Posted on 05/16/2007 7:41:28 AM PDT by MortMan
Barbara Ballard realizes it’s a bold move.
Her daughter, Katie, is 4. The state says she should start kindergarten in the fall.
But Katie won’t be boarding a school bus and making macaroni art projects with 25 other children. Instead, she’ll have “school” by herself at her mother’s office in southern Lawrence, where Ballard owns a technology company.
Ballard plans to home school her daughter, and in doing so joins a growing number of families who choose not to send their children to public or private schools.
“It’s a strong statement: I don’t think the professionals can do as good a job educating my child as I can,” Ballard says.
More parents are agreeing with that assessment, according to government figures and groups that advocate home education.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.ljworld.com ...
I agree with your point... I’m sure I can do a better job with my own kids than any other teacher could, but could I handle thirty kids in a classroom? I don’t have or want that skill set. I’m an engineer and I work well with people who have some basic respect for others, mild interest in being there, slight motivations... all the things you won’t get from the juvenile delinquent who’s causing the rest of the class to slow down.
But that kid is one of the arguments for parents to homeschool, because why should my kid be held back because some other kid in the class can’t get with the program? Or if my kid’s the slow one, why should he have to sit there day in and day out, not getting the attention he needs to learn the difficult concept, or marked out as “slow” by the other kids?
I know there will always be a need for some form of institutional schooling; I just think the current system has to go. A local, parent driven system, with lots of competition and transparency, might be what’s needed. But that won’t happen until the current system is in worse shape than it is even now.
Thank you for the information regarding expelled homeschoolers, as well as for the compliments regarding my “debate” at the linked site.
Homeschooling isn’t for every parent or every child. One of the greatest fears is failure - because it harms your son or daughter. But success is the sweetest feeling in the world.
I don’t have or want that skill set - that made me smile :)
Yes, of course, all I was doing was observing that, in addition to what it can do for some children, the increasing trend toward homeschooling also has the potential to quickly and efficiently effect positive change in our society.
Increasing the homeschooled segment also, I believe, would make public schools better for the children whose parents chose that route. There’s nothing like needing to be responsive to the “marketplace” to redirect curricula, etc.
I also believe there will always be a need for government schools. But that said, an increase in the number of homeschools would actually help reform public schools, to the benefit of public school students and the rest of society.
Agreed!
We have just started homeschooling this past year - and I’ve wondered too about college. I hear that more and more colleges are accepting homeschooled students but how is the process different for kids that are homeschooled?
You can enroll in an umbrella school and be awarded a regular HS diploma. Or you can do it on your own and just keep records of all classes taught during HS and submit that to the collge. Another route some take is the GED.
Here's how it worked for us (a lot of homeschooled families in our area are doing the same.) We homeschooled up until my son was finished with 9th grade. Our local school board offers a program called "dual enrollment." The student must past a test (college entrance exam) and then is allowed to enroll in college classes (any state college, community or university) and the tuition is free. The credits count toward high school and college at the same time. So my son went full time to college during high school. When we reached the end of what would have been his senior year of high school, he had 78 credits and had earned his AA, plus I put those classes in transcript form, signed an affadavit and submitted it to the college, as proof of HS, so he was also awarded a HS diploma. He then went on the University as a transfer student.
No one we know, who used this method had any problem getting admitted as a transfer student to another college. Among my son's friends, some were admitted to out of state colleges (GaTech, VaTech,) some were admitted to state Universities or other private institutions in state.
Most of the larger colleges now have a specialist in their admissions office that can answer all your questions about homeschoolers and admission to their college.
Four is too young. When all the 4-year olds were signing up for pre-K, when my son was 4, I thot —’hmm, we might be homeschooling. My son is SO not ready for school.’ And we ended up homeschooling.
We finally put our two oldest in a public school — NC State University. The older graduated with a degree in computer programming. His younger sister married one of his classmates, a world-class programmer who’s currently working for Adobe.
Both kids were active in the Reformed University Fellowship (the “campus Calvinist club”), and continue to delight us.
neither my husband nor i were homeschooled... however, when we began talking about getting engaged, we decided that we would homeschool our children when the time came... i don't even know how we came to decide that... it seems to me that homeschooling chose us... i cannot imagine living the other lifestyle of sending our children off to school... that seems so foreign to me now...
Notice the HORROR in some of the comments that “the children won’t be exposed to other worldviews” (ie, indoctrination into leftism).
Yes, the left hates and fears the homeschool movement.
Cringe, lefties, these kids will FAR outperform yours, won’t be indoctrinated into your ideology, and each family of homeschoolers averages around 6 kids!
I imagine that it would be difficult, at least initially - you are essentially on stage. "Homeschooling" is essentially tutoring, and tho the objective is the same in both cases, teaching is attempting to do on a mass scale what the tutor does one-on-one. Someone who can teach his/her own child very well might be utterly incapable of keeping order in a classroom, and still teach anything.But what does your question have to do with what metmom chose to do, and how satisfied she is with the results?
I checked out your comments. Good job!
As for homeschooling parents — HURRAH! The birthing of children and warehousing them from infancy to high school graduation is sad. I wish more parents would actually raise their children themselves. It takes a lot of love and patience and, yes, financial stability to do it. But what rewards!
Thanks for the info - I’ll look into that.
Thanks for the vote of confidence on my comments. I actually learned something - “by and large” versus “by on large”.
I loved how “jonas” jumped in on “4th_grade_education”.
What’s funny is that I work in the avionics approval business for the FAA. Seeing different world views is a foundation for my job!
Also, thanks for the vote of confidence on homeschooling. My wife does most of the work, but I’m the visiting math and science professor. ;-P
We just graduated our third homeschooler this past weekend! One more to go - woohoo!
We just graduated our third homeschooler this past weekend! One more to go - woohoo!
Metmom wrote this:
“The point is, teachers are not really *professionals*, they just have a teaching degree that allows them to legally teach.
They just sell you that line to convince you that no one else can do the job they do and that’s certainly not true.
I did a far better job with my kids than anyone else could have.”
Unless she has tried to teach a large public school class then she can’t compare that to homeschooling.
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