You’re right, it really isn’t, especially since many books are geared toward self study. Any child of near-average intelligence can work through Saxon or Kumon math programs on his or her own. They go through calculus. If you do the work, it’s hard not to learn. The child just needs a grader and someone to make sure the work gets done.
And heck, I had a friend teach chemistry in a real school for two years. The last chemistry course she took was in high school. Those kids did quite well. I think that the barriers to entry we have for teaching keep a lot of potential good teachers out and allow a lot of shit teachers to stay in (and tenured).
If the parents are educated then I see nothing wrong with it. How many are in this category, I have no idea. I presume the religious fanatics are not.
Do you have any at all?
I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m sure that Home Schooling is just fine for some people.
Yes, it is a bit appalling. I have many friends who have been through a teaching certificate program, and they have often expressed frustration with that and with the many hoops one is required to jump through.
Homeschooling takes a very different skill set than classroom teaching. Many teachers who homeschool their own kids find that they need to change their thinking quite a bit. And Manda JO has already covered the rest of that question. I have more thoughts on that but not time just now.
I think homeschoolers have a lot of advantages there. I have found it pretty easy to have *more *field trips. Our local schools have had to cut back so far on field trips that they are now extremely rare. Until this year, I ran a field trip program at the public library. It’s popular with teachers and the kids love it. The Friends of the Library pays for the transportation costs, because most schools can’t afford to pay for the bus, so it’s free. Even so, our numbers shrink every year because the teachers are under such pressure from NCLB; they are not allowed to spare the time to spend a morning getting the kids familiar with the library.
I have talked with several teachers who express frustration that they are not allowed to teach the state standards of science and history because they are required to spend all their time drilling basic reading and math. Reading about science and history, and doing math in science, are apparently not part of the plan. (My friend pulled her gifted son out of his Spanish immersion class and homeschooled one year because it was all basic reading and math facts, nothing else.)
Meanwhile, my kids can do all the science projects they want. This year we are doing biology and we can get anything (within reason) to dissect; I never dissected so much as a worm*, and their PS friends who are doing biology this year aren’t doing anything hands-on, but our house is filled with mouse bones from owl pellets and DNA models. Homeschool kids IME are hard to gross out with biology; where most of their friends will shriek “Eeeeeew!” they’re knee-deep in a pond observing triops and frogs.
We’ve also had great success with group science labs at the local college. The college students who plan to be science teachers put together a lab with 6 stations and teach it for a couple of bucks a pop. This year we’ve done 3, with 15-25 kids each.
Homeschoolers are also commonly very big on history–living history is a big favorite, being both cheap and local, and trips can be taken in the middle of the year, so they’re cheaper and less crowded. Yesterday at our project, a docent tried to convince me to come and volunteer so that I could bring my kids on any day–she said it’s a fun thing for the homeschoolers there. I live too far away, though.
Very few people have the enthusiasm to homeschool, but most of them are very big on reading. I suspect that the two populations don’t have a lot of overlap.
*My high school didn’t really do lab biology, though the teacher did once bring in a giant, dying crab and wave it around for a while.
You’re claiming it’s not hard when you have a degree and substantial experience.
Are you seriously claiming that the average American adult with an 8th grade reading level can do it?
Given the evidence you provide that you are a superior teacher, you may well be able to compensate and pace while only staying one chapter ahead. IMO, you’re projecting ease in a task based on your own abilities and not adequately taking into consideration the abilities of the general population.
I honestly do, provided they are dedicated to putting the time in. I’ve seen plenty of good teachers who were not rocket scientists, and a home schooling teacher would not have to deal with 75% of the crap that fills my day. Yes, I think it would take a lot of time and hard work–more time and hard work than I think many people are willing to do–but I think it is quite within many people’s capacities, especially with so many good resources available. (I mean, you can get someone to show you how to teach anything on youtube or teachertube, let alone all the fabulous commercial products.)
And I think any adult on an 8th grade reading level when they started would be much more educated when they finished.
I guess that I must have casually homeschooled my daughter after all, on a part time basis. See, I thought that taking her to the zoo and the Botanic Gardens and the Log Cabin Village and the museum were all parts of being a parent. I didn’t consider them to be field trips. And we did a lot of experiments too, as well as arts and crafts. Again, I thought that these things were just part of being a parent. The thing is, my education has some gaps in it. So Lisa went to public school, and learned the curriculum there, and I also was involved in things like taking her to the library and showing her how to use the resources there.
One of my proudest moments was when I’d told Lisa that the remote control operated with an infrared signal, and that infrared was a sort of light that we can’t see, when she was in grade school. She thought about this, and then took a mirror and aimed the remote at the mirror, away from the TV. And yeah, it worked.
They are. Even when homeschooling we’ve counted going to the zoo on the weekend as going to the zoo. But when we were studying wetland ecology, for example, we scheduled mid-week field trips to the zoo for the Louisana swamp exhibit and hands on nature center and to the Jean Lafitte National Park Barataria Swamp. Craft projects during play time are craft projects. The artwork to accompany the third grader’s report on George Washington Carver was counted as art time in the home school.
Exactly!
That’s the point I’ve been trying to make in my last three posts. Manda JO, either high school math and science is super easy or you don’t realize how much smarter you are than most Americans.
I personally think it extremely inappropriate to have teachers in math and science who only know the subject by being “one chapter ahead.” Even home schoolers and even at the middle school level. These are not trivia type subjects. Math and science are skills that not everyone has even when they work hard. Even if they are skilled (accountants, for example), I still think it’s inappropriate to be only one chapter ahead.
Y’all realize, of course, that we’re talking about being one chapter ahead in terms of lesson planning and refreshing? For example, I have a Ph.D. and in addition to my position in R&D I taught at a selective private university in south Louisiana. While I am an expert in my field, I’d still have to dig out my notes a day or two ahead of many lectures since I needed a refresher in what we would be covering.
Picture yourself with a 5th grader. Can you at this very moment and without looking at the book, manipulate fractions by hand with pen and paper, no calculator? Do you think you could if you were one chapter ahead in the material? Or, 10th grade biology. Cell division. Which is mitosis and meiosis? Think you could do it by reading ahead?
And I think you sell the average American short if you think that if someone spent 10-15 hours a week learning new material, they would not advance themselves, and could not keep ahead of their students. If an average 12 year old can learn something in a week of 50 minutes sessions in a room with 25 other kids, do you really think an average adult couldn’t master it out of a book in an hour or two?
Why? The math and science curricula available are very systematic. If you can take a child through each step, they will master the skills they need. And if they don’t, you’ll notice and have time to go back and correct it, unlike a classroom teacher.
Look, I love classroom instruction. But the talent and skill and training involves being able to teach 180 kids each day. The content is fairly easy, and I tend to think most people could handle it when teaching one child they knew very well.
I am willing to concede that there may be a point where a given parent can’t stay ahead of the child and there needs to be other arrangements–be it going to public school just for those classes, going to a community college, or hiring a private tutor. But I think that point occurs sometime well into high school for most people. And as I’ve said, I teach AP courses. I have a good handle on the actual difficulty–and it’s not too awful. It’s what we expect a high school student to be able to handle!
Exactly! Homeschooling is just more parenting–you keep the job of control over education for yourself, instead of outsourcing it to the state. You may still outsource some things, but the point is that the parent and the child are in charge. So, yes, it’s just like that–only full-time.
If that’s all you’re talking about then I have no problem. I don’t think the average American can understand the more complex subjects like math and science beyond, maybe middle school, enough to teach them properly. Oh sure, they could probably learn things superficially and spit them out to their kids but they don’t really understand the subject.
No, I don’t think I’m selling the average American short. The average American is average. I used to teach freshman chemistry and many of those students (who would be above the average American) did not understand the subject enough to teach it to high school kids (maybe not even middle school level). It wasn’t for lack of trying either. They just didn’t get it.
Yes, I do think that.
Kids’ brains are more elastic and seeing your peers get it helps. Also the kids have the advantage of having been learning for years and be relatively fresh on the material.
I think the average adult would crack that book and not get it in several hours of trying. Especially if it is math or science related.
Hell, I still look things up. Last week when I was doing data manipulation with my second-graders and explaining the mode to them, I realized I wasn’t sure what to do with multiple modes: is there another term? do you derive the mean? do you just call them multiple modes? (home audience: multiple modes). Yesterday a kid challenged me on my claim that fog was heavier than air: she didn’t understand what that’d mean. I’m going in this afternoon ready to give her a child-friendly explanation, but it’s gonna help me if I read up on things like density, water vapor, etc. before I do.
In general I get rated very highly on my content knowledge–but I think that’s because I look things up all the time.
Not that appearing elitist has held people back in this thread prior to this point, but… I don’t think that average parents attempt home education, and those who do don’t stick with it more than one year. It’s an activity that is outside the norm that also requires self selection, self motivation, and lots of time and energy and dedication.
But the parent will have been learning for years, as well: they will have re-learned kindergarten math when their kid was in kindergarten and continued along side them all the way. Any deficiencies in learning will be remediated through the years as the parent teaches the child.
Do I think everyone could do this? No, though I think an unwillingness to spend the time would be a bigger block than the impossibility of the task. One thing I’ve learned as a teacher: those of us who are “naturally” smart think that intelligence is the main thing, but I’ve learned that people of indifferent ability can learn a tremendous amount if they put the time in. We have a calculus teacher who has gotten kids who scored below the 50% on SAT math to pass the AP calculus exam–the trick, it turns out, is to spend 3 hours a day doing calculus.
Most people aren’t willing to put in that kind of time. And, as Ivorybill points out, when people are not willing and eager, they get frustrated and quit.
I guess I am not sure what you are arguing. Do you think homeschooling should be banned? Do you think it should be allowed but is generally a bad idea?
I am not arguing that every parent can do this perfectly. But I am arguing that many parents could do this more effectively than their other options (for instance, if their public school is crappy) and that they should have the right to try.
I’ve met quite a few parents who I consider to be below average in both intellect and education who have homeschooled their kids for several years.
The idea here seems to be that most people are not educated enough to educate their children. If the public school system teaches in such a way that no one can read well or remember anything about high school chemistry, maybe we should be trying a different approach? This theme strikes me as something of an indictment of the public school system, though personally I’m a little more optimistic about the general intelligence level of the population.
(We have a 4-year rotation of science, from 1st grade on–it goes biology, earth/astro, chemistry, physics. We did chemistry in 3rd grade and will again in 7th. Chemistry is one of my favorite subjects!)