Posted on 11/12/2004 6:39:25 AM PST by SunnySide
Heard this on the t.v. news while on the net. So I don't have a link, source or tv station (Sorry Mr. Mod)
Again, if you look at students killed in schools, there are the vast minority... These cases are known because of the media' thirst for "news", but they aren't the usual nor the normal...
I could then throw in your faces the much more numerous cases of children killed by their parents to "show" that parents are dangerous to their children, but this would be the same non-argument!
"It's like a game show, "How Long can The Poser survive on FR?" Kinda like a "Survivors for losers"."
A damned long time. And I think home schooling is far superior to most government schools.
You haven;t provided any to support your view while others have.
Again, we are now debating of bad teachers versus good teachers. I am the first to recognize that there are bad teachers... All of us had one... But this only shows that there should be reforms on how teachers are chosen... Also understanding how to deal with a bad teacher teaches how to deal with a less-than-perfect coworker later in life...
It's pretty strange that the mods haven't wised up to this troll.
Yes but were these murders during home schooling times? I was using the example to show that public schools are not exactly great places to socialize kids. The idea that home-schooled kids aren't socialized is an urban legend spread from ignorance.
As far as academic ability, I'll stack my 9 year old homeschooled 4th-grader up against the average public school 6th-grader any day of the week.
Our Cub Scout Den (yes, we actually let Junior out of the house every now and then) has seven other boys... same age from the local public school. Realizing, of course, that the quality of public education varies depending on locale, I'll say my son is getting a FAR better education than they are.
Of course, nothing is perfect. While Junior is progressing nicely with his Latin, we're a little disappointed with the slow rate of progess in Japanese. Perhaps my local public school would be a better source for education in these areas. Perhaps you can advise.
Exactly what social skills is my son missing because he's not in public school? With Scouts, Tae Kwan Do, piano, friends (homeschooled, public schooled, private schooled) popping over all the time... well, I do admit that our hermit-like existance isn't all we'd like... but we make do.
Government schools have done a wonderful job, COLUMBINE.
As to drugs? Again, you better understand how to say no, because you'll have to deal with it in colleges.
Government schools have a wonderful record when it comes to keeping children off drugs, Heck, everyone knows that government school "educated" kids use less drugs than homeschool and private school kids.
As to sexual activity? Well again, you better prepare them for the game, because if not they won't know how to deal with it! Especially in a society where you don't have early marriages!!!
The government employees can show kids how to put on condoms and tell them that anal sex is normal, so there ya have it! Kids sure do better in government schools on that score!
Your ideas are imbecilic liberal talking points.
My kids have never used drugs or practiced sex before marriage or murdered anyone at Columbine.
YOU on the other hand, murdered your own child proudly and called the other one a clump but ALLOWED to him to live.
LOL- Xenalyte you are the greatest!
As I said, if you want to indoctrinate your kids, then it isn't education we discuss but something else...
As you live and your children will live in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society, the fact that they don't learn how to deal with it will probably be a problem later in life... (Try to say to your co-worker or supplier that he will go to Hell because he doesn't believe in the same God, and see what happens next)
I know for instance that if another kid had ever tried to speak of Jesus to my kids, I would have sued the school. Proselytism isn't for schools at all!
I made post 109 before I saw this one. I'll cool it, and just watch as abortion and other liberal causes are advanced by "Freepers".
No offense, but you're a scary guy. How about letting parents choose the form of schooling that they feel best serves their child's needs?
I doubt you'd be as sanguine regarding the effects of government schooling if you knew the history of this pernicious institution.
A sampling:
The particular utopia American believers chose to bring to the schoolhouse was Prussian. The seed that became American schooling, twentieth-century style, was planted in 1806 when Napoleon’s amateur soldiers bested the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is renting soldiers and employing diplomatic extortion under threat of your soldiery, losing a battle like that is pretty serious. Something had to be done.The most important immediate reaction to Jena was an immortal speech, the "Address to the German Nation" by the philosopher Fichte—one of the influential documents of modern history leading directly to the first workable compulsion schools in the West. Other times, other lands talked about schooling, but all failed to deliver. Simple forced training for brief intervals and for narrow purposes was the best that had ever been managed. This time would be different.
In no uncertain terms Fichte told Prussia the party was over. Children would have to be disciplined through a new form of universal conditioning. They could no longer be trusted to their parents. Look what Napoleon had done by banishing sentiment in the interests of nationalism. Through forced schooling, everyone would learn that "work makes free," and working for the State, even laying down one’s life to its commands, was the greatest freedom of all. Here in the genius of semantic redefinition1 lay the power to cloud men’s minds, a power later packaged and sold by public relations pioneers Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee in the seedtime of American forced schooling.
Prior to Fichte’s challenge any number of compulsion-school proclamations had rolled off printing presses here and there, including Martin Luther’s plan to tie church and state together this way and, of course, the "Old Deluder Satan" law of 1642 in Massachusetts and its 1645 extension. The problem was these earlier ventures were virtually unenforceable, roundly ignored by those who smelled mischief lurking behind fancy promises of free education. People who wanted their kids schooled had them schooled even then; people who didn’t didn’t. That was more or less true for most of us right into the twentieth century: as late as1920, only 32 percent of American kids went past elementary school. If that sounds impossible, consider the practice in Switzerland today where only 23 percent of the student population goes to high school, though Switzerland has the world’s highest per capita income in the world.
Prussia was prepared to use bayonets on its own people as readily as it wielded them against others, so it’s not all that surprising the human race got its first effective secular compulsion schooling out of Prussia in 1819, the same year Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, set in the darkness of far-off Germany, was published in England. Schule came after more than a decade of deliberations, commissions, testimony, and debate. For a brief, hopeful moment, Humboldt’s brilliant arguments for a high-level no-holds-barred, free-swinging, universal, intellectual course of study for all, full of variety, free debate, rich experience, and personalized curricula almost won the day. What a different world we would have today if Humboldt had won the Prussian debate, but the forces backing Baron vom Stein won instead. And that has made all the difference.
The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army;2 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.
When our two kids were in second grade, we considered removing them and homeschooling them. However, after looking at other options and knowing our (and their) temperments (ie. all strong-willed!), we chose instead to enroll them in a non-denominational Christian school.
There they received an excellent education and are both now in college.
Part of the reason we were able to afford private school is that when they were born, we began saving for the "college" fund. We used, and replenished, it to help fund their 3-12 private school education.
Some people/parents do not have the temperment to home school. The results for those who do, though, is outstanding. I have yet to meet a properly homeschooled adult who isn't well-mannered, well-spoken AND well-educated!
As a professor, you are not intellectually superior, and you no longer have a monopoly on indoctrination. The truth hurts when it challenges your progressive ideologies doesn't it. But after all, shouldn't we all try to be more open-minded. By the way I was home schooled for several years.
My son received a 610 on his math SAT at grade 7 without any training in Algebra. He is smarter than his teachers at math. We considered home schooling so that he could learn at his own pace.
The problem with your conclusion even assuming that your unscientific study were valid, is that you assume the children would have done better in public schools. Many parents choose homeschooling for children that have learning disabilities like ADD so they can have one-on-one instruction. These same children may not fare as well in the public schools.
In any case, your math and logic abilities have no connection to applying them to real life. You have made two logical errors. You have used anecdotal information to extrapolate to a population and you have not made a fair comparison. The question is Do home schooled children perform better or worse than children of equal intelligence and ability. Quiet frankly, if you were my children's math teacher I'd have them withdraw.
As I said, some kids are fine with home-schooling, as some kids do fine with bad teachers... The question is what happens to the average kid with the average parent...
I believe that strictly monitoring what happens is a solution, as is a good relationship with your children... For instance, as in all high schools, in my kids' school there were drugs... Well I told them that I couldn't monitor them but they have only one brain and why should they fry it... They never tried drugs...
But raising a child is a bit of a crap game. So I am sure that not all people are so lucky!
If government schools are so good, why are government school teachers the #2 profession behind politicians in who sends their children to private schools?
But they wised up to the rest of us, we have been told to "cool it" on one thread, and to "keep it civil" on this thread, so I'm finished posting conservative positions for the day.
Maybe... But schools existed much before.
For instance the Scottish miracle, that made Scotland the economic powerhouse of Europe was based on schooling in Parish schools. Adam Smith for instance went there and this made an impression on him. You should read what he has to say about schools in the Wealth of Nations.
Maybe what we should be discussing is what model of schools we need... And I am the first to acknowledge that the current model is not perfect.
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