agreed. I should also note that parents rely on the curriculum or educational materials they are using to teach their children at home, so there is a two part factor in this: a) the parents ability to teach, b) the quality of the educational material being used
or in layman’s analogy…the transportation of the payload and the payload itself.
Also, homeschooling doesn’t have to just be limited to parents. You could certainly have certified teachers or coaches that can visit the home for sessions or via online. I’m sure is an industry or occupations where you can make a full-time living off of this type of need.
With the advent of A.I., it will become even easier to homeschool and I’m almost certain that unless it is by LAW, most students in the future will not even attend schools anymore because better methods of education will develop (unless of course schools themselves improve which is what people want and their displeasure of it is why they are choosing to homeschool).
I thought you were making a comparison to abuse. When we discover parents are beating their children we put them in jail. When we discover parente are abusing their home schooled children by withholding knowledge we should put them in jail too. Since you posit we can’t look in to discover the abuses until they are an adult that means we have to wait until the abuse has gone on long enough to be severe.
Whoa…now we are really venturing off into dangerous territory.
If a parent can be jailed for abuse as in withholding knowledge…then what about putting parents in jail for stuffing their kids minds with bad knowledge (ie. brainwashing them with false beliefs, unpopular views, etc).
Then what about putting most of the mainstream media news in jail for giving us misinformation and lies or as Trump would put it, “fake news”?
Where does it end? Everyone would have to look into the mirror and see a criminal because we all are if that is the standard.
If a child grows up in a christian or muslim household…and you are an atheist…would you then say that parents should be jailed for brainwashing their children? That would technically be abuse according to you no?
What do you mean, “if”? Parents definitely can be jailed for abuse due to what’s called “educational neglect”, or failing to provide for their child’s basic needs with regards to schooling and education.
You may be the most loving and tender parent in the world, but if you take your kid out of school and don’t provide them with an alternative form of education that meets your state’s educational requirements, you may be on the hook for educational neglect. That’s not some kind of hypothetical “dangerous territory”, that’s the real-life situation about compulsory education for children.
Make the ‘teacher’ parent pass a minimal competency test, teachers have to, so should parents. Not the same qualifications, but basic minimal. Maybe you can home school an 8 yr old but are out of your depth at 13yrs.
And the kid has to pass a standardized test, end of each year. Again, minimal basics only, but they must pass.
There are qualifications for teachers and benchmarks for grades in all schooling systems for good reason. There is no good reason to NOT have them for homeschooled children as well.
Kids are tested, and schools are held accountable in public schools. If you are arguing that there should be more tests and more accountability, then sure, find the cracks and fill them in. Personally, I think that there is too much testing in public schools. They are not taking an annual test, they are taking several tests a year. This leads to teaching to the test, rather than providing a well rounded education.
I’m also not a huge fan of the grade system in general. If you do well in a few subjects, but poorly in others, then it makes little sense to hold them back and make them repeat the material that they know, and it also makes even less sense to send them on with gaps in their knowledge. Schools would be much better off having more modular classes, where if you fail the module, you only have to repeat a month or two of a specific subject, rather than a whole grade if in k-6, or at least a whole year in a subject for JHS and HS.
As far as schools being in trouble, I have not seen many times when the “punishment” either levied or proposed, was actually good for the students. It may hurt teachers and administrators who failed the students, but it usually hurts the students even more. If you have proposals to hold educators and administrators accountable, then I’m more than willing to consider them. But also, keep in mind that a school can only do as well as its students. If you are a school in a poor neighborhood with parents who do not have time or motivation to be engaged in their child’s education, they are not going to do as well as that school in the upper middle class neighborhood. That’s not really the school’s fault, but you would punish the school for it.
I would put it more as, we do testing to find which schools need help to provide a proper education to their students, and the best ways to offer that help. Sometimes that may mean firing ineffective teachers or administrators, certainly rooting out any corrupt practices, but it may often mean giving the school more resources. Most punishments I have seen for failing testing involves cutting funding to the school, which is the worst thing you can do to the students.
Of course, in this day of Covid, schooling at home looks to be around for a while, but I would still consider there to be a big difference between distance learning where you follow a curriculum and lessons put online by your school, and actual homeschooling, where your guardians are your primary educators.
Teacher tests, qualifications, and benchmarks are for public school teachers. Nobody ever required these of me. They’re mostly useless box-checking to provide a barrier to entry to the profession, as they typically aren’t associated with better student outcomes.
lets look at this question from the other direction. Why should you have the right to neglect your children by not giving them the tools they need to survive as adults in the real world? As a society, why should we allow parents to deliberately saddle society with adults who have no useful skills, cannot think logically and rationally, and who struggle socially? What benefit does allowing this behavior provide to our society?
I propose that home schooling should only be allowed if the parents consistently demonstrate that this is not what they are doing.
But what about religious freedom? Well, whatever your beliefs, if you decided not to feed your kids because its what god would have wanted, you’d get a call from social services. If you decide you don’t want your kids to have the skills necessary to sustain themselves as adults, that’s also child abuse.
Not all home schooling is done by parents; it’s also done by tutors who visit. Some home schooling can also come in the form of families getting together for small group learning, though I don’t know if that’s very common. Probably not a surprise that home schooling is often done for religious reasons but that’s not always the case home schooling will be a thing in the future for sure.
There’s nothing at all with home schooling in principle. My concern is that home schooling may end up taking away resources from public education - all children have a right to have access to a quality education. We as a community have a duty to make sure that they become educated.
A way to avoid taking resources away from public schools is to integrate homeschooling into the system. Provide funding to school systems for homeschooling support. Require homeschooled students to register at a public school and to participate in some testing for their grade level.
The gorilla in the room is the teaching of social norms. Our current inclusive society requires acceptance of all races and life styles as normal. Domestic tranquility requires the mutual acceptance of all life styles and that is taught in public schools. The purpose of some homeschooling is to reject specific life styles. Can that be tolerated in homeschooling and, if not, can it be controlled?
Would you raise have the same objection had her post read “default to a public policy of no mandatory government participation based on a presumption of parental competence” instead of “grant parents the authority?”
I agree that this is one reason that people insist on homeschooling, but I can’t argue with those who say that they can do better than public schools. Personally, as long as they agree to pay the taxes for public schooling, I really don’t care if someone decides they want to bring in tutors provided that children can pass the same requirements as everyone else.
Parents are going to indoctrinate children regardless of where they’re schooled. As long as they’re exposed to the content, that’s fine with me. Eventually, adults will decide for themselves whether to believe the Universe was created 6000 years ago in 7 days, or if it all began some other way.
I actually know of (about third-hand, so take it for what it’s worth) two families who HS’ed their kids specifically so they would not be exposed to Christianity. :eek: One was pagan and the other was hardcore atheist.
What the hell type of job can the person who literally has the old 1800s readin writin and rithmatic to 6th grade get and keep? McBurger flipping? How in the hell do you expect them to manage to earn a living enough to keep themselves not to mention a family? Babysitting? Dog walking?
I grew up in the 60s and 70s. We had tests at least once a week, once a month and then at the end of every semester/trimester [depending on which school I was going to at the time.] We also had a much bigger test at the end of the school year, and I also remember a big test at the end of 6th grade, 8th grade and 12th grade. We had also been given a pre-SAT, a SAT, and an ASVAB as well as back in 6th grade and again in 9th grade one of the IQ tests.
My various teachers went to college, graduated and were certified to teach whatever their subject was. I would have trusted my mom to manage up to and through 9th grade in pretty much every subject, and all the way in history/social studies, math and ‘soft science’ but not hard science like chemistry/biology [I can just see dissecting a frog on the kitchen table …] or the harder math [calculus, physics] Her university degree was in speech therapy with a minor in comparative theology [she was a blast when various door to door missionaries came around =) ] and she knew how to think and was able to help me with most of my homework [except for spanish, her more or less first language was German] I have a degree in Political Science, accounting concentrating on forensics and certificates in machine technology and paralegal studies. I would be able to supervise kids in pretty much general studies, some aspects of math better than others, French and Spanish, English [I have actually tutored French and worked with people I know on both American and British English as a second language] but I honestly can’ see how one can really manage some of the hard science courses that have lab requirements [OK, so we can dissect critters on the kitchen table, and I did have one of the ‘toy’ home chemistry sets I don’t see making TNT in the bath tub [though it is possible to make at home … don’t ask. mrAru can make silver fulminate pretty much on autopilot as a result of a risky misspent youth]
I know people who could run a kiddy SERE school complete with weapons handling and combatives scaled down for 10 year olds … is that also ok for you for homeschooling?
What do you mean, “if”? Parents definitely can be jailed for abuse due to what’s called “educational neglect”, or failing to provide for their child’s basic needs with regards to schooling and education.