home schooling good or bad???

Great Debates
41

Subjective evidence cite:

I guess it depends entirely upon enviroment, so my experiences are limited to a small spectrum of homeschoolers. I have known exactly 6 homeschoolers in my life. Let me explain where I get my real world experience.

I am not a college graduate, I work in a factory, and have worked in several. A few warehouses as well. So my point of view is coming from the common man, the dirty, smelly kind that wears wife beaters, and thinks that to wear clothing one has to perform the duties it is named after. Much of what I will share with you is not hyperbole, it is FACT based of my asessment of these people from my conversations with them and my limited knowledge of human pyschology.

For the record, we are obviously not talking about the worldly, intelligent and EDUCATED type of people, because they don’t make up the whole world. I cannot speak for those that are in the higher eschelons of society and think rationaly and logically and can teach kids well. Cite:

Bolding mine. The unwashed, uneducated masses still outnumber the washed, reasonable ones. (joke, btw) Unless you count a high school degree, which in my experience doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on education in people I have worked around. Since we live in a democracy if those 74% people want something changed, even if it is stupid, illogical, and not something an educated person would rally behind, it will get done: why? Because Mr. Politician wants to get re-elected.

Would you like some personality types of the uneducated people I work with? Here is just a sample, and some new ones from what I put before:

*Creationism is a pretty generally accepted thing, I would take a guess that 6 out of 10 people I have talked to believe in this whole-heartedly. The older people tend to think Evil-ution is a tool of satan, and the younger ones is what mostly comprises those that know more of the scientific method.

*Rich people are bad, all money should be given to them. (hyperbole, but very close to the mark)

*People should be hanged in the street for even simple crimes, they say that this would decrease crime rates, and history proves this. :rolleyes: (almost unanimous judging fromt the reactions in the break room)

*Blacks and mexicans should be deported, only the white man is worth living, and all non-americans are not really people. (many people suggest this, a surprisingly common opinon.)

*The whole wife beating, male cheavenstic (sp?) thing.

The list goes on and on. It frightens me, and thinking that some of these people want to raise their kids believing the same tripe scares me even more.

So, maybe the 95% figure was off, but I would bet money and probably go so far as to bet my life that 95% of those 74% that only have their highschool diploma fit my haphazzard guess.

42

While the most common reasons for homeschooling used to be moral and religious, that’s changing. In 1999, only 38.4 percent included “religious reasons” for why they were homeschooling. While that’s still scarily high, it’s no longer the primary reason. The current most cited reason is “Can give child better education at home”, which is given by 48.9 percent of those surveyed.

Source:
*Report: Homeschooling in the United States: 1999
National Center for Education Statistics (part of the Department of Education)
*

43

DMC, thanks for the study reference. It’s nice to see a study not conducted by an entity directly involved in promoting homeschooling or homeschooling materials.

Also, for the convenience of others, the report is at this URL: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/HomeSchool/. Epithemus, you might especially want to look at it, as it speaks directly to some of your assertions about the educational levels of homeschooling parents.

44

I think that a lot of home schoolers just strike me as isolationist, anti-social and paranoid. I once knew a young woman who had been homeschooled her entire life so that her father could molest her without fear that she would tell any teachers or social workers. This same father was also a rabid fundamentalist and hardcore creationist. When she turned eighteen, this girl was married off in an arranged wedding to another member of the family’s closed little church community. She ran away from this guy shortly afterward and filed for an annulment. Because she had done this partly at the urging of my roomate at (who worked with her and had become a sort of illicit friend) and to a lesser degree myself, we were, for a short time, subjected to threatening phone calls, vandalized cars and letters to our employers accusing us of being “Satanists.”

I know that this situation is not indicative of homeschooling, but I am disturbed by any system which would permit this kind of isolation, brainwashing and abuse of children by an unsupervised fringe community. For this reason, I would favor a tightly regulated system for home schoolers which included not just academic testing but also some sort of regular psychological evaluations. I would also like to see a law that requires the teaching of evolution by home schoolers. Teaching creationism as fact is no different than teaching that 2+2=5. Education should not be polluted by mythology even at home.

45

Hmmm… I went to public school and was too afraid of my father to ever tell the teachers about the abuse in our home. It isnt homeschooling but bad parenting that is the problem there Diogenes.

I would like to send my daughter to private school but so far the only ones I’ve found are religiously affiliated and so we started to consider home schooling.

Crappy parents are going to screw up their kids no matter what… don’t wreck it for the parents who actually can and do homeschool better than the school system can :slight_smile:

46

KellyM, I see where you’re coming from, but as a homeschooled kid…who has met dozens of other homeschooled kids…my beef with homeschooling to shield your kid from The Evil People is what it does to the kid when he/she eventually encounters them anyway.

I was homeschooled for educational and religious reasons…and I was as naive as a newborn lamb when I got my first job at 17. I had a lot of hard-headed opinions and no real reason for them; my only explanation for any of my beliefs was “Because Dad said so.” I’d never had to defend my beliefs, or even rationalize them; for a lot of people, I was a sitting duck.

Parents who shelter their kid to the extent that I was sheltered may be doing it for the right reasons, but I think they’re doing their kids a disservice. Your kids are going to run into hostility, negativity, disagreement, etc., at some point, regardless of your efforts. It is better to introduce them to it gradually than to give them the complete shell-shock I experienced…at least in my opinion. It is also better to give your kids the option to develop their own opinions–which means exposing them to other peoples’ opinions/lifestyles/beliefs, even when negative–than to smother them only in your own. Encountering people who are nothing like yourself, in any way, can only be good for you in the long run. It helps you develop character, and helps you define who you are, and figure out what you really believe…not just what you were spoon-fed.

I am not saying that all homeschooled kids will be as wide-eyed as I was…my point is that anyone who homeschools their kids in order to shield them is just delaying the inevitable. IMO, that is the wrong motivation for homeschooling them.

47

Thanks for the link KellyM, but I only have this problem with it.

It doesn’t list the education levels or an average of the parents. A higher educational attainment in this case can mean a vo-tech school. Or an associates degree in underwater basketweaving.

The same goes for the claim that the majority of homeschooling parents choose it because they want to give their kids a better education at home. I am sure many parents say this, but it does not mean that they actually have what it takes to teach their kids better.

Take me for instance. In two years I will have an associates degree. (crosses fingers) Say I have a kid, and decide to homeschool him, to give him a “better education” not only am I suggesting that I am smarter and better educated, and thus better equiped than teachers in schools that have bachelors in education, and could be in many cases my superior when it comes to teaching. Would you want me to teach your kids? With my poor grammar (do you think 2 years alone will fix it?) teaching english, my Algebra I background (got a c in the class, don’t remember much more than that) teaching your child calculus? Do you want me teaching your child science when my background is limited, art when I cannot draw or paint, music when I break glass when I whistle?

Let me as you this- Do you REALLY think that you are so much smarter and better equiped than a board of educated and intelligent people that set cirriculums and hire teachers that teach a subject year after year and over the years have gotten down the knack for it? Now, take into consideration that YOU are probably in the 98th percentile on the IQ chart, have a varied background and are probably knowledgable in many areas. So, think this next question through-

Do you think the AVERAGE person (as in below YOU PEOPLE in intelligence) has what it takes to ACTUALLY give a better education? Sure, they may BELIEVE they are giving a better education, but are they really?

48

But I understand that 2+2 does equal 5, for very large values of 2. :stuck_out_tongue: Anyway, one of the main beefs of a lot of homeschoolers is that they don’t want the government involved in their lives like that (and that goes for the lefty ones as well), and that the government in fact has no right to take over their children’s education against their will. It’s unAmerican, unconstitutional, and so on. So you would have quite a fight on your hands from both sides of the political spectrum, because the whole point is to get away from ‘tightly regulated’ government systems and be (gasp!) independent and (gasp!) free.

Plenty of parents teach creationism as fact whether their kids go to public school or not; they just tell the kids not to believe the teachers. Plenty of parents abuse their children whether they homeschool or not. Many parents homeschool in order to expose their children to more of the world, not less. Or to help their children become real thinkers and truthseekers instead of regurgitators, or to give them better preparation for life than the public schools can or do. There are not a lot of valid generalizations for homeschoolers; they are all over the place philosophically.

–Does anyone else find it really interesting that the interests and …er, hobbies, for lack of a better word at the moment…, of hard-core leftist hippie types and conservative Christian types coincide more often than one might expect? Homeschooling is one example, and so is the living-off-the-land, grow-what-you-eat philosophy. They do it differently, but wind up allies. It’s interesting to me.

49

I’ve met plenty of 17 year olds in the same boat, and most of them weren’t homeschooled. Most public schools don’t force you to challenge your own beliefs because they feel it’s the job of your parents to do so. Schools that try to force students to form their own opinions, more often than not, get in trouble with parents who want their children to hold certain opinions and not have them challenged.

In any case, it is my intent to shield my child from bullies and tinpot dictators – and, unfortunately, that describes a substantial proportion of the population of public school teachers and administrators. Our unusual family situation places our child at exceptionally high risk to being bullied and teased in early elementary school, and I have no intention of putting my child’s in harm’s way because of the ignorance and general insensitivity of the general population.

50

Land of the Free. Let’s think about that phrase for a while. Free, as in liberty to do what one thinks best. We even have a few documents and institutions that were designed to ensure freedom. I am quite pleased that regular psychological evaluations of children against the will of the parents, have been ruled a no go unless there is evidence that a child is a danger to himself or others or has been found to be a victim of a crime, including sexual or physical abuse.

Why should we require parents to turn over their children over to the state for education? What’s next requiring them to be turned over to a state run creche so they can’t do damage in the most formative years? Repeatedly, public schools have failed to educate or even provide safety for the students in their charge. What makes you think that we should have stricter requrements for parents educating their own children than we do for public schools?

Permit islolation? If we did not allow such isolation, how would the country have been settled?

51

Uh, dear, yes, it does. There’s an extensive discussion of the educational attainment of parents in the full report (see table 3 on page 7; warning: PDF). The report noted that educational attainment in homeschooling parents is higher than that of nonhomeschooling parents. The table shows that 47% of homeschooling parents have at least a bachelor’s degree (as opposed to 36% of nonhomeschooling parents).

52

Well, land of the free is a great ideology, but it just doesn’t carry over in real life. Too many people have their own ideas of how things should be, and true freedom is only anarchy.

Laws happen, which limit MY freedom and others that feel the same way. My dream of someday being able to get a heart transplant, or have my liver switched out by the miracle of organ growing has been shattered because of the lack of reason and poor education of society. Society that MAKES LAWS THAT CAN RESTRICT MY OWN FREEDOM. Or how I see my freedom. So yes, I have a vested interest in how others teach their kids, and I think a goverment and society combined has a perfect right to regulate education. Those kids will grow up and with the education they recieved help shape who they will be and how they will help shape the future of this country. A country I do like living in, and is a big part of my life.

And I don’t think saying homeschooling should have regulations is the same thing as saying they should have stricter regulations than public schools. The same regulations that is all.

53

Ahh, missed that, thanks.

54

KellyM and I are in the 99.5 percentile. My husband is far better than any other person that I have ever witnessed at teaching children. And yes, I think the 3 of us can do better for our child than a bunch of educators that by needs be must focus on the needs of the many.

My ancestors and cousins did not risk their lives designing and defending the institutions that make this the land of the free because it was a nice idea in theory, but impractical in practice. My dad did not spend 23 years of his life defending the constitution because the writing is pretty and it has a nice turn of phrase, but rather because he believed in the land of the free. Yes, liberty is curtailed in some ways for society to function, but it should not do so in absence of clear evidence that not doing so will harm others.

There are already laws that say that if children show evidence of being harmed by educational neglect, then they will come under state scrutiny. There is no need of forcing a regulatory structure on homeschoolers, especially when the state has not figured out how to do so sucessfully even in the educational system they have designed.

55

There’s a few things going on here. First, teachers are not all that well educated. (Spend some time around education students and you’ll see what I mean.) Second, you will know your student far better than any teacher teaching 20 to 30 other students at the same time could possibly know. You will be much more able to teach to the specific strengths and weaknesses of your child than a general population public school teacher (who must teach to the average student in the class). This advantage is so great in terms of the ability to educate that one child that it often dwarfs the limitations of the parent’s skill or knowledge.

What truly matters is how committed the parent is to teaching the child. There is no effective test for committment. More significantly, the educational attainment of parents is not a good proxy for committment.

The fact that you are aware of your weaknesses leads me to believe that you will make a decision that takes those weaknesses into account. I’m not going to try to teach my child art because I suck at it. I’ll be glad to let my girlfriend do that – and there’s no way I’m letting her teach her how to sing. Homeschooling doesn’t mean that you can’t use outside resources to fill gaps in the parents’ knowledge or competency.

Yes, I do. And i think Forrest Gump would probably do a better job, too. Have you ever watched a school board deliberate? Dealt with school administrators? They’re not superintelligent shades of blue. They’re politicians, of the most petty kind; almost every decision is weighted not to benefit the education of children in the district, but instead to insure their reelection or reappointment.

56

Bwahahaha! That’s a very funny statement. Wow. Also your assumption that teachers are all well-educated and intelligent–some are, and some are most obviously not. Otherwise, what Kelly said pretty much covers what I would have said, so I won’t repeat it.

57

What about the child’s freedom? What about allowing a child the freedom to be a part of society instead of being isolated from anyone who might say something which would contradict the parents’ carefully programmed worldview? I’m not saying that all, or even most home schoolers do this, I but I know for a fact that a lot of them do. I think that society has an obligation to make sure that home schooled kids are thriving psychologically as well as academically. Kids in schools have a chance to be observed and monitored by teachers and counsellors. There is at least a chance that an abused kid can be be recognized, or tell someone or have some chance of rescue. There is no chance of this happening if the kid is never permitted to have contact with his/her social environment.

I’m not saying that kids should be “turned over” to the government but that we need a consistent standard for what constitutes a legal “education.” We don’t think it’s an imposition to require home schoolers to teach proper spelling and arithmetic, so why isn’t it ok to require accurate science. If parents want to teach creationist nonsense in addition to proper biology, including evolutionary theory, then that is their business, but the kid should damn well be able to correctly answer questions on a test about the age of the Earth, basic evolution and the like.

58

http://www.politicalusa.com/columnists/andersen/andersen_027.htm

And these are the highly competent teachers we are expected to entrust our children to?

Diogenes the Cynic: do you also support the “child’s freedom” to choose NOT to go to public school? If the child wants to be homeschooled, will you force a parent to stay home and teach the child? Since when did we let children have complete control over their lives?

And why do you insist that homeschooling necessarily equates to isolation? The evidence is to the contrary: homeschooled children are involved in more community activities, on average, than nonhomeschooled children.

And I think it’s pointless to try to claim that parents have to teach evolution until we can get teachers who are competent to teach it themselves. Science instruction in the public schools is a shambles. I and my friends have a long list of “stupid things my science teacher told me” jokes.

59

And I should point out that I and my friends generally went to some of the best schools in the country. I went to a top-flight public school in Indiana, rated one of the best in the country. And one of the friends (and the one with some of the best jokes) went to an exclusive science magnet school in Illinois.

60

I don’t think that home schooling automatically equates to isolation, only that I have observed first hand that it can. I don’t want to provide a legal sanctum for parents who would want to isolate their kids. I am not arguing against home schooling, per se, I am only quibbling about supervision.

There are teachers who don’t know spelling or history either, this does not mean that we should allow home schoolers to teach these things any way they want. Deliberately teaching children things which are demonstrably and patently false (as creationism is) should not be accepted as “education.”