For example…?
Living books, for example: “books that are well-written and engaging—they absorb the reader—the narrative and characters “come alive”; living books are the opposite of cold, dry textbooks” (from the Charlotte Mason Website)
Historical fiction.
Historical accounts written by people passionate for the subject, usually a narrow time period, rather than a general “overview” of history.
Engaging history books such as Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer or The Story of Mankind by Van Loon for the younger kids. For older kids, biographies, etc. My daughter is working her way through biographies of several scientists this year.
Basically, text books are dumbed down, politically correct general overviews and leave most kids cold. My daughters learned much more about the pioneer times by reading Laura Ingalls Wilder than they ever would reading a text book.
Thanks.
Hmmm, on further thought: don’t you agree that analysis of history, as well as historical storytelling, is also an important to use as a teaching tool? Textbooks (well, some) are good at the former, the things you listed seem geared toward the latter. It seems like using both approaches would be a good thing.
I’d like someone to know not just what, say, life for Anne in Amsterdam was like in 1942 but also the preceding events leading up to WWII in Europe as well. Reasonable?
This is a slipperly slope though. Who decides which homeschool parents are allowed to sit on the boards? Other homeschool parents? Surely there’s a reasonable chance they’ll stack the deck and load up their half of the board with parents who are rabidly pro-homeschooling and will rubber-stamp even parents who are not doing a good job. OTOH, the school district has the possibility of putting rabid anti-homeschoolers on their part of the board and they’ll red-flag even parents who are doing a good job.
Essentially I’m saying this creates an advesarial system where the homeschooling parents are bearing the extra burden of not only educating their children, but also continually proving themselves to some authority who may or may not agree with their teaching philosophy.
I remember a family who were good friends of ours when we were growing up. They were homeschooling, and they were pretty radical. They were focused on life skills, not book learning. They openly admitted they were raising their daughters to be housewives, not PhDs. The cirriculum they taught the girls included advanced home economics, including tailoring and some basic finance/bookeeping, lots of child psychology and theories of home discipline, but virtually no higher math(beyond basic algebra if they went that far) and little science.
Can you imagine a board of the type you are advocating allowing this family to homeschool? I can’t, but I can tell you that every child in that family, now in their 30s, is a happy, well adjusted member of society. The girls are indeed housewives, and by all accounts they have extremely happy home lives and are excellent parents. They don’t seem to have been harmed in the slightest by not having been taught advanced mathematics/science. The things they WERE taught, in lieu of these subjects, seems to have given them an edge in a society where being a well-adjusted and happy family seems to be the exception instead of the norm. What’s more, none of them have had any problems with drugs/alcohol/abusive relationships or been on the wrong side of the bars of a jail/prison. As far as I can tell, they’ve not so much as bounced a check and there’s damn few people who can make that claim.
So where’s the line? This board, even if it were made up of people with no agenda except the child’s welfare in mind(no pro or anti-homeschool sentiments at all) would have to hold the homeschoolers to SOME standard right? What should that standard be?**
But what’s your definition of abuse? The cirriculum that our friends used to educate their daughters would have a good many women’s-rights groups up in arms, heck it sounds barbaric to me and I grew up with these people. I saw them hold hands and cross the street at crosswalks. I saw them teach good hygiene and respect for other people to their children. I saw them encourage their children to be caring, compassionate human beings. I also saw them tell their children that a woman’s place is in the home and deliberately groom their daughters to attract a man to take care of them instead of teaching them to stand on their own two feet and enter a relationship as an equal partner.
Does it count as abuse? When I was a kid I thought it was
borderline, but now that I’ve grown up, and they’ve grown up, and I can see the results, I’m not so sure.
Enjoy,
Steven
Steven,
I wouldn’t consider what your friends daughters experienced an abuse of the system. Colleges teach home ecomonics. Its a respected field. I went to high school with plenty of kids who took the minimum (1 year) high school biology, the minimum (1 year) math (general math, not algebra) and then got the majority of their credits in home ec, or industrial education, or some sort of tech school type thing. No problem. (And I’m a card carrying member of NOW). Gee, I’d like it if everyone saw the world the way I did, but I know plenty of happy housewives who really have never needed trig. If the girls can read and do basic math, they have enough skills that when they turn eighteen if they decide to enroll in community college to become bio-geneticists - it will be a struggle, but it could be done. There is plenty of time left for them to sculpt themselves into something else - should they desire.
And, from the homeschooling advocates I’ve talked to, including those on this board, they don’t want to see abuse of the system (kids home alone all day learning nothing, not even how to sew on a button, or parents who are using homeschooling to hide child abuse) any more than people who are critical of homeschooling. I think anyone appointed to the board would be good representatives of the homeschooling community. Perhaps recommended by homeschoolers, but approved by the school board.
Homeschooling parents already face an advesarial position - mostly from people who are critical of homeschooling and hear stories like the ones above. I’d hope we’d be trading in a little of the contempt and uncertainty most people hear when they hear about “homeschooled kids”
Well naturally. But analysis does not need to come from a text book. My daughters start by narrating to me what they read. This helps me to see what they have absorbed, but also helps them form their own ideas about it. Then we discuss what they have read, talking about the events of the time, doing projects, visiting museums, and in a variety of ways understand the context in which the events occured. They are both wonderful debaters and we spend a lot of time discussing context and they form their own opinions of the events.
Lest you think they only read historical ficion or biography, I assure you they do not. But if I were going to encourage learning about the events leading up to WWII, I would find a book written by an author passionate about those very events.
If you want to learn about red-tailed hawks, read a book by someone who loves them and studies them. Visit a wildlife rehabilitation center and talk to the person in charge of the hawks. Get a pair of binoculars and go out and find one and study it. Don’t just read a small blurb about red-tailed hawks in a field guide. Do you see the difference?
The distinction arises when you consider that the parents made the choice for the girls. From toddler age through high school they were taught with intent to form them into a specific role in society. I went through public high school and college and the difference here is that I, not my parents, got to choose if I would take the light-on-science, heavy-on-home-economics path. It boils down to personal choice versus parental choice. Many, possibly most, parents are genuinely interested in their children finding their own niche in society and support their children in pursuing any courses of study they feel attracted to. Another group, like the family I mentioned, feels it is perfectly legitimate to choose for the children. You don’t personally consider it an abuse of the system, but can you see how others might?
This is the real split. Personal, versus parental determination. Personal determination demands a general cirriculum until the child is old enough to make an informed choice about their future. If the parent choose to educate the child to be a housewife, and the child later decided to be a rocket scientist the lack of early education in the sciences would be a significant, quite possibly insurmountable hurdle. Self determination would only be possible in those children who were, curious enough to look outside the worldview provided by their parents, courageous enough to stand up to their parents and, quite possibly, resourceful enough to survive without parental support.
Opportunities come and go all the time. Allowing the parent to decide on a cirriculum which precludes the possibility of taking advantage of many opportunities which would have been available if the cirriculum were more general effectively closes all those doors for the child. Should this be allowed?
This still puts all the cards in the hands of the school board. They can choose their representatives and have veto power on the representatives recommended by the homeschoolers. Who gets to decide if the school board is rejecting qualified parent representatives out of some anti-homeschooling agenda? Perhaps the school board is elected, but do you think the homeschoolers represent a large enough block of voters to make this an adequate check on the powers of the board?**
I’d love to see that happen, both as someone who was homeschooled until high school and as a parent who homeschools. I think we’ve got an extremely hard row to hoe and I, for one, intend to do my utmost to ensure we’ve got a bulletproof system if we’ve got to have one. I’m well aware of the adversarial nature of homeschooling in the US today and I’m playing devil’s advocate where needed to ensure that if someone like me is on the other side, they’ll be satisfied with our proposals.
Enjoy,
Steven
North Carolina seems to have pretty reasonable requirements for homeschooling (http://www.doa.state.nc.us/dnpe/hhh103.htm). Basically, your kids have to have the required immunizations, you have to file an intent form, the kids have to be in school for at least nine months, and you have to administer standardized tests in certain subject areas.
I’m in favor of homeschooling younger children, especially considering the “death march to the EOGs” that NC elementary schools have gotten on in the last five years. As early as kindergarten, children are being pressured to meet the Holy State Requirements which kills any joy of learning for a lot of them. My sister is seriously considering keeping her son in preschool for an extra year so he can “mature” enough to be able to handle the workload. Homeschooling would be a great option for parents forced with this decision. It’s more individualized and you can teach more creatively.
Most of the kids I know who were homeschooled were in it from sixth to eighth grade and therefore didn’t have the distraction of several hundred other suddenly-hormonally-active peers and all the backbiting and pubescent politicking that goes along with it. They came back to public schools in high school because they had to pass more specialized courses (physics, algebra, and the like). This makes a lot of sense to me, especially considering that in this state they’d have to pass the EOC’s for those courses.
Personally, I wish that there was a better tracking system in high schools so the kids who knew they wanted to be bricklayers or mechanics or electricians don’t have to take the same English, social studies, math, and science courses as the college-bound kids, they can take classes that relate more to what they want to do. As it stands now, the vocational tracking system extends only to the electives. I think that might help form a compromise between the public education system and homeschooling, but then I’m known to be an incurable optimist.
There should be no oversight of homeschoolers. As soon as there is state oversight of homeschoolers, there is state control of curriculum and teaching method, which is one of the primary reasons why people choose to homeschool.
In addition, the potential for abuse of authority by homeschool monitoring authorities is extremely high. This has been proven repeatedly, in places where oversight is required and those where it is not. In Illinois, for example, there is no requirement that homeschoolers register with the state or with the school district, or provide any documentation whatsoever regarding their decision to homeschool. However, many school districts have demanded various forms of documentation from homeschooling parents under threat of prosecution for either truancy or child neglect. Illinois law does not permit such a demand, but these officials do it anyway to harass the parents. If they had oversight authority, they would, more likely than not, abuse it to harass these same parents.
Many people choose homeschooling because of distrust of government and the general desire to be free from government interference. Mandatory oversight of homeschooled children defeats this interest, which is a protected one under our theory of government. Mandatory in-home visits of homeschooled children are almost certainly unconstitutional. The risk that homeschool oversight will be abused to defeat the right of individuals to pursue their free choice of religion and family rearing method is simply too high.
This is one of those sets of requirements which look reasonable, but upon inspection seem less and less reasonable. Heck, in a couple of minutes with BoardReader I found several threads on our very own SDMB questioning the “reasonable” immunization rules. Vaccinations and Autism, A three-page debate on the subject, and I’ll throw in a personal anecdote real quick. The state I live in requires the MMR vaccination. This is a combination vaccination against Measles, Mumps and Rubella. If you look up a factsheet on Rubella you’d discover that it is not a serious disease.
Rubella’s claim to fame?
In Texas, this vaccine is given to boys as well as girls. Two shots worth of it. This means my son is supposed to be innoculated against a disease which he is in no danger from, neither now nor in the future. The vacciene would not prevent him from being a carrier and infecting a non-vaccinated person in the future.
Vaccinations for dangerous, not simply inconvenient, diseases have my support. Giving my son shots to prevent any babies he may carry in the future from having birth defects is, well… not reasonable.
Let’s look at Mumps. Here is a factsheet from the New York State Department of Health. Mumps is another not particularly dangerous disease. The greatest danger seems to be chance of permanent hearing loss. I wasn’t able to find info about the number of cases where hearing loss occurs, but it is considered a “complication” which typically means it’s not extremely common. An even more infrequent complication is damage to the testes in young males rendering them infertile. So, because there is a blip of real danger here I decide to give this to my son. Here’s the kicker. Texas requires(see above schedule of immunzations) two doses of MMR. The factsheet I cited from the NY DoH has this to say.
Measles has roughly a .1-.2% death rate. This means 1-2 of each 1000 cases is fatal. I don’t really have a problem with Measles vaccinations, but bundling them with vaccines my child does not, and will never, need and over-immunizing him against mumps with no reason doesn’'t sit well with me.
When it comes down to the core issues I would not be opposed to vaccinations. What I am opposed to is needless vaccinations. Like the medical community is beginning to learn(the very painful lesson being taught by antibiotic-resistant diseases), it can have disastrous consequences to over-medicate.
I’ve taken most of this post to address one point in SpazCat’s “reasonable requirements”. This was not intended as a hijack of the thread into a debate on the merits of vaccination, but to illustrate that what sounds reasonable on the surface is often more complex, and sometimes unreasonable, in practice. Similar arguements could be made against the rules “kids have to be in school for at least nine months”, perhaps hinging on the fact that in a homeschool situation the children get more direct attention and can accomplish the same work in less time due to the higher teacher/student ratio. There is no evidence that nine months of study is somehow necessary. Some students in some cirriculum with certain amounts of teacher/student interaction would finish the cirriculum in a few months. Why make them “go to school” for longer than they need to finish the material?
I’d rather not get into the issue of the merits of standardized tests, but I’m sure a moment’s reflection upon the subject will allow a reasonable reader to understand that there may be legitimate concerns with imposing state-designed tests upon students who are not using state-designed cirriculum.
I have no problem filing an intent form as long as it is simply for the state’s records and not part of a program to “monitor” the homeschooling family.
As for my own feelings, they correspond strongly with KellyM’s views. I happen to be willing to comprimise a bit, a very little bit. Enough for the state to still be able to say its population is being educated.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’d really rather not get into a debate about immunizations. Really. And the standardized testing in this state calls for words only permissible in the Pit. However, I call the requirements reasonable because they provide certain standards for homeschools to follow and a way to ensure the children in homeschools are getting at the very least the same education they would in a traditional school. I see it as a phasing in of homeschooling. As time goes by the regulations can be lessened as people get more used to the idea. Maybe in time they can be phased out altogether (although hopefully not after the issue about diplomas is dealt with for those who decide to continue it through high school).
SpazCat that was my entire point. The guidelines you said were “reasonable” doesn’t really cover it. The basic guidelines of “kids have to have the required immunizations, you have to file an intent form, the kids have to be in school for at least nine months, and you have to administer standardized tests in certain subject areas.” are woefully inadequate. Each of those points is in reality a myriad of points which would have to be debated and decided upon individually. Which immunizations? Why nine months as opposed to, say, twelve or six? What guidelines should apply to the standardized tests? What purpose will the intent form serve?
With all due respect, treating the issue as something simple that a handful of guidelines can adequately cover is not fair. I went into detail about the vaccines as an example of why such broad guidelines would be inadequate. I explicitly stated that I don’t want to discuss vaccination rules, that’s a matter for another thread. Still, it was relevant because in your scenario the state would have the right to force me to send my son to public school instead of “allowing” me to homeschool because I refused to give him shots to provide temporary immunity from a disease whose worst case scenario for him would be a all-over body rash and discomfort for a week or two. Is that reasonable?
Enjoy,
Steven
Mtgman, the whole vaccination thing is off-topic, but I must respond: the point of everyone getting vaccinated for a disease is not necessarily to protect individuals, but to wipe out the disease entirely so that no one will be at risk. You and your kids are doing a public service to the whole community when you get vaccinated. Universal vaccination programs is the reason why Polio is now a quaint memory.
squeegee, the vaccination point is not off-topic. A substantial fraction of states that regulate home schoolers at all mandate vaccinations as a condition of being permitted to home school. Therefore, discussion of the reasonableness of this regulation is justified.
The laudable goal of universal vaccination presumes that the vaccine itself is safe. There is considerable debate as to the safety of many of the current mandatory vaccines.
By the way, Mtgman, if you, as a homeschooling parent, refuse to vaccinate your child, the state will force you to send them to public school, where you will be required to vaccinate your child. If you don’t, your child will not be permitted to attend, and you will be tried for the crime of having a truant child. In most states, this can eventually result in you going to jail and your child being taken into state custody (at which time, s/he will be vaccinated whether you want him/her to be vaccinated or not). It is very hard to avoid mandatory vaccinations unless you have a doctor on your side who is willing to state that there is a medical reason why your child should not be vaccinated. Oh, and by the way, state financial support for paying for those vaccines is inadequate; in many communities free vaccinations are unavailable or have very long waiting lists.
[continuing the hijack for just a bit longer]
KellyM I have studied the laws in my state regarding vaccinations and the scenario you mention does not apply. In my state it is permissible to be exempt from vaccination laws and still attend public school. Myself and most of my siblings were not vaccinated and all of us attended public school at some point. We are in compliance with the applicable laws in our state. We also have a family doctor who we have discussed the situation with and who accepts our decision to not vaccinate/selectively vaccinate. We did have to change doctors when we made the decision, but state laws vary and we’re not in danger of CPS taking our children or being charged under truancy laws.
OTOH, we did vaccinate our eldest before we did some more homework on the vaccinations safety/necessity and we never found it difficult in the least to obtain low/no cost vaccination services in our state.
YMMV(and obviously does)
[/hijack]
The goal of universal vaccination not only assumes the vaccine is safe, but it also assumes the vaccination provides adequate defense against the disease. In the case of Rubella approximately 80% of the people who contracted the disease had been vaccinated. Objecting to a vaccine which prevents a “clinically mild” disease and seems to offer scant protection is not unreasonable IMHO. This is especially true if the recepient of the vaccine would be homeschooled and not be as exposed to other children who may be carrying it.
I, and many others, see nothing wrong with refusing a medical treatment which is, for all practical purposes, unnecessary. It’s nice to do things for the community, but I draw the line at accepting unnecessary medical procedures “for the common good”.
Enjoy,
Steven
Re: vaccination – This really deserves it’s own thread so homeschool oversight issues can continue here.
My last point in the hijack: Mtgman, your 80% cite is statistically meaningless – of course 80% of people who get rubella have been immunized, since immunization is so widespread. This obscures the verifiable fact that rubella immunization has been highly effective. According to the CDC, since the immunization program was introduced in 1969, occurrence of rubella decreased by 90% or more in all age groups and may be wiped out in 10-30 years if (and only if) widespread vaccinations continue. This will prevent the thousands of serious birth defects and infant deaths that occured before rubella vaccination programs were begun.
KellyM, as far as vaccine safety, there does indeed seem to be considerable debate. Unfortunately, much of the debate seems to be based on misinformation or hysteria.
OK, I’m done. Let’s continue in a new thread if that seems warranted. Agreed?
I read a really interesting article once in some magazine that catered to the homeschoolers ( possibly called HomeSchool, but I digress)
The article featured several families and their reason for home schooling, how long they had been doing it, how many kids, etc.
Every family, save one, had a teacher in the family. Some took their kids out of school because the local public schools were not up to their standards. Some for religious reasons. All stuck to whatever curriculum that worked for them and had children meeting and excelling the required needs of the grade they should be in. These families, I felt, were an excellent representation of homeschooling that worked.
*but it was the one family * that really left a bad taste in my mouth. The woman - a farmer - was homeschooling her large brood and not really pushing for her kids to learn something specific. It was all…uh…whatever interested them…and they didn’t take any tests and none of them had any interest in college ( which I can understand) but none of them wanted to do anything but work on a farm, which, frankly as much as I admire farmers, it is a poor paying and thankless job.
The girls were all dressed in pinafores & hair scarves (which just drives me nuts)and I think the reason the woman kept them from school was because she was a religious looney. I really felt sorry for the girls living in the dark age and never having a chance.
The discussion about Vaccines is NOT a hijack as long as we confine it to relevant points. Vaccination is relevant because it is being used a one of the points in a framework suggested as “reasonable” for homeschoolers to be mandated to follow. Objections to this point of the framework can take one of two forms, objection to vaccination based upon safety concerns, and objections based upon lack of necessity.
With my comments on the Rubella vaccine, I was illustrating both kinds of objections. The first point was to illustrate that the vaccine does NOT provide lifelong immunity. In fact, the antibodies often reach level insufficient to provide immunity by the time the recipient reaches childbearing age(the time the disease is the most dangerous). If you’re going to mandate vaccinations, I want to be certain they’re doing the job. This does not seem to be the case with Rubella vaccines, hence part of my objection and part of my case against mandating vaccinations for homeschoolers. Further objections could be raised against the current incarnations of this vaccine because it is a “live” vaccine and there is a chance of the child contracting the disease FROM the vaccine. The vaccination actually becomes a vector for transmitting the disease into a person who may not have contracted it normally.
Another piece of the objection would be giving the vaccine to boys. In males there seems to be no significant benefit to the vaccine. It prevents a “clinically mild” disease, something which would certainly be a problem if dozens of children in a schoolroom or daycare came down with it, but seems unnecessary for a homeschooling family who will, almost certainly, have a parent who stays home and can care for the child without disrupting the lives of other parents or dozens of other students. A homeschooled child contracting Rubella is not a fraction as likely to spread the disease as an infected child attending public school, so mandating it to reduce the potential vectors for the spread of the disease is overkill as well. I’ve already said I draw the line at accepting unnecessary medical procedures for the common good, so “wiping out Rubella” isn’t higher on my priority list than keeping my child from the risks associated with vaccines.
Show me why a homeschooling family would care if their male children get rubella. Why would it be wrong for them to wait and possibly, if the children don’t contract the disease naturally and thereby gain lifelong immunity, be immunized in their early teens if they felt it appropriate?
This is all we need to prove. Unless you can show that ALL the debate is the result of “misinformation or hysteria” then you must admit there is room for a reasonable person to object to vaccination at least on the grounds of the safety of the vaccine. This is all that is needed to show “immunization requirements” as an unreasonable point in a framework to reguire homeschoolers to use.
Enjoy,
Steven
The only relevant points being debated are the safety and efficacy of vaccination programs. To my mind, this is at best only tangentally related to the topic of home schooling.
You’re missing the point entirely. Rubella is most often contracted in childhood, so protecting school-age children from the disease offers the highest probability of reducing the virus in the overall population. Rubella vaccine offers 90% immunity for at least 15 years from inoculation. Therefore, the number of people who can harbor the virus is greatly reduced so that the possibility of a NON-immune person contracting the disease is greatly minimized.
From this site:
It certainly does seem to be the case. There were about 57,000 cases of rubella per year prior to the vaccine program, today there are fewer than 300 cases per year in the United States. This is an extraordinary success, and is entirely due to childhood vaccination programs.
You can certainly opt out, but by doing so you and your children are demonstrably putting more infants at risk of dangerous birth defects and death. If your conscience allows this, that’s your lookout. You’ve already agreed that, for school-age children, rubella is a “clinically mild” disease, so what risk do you see as unacceptable compared to the enormous benefit to the community?
To prevent a female of child bearing years from contracting the disease, crippling or killing her children.
That seems like a unacceptably high standard. I never said vaccines are without risk, but it seems obvious that there is much uninformed and hysterical speculation on the risks of vaccination.
As I said, your conscience can be your guide; obviously, the outstanding success of MMR immunizations and the fact that most deadly childhood diseases have been or are being wiped out entirely through the use of childhood immunization programs is not reason enough to sway you, so I don’t know what will.