You forgot the "BARF ALERT" - LOL!
The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship.
This insanely ridiculous assumption is used by SO many failed educators to justify their idiot stance against home schooling. In fact, this is nothing but a liberal socialist lie; "The isolation implicit in home teaching is...." should actually read "The isolation which is assumed, erroneously, to be implicit in home teaching is NOT...."
My oldest daughter, who homeschools her three boys, shuts most of her detractors up by informing them she is a certified teacher. Her program involves trips to local libraries, museums, and other area educational resources, along with YMCA and little league athletic programs, etc. Her kids end up interacting with MANY more people, in MANY more settings, than federally subsidized brainwashing (the public school classroom) could EVER provide. Additionally, since her husband is active duty Coast Guard, they get even MORE "un-isolation" by moving around more than others might.
Liberal socialist pondscum have no redeeming social value.....
Here is my two cents to Dr Evans ...
devans@uci.edu
Dr Evans,
I suspect that thanks to google and internet you may get a deluge to your faulty op-ed in USA Today finding your email.
Let me throw some comments on the pile. First, about your curious quote from Quintilian:
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."
In the days of the Romans, the privileged Roman student were taught by Greek slave tutors - at home. So the irony is that you are misinforming with this quote - it is supportive of schooling generally and is making the point that choice in schooling is a different thing from denying education entirely. Exactly so - choosing home schooling is not a rejection of schools or education, but a choice, and for many a valid and positive education choice.
Qunitilian himself was taught first by his rhetorician father. It may be in recognition of that that Quintilian himself said:
I would, therefore, have a father conceive the highest hopes of his son from the moment of his birth. "
http://www.molloy.edu/academic/philosophy/sophia/Quintilian/education.htm The fact that you raised the issue of "parental orthodoxies" rather than whether parents and instructional materials could teach english, math and science belies your agenda: You care about indoctrination. It is a bias against parental roles in educating the next generation which is the opposite of what Quintilian would advocate.
You wrongly assert that social values can only be taught in a socialized educational setting (why not home, and the church, and other voluntary social arrangements besides a public school?) In fact, we have seen the opposite, where the schools have decided to engage in unhealthy indoctrination of politicized orthodoxies while ignoring true childhood character and moral values development. It is a reaction to the failures of schools and their mistaken orthodoxies that parents have been forced to engage in home schooling.
I could give you my own second-hand stories, eg, I know 2 friend both with PhDs who pulled kids out of public schools and homeschooled because of the mis-education and poor teachers that were being foisted on them. Yes, not everybody can teach, but sadly many of them are employed as public school teachers today and cannot be fired due to the excessive power of teacher's unions. I am sure you'll get enough first-hand stories on it.
My own children are in private schools, my daughter last year in 2nd grade tested comparable to 4th and 5th graders in public schools, and is an avid reader thanks to being taught in ways the public school has forgotten. My son is 5 and already can read, write and do basic math. He's starting first grade in the same private Christian school; public school is sadly not up to the standards necessary to teach my children well enough.
I take Quintilian to heart. Maybe you should too. ( BTW, you realize that the quote you used was about choosing rhetoric academies for older students, ie, more like a College than an elementary schools; again, most of the privileged had Greek tutors. You think maybe it was a mistake for Alexander the Great to get 'home-schooled' by Aristotle?)