When my daughter had him she was routinely doing 3-4 hours of homework every day for her classes combined and more on the weekends.
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Your daughter was **AFTERSCHOOLING** herself!!! The institutional school was merely sending home a curriculum for her to follow! THAT IS THE FLAT OUT TRUTH!
The more I compare academically successful institutioalized children and homeschoolers the more convinced I am that institutional school teach almost NOTHING! The success is due ENTIRELY to the parents ( institutionalized or homeschooled) and the child's efforts IN THE HOME!!! Both groups of children are spending about the **SAME** amount of TIME at the kitchen table doing homework IN THE HOME!!!!
Personally, I would like to see the formal and controlled studies that PROVE institutional schools teach anything at all! I would like to see the studies that separate out what is learned IN THE HOME from that acquired in the classroom. I have asked this question many times on Free Republic and never ( NOT EVEN ONCE) has any teacher or professor of education provided a link that proves where and how children learn ( in the home or in the classroom).
Imagine that! We spend up to a quarter of a million dollars to produce a 12 th grade graduate from our collectivist government schools ( who maybe can read or not), and we do NOT NOT NOT know whether the child acquired his ability to read and his knowledge in the classroom or IN THE HOME! This is UNBELEIVABLE!!!
By the way, my homeschoolers **never** spent more than 2 hours a day in formal, at the kitchen table, schooling. Seriously!
Yet....All three were admitted to college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. All finished all college general courses and Calculus III by the age of 15. Two earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18. The oldest was a world class athlete and represented the U.S. in worldwide competitions and will still earn a masters in accounting at an age typical for those who are institutionalized for their schooling.
And....I am also convinced that my kids are not any smarter than yours.
As bad as you paint public schools the simple truth is a majority of parents could never do well there themselves, much less have the patience or discipline to educate their own kids now that they have them.
Take a look at the Detroit Public Schools. As bad as they are, and they are horrible, at least every kid there is given a CHANCE to succeed and learn. The truth is without that school to go to they would never have a chance, period.
Home schooling is a great choice for SOME people, but would be utterly disastrous for most kids. Think of the more urban areas where parents see them as nothing but a mouth to feed or hopefully a check from the daddy or government each week. For those tens of millions of kids their lives would be ruined forever if their parents were responsible for their education.