Posted on 04/05/2008 3:09:38 PM PDT by kiriath_jearim
Madison Browning, 8, spent a recent school day coloring, playing on swings at a park and whirling to Japanese string music at a cozy dance studio. Caedyn Curto, 13, studied biblical scripture at his family's kitchen table before tackling decimals, completing a biology test and revising a journalism essay.
The Browning and Curto families, both of whom live in the South Bay, have embraced very different styles of education. But they now find themselves on the same side of a battle to continue teaching their children at home in the face of an appellate court ruling that home schooling in California must be conducted by credentialed instructors.
The February court decision is not being enforced pending appeals. The 2nd District Court of Appeal agreed last week to rehear the case in June, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged to support new legislation allowing home schooling if the decision is not reversed. Meanwhile, the ruling has forged a rare alliance of religious and secular home schoolers.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I’m told you can simulate the socialization experience at many public schools by taking your kid to the bathroom, where you cuss at him, blow smoke in his face, rough him up, and take his lunch money.
“I love that we have TIME.”
This, indeed, is one of the greatest blessings of homeschooling, especially when the kids are younger.
We thought initially that we were doing something wrong when we first started homeschooling our older son in first grade. My wife would be done by 10 am (they'd start at 8:30 am). But heck, they learned a whole bunch, so who cares if it only took an hour or two every day?
When we moved to our current neighborhood, my older son was in second grade going into third grade. At a party, one of our new neighbors expressed extreme skepticism that we could possibly educate our children properly in a couple of hours per day.
But my wife wasn't spending any time calling the class to attention, calling roll, waiting for each student in a class of 35 (the average class size at our local public elementary school) to read aloud from the reader, waiting for each child to get a drink of water, each child to go to the bathroom, etc. Nor were there any assemblies on diversity, questionable “history” topics, or sex ed.
You taught in schools, so you know that much of what teachers do is personnel management. And the good teachers do that very well. To effectively manage 20 or 30 or more young, energetic children takes skill. But it's still time- and resource-consuming.
Now that my older son is in eighth grade, the day takes much longer than an hour and a half or two. He takes one class at a local Catholic high school - and between that class and his homework for that class, that's about an hour to an hour and a half a day. The rest of the day takes three or four hours.
For the younger guy, our sixth grader, he generally works three or four hours per day, total.
So, as the years go on, the workload and time taken has increased, but we still have far more time than students who go to traditional schools.
sitetest
“A few years ago, we were leaders in a local home education group. We received calls from many parents of kids who the administrators at the public school had told to call us. These kids were low performers, usually with behavior problems. The PS was trying to foist them onto homeschooling. It happened so many times that I am convinced they were trying to make our group look bad, thinking the behavior problems would erupt into incidents that might be publicized.”
The public schools do that here, too. I'm not sure that the goal is to make homeschoolers look bad, but rather, their ship is sinking, and they're throwing overboard their “dead weight,” the kids who are causing their discipline problems, pulling down their test scores, etc. It's more to lighten their own load, I think, than to intentionally make homeschoolers look bad, although that happens, too. Children who are pushed out the back door of the public schools after fourth or fifth or sixth grade are often already ruined by the public school systems that they endured for those years. They often don't enjoy as much homeschooling success as children who are homeschooled due to the initiative of their parents.
Yet, I've seldom seen even these children do as poorly being homeschooled as when they were in the public schools. Even for them, homeschooling is often a noticeable improvement.
sitetest
That works for your boys, but you forgot to "socialize" your daughters!
To do that, you need an "alpha girl" to ostracize her for the clothes and [lack of] makeup she wears and to make fun of her for being a virgin at 13 and pressure her to change that fact.
Interesting points, particularly the last one.
Your experience with the amount of time spent matches what mine was growing up. Don’t think I ever worked past noon until I was in high school (unless I really screwed up) and that was starting at 9 with a half hour of Bible study and fiction reading.
My husband’s family got removed from public schools after a number of years in the system and they had a more “traditional” schedule, worked most of the day. It’s interesting how different families do different things.
Personally I plan to go with a shorter “academic” period. I think it gives kids more time to be kids.
We used a boxed curriculum up until last year - the Calvert School. When we first started homeschooling, we had no experience or anything. We’d been attending homeschooling conferences, but neither of us had ever taught young children.
We just followed the teacher’s manual, taught the lessons for the day, and went the with the flow. ;-)
We eventually got rid of the Calvert School curriculum for a variety of reasons, but still use their materials for math. What is a bit of a handicap in some subjects - heavy reliance on rote drills - is essential in mastering math (at least, it is for my sons).
Next year, the older son will be in a traditional high school. This was his decision. We were more than happy to continue homeschooling him through high school - in fact, my wife secretly preferred it. But he is an intelligent and mature young man, and so we gave him a lot of input into this decision. As well, the school that he’ll be attending is my alma mater, and as schools go, it’s pretty special.
We went to the school’s open house in the fall of his seventh grade year. Although he thought it was all pretty cool, he was leaning away from going to high school there. The principal and other administrators didn’t like this, that someone would not want to come to their school. So, to persuade him to attend, they invited him to take one course this year, in eighth grade, to get the feel of it, to see if he liked it.
It worked.
We’ll see what the younger one wants to do in a couple of years.
sitetest
I respect parents’ decisions about their children, of course - but I had an Associates’ in computer science at 18 and half my credits toward a BS degree done very cheaply through the community college. I would have considered the last two and a half years of high school wasted if I hadn’t had that opportunity.
Of course every kid is different and there are many who wouldn’t be ready for that sort of situation. Or kids who want sports or drama or other extracurricular activities might find a traditional high school better.
One of my fondest high school memories was the week I took off - I had a fiction series I’d just acquired and wanted to read, I had three weeks’ worth of assignments scheduled for me, so I took the week off (except for my college math course, couldn’t skip that) and finished my assignments in the next two weeks. That kid of flexibility is to me one of the greatest advantages homeschooling has.
Common sense is in short supply on most college campuses.....
“...but I had an Associates’ in computer science at 18 and half my credits toward a BS degree done very cheaply through the community college. I would have considered the last two and a half years of high school wasted if I hadn’t had that opportunity.”
I understand, and that sort of thing all played a role in the back-and-forth of figuring out what he wanted to do.
I asked the principal emeritus about the possibility of being able to attend the University of Maryland (very nearby to the high school) while finishing his junior and senior years. Nope, not feasible, because of how the high school schedules classes. That was a negative.
But on the plus side, the school offers a wide array of AP courses. I got some college credits from my AP tests thirty years ago, and I wasn't even really trying. But they were critical in being able to complete my degree in three years.
As well, my son is already looking forward to college, and several of the colleges that he's considering have integrated degree programs that allow for little or no transfer of college credit from community college or through AP courses. So, it may not be much of an issue, anyway.
Then again, if it becomes an issue, we've already told him that he's welcome to return to homeschooling after his sophomore year.
“Of course every kid is different...”
That's at the heart of the homeschool worldview. Every kid is different. Education should be fitted to the child, not the child to a particular mode of education.
And every circumstance is different.
Currently, our older son's passion is classical languages and cultures. He taught himself a year of high school Latin in sixth and seventh grades, and is taking Honors Latin II this year as the one course that he chose to take at the high school. This high school has a very strong classics program. He scored a gold medal this year on the National Latin Exams, and next year will be able to take Greek, as well as Latin III. Besides four years of Latin and four years of Greek (plus an opportunity for a year of independent study in each), the school also offers courses in classical history.
But he's already beyond the most advanced fare of our local community college.
However, for the next guy, the issues are entirely different. He's a math and science guy. Whether homeschooling or a traditional high school will be the right choice for him will be a question that we will all work to answer uniquely for him.
sitetest
Well what i drew from what you said is the only excuse for not homsechooling is if a parent is handicapped and thus rendered incapable of it. You also seem to be suggesting in this more recent post that i had an inferior education ( “your parents were not capable of providing you with a good education”)without even knowing anything about the school I went to.
It would have been unnecessary for them to homeschool me when i was in a school district that even offered chinese as a foriegn language. Can you speak chinese? Can you set your kids up with an internship at a newspaper as easily as a professional photographer?
I was provided with a good high school education.
At any rate that was a fairly insulting thing to say to someone; please don’t pretend it was not.
lol “there may be some success stories with homeschooling” is not a false statement and does not denote inferior intelligence.
“some” is a general term that does not specify amount.
Perhaps it would have made you happier if I had written “All homeschooled kids are so much better off than the poor schlubs in all the public schools. They are ALL success stories even though I don’t know every homeschooled kid in the entire united states”.
Would have had some back patting in that case I am sure. oh idiocy in mob form
You are arguing against homeschooling, yet you have no experience with homeschooling. You have assured us that, when you do have kids, you will not homeschool them. OK, we get it. You have much to say about YOUR education, and I don't believe anyone is finding fault with that.
Did you get that? No one is faulting your education. Most of us are saying that for us, homeschooling is what we want for our kids. We either have kids, or we teach kids. I think I finally figured out what I'm trying to say. Do you have a dog in this fight, or are you just trying to put homeschooling down? Yep, that's what I was trying to say. Please don't take offense.
Sending someone to private school does not necessarily mean that the parents take an active role in making sure their children study.
I think the secret to success in education is probably monitoring the child’s progress (with homework) to make sure the lessons are learned.
I do not think public or private school would be enough by itself. Part of learning comes from encouragement at home.
If homeschoolers do better I would bet it is a reflection on the fact their parents actively offer encouragement.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the instructors at public or private schools offer inferior lectures/lessons than those lecutres/lessons recieved at home in all cases.
These are just my opinions on the matter. I try and word my statements to not offer blanket condemnation or praise of either homeschooling or public/private schools because every situation is different.
In your post 135, did you notice you used the word “home” or “parents” in almost every para? So you are beginning to see that parents are a vital part of a child’s education. Good for you!
My arguments are more pro-public schools (at least some public schools) than a broad condemnation of homeschooling. I did have experience with public schooling.
I initially entered this thread saying i would never homeschool (which in retrospect was probably not a good idea knowing how people do not like anything that goes against the general consensus) and planned on saying no more until I was asked why.
I know not everyone was faulting my education but if you don’t mind I think i should be able to address that one post that appeared to suggest that being handicapped is the only possible reason to not homeschool.
“lol ‘there may be some success stories with homeschooling’ is not a false statement and does not denote inferior intelligence.”
The statement is, in the first place, condescending. I'm sure you see that, but will deny it because it puts you in a poor light.
In the second place, the use of the word “may” means that there also may not be some success stories. “May” means “it's possible but not necessarily true.” Thus, it's also possible that it isn't true.
In that the overwhelming number of homeschooling success stories is an established fact, both by the anecdotal experience of a few million persons, including a number of homeschooling parents and homeschooled persons on this thread, as well as any number of research studies published in peer-reviewed journals, the use of the word “may” falsifies your statement.
Thus, either you're a deliberate liar, or woefully ignorant. If it is the latter, that doesn't help your assertion that you received a good education at your public “highschool” [sic].
I won't judge which is which.
“Perhaps it would have made you happier if I had written ‘All homeschooled kids are so much better off than the poor schlubs in all the public schools. They are ALL success stories even though I don’t know every homeschooled kid in the entire united states’.”
That, too would be false. Many homeschoolers can tell you of the occasional homeschooling failure.
But the evidence is already in: Homeschooling works.
The overwhelming majority of homeschooled children prosper intellectually, and have successful educational attainment.
As well, every peer-reviewed study performed shows that homeschoolers, on average, outperform both their public school and private school peers. If you want to argue with the science, go ahead. Kinda like the Black Knight in Monty Python. Do you have us just where you want us, yet? If you want to delve into WHY homeschooling works better than public schooling, that's actually an interesting question.
That doesn't mean that no one can get a good education in public schools, and it doesn't mean that there are no homeschooling failures. There are millions of folks who got a good education in public schools, and dozens of folks who would have done better in a traditional school than being homeschooled.
It only means that homeschooling works, and clearly works better, in our country at least, than public schooling.
“oh idiocy in mob form”
The only idiocy in this thread isn't coming from homeschooling proponents. Look in the mirror.
sitetest
There is nothing condescending about refusing to state that all home school stories are pure success. Even you have admitted that there are some homeschooling failures so I don’t see what the problem with the word ‘some’ is.
So I wrote that statement to make allowances for the fact that
1. not all homeschool stories are successes
2. my knowledge of whether or not it is successful on a wide scale is based on posts made in a thread on the internet by pro-home schoolers. Therefore i added to word ‘may’ to reflect that.
You are right: i don’t know that much about its success rates.
Regardless of whether or not homeschooling successfully gets kids into college I can still think of a few reasons to prefer public schools. So you can prefer public schools without dismissing homeschooling as a total and complete failure.
I am not questioning that homeschool works for some people.
When you enter an obviously pro-anything thread with your mind already made up (in an anti- direction), that's when it gets ugly. It's like you're not here to maybe explore the options of homeschooling, or to learn anything about it.
That is like one of my students showing up for school at 8:30a.m. and announcing they hate algebra and will not, under any circumstances, be involved in any sort of algebra learning activities. I would say to them "Then why'd you bother showing up at all? You knew we'd be doing algebra". See what I'm saying? If the thread would have been "I hate homeschoolers and here's why..." then maybe you wouldn't have gotten so much heat.
But still, I'm dying to know how you'll direct your kids' education, when it's time. (I am so glad I don't have to worry about whether my kids are in a "good district"!)
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