Exactly my argument. I'm not against home schooling, but the vast majority of parents are quite unqualified to teach. Maybe 20-30% of parents could do a decent job teaching their kids. My own parents would have been totally inadequate. At any rate, my Dad worked and my mother didn't have time with sometimes four or five squalling brats running around the house.
I worked (and was often away in another country for weeks or months at a time) and my wife dealt "with sometimes four or five squalling brats disciplined and loved kids running around the house."
Oh, and she also dealt with living in Africa where the water supply while we were in town was unreliable, sometimes milk, cheese & flour were nowhere to be found and our 6 year old came home from playing at a friend's house with the news that a cobra had reared at them. When not in town and living in the bush, she dealt with cooking on a "3 stone fire" and wild critters coming into the tent through a broken zipper.
Between them, our four (partially) home-schooled kids have 5 bachelors degrees and a Masters & 2/3rds. (BTW, neither my wife nor I have degrees)
We have friends whose 6 children were/are all home schooled and extremely successful. The father is a long distance truck driver. The mother broke her back in a car accident during this time. They set their priorities and lived by them.
Nearly everyone can do this, if they choose to do so. There is a whole network of friends, other home schoolers and educational material for support.
In the words of the eminent 20th century philosopher, Roger Miller, "All ya gotta do is put your mind to it. Knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it!"
Yes, indeed! Some parents are too distracted, too drug addicted, too illiterate, too innumerate, too materialistic, too poor, too stupid, too mentally ill, too greedy, too physically ill, too inept, too foolish, too uncaring, too burdened, too divorced, single parents by choice, too undisciplined...etc....to homeschool.
The children of these dysfunction parents ( or single mom by choice) to homeschool. But....guess what? They aren't doing well in institutional government run and Marxist-Borg controlled institutional schools either!
And you know that how?
Just what exactly makes a person *qualified* to teach?
You can't honestly think that it's a teaching degree, because we know better. Teaching degrees don't teach aspiring teachers to teach and I have had teachers tell me that to my face.
I know of plenty of moms who have more than five squalling brats that homeschool successfully. Lots. Because you had parents that weren’t the most successful at parenting doesn’t mean that others have similar failings. Most parents, yours included, don’t start out with all their abilities tuned toward educating their children. Most of us were public schooled, although we are now getting some homeschooled parents carrying on the tradition. The important thing is that we grow as we learn ourselves. We grow into being educators, not schoolteachers, but educators. We learn to teach the way that children learn, not just warehousing them. Now if I had 25 or even 30 children, I would surely struggle. Oh ...wait....
I’m glad my successful children were educated at home, it gave them skills and strengths that they just would not have had otherwise. Intelligence is about more than reading early.
‘At any rate, my Dad worked and my mother didn’t have time with sometimes four or five squalling brats running around the house’.
Four or five is not easy, but certainly, in baseball terms, minor leagues. And why let them squall for more than 4 or 5 seconds?
Well, I may have to agree with you there, but just because you had terrible parents who apparently didn't give a damn about their kids doesn't mean others do.