That’s nice, but if we’re going to allow homeschooling (which I’m OK with), I think this sort of thing needs to be managed systemically, rather than by happenstance neighborly conversations.
By this I mean (1) having clear standards that all students need to meet, regardless of where they’re taught, (2) periodic testing to make sure that each teaching facility - counting a homeschooling situation as a teaching facility - is meeting the needs of its students, and (3) potential revocation of a facility’s right to teach if it’s egregiously failing its students.
I don’t think anyone’s saying home schooling can’t be done well. The troublesome part is that absent systemic checks, it’s all too possible for nobody to be aware when it’s being done wrong, or essentially not being done at all. And apparently a fair number of states have no such systemic checks.
“Whole Language”…I’m guessing that’s the reason that the schoolchildren’s Letters to Santa as published by the local rag have become increasingly illegible and unintelligible over the years, to the extent that the paper has resorted to transcribing the letters instead of just printing scanned copies.
I would be very concerned about a child unable to read at age 8. Unless the child has an amazingly sharp memory, there are very few things that can be taught and applied without literacy…and aside from being unable to entertain themselves with a book, the poor kid would even be locked out of many video games that rely on text to walk you through a tutorial or drive the plot.
Regarding homeschooling, I’ve seen both extremes – my extended family loves sharing their experiences on social media. One cousin and her husband are college educated (she in education, he in engineering); while the husband works outside the home, both have an active role in the kids’ education, especially when it comes to field trips (often taken with other groups of homeschooled kids). All the kids seem to be well-adjusted, bright, and enthusiastic about their school work. Another cousin is expected to homeschool the kids on her own, as this is viewed as a woman’s job per her religion. She has some kind of post-high school nursing education, but I’m not sure what level (if any) she achieved. (Per her religion, it’s very selfish for a woman to pursue higher education instead of getting married and starting a family.) Her children don’t have much enthusiasm for their school work, and have a borderline hatred of math in particular. As far as I can tell, she’s using state-approved literature to teach them instead of some of the heavily Christian-centric homeschool literature I’ve seen elsewhere. (Her history selections seem a tad biased though.)
Heavens no…that’s how they form their own opinions!
I did some homeschooling (California). The guidelines were pretty dang strict. You had to have a licensed teacher/supervisor to review all your kid’s work. You could use a purchased curriculum or make up your own but you had to produce a body of work, and come to regular parent-supervisor meetings. This might have just been my county. There was an excellent public school program supporting homeschooling – the supervisor had “enrichment” activities for drop-ins a couple days a week, there were field trips etc.
My experience was that most of the homeschooling parents simply thought the public school system was horribly inadequate (quite true, CA has defunded schools steadily since the 1970’s). Some were hippies, some were evangelicals, but the ones I met were no more crazy than the general populace.
My husband’s cousin home-schooled her kids and according to my MIL, they did really well and they’re now all successful adults. I asked my daughter if she considered it for her daughter, since she taught for 10 years, but she thinks the social aspect of school is very important. Plus with 2 engineers and a former teacher in the family, the kid will have enrichment at home, whether she wants it or not!
Around here it is very rarely a situation where educated parents feel that the local school system is inadequate and they could do better.
The primary homeschooling types here (Texas) are evangelical/fundamentalist types who look at the public schools’ toleration of things like LGBTQ students, and the general school system refusal to take a moral stand on things like premarital sex and teen pregnancy as endorsements of those things. They’re worried that their kids will somehow be warped by all this, etc… so they keep them home. I guess the whole plan is to keep them in a nice little churchy bubble so that they never really have to interact with the wider world, except peripherally, even as adults.
