Posted on 05/31/2009 1:48:40 PM PDT by aberaussie
Homeschooling: great for self-aggrandizing, society-phobic mother…… but not quite so good for the kid.
Here are my top ten reasons why homeschooling parents are doing the wrong thing:
10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not). And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered an outsider, a natural outcropping of being homeschooled.
9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools.
8. Homeschooling is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, students who get homeschooled are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) high achieving students out of our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates.
7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)
6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me? Well, maybe you can. I’ll give you that. But there’s no way that you can teach English as well as me, and biology as well as a trained professional, and history… and Spanish… and art… and counsel for college as well as a school’s guidance counselor… and… and…
5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)
4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?
3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week. Homeschooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.
2. Homeschooling parents are arrogant, Part 2. According to Henry Cate, who runs the Why Homeschool blog, many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling.”
More comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future.
1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.
*** Please see the comments for thoughts on the word ‘geeky.’ But, in general, to be geeky connotes a certain inability to integrate and communicate in diverse social situations. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment without peers. It’s hard to get by in such a diverse world as ours! And the more people you can hang out with the more likely you are to succeed, both in work life and real life.
One last note, to those homeschooling parents out there: it’s clear from the number and passion of your responses that TeacherRevised is missing an important voice in the teaching community. If any of you are interesting in writing for us, send me an email: jessescaccia@gmail.com. I would love to have you as part of our conversation.
Exhibit A: Some school in California (forget where) will make mandatory teaching to Kindergartners same-sex marriage. No opt-out allowed.
ah... what a lame-ass...
and I’ll provide rebuttal to each “point” later.
Her points are stupid and I only read the first two.
The one that jumps out the most is the point where the “humble teacher” calls homeschoolers “arrogant”,
then procedes to proclaim her credentials - one of the signs of pride and arrogance is the need to do so.
The only major problem I see with home schooling is that the kids don’t have the chance to be brain washed by liberal (facist) teaching authority. Not only that, they get to eat good food at home, don’t get caught up in gang fights, taken to abortion clinics and the list goes on. They are sure missing out on a lot aren’t they?
This is exactly right. Well socialized illiterates with the illusion if self esteem is MUCH better than academically accomplished children with real self esteem. /sarc
This is too lame to bother with, the writer should be embarrassed, not interesting, not funny, not insightful, nothing, a total waste of time.
This woman is a teacher?
Stats refute this guy’s zany ideas. Not only are they better educated, homeschoolers show up more socially well-adjusted adjusted than their brain-washed public-school counterparts.
Far as I could get.
Some of the concerns about "socialization" may be legitimate, but I'd also point out that the picture this author paints of parents educating their kids in the home is not necessarily typical of what we know as "home-schooling" these days.
If the author of this nonsense were truthful, he/she would just come out and admit that the #1 item on this list is that home-schooling parents expose many "professional educators" in this country as complete frauds.
I would put a 17 year old homeschooler up against this lame-o and all her teaching creds,
and watch the HSer SHRED her in a debate.
I’d pay money.
This must be in pre-response to the Glen Beck story about the increase in homeschooling.
there is a certain tipping point where so many people will be home schooling that the registered voters who home school will have an influencial enough vote on the need to tapayer support public schools.
Most of the author’s reasons are not just silly they are neurotic.
Hmmmm...my 21 yr old home schooler had straight As in college and was voted most popular student of the year...
seems a bit jealous...
For all of her hate-filled language and INTOLERANT attitude (but I’mm not an agnostic!) I notice that this multi-public schooled, many-degreed “English” teacher cannot explain why homeschooled children outperform her dumbed-dowm multi-cultural public school students - who get billions more dollars wasted on their propaganda every month than homeschooling spends in a decade.
Her “arguments” fall back on insults.
Double masters degrees and this doofus still can't master the use of me vs. I???
Jesse is a douchebag. Modern public schools are only jobs programs.
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