Posted on 09/03/2003 8:29:31 AM PDT by Damocles
Home is no place for school
Wed Sep 3, 6:49 AM ET
By Dennis L. Evans
The popularity of home schooling, while not significant in terms of the number of children involved, is attracting growing attention from the media, which create the impression that a "movement" is underway. Movement or not, there are compelling reasons to oppose home teaching both for the sake of the children involved and for society.
Home schooling is an extension of the misguided notion that "anyone can teach." That notion is simply wrong. Recently, some of our best and brightest college graduates, responding to the altruistic call to "Teach for America," failed as teachers because they lacked training. Good teaching is a complex act that involves more than simply loving children. Research on student achievement overwhelmingly supports the "common-sense" logic that the most important factor affecting student learning is teacher competency. While some parents may be competent to teach very young children, that competence will wane in more advanced grades as the content and complexity increases.
But schools serve important functions far beyond academic learning. Attending school is an important element in the development of the "whole child." Schools, particularly public schools, are the one place where "all of the children of all of the people come together." Can there be anything more important to each child and thus to our democratic society than to develop virtues and values such as respect for others, the ability to communicate and collaborate and an openness to diversity and new ideas? Such virtues and values cannot be accessed on the Internet.
The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship. It is a rejection of community and makes the home-schooler the captive of the orthodoxies of the parents.
One of the strengths of our educational system is the wide range of legitimate forms of public, private or parochial schooling available for parental choice.
With that in mind, those contemplating home teaching might heed the words of the Roman educator, Quintilian (A.D. 95). In opposing home schooling, he wrote, "It is one thing to shun schools entirely, another to choose from them."
Dennis L. Evans directs doctoral programs in education leadership at the University of California, Irvine.
Either the man is willfully deceptive or a complete idiot if he wants to aledge that there is any comarison betweent riding heard on 30 govchool kids and teaching 2-5 kids at home.
As one who is in college preparing for secondary education teaching, I say this with a bit more behind it, but it's obvious to anyone with one eye and half-sense that it takes an entirely different skill set.
The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship. It is a rejection of community and makes the home-schooler the captive of the orthodoxies of the parents.
Of course, orthodoxies are fine, so long as they are the RIGHT orthodoxies.
Can there be anything more important to each child and thus to our democratic society than to develop virtues and values such as respect for others, the ability to communicate and collaborate and an openness to diversity and new ideas?
See my thread here for some helpful reference material on the socialization argument:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1006999/posts
Regarding academics:
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
The number of home-schoolers is up dramatically, with the National Home Education Research Institute estimating between 1.7 million and 2.1 million last school year, up from 1.2 million in 1996. Their ACT college admission scores are also consistently above the national average (22.5 vs. 20.8 in 2003), and an education institute study of 5,400 home-schooled kids found scores on standardized exams consistently above national averages in 1995 and 1996.
Want more?
Look here:
http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/comp2001/HomeSchoolAchievement.pdf
***According to this study, homescholers taking national standardized test scored on average in the 80th percentile.
***There was no significant difference in scores when segregated by parents education level (gretest spread was 79% for "father did not graduate High School" to 88% for "father graduated college" no other spread is larger than 5%. Note well: Students homeschooled by parents who had not completed HIGH SCHOOL scored at the 80th percentile!!! Compare this to the next table which showed that public school students who's parents had graduated college averaged at the 61st percentile for fathers, 63rd for mothers.
On the next table, note that having at least one certified teacher as a parent of a homeschooler actually produced the same or slightly lower scores.
Other noteable facts:
***Neither amount of money spent or amount of state regulation made a significant difference in results;
***Minorites performed virtually the same as whites in homeschool, quite the oppisite from govschool results;
Want more?
http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/rudner1999/Rudner2.asp#Fig1
This one breaks down the rankings by grade level and subject and finds a range from a low of the 62nd percentile to a high of the 92nd. Not a single reading score from 1-12th grade was below the 82nd.
It's pretty much overwhelming.
But then, most of us knew that.
If so -- don't blame me! (See post #15.)
Dan
(c;
Reading these types of articles is like watching rats swim upstream, and I get a good laugh at the mental struggle that these people show as they try to discourage people from doing what is natural: loving and raising their own children, while preacting theri God goven right as well as their consitutional rights. Ohhh.... the evil of it all; school choice for children and parents.
Not exactly an objective opinion. Might as well ask the CEO of Ford for his opinion of Toyota.
Here's what I'd like you to consider:
Before I started homeshooling, the stubborn one was going to public school, hating it, getting straight A's; and the teacher was encouraging us to have her put on Ritilin because she was a disciplinary problem.
Starting homeschooling, I soon found that she was illiterate at age nine.
Now it's your call on what to do about your son's schooling, but you should consider that a stubborn learner at home will be a stubborn learner in public school; and students like those are often marginalized, drugged, advanced without qualification, and ultimately graduated having little valuable knowledge.
Teaching the girl was always a chore, but I made sure she was , at least, learning things and advancing, reading and discussing, held on-task; it was only my dogged persistence that worked to get her educated. (The pisser was, that she is a mathematical savant...able to solve quadratic equasions in her head, e.g.....very casually)
She started, then quit college, twice: didn't know what she wanted to do ....other than have fun with her friends.
But now, after a few years of lollygagging, working as a bartender and waitress, she's panicking as she sees her sister and friends with the enormous opportunities they have earned through hard work and college degrees: she's feeling left behind.
So she's suddenly motivated, signed up for courses, and saving her money.
The point is, that if I hadn't pulled her through those briars all those years, she would, now, be motivated, but without the skills she needs to advance. All that crap...like grammar and history and math...that I forced into her is now serving her desires. She acknowledges this, and is grateful for my strong discipline and "you will learn" approach.
I don't think a public school can achieve these results with a reluctant learner. Maybe a PS could inspire something in your boy, but most likely not. He may enjoy the ease with which he can pass his years there, then graduate with a serious dearth of useful knowledge...and a gaggle of bad habits: a life-long handicap.
Teaching my problem student was not often fun, but I feel great satisfaction that the hard work is yielding, and will yield, positive results: she'll only be a bartender if she wants to be one.
I'm certain that her life would be a disaster had I not, myself, taken on the task of educating her.
I hope this story is of use to you as you decide which course.
Premise is wrong.
Homeschooling is an extension of parents' accepting personal responsibility for the upbringing of their children.
Didn't think so. So much for "orthodoxy".
Idiot.
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