Public vs. private vs. homeschooling

Great Debates
41

Actually, I think schools do a piss-poor job of teaching diversity. They stick a kid in a room full of people the exact same age as he is, who all come from the same neighborhood, who are all reading the same books (“Special” children are removed). Save for the occasional guest speaker, all of the adults they come in contact with are professional educators, who (by mandate) themselves have very similar educational backgrounds, accept a whole host of mandated pedagogical preactices and philosophies, and teach a heavily-mandated curriculum.

You call this diversity?

42

My ex-boyfriend was homeschooled for several years. He occasionally tells a story about his mother talking to a local school administrator (I think for some curriculum approval work or something) who said something to the effect of, “Oh, your sons must have wonderful social skills. We just don’t have the resources to teach that.”

Whenever I hear the ‘homeschooled kids are likely to be socially stunted’ comments, I think of that. (And I remember the toxic social environments I was exposed to, as well, and recognise that there’s some large truth to the administrator’s comment.)

(Said ex-boyfriend did something like the last two years of high school in the public school system. He was tested on what he needed to know, told he was behind on his history, and spent a while reading relevant books to catch up. Both of his parents were well-equipped to teach – his father was a professor – and they kept their kids involved in plenty of community activity as well.)

43

I know I’ve seen that stat repeated somewhere. That’s why two extreme fundie colleges (Bob Jones, and Pensecola Christian College) can make a HUGE killing on selling homeschool materials.
Yeah, there are folks who are fairly libral who homeschool…but it DOES seem like a fair percentage of the fundies who homeschool, are doing it b/c OH THE HORROR…THE SECULAR WORLD IS OF SATAN! These are families where EVERYTHING has to be specificly “Christian” or it’s teh EVIL!
In short they really want to shelter their kids from the WORLD.

44

I went to public school and I didn’t receive any beneficial socialization. I don’t see learning the social norm as a worthwhile requirement if the norm is loud, vapid, ignorant and sometimes belligerent. If it is worthwhile, they can pick it up in college. If the unique segments of society you refer to are the spectacles I see on daytime court shows, my interaction with the folk I envision showing up on there (whom I really forgot existed) wasn’t of much benefit. The social environment is chaotic but generic, (you could probably get the message in a day or two) and it’s part of the reason for the low educational quality.

45

I send my kids to a Catholic school, even though we have a great public school system. I send them because it reinforces our background. There is more discipline, and a higher standard of behavior, ethics and academic excellence. It is also a smaller school, where everyone knows each other, knows the families. It’s nice being able to have a Christmas tree instead of “Winter festival” time. Uniforms are the greatest. Am I trying to insulate my children? Yes, to a certain extent, I am. When I talk to other mothers, and listen to them talk about 12 year olds cutting themselves and drinking and having boyfriends, and I look at my daughter and her friends, yes, I am glad to be able to insulate her a little. I am a product of public schools, and was underserved. In addition I was exposed to plenty of inappropriate things at a young age. Are you going to have to learn to get along in the big bad world? Yep, unless you’re Amish, or completely isolated, you will. Do you need to start learning these things at a very young age? Nope. Part of my job as a parent is to protect my children. Is public school the agent of Satan? Um, nope. But as a small school, we have more control and accountability. We’re required to volunteer.

On homeschooling- I know quite a few homeschoolers. Some are fundies, (and yes, they can be quite scary,) some are granola eating tree huggers, some are former teachers, some are just plain odd, and some are people trying to insulate their children from the big bad world in every way. Like anything, it depends on the parents, the kids, the environment, and the motivations. I do think however, with homeschooling becoming more prevalent, the requirements of the local public school services that must be provided, and the vast resources on the 'net, that homeschooling is a viable alternative for many.

46

Could you be more specific?

47

Only in certain instances. And as the parent of a Special Ed child, I can say that there are times when it’s best if my daughter is in a stand-alone classroom. As to “from the same neighborhood,” that may be true in elementary school, but by the time that kids get to middle and/or high school, they are going to be interacting with kids from all over their area.

Who else would you prefer they interact with while at school?

Compared to what they get in a homeschooling situation? Yeah. And what’s more, it is pretty diverse to anyone who doesn’t have some sort of axe to grind about public schools.

48

See the link.

49

It’s not about having an axe to grind…it’s about wanting to be the one who decides what your children are exposed to, and at what age. It is about understanding that, while the public schools are supposed to be for everyone, they are much better at teaching certain sets of values than others, and that those values may or may not be in line with what a parent may prefer their child to learn. Public schools are terrific for people who agree with what is taught.

Of course, all schools need to reach certain standards academically. IMO, the public school standards in my community are too low. Don’t I have the right…and the obligation, for that matter, to try to get my children a better education if I can?

50

Frankly doing something other than being at school. Failing that, I’d prefer they spend time around adults of all sorts. Certainly they can be around adults who are knowledgable in whatever subject is being taught; they can also be around all sorts of other adults for all sorts of other reasons.

Isn’t this rather circular? I explain why I’m not impressed with mandatory public schooling, and you exclaim that nobody would think that except someone who is not impressed with mandatory public schooling? :dubious:

If by “axe to grind” you mean some sort of personal beef, that is not the case. I am the product of various unexceptional public schools, except for 1 1/2 years of grammar school and one semester of High School spent in private religious schools (at the latter of which I was told that I was “sent by Satan.”) I have never been formally homeschooled.

51

There seem to be a lot of undefined terms, as well as prejudices about various forms of school - some pro, some con - and stereotyping going on here. Which is understandable. Most of us grow up knowing one form of schooling well, and the others are shrouded in a mystique, tales of their horrors or wonders which we never get to verify. Added to that, all three labels: private, public and homeschool, cover a HUGE variety of educational options, and what’s “good” in one city for one student may be horrid for someone else somewhere else.

And THAT, BrainGlutton, is why I think we need to keep all our options open. I live in Chicago, and we have pretty much every option (theoretically) that one could fathom: crappy public schools, slightly less crappy public schools, Charter schools, Magnet schools (Some good, some crappier than their neighborhood public), crappy Catholic schools, decent Catholic schools, Jewish schools (I know nothing of their crappiness or not), Waldorf schools (good for the right student, horrid for the wrong), Homeschool Groups, Homeschool Individuals, Unschooling…

It’s possible to “Homeschool” and do absolutely nothing but go to the museum twice a year. It’s possible to Homeschool using real life: teach fractions while cooking dinner and investing by actually investing and history by visiting battle sites or to Homeschool out of books. It’s possible to Homeschool and have a set curriculum purchased from a Christian school, or found on-line, or copycatted from the state. You can Homeschool as the mood strikes, or with set hours in a special room in your house. It’s possible to go out once, twice, or seven days a week to museums and galleries and printing presses and radio stations and research labs and historic villages and nursing homes to interview and learn from people who do stuff or lived stuff, or you can teach everything out of an outdated book. You can (depending on the state), mimic the local school and have your kid tested thrice yearly to keep him on even ground with his peers, or you can let him focus all his attention on physics and never learn to write a sentence. You can shelter him from personal relationships, or you can encourage him to join athletic teams, plays, choirs, school dances, student government, chess club - any extracurricular open to a school student is open to a homeschooled student. You can teach everything yourself, or send the kid to a school for chemistry lab, or algebra, or whatever you can’t handle on your own.

The reason it’s important to leave homeschooling as an option in our education system is that, for some kids, it’s the only good option. For others, it’s horrid (and this depends on the family as much as the student.) Am I happy that some rock-headed fundamentalist can teach their kids that evolution is bullshit and women are the source of evil and God sent AIDS to punish us for gay sex? No, I’m not. But if I want to preserve my rights, I have to ensure theirs. If I want to ensure a good education for my kids in a school district overrun by gangs, teen pregnancy and “Juicy” ass-pants on 10 year olds (not to mention outdated textbooks, school supply shortages and teachers who literally sleep through their class periods), AND I don’t want to send him to a Catholic school where he has to attend mass AND I think he’s a terrible candidate for Waldorf (and I don’t have a spare $150,000 in my pocket) - well, I want to preserve my right to teach him at home.

The freedoms we have in this country can all be used for good or ill. I’ll fight to protect them on a legal level, and try to work to reduce the ill on a social level.

52

But teachers are knowledgeable adults. As to not being in school at all, well, we clearly have different ideas about what is a workable educational system. And they wind up around other adults for other reasons when they’re not in school. Seems to me that with the exception of you wanting kids to be anywhere besides school, your desires are being met.

Except that your reasons for not being impressed simply aren’t true. The only point made that I didn’t address was:

What educational background would you prefer educators to have? Since it appears that you’re displeased (not impressed, whatever) with the status quo?

Well, it appears to me that you have quite a beef. Personal? Not necessarily. Hell, I was also educated at public schools that were decidedly less than impressive. Particularly when compared to the kids I knew who went to Catholic school. Seems, though, that you came out of it really pissed at public schools, whereas I want to improve them. Different strokes, eh?

53

There are all sorts of competing pedagogues that are anathema in the mainstream American school system. Rote learning is out. Repetition is out. Spelling and handwriting are so far out they’re invisible (my kid hasn’t had a spelling or handwriting course since second grade, and it shows.) Phonics goes in and out. Whole learning, Lab learning, book learning. More and more, schools are limiting not only content of what’s taught, but pedagogy - HOW things are taught. If your kid doesn’t learn well by those methods, he’s fucked. I’d prefer more flexibility and variety within the system, but I don’t think the level of flexibility and variety that would be optimal is possible within the system.

As for who else should be teaching, I think people with experience in the field should be teaching. If I want my kid to understand the assembly line model of production, we can read about it, sure. But how 'bout we go see an assembly line? Talk to a plant manager and maybe someone who stuffs widgets in boxes 10 hours a day. Go to a nursing home and talk to a guy who worked for Ford back in the day. Talk to the engineer who designed the machines on the line and find out what needs he had to meet and how he did it. Talk to a guy in the unemployment office who’s trying to find jobs for 100 people that automated line put out of work.

If it’s done right, planned right and followed through right, I’m confident that my kid will come out of that experience knowing a hell of a lot more about physics, math, marketing, ethics, employment issues and the history of automation than a kid stuck in a history class who reads one line in a social studies book saying that Henry Ford is responsible for implementing the first assembly line in America.

And I don’t think it’s possible to do that “right” with 30 students, outdated texts, and no money for field trips.

Teachers are knowledgeable adults, sure. But how can we possibly assume that they’re the most knowledgeable adults in every single subject they’re expected to teach, or that their teaching methods will be equally as effective for thousands of students over their tenures?

If I decide to homeschool, I won’t expect myself to be an expert at everything - my job will be to figure out who is and how we can learn from them. I can be more flexible with my one or two or five students than I can with 30, and I can fund the education of one or two, but I couldn’t afford to send a whole classroom to the assembly line every week.

54

Knowledgeable about a certain subject, yes … namely “education” as taught by wherever it was they got their education degree from. (and Education programs tend to draw the dimmest bulbs, to boot)

That’s just the point. I think we need a lot less “system.” Literacy rates in the US today are lower than they were before we had mandatory schooling. That’s the “system” at work.

I’d also argue that we have less independant thought, less self-determination, and less intellectual curiosity because of the “system.” Those are values I hold important, and I am very far from being the first person to think that mandatory schooling supresses them; I could trot out a dozen quotes from famous educators saying the same thing.

IOW, you don’t share my values, and/or you do think schools teach them. Fine for you. If the system works for you and your kids, god bless ye.

I came in primarily because people were saying foolish things about why others choose to opt out of the system, not to try to convince someone of what I think. I’m certainly not interested in, say, using force to compel someone else’s kids to go to my school and learn the curriculum I assign them.

If we must have full-time professional educators, I’d prefer their education be in the subject at hand, not in “education.”

Not at all. I did not begin to have strong feelings on the matter until I became a teacher.

55

This is really the bottom line for me. If a person happens to agree with what the public schools teach, and how they teach it, then that is terrific. If you don’t, then you simply have to have other options.

WhyNot’s last post on this was great…excellent examples of where out-of-school learning can be beneficial, but the public schools simply can’t accomodate.

I have an acquaintance who homeschools because they live on a working farm and grow their own food. The believe that learning how to do this should absolutely be an integral part of their children’s education. How else are they going to teach this, if not at home, on the farm?

56

Well, more flexibility would be a good thing. And for the record, my daughter is a freshman in high school (sonuvabitch but I’m old) and will have a spelling test today. I, personally, never had a handwriting course. As to the different ways of teaching, yes, it can be confusing and hard to follow. That said, though, I have spent an awful lot of time in the corporate world, and have been expected to adapt to a new way of doing things any number of times. When the new boss is decidedly different than the old boss, you adapt. I wish like hell that there existed a single way that worked for everyone in regards teaching. Decent public schools are looking for ways that work best for most and trying to find ways to work with students who have different learning styles.

As a matter of fact, back in the mists of yesterday evening when this thread started, reference was made to Milton Friedman and his treatise on vouchers which was written back in 1955, when schools flatly taught the way that they taught, and if your child learned differently, well, tough shit. He could either learn the way that the course was taught or get the hell over himself. Or go piss away his time in shop class. The fact that public schools are trying to work within the framework established speaks to their credit, I think.

I can only assume that you’re speaking about kids at the middle or high school level. And in my district, there are guest speakers who have experience in the field.

Nor do I. But if you want smaller class sizes, newer texts and field trips, then the schools need funds to do those things. As a board member whose district is seeking a levy increase hopefully as soon as April, I can tell you that my district has done its damnedest to keep class sizes respectable, texts updated and leave enough money for the kids to see the rest of the world. And we’re still looking at a pretty bleak picture inre funding.

In the beginning of this, it sounds like you’re referring to elementary ed, where teachers are expected to teach a wide variety of subjects. Do you honestly think that an engineer would do better? An assembly line worker? A physicist? And how can you assume that their teaching methods will be equally as effective for thousands of students over their tenures? Sounds frightfully like the assumption made for those who are teachers at present. Well, to me anyway.

And if you decide to homeschool, it sounds like you’ll do an exemplary job. As to flexibility and affordability, well, I’ve already touched on that.

57

Agreed. But that is a matter of policy, not freedom. If any state of the Union decided all children must attend public schools and nothing else could substitute – no private schools, no homeschooling, except as supplements to public education rather than alternatives to it – that would probably be a bad idea, but it would be neither unconstitutional nor unjust.

58

Well, our neighborhood is damn diverse. The cool thing is that we had no idea of the religion or cultural background of lots of my daughter’s friends until we met them. It made absolutely no difference to her. She also had a trans-gendered teacher, who she loved, and who drove some of the Mormon parents batty. (But quietly batty, to their credit.) She and her boyfriend shared a limo to the prom with a boy and his boyfriend. Yeah, I live in the Bay Area, that hotbed of liberal evil, but I think the schools are doing okay.

If you mean lack of diversity through lack of electives, then I agree. One or two more funded periods a day would give the kids and the school a lot more leeway to explore stuff beyond the basics. But we couldn’t be near the bottom of the country for school funding if that happened.

59

When the proponents of public school insist that children will not learn about (fill in the blank) if they are taught at home by those narrow minded fundamentalists I have some reservations. I have similar reservations when fundamentalists suggest that public school is an appropriate venue to have the core values of Christian faith taught.

My counter argument to both groups generally goes like this: Did you go to public school? Can you factor a polynomial? What conflict was ended by the Treaty of Ghent? If you went to public school, you studied both of those subjects, and should know the answer. Generally, people don’t know. The problem is not that home schooling is bad, the problem is that public schooling is far short of even bad. To those who want faith to be taught in school, remember, if you do, the NEA is your shepherd. To those who don’t perhaps you should check out how well your kids have learned the things you thought they were being taught.

Public school is in a disgusting state in the US. People who notice it want to get their kids out of it. If you think social needs are important enough to make public school a societal necessity, perhaps you should campaign to give public school the same level of importance as say, the “War on terror.” By “same level of importance” of course, I mean same level of funding, since in terms of government, care about means spend money on.

Offer “Biology according to Genesis” as an elective replacement for Biology. Offer “History according to Genesis” as an elective. Offer the same subjects “according to the Koran” and “According to Bob Marley” Getting into higher education might be compromised by those choices, but that is a decision to be left to the parent. However, plain or ordinary Biology, or perhaps “Biology according to godless atheists” needs to be offered to people who want to actually study biology in later life. Children will learn the absurdity as well, and that is a priceless lesson.

Tris

60

Wow! You must have been an absolute hoot around the teachers lounge.

Not that I’m necessarily doubting you, but where did this come from?

And in certain respects, I would very probably agree with you. And I assure that I could go quote for quote with you as long as you so desire. Offhand, I don’t see that accomplishing a whole helluva lot.

Horseshit, Sparky. That particular point came in rebuttal to the following from you:

And I pointed out to you not only that you are wrong about the ridiculously hyperbolic points that you attempted to make, but specifics where you are wrong. Do I share your values? It appears I don’t. Are you speaking any semblance of truth in the above? No. And your link sounds like precisely the sort of pissing and moaning that you are doing. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. Well, save your unworkable ideas of what schooling should consist of. Which is actually less than nothing.

And on that particular point, we agree in totality.

Are you referring to elementary ed? Or higher ed? Because teachers at the middle or high school level are (usually, there are exceptions to every rule) educated in the subject at hand. As well as education.

Again, an absolute joy at faculty meetings and suchlike.