Posted on 08/10/2009 4:53:45 PM PDT by achilles2000
Each year, the homeschool movement graduates at least 100,000 students. Due to the fact that both the United States government and homeschool advocates agree that homeschooling has been growing at around 7% per annum for the past decade, it is not surprising that homeschooling is gaining increased attention. Consequently, many people have been asking questions about homeschooling, usually with a focus on either the academic or social abilities of homeschool graduates....Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled students from all 50 states who took three well-known tests—California Achievement Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007–08 academic year. The Progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed...Overall the study showed significant advances in homeschool academic achievement as well as revealing that issues such as student gender, parents’ education level, and family income had little bearing on the results of homeschooled students....
(Excerpt) Read more at hslda.org ...
And...One of the **most** important reasons to get it out of the hands of government.
Government schools were a socialist scheme from the beginning and it is **impossible** to reform socialism!
Just by attending government K-12 schools children learn that it is OK for the government to take from their neighbor ( by threat of police force) to provide a service that their parents want for free. Thirteen or more years of this, and the child is well indoctrinated to be a socialist. Added to this toxic brew of government school socialism is an atheistic worldview, and far too many Marxist teachers more than willing to proselytize their communist worldview.
I think you misunderstood me.
I wasn’t particularly interested in learning that junk. I was more interested in showing off...or at least putting the “teacher’s pet” to shame. If there was no one to show off to or put to shame, I worry that I would’ve stopped trying. I really don’t think homeschooling would’ve worked for me. I think it would’ve ended up like my piano lessons did...a million reasons to NOT practice and a million excuses go do something else. after all, what fun is it to sit in the front room all alone practicing something that no one else is doing and no one even knows I’m doing it? Where’s the payoff? Who am I beating? How do I win? There’s no adversary and no incentive to achieve.
As far as I can tell, anyway.
I don't believe that public education violates that constitution.
Would you say that it is impossible for government indoctrination to violate the Constitution?
Yes, the 3 R's. But then, failure to teach the Constitution - thus, failure to teach about freedom - would arguably fit that bill as well, since that would be a signal failure to teach about what America and American citizenship is about.
Please pardon that cut and past nightmare. I’m attempting to practice touch typing on my phone. I think what I was trying to say is clear - mostly.
However,.... We must remember that behind every law stands an armed policeman to enforce it. This is why, as a society, we must, as a free society, keep laws to an absolute minimum.
Schools are socialist because if parents can pay for food, clothing, and housing, they should also pay for education services. When children go to government schools they are given an object lesson ( every day for 13 or more years) that they government can use the threat of police force to take money from their neighbor to pay for a service that they and their parents want for free. If they learn that the government can give them tuition-free education, then why not government health care, prescription drugs, retirement benefits, disability, unemployment,...etc.?
Except for social security, education is likely one of the largest government socialist entitlements received by the American person.
And...Again...If the government expects parents to feed, house, and clothe their children, the government can expect that parents make a good faith effort to educate their children. But...In many states the government's standard for passing from grade to grade is illiterate and innumerate. The government can not have higher standards for parents and private schools than it has for its own schools. Whatever would have been considered passing for the lowest performing child in the state, that should be the standard for parents and private schools.
Also..Why do you think that my motive is to change your beliefs? I am not posting for your benefit.
I post for other conservatives. I also read Free Republic so that I can pick up their fresh new ideas and clever ways of expressing them. ( Please see my tag line.)
Good job! No complaints from me! :-)
So?..You must be rather comfortable with Marxist atheism.
Ah!...But, please remember that any government powerful enough to force a philosophy of education with which you are comfortable, is also powerful enough to force you to pay for and subject your child to an educational worldview that you might find abhorrent!
And...If you think government schools can be religiously neutral, please describe one. I and possibly others will have **great** fun tearing that to shreds! :-)
And...Again, I have absolutely no interest in “budging” you. I post for other conservatives. Those who defend government K-12 school are merely a whetting stone upon which talking points can be sharpened.
“It is very likely that government schools actually waste the child’s life and cost the taxpayers unnecessary expense. “
A little more dramatic than necessary but I don’t disagree with the point that schools waste a lot of money. However, the post was about “homeschooler academic achievement”. I merely pointed out the (obvious) statistical reason why, and that it isn’t unique to or because of homeschooling.
But what happens when the parents, you know, involved with their child's education aren't even at 5th grade level themselves?
Which is the case in inner city schools, which brings Detroit to mind where only some 26% of kids graduate, where the enite community has a 3rd world literacy rate.
The same thing happens decade after decade under godless hypocrat NEA leadership in inner cities, where more money is thrown at a failed model every year with the same tired results, and yet the parents will tell you they're involved just the same, and sadly, probably are.
“...where more money is thrown at a failed model every year with the same tired results”
I think everyone can agree to agree that government wastes money at whatever it does.
Which does nothing to diminish the success of homeschooling.
All that reasoning does is come across as from the public school parent as justification for sending their kids to public school instead of taking the time to do it themselves.
Besides, academics aside, there's more to raising kids than just making sure they have good grades.
Homeschooling allows for the development of moral character and the passing on of values and ideology that no amount of deprogramming at the end of every school day can counteract.
In the public schools, their minds WILL be polluted with things that they don't need to see and hear. They will likely NOT get the introduction to profanity and sexually explicit talk that teens can do that once it's in the mind, is there to stay. No amount of deprogramming will remove that.
The problem is, most parents could do a better job educating a child to the 5th grade level in far less time than the public education system.
The only reason it works to that level, is because of how easy it is to do.
That's not enough justification to support the education system we have by the coercion that's used to support it.
(I certainly don't want to live in a society with 80% illiteracy rates.)
We're getting there anyway, in spite of the *promoting general welfare* catch.
The department of education is NOT *promoting the general welfare* at this time.
Education happened before it was mandated by the federal government and literacy rates were higher then.
“All that reasoning does is come across as from the public school parent as justification for sending their kids to public school instead of taking the time to do it themselves.”
The article was about the statistics behind “homeschooler achievement”. I explained why they were wrong.
I in no way discourage homeschooling, unless, of course, you need misleading statistics to convince you.
Homeschool for whatever reason you wish, but don’t presume that the act of homeschooling is going to be responsible for increased achievement for all homeschoolers, because it isn’t true.
“All that reasoning does is come across as from the public school parent as justification for sending their kids to public school instead of taking the time to do it themselves.”
The article was about the statistics behind “homeschooler achievement”. I explained why they were wrong.
I in no way discourage homeschooling, unless, of course, you need misleading statistics to convince you.
Homeschool for whatever reason you wish, but don’t presume that the act of homeschooling is going to be responsible for increased achievement for all homeschoolers, because it isn’t true.
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