I actually DID home school my middle child and the school guilted me back by saying that the socialization was what was important. The 'socialization' made it difficult to deal with her disability. My sister home schooled her kids. Now she subs in a basically black PRIVATE school and the kids do extremely well learning respect and pride as well as academics in Minneapolis.
I wasn't concerned about violence here. I just wanted him to actually learn something, and not be rewarded for bad behavior. With homeschooling, you can choose from a large variety of online educational programs, or, to avoid being trapped in the structure and fees of an online program, there are plenty of individual lessons that can be accessed online or on DVD, which could be used to supplement a curriculum of your choosing. You can also find workbooks that can be used for assignments. When he got lazy or obstinate, as would occur from time to time, I could give him an assignment from the workbook and tell him he could get it done in an hour and be done with it, or he could spend the rest of the day on it if he felt like it. If you meet up with other parents who are homeschooling their kids, you can form an organized or unorganized homeschooling group, where no one parent is responsible for the whole curriculum. This also helps with the socialization. The main thing, in order to gain the full advantage of homeschooling, is to mix it up. Don't sit your kid in front of a computer or television for hours on end, but make use of some of that. A homeschooling education doesn't have to be structured like a classroom, although you can do some of that. If you have museums or other historical places, consider using these rather than sitting the kid at a desk to learn history from lectures or a book. But plan; simply walking through a museum isn't going to be particularly helpful without a plan. When we homeschooled our nephew, we consulted the school curriculum so that he wouldn't be left behind in something that we might have otherwise forgotten, but we brought in the stuff that the public schools leave out, such as the 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Constitution, and we covered real history rather than the BS that passes in the public schools. Since Maine history was a required subject here (although not legally required of homeschoolers), I began with the history of the American Indian groups who inhabited (and still inhabit) the state, which is something the public schools ignored, except for the Indian wars or other ways in which they impacted the white people who moved in later. While not necessary for a good homeschooling experience, I made use of some of the resources I had acquired while serving as program chairman for the EMT programs at TSTC and STCC, and included several computer tutorials that I created myself, and most of his tests were done on computer, which not only taught computer skills but kept me from having to grade them by hand. In time, a lot of it was done by computer. Since we built websites professionally, he learned to do that, as well. Plus, in high school, we sent him to the local public school for chorus, band, and theater. Yeah, they tried to tell us that he couldn't enroll in these programs unless he was enrolled as a full-time student, but that wasn't true. By the time he was ready for the 12th grade, we enrolled him full-time so that he could graduate with a diploma from an accredited school, which was not required but we thought it might make things easier for him later. He did well, by the way.
When we were home schooling, The home schooled kids tested better than the ps kids and it was theorized that was why the educators were so down on home schooling.
To be fair to the other side of the discussion, there are indeed parents who shouldn't be homeschooling. But most of those who think that homeschooling would be beyond them simply don't know what's available.
This idea of yours is a good one. " If you meet up with other parents who are homeschooling their kids, you can form an organized or unorganized homeschooling group, where no one parent is responsible for the whole curriculum. This also helps with the socialization. " My youngest daughter has custody of 3 of her grandkids now but so far they are back with their mother if she stays straight. Homeschool would be good if she had a group of others.
Certainly, some small percentage of students will benefit from home schooling. But consider that, on the first day of Kindergarten, before any involvement with the dreaded "education system", the average black child shows up with a vocabulary about 1/2 that of the average white child. And while both children's vocabulary expands, the average black child never catches up. Do you really believe that those black children would benefit from home schooling? After all, they have been "home schooled" for 5 years or so already. As an aside, it is hard to take the arguments of the pro home school/anti public school faction seriously when they post as an example of their belief a youtube video with low production values, or another who insists that the average teacher in 1974 was making over $64,000 a year. I'm glad that a couple of you have had success with home schooling, but the recent Covid lock down demonstrated that for most kids it was a failure. So keep in mind the old adage that "the plural of anecdote is not data". And yes, by all means, have a nice day.
Hoot, you seem very defensive about this. I believe most of us can see that children are not being educated in the basics any longer because schools have changed their focus. And don't get me started on the removal of physical education classes at a time when Americans are fatter than ever. It goes without saying that some parents are definitely better equipped to home school, but I believe children are not being educated well enough by public schools. My nephew and his wife (both college educated) chose to home school their 4 children until they were high school age. All four went on to attend universities and are successful adults. They received most of their socialization through church activities, participation in Little League, etc. and are all well-adjusted young adults. There is no "one size fits all" when educating children.
Beth - I've never disputed that some kids can benefit from home schooling. Of course your nephew and wife will do a great job at it. What I do dispute is that "the education system is making kids stupid". For one, we've always had plenty of stupid people. That's not new. Secondly, schools can only do so much. The best predictor of a child's academic success is the amount of parental involvement, and for an increasing portion of our population, parental involvement is largely missing. Blame it on changing demographics or changing cultural attitudes, or whatever, but it is missing. Do home schooled kids outperform kids in public schools. Sure, because of the increased parental involvement and the idea of self selection. The Covid lock downs should have taught us that for a majority of kids (and parents) that home schooling makes things worse. And of course, we could also point out that kids that attend private schools do better than the kids in public schools. Again, parental involvement. Home schooled kids and kids in private schools are hardly randomly selected. They would most likely do well under any circumstances. These comparisons are "apples and oranges" and are rendered meaningless. This has all been pointed out before in this thread but I guess it needs to be repeated. I'll be glad to let you prove me wrong. Take all the kids currently in the Baltimore Public School system, and tell the parents to home school them and let me know how it works out. (Hint, about 7% of those kids are currently at grade level in math, and there are 20 some schools where not a single child is performing at grade level.) Defensive? No, but certainly I take exception to the idea that it is "the education system" that is "making our kids stupid" and the undue and factually incorrect criticism of our public schools.
And what facts would those be? Or are you still insisting that teachers in 1970 were making $64,000 a year? As to the other post, what do you think those numbers mean? If you believe it means that home school is a better option for all students, that would be wrong. Example - my first wife (may she rest in peace) was not only the prettiest cheer leader, she was also the smartest girl in her class. The second smartest was also a cheer leader. It was a very small class (25 students) and let's just imagine that we took out the 5 folks who were ultimately in the honor society and started home schooling them as freshman, and test them as seniors. Which group would have the highest test scores? Of course the 5 top students. What about the average test scores for the remaining 20 kids or so? Average would go down because the top scores are no longer in the averages, even though their individual scores didn't change. Get back to me when you and the other guy can understand this. None of my facts have been disputed/disproven Have a nice day.
No, I'll stand by it as quoted. I don't know if it's correct because I didn't compute it, but I know that I quoted it correctly. I have to leave for a meeting right now, however.
Ah, so your anecdotal experience outweighs those of others. Got it. If you bothered Hoot, you could look up all the necessary data yourself instead of writing mere opinions based on your own biases. To be sure, if you wish to deny the data and you truly believe that public (government) run schools are better than homeschooling or private, it’s all good. That said, to add a smidgen of a monkey wrench in the gears, have you ever heard of ILS (International Learning System)? Note: I was one of the teachers involved with the early production of the system. For just a briefer, it is a computerized system that was specifically built for normal people, who, for whatever reason are illiterate or just slow to learn. There are ILS centers all over the United States and even in some other parts of the free world but here in the U.S., most of them are in Rescue Missions that are associated with AGRM whilst some are free standing and are mainly for those adults who simply slipped through the cracks via life happenings and / or coming back into society from prison. What I’m getting at is a question: Of the hundreds that I had experiences with, how is it that a person can come out of a public school and still be functionally illiterate? Of course, it’s a given that there were a few who never went to a school at all and were “father to son” taught for an occupation and most were school dropouts but the ones that concerned me most were those who graduated from a public high school. Why on earth would a program be so highly needed if public schools were that great? I never interviewed anyone for the program who was actually taught their ABC’s in a monitored home school environment nor did I ever have someone from a private school in my class. I do wonder why? Oh yeah, is it not simpler to write my name rather than a highly insulting “the other guy”? Or does it take a higher education to do that?