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Posted on 01/06/2009 11:39:38 AM PST by GonzoII
A homeschooling movement is sweeping the nation – with 1.5 million children now learning at home, an increase of 75 percent since 1999.
The Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics reported homeschooling has risen by 36 percent in just the last five years.
"There's no reason to believe it would not keep going up," NCES statistician Gail Mulligan told USA Today.
A 2007 survey asked parents why they choose to homeschool and allowed them to provide several reasons. The following are the most popular responses:
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Hi,
I’m doing well,thank you.
Happy New Year.
This ping list is for articles of interest to homeschoolers. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping List. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from either list, or both.
1.5 million children
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The true number is likely twice that.
Just GREAT! Laughing and laughing!
The government schools are not broken. They are working perfectly as intended. Their goal was, is, and always will be turning out slaves to the state.
That they seemed to be OK in the past is that it took a few generations of kids passing through the indoctrination centers to finally break down all allegiance to freedom and to mold parents who are also slaves to the state.
The opinion that is homogenized is dictated by the teacher.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Just walk into **any** government school and notice the walls filled with the children’s art work: All of it nearly identical.
It’s sick really.
Just to make my point clear, I am an old grannie, who decided to move to a rural area to get my kids out of one of the “best” ‘burb schools in NYS.
This was because the “socialization” they were receiving was destroying their potential and their future! Home-schooling didn’t exist back then, but if it had, I would do it in NY minute.
As far as socialization id concerned, the rural area we moved to had many opportunities for summer jobs that allowed contact with many intelligent adults of all ages. My children learned more about relating to people of all ages in their summer jobs than they did during the school year.
Now, stupid NYS has laws that will not even allow someone under 18 to operate a lawn mower or simple machine! What are they doing to our adolescents by nonsense laws like this!
In spite of the fact that I support home schooling, I have to state here that the problem with public schools is NOT THE IUTTER LACK OF QUALITY OF THE TEACHERS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
It is the lack of quality in the parents of these children. A teacher cannot teach a child who has parents who do not respect the teacher, who do not discipline their children, who do not make sure homework is done, if they even make sure their children go to school!
The lack of quality in our public school is a reflection of a lack of quality in our culture.
It is the institutionalized child who is **isolated**!!!!
It is **not* natural to house children, segregated by age, in prison-like settings, cut off from the natural world of family and nature, and essentially treat them like prisoners! I call that **isolated**!
The truth is that **al** of the prison-survival skills that children learn in their prison-like institutions **must** be unlearned if they are to succeed in their work, marriages, relationship with in-laws, and neighbors.
Thankfully, humans are resilient and most completely unlearn the toxic prison social survival skills that helped them survive their schooling institutionalization. But....Some don't. There are a lot of walking wounded out there who are still hurting from their personal institutionalized schooling horrors .
I bet those parents are products of the government schools themselves.
In education it is impossible to do controlled double blind studies on children, especially one child.
So.....No one can know how your son might have done if he had had the freedom to homeschool and follow his interests at a quicker pace.
My own homeschooled kids were in college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. They finished all college general education courses and Calculus III by the age of 15. The two younger had B.S. degrees in mathematics at 18. The oldest of these two earned a masters in math at 20. The youngest will graduate with not only her math degree ( at 18) by will earn her second degree as a chemical engineer at about the same age when her classmates are being awarded their first.
One of the reasons that I pulled my children out of government school was the principal and teacher flat out refused to believe that my first grader was reading on the 4th grade level and doing 3rd grade math.
I kept my two locked in a closet...when they weren't chained to their desks.
Ok...I'll admit it. My post #129 is over the top.
But....Gee! You have implied with your comment that:
1) We homeschool for religious reasons. Morals and ethical concerns are only **part** of why people homeschool. In our case the government school principal and teacher **refused** to give my first grade son and appropriate education. He was reading on the 4th grade level and was nearly finish 3 grade math!
2) In your second comment you accused homeschoolers of isolating their kids, as if homeschooling and isolation are one and the same. Ipso facto: homeschooling results in isolation! Unbelievable!
I as a homeschooler see it differently. I see institutionalized children as being isolated and homeschoolers as being free to explore the world.
Cam you understand why homeschoolers get testy some times with questions like yours?
So....Don't be all offended if you ask a question like the one above if the homeschooler snaps back and asks,
“So?....Why are you isolating your child in a prison-like environment and teaching him to be a good prisoner?”
...or......
“Don't your **care** about the moral and ethical environment that your child is swimming in? Why would you throw your child in to a moral cesspool when he is too young to morally know how to swim through it?”
You are right that the federal government involvement in k-12 had been growing for decades ( in fact it began before 1900). But your post seems to imply that what the Peanut Farmer did was trivial. If it were, the NEA and the rest of the education special interests would not have lobbied so hard for it.
Creating a Cabinet level department focused on the Ed special interests (which is what creating the DOE amounted to)gave those special interests considerably more power and money. That, of course, is why the Ed lobby wanted the DOE as the quid pro quo for their support for Jimmah. Being a man of “honor” he paid them off.
This is the thread I mentioned.
personally, i do not consider what you described as "homeschooling." secondly, the comment above is a very good reason to homeschool... our kids have ONE SHOT... i don't have 12-13 years to give of my kids' lives to wait and see if the government schools get it right... do you worry so much about the kids in standard classes who are learning "nada?" they do exist, you know... fall through the cracks even with all the testing and such... many of them even earn diplomas...
hahahaha! yes--homeschooling means we never leave the house... because we homeschool, it must mean that we grow all our own food, make our own clothing and never, ever associate with the outside world...
btw--certainly it can't be optimal to put kids in institutionalized learnning centers...
while i will not broadbrush "public schooled kids," i do save my broadbrush for public schools... i do not like them... i do not support them in principle... they are not what i would even call "public schools." they are government schools... government run... and i admit that i include even the best of the best of the best in my broadbrushing of "public schools." i liken them to public housing...
It’s not in the end about religion, academics, or “socialization”, — but all three combined, and then some. The entire cultural consensus of the West continues the breakdown that started with, oh, Abelard, and NO PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM CAN SURVIVE THIS PROCESS.I remember when parents sent their children to private schools to specifically AVOID the socialization taught by public shools.Remember when brown vs board of education was ruled? “white flight” was accused but the fact of the matter is those parents that fled to someplace other than public schools had their fears justified.
This debate is not about to homeschool or not to homeschool, this debate is really about the UTTER LACK OF QUALITY in the public schools.
50 posted by longtermmemmory
. . . It is not possible to sustain a public education system as the underlying culture becomes more “diverse”. It is simply obvious and inexorable that parents will opt out as they are able.
Excellent points. I would add, painfully, the caveat that "It is not possible to sustain voluntary support and voluntary population growth in a public education system as the underlying culture becomes more 'diverse'."That is, as the government schools become culturally intolerable and the parents accordingly assert their rights to propagate their own culture in their own children, the government will assert (see, "it's for the children") ownership of your children. At which point the idea of "having children" is undermined, the family is subverted, and family formation ceases. And governmentists then start wondering why there are no children, and start talking about subsidizing childbearing.
Gold, you say, “It can’t be optimal to isolate kids.”
Wow. You need to read the above post which lists all the 25 stupid things non-homeschooling parents to those of us who homeschool. It astounds me that there are still people who think we “isolate” our children. The only good thing about ignorance is that there is hope you can be educated, so your ignorance goes away, and you are better informed.
Do you honestly think that “exposing” children (the opposite of “isolating”) to public or private schools somehow makes them more grounded and rounded and balanced and emotionally complete?
It doesn’t. And out of hundreds of families I know personally who homeschool, only ONE comes close to the definition of “isolating” their children. The rest of us? Well, we’re all too busy with our many activities to bother with explaining it to you.
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