I was wondering about that! Glad you cleared it up for us. I think we can lock the thread now!

doreen

01-29-2011, 12:46 PM

Maybe the horrid homeschoolers are avoiding becoming data points in these kinds of studies. If so, then we have no data on what's happening to them and their children.

That's right, we have no data on them and their children- which means we don't know how they are doing, we don't know how many of them there are and we don't know what proportion of the homeschooling population they make up. Which means we know absolutely nothing about the entire universe of homeschoolers and cannot make generalizations such as "Home schooled children perform at higher academic levels than non-home schooled children." We can perhaps say that homeschoolers who participated in a study , or took a specific test or used a specific curriculum perform better than non-homeschooled children, but that's it. Otherwise, it's like pretending that the average SAT score at my high school tells you anything about the approximately 90% of the students who didn't take the SAT. They may have been excellent students planning to go to colleges that didn't require the SAT, or they may have been illiterate - no way to know from the data given.

Now, that's not necessarily a reason to restrict homeschooling, but it is a reason to avoid making statements like this
If all the data we have, and it isn't perfect, shows a positive impact on society(echoing the review's authors) then why should we sacrifice that because of what may or may not be happening in the gaps in the research?

because the data doesn't show a positive effect of homeschooling on society. At most, it shows a positive effect for the group of participating home schooled students. Just because it would quite literally be impossible to obtain data from a random sample of home-schoolers doesn't mean we should act as if a non-random sample gives us the same information.

You're correct that a fair amount of research , especially polls , depend on self-selected participants. But they still use methods designed to eliminate sample bias- for example, ten years ago ,telephone pollsters did not make it a point to include cell phone lines. Now they do , because the demographics of cell phone households are not the same as those of households including a landline and leaving out those households will affect the results. Look up the Literary Digest poll in 1936 for a famous example of a incorrect result due to a biased sample.

araminty

01-29-2011, 12:55 PM

I agree with a lot of the criticism in this thread. Many of the experiences kids get in schools just can't be replicated in non-school situations. And these experiences form the basis for social interaction that makes up, well, society.

In the last homeschooling thread, which I linked to above, I mentioned some examples I've seen in the informal education classes I've taught. These classes, while really great at teaching the subject matter at hand, can't also serve as socialization training for the participants too. I just don't have time to say, "please keep your questions on topic, and share your stories with me at the end," to the thirty homeschooled kids who keep telling me rambling anecdotes, and it's not fair on the few kids who do know the boundaries.

I don't think informal classes can give kids the social skills they need.

dangermom

01-29-2011, 01:21 PM

I never said that. But for most children, school is going to be a substantial portion, most likely a majority, of their social interchange with a large group of other children.
OK, but not for all. So in fact we're pretty much in agreement? Homeschooling is always going to be a minority choice.

I've been thinking a little about this whole social/bullying/diversity thing. A lot of people claim that homeschooling robs children of the diversity and tolerance found at public schools (well some of them; certainly not this local one). And again, that homeschooling robs children of the social pressures they need to learn to deal with. Both of these things are assumed to exist only in public schools.

At the same time, I think we all know that IRL, school culture teaches conformity and social fear. There is a box of acceptable qualities (as a mom of girls, I'm going to talk about girls but it's for boys too): one must be pretty, fashionable, slim, 'nice,' athletic, witty, gossipy, etc. and the rules have been getting progressively stricter and are being applied at younger ages. When I was in grade school, the rules existed of course, but they weren't nearly as rigid or demanding.

I can actually go on and on about this, but I'll try not to and just say that I think it's interesting that the diversity of personality and thought that comes naturally to many homeschoolers seems to be unacceptable to so many Dopers who otherwise declaim the virtues of diversity, tolerance, and individual freedom.

Peremensoe

01-29-2011, 01:22 PM

rhubarbarin

01-29-2011, 01:43 PM

Well, neither formal nor informal classes can give kids many of the social skills they need, but that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with either kind of class in itself. It's a matter of the total range of experiences. I expect an ideal socially healthy person will have experienced both kinds of classes, and a whole lot of other kinds of interactions as well. Certainly attending only formal classes can be a substantial handicap.

It sure was for me. I was intimidated by everyone older than me for a long time - my parents didn't take me out much and were authoritarian, so I got little exposure to kids who weren't my own age or my little sister's age. And adults/people more than a few years older were only authority figures to me.

I wasn't socially normal at all until I started working, got out on my own and started interacting with all kinds of people. I haven't met any religious, isolationist homeschooled kids (I've heard some horror stories though) but I have met a lot of kids who were educated at home by progressive or secular parents, and all of them have been far more well-rounded in most ways than I was, as a public school kid, or than most of my public-school friends in fact (let's face it, I'm not the best example - I've always been a little off). Most of them are highly successful in higher academics as well.

Spectre of Pithecanthropus

01-29-2011, 02:02 PM

The only people who homeschool are crazy. That is not a generalization, they are all crazy

Moderator Note:

YogSouth, I urge you to drop the generalizations, because despite what you think, that's what this is.

For The Straight Dope,

Spectre of Pithecanthropus

Kaio

01-29-2011, 02:06 PM

The problem is that most social groups don't become less hostile as its members become adults - they just get more subtle. So if you're ever going to function is a social setting, you're going to have to learn the skills. Most people start learning those skills in recess when they're five years old. Home schoolers are going to be several years behind.

I agree with you, but I honestly haven't seen public schools (or even private ones) really stepping up to teach these skills. Throwing kids to the wolves or just telling them to deal with it by themselves does not constitute skills instruction.

And frankly -- munging a quote from Tori Amos -- everyone's teaching kids how to avoid or deal with bullies, but no one is teaching kids not to bully in the first place.

I have no idea if homeschooling does this better (some of the time, most of the time, or never), but I wouldn't use this as an argument in favor of public school.

Kaio

01-29-2011, 02:40 PM

That's right, we have no data on them and their children- which means we don't know how they are doing, we don't know how many of them there are and we don't know what proportion of the homeschooling population they make up. Which means we know absolutely nothing about the entire universe of homeschoolers and cannot make generalizations such as "Home schooled children perform at higher academic levels than non-home schooled children." We can perhaps say that homeschoolers who participated in a study , or took a specific test or used a specific curriculum perform better than non-homeschooled children, but that's it.

Wait, aren't homeschooled children required to take the same standardized tests as public school kids? Wouldn't it be possible to conduct a meta-study comparing test scores of kids enrolled in public schools, vs. those who are not? (Surely there are public/private/home school enrollment records somewhere, yeah?) That would solve the sample-bias problem, at least.

Little Nemo

01-29-2011, 03:05 PM

I agree with you, but I honestly haven't seen public schools (or even private ones) really stepping up to teach these skills. Throwing kids to the wolves or just telling them to deal with it by themselves does not constitute skills instruction.

And frankly -- munging a quote from Tori Amos -- everyone's teaching kids how to avoid or deal with bullies, but no one is teaching kids not to bully in the first place.

I have no idea if homeschooling does this better (some of the time, most of the time, or never), but I wouldn't use this as an argument in favor of public school.Again, I want to emphasize I'm not advocating bullying. I'm just saying it exists. Unless people live in a very controlled environment for their entire life, they're going to encounter bullies. So they need to learn how to deal with a bully.

And that works both ways. Social experience also teachs children why being a bully is bad. A person with limited social skills might grow up to become a bully.

And bullying is just a single aspect of social skills. Children learn all sorts of other social skills in their peer group as well.

I'm not saying people can't learn these social skills in other ways. But their opportunities will almost certainly be much more limited that those of children who spend forty hours a week with a large group of other children who they deal with on an ongoing basis.

Kaio

01-29-2011, 03:17 PM

I get that. I'm just saying that dropping kids into a large peer group, which will include bullies, and leaving them to sink or swim on their own is not a remotely effective method of teaching coping skills. We don't expect kids to intuitively understand algebra, so why expect them to just somehow "figure out" how to deal with bullies?

Basically, I"m saying that I wouldn't advocate that "public schools teach social skills better" when in my experience, public schools don't teach these skills at all. Or even provide a whole lot of help. Kids are basically teaching themselves, which may or may not work out remotely well.

suranyi

01-29-2011, 03:17 PM

Nobody needs to be bullied. But people are bullied. And that continues throughout a person's life - it's just that the form of bullying will change. So what people need to do in order to become competent adults is learn how to deal with bullies, whether it's a fifth grader who wants your chocolate milk or a boss who's pressuring you to work outside your contract.

I strongly disagree with this statement. I was bullied horribly during a certain period of my schooling -- mainly seventh through ninth grades. I have never been bullied, not even once, as an adult, and I'm 48 years old now. Even in college there was no bullying any more. The idea that kids must experience bullying in school to prepare them for life just doesn't seem right to me.

ITR champion

01-29-2011, 03:20 PM

Some people seem to be saying that one of the advantages of home schooling is being able to avoid the often hostile atmosphere of the student peer group. It's true that home schooling does avoid this but is it really an advantage?

The problem is that most social groups don't become less hostile as its members become adults - they just get more subtle. So if you're ever going to function is a social setting, you're going to have to learn the skills. Most people start learning those skills in recess when they're five years old. Home schoolers are going to be several years behind.
I think your perception of this issue is completely wrong. A child's peer group is not hostile in general. That's what makes it a peer group. It's true there's a period, stretching roughly from 5th grade to 8th grade on average, when "friends" insult each other a fair amount, but by and large friends are friendly. Bullying comes from outside the individual's immediate group of friends.

As for the idea that adult social groups are hostile, that's just bizarre. If it's true for your social group, ditch it and get a new one.

Ivorybill

01-29-2011, 03:21 PM

Wait, aren't homeschooled children required to take the same standardized tests as public school kids?That varies by state. When we were in Louisiana there were at least two ways to register with the state: (1) as a private educational facility and (2) as a home study program. We chose the latter. The state required that we complete and be able to prove a minimum number of instruction days and to prove grade equivalency. Every spring we gave our kids the California Achievement Test (CAT). We did not have to give those scores to the state, but rather kept the results on file in case we were ever audited. So I doubt the data are out there in an easily obtainable form.

It's clear that those who have their minds made up that institutional education is the cornerstone to social development are not going to change their minds based on this thread. I wonder, though, if they are protesting that as much as they are protesting that parents who home school maintain greater control over the amount of indoctrination state and private entities are able to give their children in the educational arena.

Czarcasm

01-29-2011, 03:26 PM

That varies by state. When we were in Louisiana there were at least two ways to register with the state: (1) as a private educational facility and (2) as a home study program. We chose the latter. The state required that we complete and be able to prove a minimum number of instruction days and to prove grade equivalency. Every spring we gave our kids the California Achievement Test (CAT). We did not have to give those scores to the state, but rather kept the results on file in case we were ever audited. So I doubt the data are out there in an easily obtainable form.

It's clear that those who have their minds made up that institutional education is the cornerstone to social development are not going to change their minds based on this thread. I wonder, though, if they are protesting that as much as they are protesting that parents who home school maintain greater control over the amount of indoctrination state and private entities are able to give their children.That's interesting. Are there any cites available as to how often Louisiana audits home schools?

Kaio

01-29-2011, 03:35 PM

As for the idea that adult social groups are hostile, that's just bizarre. If it's true for your social group, ditch it and get a new one.

No, I will say that if you haven't been bullied as an adult, by an adult, you've been very lucky. I have had some astonishingly lousy supervisors in my time; and the reality is, you don't always have the option to just pick up and leave your job.

Hell, I had one boss who lied about me to another department's manager in order to cover her own ass. I was copied on an email to him that said she "didn't know why" I hadn't finished his project. The reason, as she knew perfectly well, is that she'd never told me about said project. Her response, when I politely and privately pointed this out, was that "it didn't matter."

I did walk out at that point, but that was only possible because I'd toughed out her crap for three months, and saved money like a fiend. And the economy wasn't in the toilet at that time.

Ivorybill

01-29-2011, 03:36 PM

That's interesting. Are there any cites available as to how often Louisiana audits home schools?I don't know. The place to look would be the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

I don't know anyone in our orbit of home school groups who was ever audited, mainly because these folks all actually did home education in compliance with state guidelines. The rumor was that the only time the state really came out to audit was when the neighbors called to complain that the Snopes up the street were endangering the welfare of their children and hiding behind the home education laws to do so.

I just quizzed my wife on the reporting to make sure I got it right. She confirms that we did not have to turn in test scores, but that she did so as to prove grade equivalency w/o there being any questions about it.

CanvasShoes

01-29-2011, 03:42 PM

Czarcasm

01-29-2011, 03:43 PM

I don't know. The place to look would be the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

I don't know anyone in our orbit of home school groups who was ever audited, mainly because these folks all actually did home education in compliance with state guidelines. The rumor was that the only time the state really came out to audit was when the neighbors called to complain that the Snopes up the street were endangering the welfare of their children and hiding behind the home education laws to do so.

I just quizzed my wife on the reporting to make sure I got it right. She confirms that we did not have to turn in test scores, but that she did so as to prove grade equivalency w/o there being any questions about it.I just checked the HSLDA, and as far as I can tell there are no regular audits at all.

dangermom

01-29-2011, 03:59 PM

Interesting (wow, I only asked out of idle curiosity, I had NO idea how heated this subject is). At any rate, from what I understand of my friends and acquaintances who have home-schooled (I'm a recent transplant to Seattle from Anchorage), there are basic requirements of home-schoolers. They would have to complete specific packets and mail them back to the governing educational authority.

In addition, they had to have PE and other outings. From the posts I see here, I'm guessing that other states are a lot looser in terms of what they require for a student to pass each grade?

It really, really depends on the state. You can look up a list of the requirements for each state (http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp) (I'm not a fan of HSLDA, but the info there is accurate). Some states are fairly stringent, others extremely loose. When I was an independent homeschooler in CA, I was a private school, and I registered every year, but I never had to do any testing. Now we take the STAR test every year and I can show you fancy graphs of my children's progress as compared with the grade level average.

It's pretty well impossible to get an accurate and complete picture of all homeschoolers in the US. We don't really even know how many there are. Every state does it differently, and you always have a small number of people who are violently opposed to anyone knowing anything about them at all and who fly under the radar (and those people may be left or right). Quite a few homeschoolers (again, left or right both) think standardized tests are evil and refuse to have their children take them, at least until they're older.

Homeschoolers use every possible permutation of curriculum, government oversight, or avoidance thereof. And these days they come in every possible philosophical flavor, race, and creed. Generalizations are as impossible as generalizations about Americans.

Ivorybill

01-29-2011, 04:04 PM

Generalizations are as impossible as generalizations about Americans.Great point. We have met and interacted with black, white, Indian, Russian expatriate (descendants of the wrong side of the revolution - Vena's grandmother took piano lessons from Tchaikovsky), Christian, agnostic, liberal, conservative, etc., etc. That all in south Louisiana. Each family had a different underlying reason for choosing home education.

Ivorybill

01-29-2011, 04:08 PM

I just checked the HSLDA, and as far as I can tell there are no regular audits at all.Sorry. HSLDA probably could tell you how often home education programs are audited by the states and can definitely tell you what each state requires from home educators in the way of registration, reporting, and compliance.

tingbudong

01-30-2011, 08:38 PM

Left Hand of Dorkness

01-30-2011, 09:05 PM

My parents are both retired teachers. They both say that the vast majority of students they taught who were previously home schooled (and since returned to the public school system) were always behind their peers in pretty much everything. Where I am from one of the major reasons for homeschooling was the lack of religion in the public schools.
It'd be interesting to know what ages they taught. IME, the US school system is emphasizing literacy skills at ever-earlier ages, despite fairly solid research showing that such an early emphasis does not have long-term significant benefits. I've talked to teachers who had second-graders enter their classes from Montessori schools barely able to recognize their own name, but by the end of the year the kids are about on grade level, because developmentally most seven-year-olds are ready to take off in reading.

That may not be what's going on in the cases you're talking about, but it's a possibility.

drachillix

01-30-2011, 09:25 PM

I'm sort of half joking, but I can see how some kids might benefit from not going through the institutional grind of the public school system. Provided that they are homeschooled according to some strict standards.I have always been of the opinion that every boy somewhere between 10-14 NEEDS to get his ass handed to him..just once. Knowing you are not invincible is a useful lesson that unfortunately only gets delivered one way.

BigT

01-30-2011, 10:41 PM

No, I will say that if you haven't been bullied as an adult, by an adult, you've been very lucky. I have had some astonishingly lousy supervisors in my time; and the reality is, you don't always have the option to just pick up and leave your job.

Hell, I had one boss who lied about me to another department's manager in order to cover her own ass. I was copied on an email to him that said she "didn't know why" I hadn't finished his project. The reason, as she knew perfectly well, is that she'd never told me about said project. Her response, when I politely and privately pointed this out, was that "it didn't matter."

I did walk out at that point, but that was only possible because I'd toughed out her crap for three months, and saved money like a fiend. And the economy wasn't in the toilet at that time.

Last I checked, your boss was not part of your peer group. I would even argue that a boss can't actually be a bully, because part of being a bully involves not having any actual power over you, and then making up for it with threats of violence or at least social ridicule.

Dealing with someone who does not respect the people under them is a completley different skillset. You deal with bullies by either showing them that they don't have power over you, or by fighting back. You can't do that with a boss. As you pointed out, all you have are self-preservation techniques.

I have to admit I wasn't bullied in school. I was always really good at assimilating into social groups. It's only now that I've gotten older that I realize I don't have to try to fit in with people whose behavior and morals are very, very different than my own. But my sister was bullied, and she did learn to deal with it. But the skills she learned are 100% not helping her with dealing with the bad boss she has now, as she can't run and tell the teacher on them, and ignoring them doesn't work.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, most homeschoolers do seem to lack some social skills when they get out, but it's not like they can never learn them. A few years after being in college, they seem to do a better job than most, as they don't obtain any baggage from the learning experience, and are dealing with actual adults, rather than kids.

I wish the social skills I learned as a kid were still relevant to being an adult, but they really aren't.

BigT

01-30-2011, 10:49 PM

dangermom

01-30-2011, 10:51 PM

It'd be interesting to know what ages they taught. IME, the US school system is emphasizing literacy skills at ever-earlier ages, despite fairly solid research showing that such an early emphasis does not have long-term significant benefits. I've talked to teachers who had second-graders enter their classes from Montessori schools barely able to recognize their own name, but by the end of the year the kids are about on grade level, because developmentally most seven-year-olds are ready to take off in reading.

That may not be what's going on in the cases you're talking about, but it's a possibility.It's true that quite a few homeschoolers like a better-late-than-early approach. Montessori methods are not uncommon.

OTOH, it's also the case that there's a little confirmation bias with anecdotes from teachers about homeschooled kids. Homeschooled kids who end up in public school are often there because the parents felt they weren't succeeding with the homeschooling and decided to go for a different approach.

I have just as many anecdotes about parents who finally got tired of educational neglect and pulled their 8yo's out of school in order to teach them to read. My neighbor pulled her daughter--who has slight dyslexia--out after second grade, and within 6 months took her from unable to read to grade level proficiency. The girl didn't go back until high school, and is now doing very well indeed.

Likewise, my friend J. got tired of 3 successive teachers putting her meek and quiet daughter next to the rowdiest boys in class to keep them under control. This worked great for the teachers, but not so well for the girl, who was very stressed and couldn't concentrate. A year of homeschooling got her up to grade level in everything, where before she was learning nothing at all. Now she's in the GATE program, with a teacher who understands her needs, and is much happier.

People are very likely to blame homeschooling for things that also exist in public schools--there's a lot of confirmation bias there. If you see a homeschooled kid and a publicly schooled kid, both of whom are slightly odd, does the second kid's education get the blame? But everybody knows that homeschooled kids are weird, as if there aren't plenty of weird kids in every school in the world.

Mtgman

01-31-2011, 12:16 PM

I'm not accepting. I spent too much time doing research as an undergrad and later with graduate work in Psychology to give credit to research that barely explores the issues.

Social sciences do have rigor, they just explore issues that are more abstract and have more variables to control for. Rigor is about the tools and methodology, not the subject.So, why did you cite that paper? If you dismiss the conclusion of the authors, and you call them "a couple of researche[r]s that would love to get grants to study homeschooling" what were you hoping that cite would add to the discussion? Shodan had linked to the original cites, which include the source material on their methodology and assumptions. If those studies are suspect, then why not address them directly instead of bringing this literature review, which you now seem to be dismissing, into the conversation?The default is public school.The default is a nasty, brutish, and short life. Beyond that there isn't a default. Individuals, and to a lesser extent societies, create their own learning environments and every singe learner's experience, and needs, are different. Education is far too complex to reasonably pigeonhole into one form. Modern public education, descended from the Prussian educational system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system), wasn't even the norm in the US until the last century.If you can demonstrate you can do better, great. Otherwise, the kids get the resources of many different teachers, students, and educational tools a single private family is unlikely to be able to provide.Great, they can take those many resources, spend thousands of hours in a classroom, and then end up at the bottom of the pile among their other developed nation peers. That's acceptable to some people, but there are others who think maybe the default is at fault and something new should be tried. Given the failures of public education in the US, I believe it would be folly to erect huge barriers to educational innovation. We don't have to present a case for restricting homschooling. They have to demonstrate they can do the job and your random family is not equipped to do so.The US legal system requires laws to show a rational basis. If you want to favor public school over home school, you have to show that favoritism is based on a rational analysis. According to the review of educational research you yourself cited, homeschooling seems to be a net benefit to society. There hasn't been a single citation of homeschooling having a detrimental effect, only vague comments about what may be happening that the research hasn't been able to control for. Quantify the dangers poor homeschools have inflicted on society and we'll rationally analyze them along with the data which shows benefits for society, and then we'll have what we need to make an informed opinion.That's right, we have no data on them and their children- which means we don't know how they are doing, we don't know how many of them there are and we don't know what proportion of the homeschooling population they make up. Which means we know absolutely nothing about the entire universe of homeschoolers and cannot make generalizations such as "Home schooled children perform at higher academic levels than non-home schooled children." We can perhaps say that homeschoolers who participated in a study , or took a specific test or used a specific curriculum perform better than non-homeschooled children, but that's it. Otherwise, it's like pretending that the average SAT score at my high school tells you anything about the approximately 90% of the students who didn't take the SAT. They may have been excellent students planning to go to colleges that didn't require the SAT, or they may have been illiterate - no way to know from the data given.Of course. We don't know what we don't know is an underlying axiom of pretty much every conversation. What I'm saying is that what we don't know shouldn't outweigh what we do know. That way lies madness. There might be a giant space goat about to eat our entire galaxy, so let's throw out all of math, physics, and everything we think we know and spend the remainder of our days in drunken debauchery.

Well, it was worth a shot.

In any case, we can only judge on what we have. What we have seems to show a net positive. If you believe there is a large unknown reservoir of homeschoolers who are raising sociopaths who will wreak havoc on society, well, find them and let's re-evaluate the situation. As of now I agree with the authors of the paper AlienVessels cited. The data we have, which is incomplete, seems to show homeschooling as a net benefit to society. So I'm fine with going ahead with it and even expanding it, along with more, careful, privacy-respecting, research.

Enjoy,
Steven

Ruken

01-31-2011, 01:13 PM

EVERYBODY thinks that they are great teachers. At least, everybody (or a significant percentage of people) think that they are better teachers than people who do it for a living. They especially think that they are better teachers than people who took classes in teaching theory (granted, not all of that information is helpful or decent). Otherwise, we wouldn't be having societal conversations all the damn time about how teachers suck.The OP asks what's wrong with home schooling, and we've had a few posts that allude to the magical abilities imparted on teachers during their training. While I certainly hope that our system for educating educators is not a complete waste, I have to ask what evidence we have that this training has a significant impact on teaching ability, especially when so many issues that are unique to schools are removed. There are a few things to keep in mind, some of which have already been pointed out.

Teachers at private schools are not required to have education degrees or state certification, yet their students do fine. True, private schools don't have to teach the kids who are most challenging to teach, but neither do homeschooling families.
University professors and 1st-year grad student TAs have not been trained as educators, yet their students still seem to learn.
I'm not sure how to put this politely, but on average, education majors are not known for their academic prowess when compared to other college students. While true that raw smarts do not allow one to immediately pick up a new skill, they help with learning it on the fly.
Students taught by inexperienced and minimally trained teachers through programs like Teach for America do just as well, if not better, than those taught by regular teachers.
While a highly-experienced teacher might be the best teacher, not all public-school teachers have been on the job very long. Over 40% of teachers have nine or fewer years of experience.

*Note that even if the average college graduate is smarter than the average teacher, many homeschooling parents never went to college. That doesn't mean they're stupid, it just means we're dealing with a different pool.

Scumpup

01-31-2011, 01:20 PM

Teachers at private schools are not required to have education degrees or state certification, yet their students do fine. True, private schools don't have to teach the kids who are most challenging to teach, but neither do homeschooling families.

YMMV, but it has been my experience that private schools still tend to hire degreed and certified teachers whether there is a legal requirement or not.

raspberry hunter

01-31-2011, 03:09 PM

University professors and 1st-year grad student TAs have not been trained as educators, yet their students still seem to learn.

I mostly agree with your point of view, but I don't agree with this point. I'm sure you had your share of professors who were incredibly bad teachers and whose students didn't learn anything; I sure did. Also, the couple of times I experienced a grad student trying to teach a class of grade schoolers (back when I was a summer program TA for geek math), it was... not pretty, unless the grad student had had previous experience teaching grade schoolers, in which case he was often excellent.

That being said, one-on-one is totally different, as you've said before in this thread. The one (multiperson) class I taught, it took me at least a year to figure out how to reach the entire class, probably more. When dealing with one student, I can adapt every time to that student's learning skills specifically, and even over the course of a single session try several different methods if one isn't working.

doreen

01-31-2011, 06:45 PM

We don't know what we don't know is an underlying axiom of pretty much every conversation. What I'm saying is that what we don't know shouldn't outweigh what we do know. That way lies madness. There might be a giant space goat about to eat our entire galaxy, so let's throw out all of math, physics, and everything we think we know and spend the remainder of our days in drunken debauchery.

Apparently, it is not such an axiom. Because people make generalizations such as "homeschooling has a positive effect on society" when we don't know that. Or " homeschoolers outperform those who attend traditional schools" when we don't know that either. We could say that "The study shows that homeschoolers who choose to take the _____ exam outperform those attending traditional schools who who choose to ( or are required to ) take the exam " and be completely accurate. But the results never get reported that way. Until and unless there is a way to compare the universe of homeschoolers to the universe of those who attend traditional schools on at least a district-wide basis , we will not be able to make such comparisons. That is unlikely to happen - it would require that both groups be required to undergo the same assessments. Not that certain homeschooling parents decide to have their children undergo the assessments, while others avoid it for whatever reason they have. And of course, if the assessments are required, those who avoid them are not complying with the requirements of homeschooling. Which means we could draw conclusions about homeschoolers who are in compliance with the regulations while still knowing nothing about those who claim to be homeschooling who are not in compliance.

But I think you are mistaking my issues with the generalizations being drawn without a basis for a disagreement with the idea of homeschooling. I don't have a problem with the idea of homeschooling and I don't think the lack of research is a reason to prohibit it. I sometimes wonder why certain homeschoolers seem very invested in drawing generalizations from this research. I mean, I made decisions for my kids based on what I thought was best for my particular kids. There could have been multiple studies including every single child in the United States ( even those locked in a closet 10 hours a day ) saying that homeschoolers do better both academically and socially - and I still wouldn't have homeschooled my kids. Because it wouldn't have been the best choice for my kids. I assume you would have homeschooled yours no matter what the research said because it was the best choice for them.

suranyi

01-31-2011, 07:11 PM

Apparently, it is not such an axiom. Because people make generalizations such as "homeschooling has a positive effect on society" when we don't know that. Or " homeschoolers outperform those who attend traditional schools" when we don't know that either. We could say that "The study shows that homeschoolers who choose to take the _____ exam outperform those attending traditional schools who who choose to ( or are required to ) take the exam " and be completely accurate. But the results never get reported that way. Until and unless there is a way to compare the universe of homeschoolers to the universe of those who attend traditional schools on at least a district-wide basis , we will not be able to make such comparisons. That is unlikely to happen - it would require that both groups be required to undergo the same assessments. Not that certain homeschooling parents decide to have their children undergo the assessments, while others avoid it for whatever reason they have. And of course, if the assessments are required, those who avoid them are not complying with the requirements of homeschooling. Which means we could draw conclusions about homeschoolers who are in compliance with the regulations while still knowing nothing about those who claim to be homeschooling who are not in compliance.

But I think you are mistaking my issues with the generalizations being drawn without a basis for a disagreement with the idea of homeschooling. I don't have a problem with the idea of homeschooling and I don't think the lack of research is a reason to prohibit it. I sometimes wonder why certain homeschoolers seem very invested in drawing generalizations from this research. I mean, I made decisions for my kids based on what I thought was best for my particular kids. There could have been multiple studies including every single child in the United States ( even those locked in a closet 10 hours a day ) saying that homeschoolers do better both academically and socially - and I still wouldn't have homeschooled my kids. Because it wouldn't have been the best choice for my kids. I assume you would have homeschooled yours no matter what the research said because it was the best choice for them.

I think this really is the critical point. Parents should be allowed to decide what the best choice is for their children, and then make that choice accordingly. I don't think homeschooling will be correct for my son who is only one year old, so I plan to send him to school at the appropriate age. My sister did home school her daughter, now 16 years old, and it seems to have worked out well for them.

AlienVessels

02-01-2011, 02:41 AM

So, why did you cite that paper? If you dismiss the conclusion of the authors, and you call them "a couple of researche[r]s that would love to get grants to study homeschooling" what were you hoping that cite would add to the discussion? Shodan had linked to the original cites, which include the source material on their methodology and assumptions. If those studies are suspect, then why not address them directly instead of bringing this literature review, which you now seem to be dismissing, into the conversation?

Because both of the previous cites were from suspect sources and a literature review is going to spread a wider net. I'm willing to consider the fact that I'm wrong and do a bit of leg work to get better data, if available.

According to the review of educational research you yourself cited, homeschooling seems to be a net benefit to society.

The conclusion of the review was that the research was inadequate. Until it gets replicated in a reasonably contemporary way, all that research represents is a rudimentary toe in the water.

Again, you confuse the opinion of the authors with what their review of the literature shows.

If you read the full article, you'll see the warnings of the authors about what is being measured and why that might be misleading. A ton of the results could simply be attributed to more parental involvement and higher parental expectations applied on a daily basis.

In any case, we can only judge on what we have. What we have seems to show a net positive. If you believe there is a large unknown reservoir of homeschoolers who are raising sociopaths who will wreak havoc on society, well, find them and let's re-evaluate the situation. As of now I agree with the authors of the paper AlienVessels cited. The data we have, which is incomplete, seems to show homeschooling as a net benefit to society. So I'm fine with going ahead with it and even expanding it, along with more, careful, privacy-respecting, research.

What we have pretty much shows that the children of involved parents perform better in a variety of ways.

Given the flaws in the research and that unsurprising result, I say allow people that can demonstrate the resources to homeschool and start reasonably rigorous investigation into the cost/benefit of ALL cases to society.

dangermom

02-01-2011, 07:48 AM

What we have pretty much shows that the children of involved parents perform better in a variety of ways.
Well, I guess that is the point of homeschooling...
Given the flaws in the research and that unsurprising result, I say allow people that can demonstrate the resources to homeschool and start reasonably rigorous investigation into the cost/benefit of ALL cases to society.I'm sorry, I can't quite understand what this sentence means. Do you mean that there should be test-case homeschoolers who would document everything they do?

I'm taking the girls on an all-day history re-enactment (which will have large groups of children in a non-public school setting) so I won't be here to see the answer for quite a while.

heatmiserfl

02-01-2011, 08:18 AM

I read the linked document and I'm not seeing anything which invalidates the research. Are there specific sections you believe support your view that existing research on the quality of home education is fatally tainted by methodological errors? I'll reproduce most of the summary and conclusion from that paper here because I don't think it makes the point it seems to me you're trying to make.Everything I quoted is verbatim(typos are my own). Exactly what part of this review do you believe invalidates the cites provided by Shodan? The authors say there should be better controls, but they stop way short of saying the studies are invalid, and in fact they reiterate their belief, based on their review of dozens of studies, that positive effects for all of society result from homeschooling.

Enjoy,
Steven

ETA: Ninja'ed! Oh well. Having a partial transcript of the cite will be useful to the discussion as a whole I think.

The below quote from your post completely invalidates 'positive' studies on homeschooling as a comparison with mandatory testing from the much larger pool of public schools. A bigger concern is that parents are doing the testing. Also, studies done by proponents of homeschooling is questionable in my opinion.

Research on Homeschooling is in its infancy. Many samples are small and done mainly by proponents of homeschooling. In all but the Alaska study the subjects were self-selected. Almost all of the areas which have been researched are quantitatively testable in some way. Children test high, but the parents are doing the testing in most instances, and one wonders what would be the results if variables could be better controlled.

More from wikipedia:
Although there are some studies that show that homeschooled students can do well on standardized tests,[25] some of these studies compare voluntary homeschool testing with mandatory public-school testing. Homeschooled students in the United States are not subject to the testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act.[26] Some U.S. states require mandatory testing for homeschooled students, but others do not. Some states that require testing allow homeschooling parents to choose which test to use.[27] An exception are the SAT and ACT tests, where homeschooled and formally-schooled students alike are self-selecting; homeschoolers averaged higher scores on college entrance tests in South Carolina.[28] When testing is not required, students taking the tests are self-selected, which biases any statistical results.[29] Other test scores (numbers from 1999 data in a year 2000 article) showed mixed results, for example showing higher levels for homeschoolers in English (homeschooled 23.4 vs national average 20.5) and reading (homeschooled 24.4 vs national average 21.4) on the ACT, but mixed scores in math (homeschooled 20.4 vs national average 20.7 on ACT, although SAT math section was above average 535 homeschooled compared to 511 for national average of 1999) .Template:Citation needed:inactive link[30] However, advocates of home education and educational choice counter with an input-output theory, pointing out that home educators expend only an average of $500–$600 a year on each student, in comparison to $9,000-$10,000 for each public school student through the United States, which raises a question about whether home-educated students would be especially dominant on tests if afforded access to an equal commitment of tax-funded educational resources.Template:Citation needed:insufficient link[31]

Considering how ignorant our populace is in the math and sciences, there is no way that home schooling is superior to schooling from professionals unless the home schoolers are highly educated themselves. So people saying that they know home schoolers who are engineers are probably right that those kids are getting a better education than a public school (as long as they have the time). However, if it is true that the trend in the US is that people are homeschooling for fundamentalist religious reasons, then this is just breeding more ignorance. It's bad enough that polls are showing more ignorance in science and increases in woo. I attribute this to religious fundamentalists getting onto school boards and into our media. Increases in homeschooling by fundamentalists is a disturbing trend.

edited to add: The collaborative homeschooling systems are probably great if the goal is to provide for superior education and some of the homeschoolers in the system have training in math and/or sciences.

heatmiserfl

02-01-2011, 08:25 AM

It really, really depends on the state. You can look up a list of the requirements for each state (http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp) (I'm not a fan of HSLDA, but the info there is accurate). Some states are fairly stringent, others extremely loose. When I was an independent homeschooler in CA, I was a private school, and I registered every year, but I never had to do any testing. Now we take the STAR test every year and I can show you fancy graphs of my children's progress as compared with the grade level average.

It's pretty well impossible to get an accurate and complete picture of all homeschoolers in the US. We don't really even know how many there are. Every state does it differently, and you always have a small number of people who are violently opposed to anyone knowing anything about them at all and who fly under the radar (and those people may be left or right). Quite a few homeschoolers (again, left or right both) think standardized tests are evil and refuse to have their children take them, at least until they're older.

Homeschoolers use every possible permutation of curriculum, government oversight, or avoidance thereof. And these days they come in every possible philosophical flavor, race, and creed. Generalizations are as impossible as generalizations about Americans.

Thanks for the post. Again, this negates any assertions that there are proper studies out there that can make a generalized claim that homeschooling is better than other schools.

Peremensoe

02-01-2011, 08:35 AM

Again, this negates any assertions that there are proper studies out there that can make a generalized claim that homeschooling is better than other schools.

Or the reverse, naturally.

Ruken

02-01-2011, 08:45 AM

One would think there would be useful data from states (or even other countries) that require testing. But we don't really need to make the claim that homeschooling is better than real school. The lack of evidence that it's detrimental is enough to answer the OP.

What's wrong with Home Schooling? Nothing, as far as we know.

heatmiserfl

02-01-2011, 09:43 AM

Or the reverse, naturally.

Personally, I think the burden of proof is weighted towards the homeschoolers to show that their kids are getting a proper education in high school math and science if they are not trained in these (or related fields).

I'll start with the preface that the majority of Americans are not competent to teach their kids high school math and science. I don't think this is an unreasonable assumption. If it's true that some states do not even require homeschoolers to report their kids' progress, I also don't think it's unreasonable to assume that many kids in those states are not even being exposed to proper math and science principles. Furthermore, if many of these kids are from fundamentalist families, they are being actively being misinformed which is even worse than general ignorance.

I'll add that most states require their high school math and science teachers to have a certain level of training in these fields. Therefore, even if some are not the greatest teachers, at least they had some training. Also, they will have some oversight. It's alarming to see with a quick google search that some states like Texas have little or no regulations on homeschooling.

HMS Irruncible

02-01-2011, 10:13 AM

My 2 cents... I'm not sure I'll be able to homeschool my children, but if circumstances favor it then I will do it up to 8th grade level or so.

Reasons:
Socialization 1: Children are selfish assholes until they are socialized. Therefore, we should learn socialization AS children, not necessarily FROM children. Public schools are not a place to learn socialization, at least up until high school level.

Socialization 2: Exposure to different people. OK, it's good for kids to meet people from all walks. I can dig that. But some kids, especially at the lower income levels, bring exposure to pathological and possibly even criminal behaviors (bullying, drugs, sexual abuse, etc). I'll take them to a soup kitchen to see what deprivation looks like. There's no need to expose them to its consequences day in and day out.

Socialization 3: Exposure to differing points of view. I could care less about my children picking up points of view from other children, because other children are unqualified to have viewpoints on anything. Teachers MAY be qualified, but because they're in positions of authority, I don't want them peddling their points of view either. The history textbooks are worst of all, as anyone knows who ever read "Lies My Teacher Told Me." Public school is not the place to go for points of view.

Cultural awareness: I could care less if my kids ever know anything about pop culture. Most of it is ephemeral garbage of no long-term significance. All they need to know is that in 10 years, the phrase "Justin Bieber" will be the punchline of a joke, and they should smirk appropriately when they hear it.

Finally, I do admire teachers, but to me, my child is my child. To them, my child is their job, and we all have a bias toward making our own jobs easier.

Xema

02-01-2011, 10:23 AM

It's alarming to see with a quick google search that some states like Texas have little or no regulations on homeschooling.
This would be alarming if there were evidence that this were producing problems (at a rate higher than the alternative). IOW, regulation should be applied where & when needed (and shown to be effective) - not because it's a good thing of itself.

Ivorybill

02-01-2011, 10:23 AM

Personally, I think the burden of proof is weighted towards the homeschoolers to show that their kids are getting a proper education in high school math and science if they are not trained in these (or related fields).My experience with home education - - seven years, four of my own children, two states, interactions with lots of families of all races, creeds, religions - - is that the parents know their limitations. They accomodate that through the purchase and implementation of accredited home study curricula that guide the student through subjects the parents find difficult.

A lot of y'all who are suspicious of home education and who are strong advocates of greater state regulation appear to me to be working under the assumption that there exists a sizable percentage of home educators who don't give a flip if their kids learn anything. Again, in my experience, that's not the case. It takes a great deal of time, energy, and commitment to educate your children in your home. Those who go to the trouble of doing so are doing what they think is in the best interests of their children.

That does not mean that there's not some small percentage out there who are purposfully sheltering their children, but, even if strict regulation was economically viable, I don't think that states should be diverting funds away from already underfunded public schools to find those people. Even if their kids were forced into public or private schools, if parents are intent on ignorance state-mandated education won't overcome that kind of ideology.

Mtgman

02-01-2011, 10:53 AM

The conclusion of the review was that the research was inadequate. Until it gets replicated in a reasonably contemporary way, all that research represents is a rudimentary toe in the water.

Again, you confuse the opinion of the authors with what their review of the literature shows.And again I'm going to ask you for citations to specific passages because I transcribed virtually the entire summary and conclusion of the review and I respectfully disagree with your characterizations.
Personally, I think the burden of proof is weighted towards the homeschoolers to show that their kids are getting a proper education in high school math and science if they are not trained in these (or related fields).Why the higher burden of proof on the homeschools than on public schools? Public schools are falling apart (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/scho-a03.shtml).A report released Tuesday by an educational advocacy group founded by retired general and former Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell finds that almost half of all public high school students in the US’ fifty largest cities fail to graduate.

The report states that only 52 percent of public high school students in these cities graduate after four years, while the national average is 70 percent. Some 1.2 million public high school students drop out every year, according to researchers.

The report finds that, overall, 17 of the public school systems in 50 major cities have graduation rates of 50 percent or lower, and the average graduation rate of all 50 systems is 58 percent. The findings are based on federal Department of Education statistics for the 2003-2004 school year.Public schools aren't providing a proper education in pretty much anything in many of the largest cities. So why hold homeschools to a standard the public schools, with professional teachers, administrators, and far more funds can't reach? Using the assumptions in this thread, that more teachers and more opportunities for socialization create better results, the the large schools in the large cities should be the best. But it seems the smaller cities and towns, where the teachers often have to double up on subjects which they may not have degrees in themselves, are doing better.

I would also like to disagree with those in this thread who believe what the studies don't show, whatever that is, is more important than what they do show. The perfect is often the enemy of the good enough and to leave American education to continue falling apart while simultaneously restricting parents ability to take their children's futures into their own hands is a recipe for disaster. The bar for homeschools seems to be that they be better than some idealized version of public school, which clearly doesn't exist. Being better than the reality of many public school is pathetically easy, much to our society's shame.

Enjoy,
Steven

suranyi

02-01-2011, 11:10 AM

Personally, I think the burden of proof is weighted towards the homeschoolers to show that their kids are getting a proper education in high school math and science if they are not trained in these (or related fields).

I'll start with the preface that the majority of Americans are not competent to teach their kids high school math and science. I don't think this is an unreasonable assumption. If it's true that some states do not even require homeschoolers to report their kids' progress, I also don't think it's unreasonable to assume that many kids in those states are not even being exposed to proper math and science principles. Furthermore, if many of these kids are from fundamentalist families, they are being actively being misinformed which is even worse than general ignorance.

I'll add that most states require their high school math and science teachers to have a certain level of training in these fields. Therefore, even if some are not the greatest teachers, at least they had some training. Also, they will have some oversight. It's alarming to see with a quick google search that some states like Texas have little or no regulations on homeschooling.

But what do you want to do about this? I believe in civil liberties, so I believe the government should not interfere in personal matters like this unless it can be definitely shown that there is a problem. Nobody can show that there is problem, so the government should butt out.

heatmiserfl

02-01-2011, 11:20 AM

This would be alarming if there were evidence that this were producing problems (at a rate higher than the alternative). IOW, regulation should be applied where & when needed (and shown to be effective) - not because it's a good thing of itself.

How can you get evidence of a problem in a place like Texas does not require any testing or oversight?

Right now, homeschooling is rare enough that you probably wouldn't see a problem in the general population. However, problems could be observed if the trend continues.

We already lag behind other countries in math and sciences and the explanation for this is that many of our middle school teachers don't have degrees or at least minors in these subjects. High school teachers usually do but the kids are already behind at that point. If homeschooling trends continue, this will get even worse and it's already bad. Looking at polls regarding general science, it seems that Americans are not only lagging behind other countries, we are regressing from our previous levels.

So I'm going to continue to be alarmed unless it's shown that homeschooling trends are not increasing or that homeschooling is increasing but only for grades K-6.

My experience with home education - - seven years, four of my own children, two states, interactions with lots of families of all races, creeds, religions - - is that the parents know their limitations. They accomodate that through the purchase and implementation of accredited home study curricula that guide the student through subjects the parents find difficult.
And again, the majority of Americans don't do very well at math and science even at the level of middle school. A home study guide will not overcome the lack of abilities in many of these parents.

The problem is (and studies show this) that people simply don't know the level of their ignorance. Like the old saying, "the more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know."

So no matter how dedicated a parent is, there is a point in which they do not have the knowledge or the talent to give their child a proper education in the hard subjects. At that point, the benefits of homeschooling, such as personal attention, will be lost.

I tried googling for some studies and it's quite strange to find page after page of stuff from home school proponents only. I think the problem is, as someone already mentioned, it's very hard to do proper studies because there is no oversight in some states. No oversight, no way to collect data.

Lynn Bodoni

02-01-2011, 11:23 AM

My experience with home education - - seven years, four of my own children, two states, interactions with lots of families of all races, creeds, religions - - is that the parents know their limitations. They accomodate that through the purchase and implementation of accredited home study curricula that guide the student through subjects the parents find difficult.

A lot of y'all who are suspicious of home education and who are strong advocates of greater state regulation appear to me to be working under the assumption that there exists a sizable percentage of home educators who don't give a flip if their kids learn anything. Again, in my experience, that's not the case. It takes a great deal of time, energy, and commitment to educate your children in your home. Those who go to the trouble of doing so are doing what they think is in the best interests of their children.

That does not mean that there's not some small percentage out there who are purposfully sheltering their children, but, even if strict regulation was economically viable, I don't think that states should be diverting funds away from already underfunded public schools to find those people. Even if their kids were forced into public or private schools, if parents are intent on ignorance state-mandated education won't overcome that kind of ideology. My experience is different. Most of the people I know who homeschool do it because they don't want their kids taught certain things, like evolution or indeed a lot of basic science. These folks mean well, but they DON'T know and accept their limitations. They think that if it's in the Good Book, then it's true, and if it isn't, then it's not true. And many of these people would have trouble figuring out how many gallons of paint they'd need to paint a room, for instance. They do take a lot of time and trouble to teach their kids, but most of this effort is directed towards bringing up the kids to follow their religious beliefs.

Now, I live in Texas, and there are a lot of fundamentalists living here. Quite probably, I get my experience of homeschoolers being taught mostly about the Bible because of the fundamentalists are heavily represented here, and because fundamentalists tend to do more homeschooling. However, I think that this is a valid concern for everyone.

I suppose I've done some halfhearted homeschooling myself, in that I took my daughter to a tutor when the school wasn't interested in finding out if she was dyslexic, and they certainly weren't interested in helping her learn to read. I tried to teach her to read, but I'm not the world's best teacher. So I got her help, and I did teach her other things, but she was going to the public school at the same time.

There are some good homeschoolers, but in my experience, they are vastly outnumbered by the people who want to shelter their kids from the sinful world.

Ivorybill

02-01-2011, 11:25 AM

A home study guide will not overcome the lack of abilities in many of these parents.Accredited curricula, some with professional grading services, should not be confused with home study guides.

Manda JO

02-01-2011, 11:27 AM

We already lag behind other countries in math and sciences and the explanation for this is that many of our middle school teachers don't have degrees or at least minors in these subjects. High school teachers usually do but the kids are already behind at that point. .

If that were the problem, it'd be fixed by now. The reasons for the weaknesses of the American school system are complex and poorly understood. The gaps you speak of start well before middle school, and a lack of qualified teachers is only one factor in complex question.

As a teacher with more than a decade's experience, I will tell you that content knowledge is just not that big of a deal. Provided there are no ideological impediments, the vast majority of things taught through high school can be mastered by an adult reading one chapter ahead.

Ivorybill

02-01-2011, 11:28 AM

There are some good homeschoolers, but in my experience, they are vastly outnumbered by the people who want to shelter their kids from the sinful world.How active are you in the home education community in your area? Enough to know that you're seeing a statistically valid sample? I'm sorry - - for the kids affected and for the perception on home education - - that your experience is so negative.

Lynn Bodoni

02-01-2011, 11:38 AM

I'm not really active at all. I do come into contact with homeschoolers (parents and kids) on a regular basis, though. The parents generally are quite vocal about how they are avoiding the Evils of Evolutionary Thinking, whether the subject was under discussion or not.

Mtgman

02-01-2011, 11:38 AM

I tried googling for some studies and it's quite strange to find page after page of stuff from home school proponents only. I think the problem is, as someone already mentioned, it's very hard to do proper studies because there is no oversight in some states. No oversight, no way to collect data. So how about the other way? What percentage of prison populations are homeschoolers? What about people admitted to rehab programs? People on public assistance? People in remedial studies classes at community colleges/centers?

These things have data collected about them and it's not self-selected in most cases.

I'd personally be surprised if homeschooled students are represented at anything near their estimated general population proportions in these statistics.

Enjoy,
Steven

heatmiserfl

02-01-2011, 02:10 PM

Accredited curricula, some with professional grading services, should not be confused with home study guides.

I'm not sure what you mean by accredited curricula with professional grading services. Do you mean that the home school teacher takes courses in math and science and becomes accredited? If the curriculum is rigorous and required for home school teachers, I'm happy with it. Do all states require this?

Originally posted by Manda JO
As a teacher with more than a decade's experience, I will tell you that content knowledge is just not that big of a deal. Provided there are no ideological impediments, the vast majority of things taught through high school can be mastered by an adult reading one chapter ahead.

Are you a middle school science or math teacher? The reason I ask is that I doubt most adults can teach the middle school algebra and physical sciences (or even biological sciences) that my daughter was taught by just reading a chapter ahead. Way too complicated. They would have to first learn (re-learn) it themselves, then prepare to teach it properly. Heck, I have an advanced degree in science and I had to look up a few things before I could help her on her homework. Maybe her curriculum was a little tougher than most American schools but I think that's where the problem lies. It's possible the curriculum for many European schools is tougher. I know that the curriculum for the university track students is quite tough. According to the Europeans I have worked with, students going into science/math-type paths are required to take differential and integral calculus and at least 2 science courses. That means that they have to have at least algebra I and probably geometry (or equivalents) in middle school.

Public schools aren't providing a proper education in pretty much anything in many of the largest cities. So why hold homeschools to a standard the public schools, with professional teachers, administrators, and far more funds can't reach? Using the assumptions in this thread, that more teachers and more opportunities for socialization create better results, the the large schools in the large cities should be the best. But it seems the smaller cities and towns, where the teachers often have to double up on subjects which they may not have degrees in themselves, are doing better.
According to your cite, the comparisons were between cities and their corresponding wealthy suburbs. The problem is poverty, not 'public schools falling apart.' It's even worse when a great deal of money comes from local property taxes. Poor districts means less money for schools. Complicating it with discipline/home/crime problems means less resources for proper education.

So how about the other way? What percentage of prison populations are homeschoolers? What about people admitted to rehab programs? People on public assistance? People in remedial studies classes at community colleges/centers?

These things have data collected about them and it's not self-selected in most cases.

I'd personally be surprised if homeschooled students are represented at anything near their estimated general population proportions in these statistics.
You'd have to normalize for the plethora of other variables. Data is not necessarily self-selected but it would have a bias for certain populations. Not as simple as you think.

Ivorybill

02-01-2011, 02:26 PM

I'm not sure what you mean by accredited curricula with professional grading services. Do you mean that the home school teacher takes courses in math and science and becomes accredited? If the curriculum is rigorous and required for home school teachers, I'm happy with it. Do all states require this?No. The curricula are courses of study for the students. Various entities produce accredited curricula to provide parent teachers with text books, lesson plans, and other academic materials to use on their children / pupils. Some of these include a grading service in which the student sends in assignments and tests for evaluation and grading.

For example, we use a self designed Montessori-based curriculum for our children pre-k - 6th grade. In 7th grade we purchase the curriculum from The Calvert School (http://www.calvertschool.org/) and pay to have our child's work evaluated through Calvert's grading service. This in preparation for transition out of home study and into regular school in 8th grade in part to get the student some exposure to processing feedback from someone other than mom and/or dad.

Each state has a different approach to how it regulates home education. I do not know of any states that require use of an accredited curriculum. Most of the people we know who use them do so for personal reasons. Google "homeschool curriculum" for more examples.

doreen

02-01-2011, 06:26 PM

So how about the other way? What percentage of prison populations are homeschoolers? What about people admitted to rehab programs? People on public assistance? People in remedial studies classes at community colleges/centers?
These things have data collected about them and it's not self-selected in most cases.

I'd personally be surprised if homeschooled students are represented at anything near their estimated general population proportions in these statistics.

Do we even know the estimated proportion of homeschooled students in the general population? According to the HSLDA, ten states don't even require parents to notify any agency that they are homeschooling.

In any event, the only one of the above institutions which might have data regarding homeschooling are the community colleges ( and even the community colleges might not if the student has a GED) In my experience ( and I've worked with all of them ) prisons, rehab programs, and public assistance programs ask about the highest level of educational achievement, and may conduct standardized literacy tests, but do not ask what type of education a person has received.

Left Hand of Dorkness

02-01-2011, 06:42 PM

So how about the other way? What percentage of prison populations are homeschoolers? What about people admitted to rehab programs? People on public assistance? People in remedial studies classes at community colleges/centers?

These things have data collected about them and it's not self-selected in most cases.

I'd personally be surprised if homeschooled students are represented at anything near their estimated general population proportions in these statistics.
I too would be surprised. I'd be astonished, however, if you could establish a causative link. Much more likely would be that both homeschooling and stayin' out of trouble share a similar cause: parents who are highly involved in their children's education.

I'm sure I've got kids who are going to be in jail at some point in their lives, and I'm sure I've got kids who will never see the inside of a jail. Both groups are in public schools.

Similarly, I know kids who aren't in public schools. The ones whose parents pull them out of school because they're moving, and they can't be bothered to enroll them in a school anywhere in the country, and we worry about their fate until they turn up half a year later? I seriously worry about those kids' future. The ones pulled out of public school for homeschooling because public school can be too rough? I don't worry so much that they'll end up in prison.

It's not that I think homeschooling prevents jail: it's that I think active parents sometimes prevent jail and also sometimes homeschool.

tygre

02-01-2011, 07:05 PM

I know a fair number of homeschoolers. About 1/3 have used some combination of homeschooling and "regular" (whether public or parachoial or private) schooling. The rest have been solely homeschooled.

The majority are homeschooling because they think their kids' needs are not met in a traditional school setting. In a couple of cases, this is due to medical needs, either physical or emotional. The rest, um...well, in more than a few cases, it's maternal separation anxiety, it seems.

The biggest problem I see with homeschooling is that it requires at least one parent to remove themselves from the paid workforce, usually for a number of years, at a significant long-term risk to future earnings and career. Yeah, yeah, they could work the night shift, or have the kids study at night, etc etc...but that doesn't happen in any of the families I know. Nope, it's Mom staying home, often for 10+ years.

Manda JO

02-01-2011, 07:24 PM

Are you a middle school science or math teacher? The reason I ask is that I doubt most adults can teach the middle school algebra and physical sciences (or even biological sciences) that my daughter was taught by just reading a chapter ahead. Way too complicated. They would have to first learn (re-learn) it themselves, then prepare to teach it properly. Heck, I have an advanced degree in science and I had to look up a few things before I could help her on her homework.

No, but as I mentioned earlier, I started teaching AP Economics with absolutely no background in it, and students from my first two years went on to be economics majors at Ivy League schools and did fine. Yes, you'd have to relearn a lot of things, but relearning things doesn't take that long. Remember, this is the parent's full time job. It is what they do with their life. It's not unreasonable to think that an average adult could learn in three hours of independent study what they need to teach over five hours of class time each day. Assuming the kid is using that two hours for independent work, art and music practice, etc., that's a full time job for both of them.

PunditLisa

02-01-2011, 07:39 PM

The biggest problem I see with homeschooling is that it requires at least one parent to remove themselves from the paid workforce, usually for a number of years, at a significant long-term risk to future earnings and career. Yeah, yeah, they could work the night shift, or have the kids study at night, etc etc...but that doesn't happen in any of the families I know. Nope, it's Mom staying home, often for 10+ years.

With all due respect, why is this a problem? I know plenty of Moms who stay home and clean their house while the kids are in school. Most of my friends go play tennis while their kids are in school. And the homeschool teacher does have a job, -- it's just unpaid. Their life, their choice.

::shrug::

Qin Shi Huangdi

02-01-2011, 07:59 PM

I think a lot depends on the material and the curriculum. I've looked at an example of a Christian homeschool curriculum and publisher of materials and I must say I'm fairly impressed: http://www.veritaspress.com/ Starting to learn Latin at Second Grade, teaching history chronologically (an idea I agree with), math two years accelerated than average, logic at seventh grade etc., etc. Despite being creationists they include the Origin of Species in the curriculum. Certainly equals or exceeds what I learned at public school at the equivalent grades and California is said to have one of the stricter standards in the Union as regards to education.

dangermom

02-01-2011, 09:45 PM

However, if it is true that the trend in the US is that people are homeschooling for fundamentalist religious reasons, then this is just breeding more ignorance.

Last time I checked, about 30% of homeschoolers are conservative evangelicals--which doesn't make them fundamentalists, that's a smaller subsection. That percentage is shrinking as homeschooling becomes ever more mainstream. The evangelicals are more visible, because they are a cohesive bloc and an easy market and they're vocal. The other 60% or more of homesachoolers is made up of pagans, Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, don't-care's, atheists, and everybody else, and they all do something different. They are thus much harder to pin down, they mostly talk to each other on the Internet instead of in print, and they use a zillion little companies or major textbooks used in schools.

I know some evangelicals, and they're all pretty ordinary friendly folks who work hard to teach their kids well. I only know a couple of serious fundamentalists maybe IRL.

I got up at 5am, drove 2 hours, and spent the whole day teaching kids how to weave on a loom. I have a 2-hour drive ahead of me, and a bag of M&Ms to keep me awake. Wish me luck!

Czarcasm

02-01-2011, 10:48 PM

AlienVessels

02-02-2011, 12:17 AM

Well, I guess that is the point of homeschooling...I'm sorry, I can't quite understand what this sentence means. Do you mean that there should be test-case homeschoolers who would document everything they do?

I'm taking the girls on an all-day history re-enactment (which will have large groups of children in a non-public school setting) so I won't be here to see the answer for quite a while.

30 years or so ago I completed the coursework just short of the hours required in student teaching to graduate with a teaching certificate. I quit because I was appalled at how little I needed to know to teach and how challenged by the coursework my peers were.

I didn't feel qualified then, but I was technically. In my opinion, a homeschool teacher needs to demonstrate that they have mastered the material they are teaching. I don't care if you can put together a classroom bulletin board, but if you're just staying one lesson ahead of the kids, that's not teaching.

You also need to demonstrate that you're going to apply the same kinds of resources that kids would have access to in public school. That includes computer, media, science project and other resources. Similarly there ought to be the kinds of field trips you mentioned. There ought to be opportunities for the students to interact in a cooperative learning setting with other students.

Roughly half the adults in the US read at an 8th grade level or lower. Now how many parents do you think are qualified to teach?

Ivorybill

02-02-2011, 07:10 AM

I don't think anyone doubts that there is a great amount of quality material available for home schoolers, but what is available is not necessarily what is being taught.Urm, maybe more accurate to say 'But what is available may not necessarily be what is being taught?'

These curricula for aren't exactly cheap. Add a grading service and you're talking real money for a lot of folks. Why would anyone bother to produce a curriculum if nobody is buying it? Why would the home educator buy it and then not use it?

Ivorybill

02-02-2011, 07:23 AM

You also need to demonstrate that you're going to apply the same kinds of resources that kids would have access to in public school. That includes computer, media, science project and other resources.We lived in New Orleans for 11 years and homeschooled for six of them prior to moving last summer. We have friends who either used to teach and who still teach in the public school system in Orleans Parish. Conditions described below have improved since Katrina, but not universally.

To use the New Orleans public school system as an example, your approach would require: ridding our home of toilet paper (teachers often got parents to buy that since the school system didn't provide it); stop cleaning the bathrooms and doing general maintenance (teacher friends would get volunteers each fall to help them paint the walls in their classrooms as the school system wouldn't do it), get rid of or break our computers (even when they had them, many schools' systems did not work), get rid of supplemental reading materials (a kindergarten teacher friend bought her own books and materials for the class), and that's just the top of the list. Science supplies? Surely you jest.

There ought to be opportunities for the students to interact in a cooperative learning setting with other students.How about this (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/12/05/callebs.home.school.saints.cnn?iref=24hours)?

Manda JO

02-02-2011, 07:37 AM

I didn't feel qualified then, but I was technically. In my opinion, a homeschool teacher needs to demonstrate that they have mastered the material they are teaching. I don't care if you can put together a classroom bulletin board, but if you're just staying one lesson ahead of the kids, that's not teaching.

I AM qualified. I'm an experienced high school teacher with a list of local and state awards. I've got the highest AP scores of any comprehensive high school in my large urban district in two separate disciplines (English and Economics). The only thing in the world I know I am good at is teaching, and let me tell you: staying one chapter ahead is just fine. This is especially true in homeschooling, where you have infinite time to teach and reteach and tailor to a particular child's experience. If the first time you explain the distributive property, you make a hash of it, you can go back and redo it.

Every time a teacher gets a new prep they have to learn the content. For many teachers, this happens every couple of years. It's just not that hard.

Ruken

02-02-2011, 08:16 AM

It's just not that hard.You're right, it really isn't, especially since many books are geared toward self study. Any child of near-average intelligence can work through Saxon or Kumon math programs on his or her own. They go through calculus. If you do the work, it's hard not to learn. The child just needs a grader and someone to make sure the work gets done.

And heck, I had a friend teach chemistry in a real school for two years. The last chemistry course she took was in high school. Those kids did quite well. I think that the barriers to entry we have for teaching keep a lot of potential good teachers out and allow a lot of shit teachers to stay in (and tenured).

ratatoskK

02-02-2011, 08:54 AM

If the parents are educated then I see nothing wrong with it. How many are in this category, I have no idea. I presume the religious fanatics are not.

LonesomePolecat

02-02-2011, 08:59 AM

Do you have any articles from sources other than the Home School Legal Defense Association (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_School_Legal_Defense_Association)?
Do you have any at all?

Bridget Burke

02-02-2011, 09:11 AM

Do you have any at all?

I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm sure that Home Schooling is just fine for some people.

dangermom

02-02-2011, 10:37 AM

30 years or so ago I completed the coursework just short of the hours required in student teaching to graduate with a teaching certificate. I quit because I was appalled at how little I needed to know to teach and how challenged by the coursework my peers were.Yes, it is a bit appalling. I have many friends who have been through a teaching certificate program, and they have often expressed frustration with that and with the many hoops one is required to jump through.

I didn't feel qualified then, but I was technically. In my opinion, a homeschool teacher needs to demonstrate that they have mastered the material they are teaching. I don't care if you can put together a classroom bulletin board, but if you're just staying one lesson ahead of the kids, that's not teaching.Homeschooling takes a very different skill set than classroom teaching. Many teachers who homeschool their own kids find that they need to change their thinking quite a bit. And Manda JO has already covered the rest of that question. I have more thoughts on that but not time just now.

You also need to demonstrate that you're going to apply the same kinds of resources that kids would have access to in public school. That includes computer, media, science project and other resources. Similarly there ought to be the kinds of field trips you mentioned. There ought to be opportunities for the students to interact in a cooperative learning setting with other students.I think homeschoolers have a lot of advantages there. I have found it pretty easy to have more field trips. Our local schools have had to cut back so far on field trips that they are now extremely rare. Until this year, I ran a field trip program at the public library. It's popular with teachers and the kids love it. The Friends of the Library pays for the transportation costs, because most schools can't afford to pay for the bus, so it's free. Even so, our numbers shrink every year because the teachers are under such pressure from NCLB; they are not allowed to spare the time to spend a morning getting the kids familiar with the library.

I have talked with several teachers who express frustration that they are not allowed to teach the state standards of science and history because they are required to spend all their time drilling basic reading and math. Reading about science and history, and doing math in science, are apparently not part of the plan. (My friend pulled her gifted son out of his Spanish immersion class and homeschooled one year because it was all basic reading and math facts, nothing else.)

Meanwhile, my kids can do all the science projects they want. This year we are doing biology and we can get anything (within reason) to dissect; I never dissected so much as a worm*, and their PS friends who are doing biology this year aren't doing anything hands-on, but our house is filled with mouse bones from owl pellets and DNA models. Homeschool kids IME are hard to gross out with biology; where most of their friends will shriek "Eeeeeew!" they're knee-deep in a pond observing triops and frogs.

We've also had great success with group science labs at the local college. The college students who plan to be science teachers put together a lab with 6 stations and teach it for a couple of bucks a pop. This year we've done 3, with 15-25 kids each.

Homeschoolers are also commonly very big on history--living history is a big favorite, being both cheap and local, and trips can be taken in the middle of the year, so they're cheaper and less crowded. Yesterday at our project, a docent tried to convince me to come and volunteer so that I could bring my kids on any day--she said it's a fun thing for the homeschoolers there. I live too far away, though.

Roughly half the adults in the US read at an 8th grade level or lower. Now how many parents do you think are qualified to teach?Very few people have the enthusiasm to homeschool, but most of them are very big on reading. I suspect that the two populations don't have a lot of overlap.

*My high school didn't really do lab biology, though the teacher did once bring in a giant, dying crab and wave it around for a while.

AlienVessels

02-02-2011, 10:58 AM

I AM qualified. I'm an experienced high school teacher with a list of local and state awards. I've got the highest AP scores of any comprehensive high school in my large urban district in two separate disciplines (English and Economics). The only thing in the world I know I am good at is teaching, and let me tell you: staying one chapter ahead is just fine. This is especially true in homeschooling, where you have infinite time to teach and reteach and tailor to a particular child's experience. If the first time you explain the distributive property, you make a hash of it, you can go back and redo it.

Every time a teacher gets a new prep they have to learn the content. For many teachers, this happens every couple of years. It's just not that hard.

You're claiming it's not hard when you have a degree and substantial experience.

Are you seriously claiming that the average American adult with an 8th grade reading level can do it?

Given the evidence you provide that you are a *superior* teacher, you may well be able to compensate and pace while only staying one chapter ahead. IMO, you're projecting ease in a task based on your own abilities and not adequately taking into consideration the abilities of the general population.

Manda JO

02-02-2011, 11:29 AM

You're claiming it's not hard when you have a degree and substantial experience.

Are you seriously claiming that the average American adult with an 8th grade reading level can do it?

Given the evidence you provide that you are a *superior* teacher, you may well be able to compensate and pace while only staying one chapter ahead. IMO, you're projecting ease in a task based on your own abilities and not adequately taking into consideration the abilities of the general population.

I honestly do, provided they are dedicated to putting the time in. I've seen plenty of good teachers who were not rocket scientists, and a home schooling teacher would not have to deal with 75% of the crap that fills my day. Yes, I think it would take a lot of time and hard work--more time and hard work than I think many people are willing to do--but I think it is quite within many people's capacities, especially with so many good resources available. (I mean, you can get someone to show you how to teach anything on youtube or teachertube, let alone all the fabulous commercial products.)

And I think any adult on an 8th grade reading level when they started would be much more educated when they finished.

Lynn Bodoni

02-02-2011, 02:26 PM

I guess that I must have casually homeschooled my daughter after all, on a part time basis. See, I thought that taking her to the zoo and the Botanic Gardens and the Log Cabin Village and the museum were all parts of being a parent. I didn't consider them to be field trips. And we did a lot of experiments too, as well as arts and crafts. Again, I thought that these things were just part of being a parent. The thing is, my education has some gaps in it. So Lisa went to public school, and learned the curriculum there, and I also was involved in things like taking her to the library and showing her how to use the resources there.

One of my proudest moments was when I'd told Lisa that the remote control operated with an infrared signal, and that infrared was a sort of light that we can't see, when she was in grade school. She thought about this, and then took a mirror and aimed the remote at the mirror, away from the TV. And yeah, it worked.

Ivorybill

02-02-2011, 02:44 PM

I guess that I must have casually homeschooled my daughter after all, on a part time basis. See, I thought that taking her to the zoo and the Botanic Gardens and the Log Cabin Village and the museum were all parts of being a parent. I didn't consider them to be field trips. And we did a lot of experiments too, as well as arts and crafts. Again, I thought that these things were just part of being a parent.They are. Even when homeschooling we've counted going to the zoo on the weekend as going to the zoo. But when we were studying wetland ecology, for example, we scheduled mid-week field trips to the zoo for the Louisana swamp exhibit and hands on nature center and to the Jean Lafitte National Park Barataria Swamp. Craft projects during play time are craft projects. The artwork to accompany the third grader's report on George Washington Carver was counted as art time in the home school.

heatmiserfl

02-02-2011, 03:07 PM

You're claiming it's not hard when you have a degree and substantial experience.

Are you seriously claiming that the average American adult with an 8th grade reading level can do it?

Given the evidence you provide that you are a *superior* teacher, you may well be able to compensate and pace while only staying one chapter ahead. IMO, you're projecting ease in a task based on your own abilities and not adequately taking into consideration the abilities of the general population.

Exactly!

That's the point I've been trying to make in my last three posts. Manda JO, either high school math and science is super easy or you don't realize how much smarter you are than most Americans.

I personally think it extremely inappropriate to have teachers in math and science who only know the subject by being "one chapter ahead." Even home schoolers and even at the middle school level. These are not trivia type subjects. Math and science are skills that not everyone has even when they work hard. Even if they are skilled (accountants, for example), I still think it's inappropriate to be only one chapter ahead.

Ivorybill

02-02-2011, 03:17 PM

Even if they are skilled (accountants, for example), I still think it's inappropriate to be only one chapter ahead.Y'all realize, of course, that we're talking about being one chapter ahead in terms of lesson planning and refreshing? For example, I have a Ph.D. and in addition to my position in R&D I taught at a selective private university in south Louisiana. While I am an expert in my field, I'd still have to dig out my notes a day or two ahead of many lectures since I needed a refresher in what we would be covering.

Picture yourself with a 5th grader. Can you at this very moment and without looking at the book, manipulate fractions by hand with pen and paper, no calculator? Do you think you could if you were one chapter ahead in the material? Or, 10th grade biology. Cell division. Which is mitosis and meiosis? Think you could do it by reading ahead?

Manda JO

02-02-2011, 03:28 PM

Exactly!

That's the point I've been trying to make in my last three posts. Manda JO, either high school math and science is super easy or you don't realize how much smarter you are than most Americans.

And I think you sell the average American short if you think that if someone spent 10-15 hours a week learning new material, they would not advance themselves, and could not keep ahead of their students. If an average 12 year old can learn something in a week of 50 minutes sessions in a room with 25 other kids, do you really think an average adult couldn't master it out of a book in an hour or two?

I personally think it extremely inappropriate to have teachers in math and science who only know the subject by being "one chapter ahead." Even home schoolers and even at the middle school level. These are not trivia type subjects. Math and science are skills that not everyone has even when they work hard. Even if they are skilled (accountants, for example), I still think it's inappropriate to be only one chapter ahead.

Why? The math and science curricula available are very systematic. If you can take a child through each step, they will master the skills they need. And if they don't, you'll notice and have time to go back and correct it, unlike a classroom teacher.

Look, I love classroom instruction. But the talent and skill and training involves being able to teach 180 kids each day. The content is fairly easy, and I tend to think most people could handle it when teaching one child they knew very well.

I am willing to concede that there may be a point where a given parent can't stay ahead of the child and there needs to be other arrangements--be it going to public school just for those classes, going to a community college, or hiring a private tutor. But I think that point occurs sometime well into high school for most people. And as I've said, I teach AP courses. I have a good handle on the actual difficulty--and it's not too awful. It's what we expect a high school student to be able to handle!

dangermom

02-02-2011, 04:11 PM

heatmiserfl

02-02-2011, 06:13 PM

Y'all realize, of course, that we're talking about being one chapter ahead in terms of lesson planning and refreshing? For example, I have a Ph.D. and in addition to my position in R&D I taught at a selective private university in south Louisiana. While I am an expert in my field, I'd still have to dig out my notes a day or two ahead of many lectures since I needed a refresher in what we would be covering.

Picture yourself with a 5th grader. Can you at this very moment and without looking at the book, manipulate fractions by hand with pen and paper, no calculator? Do you think you could if you were one chapter ahead in the material? Or, 10th grade biology. Cell division. Which is mitosis and meiosis? Think you could do it by reading ahead?

If that's all you're talking about then I have no problem. I don't think the average American can understand the more complex subjects like math and science beyond, maybe middle school, enough to teach them properly. Oh sure, they could probably learn things superficially and spit them out to their kids but they don't really understand the subject.

And I think you sell the average American short if you think that if someone spent 10-15 hours a week learning new material, they would not advance themselves, and could not keep ahead of their students. If an average 12 year old can learn something in a week of 50 minutes sessions in a room with 25 other kids, do you really think an average adult couldn't master it out of a book in an hour or two?

No, I don't think I'm selling the average American short. The average American is average. I used to teach freshman chemistry and many of those students (who would be above the average American) did not understand the subject enough to teach it to high school kids (maybe not even middle school level). It wasn't for lack of trying either. They just didn't get it.

AlienVessels

02-03-2011, 02:45 AM

If an average 12 year old can learn something in a week of 50 minutes sessions in a room with 25 other kids, do you really think an average adult couldn't master it out of a book in an hour or two?

Yes, I do think that.

Kids' brains are more elastic and seeing your peers get it helps. Also the kids have the advantage of having been learning for years and be relatively fresh on the material.

I think the *average* adult would crack that book and not get it in several hours of trying. Especially if it is math or science related.

Left Hand of Dorkness

02-03-2011, 06:10 AM

Picture yourself with a 5th grader. Can you at this very moment and without looking at the book, manipulate fractions by hand with pen and paper, no calculator? Do you think you could if you were one chapter ahead in the material? Or, 10th grade biology. Cell division. Which is mitosis and meiosis? Think you could do it by reading ahead?
Hell, I still look things up. Last week when I was doing data manipulation with my second-graders and explaining the mode to them, I realized I wasn't sure what to do with multiple modes: is there another term? do you derive the mean? do you just call them multiple modes? (home audience: multiple modes). Yesterday a kid challenged me on my claim that fog was heavier than air: she didn't understand what that'd mean. I'm going in this afternoon ready to give her a child-friendly explanation, but it's gonna help me if I read up on things like density, water vapor, etc. before I do.

In general I get rated very highly on my content knowledge--but I think that's because I look things up all the time.

Ivorybill

02-03-2011, 07:10 AM

I think the *average* adult would crack that book and not get it in several hours of trying. Especially if it is math or science related.Not that appearing elitist has held people back in this thread prior to this point, but... I don't think that *average* parents attempt home education, and those who do don't stick with it more than one year. It's an activity that is outside the norm that also requires self selection, self motivation, and lots of time and energy and dedication.

Manda JO

02-03-2011, 07:26 AM

Yes, I do think that.

Kids' brains are more elastic and seeing your peers get it helps. Also the kids have the advantage of having been learning for years and be relatively fresh on the material.

I think the *average* adult would crack that book and not get it in several hours of trying. Especially if it is math or science related.

But the parent will have been learning for years, as well: they will have re-learned kindergarten math when their kid was in kindergarten and continued along side them all the way. Any deficiencies in learning will be remediated through the years as the parent teaches the child.

Do I think everyone could do this? No, though I think an unwillingness to spend the time would be a bigger block than the impossibility of the task. One thing I've learned as a teacher: those of us who are "naturally" smart think that intelligence is the main thing, but I've learned that people of indifferent ability can learn a tremendous amount if they put the time in. We have a calculus teacher who has gotten kids who scored below the 50% on SAT math to pass the AP calculus exam--the trick, it turns out, is to spend 3 hours a day doing calculus.

Most people aren't willing to put in that kind of time. And, as Ivorybill points out, when people are not willing and eager, they get frustrated and quit.

I guess I am not sure what you are arguing. Do you think homeschooling should be banned? Do you think it should be allowed but is generally a bad idea?

I am not arguing that every parent can do this perfectly. But I am arguing that many parents could do this more effectively than their other options (for instance, if their public school is crappy) and that they should have the right to try.

Lynn Bodoni

02-03-2011, 09:12 AM

Not that appearing elitist has held people back in this thread prior to this point, but... I don't think that *average* parents attempt home education, and those who do don't stick with it more than one year. It's an activity that is outside the norm that also requires self selection, self motivation, and lots of time and energy and dedication. I've met quite a few parents who I consider to be below average in both intellect and education who have homeschooled their kids for several years.

dangermom

02-03-2011, 09:34 AM

Are you seriously claiming that the average American adult with an 8th grade reading level can do it?

I don't think the average American can understand the more complex subjects like math and science beyond, maybe middle school, enough to teach them properly.
The idea here seems to be that most people are not educated enough to educate their children. If the public school system teaches in such a way that no one can read well or remember anything about high school chemistry, maybe we should be trying a different approach? This theme strikes me as something of an indictment of the public school system, though personally I'm a little more optimistic about the general intelligence level of the population.

(We have a 4-year rotation of science, from 1st grade on--it goes biology, earth/astro, chemistry, physics. We did chemistry in 3rd grade and will again in 7th. Chemistry is one of my favorite subjects!)

Manda JO

02-03-2011, 09:41 AM

ralph124c

02-03-2011, 09:47 AM

My only experience with HS kids is the woman down the street-she has two daughters (both play on the school sports teams). These kids are incredibly polite and well-adjusted. they are much more mature than their school peers (their mother is a certified teacher).
honestly, when you realize how much time in your average public school is wasted on extraneous stuff, you probably get much better teaching at home. The main thing I notice-kids in the local public HS seem to revert to childish behavior, as if the carriculum is focussed on the lowest common denominator.
Frankly, these kids 9down the street0 are a plaesure to be around-I wish I could say that for the school kids.

dangermom

02-03-2011, 09:47 AM

Ha! Well Manda, you said it much more clearly. :D

heatmiserfl

02-03-2011, 11:03 AM

The idea here seems to be that most people are not educated enough to educate their children. If the public school system teaches in such a way that no one can read well or remember anything about high school chemistry, maybe we should be trying a different approach? This theme strikes me as something of an indictment of the public school system, though personally I'm a little more optimistic about the general intelligence level of the population.

(We have a 4-year rotation of science, from 1st grade on--it goes biology, earth/astro, chemistry, physics. We did chemistry in 3rd grade and will again in 7th. Chemistry is one of my favorite subjects!)

I really don't understand why its controversial to say that the average American will have average math skills. They also have an average IQ (even if IQ is not the best determination of intelligence, it is loosely correlated with certain abilities). That's the definition of average. As I recall, teachers typically have significantly higher than average IQ's and, for math and science, high school teachers have training in their subject. That immediately puts them well above the average American.

I think our high school math graduation requirements are still algebra I and geometry. Many of those kids will graduate with C's or lower in algebra. Right? Unless there's some kind of grade inflation. That means that the average American has not mastered the subject. This is not a reflection of the school system or teachers. In fact, I'm trying to defend teachers (unless it's true that our subjects have gotten so watered down that anyone thinks they can teach them). I don't see how it's unreasonable to say that people who got C's in high school math will not be able to properly teach their kids up to a certain level. Some of the ones who got C's because they were goofing around could take remedial instruction but some don't have the ability.

Is it really socially acceptable and elitist to say that not everyone can teach middle and high school algebra and geometry?

Manda JO

02-03-2011, 11:16 AM

In Texas, at least, graduation required Alg I, Alg II, Geometry, and a fourth year of math: pre-cal is strongly encouraged: if a student takes Alg II their junior year, they MUST take pre-cal or AP Stats their senior year--they can't go back and take the "practical math".

I don't think it's elitist to say most people could teach these effectively to 150 kids in 50 minute chunks. That's a hell of a thing. But I do think it's elitist to say most people couldn't master these, and having mastered these, pass them on to one other person that they know better than anyone else in the whole world given all the time in the world.

If an average person can't master these things, how the hell is it fair to have them be high school graduation requirements?

And, even if that's the case, why should the fact that some parents couldn't master geometry well enough to teach it to a 14-year old be grounds to deny all parents the right to try to teach their 8 year how to multiply fractions? Yes, at some point outside support may be needed--and that point may be algebra for some and differential calculus for others. How is that an argument against homeschooling as an institution?

Hippy Hollow

02-03-2011, 11:21 AM

I disagree. Just because someone knows a subject thoroughly, doesn't mean that this person is an effective teacher, in this or any other subject. And this is one of the problems with homeschooling...many of the people who decide to teach have no idea how to go about it.

I'm an excellent reader, and I can do just about all arithmatic and even some real mathematics. However, I am a lousy teacher in just about every academic subject. I can teach someone to knit or crochet or how to play FRPGs. When my daughter needed help learning to read, though, I had to get a tutor for her.

I acknowledge my shortcomings as a teacher. Many homeschoolers, though, don't even realize that they are barely literate and have problems with any math beyond simple addition and subtraction. And yet they think that they are great teachers!

Midway through this thread, and I wanted to comment on this. Absolutely. As someone with a doctorate in education from (at the time) the number one ranked graduate program, I did not take one course in pedagogy. Now I am a former teacher and have training in pedagogy, but if someone at a top school in education is not required to take any coursework in teaching, I think we can surmise what that means in other disciplines.

Holding an advanced degree means the holder knows the content. It does not suggest that they can communicate that knowledge effectively. And not to bag on the PhD holders who are homeschooling - I'm sure some are excellent, but please, do not assume having letters after your name means you are qualified to teach. :)

Back to the topic. I am a product of public schools (except my graduate education), believe in them strongly, and wish some of the creative, energetic parents that homeschool would direct their capital and energy toward improving public schools (and yes, I understand bureaucracies create a problem). But I commend those parents who are doing a terrific job for their kids. It just seems to me to be skewed wildly to the very affluent and educated and the fundie crowd. I know a lot of the former and the kids do very well academically, but seem to struggle (not terribly, but they do) socially. And the parents admit that.

I wager that the 100% intellectual capital that homeschooled kids apply to their studies is used differently with kids in public schools. You're spending 30% of your intellect trying to fit in, get along, make friends, etc. Personally I think that's a good thing.

I went to a tough inner-city school with every societal scourge imaginable. Came out fine, didn't get into crime or drugs, and I don't consider myself exceptional - lots of kids like me did fine. But as always, YMMV, and it's great to hear examples of really well taught kids in this thread.

heatmiserfl

02-03-2011, 11:41 AM

If an average person can't master these things, how the hell is it fair to have them be high school graduation requirements?

And, even if that's the case, why should the fact that some parents couldn't master geometry well enough to teach it to a 14-year old be grounds to deny all parents the right to try to teach their 8 year how to multiply fractions? Yes, at some point outside support may be needed--and that point may be algebra for some and differential calculus for others. How is that an argument against homeschooling as an institution?

Passing a subject with a C or a D is not mastering it. That's my whole point. Maybe you disagree but I think kids, even home schooled kids, should be taught by someone who understands well (not gets by) the subject.

Also, my argument against homeschooling in this thread has always been restricted to upper level math and science. I have specified this in everyone one of my posts. I don't care about elementary school and teaching fractions. Most parents could do it (but I'm sure there are some people who can't). To be honest, I'm not even very worried about the lack of socialization. I'm talking about grade levels and subjects in which teachers in our public schools have degrees. No matter what criticisms people have of teachers, more of them have mastered their subject than the average American.

I also specified, repeatedly, that I don't have a problem with home schooling as long as it is monitored and there are standards. That doesn't appear to be the case for all states.

shantih

02-03-2011, 11:46 AM

I know two families that homeschool their kids (2 x anecdotes does not, of course, = data). The first has three children and their father was in the Air Force for over 20 years. They didn't like the idea of the disruption they would cause by changing their kids' schools every two years or so, so the mother started homeschooling the oldest child, figuring that when she got out of her depth, she would start putting the kids in a regular school.

What she found was that she was able to stay ahead of the subjects all the way through. When their oldest was in her high school years, they worked it out with a group of other homeschooling parents to have people, often other parents who had a particular education, handle the more advanced sciences. She is now in a quite decent university, happy and well-adjusted as can be, and her brother and sister continue to be homeschooled.

They always had the kids in different sporting and other after-school activities at whatever local school, so they had plenty of chances to socialize with other kids and make friends. As they moved around the world, my friend was able to change the focus of their lessons to include whatever the area had to offer.

The other family is my brother's. They only have one child, and weren't impressed with public school. My sister-in-law is deeply impressive. She's worked out a routine in which they work on workbooks some days and on others join up with any of a number of different groups with which they've built a connection to pursue a group acitivity. They've done different things with the National Zoo, the Smithsonian, Habitat for Humanity, a gemologist, and a Civil War expert, among many others. As part of their Civil War unit, they went to a battlefield, drew water from a well used by the real soldiers, and made hardtack. Hardtack! That's going to stick with him for a lifetime. My nephew has made short stop-motion films with Lego mini-figs. He's a bit shy but otherwise a completely happy and normal child. He needs to take certain tests every year to demonstrate that he isn't falling behind his grade level, and every year he has scored at 100%.

In both cases, it's the dedication and organization of the homeschooling parent that makes it all come together. I'm sure there are many people who homeschool poorly, but I haven't encountered it myself.

AlienVessels

02-03-2011, 12:30 PM

But the parent will have been learning for years, as well: they will have re-learned kindergarten math when their kid was in kindergarten and continued along side them all the way. Any deficiencies in learning will be remediated through the years as the parent teaches the child.

Do I think everyone could do this? No, though I think an unwillingness to spend the time would be a bigger block than the impossibility of the task. One thing I've learned as a teacher: those of us who are "naturally" smart think that intelligence is the main thing, but I've learned that people of indifferent ability can learn a tremendous amount if they put the time in. We have a calculus teacher who has gotten kids who scored below the 50% on SAT math to pass the AP calculus exam--the trick, it turns out, is to spend 3 hours a day doing calculus.

Most people aren't willing to put in that kind of time. And, as Ivorybill points out, when people are not willing and eager, they get frustrated and quit.

I guess I am not sure what you are arguing. Do you think homeschooling should be banned? Do you think it should be allowed but is generally a bad idea?

I am not arguing that every parent can do this perfectly. But I am arguing that many parents could do this more effectively than their other options (for instance, if their public school is crappy) and that they should have the right to try.

What I am saying is that frustration with the local school does not qualify a parent to teach. Believing they can do better does not qualify them.

I think any parent should have the opportunity to demonstrate they can do as well as the local school. But they need to ante by showing how they can do that job - that they have the resources and availability. I'd also want reasonable testing by outside authority, not administered by the parent doing the homeschooling.

This idea that people won't get into situations they aren't equipped to handle is at best "optimistic". And I haven't seen anything in the way of explanation of how you handle the kids of parents that couldn't get it done. I had two brothers that were held back in school and they never really caught back up.

AlienVessels

02-03-2011, 12:45 PM

I thought of another way to make my point: if the assertion is that the average public school high school graduate has been so poorly educated that they can not be expected to readily relearn what they learned in middle school, then what is the point of sending their own children to public school? Clearly the experience is pretty valueless, especially since the quality of education today seems to be lower than it was a generation ago.

Ever tried to catch up when you fall behind in a running race? It's quite a bit harder than maintaining your pace with the pack. There is a certain amount of inertia that keeps you going in school. Take a break from school and it's going to be that much harder to refresh those basic skills and then move forward with them.

The experience of sending kids to school is not useless. You're hoping they'll either move on to college, or be employed where those skills are used on a regular basis.

We live in an information age where there are vastly more distractions than a generation ago. Certainly there is a strong argument that for dedicated and equipped parents, homeschooling is a good option. But honestly, in most cases I think the parent actually sitting down with the student for a couple hours a night working through homework would capture the majority of the advantage of "ideal" homeschooling. And to preempt the question, I don't think most parents do that.

Peremensoe

02-03-2011, 12:49 PM

I think any parent should have the opportunity to demonstrate they can do as well as the local school. But they need to ante by showing how they can do that job - that they have the resources and availability. I'd also want reasonable testing by outside authority, not administered by the parent doing the homeschooling.

Why should the burden of proof in this specific case of schooling be on the parents?

In most respects the default is to assume that parents are doing an adequate job of parenting until considerable evidence emerges otherwise. We don't ask for evidence that parents know how to feed their children nutritious meals, or instill good values, or whatever. Why are the mediocre standards of public school education so uniquely important?

GargoyleWB

02-03-2011, 01:15 PM

As young adults, the children have some ...remarkable gaps in their knowledge of history (for example).

I used to work with a home-schooled (and schooler of his own kids). He was an engineer, sharp guy, but the gaps...oh my the gaps...

Some examples...

He was unaware of there being a first world war. WW2 was named because it was fought between 2 powers, the US and Germany. "But what about Japan, Russia, Britain, Italy..." "Well, they wanted to keep it simple for the media."

There are only two atomic bombs in existence, owned by the US and Russia. They are each doomsday devices. "You do know that Britain, France, India, Pakistan, ex-Soviet states, Isreal...all have many bombs don't you"..."They want them, sure, but the US and Russia won't let them."

So my opposition is that home schooling can become an educational death spiral of ignorance. If you pass on what you learned, gaps, ommissions and errors, it is inevitably going to get more and more inaccurate with each generation.

Lynn Bodoni

02-03-2011, 02:44 PM

The idea here seems to be that most people are not educated enough to educate their children. If the public school system teaches in such a way that no one can read well or remember anything about high school chemistry, maybe we should be trying a different approach? This theme strikes me as something of an indictment of the public school system, though personally I'm a little more optimistic about the general intelligence level of the population. No, my idea is that knowing a subject does not qualify a person to teach it. I learn by reading. I'm bored silly by someone reading to me. Some people are great lecturers, but even with a fantastic lecturer, I'll usually learn more by reading a mediocre textbook. Some people are the other way around, and need a lot of lecturing in order to absorb written information. Neither way is bad, but a teacher needs to know how to teach both types of people, and people who learn in other ways.

Teachers need a social skill set as well as a knowledge base, and they need excellent organizational skills too. A homeschool teacher without the social skills and the organizational skills is not going to be good for his/her students, no matter how much s/he knows about a particular subject.

So my opposition is that home schooling can become an educational death spiral of ignorance. If you pass on what you learned, gaps, ommissions and errors, it is inevitably going to get more and more inaccurate with each generation. This. I've seen the results of second or third generation homeschoolers, and the result can be frightening.

Finally, there have been studies that show that the people who are incompetent and ignorant quite frequently think that they are far more competent and knowledgable than they actually are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect . So we have a lot of incompetent, ignorant people who think that they know enough to teach kids whatever they need to know, when the teachers really don't know what needs to be taught themselves.

Yes, there are lots of problems with public schools. In most cases, I think that the kids would be better served by going to public school, and having the parents give extra lessons if they think that the kids aren't getting a proper education.

Palo Verde

02-03-2011, 03:24 PM

Homeschooling is one of those things that is done badly often and well rarely. I wouldn't be surprised if Dopers aren't overrepresented in the 'well' category, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of folks doing it badly out there.

dangermom

02-03-2011, 07:11 PM

doreen

02-03-2011, 08:17 PM

The idea here seems to be that most people are not educated enough to educate their children. If the public school system teaches in such a way that no one can read well or remember anything about high school chemistry, maybe we should be trying a different approach? This theme strikes me as something of an indictment of the public school system, though personally I'm a little more optimistic about the general intelligence level of the population.

My idea is that not everyone had the same education that their children may want or need- and I'm mostly talking high school level here. I could have taught my children algebra or biology or chemistry by being one chapter ahead because I already learned those subjects in high school and/or college. I wouldn't be learning from the book, I would be refreshing my knowledge. On the other hand, the many people I graduated with who fulfilled their math requirements with some combination of consumer math and bookkeeping and their science requirement with earth science are not going to be able to teach their children algebra or biology or chemistry by being one chapter ahead in the book. They might as well just give the kid the book to learn from.

I work for a government agency which means we get a fair amount of training from people who know virtually nothing about the work we actually do. They are given lesson plans for each subject and teach from the plans. It works okay for certain subjects- for example how to complete the new electronic timesheets. It is a disaster whenever it involves anything more complex, because the trainer must constantly respond "I'll get back to you" to any question that is not actually answered in the lesson plan.

doreen

02-03-2011, 09:01 PM

I could say the same about public school.

You're absolutely right- a lot of folks are doing public school badly out there. I'm sure that every Doper who homeschools is doing an excellent job , and I'm equally sure that nearly all of their children would do well in public schools.

I'm also sure that the population of public school parents who currently couldn't care less whether their child gets enough sleep on a school night, studies or does homework, and thinks that a shopping trip is a valid reason for absence won't suddenly change their ways and care about academic achievement if they decided to home school tomorrow. In fact, if that bunch decided to homeschool tomorrow, it would probably be so they can sleep late everyday.

This may be a bit of a hijack, but I have to say, I think the comparisons some people make between public schools and homeschooling based on the test results of a self- selected sample are unfair. It is currently impossible to compare the universe of homeschoolers to the universe of public schoolers - but it's not impossible to compare that self-selected group of homeschoolers to a similar group of public schoolers. It's fine to eliminate the people who claim they homeschool to keep CPS off their back ( and they do exist)- as long as you also eliminate the public schoolers who don't show up two days out of every five. I don't think the public schools will do terribly in that comparison.

AlienVessels

02-04-2011, 02:22 AM

Why should the burden of proof in this specific case of schooling be on the parents?

In most respects the default is to assume that parents are doing an adequate job of parenting until considerable evidence emerges otherwise. We don't ask for evidence that parents know how to feed their children nutritious meals, or instill good values, or whatever. Why are the mediocre standards of public school education so uniquely important?

Well, as a matter of fact parents probably don't know how to feed their kids nutritious meals and we do try to educate them about that.

But you eat meals and presumably try to live morally each day. You don't do algebra, think about the Krebs Cycle, interpret poetry or follow the expansion of the United States on a map on a daily basis. In fact rather than tuning in to the educational channel of choice, people raise the kids on the cartoon network and watch sitcoms instead of sitting with their kids during homework time.

Some parents go well beyond this. But the typical parents? They're trying to knock out two incomes to raise a family. That doesn't leave much room.

heatmiserfl

02-04-2011, 07:37 AM

Why should the burden of proof in this specific case of schooling be on the parents?

In most respects the default is to assume that parents are doing an adequate job of parenting until considerable evidence emerges otherwise. We don't ask for evidence that parents know how to feed their children nutritious meals, or instill good values, or whatever. Why are the mediocre standards of public school education so uniquely important?

What do you mean burden of proof being on parents? Are you suggesting that teachers don't have standards for their curriculum? Do they hide their lectures and grades from parents and their superiors? There's no school boards? No legislators? No PTAs? Home schooling should have some transparency to ensure that students are exposed to minimal education requirements.

It looks like parents in some states have no oversight at all. You can't compare parenting to formal education. I don't agree that public schools have mediocre standards. They're perfectly reasonable.

heatmiserfl

02-04-2011, 08:01 AM

Finally, there have been studies that show that the people who are incompetent and ignorant quite frequently think that they are far more competent and knowledgable than they actually are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect . So we have a lot of incompetent, ignorant people who think that they know enough to teach kids whatever they need to know, when the teachers really don't know what needs to be taught themselves.

Yes, there are lots of problems with public schools. In most cases, I think that the kids would be better served by going to public school, and having the parents give extra lessons if they think that the kids aren't getting a proper education.

This study needs to be restated. It's well-known that the more ignorant and incompetent people are about something, the more confident they are in themselves. Their ignorance makes them incapable of questioning themselves properly. Hence you have people thinking that they can teach all kinds of subjects when they really don't have a clue. Some of them realize how hard it is once they start doing it but the very incompetent ones are incapable of realizing that they are screwing up. OTOH, more educated or competent people realize how difficult something is and tend to question their ability to do something properly.

Ivorybill

02-04-2011, 08:37 AM

AlienVessels

02-04-2011, 11:24 AM

Lost in all the heat and smoke here is a numerical comparison between home education and institutional education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics of the United States Department of Education, in 2007:

*The number of homeschooled students was about 1.5 million, an increase from 850,000 in 1999 and 1.1 million in 2003.

*The percentage of the school-age population that was homeschooled increased from 1.7 percent in 1999 to 2.9 percent in 2007.

So, let's say 10% of the people homeschooling fit the ignorant, insular, and abusive model that many in this thread are railing against. That's 150,000 children. To be consistent, suppose that institutional education somehow fails to reach 10% of the roughly 51.2 million school age children in the U.S., which means institutional education churned out over 5 million unprepared children in 2007. 5 million, and that's a conservative estimate.

Those who fear that the republic is at risk through a dumbward spiral fueled by home education might redirect their ire to the bigger number as it makes a lot more sense from a social and economic standpoint to focus on the larger problem.

It's somewhat more difficult to remain ignorant, insular and abusive in the public school. At least with the public school, you can address a problem with a teacher and if necessary change teachers or schools.

When considering how to address problems, you must also consider the cost. I reject your estimates of problem cases and that the proportions are similar, but even so, I can easily address many if not most of the cases of ignorant homeschooling by simply not allowing people that can't qualify to homeschool.

Dealing with problematically performing public schools is a more complex problem. There probably isn't a single, across the board solution. You can't just dissolve inner city schools and move the kids elsewhere.

Ivorybill

02-04-2011, 11:34 AM

It's somewhat more difficult to remain ignorant, insular and abusive in the public school. At least with the public school, you can address a problem with a teacher and if necessary change teachers or schools.My friends who are working in New Orleans public schools and New Orleans public charter schools disagree with your assertion here. They have stories that would astound you as to the willful ignorance, the willful antipathy to education, and the rejection of what some would call societal norms. New Orleans is not unique among urban school systems, and urban school systems have the vast majority of the nation's young people.

When considering how to address problems, you must also consider the cost. I reject your estimates of problem cases and that the proportions are similar, but even so, I can easily address many if not most of the cases of ignorant homeschooling by simply not allowing people that can't qualify to homeschool.Design your policy then. How would you go about evaluating home educators? At what direct cost? At what opportunity cost? Direct federal mandate? Federal mandate that the states regulate home education in a standard manner? Who pays?

Dealing with problematically performing public schools is a more complex problem.Exactly. You will get more bang per buck spending that buck addressing deficiencies in the public school system than you will spending that buck chasing a few thousand kids in the home education system.

Really Not All That Bright

02-04-2011, 11:37 AM

Those who fear that the republic is at risk through a dumbward spiral fueled by home education might redirect their ire to the bigger number as it makes a lot more sense from a social and economic standpoint to focus on the larger problem.
I don't worry about homeschooled children being dumb. Even if their parents teach them that evolution is a tool of the devil, they'll probably still do better on mathematics and English testing than the general school population.

What I do worry about is an insularity spiral.

Peremensoe

02-04-2011, 12:01 PM

Well, as a matter of fact parents probably don't know how to feed their kids nutritious meals and we do try to educate them about that.

But there's no testing! No enforcement!

What do you mean burden of proof being on parents? Are you suggesting that teachers don't have standards for their curriculum?

No. AlienVessels has said that parents should not be allowed to homeschool their children without first demonstrating competence. This means a starting assumption of incompetence, with the burden of proving otherwise.

And I am asking, why is schooling, in particular, so important that we should assume parental incompetence in this area, when the state and social default in almost all realms of parenting is to assume competence (and good intentions)? You follow? People have to do terrible things to their children in most respects to even run the risk of having the state (or anyone) intervene, yet AV says we should start out with an interventionist position with respect to schooling. Why the difference?

I don't agree that public schools have mediocre standards. They're perfectly reasonable.

If you think about it a little, you'll realize that public schools must have mediocre (moderate, "only ordinary") standards. You can't have high standards except by excluding people, which is anathema to the public school mission.

aceplace57

02-04-2011, 12:24 PM

I work at a university (a staff member). I've talked with friends in the faculty and they've mentioned the home schooled kids really stand out. They're more focused, complete their work on time, and get better grades.

It would be interesting to see formal studies on a big scale. I suspect home schooled kids do better in most subjects.

There may be small gaps in their education. Especially in the sciences, but a student with strong, independent study habits can easily catch up in college.

Duke

02-04-2011, 12:55 PM

With all due respect, why is this a problem? I know plenty of Moms who stay home and clean their house while the kids are in school. Most of my friends go play tennis while their kids are in school. And the homeschool teacher does have a job, -- it's just unpaid. Their life, their choice.

It's not a problem...except if the parents get divorced. Which happens a lot--half of all marriages end in divorce, of course, and homeschooling moms aren't the only ones who get stuck in this situation.

But on the other hand, it's a piece of the equation that I rarely hear homeschooling parents take into consideration. "What's best for my kid?" is a great question, but two of other questions have to be "Can we afford to live on one income instead of two, and how does that affect my kid?" and individually "If things don't work out in this marriage what happens?" I know from personal experience that nobody wants to think about getting divorced, but I myself had wished I had planned more.

I recently worked on a non-profit with a woman who had homeschooled her kids for over a decade--someone who'd given up a good career because she felt being there with her kids on a regular basis was important. Shortly before her last kid left the nest, her husband left her. Needless to say, her years of homeschooling did not help her find employment. I know it sucks to say but...it happens, and it's got to be part of the equation.

AlienVessels

02-04-2011, 01:49 PM

My friends who are working in New Orleans public schools and New Orleans public charter schools disagree with your assertion here. They have stories that would astound you as to the willful ignorance, the willful antipathy to education, and the rejection of what some would call societal norms. New Orleans is not unique among urban school systems, and urban school systems have the vast majority of the nation's young people.

Design your policy then. How would you go about evaluating home educators? At what direct cost? At what opportunity cost? Direct federal mandate? Federal mandate that the states regulate home education in a standard manner? Who pays?

Exactly. You will get more bang per buck spending that buck addressing deficiencies in the public school system than you will spending that buck chasing a few thousand kids in the home education system.

No, you will get more bang for the buck having a basic requirement that people demonstrate competence and resources to homeschool. You'll strip out the low end because they'll fail the basic requirements. Relatively inexpensive to administrate.

Public schools are harder to deal with because they don't have the option of self-selection. They have to address the needs of every single child attending, irrespective of the effort that child's parent(s) put in. Many more bucks to the bang to fix the low end there.

I'd require that homeschoolers demonstrate compentency in the material to be covered and make a commitment to provide a minimum amount of classroom time and resources to the students being homschooled. Pass a test, sign a document committing to meet the educational requirements that the public school must.

AlienVessels

02-04-2011, 02:00 PM

But there's no testing! No enforcement!

No. AlienVessels has said that parents should not be allowed to homeschool their children without first demonstrating competence. This means a starting assumption of incompetence, with the burden of proving otherwise.

And I am asking, why is schooling, in particular, so important that we should assume parental incompetence in this area, when the state and social default in almost all realms of parenting is to assume competence (and good intentions)? You follow? People have to do terrible things to their children in most respects to even run the risk of having the state (or anyone) intervene, yet AV says we should start out with an interventionist position with respect to schooling. Why the difference?

If your kid shows up to public school with rickets, I guarantee there will be testing and enforcement.

As far as parental competence, lets start with an average reading level at 8th grade.

If most parents included schooling as a significant role in parenting, I might be more flexible in my view of what the *average* parent is capable of. But "go do your homework" doesn't cut it for me.

And I didn't invent an interventionist policy with respect to schooling children. We require that kids be educated and we hold the schools to some standards. Parents homeschooling should be able to show they meet those standards.