[SauronOfMordor]

I have no quibble with homeschoolers, provided they actually have some mastery of the subject matter.

In the homeschooling community, people like the author are known as "un-schoolers".

I'm a homeschool dad. I don't follow a fixed curriculum, tending to play things by ear. The oldest one has turned out well, getting a 1300 SAT and starting her first college course (Biology I) at a nearby university. She's 14

What I've been doing is concentrating on reading in the first 3 grades. My viewpoint is that if the kid is able to read well and independently, everything will work out. If the kid is not reading well by then (I mean at the level of being able to read and comprehend the newspaper, not Dr Seuss), then they're not going to do well in anything

[annyokie]

How is un-schooling different? I mean no offense to any homeschoolers here, but how is watching the history channel at home any different than watching the history channel at school?

I'm not cracking wise, I really want to know the reasoning.

Thanks to all.

[federalist1]

This is our family's sixth year of home schooling. My son did not read well by third grade. He could barely read at all. He did, however, master Newton's first three laws of motion; he was thrilled with how Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth; etc. He has an engineer's mind that, as a third grader, drew accurate conclusions about the way things work that took me some time to work through. He was always right. Had I tried to make my son fit the "read by x age" mold, he would be labelled learning disabled. In the public schools, he would have been a candidate for drugging into submission.

Re: schools. How can an entire group of children go through the same class and come out with such different results? We accept as self-evident that each child is different. Yet we presume to teach all at the same pace. And any child who is not ready to learn what the experts say they should be able to learn is considered out of step. Why? Because the child does not fit some expert's' mold?

Children are not machines to be programmed. It is high time more people -- particularly parents -- stopped trying to shave off this quality here and that quality there to make them fit a mold that has no basis in real life. The bell curve means some children are at the ends. Cramming all children into the middle ought to be criminal. We do not cut off children's fingers to make them the same length (not yet), we do not put them on stretchers to make them the same height. Why do we insist that their brains are the only parts that are supposed to grow in lock step with some invented norm?

Children are born sponges. They are forced during their school years to learn and do what someone else has said they should, and in the way someone else says they should do it. And then we wonder why middle schoolers become so detached and unmotivated. They've spent their whole lives being told what to do and how to do it!

Have you ever met a young child who did not blow your socks off with some amazing gift? Not all gifts fit into the school mode, though, and many are not rewarded or even recognized.

I highly recommend Dr. Raymond Moore's "Better Late Than Early." Some children's neurological connections don't get made until the age of 10 or 12. That's fine. Unless they've already been called stupid by the likes of people who think they are damaged if they can't read by third grade. Einstien and Thomas Edison were such idiots. I believe many Einsteins and Edisons are beaten down by the system and prevented from knowing of their genius, let alone using it.

In the U.S., we school for normalcy. We then complain that our children as a group are so horribly average. Those who can't read by third grade are condemned to intellectual ghetto for the rest of their lives? Maybe your children, but not mine! Mine are an heritage of the Lord with gifts of His choosing in His time.

By the way, both my children score several years above so-called "grade level" in standardized testing. They think the standards are silly. They are doing what they can as well as they can, and that is enough.

[Osage Orange]

You wrote:

"What I've been doing is concentrating on reading in the first 3 grades. My viewpoint is that if the kid is able to read well and independently, everything will work out."

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

BRAVO!!

Exactly what my wife and I decided some 20 years ago...

It worked too........

Best FRegards,

[dasboot]

I'm a homeschool dad. I don't follow a fixed curriculum, tending to play things by ear. The oldest one has turned out well, getting a 1300 SAT and starting her first college course (Biology I) at a nearby university. She's 14

Way to go! And thanks for the update. It's nice to hear about this...seems like yesterday you were getting started. Seems like yesterday I started myself. I miss it, and my kids, a whole lot. Those homeschoolin' days were the best days I ever had. *sigh*