Posted on 07/29/2018 8:12:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
Americans have lost faith in the public school system. Only 36 percent of U.S. parents have a “great deal” of support for public schools, according to a 2017 study by Gallup. But despite this dismal reality, more than 90 percent of American children remain enrolled in public schools.
There is, however, a growing contingent of parents who are rejecting government schools and instead choosing to educate their own children at home. Although homeschoolers only currently make up about 3.4 percent of the total student population, homeschooling is a shining example of what education freedom can deliver. When it comes to standardized testing and other educational benchmarks, there is no denying that homeschoolers fare much better than their public school counterparts. After examining a compilation of nationwide studies, Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute revealed that, “The homeschooled have consistently scored in these studies, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the United States and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile.
Another study validates homeschoolers’ exceptional academic achievement. In a poll conducted by Ray, homeschooled students achieved scores in the 86th to the 89th percentile, compared to the standard 50th percentile for those enrolled in government schools. Interestingly, the homeschooled students who had neither parent certified as a teacher performed as well as those who had a parent that was a certified teacher, by a margin of 88 percent to 87 percent.
Furthermore, on college entrance exams, homeschoolers routinely score higher than public school students. On the 2014 Standardized Achievement Test (SAT), homeschoolers on average scored a 567 in critical reading, 521 in mathematics, and 535 in writing. How did the public school students perform on the same test? Quite a bit lower, as the national average for all public school students was 497 in critical reading, 513 in mathematics, and 487 in writing.
Unlike public schools, homeschooling inherently meets the unique needs of each child. Who else, besides a parent, knows what is best for their own children? Certainly not government bureaucrats and teachers, who work at the mercy of state and federal regulators, many of whom have no idea how to educate kids!
Homeschooling accommodates a wide variety of personality and learning differences, a stark difference from the traditional public education system. Thanks to Common Core, much of the classroom time spent in public schools is now unnecessary and pointless. On the other hand, homeschooling allows parents to optimize their schedule and curriculum based on a student’s individual needs. A class of one maximizes customization and minimizes standardization. In a homeschool environment, if a student excels at history but struggles with mathematics, he or she can cruise through the former and slowly absorb the latter.
Some parents might feel intimidated at the prospect of educating their own children, especially if they don’t have a background in education. But homeschooling is more accessible today than ever before. Since homeschooling’s humble beginnings in the 1970s, there has been a wealth of educational resources that have been published for home educators. In fact, there are more than 30 nationally recognized homeschool curriculum providers offering services to U.S. parents today.
Further, parents avoiding homeschooling because they doubt their ability to educate their children should remember that polls show most parents don’t trust publicly certified teachers, either. For example, one study found 75 percent of Americans believe accreditation for teachers does not ensure quality education.
The best evidence for accreditation skepticism comes from a study conducted by Eric Hanushek at the University of Rochester. Relying on data from 113 other educational studies, Hanushek discovered that for 85 percent of the students included in the study there was no correlation between the accreditation of the teacher and the success of the student. Further, educational expert Donald Erickson of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) says accreditation is vastly overrated. “Some of the worst teachers I’ve ever seen are highly certified,” Erickson said. “Look at our public schools. They’re full of certified teachers. What kind of magic is that accomplishing? But I can take you to the best teachers I’ve ever seen, and most of them are uncertified. … We don’t have evidence at all that what we do in schools of education makes much difference in teacher competence.
Teaching a child at home is not an easy task. It takes time, effort, and, most of all, love. However, the advantages often outweigh the difficulties. If a parent is unsatisfied with his or her child’s public school education and has the ability and interest in homeschooling a child, he or she should feel confident that providing a superior learning environment through homeschooling is both possible and often an incredibly rewarding experience.
I would have been happy if I had been able to help my children with their homework but being taught the German System. It was impossible for me. The result came out the same, but still.
“Teaching a child at home is not an easy task. It takes time, effort, and, most of all, love. “
And money. And a desire to reach out to other sources to open up new horizons to the child.
ANYTHING that can be taught in a classroom is now available on-line.
Even as far back as the 50s when I was in elementary school, public schools had started their descent into liberal mediocrity. We were a military family and moved often. During one transition while I was entering sixth grade, we moved to New Jersey and the parents decided that the public schools there were not to their liking. I was sent to a Catholic school (with the dreaded nuns). Boy, what a diff. Yes, the nuns were strict, but I found that virtually every class was far advanced from what I had previously experienced. I am particularly thankful for the math classes which, when I started, appeared to be out in space, but turned out to start me on a career based on math.
I still give thanks that there were alternatives to gubmit education even back then.
Public and private schools perform one important factor.
It concentrates a bunch of kids together and they learn how to be kids and learn social skills. .
The wife and I taught our kids (and supplemented the public education) much of the knowledge they have making them the successful adults they are. We also taught them what to see what were lies perpetrated by public schools.
It’s a balancing act.
The boys in that picture look very like my two homeschooled grandsons.
I have a relative who is a teacher (and very, very liberal) who was complaining that pro athletes make millions but teachers make so little. I told her when they can take the top few hundred teachers in the country and have them teach every student those teachers could make millions like pro players while the other 99% would make the same as rec-league basketball players (i.e nothing). With the internet that can happen now.
When I was in k-12 we got a really good education. They didn’t dumb it down for the lowest denominator. There was a slow class for the slow kids. Everybody else got the regular curriculum.
Certainly do-able, but I think it more likely that the direction of "electronic classroom" education will be in teaching the same subject in different ways, based on the inherent "learning style" of the specific student.
This statement sums up what should be obvious to all but the most politically motivated defenders of what passes for "public education" today.
Union/political/bureaucratic control of the entire "education" process for preparing youth for citizenship in a free society has failed to accomplish that purpose, and that failure has left the future of freedom and liberty at risk.
"We, the People" must be equipped to distinguish between the principles that would keep America free and prosperous versus the false premises that will enslave her, and we must be able to articulate them.
Accommodating tyranny by failing to call it what it is is dangerous. We long have needed a leader whose words are strong and courageous and based in the principles of our Declaration of Independence.
American citizens need to wake up to the counterfeit ideas and false "hopes" offered by politicians who use "promises," just as the rest of us use "currency."
They buy votes with "promises" in order to gain power to themselves and their ilk. Then, when "hopes" are dashed, "the people" they have promised to help (the naive, the poor, the ignorant--even the "educated" who are ignorant of liberty vs. tyranny) find themselves enslaved, working for those who have purchased their power in the most despicable manner--by offering "hope and change." Thus it has ever been.
The people who founded America were not so "dumbed down." Hear two of them:
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle [usurpation of power] and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much . . . to forget it." - James Madison
" . . . nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the penshioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, lusury, foppery, selfishness, meanness and downright venality swallow up the whole society." - John Adams
Further, it was not just the founding leaders who were well-informed about their constitution and approaching threats to its protections. By the Year 1830, when the French jurist Tocqueville traveled America, he wrote admiringly of the citizenry, observing that even the backwoodsman was far more well-read and informed than those in other parts of the world, and that they understood their Constitution, and had with them a Bible and a newspaper. Sadly, beginning in the mid-20th Century, our "government" schools removed the ideas of liberty from the nation's textbooks, largely under the guise of a counterfeit idea of "separation of church and state," and the citizenry is uninformed as to the difference between tyranny and liberty.
Today, with all modern means of communication, Americans possess little understanding of threats to their liberty and, thus, risk losing it to charlatans whose only goal is power.
First, look at cost/family income. Dr. Brian Ray, educational researcher, finds that there are successful home schooling families at every level of family income, according to the Dept. of Labor. Think of what that means: "at every level." It's not a question of what you can afford. It's a question of what you value.
Second, look at the question of expertise. If your child can talk and your child knows how to use language to learn, you have already taught him the most important skills he will ever acquire. If he is capable of forgiving and being forgiven, loving and being loved --- he has what he needs for lifelong mental and emotional health. These qualities can be deformed, and degraded by today's typical classroom experience.
Dr. Ben Carson --- politician, author, and pediatric neurosurgeon --- was raised by a virtually illiterate, divorced mother who had married at the age of 13. Although he attended schools --- very poor ones -- rather irregularly, he attributes his excellent intellectual development to the fact that his mother limited his TV time and required him to read and write book reports on two library books per week. An illiterate single mother who was employed outside the home as a domestic worker, did this. And she did it at home.
Even if you're of only average intelligence and education, you are capable of educating your kid by learning side-by-side with him and staying one jump ahead. That's how I taught my boys Algebra II!
I could say more, but let me finish up with this: Are you interested in home schooling? Try it provisionally for one year. That's how long it will take for you to start, experiment, fumble, fish around, and settle on the best way to do it for you and your kids. One size does not fit all. But YOU CAN find a way to do it that fits you and your kids.
Please, please keep your kids away from the intellectually tepid, emotionally defective, socially savage, sexually depraved public school. Adapting a question Our Savior asked: what good would it do for you to gain the whole world, and lose your kids?
“Dr. Ben Carson -— politician, author, and pediatric neurosurgeon -— was raised by a virtually illiterate, divorced mother who had married at the age of 13. Although he attended schools -— very poor ones — rather irregularly, “
Wiki
ILLITERATE adults could go thru 3 hours of reading writing and arithmetic online. Do it with the kids. More motivation.
Its fine except if you have to WORK for a living
3 hours is all it takes. Plenty of time left to work.
“ILLITERATE adults could go thru 3 hours of reading writing and arithmetic online.”
And still be illiterate.
As Carson has often said on the public platform, his progress was secured only because of his mother's passionate insistence that he keep reading, keep writing, keep learning at home. So even family instability, poverty, and his mom's near-illiteracy did not prevent her from making their home a key learning environment--- which made all the difference to Ben and his brother.
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