Re: Homeschooling
Do you homeschool your children and do you think you think it's a viable option for other families?
We have one home-schooled member on this forum that's (mostly) the exception to everything I'm about to say.
Homeschooling is mostly for the benefit of preventing children from learning things like evolution or any associated "liberal" ideas. The only way to achieve this is, sadly, to permanently dismantle any ability to demonstrate critical thinking, one of the results of which is that logical fallacies are not only to be expected but celebrated. While such home schooled kids tend to be superior in reading, writing and arithmetic, their lack of critical thinking and hostility to science (particularly, scientific concepts deemed to be threatening to their faith) results in something that is a heartbeat away from child abuse, in my opinion. Their permanently misshapen brains make them unsuited to interacting with the world outside of their tiny, religious communities.
Oh, ask a home schooled person their thoughts on history, and you'll get all sorts of crap like, "Christians invented law" or "The gays brought down the Roman Empire." It's a hoot.
Many places to plug into this thread... the first and second posts seem the best to respond to....
Contrary to conventional wisdom, homeschooling is not some Nuevo, untested idea. In fact, until the industrial revolution of the late 18th / early 19th century, it was the normal way people were educated.
I am a strong Christian and we homeschool. We graduated our son from homeschooling in 2010. He was accepted, as the first homeschooler, to the Engineering Honor Program at the University of Colorado in Boulder. My daughter will enter her senior year in high school next year.
We did not home school for religious reasons and I firmly believe in evolution. We did not homeschool to "shelter" them from the world (and anyone that has read my posts would realize I am not trying to protect my kids from "liberal" ideas).
We started out the traditional way: our son went to various public and private schools through the first grade. He was exceptionally gifted. He had difficulty adjusting to the pace of a traditional school that went too slow and kept changing subjects on him... as a result, he would act out and become a behavior problem. The public and private schools wanted to address the issue with drugs. We chose to address issue by creating an educational environment that would allow him to pursue his interests at his pace. We tailored the other educational essentials around his passion. Mother and Father (me) were hands on in his education. We created a lot of educational opportunities around family; especially travel (combining history, culture, language and geography into experience and family time). For example, I took civics as my subject. I set a course syllabus that include a week long field trip (each) to Washington. It was a great time to bond, teach and create memories.
My son's homeschooling experience did not keep him out of a good school with a good educational opportunity. I expect my daughter will enjoy the same.
The cool part of home schooling is that we did not deal with traditional teenage rebellion. My kids generally enjoyed being around their parents through high school. Yes, the general "rap" on homeschooling is that the kids are socially retarded. I think people offer that objective largely out of ignorance. I think you will find most home school kids to be confident, polite and generally comfortable in their own skin. They were saved from the taunts, bullying and longing for acceptance that befalls far too many high schools during that awkward period of adolescence. Homeschool kids have plenty of social opportunities. In Colorado, every aspect of our local high school is open to our kids: they can attend any class; play on any team or join any club. We often joke with those that bring up this socialization aspect as that we acknowledged the problem and became proactive: we hired a kid to stop by the house and take our son into the bathroom to beat him up for his lunch money.... its amazing how many people instantly shut up with that quip. Sorry, this socialization objection is just ignorance....
Look, home schooling is not for everyone. There are some disadvantages. I think there are some things learned in public school that are worthy of learning: there are some personal accountability things that you learn there that are not as easy to teach in home school that I learned this by navigating a large high school and good sized college; we have (too much) coddled our kids in some areas where we should have taught self reliance (our bad). Homeschooling, however, while not for everyone, has been great for my family. I, for one, have just really enjoyed being actively involved in teaching my kids. I do think the things that we sheltered them from (like school shootings and pressures around sexuality/dating) have been good.
Plus you don't have to worry about your kids leaving you every day.
With all the school shootings, I'm surprised more people don't home school. I'd love to home school both of my girls, but I am trying to do right by them and I want them to have this time to make friends, meet people and so on. I know that it can happen outside school, with home school functions, but unless something really bad happens, I don't want to take this away from them right now. Right
now.
Homeschooling is always an option.
As to school shootings, our high school, Arapahoe High School, had a school shooting in December 2013. I learned about the shooting as it was in progress (before it was on the news and before we learned that "only" one person had been shot). The thought did not escape me that save for our decision to home school, my daughter would be there day and I would be panicked In fact, the one girl that was shot and killed was a very good friend of a girl that lives across the street.... my hair turned grayer that day.