Posted on 03/03/2006 2:17:13 AM PST by grundle
COLUMBIA, Maryland (Reuters) - Elizabeth and Teddy Dean are learning about the Italian scientist Galileo, so they troop into the kitchen, where their mother Lisa starts by reviewing some facts about the Renaissance.
Elizabeth, 11, and Teddy, 8, have never gone to school. Their teachers are primarily their parents, which puts them into what is believed to be the fast-growing sector of the U.S. education system -- the home-school movement.
For their science lesson, Teddy and Elizabeth are joined by three other home-schooled children and their mother, who live down the street in their suburb midway between Baltimore and Washington D.C.
Before the lesson starts, all five kids change into Renaissance costumes -- long dresses and bonnets for the girls, tunics and swords for the boys.
"We definitely have a lot more fun than kids who go to school," Elizabeth said.
Nobody is quite sure exactly how many American children are being taught at home. The National Center for Education Statistics, in a 2003 survey, put the number that year at 1.1 million. The Home School Legal Defense Association, which represents some 80,000 member families, says the figure now is quite a bit higher -- between 1.7 and 2.1 million.
But there is no disagreement about the explosive growth of the movement -- 29 percent from 1999 to 2003 according to the NCES study, or 7 to 15 percent a year according to HSLDA.
This growth has spawned an estimated $750 million a year market supplying parents with teaching aids and lesson plans to fit every religious and political philosophy. Home-schooled children regularly show up in the finals of national spelling competitions, generating publicity for the movement.
Parents cite many reasons for deciding to opt out of formal education and teach their children at home. In the NCES study, 31 percent said they were concerned about drugs, safety or negative peer pressure in schools; 30 percent wanted to provide religious or moral instruction while 16 percent said they were dissatisfied with academic standards in their local schools.
"I wasn't sold on the idea of institutionalized education. It's a factory approach -- one size fits all," said Isabel Lyman, author of "The Homeschooling Revolution" who taught both of her now-grown sons at home.
"The schools take all the joy out of learning. They don't take account of a particular child's interests, needs and development. The whole system is anti-child," she said.
STATES VARY
Different states take widely varying approaches to home schooling. Some, like New York and Pennsylvania, require that the parents submit lesson plans four times a year and regularly test the children.
Others, like Texas, basically leave them alone. So there is little reliable data on how they are doing, said University of Colorado education professor Kevin Welner.
"There are popular myths that home-schooled children are socially inept, cloistered kids and that they are either illiterate or academic wunderkinds. Anecdotes aside, we simply don't have the data to make such generalizations," he said.
"Some children will get top-notch instruction. Others will get poor or minimal instruction. Obviously it will vary by parent," he said.
Even the cliche that the majority of home-schooled children are evangelical Christians is outdated, if it was ever true.
The movement remains overwhelmingly white and middle class but it is growing fast among black and Hispanic families and becoming more politically and religiously diverse as well.
Some parents follow an educational philosophy known as 'unschooling' where the children are encouraged to follow their own interests rather than adhering to a fixed curriculum.
Laura Derrick, president of the National Home Education Network, has followed this philosophy with her 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter.
"My son learned to read before he was 3 and I realized then we were working better than any school program ever designed," she said. "Children are born wanting to learn."
Lisa Dean, who was a lawyer before she became a mother, said home schooling her children was tremendously rewarding but also very exhausting.
"It's a long day with the kids. I look forward to when my husband comes home," she said.
She also has backup from a local group of 70 home-schooling families who organize group field trips and extracurricular
activities. Her children both take lessons in Celtic music on the fiddle, play soccer and basketball and have tried classes in art, hip-hop dancing and kick boxing.
Back in science class, the children were satisfied that heavy and light objects both fall to earth at the same speed, just as Galileo observed, even if neither they nor their mothers seemed to know why. And then it was time for lunch.
When the schools are inhabited with anti-American morons like that moonbat in Colorado, is it any wonder?
Very good past but such an easy argument was handed to us by that idiot yesterday.
The kid did good.
Maybe run him for congress as a 16 year old. Sounded more mature and losds smarter then nearly every congress critter I've heard speak.
Heard him on Hnnity and he was a cool cookie.
The last line gives away the author's bias that home-schooling is a joke.
He just could not resist getting in a final jab.
And they wonder why journos are seen as biased adolescents..
Well, it's possible that the mothers knew why but just aren't saying because they want the kids to figure it out for themselves.
Or maybe the author's really such an idiot.
No doubt the author thinks a pound of gold is heavier than a pound of feathers.
Yup, I heard a bit of him on Hannity, too. That kid did great, especially considering his mother is a dimlycrat.
I find something contradictory about these clauses. FWIW, my kids were homeschooled. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Do these kids get a GED or a high school diploma? I remember reading a while back about a child custody case where the father wanted his son to go to public school and the mother insisted on home schooling. The kid wound up with a GED and couldn't get into LSU. The father was furious.
My home educated sons get a diploma, I issue it. They can get into hundreds and hundreds of colleges and universities, all four military academies.
I've got a dear friend whose hsed daughter attends Georgia Military Academy and after her second year will be commissioned as a 2nd Lt. She has just been selected as the first female Regimental Commander and is on the dean's list and many more accomplishments.
If he couldn't get into LSU, that's their loss.
That being said, I won't allow my sons to take the GED. They earned a diploma, they get one. Non-traditional it may be, but they have earned it.
This is the best way to foil the leftist plan to poison the minds of kids.
My mom was and is a dummycrt. Dad a Reagan supporter. My sister followed mom and is a leach on society, never had a job like mom. I a repub have never asked or been given a thing. I am very successful.
"The kid did good"
The kid did "well".
If Demoncrat gets elected in 08 rest assured that the homescool movement is going to get shut down.
You can find them in just about any Bible believing Baptist (independent fundamentalist KJV only) Church. That's where. The men there are taught to be men and work hard to support their wives and children.
Your Welcome :)
Some advice to you: Drop the Goth stuff, it's a turn off to the type of man you desire. Then get an education for a profession, join a good church or move to an area where you will have a good chance to meet that man. Sounds like you want the rugged independent more outdoorsy type.
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