Posted on 03/30/2008 12:20:20 PM PDT by BenLurkin
LANCASTER [CALIFORNNIA] - The first thing to know about the typical home-schooled family is that there is no typical home-schooled family, say parents who teach their children.
"You can't generalize," parent Alice Moreland said. "Everybody does it for a different reason and does it in different ways."
The Lake Elizabeth mom home-schools her two youngest children, Sarah, 14, and Kasey, 12.
Two of her three other children, now grown, also were home-schooled.
"Public school's great for some kids - sometimes I've used public schools for my kids - but I'm just really, really grateful for the opportunity to have a choice," Moreland said.
She said she tried public school for her youngest daughters, but they asked to return home, in part because they were covering subjects they already had learned.
Sarah said she grew frustrated in public school because doing schoolwork takes longer. With home schooling, she can spend an hour on each subject and be done for the day.
She said her home-schooled education is better than the one she received in public school and she doesn't miss out on the social aspect because of her family's connections with other home-schoolers.
Sarah's younger sister Kasey said she likes being a home-schooled student because it allows her to move forward more quickly in her studies than if she were in a public school.
"We can just zoom up ahead," Kasey said. "We can become more advanced for our age."
The Morelands belong to Antelope Valley Roserock, a home schooling group in which families can seek support, network and plan events together.
About once a week, they meet at a local park where the children and parents can socialize.
Moreland has used her group connections to develop a course of study for her daughters, sharing ideas and information with other moms.
(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...
You totally CANNOT generalize!
We have amazing home schoolers around here!
And we also have some “un schoolers” who give the home schoolers a bad name!
Also...where many communities have SO MANY conservative home schooling families...we have MANY, MANY who are SUPER DUPER LIBERAL and WACKY! :-)
(many of whom are the unschoolers )
Anyway...I feel frustrated by people in the school system who try to generalize when speaking of this hard working group!
:-)
As both a public and private school teacher spanning 1968 - 2000 most of the home school students I knew were at or above grade level academically and socially. The one student who was ill-prepared was the child of moonbeam liberal parents. Many parent who choose public schooling for their children, over-estimate the quality of their children’s educational experiences. Parents tend to reassure themselves with the belief that almost all their children’s teacher are extraordinary. It reminds of the opening to the corny radio series, ‘Lake Woebegone’, where all the children are above average.
In the best of circumstances, perhaps one quarter of students have excellent (effective)teachers, and only one quarter are poor (ineffective) teachers. This 25% / 50% / 25% model refers only to the ability for a teacher to teach. It does not refer to the kinds of information taught.
One reason home schoolers tend to be more advanced than their brick and mortar brethren is that they do not waste their valuable time on such things as lining up (5 minutes), attendance (5 minutes), the calendar ritual (20 minutes), waiting for slower students (10 minutes), lining up after recess (5 minutes), class meeting about the use of red rubber balls (20 minutes), distribution of math materials (5 minutes), waiting for slower students (5 minutes), putting away materials and preparing for lunch (10 minutes).
Yes, a first grade child needs to learn the days of the week, and the seasons of the year. Concerning the calendar ritual: it does not take the home schooler one hour and forty minutes each week for thirty-nine weeks to master the subject. The calendar ritual is a part of the school day in classrooms all the way through 4th grade. For a number of teachers calendar time give them more time to do other things, while the student of the day directs the the counting of the days in English and then in Spanish, the months of the year, and the whole class reciting of such exciting facts as, “Yesterday was Monday. Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow is Wednesday.” Excuse me for rambling on. My point is that out of five precious hours of class time per day about two hours is wasted on non-educational or minimally educational activities.
The other thing to consider is that the schools you attended as a child and teenager no longer exist. Schools now days are much more agenda driven. No longer is teaching the basic skills of reading, writing and math the first priority. I suggest to all parents to come and spend whole day in your children’s classrooms. What you find out might surprise you. Read your children’s text books, even their math and spelling books. What agenda is tucked within the pages of those books? What ‘untruths’ or ‘adjusted truths’ have been presented as the ‘gospel truth’?
When I lived in Santa Cruz County we had friends who home schooled their kids because (now sit down) the public schools were to “right wing”.
“When I lived in Santa Cruz County we had friends who home schooled their kids because (now sit down) the public schools were to “right wing”.”
We STILL have them here!
LOL!
In order to homeschool, the parents need to at least qualify as teachers—at least bachelor degrees in science, and preferably graduate degrees with minors in science or physics.
Otherwise, I see a future in which these homeschooled kids will be retarded in math, physics, chem, and other subjects that are difficult to understand and very easy to misunderstand.
You need a mentor in math and science.
Only math degreed people should be teaching math anyway—which is separate issue in schools. But a parent with an arts major or theology major trying to teach math/physics is going to make a huge mess if they even bother trying to to teach the material.
As a former teacher (not long mind you, I didn’t like being a teacher at all), I saw too many ‘fellow’ math teachers who had majored in other fields, teaching math incorrectly.
I don’t mean to say that they didn’t teach it well. I mean to say, they didn’t understand it well, and in some cases, at all: particularly when trying to prep kids for SAT questions. They were at times doing things completely wrong or seemed mystified by the actual answers.
I was in there for observations and simply had to correct a teacher who was flat out giving wrong answers—completely wrong answers to certain questions.
The point is, a math degreed person can look at many problems and know instantly what’s going on. Hell, as an undergrad, I spend 2 years working in the math lab tutoring Calculus, Diff Q, Linear Algebra, Statistics...you name it.
Homeschooling needs to be regulated, if not by outlining required material, certainly by the educational level of the parents. If the parents are well educated and want to forego all of a particular subject, as long as they know it themselves, you can’t get too nosey. But it would be a shame for a child to be miseducated because their parents were uneducated.
Otherwise, this country will become a hotbed of uneducated idiots like we see in the middle-east currently.
Oh, where to start?
What is an “unschooler”?
Otherwise, I see a future in which these homeschooled kids will be retarded in math, physics, chem, and other subjects that are difficult to understand and very easy to misunderstand.
That has to be the dumbest statement concerning homeschooling I have seen.
Try looking at the statistics concerning home schooling compared to public and private schools and those home school mom's with only a high school diploma compared to those who were taught with teacher's degrees, that includes all coming out of public school.
It makes you look like an idiot. Hint...mothers with only a high school diploma have their children beat the pants off the scores of public schools scores and private school scores. The reason.....children begin to teach themselves once they are well versed in reading, they realize you are only reading directions to them which they very quickly figure out they can do themselves.
I only have a high school diploma and 3 children that I home schooled, one finished high school with his associates degree in biology and has just finished grad school, one is at Juilliard and the 3rd is on his way to the university of his choice this next year. Gee, no teacher's diploma to screw them up at all, and if I ever needed help with a course say Chemistry or Spanish the home schoolers pooled together to let the mom with those skills teach that course and you did not pay taxes to support us.
Nobody has a right to tell me or anybody else how to raise or teach my children anything else is a loss of freedom. By the time idiots are done they will even try and tell us who is allowed to have children, gee what degree or license in the future must I get to be allowed to breed. You never look to the future to see where these limited regulations lead to, just look at smoking.
Well, the part about incompetent public school teachers was accurate.
Oh jeez...I guess I better not be ***TOOOO*** sarcastic in my answer...there are probably some FReeper families who are “un schoolers”..and they probably do it well...
But around here...Unschooling is a sort of a movement where everything about learning is child driven...
You don’t want to read...don’t have to read...don’t want to do math...don’t have to do math..
Wanna learn about whales today? Ok...let’s scrap everything and jump in the car and hit the beach/aquarium etc...
And..while I think that there are amazing components to the idea...
It sure seems strange to me..
Now home schooling to me does NOT seem weird at all...
Curriculum based learning...parent led...parent knows the kid best..etc...
Good parents...good teaching...all good...
But around here...unschoolers are the children of parents who think assessments of any kind (be it tests or other methods of JUDGING a child) are restrictive and confining...
Now...again...if there are some “un schooling” FReepers who are doing a great job of letting their children LEAD them to a great education...I will certainly hold my opinion open to allow myself to be educated...
But..from what I have observed...it can be pretty wacky..
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
Oh good GRIEF!
I am NOT a Home Schooling “only” type person..and I think that there are MANY schools who are doing a great job for our kids..
However...what you have just said is completely GOOFY!
The kids who are home schooled by competent parents...degree or no degree are certainly just as well of..and in MANY circumstance FAR BETTER OFF than kids who’s parents don’t give a rip about what they are learning...and plop them in a school...private/public whatever..
We have a ton of home schooling friends...not a SINGLE one of their parents has a math or science degree...and they are ALL going to be entering college ready to do math as well (and in many cases much, MUCH better) than their peers...because their parents have paid close attention to what they are learning...because their parents are the ones TEACHING THEM!
I’m sure someone else will be so much MUCH better qualified than I to debate the point...
But, I wanted to throw in my 2 cents...
All three of my homeschoolers finished college Calculus III ( an all general college requirements) by the age of FIFTEEN! The two younger earned B.S. in mathematics by the age of 18. The older of these two earned a masters in mathematics by the age of 20.
The oldest took a somewhat different course. He is a highly ranked athlete, and trains full-time while studying accounting part-time. He is in his college honor society, and will soon earn a masters in business administration at same age as his contemporaries.
Wish I had time to correct your misconceptions but: my mother had no college degree. I was in calculus at 15, got biology and chemistry lessons at home, and have a computer science degree today with no holes in my math/science background.
You are just wrong.
Wow, are you out of touch with reality. Parents are plenty qualified to teach their own kids, degree or not. An education degree is useless for teaching people how to teach and the average parent is easily as smart as your average teacher.
Homeschool curriculum is so self-explanatory that in depth knowledge of the subject, which you don’t necessarily get with a teaching degree, is not necessary. Parents can learn as they go. Even if they don’t have a great grasp of the material for the first child, by the second, they do. Parents are capable of learning, too, you know.
If lack of a degree of any kind will result in homeschool students who are *retarded* in any area, then how do you explain these statistics?
SAT/ACT homeschoolers:
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/hslda/200105070.asp
Standardized test scores homeschoolers:
http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp
Besides, who’s going to require the degrees to ensure quality education? You want to give that authority to the nanny state and get their permission to homeschool? To prove to an incompetent system that you’re qualified? You want them to supervise someone who can do a better job than they? They wouldn’t know qualified if it hit them over the head.
So much material, so little time....
Has the educational system being regulated improved its quality?
Just for reference to see how ‘professionals’ perform: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1994407/posts?page=1
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Balding_Eagle,
If you see school articles like this, if you remember, could you ping me. It looks like our Public Education ping list is DOA.
I will also let metmom know. The above link is definitely another reason to homeschool.
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