Posted on 01/12/2007 8:26:59 PM PST by achilles2000
BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: By some estimates, the number of children in this country being taught at home is well over a million and may be approaching two million, and in some states there is very little or no government oversight of what the kids are learning, which is just the way most home school parents want it. We have a Lucky Severson story today on the home school debate...[be sure to watch the streaming video of the program that is now being broadcast over PBS's TV stations this weekend]
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
My wife is Jewish and I'm Unitarian, so we may not be what people think of as homeschoolers. If God blesses us kids, we will absolutely be homeschooling. The problem is that even the private schools are picking up on all these stupid educational fads.
Yet when we make roughly this same point about "global warming", we are called neanderthals who are against "sound science".
Liberals have always supported govenment controlled schools for everyone else's kids, not their own. I guess they have figured out that homeschooling takes less cash flow than the private schools they have traditionally used to avoid exposing their little darlings to those awful Black children.
"the U.S. Department of Education acknowledges that home schoolers are growing ten times as fast as the general school age population."
You bet. Reich is an idiot if he doesn't know the politics of publicaton these days.(Well, he's an idiot anyway, plus he's too short.) There is no more integrity in the academic publishing game than there is in the do-it-yourself curriculum favored by greedy administrators and lazy "professors."
These are a few of your favorite things! ;-) I guess PBS found you. LOL
The "peers" are the leftists in the ed schools. Moreover, the ed schools are notorious for being havens for the intellectually challenged whose "research" is not taken seriously outside of the inbred corridors of the education establishment. Tom Sowell mentions in one of his books that in Morningside heights (Columbia Universtiy) the jibe is that the widest street in the world is the street that separates Columbia Teachers College from the rest of the university.
Reich is also being dishonest. Much of the data comes form states where homeschoolers are tested by the state. In the cases in which homeschooling organizations (his "advocacy groups") have produced research it has often been by contracting it out to well known and respected researchers such are Dr. Lawrence Rudman. While in every social science study there are various methodological issues, the striking thing about the homeschool research is that no study has ever shown that the children don't do better than the average child in public school. This even holds true for minorities, single parent, poor, and uneducated families.
The point here is not that the homeschoolers are perfect or inherently better. Rather, the point is that the public schools have become so corrupt that they now take perfectly capable children and turn them into dullards.
Note, too that Reich's comments on academics was not the ground he wanted to stand on - he knows that pushing th eissue becomes very embarrassing for his ed school friends. Instead, his main argument is the homeschool families must be regulated in a way that public school content is puumped into the heads of homeschool children. When he talks of "ethical servility" what he is really saying is that homeschooling allows parents to pass on their values rather than those of the public school establishment.
I think that many more liberals are going to start homeschooling.
ping
"the U.S. Department of Education acknowledges that home schoolers are growing ten times as fast as the general school age population."
That is the best news I've heard with regards to the future of this nation.
one of the homeschooling parents in our group is as liberal as they get. others are middle of the road, very few are "right wing".
They'd better watch out! f their kids actually learn to think and question, they probably will not stay LIBERAL kiddies!!!!
I am not a fundamentalist but homeschool. My son's teacher was trying to make me responsible for his in school behavior, and the only way I figured I could do that was to go there every day. Not real feasible so I homeschool. I use all computer based cirriculum. My son is enrolled in the florida virtual school online and my daughter does switched on schoolhouse. If I could get her into the local charter arts school I would do that but my son is too "hyper" to go to regular school. A lot of the people in the home school group I belong too are very politically liberal even though they are "christian" of one sort or another.
SEVERSON: Most of these kids do have opportunities to socialize, but often only with other home schoolers.
This just cracks me up! A pointy-head PS administrator made this exact point on the homeschool edition of the Dr. Phil show recently.
Of course, there's no concern that public school kids only socialize and interact within the petri dish of the public school. And we all know that age-segregated life is "real life."
We had 1 liberal, maybe 6 middle of the roaders, 1 member of The Way and the rest about 24 or so were Baptist or Non-denom.
The big fight came when the religious group wanted to push for a statement of faith. When I said my statement of faith was the Nicene or Apostle's Creed and that that was all I'd willingly sign, I was told that wasn't acceptable because it was "man made not from God". When I asked who wrote the statement they wanted me to sign? They just stood there. (I knew exactly who wrote it one of the women in front of me!) Finally someone said it's from the Bible. I wanted to ask what do the Creeds atate that are not Biblical? but I didn't. I left and started another group.
The statement was really pushed to get rid of the "cultist" Way member. That's what I was told later. Anyway it didn't work she signed, but the middle of the roaders and the liberal all left.
Does your daughter like the Switched On Schoolhouse? What do you think of it?
Severson should have realized that the comment is absurd, especially if the children go to church. The vast majority of the population institutionalizes their children in government schools, including Christians. The vast majority of children that homeschooled children interact with in the neighborhood, church, music activities, etc. are going to be public school kids. You have to make a real effort to get in some socializing with homeschooled children. Of course, the main point is that homeschooled children interact and socialize with children of all types and adults.
I'm in Florida, too, and I've found a lot of secular homeschoolers here. I think part of it is the horrendous overcrowding in the schools. In my area even the private schools are filled to the max.
I think its great very easy to use not extremely expensive great on a laptop. I used it for two kids in each grade the newer one that has the xp sp2 bugs taken out is much better than the older version. In Florida all that really matters is that they test well and mine always did. SAT test yearly is my option to keep the sup. of schools happy.
In my more uncharitable moments, I am convinced that education as it exists today is designed specifically to keep the student stupid and compliant, essentially brainwashed. I learned to read at a young age, and more importantly, learned to LOVE to read. The "consensus" also today seems to be that "facts, dates, and rote memorization" have no role, and I vehmently disagree. It's just criminal what's happening in the schools, even worse it's mandatory. Look for any sort of homeschooling to be criminalized. Bank on it.
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