Question: Who taught her then? Was it the Mom? Did they have any restrictions or reporting requirements? Also were they part of any homeschool networks?
Thing is going back to the OP some would put such tight regulations on it that it would be effectively banned.
And why? Because the news has stories of some crazy parents. it seems like the Harvard professor in the article only knows the bad stories, never the good. She also knows little about the nuts and bolts of it and all the hard work parents put into it. Its much easier to just put your kids on a school bus and let someone else teach them.
Now after all this I’m actually for some basic regulations like reporting to a district and taking some standardized tests.
You aren’t comparing apples to apples here. For the homeschooled child, the penalty is a removal from the homeschool and a placement in the public school. When the public school fails in its mission, the penalty is that they get a redo.
Medical care and education are so vastly different as to not even be comparable. It’s one thing to say that we don’t believe the average person is qualified to diagnose illness or to prescribe medicine and it is yet another to say that the danger of someone not being able to teach elementary subjects is so great as to need an intrusion. We don’t allow adults to prescribe their own medicine.
Yes, but what I am saying is that the simple failure of a GRE is not evidence of abuse unless you are proposing jailing teachers when their students fail a test. I don’t want to see children deprived of an education either, but by and large homeschoolers do far better than those educated in the public schools. It seems as if the focus of this effort is misplaced.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood you, but are you suggesting that parents should not be able to say to their children that, for example, homosexuality is sinful? If not, then perhaps maybe expand on this. If so, that sounds positively 1984.
My primary vocation is education. I care a lot about the subject. I believe in a strong public education system. I was also skeptical about home schooling, but the more I’ve learned about it, the less I object to it outright.
Like I say, as long as we don’t use home schooling and vouchers and other shit as a justification for de-funding public schools, there’s no problem in principle.
The thing is, parents will say that to their children regardless of what the school curriculum says to the contrary. You could centralize the shit out of education (which I’m not necessarily advocating) - that wouldn’t prevent parents from indoctrinating their children. Let’s not design a curriculum with the aim of preventing indoctrination; let’s design it with the aim of presenting a fact-based education to children and then giving them an opportunity to select between explanations the school system offers and those of their parents or those that are achieved through personal experience and reflection. Education is largely experience. The classroom isn’t the only experience we have.
But I think therein lies the rub. I went to the public schools and I’m all in favor of a robust public school system. They have many benefits and I’m not some right wing zealot trying to close them all down.
However, I am also struck by the many failures of the public schools despite the massive, and I mean truly massive amounts of money that we pour into them. The failures are so big that homeschooling and private schools are flourishing (and for the purposes of discussion, I’ll exclude those who send their children to religious schools for a religious education as that “failure” could not possibly be placed on the public schools who have to operate under the Establishment Clause).
Imagine being given something at no additional cost to you but you refuse it. Say, for example, that the city provided taxpayer funded lawn care service at no additional charge. You don’t get a rebate for refusing it.
But despite having the city free lawn care service you have a significant portion of people hiring others to mow their laws (private schools) and many others still mowing their own lawns (homeschooling). If you were the director of the city lawn care service, what would that tell you about your service?
Why should the school system say something contrary? If we are trying to educate and not indoctrinate, then why not just teach the facts without having an opinion on that?
For example, teach about the strides that the gay community has made from mental illness to repeal of sodomy laws to legal gay marriage. Let the students debate their own opinion and if the teacher is asked “Who is right?” or “Is being gay a sin?” or “Is being gay just as normal as being straight?” you tell them that is not up to the school system to have opinions, we are here to teach facts, and it is for you to come up with your own opinions.
It’s not generally the school system’s function to have opinions- but you aren’t looking at it from the other point of view. By “other point of view”, I mean the point of view of the parent who believes that teaching about the strides the gay community has made is contrary to the “fact” that being gay is a sin. Those parents are free to continue to teach their children that being gay is a sin even while the school system is teaching about facts such as the fact that gay marriage is legal.
That my lawn care service didn’t appeal to bigots and those who think that only God botherers should be mowing lawns?
Absolutely. Don’t use it as a justification to de-fund and generally disparage public education.
NOT necessarily that I’m doing it WRONG. It can be just that I do not do it to the *taste *of those residents, and when it comes to education, public health or other public services, the customer is NOT always right.
Plus…
…and will be quite mad that the school dares even tell their child something contrary to their beliefs.
Quite honestly, I’m more respectful of the parents who apply themselves to inculcation of values in the family home and church (including homeschooling), as opposed to School Board members who will bowdlerize the curriculum and expunge the reading list of “sinful” issues for *all *of everyone’s children, seeking to pander.
How about when kids learn at a public school the way to get a good spot on a sports team or the lead role in a school play is how much money their parents give to the booster club or the parents roles on the school board or in the community?
How about how a teacher is supposedly hired to teach say history but in truth, they are hired to coach basketball?
How about when kids see that students that cause trouble are often handed grades just to get them to graduate or not be in the same grade or class the next year?
They’re not comparable in all ways, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to make some comparisons between them.
And we don’t allow adults to bestow their own educational qualifications, either. You can’t just do a bunch of reading on the internet and then legitimately award yourself an academically accredited PhD, any more than you can just do a bunch of reading on the internet and then legitimately prescribe your own medicine.
We do, however, allow adults to provide plenty of everyday medical treatments for themselves and their children in response to everyday health problems, just as we allow adults to undertake plenty of educational tasks for themselves and their children. What we don’t do in the case of medicine is to assume that adults are automatically qualified to be the only providers of needed medical treatments for themselves or their children. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that we shouldn’t assume that adults are automatically qualified to be the only providers of needed educational attainments, either.
:dubious: Have you considered that it “seems” that way to you merely because you know nothing about Dr. Bartholet’s experience and expertise on this subject? By your own choice, mind you: you couldn’t even be bothered to read her paper that has been linked to multiple times in this thread, which makes it very clear that she knows a great deal—far more than you do, in fact—about good stories in homeschooling experience, as well as about the “nuts and bolts” of those endeavors and all the hard work parents put into them.
But if you’d rather cling to the illusion that Dr. Bartholet can’t possibly have adequate “real world” knowledge of this subject because she’s a professional teacher and researcher on it, well, that’s up to you.
It could be argued that incidents like the above teach children very valuable lessons about the realities of the adult world.
First off I want to apologize. I’ve been studying for the GRE and that wasn’t what I meant at all. I meant GED.
Secondly, I think you could draw up a fair system of jail for all. Say a home schooler parents kid fails their GED the parents goes to jail for 10 years (13 school years × 9 months per year). If a public school kid fails their freshman math teach would be responsible for 9 months in jail divided by their total number of students so say 150 or about a day and a half of course that should be split by all of the other teachers so it should be about 3 hours.
Of course this policy would decrease the number of teachers that want to teach in impoverished districts rather than rich ones so long term it wouldn’t have the desired effect. I am all for improving public schools and I think robust testing to determine where the failure points are is essential. A big difference if that the child is removed from an ineffective public school teacher at the end of the school year we aren’t removing kids from ineffective home schoolers.
As for your lawn mowing example. I think its a pretty good one. Even if the public option does a good job some people are going to prefer the have a team of ten people giving their home a golf course like appearance where it it mowed every day and some people sit home and have nothing better to do then spend 40 hours per week on their lawn. Neither of them are a problem and both would pass the standards of the public lawn service. We just need a way to prevent the person who is taking care of their own lawn from growing nothing but dandelions and dirt from making the rest of the neighborhood work harder.
Generally, the accepted way to use studies to bolster your argument is to use relevant excerpts, preferably with a bit of analysis, rather than asking others to do your research for you. Especially as one of them was behind a paywall. $35 isn’t going to break me, but it’s not worth it for 24 hours access to a paper so that I can try to find out what your point is.
This is at least a bit of analysis of the papers that you cited. Thank you.
It doesn’t answer my question as to what your opinion is on the minimum requirements before we allow someone to become a primary educator of their own child, but it does give evidence to your point, that no one has disputed, that arbitrary qualifications are not a clear indicator of better results in the students. I hang out with teachers who complain about spending their summers renewing or expanding their certificates, the opinion that I have come away from these discussions is pretty well summed up in your studies. It may be interesting to share those papers with them and see what they think.
The self selection criteria for those in the studies (the two not behind a paywall anyway) indicated that these were teachers who had some level of experience in teaching, some instruction and certification, even if it was not of a traditional nature. I did not see where they just pulled random people off the street and gave them a classroom, or even 1 on 1 tutoring, which is what we would be doing by having parents homeschool with no requirements or qualifications.
Actually I’m sure that many appreciated your analysis. Thank you.
this is addressed here
You have no obligations whatsoever. We’re just people, talking, trying to make sense of the world.
I did think that, given your firsthand experience, and that it seems as though you turned out alright, that your opinion on the subject to be a valuable data point, which is why I asked for it.
I don’t know that there are any serious proposals that would levy requirements greater than those imposed on public teachers. States vary, quite a bit, so I can certainly see a situation where one state has more requirements to home school than another state has for public teaching, but that’s just a “feature” of our dual federalism, and for policy purposes, any comparisons between requirements of teachers and homeschooling educators should only be considered within a state. (Except, of course, for academic purposes, as studying the varying requirements against student outcomes could give us more data to better guide schools and educators.)
I also think that private schools should have more oversight and requirements than they do, but that’s a whole different thread.
Honestly, I’d say that making sure that the student is well rested and fed probably has far more to do with their academic performance than teacher certifications.
The environment of students and schools is so varied, and such an important part of their performance, that trying to tell what contribution the teacher has made is like trying to measure the breeze of a fan in a hurricane.
Which is at least part of the reason to object to homeschooling with no oversight. At least in a school, their environment is controlled, and they have the ability to be fed, and possibly even protected against abuse.
The idea of insitutional learning has both its benifits and its drawbacks. That we all end up with a shared idea of the universe and reality is a feature, but that nefarious actors can create a distorted reality is quite the danger.
The difference is, is that when Texas meddles with its history books, the whole nation takes notice. What comes of that notice may not be all that useful, but at least we know what is being taught. When people are being taught at home based on the curriculum made by their parents, we have no idea what version of reality that they are getting.
Public teachers are usually also taught one on one skills. Personally, I think that class sizes should be much smaller, and the focus should be on small groups and one on one, rather than trying to teach 32 kids all at the same time.
I do feel that group learning has a number of benefits that are not found in one on one instruction. This is something that some homeschooling groups can offer, but obviously cannot be offered in a one on one parent/student setting.
And you also have the problem that your test subject is expected to eventually become a productive citizen, so you cannot ethically subject them to the kind of rigorous double blind study that would be needed to really eliminate variables and pin down relevant factors.
But, as I stated up thread, making sure that the student is rested, fed, and secure is probably a much larger variable, and one that is hardest to control for.
The state can certainly go too far, but I do see that it has a legitimate and compelling interest in ensuring that children are well cared for and grow up to be adjusted and productive citizens. This goes against a parent’s right to control their child and their upbringing to have them grow up into the sort of adult the parent wants them to be. Most of the time, the state and the parent have the same goal, the same interest in what is best for the child.
Unfortunately, without any sort of imposition on parents, we have no way of knowing how their kids turned out until they are adults. Some sort of imposition should be made.
I know parents who are not qualified to help their kids with their homework, much less teach the material for it. I cannot see turning their child’s education over to them exclusively to have positive results.
What you are saying here is that thee study that has been done is inconclusive, and that it is very unlikely that better studies can be done, given the uncontrollable nature of most of the relevant variables.
I agree that there is much analysis and nuance to be had here, and that is what I was getting at. The OP simply asks if homeschooling should be banned, I think that most of us are in agreement that it should not be. Extending that does ask the question, how should homeschooling be handled, what qualifications and obligations does a parent need to have towards their child’s education? Maybe this thread should only be 3 posts long, and taking up the question of when and where homeschooling is appropriate should get its own, if so, I’m fine with moving this elsewhere.
I do not expect a simple or even static answer to the question. I expect that determining homeschooling requirements will be very complex and changing as things change. But if we cannot even ask the question without being accused of JAQing or looking for a Dunning-Kruger party, then no answer can ever be forthcoming. We have to start somewhere.
You insults aside, I do appreciate your input on this matter. I did not mean to cause you offense, and I have no idea why you chose to take such a hostile stance to exploring what really is the heart of the OP.
Do you really think that this professor based her entire paper on some news stories of crazy parents?
Part of that is because they are massive. There are 56 million public school students. If you have a 99.99% success rate, you are still talking thousands of failed students.
And obviously, anything approaching that rate is not feasible. But, yeah public schools are “one size fits all”, and as we all know, the are many who one size fits all does not fit.
Definitely getting far afield of the OP, but if you want to discuss ways of improving the public school system, I’d be down for such a discussion.
As someone without children, I might also point out that in this analogy, you don’t even get a rebate if you don’t have a lawn. (And, sticking with the analogy, and not reality, you pay the same if you have no lawn, have a little plot of land, or several acres.)
Depends on what you mean by significant. When 97% of the people use your service, and a substantial number of the remaining 3% refuse because they have a different idea as to how they want their yard landscaped than what you offer, what do you think that that tells you?
I’ll agree that teachers should not be talking about sin, but neither should students, in the classroom. These are direct asks for the teacher’s opinion on a matter. The teacher would do poorly if they just answered, but should instead guide the student as well. Keep in mind that school is not just about memorizing facts, it is actually about learning about critical thinking and analysis. So, “Who is right?” You discuss the facts of the matter, explain the damage and hardships that oppressed minorities have to endure, then let them make their own decision as to whether or not oppression is “right”. If you just tell them that oppressing minorities is wrong, then that is a simple answer that will not serve them well when they find themselves asking why oppressing minorities is wrong. I think that a problem we find ourselves in right now is that there were many who were told that bigotry and oppression were wrong, but never why, as it just seemed obvious to those who taught them, and now some of those people are questioning the basis of that premise. You have a good point that the teacher should not just answer these questions as though from unquestionable authority. They are teachers, not clergy.
Your other questions go to what is sin, and what is normal. Should a student ask, “Is being gay a sin?” it should have pretty much the same answer as “Is eating shellfish a sin?” First, you have to determine what is sin. If sin is defined by the bible, then the answer is, “We don’t teach Biblical beliefs in school.” If sin is defined by the harm it does to others, then the answer is, “What harm is someone causing by being gay?”
The question “Is being gay just as normal as being straight?” should have pretty much the same answer as “Is being black just as normal as being white?”
Jail? No, no jail.
But give a Homeschooled kid a test on reading and math, say at 3rd grade. If kids cant pass 2nd grade level, kid cant be homeschooled. Another test @ 5th and 7th. Some science there @7, kid should understand evolution as a basic concept. And the US Constitution.
Hey, k9, my posts were rude and I apologise for that and appreciate the thought your put into yours. It’s an interesting topic and I will put more time into mine as I am able around other obligations.
The homeschooling movement has their very own NRA, the HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association). At first glance, it looks like they simply want to protect your rights to home school your children. Their about page says things like:
I take no issue with any of that. I sort of infer that they are speaking of parents wanting to teach their special needs children in a home environment. Cool.
Now, back to the HSLDA. It turns out that they have their own online academy. It lets you browse their courses, so I checked out the Math section and went from there to the Physics page. Looking through the description sounded like a pretty standard physics class. Then I made my first mistake; I clicked on the official booklist (PDF) link. Turns out there is just one book, “Physics for Christian Schools” by Bob Jones University. What in the fuck is Christian Physics? Is it like particle physics, but only three particles?
Now that I realized what was behind that facade, I knew where to look next, Biology, and it did not disappoint! Below the description they have two links. The first is an intro from the course developer herself, Master Teacher Dr. Kris Mayo. It’s short, so I’ll give you the full transcript:
Okay, they probably are going to skip over that whole evolution thing and focus on dissecting frogs. Then I clicked on the second link, a (3 minutes and 5 seconds long) sample clip from a live class session. HOLY FUCK! Keep in mind that this clip of a discussion is the portion of the entire course that they chose to highlight and share with potential customers. It’s way too fucking inane and insane to try to follow long enough to get a transcript, so choose to view it or not, it’s up to you. If I had to summarize it, it boils down to the likelihood of tossing a bunch of car parts (which were the result of an explosion, for fuck’s sake) in the air and having them spontaneously form a fully functioning automobile. If this is the shit that even the legitimate organizations are peddling, then we need standardized testing of some sort to make sure these poor kids aren’t just wasting everyone else’s time when they hound their Biology 101 professor about the the farcical notion that eyes are due to natural selection. College preparatory my ass.
The longer this thread goes on, the more I learn and what I’m learning isn’t positive for my understanding of the home schooling movement.
Nitpick: I’d venture to guess that on the contrary, what you’re learning in this thread is indeed quite positive for your understanding of the homeschooling movement, in the sense that it’s increasing your understanding of the details of what it’s about and what goes on in it.
What it may not be positive for is your respect and trust concerning the homeschooling movement.
But that’s the homeschooling movement’s own fault. Pace Urbanredneck, all the available evidence indicates that anti-education religious types who play fast and loose with scientific facts in the name of their preferred ideology are not merely a tiny minority of homeschoolers, but a substantial and influential bloc in the movement.
(Repeating once again that yes, I am aware that there are lots of highly competent and responsible homeschooling parents out there who do a great job of producing very well-educated students. The point is not to falsely assert that there aren’t any “good stories” of homeschooling: rather, the point is to refrain from just credulously assuming that the whole homeschooling phenomenon is almost entirely made up of “good stories” while the “bad stories” of abuse and ignorance are a negligible minority.)