Arithmetic can be done by machines these days, although it’s still a good idea to be able to make change.
Math is very important.
I agreed with your sentiment until I met a couple who were homeschooling their two kids. He had a PhD in education and decided to be a stay-at-home dad/teacher. The kids were active is community sports leagues and were all around amazing little people.
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Agreed. There’s a pretty solid correlation between being able to think analytically and being able to handle advanced math. To discount it like that is to fall into a thought pattern where knowledge and ability is valued less than common sense. We have enough of that, I think.
I agree it’s a good idea, in the same sense it’s a good idea to hop on a treadmill every once in a while.
But sucking at math or spelling has no deleterious effects WRT getting on in today’s society.
Heck, I could be a bad speller, but you would never know it from my emails, posts on FB, or this board.
My son was, unfortunately, a guinea pig in the Whole Reading scam too. One of the problems (and there are many IMO) is that none of the other teachers taught it. So the very next year he was behind and struggled. He had to get help with reading and we had to do extra reading exercises at home every night. I think all of that forced extra studying really turned him off of reading. I don’t think he ever read for pleasure. I think Whole Reading lasted that one year and then thankfully disappeared.
No, again I disagree. It’s pretty clear that, while it’s possible to get by and have a life without math, it’s much more likely to thrive with math than without.
I’m not opposed to homeschooling just because IME *most *homeschoolers are some intersection of paranoid prepper, religious nutjob or hippie flake, which your single anecdote is not going to dispel. I’m also opposed to it because “community sports league” is no replacement for immersive socialization (a word I use quite deliberately), and *also *because your PhD would have been more useful to society teaching a whole class than just 2 kids.
I *used *to think homeschooling was the ideal - specifically, I idealized the homeschooling Gerald Durrell talked about in My Family and Other Animals. Then I realized that was just elitism.
OK, we are not really disagreeing, I guess. My one concern is that one child’s “immersive socialization” is another child’s “sitting duck for bullying”.
Personally, my own kids did well in the public school system, albeit with much input from me.
This. I’ve put 5(Five) very different people through high school, the results were as varied as you might expect but they are unanimous in their criticism of administrations who find it easier to hold open the door so the bullied can flee than to deal with systemic problems and sociopaths. If I had it to do over again I would deprive all of them of that experience and school them as self-aware, free-thinking hippie flakes. Boo frikkin hoo if they don’t get to play high school sports, or be cheerleaders, or just faceless bodies in a math class of 40 disinterested and hormonally distracted kids, and learn the joys of physical & emotional domination of/by their peers. They’re better off without that kind of socialization.
My experience only, YMMV. I’ve known a couple of dozen homeschoolers and one or two were antivaxers and the rest all believed history and science should be taught with the Bible. A couple really didn’t homeschool much(most seemed to a least be trying) but didn’t want their kids in public school.
I just want to point out that as a parent of a 7 year old and a 4 year old, it is SO nice to be able to tell the older one to go get something or go do something based on being literate (for a 7 year old). Or being able to leave notes like “Snacks are in the fridge” or “No TV until the room is picked up.” Or even that the 7 year old will actually read stuff as a pastime, while the younger one is like the Tasmanian Devil while playing on his own.
It’s not quite as grand as getting them potty trained, but it’s certainly a pleasant milestone. I can’t imagine NOT wanting to teach your kid to read.
You’d think the homeschooling crowd would be all over early reading so these kids can read the Bible…
OP, why not call your local school district’s superintendent’s office and find out how rigorously those regulations are carried out? It could be that they are, and that the case you heard about indirectly had a lot more to it than you know. Or it could be the case fell through the cracks.
I knew one family who “homeschooled” their kid for a semester in middle school. Both parents worked all day, and the girl sat around watching TV and playing games. I asked the superintendent about it, and he said there was nothing to be done: no regulations in that state. The girl returned to school but was way behind.
STRONGLY disagree learning to read early isn’t important. A parent can be justifiably proud that a kid was smart enough to pick it up in a hurry later on, but the missed opportunities are significant, and many kids struggle as a result. Reading affects learning and brain development. It’s generally a real disservice to deprive a kid of that.
I concur.
It appalls me that some states basically say, “OK, you’re homeschooling your kids, they don’t ever have to be tested to see if they’re anywhere near grade level.” ISTM that the same minimum standards should apply to public schools, private schools, charter schools, homeschooling, whatever. Whatever testing goes on in the public schools to ensure that the school is doing its job, should apply to all the other situations.
That way no homeschooling parent, no ‘Christian’ academy, can teach their kids pretty much nothing and get away with it for years, crippling those kids’ ability to learn what they need to make their way in the world when they grow up.
I would explain about resumes and keyword scanning and such.
I take it you’ve never heard of “unschooling”? (Yeah, I think it’s a lot of bullshit, right up there with anti-vaxxers, but apparently it’s legal.)
Of course, there are indeed lazy parents like my former neighbors, but THAT’S a different story. Her kids were actual middle-school dropouts. I don’t know how she managed to get away with it.
LOL, there are even more unschooled people with high school diplomas! Anyway. WHEN I know a person who is directly responsible for the welfare of a child or children, and I see this responsibility is not being met I WILL speak to them about it. I won’t admonish, declare or insist. I will engage them in a conversation about what children require, and ask the person if these requirements are being met. Then I’d ask how. All the while I’ll be curious. “Don’t you think…” is how I would phrase a suggestion. After that, I’ll (and have) give the person some time to think about what was said and incorporate some ideas. If the response is a door slam, I call child protective services. That adult’s distorted view of life isn’t worth the loss the poor child would suffer as a result of no one doing anything.
By the way, I home-schooled four children. One is a certified auto mechanic who works for Audi. One is an educator; graduate of William and Mary. One is a theoretical physicist examining quantum gravity, and one is a physician.
I was never taught how to read, but as a toddler (and before that) I sat on a lot of laps and was read to or just sat there as someone read the paper. I can’t even imagine not being able to dive into the library as soon as I was allowed (at ~6 years old). In my case forcing me to wait would have been child abuse.
Yes, they’ll pick up some language skills that way. But there are other very important language skills that they won’t pick up that way. Such as reading. I don’t see how you can teach a kid to read without teaching them to read.
Now, arithmetic, it’s no great tragedy if a kid doesn’t learn arithmetic, so long as they’re still learning math. But that’s a separate rant, against the formal education system, which often doesn’t even start teaching kids math until they’re in their mid-teens.
So teach them to read for reading’s own sake? Come on, you’re better than that. To be fair, though, you did say “skills”, which is plural. What else does learning to read provide that can’t be done better by passive & active participation in conversation, playing games, solving puzzles, building models, playing/listening to music & song, going for walks, learning to be conversant in a second language, or doing somersaults down a grassy hill?
Reading is important, and I will never say otherwise. But knowing from a very young age how to interact with other people and the physical world, and to use logic and understand multiple nonverbal ways of conveying ideas, are far more important for building a functional person. On the other hand, trying to teach reading to a kid with bad eyes or dyslexia, for example, does a great deal of harm to self esteem and teacher/pupil relationships until the physiological problem is discovered. A six year old who can read? Fantastic and good luck to 'em. But that sets a bar that will destroy a myopic kid’s self esteem. Someone that age will understand an adult’s frustration, but won’t have the wherewithal to understand and say they can’t focus the letters. So now the kid has spent formative years being looked down on by adults AND peers, labeled retarded or lazy, maybe given drugs he doesn’t need…all the while NOT being led on a guided discovery tour of the world he will one day read about for more detail. And don’t get me started on precocious readers who don’t take their noses out of the books long enough to actually see the real version of what they’ve been reading about.
No way is reading THAT important. It is A skill, and not the most important.