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.
Looks “white” as can be to me. Not that it matters what color the guy is...
I’m curious why, if Jesse thinks kids in public schools are so much better socialized and know more about other cultures, he only has black and latino kids in the photo on his blog? Does he hate white people? Jews? Indians? Asians? Come on Jesse, where’s the diversity? My homeschooling group is more diverse than the photo on your blog.
you think you can teach English as well as me?
Considering the sentence above, “yes.”
Uhhhh - wouldn’t the correct answer be “Better.”
My completely homeschooled, never spent a single day in public school, son attends one of the larger universities in the country. When he first attended, his greatest fear was that he would be considered odd and would not fit in.
After his first semester he confided to me that he found he was different but it was a good thing. He said the other kids were messed up, had no foundation in anything, and were perpetually confused about how to act or think. Now they all come to him for advice because he seems so centered and mature.
What whacky libs, and conservatives who don’t know any better, don’t realize is that different does not always mean worse. If the world is falling apart around them and nothing has any real meaning to them, kids are going to feel lost and alone. They need someone different, someone they can identify with who understands their situation, someone who is more mature and connected to them than some of their parents. They need the strength of wise homeschoolers as friends.
I know that there may be a few homeschoolers who end up not being able to cope with the world as it is, there are public schoolers who can’t cope, but if the homeschooling parents are the least bit on the ball, they try to see to it that their children are ready to deal with the world as well as being able to deal with the school work.
#18 wins!
“So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me (sic)? Well, maybe you can. I’ll give you that. But there’s no way that you can teach English as well as me (sic)
Double masters degrees and this doofus still can’t master the use of me vs. I??? “
I was laughing when I read it and all the pompous talk!
“...as well as I [can teach English].”
I think the biggest reason gov is against home schooling is the way the school systems are paid. Don’t the schools get money for each day child in school from their school district. I don’t think anyone in government actually cares. But I do think there is a financial motivation for their opposition.
This was one person’s reply. Too good not to re-post here:
steve
May 31, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Let me see if I’m understanding the argument. Homeschooling is bad because:
10. When homeschooled kids get to college they’ll be mocked by the kids socialized by constant peer relations and educated in public schools to be tolerant and celebrate diversity.
9. Learning can’t take place at a kitchen table.
8. It’s selfish to give your kids a good education at home when others are doomed to a poor one at public schools.
7. You should send your kids to public schools to proselytize the heathen there.
6. You can’t teach a subject if you don’t have an advanced degree in that subject. (We’ll just ignore the fact that most public school teachers don’t hold degrees in the subjects they teach)
5. I’m personally offended by people who aren’t like me, who make different choices and have different beliefs. (Incidentally, you should send your kids to me so I can teach them to be tolerant and celebrate diversity.)
3 & 4. Only constant, day in day out non-stop social interaction with people who aren’t like you, who make different choices and have different beliefs will make you tolerant of them. (see point #5 to see how well this worked for me!)
2. It’s too risky to attempt getting a superior education. You should do the safe thing and settle.
1. Homeschoolers are different from me, I personally have a hard time relating to them. They should be more like me, you know: capable of dealing with people who are different.
I, as a Christian, always particularly enjoy it when non-Christians lecture me on how to be a good Christian.
Exactly! Those STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, anti-Catholic, 19th century Protestants!!! ( Yes, I am shouting!) They foolishly believed that government schools would always be Protestant Christian in their worlview.
Any government powerful enough to force Protestantism on other people's children ( and make the taxpayer pay for it), is a powerful enough government to force strip searches, and homosexual fisting practices on their kids!
It also conditions a stigma attached to Christian religious beliefs, as if there is something strange and forbidden about them.
Very good point! If Children are forced to hide their Christianity and whisper about it on the sly. This teaches a powerful lesson. They may falsely believe that Christianity is somehow shameful and must be hidden like a bathroom activity!
Sitting here laughing and laughing. Great post!
I searched in vain for a reason given that wasn’t simply irrelevant.
ROFLOL!!
About right.............!!
If Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians took their Christian duty seriously to provide for a public Christian culture in the U.S., including in education, this whole secular monopoly on statist control of education could be brought to an end. Instead they got suckered into privatization of religious belief and then all of this madness with secular humanism and moral relativism took over. It's just a fact that certain issues of faith and of right and wrong are not merely private or just personal opinions. They have to be part of the public square and part of the culture instilled in students in education.
Might I ask how you survived professionally, being a conservative in a world dominated by the socialism impaired?
I never took a job in that world. I stayed in sales and marketing. The closest I ever came to journalism was writing copy for ads and newsletters and proofreading and editing copy for brochures.
When I first was majoring in marketing, an English professor recommended my name to the college newspaper. I never considered reporting, but I went to the meeting, anyway. The woman in charge began spouting left-leaning opinions. Right there, I wanted nothing to do with that paper. Or reporting. Years later, at the university, I switched from advertising to newswriting (both under the heading of journalism) only because newswriting looked like a tougher curriculum. And I did find it challenging. (The teacher who wrote the above article would've been laughed out of those classes by my professors.) Our professors were tough. By the time I finally wrote a paper that scored me an offer of an internship, I was married and expecting. So, my "career" turned out to be raising a family. ;-) LOL.
That was perfect! LOL.
LOL. Well, I assumed he was a woman... I wonder what that says about me?
It is a co-written piece, by our friend Jesse, which begins like this: It’s no accident that we refer to it as the public school system. It’s exactly that: a system. And not a particularly kind or sensible one either.
Wasn't he just writing how homeschooling is selfish and not in the best interest of the child, yet public schooling isn't sensible either? Ok.
He talks about catching the kids before they drop out.... Hey Jesse, our homechooled kids don't have to be caught, we know exactly where they are and they rarely "drop out".
But I especially love the paragraphs about helping the kids if they can't get along with a teacher (nope, doensn't happen in our homeschooled class rooms) and you remember those guidance counselors, you know, the ones he claimed kids can't get prepared for college without? Well, sometimes they are just too busy for the kids.....Here is is comment: Unfortunately, they don’t have time to deal with every kid on a personal basis.
“5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)”
This seems to be the crux of the matter, doesn’t it? She needn’t have bothered to write the rest.
Yes, I agree.
No. I suppose I should though.
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