Homeschooling

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WildAlaska said:
Many kids in the Public School system are filled with silly liberal claptrap.

Many kids Home schooled are filled with tinfoily hat claptrap.
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So far, so good, Wild, who can argue with "many".



None of them know how to read and write. All of em need to toss out the video games and turn off the TV.
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Now you done stepped in it, Wild.

About the video games and TV, I totally agree with you. You are, however, overlooking the fact than many religious parents either bar completely or closely monitor what their kids can watch on TV.

For about 4 years, the only TV my daughter saw was the tapes we bought for her.




None of them know how to read and write.
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But here's where you really blew it; you rushed in where angels fear to tread.

The stats show that home-schooled kids are, as I mentioned above, about 30% above public-schooled kids in their test scores. Home-schooled kids regularly win the national spelling contests, year after year. If I remember correctly, one year first, second AND third place winners were all home-schoolers. Their reading/writing, math skills are usually far superior. Even if some may write "tin-foily" stuff, they express themselves well and can spell "tin-foil".

As I mentioned above my daughter can THINK, and she can WRITE!



Little example from last Thursday, when G-d sent another blessing my way (I keep asking myself what I ever did to deserve them? But I sure don't refuse 'em -- main one being my daughter herself.)


I stumbled onto a forum for religious and hassidic Jews. I assumed that this meant they would be conservative and I wrote of my anguish at what liberal Jews were doing to undermine the security of Israel.

Bad assumption! Most of them were liberals (!) and they lambasted me. I had characterized liberals and the damage they do in my usual understated :D way. They screamed that I had attacked them (I hadn't), and came up with the usual liberal response: I was not a thinking person, I was promoting hate, and I was just a generally mean character. They really piled on.

Just as it was getting interesting, my daughter phoned and I told her what was happening.

My kid is the light of my life. But we do knock heads from time to time (like all the time!). My ex laughs and asks me how I like arguing with myself.

She truly is a chip of the old block. I love it.


Here comes the miracle: "What forum is this", she asked indignantly, "I want to get on there and let them have it!".

Now I knew I had raised a very conservative kid. But she had never, in any way, been involved in any of my beloved "discussions". I never thought she'd be interested.

She called me back, "Dad", she said, it was SOOO good!". "What was good?" I asked her. "What you wrote", she answered. "It's just what I would have said."


You probably have to be a parent to understand this, but once again, without even dying, I went straight to heaven. I was ecstatic.

"Say that again," I said, "One thousand times -- I'll pay you!"

"Naw", she laughed, I'll say it again for free."


Her dorm counseler wouldn't allow her to dial up the net that night. Next evening she called me. "Dad, wanta go on and see what I wrote?"

So I did. And twice in two days, STRAIGHT BACK UP TO HEAVEN I WENT!


She never told them that "matis" was her father.

She just defended me, took them to task for criticizing me, said I was doing something for Israel and implied that they were just sitting on their tushes.

She wrote, "I wish there were more out there like matis."

I cannot tell you how happy I am!


This is the kid who was my 50th birthday present from G-d.

This is the kid my ex grabbed when she was two and flew across the continent to her mother with.

This is the kid whose mother I courted for 5 years to get her to bring her back and to remarry me (she did, but after a few years dumped me again. I'm just a hard guy to live with!)

This is the kid I managed to save from conversion and to get DEEP into her Judaism (both she and her mother are now ultra-orthodox chassidim).

And just look at how she turned out.

I knew she was a great kid, I knew she was smart, religious as I wanted her to be, beautiful, everything I could ask for in a daughter.

But this was for me a wonderful confirmation that I musta done something right! G-d is good to this ex-militant atheist!


So don't even tempt me, Wild, or I'll post what she wrote, then you'll really be sorry :D


I wish you and all parents on this board the nachas (joy in the accomplishments of your children) and the happiness I feel.


(And don't disparage home-schooling!)


matis
 
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Public Schools are beginning to act as if they are the ultimate decision maker in children's lives. In my kids' district, they decided to have a sex and drug survey, and decided in a kind of "reverse" parental consent, in that they would mail out an announcement stating if written protest from the parent was not received by X date, then the school would go forward with this survey. I went to the District office in order to get a copy, and was told I as the parent, was not allowed to have a copy, and could only view it in the office.

Even after I told them it was not legal to 1: deny a parent a copy of that survey; and 2: survey kids regarding drugs and sex, without written parental permission (not lack therof) the Assistant Superintendant would not believe me until aftger the State Attorney General's office had explained it to them in a demand letter. They had ignored a written open records act request, and violated Federal code by not obtaining written authorization to query our kids on private matters. (The reason they did not want to give me a copy, is the survey asked numerous questions on family subjects, which were not mentioned in the notice mailed.

After receiving the demand letter from the Attorney General, they were kind enough to provide the copy, while condescendingly alluding to how much of a pain I was to actually want to know what was going on in our school.

Most parents won't stand up against the School District, and therefore the Districts get away with just about anything they want.

I have no doubt that Redworms friend was treated like a criminal because her kid was out of school for two days. I don't doubt it at all.
 
You know, it has always amazed me -- and it continues to amaze me -- that the most common critique leveled at homeschooling is, "What about socialization?"

The fact is that if you're worried about socializing your children, homeschool is absolutely the best way to go.

In formal schools (public or private), the kids spend 6 or more hours a day in a rigidly-controlled setting. They are exposed only to other children the same age as they are, and spend that time with usually one but at most two or three adults who have made a life's work of being around children that age. They do not spend any significant time with any other demographic, and they do not learn from school how to interact with anyone who is much older or much younger than they are themselves. On the playground, a kid who plays with younger kids gets made fun of for doing it. Younger kids get teased and tormented, and are rarely treated with kindness by the bigger kids.

The real world isn't like that. The only thing traditional school socializes kids for is for spending time with other people their own age in a traditional school setting.

A typical homeschool family is larger than the average (averages 3 to 4 children per family compared to national average of 1.2), and has a wide circle of other homeschool families the kids spend significant time with. The result is that kids are frequently exposed to children both older and younger than themselves, and because other family members are usually present, they learn not to be unkind to the younger ones.

Formal bookwork happens at the kitchen table in isolation, but takes very little time in comparison to the same amount of bookwork in a traditional school setting. The rest of the time is usually spent out in the community -- at sports activities, music lessons, community theater, museums, and pursuing whatever the children's interests happen to be. The children are thus exposed to people of all ages in a wide spectrum of occupations and a variety of social settings.

For example, one day earlier this year, my children listened with fascination as a man who'd helped liberate the concentration camps during WWII told us all about his experiences. We bumped into him at a flight museum during school hours, and wouldn't have had time to learn from him if we hadn't been on our own schedule during our own thing. The children knew how to keep a conversation going with this old gentleman because it's the sort of thing they do all the time. Even when traditional schools take the children on field trips, the events are so tightly scripted and so chaotic that little learning takes place -- and very little positive socialization such as this.

Another example of how this can work: my kids spend four hours a day, four days a week, in a homeschool co-op. The other children attending co-op have children ranging from age 3 on up through late high school. The social situation there is very different from a traditional school setting because the social norm is to play with kids both older and younger than the kids are themselves. Playing with younger kids, they learn patience and kindness. When they play with older kids, they strive to keep up with the big kids' skills and want to be like the big kids. The adults at the co-op are people with real jobs in the real world -- loggers and office workers, military people and carpenters and farmers and shop owners. They range in age from just out of high school right up to someone's great-grandma who likes to come in and visit the young folks.

Because their lifestyle gives them time for such things, the typical homeschool family also spends more time volunteering in the community than the national average -- doing stuff like stacking boxes in the food bank, visiting the folks in the local nursing home, mowing lawns for elderly or disabled folks, and the list goes on. All of these are tremendous opportunities for the best kind of socialization.

Around here, most the homeschool kids I know are involved in at least one or two sports, either the community ones like Little League, or the school-specific ones.

Of course every homeschool family is different, and the specific situations kids will be exposed to is different from one family to the next. But the point is that far from being isolated, most homeschool families are vibrantly involved in their community life -- and as a result, most homeschool children have a myriad of social opportunities that would simply never occur in a traditional school setting.

pax
 
It seems to me that some of the courses taught in public and private schools could easily be effectively taught at home but the more technical courses required to prepare them for higher education, like Calculous, Physics, chemistry and biology would be impractical in most cases due to the instructor knowledge and equipment required to teach them.

Also, there is more to K-12 than just the three R's. I feel it severly handicaps the home schooled when they MUST leave the nest and interact with the general public. They also miss a lot by not being able to compete in team sports however one could compete in "independent" leagues and acquire many of the skills required overcome these short commings of home schooling.

However, the fact still remains that it is too easy to let it slip under the rug and the child does not get what he needs.
 
Public schools are a great place for students to learn about interacting with other people.
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If some of the things that are routinely ignored in public schools happened in the workplace, there would be criminal charges and jail time involved. How does that have anything to do with learning to interact with other people?
 
My 2 cents.....

When I was in college we had a young woman and her mother come to class. It was the first day and the girl was trying out college after home schooling her whole life. You could tell she was very nervous with the new environment and that her mother was hovering over her. After class I cut through the lunch room and saw the two of them sitting together with mom still watching over her. The daughter held her head down and was almost afraid to look at the students around her.

We thought that mom would be there for just that day. How wrong were we, she came back the next day as well and looked more irritated as the class went on (Statistics). After the class she had a heated discussion with the teacher and left with her daughter to never be seen again.

I'm not saying home schooling is wrong, but I believe kids need to intereact with other kids outside the reigns of their parents in an environment where they have to learn to cope with growing up and adolescents. Parents still need to be fully involved in their lives but, let their children makes friends and develop their confidence. I worry that our fear of what our children can encounter and become might force us as parents and adults to be over protective.

If a child is going to be home schooled, he or she has to interect with other kids through one avenue or another outside the controlled environment to develop their skills of communication. I look at it as being similar to going away to college, it helps young adults learn responsibiltiy and prepare for the next step. They still need to realize that the outside world is very different from the bubble college represents. Home schooling is very similar and a bubble that can leave kids unprepared for the real world. Failure to do so in my opinion leaves them unprepared for real life.
 
"If some of the things that are routinely ignored in public schools happened in the workplace, there would be criminal charges and jail time involved. How does that have anything to do with learning to interact with other people?"

My friend, it has every thing to do with interacting with other people, even the bad stuff is a fact of life and one has to be aware of them and have an idea of how to cope with them.
 
It appears to me that the last four posters didn't read pax's post, where she handily debunks the myths surrounding "socialization" of home-schooled kids.

But, hey, what do the opinions and experiences of an actual home-schooling parent count? ;)
 
Pax,

There's not much point in my quoting your wonderfully cogent post above 'cause I'd just have to quote the whole thing.

So let me just say, "Pax, YOU ARE MY HERO!" :D





matis
 
Sounds like Pax and her group are doing an excellent job of educating their children, which based on the description of their activities, are pretty young, 9th grade or less. My questions would be who will, or does, teaches them calculus, assuming they intend to go on to a technical college. How do you handle the hands on experiments in chemistry and biology. Do you have qualified instructors come in or what?
At any rate, good luck, hope it continues to work out for you. Sounds like you have had a really bad experience with public schools. My schools of the 40s and 50s didn't put up with no foolishness. when I was in the first grade my mother us to ask my teacher, who walked by our house on the way home, each day not if she had to whip me that day but how many times she had to whip me. Must have done a little good I went on to graduate college with a BS in Chemical Engineering and a tripple minor in Math, Physics and Chemisty.
 
BigJack ~

That post was specifically talking about socialization, not so much about education. But to answer your question about "tough" subjects like calculus, that's the whole reason we started the co-op in the first place. We hire tutors for some of it but mostly the parent(s) who are most skilled in a subject do the tutoring for that subject for all the kids at a given grade level. We pool funds for big purchases like microscopes and lab equipment.

pax

There is an idea floating around that public schools are deliberately designed to turn out brainless conformists. I don't believe this. I think public schools are just what you get by default. If you build a giant building out in the suburbs and lock the kids in it during weekdays in the care of a few overworked and mostly uninspired adults, you'll get brainless conformists. You don't need to posit a conspiracy. -- Paul Graham
 
Pax, the age segregation problem has been one of my primary concerns. Any parent who sends their kids to public school needs to anticipate this and avoid the problem by getting them into age-integrated activities like Scouting and church.

Concerning the idea that one can't train the sciences in home school (or private school), I personally know of one home school group in my town which includes a cardiologist and another which includes a dentist. The kids in those groups do VERY well in math and the sciences. My kids in their little religious private school had a PhD engineer who taught their junior high school math and a PhD physicist who subbed in their high school. With home schooling there is no maximum level of expertese, no glass ceiling for the teachers. (With private schools there is a problem in that the authorities put a lot of pressure on private schools to get rid of 'uncertified' teachers who have good credentials...a way of cutting out the competition.)

With this in mind I would pose a contrary problem, that the MAXIMUM level of expertise in public schools is usually a masters degree in educational tautology. The teacher selection process is actively opposed to recruitment and hiring of people with any real experiance in the math-science field. So if America wants to continue to advance in math and the sciences we need to abolish the education establishment.
 
Pax wrote eloquently, but didn't debunk anything. She did a fine job of expressing herself, though.

It's doubtful that my next ex-wife will be of childbearing age; however, should such a lucky young woman find her way into my life, our child/children won't be homeschooled. (They'd attend private schools.)

How many c.e.o.'s of Fortune 500 companies were homeschooled? Anybody want to bet the answer is "0"?????

What percentage of the nation's top physicians, dentists, lawyers, jurists, scientists, etc., etc., were homeschooled? Wanna bet that it's not an infinitesimal percentage?

RE: My comments about child abusers: Surely didn't mean to imply that child abuse is rampant in the homeschooling community; just that many child abusers do choose homeschooling for their children. (Anybody not GET IT why they'd do that?)
 
Concerning the idea that one can't train the sciences in home school (or private school),
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what? going out, catching a frog, and slicing it open away from the confines of a classroom aint science? pshhawwww! my entire life has been dedicated to scientific experiments.
 
Mvpel, I agree that alot of inappropriate stuff occurs on schools. Thankfully, it seems like a majority of kids (at least where I go to school) are still benefiting:

They're learning about difficult, unruly, or otherwise not-worth-being around people... And how to deal with, or better yet, avoid them.

Every kid needs some exposure to the bad stuff to help guide them to the good.

Cheers,
Wolfe.
 
HSLDA 100$. Wow portuguese surplus was about .22$ a round last time I bought some .Not that it means anything.I think that social workers love "homeschoolers" because they give them a "Darth Vader".They are more than happy to find bad homeschoolers because it gives them job security.Whether the child's dad is the wierd guy on the block with all the guns or the child didn't get all there vacinations,a "College Educated Gov. Employee"[social worker] will be just tickled to pay them a visit.

Most useless people:
Public school teachers
recycling NCOs
social workers
meth heads
vice cops
Diversity coordinaters
video jockeys
The NOW
O.J.
Televangilist
guidance counselers
PETA
Almost anyone that lives in Portland OR
And Bono
 
who will, or does, teaches them calculus, assuming they intend to go on to a technical college.
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I was homeschooled k-12, and by my junior year, I was pretty much self-taught, my parent's role being largely reduced to handing out tests. I taught myself differential calculus, not my parents. It's really not that hard to homeschool kids if you have a decent curriculum.
How many c.e.o.'s of Fortune 500 companies were homeschooled? Anybody want to bet the answer is "0"?????

What percentage of the nation's top physicians, dentists, lawyers, jurists, scientists, etc., etc., were homeschooled? Wanna bet that it's not an infinitesimal percentage?
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Wanna produce some actual data, instead of speculation?
 
I was homeschooled k-12, and by my junior year, I was pretty much self-taught, my parent's role being largely reduced to handing out tests. I taught myself differential calculus, not my parents. It's really not that hard to homeschool kids if you have a decent curriculum.
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Bingo! Public schools in the US suck, and aside from the liberal indoctrination aspects and what not, the abject poverty of the curriculum is reason enough to homeschool your kids. Under any measure, you couldn't do a worse job than the current crop of "educators" (a pompous moniker, by the way.) Public ed is a sick joke.
 
I would never doubt that "home Schooling" could be successful. Hell, wasn't ole Ben Franklin home schooled? And as I said before, looks like Pax and that group have "got it together", and they are more a "private school" than one thinks of as a "home school." I would be willing to bet that the incident of failure to complete is seriously high in the total efforts to home school. As Twycross alludes to, in the later years "I taught myself" and I just can;t believe that many teen agers are equally as responsible.
The change in phylosophy that came with the integration of the public schools in the south over 50 years ago has led to the complete failure of the public school system in the south. Not unusual at all for high school graduate to not be able to read--can shoot them hoops, but can;t read. The abandonment of dissapline and respect being obvious. Also, many if not most of the affluent or middle class upwards students left the system and went to private schools as did many of the more qualified teachers and with them went their money and support.
There is no easy answer to this problem but home school, which no doubt has its place, is not the answer that is required.
 
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