Posted on 01/06/2009 6:16:16 AM PST by Sopater
Link only to USA Today article
(Excerpt) Read more at ednews.org ...
Primarily because in government schools immorallity and atheism are the rule.
We send our two kids to a hybrid school.
2 days classroom taught by paid teachers with all of the normal activities that a public school would have, drama, beta club, journalism and we even have the only Jr. ROTC home school sponsored troop in GA.
The other 3 days are taught at home as classroom assignments by the parents.
And don't bother launching the comments that I'm a troll, a union teacher, or a leftist. I used to be one of those homeschoolers that wasn't doing the job, and I saw a fair number of other mothers that weren't doing it either.
Yes, a good number of schools are crappy - no question. But if you're going to homeschool you have to make the effort and be honest with yourself regarding whether you're actually going to do the work or not.
Seperation of school and state.
Exactly. Otherwise you are doing your kids a disservice, at a minimum.
ping
Well said! You have more courage than I do. We've never attempted an entire year of homeschooling.
We do have summer-school (during the break), and discuss and research as they're studying throughout the year in order to ensure they have all the information (not just the perspective the schools want to teach).
It seems to work well for us.
True.. If a parent has "spoiled" the child.. home-schooling them may be counter productive.. since the kid is being ruined in other ways.. SPoiled kids can be failures in many aspects of learning.. not just school/studying..
But home-schooling a spoiled child instead of public schooling them can still be a better option.. Since the public(teachers/students) are not hamstringed with baby sitting them..
Public school is about creating stunted democrats.. and fanatic socialists.. not operative entrepreneurs.. as are almost all academic institutions especially Universitys..
Come this Thursday night we can all watch one of the nation’s premier home-schoolers try to lead his team to a national championship.
My two oldest are just now reading the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers concurrently as part of Veritas's Omnibus curriculum. Oh, and in the secondary books they just finished Ben Franklin's autobiography, and they're starting on Charles Finney's. Daughter's 14, son is 13. Life is good. =]
how would it be possible to give power back to the teachers? when i was in grade school, i remember we still got swats!! it was great. of course now that’s like an ancient barbaric ritual according to kids nowadays...what if you were to put your kid in school and then go to the teacher or principle and say, “look, if my kid acts up or disrespects you in any way, you have my permission to discipline him.” do you think other parents would follow suit?
what the hell am i talking about...parents don’t want billy and suzy to get in twuble...it might hurt their wittle self esteem!!! god, die already!
This quote in the article gives an idea of how many homeschoolers do something similar.
Personally, not to criticize your choice, my husband and I have agreed to avoid such home-school cooperative ventures. We think they're a foot in the door for the government. But we're weird - both homeschool graduates ourselves and very paranoid about government school influences.
I doubt most students today know what the Federalist Papers are. They likely believe enumerated means some sort of coverage sold on TV by an illustrated chick.
1. Restore to teachers the right to discipline students.
2. Repeal the "right" to public education.
3. Take away from administration the power to revise teacher-assigned grades upward.
The top reasons, from a sidebar to the article:
Concerns about the school environment (including safety, drugs, peer pressure): 88%
A desire to provide religious or moral instruction: 83%
A dissatisfaction with instruction at other schools: 73%
An interest in a non-traditional approach: 65%
Source: Top home-schooling reasons in 2007 Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey
My own observations from nine years of homeschooling is that a moderately subpar homeschooling experience usually provides a better education than the majority of public school experiences.
As well, most of the children I've seen do the best in public schools had parents who were deeply engaged, and who performed not a small amount of the schooling themselves, at home. In these cases, it's likely that the children would have done marvelously well anyway if they'd have been homeschooled.
The thing is, children learn naturally. They're built to learn. If one doesn't place obstacles in their paths, many children will learn a fair amount even without a lot of help. The problem with many public schools is that their primary purpose - warehousing of young people - conflicts with the goal of learning.
sitetest
On #2...what do you mean here?
i’m assuming you are thinking public school should be paid for like private?
There are many cooperatives and other opportunities related to traditional schools that aren't related to public schools.
There is a Catholic homeschooling cooperative in my own area with a couple of dozen families and dozens of children (mostly elementary school-age) involved. There is also a Catholic homeschooling cooperative high school locally. One of the local Protestant congregations also has a very large cooperative program.
My own son was invited during his 8th grade year to attend a local traditional Catholic high school for Latin. He'd managed to teach himself a year of high school Latin in 6th and 7th grade, but as he advanced, it would have been increasingly more difficult for him to advance without outside assistance.
sitetest
I admit there are times that I have been sure I wasn’t teaching my children the right way or enough. Especially on threads online where I have read about Jr.’s 500 page college thesis at the age of ten that he wrote in his spare time. But, I have been amazed by what my children learn by just helping each other out and just because they want to learn.
I've seen junior high age kids that could barely put a written sentence together, tested at 4th grade levels in math, knew very little basic history, science, grammar, etc.
Yes, children are built to learn but let's face it - there's a ton of stuff kids should learn but won't on their own because it's dull, it's hard, it's irrelevant (to them). Unschooling doesn't really work after the younger grades.
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I’ve participated in such cooperatives, one organized by homeschoolers, taught by the parents, no government strings attached. There are similar cooperatives in my new area, one I’ve already heard about that has a classical focus.
Specifically problematic to me are the government school run, government school teacher taught cooperatives. They were really big in Iowa where we just moved from. In fact they sort of sucked the air out of the local homeschool groups - why bother putting together your own coop when the school has a free one with “real” teachers? I think that’s a bad thing.
I started taking community college classes at 15 because I couldn’t teach myself calculus. Still I feel that’s different than joining a government school program... homeschoolers need to be looking for the strings. It may be as inocous as “the school district gets extra funding for doing this” - but I hate the government school system and want them to get as little money as possible, and none at all for my kids, thanks.
Homeschooling right is work, no doubt about it.
It’s time consuming and often tedious.
But, done correctly, the results are more than worth it.
Does anyone use the old McGuffey readers?
Agreed, and that was my original point.
But the very worst that can happen in that event, is that they end up with an education equivalent to what they would get if you sent them to a Public School anyway!
I so believe that you have to educate and raise your kids according to biblical principles, or your homeschooling efforts are not going to succeed.
First concept: Don’t bring Caesar’s system into your home.
Regardless of whether you homeschool your children, send them to private school or gov’t schools, or lock them in a box and don’t let them learn anything, the parent is ultimately responsible for their child’s education. If a child attends a gov’t school and comes out dumber than a box of rocks, the parent is squarely to blame.
Uh, that's the name of a Michael Crichton novel, right?
j/k
Unfortunately, government schools are so bad you don’t have to make much of an effort to outperform them.
In March or April a new survey of homeschool academic performance will be out based on a very large data set. The results will impress - and bring out the government school apologists.
The left has done everything possible in order to remove parental authority (and thus destroy families),
and they start with removing social responsibility.
God: "Because I am not allowed in schools."
Same here, but we don’t do jr ROTC with our daughter. She’s in 9th grade never been to public school. She play’s in Home School vollyball league against small private schools.
No, I wasn't coming at it from that direction.
You see, right now, if a kid wants to be an utter butthead and disrupt class and not learn and generally be a pain, for as long as his parents want him to stay in the public school system up until the age of 18 the school system has to take him in.
Give schools the power to boot a kid at discretion, and these problem children (teenagers, generally) become no longer a problem. Let their parents pay for reform school.
“...moral and religious reasons...” How about just making certain their kids can add!
I bet it won’t get any press, either.
Some lefties actually DO think they’re helping. These are not the ones who are actually in power. The ones in power KNOW that they are destroying the institution of the family.
“I've seen junior high age kids that could barely put a written sentence together, tested at 4th grade levels in math, knew very little basic history, science, grammar, etc.”
First, I compared a “moderately subpar homeschooling experience” to “a majority of public school experiences.”
“Subpar” isn't the same as “atrocious.”
I wasn't comparing the worst of homeschooling experiences, but rather those that are moderately below-average.
You're citing results that represent some of the worst homeschooling experiences.
But if we're going to compare these worst homeschooling experiences that you've seen, I'd compare them to public high school graduates who are completely illiterate and innumerate, completely void of any knowledge of history, and grammar? Get real.
Having seen results of any number of studies, the homeschooling results that you cite are rare. Regrettably, what I cite concerning public schools isn't so rare. Thirty percent of public school children don't even manage to get a high school diploma. And in many jurisdictions, the percentage is much, much lower. I read recently that only about one out of four children in the Detroit public school system get a high school diploma.
And then, as to the value of the diploma received by more than a few, it's non-existent.
I'll reiterate - a moderately subpar homeschooling experience usually provides a better education than the majority of public school experiences.
“Unschooling doesn't really work after the younger grades.”
Depends on the child. Both of my sons learn more from their own self-directed pursuits than what they receive formally. The older son is now in a traditional Catholic high school, the younger is still homeschooled.
sitetest
Good to avoid those. You’re not paranoid. The government school establishment wants to adopt German policies toward homeschooling.
On the positive side, here is a link to an outstanding coop program that you should explore and tell others about:
First some short interviews: http://www.hslda.org/docs/hshb/77/hshbwk5.asp
Here is the website
http://www.firstclasshomeschool.org/pages/home.html
I know it is a little early for you, but you ought to call Heidi at 360.326.8826 and find out what’s up with First Class. You may be able to use the information to help others. Hedi will know who sent you ;-)
Oh, look! A pig just flew by my window ;-)
Home schooling is like pizza: Even “bad” homeschooling is pretty good ;-) And that’s the truth...
Student: “God, why do you allow so much bad stuff to happen in the world?”
God: “Because”
I have, with each of our children. The 1836 edition is outstanding.
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