I almost never look into Great Debates because the argument gives me indigestion (urp), but I would very much like to hear Dopers discuss the merits of homeschooling vs. private education vs. government sponsored education. This issue was brought to my mind by the recent death of Milton Friedman, the economist who first introduced the idea of school vouchers. Here is a short opinion piece he wrote last year:
For a long time, I thought that home schooling was a great idea for gifted children with gifted parents–or even for parents and children of average intelligence who want to avoid the rotten influences of public schools. Now, though, I am starting to think that the socialization one receives in a public school is extremely important. One doesn’t have to conform to the norm, but I think that it is extremely important to be familiar with what the norm is… or the normS. One meets segments of society in public school that one may never have the chance to extensively interact with again. I almost think that the importance of this socialization outweighs the importance of educational quality.
So, can we start a discussion? I don’t have much to add (urp!), but I’d like to read.
I was the product of crappy public schools and went to college with numerous homeschoolers. My opinion on the relative merits is that I think homeschooling should be legal without many (or any) restraints on it from government. It is the parents’ right to determine their children’s education and the state should not interfere. That being said, I don’t think it’s a very good idea from what I saw. While I got a crappy public school education, I did learn valuable lessons about socializing with others outside my family/church and about how to function in the real world, independent of my family. Many homeschoolers I met during college lacked those skills to varying degrees.
However, many of these folks were better educated than I. So what’s important? Smart, maladjusted kids or somewhat uneducated, well-adjusted kids? Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. One of my good friends was home schooled but his parents sent him to classes at the local community college during his high school years. He was very well adjusted, very smart, and he graduated college in 3 years instead of 4. He had the best of both worlds.
Private schools can be great. My husband attended one of them and got an exemplary education. (Quite a few of his fellow students went on to Ivy League schools.)
The private school I attended was another story. It was unaccredited and the education was piss-poor. When I applied to college, the woman I spoke to in admissions actually laughed when I told her where I went to school and said I had to get a GED before I would be considered.
If you ever consider sending your kid to a private school, be sure to do your research beforehand. My parents didn’t and I suffered for it.
I can give some perspective from the home school view. I went to a private school for Kindergarten and 1st grade and then was homeschooled through graduation.
I feel that home schooling was the best option for me for several reasons.
I work better learning at my own speed. Home schooling gave me the flexibility to study at my own level and pace. For example, in 7th grade I tested at between a 7th grade and college freshman level across the various subjects, so I was able to study what was appropriate for my abilities.
I was gay. The school districts in our areas were not at all known for gay friendly. I don’t believe that would have been a good environment for me.
More socialization. Since I wasn’t spending all my time being grouped solely with other kids, I feel that I learned more about socialization with a broad spectrum of people than I would have otherwise.
We also had the freedom to study things that we took an interest in and take ‘field trips’ as we desired rather than being tied to a set course of study. Just because the history book says its time to learn about the American civil war doesn’t mean we have to if we have gotten a passion for the civil rights movement. Of course we would at some point cover the civil war, but it didn’t have to be at the time the book said to.
I’m sure I’ll get back in this topic later on, but there’s a bit of my views on the subject.
in 4rth grade, my kids grades went into a steep nose dive. He stopped doing any work at all, stopped talking with his teacher (a well meaning but woefully in-experianced lady). After lots of meetings and probably criminal mistreatment of my kid by the district they finally tested him and found he had an extremely high IQ and was in the top .3 percent or so. The diagnostician said he needed to be in a differant type of school…that he wouldnt respond to traditional teaching techniques. The next year they put him in a science school and he really took off again. Things were going great.
Then they threw him in a normal school and he cratered. Towards the end he was developing an ulcer and totally shutting down. I wound up having to pull him out and home school him.
He already reads on a college level so I dont bother with reading. His math skills suck, so he works on math much of the time…for history I either give him a book to read or put him in front the history channel. He gets to pick his own science assignments and its usually something concerning physics. after he finishes his school work he usually sits around working on mods for Oblivion or something. I do need to shove him outside more often.
For socialization he comes up to the coffee shop and hangs out with college studensts and high school students. At 13 he can hold a conversation with them better than another 13 year old. So I guess he’s more coffee house schooled than home schooled.
Aren’t most homeschoolers fundamentalists ? And could that be why the google ad is for “Democrats Suck : Theft of income, declining morality and lack of values” ?
Full disclosure: I am a school board member whose daughter is a special ed student.
I would think that the former would be considerably better than the latter.
Basically, if you want to homeschool, that’s great. I understand that for some kids it’s the best thing. Certainly seems like it was for Antinor01. It’s the fundamentalists that Der Trihs mentions that I think are doing their kids a real disservice. Ditto for the private schools like Lissa attended. As to Renob’s experience, well, there certainly are crappy public schools. Just as there are, per my previous points, crappy homeschools and private schools. While I don’t necessarily think that socialization trumps all, I do think that it’s a vitally important aspect of any education.
As to vouchers and Friedman’s enthusiasm for same, it’s an inherently unworkable system unless you choose to dismiss the special education students as well as those who aren’t special ed but aren’t at grade level due to other factors. And as soon as you do that, you’ve managed to recreate the 1955 schools that got Milton’s knickers in a twist. Too, as he says, “The original article was not a reaction to a perceived deficiency in schooling. The quality of schooling in the United States then was far better than it is now. . .” I imagine that back then he was worried about the best and brightest being forced to contend with the kids in the vocational track. Nowadays, from what I’ve personally witnessed, parents aren’t comfortable with their kids having to go to school with those who look different than they do.
Something that was said at a recent gathering of school board members and administrative staff was that the number of people who say that public schools in the US are crap is, if I recall correctly, somewhere around 40ish%. When that’s brought closer to home and they are asked about public schools in their home state, it dropped to around 25%. When things get narrowed down further and they’re asked about public schools in their districts, it further dropped to 15-20%. And these figures have remained at or around these percentages for over forty years. It’s basically like asking someone about Congress and being told that they’re all crooks and should be thrown out on their ears. Yet if you narrow it down, quite often they will tell you that they rather like their local congressperson and intend to vote for him or her. Recent election results notwithstanding.
And this I think is really cool. So long as he understands that he very likely won’t have a whole helluva lot to talk about with his age-appropriate peers and has no problem with that.
I’m considering homeschooling my daughter (who’s not yet 2, so I still have some time to think about it), mostly people the schools around here ARE total crap, GL Wasteful’s point aside. The local high school has a…wait a sec…24% dropout rate and test scores that suck even for a Chicago Public School. We’re jumping through every hoop we can to get WhyKid into one of the best of the CPS schools possible - the one with only a 14% dropout rate. (Yes, Virginia, that was wry humor. 14% still sucks, IMHO.) He is NOT a good candidate for homeschooling - he’s a bit on the lazy side and likes to make teachers the enemy. I don’t need my son to view me that way, I’d like to keep him on my side and remain his parent, not his adversary.
I think if I do homeschool my daughter, I will definitely seek out a homeschool group to ensure the best socialization and education possible. Basically, these work as unofficial, uncredited private schools: the parents teach their strengths (so I could do writing and theater, and let someone else handle algebra) and the kids benefit from small group instruction and flexibility. Plus, there are tons of resources within the public school system that we can still utilize: gyms, athletic teams, libraries, band, etc.
I was going to start a homeschooling thread today!
IMO, to some homeschool parents – possibly a majority – avoiding “socialization” is the whole point! They don’t want their kids exposed to corrupt secular culture.
As a lawyer I once represented a small midwifery center, trying to get a state license for one of their midwives. The head of the center once mentioned to me that a lot of their customers/patients/whatever were people who, as soon as the baby was delivered, shot out the door – before the paperwork for the birth certficate was brought out. Homeschoolers almost certainly. More to the point, they were people who, for religious reasons, wanted to avoid any kind whatsoever of official notice by “Caesar.” No birth certificates, no Social Security cards, presumably no driver’s licences. That was why they went to a midwife instead of a hospital – easier to avoid leaving a paper trail. And that’s just disgusting. WRT to their kids it amounts to child abuse. Imagine trying to grow up in this society under those conditions! Certainly we have a right to privacy, but nobody has a right to be invisible to the state! :mad:
Cardinal and I got into the homeschooling issue (in relation to the United Nations, believe it or not) in this thread. Nothing is more horrifying than people who think homeschooling is an expression of “family autonomy” or, worse, “religious freedom.” :rolleyes:
That said, there might also be good reasons to choose the homeschooling option.
But IMO, most people who make that choice – not all, but most – are completely unfit to educate their own children, if not to raise their own children.
(thinks about saying that great minds think alike)
(waits to see the pile-on first)
Keep the opinions coming. Since so many homeschoolers are fundamentalist Christians, it’s particularly interesting to discuss homeschoolers who aren’t.
I went to public for kindergarten through 3rd grade. It was too easy and under stimulating. I think part of the reason my parents pulled me out of public school was so that I wouldn’t learn the sex ed from the public school point of view. (Instead, they gave me a Dr. James Dobson book… I learned the rest from the neighborhood kids and the internet.)
I was home schooled in 4th grade (my brother was also - he was in 7th grade). My parents decided to home school for 1 year to help us transition from public to private school. My mom worked from home at the time so it all worked out well.
We worked at our own pace. If a subject was easy for us, we quickly did our work and moved on. We did our basic subjects plus music, art and foreign language. There were lots of kids in the neighborhood around our ages so we didn’t miss out on the social life. We were also part of a home schoolers club so we had field trips too.
I went to a small somewhat normal private school associated with a non-denominational church for 5th through 8th. The education was standard, plus Bible class and chapel once a week.
For high school I went to another private school - associated with a charismatic Christian church. I graduated in 2003 so it’s still fresh in my memory. The school was focused more on Jesus and sports than on providing a proper education. To this day, I think I got screwed over on the education my parents worked very hard to pay for. It was a big waste of my time. I think I would’ve learned a lot more at a public school, even if I was exposed to more “worldly” things like sex, drugs and violence.
I have a good friend who homeschools, and she is not a Christian, and is far-left enough to consider herself a socialist. She homeschools because her kids are academically a couple of grades ahead of the other kids their age in the public school, and there is no accelerated program for them. She figured that their socialization would be helped more by joining homeschooling groups and getting them involved in sports and such, than being stuck in a classroom with kids 2 or 3 years older than they are. I also think that a big part of it is that she is super involved in being a mom, and thinks that the close interaction they have as a family and creative learning is better for nurturing their academic drive than sending them to school.
I know other folks who homeschool, and none of them are fundamentalists. Of course, I live in very very liberal area, so my sample is skewed, but my experience is that academics are the driving force behind deciding to homeschool, not religion.
I’ve known dozens of homeshooled kids (including my nephews). I can’t recall any of them where the parents didn’t make a point of having the kids join a community sports team or do something social. Most cities that have large numbers of them have one-day-a-week gatherings so that mom has a few hours a week to be free.
Damn those people. How dare they not share your values?
IMO, you have nothing to support that but bigotry.
I forgot to mention, my parents are fundamentalist. I was raised that way but I don’t share those views anymore. Actually, my high school is what really turned me away from Christianity.
I’m a little curious as to what the actual figures are. I remember in Jesus Camp: The Movie that at one point there was something that claimed that 75% of all homeschooled children are fundamentalists, but I think that figure is a bit high. I’m always willing, though, to have my notions disabused.
It’s not a question of values. People who think “religious freedom” includes the right to homeschool are just flat wrong. After all, no religion is taught in public schools.
I didn’t want to be a part of what I saw going on. From my experience, most Christians are uneducated about life… and maybe that is by choice, to stay away from the “worldly” things.
I didn’t get down with the speaking in tongues and whole view of “this way is the only way”. I never got into any trouble, no partying, drinking, drugs, etc but I think my personal views separated me from most of my peers. I didn’t fit in with the good or the bad kids so I was an invisible loner.
