Posted on 11/18/2012 5:16:50 PM PST by SeekAndFind
This part of your post is ambiguous:
“I was thinking about this. As I said I know about 40 or so families that homeschool. That translates to about 60-63 kids. As I said 12 of them are exceptional and 3 are complete buttheads. Right off the bat that means that just under 30% are well above the norm.”
It sounds like you're saying 12 children are exceptional, but that would only be 20% of 60 - 63. Are you saying 12 families are exceptional?
In either event, I think your experience is still skewed negatively, probably for some of the reasons posted a few posts up in this thread by someone else - it's all in your worldview, and the fact that you're more likely to see the failures than the successes.
Nonetheless, perhaps you should moderate your rhetoric and your tone to reflect that even your unbalanced experience shows that homeschoolers succeed far more than they fail.
If 20% or 30% of homeschooled children are "exceptional," and another 10% or so are above average (although that's an interesting curve - doesn't look much like a normal distribution to me), and a mere 10% are below average, and those for specific reasons, that looks like overall success far beyond that enjoyed by the average public school.
Especially when one considers that roughly 30% of children in public schools don't even successfully complete their secondary education.
“...and another 5 are below the average. These 5 are homeschooled for special educational reasons. The families have pooled resources and received assistance from the county to meet their needs.”
Almost counter-intuitively, special needs kids often seem to do better being homeschooled than not. I say “almost” and “counter-intuitively,” because, well, this is one area where one might think that specialized training is more needed than in ordinary primary and secondary education.
And, indeed, it is.
But the “almost” part comes in from actual homeschool experience, knowing that most homeschoolers will stop at nothing to do the best for their children, including obtaining, formally or informally, the specialized training needed to take care of a special needs child.
Imagine that - that parents would care more about their children than strangers would. Who’da thunk it?
And that's what drives homeschooling - most normal folks love their children far more than any other people on the earth.
I know that many public school teachers see the kids where that just isn't the case. But even though this population has grown dramatically - and quite tragically - and may be the majority of children in some communities and populations, at this point, it's still true that most parents love their children far more than anyone else loves their children.
sitetest
This is 9th grade, typically ages 14-15 and more importantly their homeschooling parents sent them voluntarily for the test.
I have a friend that home schooled her threee children. She was not equipped to do so. She just didn't have the fortitude to make the kids do work. As a result, her kids are not productive. Roaming from dead end job to dead end job.
Two of the three still live at home at 30 and 28 years old! She simply cannot let go of those apron strings.
“Again please in mind that my issue is only with the ‘Kook Fringe’ element...”
But many of your posts belie this statement. Many of your posts focus on homeschooling failures, which are few and far between, and deny the overall tremendous success of homeschooling.
Thus, you become a target for the fringe against you rail, while at the same time inducing the hostility of folks like me, who aren’t quite on the fringe.
If all your posts showed the balance of the last couple, you would look less like the mirror image of the fringe you dislike.
You also need to understand - this is very important - that folks who have actually homeschooled have had to endure years and years of jackasses, morons and other assorted defectives who have told us: we’re committing child abuse; we’re just too lazy to send our kids to school; we have no rights to resources generally available through the public schools even though we pay the same taxes; our kids will be unsocialized, uncouth and ill-equipped to handle the wider world; we’re selfish for keeping our admittedly-superior children out of the public schools; we’re just trying to get away with something (not ever sure quite what it is with which we’ve been trying to get away); it’s not possible for “ordinary” people to teach their children; we should be required to be licensed to teach our own children; there should be more and stricter regulation of us because, again, everyone knows we’re trying to get away with something.
And on.
So, when you react in anger to one of the folks you consider the fringe, and you respond in an unbalanced way, in kind, you’re rubbing salt in the often still-open wounds of those of us who have had to suffer the stench of filthy verminous people as described above.
As I’ve alluded, my son started college this year. He homeschooled for eight years, spent four years at the top of his class at a pretty good, local Catholic high school, graduated valedictorian, one of the most popular kids in the school, National AP Scholar, National Merit Scholar [declined - he didn’t go to the school that offered it], and got accepted to some pretty decent colleges, including Harvard, Hopkins, UVa, Notre Dame, and with a full scholarship, room, board, books, educational stipend, and walking-around money (a couple of thousand dollars per year), the Honors College at the University of Maryland, College Park.
In the spring, he received another piece of mail from Harvard encouraging him to accept their offer of admittance. It accidentally wound up in the mailbox of one of Satan’s bitches in the neighborhood, the same bitch who told my wife when we first moved in a dozen years ago that homeschooling was child abuse. She brought the mail to our door and asked about our son. My wife said, yes, indeed, he’d been accepted at Harvard, and was seriously considering it. And the bitch said, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Being so sheltered, do you think he can handle it?”
That’s what we put up with.
Your rants, when you are ranting, only remind me of the bitch down the street.
sitetest
Laugh. Out. Loud.
Oh, and don't forget, we are destroying democracy. I got that one once. From a stranger. In a library after a home schooling workshop.
(Yes, I do know those are not complete sentences, in case there are any grammar police on the thread. I'm using that style as a literary device.)
There are plenty of institutionalized children with parents like the one you described who aren't doing well, either. Ask any government teacher who complains about the lack of parental support.
It has been my observation ( anecdotal) that academically successful children, whether institutionally or home educated, have parents that are equally committed, equally engaged, and are spending the **same** amount of time providing homework support.
My conclusion: It could be that institutional schools are not teaching much. It could be that it the parents and children in both cases, institutionally schooled or home educated, that are doing the real work **in the home**. The institutional school may merely be sending home a very expensive curriculum for the child and parent to follow in the home.
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