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Homeschooling[W:199]

Homeschooling

  • Total voters
    67
Re: Homeschooling

Gipper said:
Usually homeschooled kids are one side of the bell curve. Either they're academically superior to those who are homeschooled, or are given no structure and end up without rudimentary skills.

As far as socialization, same thing. If coddled, they can be ill-prepared for society, but they can also be very well-adjusted.

People who think only negatives about homeschooling are probably less worldly than the children they're slandering. Also, full integration into society isn't always great, since much of society is f'ed up.
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As far as which homeschoolers are superior at what, one commonality is that all homeschoolers are consistently superior in reading, writing and arithmetic. I have yet to encounter an illiterate homeschooler. Once you go off the path onto ideological/religious topics things get decidedly messier.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Cardinal said:
Once you go off the path onto ideological/religious topics things get decidedly messier.
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Hold up a second. Isn't the cornerstone of liberal dogma that "Diversity is our strength."™ You seem to be arguing for a stultifying uniformity.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Ikari said:
Since when have our public schools taught critical thinking?
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With different schools relying on the tax revenue determined by each district's real estate value, and each state determining its own curriculum, there is so little consistency that I would consider it unwise to uphold the public school system universally (especially as there really isn't such a thing as a public school system, per se). I'll repeat: these are perfectly valid reasons for homeschooling, and there are examples of such in this thread that I've seen (I think Superfly might be one such example). That said, public school systems don't set out to inculcate hostility for critical thinking as a matter of principle, and the religious, ideological type of homeschooling is widespread and harmful.
 
Re: Homeschooling

RiverDad said:
Hold up a second. Isn't the cornerstone of liberal dogma that "Diversity is our strength."™ You seem to be arguing for a stultifying uniformity.
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Let's not carry on some kind of charade that you understand what I'm saying. I'm not in the mood for it.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Cardinal said:
As far as which homeschoolers are superior at what, one commonality is that all homeschoolers are consistently superior in reading, writing and arithmetic. I have yet to encounter an illiterate homeschooler. Once you go off the path onto ideological/religious topics things get decidedly messier.
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Oh, there are some whopping morons too. Some kids who are "homeschooled" are left to their own devices and told to sit unsupervised in front of a computer and just learn.Also, the progressive version is called "unschooling". These kids have liberal parents who think that taking their kids on roller coasters is a physics lesson, or shooting pool teaches you geometry. Needless to say, they're idiots.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Cardinal said:
That said, public school systems don't set out to inculcate hostility for critical thinking as a matter of principle, and the religious, ideological type of homeschooling is widespread and harmful.
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All parents who care about the welfare of their children so much that they're willing to endure the hardships of home schooling them are not going to be doing anything to harm those children.

If you hold that they are harming them then this strongly signals that what you really mean is that these parents are doing something that you disagree with. That's all. You're just being flamboyant and imprecise in your use of language.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Gathomas88 said:
Is there necessarily a problem with that?

It's hardly like our public educational system is "agenda free" either.
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Yes, there is a problem with that. Education is supposed to be about teaching facts, not someone's wingnut, asinine religious beliefs. We do children a disservice when we allow them to have their heads stuffed with religious nonsense.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Cardinal said:
As far as which homeschoolers are superior at what, one commonality is that all homeschoolers are consistently superior in reading, writing and arithmetic. I have yet to encounter an illiterate homeschooler. Once you go off the path onto ideological/religious topics things get decidedly messier.
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I haven't found that homeschooled children are being taught anything religious, as a part of their school curriculum. Undoubtedly, though, home-schooled children (in this part of the country) tend to come from homes where religion is a pretty important part of their lives. That being said, every home-schooled child I know, and have known, is scholastically superior to most of their peers, and goes on to higher education and professional careers.
 
Re: Homeschooling

vesper said:
My main concern is that the parent isn't disciplined or qualified to teach their children at home. I think however offering school choice outside the public school system is the real answer. These are schools with licensed educators where often a liberal arts education is offered that promotes critical thinking. Not like No Child Left Behind or Common Core where learning the answers to specific questions in order to pass a series of tests and often not understanding the why except it is the correct answer really sucks!
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In a lot of instances, the parents really don't have to do anything, except just make sure that the child is at the computer, doing his or her work, every morning. The private school that covered my daughter took care of absolutely everything. It was all online, and all I had to do is make sure she was up, and working. They took care of everything, including grading and keeping up with attendance. At the beginning of the next school year, when we decided to allow her to go back to public school, they sent her transcript and it was a very smooth transition.

I am sure that not all schools work this way. A friend of mine is homeschooling her children, and she actually has to teach them, keep up with attendance and everything else. Hers was much more labor intensive. Mine was gravy. But I paid for mine - I think hers is free. That could be the difference.
 
Re: Homeschooling

vesper said:
My main concern is that the parent isn't disciplined or qualified to teach their children at home. I think however offering school choice outside the public school system is the real answer. These are schools with licensed educators where often a liberal arts education is offered that promotes critical thinking. Not like No Child Left Behind or Common Core where learning the answers to specific questions in order to pass a series of tests and often not understanding the why except it is the correct answer really sucks!
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I don't believe that many parents are even interested in home-schooling, unless they are either qualified, or planning to put their children into a home-schooling environment where the individuals who are teaching, ARE qualified. All the home-schooling parents that I know are very interested in making sure their children are getting an education which is superior to what the public schools are providing.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Cardinal said:
Some piece of knowledge being ultimately peripheral in importance and that same knowledge being specifically quashed has very different ends...and different consequences. Learning the 50 states only to visit fourteen of them vs. being deliberately told that there are no 49 other states so as not to contradict the idea that one's own state is the only one are completely different things.
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Okay, so again. Apart from the ideological aspects of the thing, what is really the harm?

It's not like the parent's can keep these kinds of things from the forever. For that matter, it's not like there aren't traditional schools that neglect to teach evolution either.

You're basically just trading one creation story of "peripheral importance" to a person's life for another.

I disagree. When the attempt to constrict a person's knowledge of the world (universe) is deliberate and ideological in origin that is harmful.
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I would be more inclined to agree with you if this wasn't already something that even secular, state-funded education attempted to do on a routine basis.

Heh. Next time I run into a homeschooler who proudly uses all of the who's who of logical fallacies I'll let you know and you tell me.
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Works for me. :lol:

I'm sure there's some pretty stupid crap out there. As I said before, there are legitimately bad school systems even here in California, the details of which were frankly shocking to a good, freshly scrubbed New Englander like myself. And while that is often the pretext for homeschooling, the homeschoolers I myself encounter are almost invariably of the religious, ideological type.
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I'm not going to deny that it is a lifestyle which tends to attract people of a particular political lean.

I'm simply saying that I don't really see the harm in that fact. Our public educational system is already heavily ideological.

Actually I'm not familiar with that person, at least not so that I'd automatically know who you're referring to.
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He has a red avatar.

Cephus said:
Yes, there is a problem with that. Education is supposed to be about teaching facts, not someone's wingnut, asinine religious beliefs. We do children a disservice when we allow them to have their heads stuffed with religious nonsense.
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Okay, so name a single way in which a non-scientific layperson is going to be objectively harmed by being taught one version of creation over another.

Gipper said:
Oh, there are some whopping morons too. Some kids who are "homeschooled" are left to their own devices and told to sit unsupervised in front of a computer and just learn.Also, the progressive version is called "unschooling". These kids have liberal parents who think that taking their kids on roller coasters is a physics lesson, or shooting pool teaches you geometry. Needless to say, they're idiots.
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Ugh. Yea... I've met a couple of those. Things generally didn't end well for them.

My first girlfriend had fruit-loopy Liberal "compassionate" Catholic parents. They "unschooled" her, focusing on art history, music, and foreign languages while ignoring academic fundamentals almost completely.

After bombing her SAT, she ran away from home, got knocked up, and wound up as a single mother after her live-in boyfriend left her high and dry. I think she's finally found a guy to settle down with now (after running through six or seven others and having another kid), but the whole situation is still a damn train wreck.

Her younger brother's got a much better head on his shoulders, but he's pretty limited in his job prospects due to his lack of a college education. Last I heard, he was making 25K a year as an engraver at a downtown Charleston jewelry shop.

I'm not opposed to Homeschooling at all, but I definitely think that there need to be at least a few regulations on it.
 
Re: Homeschooling

lizzie said:
I don't believe that many parents are even interested in home-schooling, unless they are either qualified, or planning to put their children into a home-schooling environment where the individuals who are teaching, ARE qualified. All the home-schooling parents that I know are very interested in making sure their children are getting an education which is superior to what the public schools are providing.
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I know of those who homeschool that have been very successful at it but I also know of others that were not and ultimately their children ended up going to public school where they were years behind and it has been a trial for the children to catch up. Not all parents are created equal.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Superfly said:
In a lot of instances, the parents really don't have to do anything, except just make sure that the child is at the computer, doing his or her work, every morning. The private school that covered my daughter took care of absolutely everything. It was all online, and all I had to do is make sure she was up, and working. They took care of everything, including grading and keeping up with attendance. At the beginning of the next school year, when we decided to allow her to go back to public school, they sent her transcript and it was a very smooth transition.

I am sure that not all schools work this way. A friend of mine is homeschooling her children, and she actually has to teach them, keep up with attendance and everything else. Hers was much more labor intensive. Mine was gravy. But I paid for mine - I think hers is free. That could be the difference.
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Here in Ohio, we have several means of school choices offered to parents. It is working out very well. We now have the computer online classes. Many of the schools focus on different learning disabilities with new innovative ways of teaching. We are seeing great success especially with students that often fall through the cracks because the public schools are set up with cookie cutter type teaching methods that do not meet the needs of these students.
 
Re: Homeschooling

vesper said:
I know of those who homeschool that have been very successful at it but I also know of others that were not and ultimately their children ended up going to public school where they were years behind and it has been a trial for the children to catch up. Not all parents are created equal.
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Well, I realize we are just comparing personal anecdotal experiences here, but I have never once seen a home-schooled child who was falling behind, and in fact, they are normally far ahead of their same-age peers.
 
Re: Homeschooling

lizzie said:
Well, I realize we are just comparing personal anecdotal experiences here, but I have never once seen a home-schooled child who was falling behind, and in fact, they are normally far ahead of their same-age peers.
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We weren't always "on schedule" according to the curriculum my mother made up. That actually did worry me a bit when I was younger, to be honest.

However, when I actually got to college, it turned out that pretty much everyone else was so ludicrously far behind the curve that it didn't really even matter. :lol:
 
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Re: Homeschooling

lizzie said:
Well, I realize we are just comparing personal anecdotal experiences here, but I have never once seen a home-schooled child who was falling behind, and in fact, they are normally far ahead of their same-age peers.
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I agree, many of them excel far beyond what others in the public schools achieve. But I also know those who had no business taking on the task of teaching their own children because they were not disciplined to do so and ended up to be a disaster. This wasn't some computer program where your child virtually attends class but where the parent was responsible for providing and executing the curriculum.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Gathomas88 said:
We weren't always "on schedule" according to the curriculum my mother made up. That actually did worry me a bit when I was younger, to be honest.

However, when I actually did get to college, it turned out that pretty much everyone else was so ludicrously far behind the curve that it didn't really even matter. :lol:
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I guess all my friends must have exceptional children. :lamo
 
Re: Homeschooling

Beaudreaux said:
Since no one on the left will bite, I'll give it a go from a conservative viewpoint that had his kids in public school.

It depends, like most anything else about public schools, on the teacher.

My kids had a number of teachers that enforced critical thinking skills. To the dismay of many a student and their parents, I might add. One in particular was an AP English teacher in the 11th grade that gave a novel a week to the kids to read and write a 1000 word essay on by Friday. And he didn't shy away from the good ones either; like Uncle Tom's Cabin, and other writings that helped shape our culture. He required them to dissect the book from two differing viewpoints (protagonist and antagonist), and explain in detail the motivations behind each character from a sociological and societal standpoint of the time within the novel and then against today's "accepted norm." Note - this teacher was not a liberal, although the others that instilled critical thinking skills were. This guy would hammer the kids to make them explain their conclusions and why they came to those conclusions. This invariably would get into personal beliefs and prejudiced ideological viewpoints that were instilled in the kids by their parents, society and the media (hence the pissed off parents). Within weeks, the kids as well as the parents hated him - I was one of them (at first). However, by the end of the year, the kids loved him. He taught them how to think for themselves. How to not take any position, no matter how much it was approved or accepted by society, as correct. He showed them how that they themselves must take the available information, evaluate their own views against the information available and render a conclusion or view based on that evaluation. The key being that they had to defend their position and many a heated debate occurred. I was privileged toward the end of the year to be invited to attend one of the debates on a Friday with another parent (a progressive) on the other side. This time though, the kids ran the debate, and asked the questions. I learned very quickly that the kids in that particular class had had their brains opened and turned on by this guy. And if your wondering, both me and the progressive guy took our share of bruises during the affair. It was great.

Maybe this answers your question, maybe not. At least I stepped up though.
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What? A reasoned response! Bah

No, you are right, it is situational. I was being a bit facetious with that comment. I think on whole, the quality of our public education has taken a nose dive. There are good places and good teachers, but it's not universal enough across the whole. I wouldn't end public education, though I wouldn't end homeschooling either. I think both can be legitimate. We do have problems with our public schools, most notably how we fund them, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The best teachers are the ones that make you work and think. In grad school, my favorite professors had the toughest, most challenging courses.
 
Re: Homeschooling

TeleKat said:
Do you homeschool your children and do you think you think it's a viable option for other families?
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Yes and Yes. Home schooling puts the onus to develop good work habits and study hours on the students as their own responsibility. You instill in them the desire to learn and explain that is what their job is in the family. Avoid the general public curriculum like the Bubonic Plague and accelerate the student at every opportunity. My youngest daughter is 17, and been home-schooled since first grade. She is now getting her Associate's Degree in business and will get her Bachelor's in two more years when she is 19. College is online now and the students who's curriculum was online in High School progress naturally into the College methodology. They are also able to get a Degreee without school loans by doing it online from home. She will have to use loans for her Graduate degrees as she plans to go to Veterinary school. I highly recommend home schooling but rememger, you operate under the auspices of your home school district and you are in competition with them, so don't expect much cooperation. My daughter took her SATs (her scores were equal to the seniors in the home district) when she was 14, but still the home school district would not write the letter that would have allowed her to begin college at 14 years of age. The district finally relented after two years of stalling.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Gathomas88 said:
Okay, so again. Apart from the ideological aspects of the thing, what is really the harm?

It's not like the parent's can keep these kinds of things from the forever. For that matter, it's not like there aren't traditional schools that neglect to teach evolution either.

You're basically just trading one creation story of "peripheral importance" to a person's life for another.



I would be more inclined to agree with you if this wasn't already something that even secular, state-funded education attempted to do on a routine basis.



Works for me. :lol:



I'm not going to deny that it is a lifestyle which tends to attract people of a particular political lean.

I'm simply saying that I don't really see the harm in that fact. Our public educational system is already heavily ideological.



He has a red avatar.



Okay, so name a single way in which a non-scientific layperson is going to be objectively harmed by being taught one version of creation over another.



Ugh. Yea... I've met a couple of those. Things generally didn't end well for them.

My first girlfriend had fruit-loopy Liberal "compassionate" Catholic parents. They "unschooled" her, focusing on art history, music, and foreign languages while ignoring academic fundamentals almost completely.

After bombing her SAT, she ran away from home, got knocked up, and wound up as a single mother after her live-in boyfriend left her high and dry. I think she's finally found a guy to settle down with now (after running through six or seven others and having another kid), but the whole situation is still a damn train wreck.

Her younger brother's got a much better head on his shoulders, but he's pretty limited in his job prospects due to his lack of a college education. Last I heard, he was making 25K a year as an engraver at a downtown Charleston jewelry shop.

I'm not opposed to Homeschooling at all, but I definitely think that there need to be at least a few regulations on it.
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What value did your education in Ancient Roman history have? Why do you talk about it here and again on this forum? Do you expect to be commanding any centurions soon? Are you biding your time until you're able to rule over the Mediterranean and have an affair with an Egyptian queen? Would you be happy if I were to use my Mind Wiping Device (just made it yesterday) on you and remove everything you know about Ancient Rome?

See, you're talking to an artist here. I'm more aware than anybody that what I make has no concrete value. Hell, my life can practically be defined by its affair with uselessness -- I spent four years learning Latin, after all. Oscar Wilde, a guy who had more of a love/hate relationship with artists than anyone I know, said, "We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." Ouch...but true. Is it acceptable to then say that we should tolerate the quashing of art as it is useless? What is really the harm?
 
Re: Homeschooling

TeleKat said:
Do you homeschool your children and do you think you think it's a viable option for other families?
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I have noticed a trend on this thread that intrigues me. That is people say they are concerned about whether or not the children that are home schooled are socialized or not. My intrigue is specifically concerned with that socialization and what exactly people mean by it. So what do you mean?
 
Re: Homeschooling

lizzie said:
Well, I realize we are just comparing personal anecdotal experiences here, but I have never once seen a home-schooled child who was falling behind, and in fact, they are normally far ahead of their same-age peers.
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Though I support home schooling, I have seen some homeschooled kids that were obviously behind my public schooled kids. In the end, homeschooling and public schooling can both be done very well, very badly or just average.
 
Re: Homeschooling

PirateMk1 said:
I have noticed a trend on this thread that intrigues me. That is people say they are concerned about whether or not the children that are home schooled are socialized or not. My intrigue is specifically concerned with that socialization and what exactly people mean by it. So what do you mean?
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Well, from I've seen with my sister, they lived out in the boonies and really had nowhere to go. It was a trek just to go shopping. So my mom didn't really take her anywhere, so now it's awkward for her to meet people. I mean, she's not a recluse or anything. She's married, now, with a baby. But she just doesn't know how to make friends, refuses to be alone, is mentally and emotionally unable to go anywhere by herself. I mean, anywhere. She couldn't run to the store for a loaf of bread by herself. She doesn't really have any friends - she's only friends with my mother. It's really an odd situation.
 
Re: Homeschooling

Cardinal said:
What value did your education in Ancient Roman history have? Why do you talk about it here and again on this forum? Do you expect to be commanding any centurions soon? Are you biding your time until you're able to rule over the Mediterranean and have an affair with an Egyptian queen? Would you be happy if I were to use my Mind Wiping Device (just made it yesterday) on you and remove everything you know about Ancient Rome?

See, you're talking to an artist here. I'm more aware than anybody that what I make has no concrete value. Hell, my life can practically be defined by its affair with uselessness -- I spent four years learning Latin, after all. Oscar Wilde, a guy who had more of a love/hate relationship with artists than anyone I know, said, "We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." Ouch...but true. Is it acceptable to then say that we should tolerate the quashing of art as it is useless? What is really the harm?
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The issue here, as I see it anyway, is essentially trading one bit of peripheral knowledge for another.

As much as people may hate to hear things phrased this way, evolution, for the average lay person, ultimately is little more than a secular "creation story." While I suppose that it might provide opportunities for a person to expand their imagination in the same way that my knowledge of history does (I will admit to dreaming up bizarre alien creatures and speculating upon their evolutionary histories myself from time to time), it's not like a person is necessarily being "deprived" of anything if they are simply taught a different creation story instead.

Frankly, how many of these families are completely keeping knowledge of evolution away from their children anyway? A lot of the more fundamentalist Protestant families I knew would actually teach their children about evolution explicitly so that they could argue against it. :lol:

That frankly strikes me as being somewhat misguided. However, it's better than nothing, I suppose.

PirateMk1 said:
I have noticed a trend on this thread that intrigues me. That is people say they are concerned about whether or not the children that are home schooled are socialized or not. My intrigue is specifically concerned with that socialization and what exactly people mean by it. So what do you mean?
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Honestly, judging from what I've seen of most of the rest of my generation, I don't even think I'd want to be "socialized."

Maybe that's a bit myopic, but it is the way I sincerely feel on the matter. :shrug:
 
Re: Homeschooling

Superfly said:
Well, from I've seen with my sister, they lived out in the boonies and really had nowhere to go. It was a trek just to go shopping. So my mom didn't really take her anywhere, so now it's awkward for her to meet people. I mean, she's not a recluse or anything. She's married, now, with a baby. But she just doesn't know how to make friends, refuses to be alone, is mentally and emotionally unable to go anywhere by herself. I mean, anywhere. She couldn't run to the store for a loaf of bread by herself. She doesn't really have any friends - she's only friends with my mother. It's really an odd situation.
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So am I to presume the only real contact with humanity your sister had was with the family no consistent contact with people outside the family?
 
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