ksen, I've said many times that we're now considering homeschooling when we haven't really in the past. I have two basic problems with the whole private school/homeschool mentality.
1) Private schools: I'm at least a few years older than you and I grew up in the south. My first grade year was the year Virginia schools were desegregated. I still remember that was the conversation on the way to school my first day. As such, I've always been skeptical of private schools, particularly "Christian" private schools because a lot of them were formed, not for educational reasons, but for segregation reasons.
2) Homeschooling: I agree that it's great for some families. I think you (ksen), 2J, SuziQ and the others (Jen's family) are all quite well prepared to homeschool your children. But a lot of people aren't. I may insult some folks here, but I think if all you have is a high school diploma that you don't have any business homeschooling your children. No, you don't need an education degree, but you need more than high school.
And I have a real problem with folks who want to homeschool their kids to keep them away from all the evil in the world. Hear me out. It's a good thing to limit what your kids are exposed to. But at some point, they've got to know what the real world is like.
It's like the parents that my wife is dealing with now as she's teaching kids who have been mostly homeschooled. The woman that didn't want her daughter reading Poe and Hawthorne sent in a collection of "Christian Literature Short Stories" as an alternate. My wife looked at it and said "fine" since there was some good literature in the book (including, to our amusement, works by Poe and Hawthorne). But she's offered her class extra credit for a book review over the Christmas holidays. She's had one student ask if she can read the Left Behind series.
I'm reading that series because I think the story line (and their interpretation) is intriguing. But the writing is crap. Last year during Christmas rehearsals I was reading one and so many people from our choir came up to me and said "aren't those books just wonderful? They're the best thing I've ever read." [insert puke smilie here]
I'm on my soapbox here because I adamantly refuse to fall for the line that just because something is "Christian" that it is "quality."
And THAT's why I'll never agree that homeschooling is for everyone.
/rant
You know...I'm just going to say a few things partly regarding this and partly my own thoughts and then back out. I KNOW this is one of the few subjects that can really get me riled up, and I'd rather not go there. ;-)
First of all, though I know there ARE good schools out there, I would say the public schools in this area are more about indoctrination than they are about education. They teach more about "social issues" than they do about literature, mathematics, writing, etc. Their whole goal is to turn out good little (liberal) citizens. Many of the public universities are more of the same. (And not just the public ones, for that matter.)
I have very strong opinions on higher education, which I know are not shared by the vast majority of Americans, so I usually don't bring them up. But I'll be darned if I'm going to pay tens of thousands of dollars to an institution that supports programs and causes that go against everything I believe in just so I can get a piece of parchment that says I've taken classes in something I can learn on my own! Yes, it does give me proof...but I'm not willing to pay that much for proof. I don't need it in my present career field, and I would be unlikely to find a really good job in the fields I would LIKE to study - music, mostly. Nor would I really want to do that as a career. If I want to learn about one particular thing, I'll take a class or read up on it, but I have no desire to go to university to do so.
Ok…..
1) Private schools: I'm at least a few years older than you and I grew up in the south. My first grade year was the year Virginia schools were desegregated. I still remember that was the conversation on the way to school my first day. As such, I've always been skeptical of private schools, particularly "Christian" private schools because a lot of them were formed, not for educational reasons, but for segregation reasons.
You could always investigate the school and the church that runs it. That should tell you if they exist merely to continue segregation.
2) Homeschooling: I agree that it's great for some families. I think you (ksen), 2J, SuziQ and the others (Jen's family) are all quite well prepared to homeschool your children. But a lot of people aren't. I may insult some folks here, but I think if all you have is a high school diploma that you don't have any business homeschooling your children. No, you don't need an education degree, but you need more than high school.
Why aren’t parents with a high-school degree qualified to teach their own children through high school? Especially these days with the plethora of helps that are available for homeschooling families?
The love and care the parent will give the child(ren) will far outweigh their lack of advanced degrees.
And I have a real problem with folks who want to homeschool their kids to keep them away from all the evil in the world. Hear me out. It's a good thing to limit what your kids are exposed to. But at some point, they've got to know what the real world is like.
What point is that? 5 years old? 8 years old? 13 years old?
When you are trying to nurture a new tree you don’t stick them out in a hurricane at a young age to help them learn how to weather it. You keep them inside and feed them and care for them until they are strong enough to weather the storms.
I'm reading that series because I think the story line (and their interpretation) is intriguing. But the writing is crap. Last year during Christmas rehearsals I was reading one and so many people from our choir came up to me and said "aren't those books just wonderful? They're the best thing I've ever read." [insert puke smilie here]
Yep, the writing there is pretty junky.
I'm on my soapbox here because I adamantly refuse to fall for the line that just because something is "Christian" that it is "quality."
Ok, I can agree with that.
And THAT's why I'll never agree that homeschooling is for everyone.
Why? Because some Christian writing is not quality? I’ll bet those Christian authors were not homeschooled so I don’t see how you are making the connection.
I'll agree with you wholeheartedly thre, Corin. I have seen materials used in 'Christian' homeschooling, and some are decidedly inferior. Even though we are devout Catholics, I don't use just 'Catholic' materials for our kids' education. We use some Catholic texts for Religious education, and our kids are using a Catholic Amer. History book which they read along with the secular text. It gives a good perspective on the way the Church progressed through the history of the US. But I would never DREAM of using that book exclusively and think the kids were getting a well rounded education.
There are a lot of kids who don't do well in schools because they are bored with what it being taught, or 'get it' the first time, and are bored with having to sit there while the teacher continues to go through it with the other kids. Some kids just do better learning things on their own!
Our kids are kinda quirky, but with parents like Sir SuziQ and me, they never had a chance, LOL!! But they like stuff that most kids in their classes were never into very much; astronomy, Dungeons and Dragons, computer programming, anime, science, math. The older two did ok, though I think our second oldest would have enjoyed homeschooling immensely. After h/sing three years, our youngest son will probably go to the same high school our older two sons attended. It is an all boys Catholic school which is sort of in the Classical mode in that they study a lot of the classical literature and really emphasize learning for learning's sake. Our daughter, on the other hand, is content to stay at home. I gave her the option of going back to school this year, to begin high school, and she said that sitting in class all day would be too boring, she'd rather do the work at home. She's more of the literary, artistic type, so I don't know what she would want to major in in College. Sir SuziQ is trying to convince her to become a Paralegal. Even if she didn't want to do that full time, she'd have a great skill to get part time work while in college and during the summers. Apparently they make good money. We'll see. But I can't see forcing her into a school situation in which she would be bored all day, then have to come home and spend all evening on homework which should have been covered in class, but wasn't. Plus she's not a really social person, so the whole social scene would be a drag for her unless she lucked up on kids who shared her interests.
Sir SuziQ HATED high school, mainly because many of the kids made life hell for the smart kids, so he had only a few friends, who he's still friends with today, though they rarely see each other.