Posted on 03/02/2006 11:45:53 AM PST by LouAvul
Elizabeth and Teddy Dean are learning about the Italian scientist Galileo, so they troop into the kitchen, where their mother Lisa starts by reviewing some facts about the Renaissance.
Elizabeth, 11, and Teddy, 8, have never gone to school.
Their teachers are primarily their parents, which puts them into what is believed to be the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. education system -- the homeschool movement.
For their science lesson, Teddy and Elizabeth are joined by three other homeschooled children and their mother, who live down the street in their suburb midway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Before the lesson starts, all five kids change into Renaissance costumes -- long dresses and bonnets for the girls, tunics and swords for the boys.
"We definitely have a lot more fun than kids who go to school," Elizabeth said.
.................
But there is no disagreement about the explosive growth of the movement -- 29 percent from 1999 to 2003 according to the NCES study, or 7 to 15 percent a year according to HSLDA.
This growth has spawned an estimated $750 million a year market supplying parents with teaching aids and lesson plans to fit every religious and political philosophy. Homeschooled children regularly show up in the finals of national spelling competitions, generating publicity for the movement.
Parents cite many reasons for deciding to opt out of formal education and teach their children at home. In the NCES study, 31 percent said they were concerned about drugs, safety or negative peer pressure in schools; 30 percent wanted to provide religious or moral instruction while 16 percent said they were dissatisfied with academic standards in their local schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Just get a tutor, or take advantage of a homeschool co-op Math class!
bump for later. I expect you have some ideas already.
SuziQ:
Outstanding news! And, an "hola" back atcha.
Can you share what school your lovely daughter is headed to?
Hugs
We paid the taxes all during that time for the public schools, though our kids attended Catholic school. We weren't looking for vouchers then either.
Most homeschooling families will not be interested in vouchers. They don't like having to get approval from their local school departments now just for the ability to homeschool in general, they certainly won't like having to have their curricula approved by those folks!
Oh, and Andrea Yates wasn't a long term 'homeschooling mom'. She only had one child who was school aged. Her problems began LONG before she ever started homeschooling her oldest.
You've probably seen the town mentioned in the news in the last week. There have been several stories mis-representing the town as some sort of 'Catholics only' enclave. It's simply an attempt to build a new town that will support traditional values, and the University will anchor the town. The ACLU is all up in arms about it. ;o)
This actually is highly unlikely, for two reasons. First, leftwingers do not wish to sully themselves with actual effortful activity. They prefer to use your money to hire government thugs to do their work for them.
Second, leftwingers do not care about children, seldom even have any, and so would certainly not exert themselves in a sustained effort such as home schooling requires.
Yes, I have heard of the school and the town. Glad to hear
it's catching on with home scholars. Naples is nice!
That's your FR homepage, silly,
Homeschooling isn't a method -- it's a lifestyle of learning.
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Helen Keller's autobiography influenced me greatly.
In other words, it is actually being a family similar to when boys helped dad in the fields and girls helped mom in the house. Everything we do all day long is a learning experience for our kids, add family outings, a couple of specific areas of book learning and quality time spent as a family learning to enjoy our surroundings and it sounds like a great family lifestyle. And, I don't mean to simplify it.
"It would be nice to get a school tax break from the local government for those who homeschool, or send their kids to private schools."
Tax credits would implicitly require trusting parents to make the best decisions for their children. It would also be the death knell for the government schools. Not too likely a scenario in the short term. Although in the long term, who knows?
So-called conservatives are also too busy spending their time trying to sell the School Voucher brand Political Snake Oil. In spite of the fact that the courts have knocked down school vouchers at every turn.
"People will get tired of paying for a socialist program they aren't using."
I hold little hope for tax credits in the short term. And I vehemently disagree with school vouchers, which the courts have pretty much torpedoed anyway. But if current trends toward homeschooling hold or, hopefully, accelerate, we might see some relief on the tax side in any case. Not through tax credits for parents, but through less taxes to pay for schools that aren't being used anyway.
One thing that gives me great hope is that homeschooling is beginning to look like a status symbol.
And even this is WAY over rated. I homeschooled. My kids got together with other kids (and most of the time it wasn't kids their own age) maybe once a week. They have grown into very responsible adults, because they were around responsible adults mostly,raising their own children now.
Becky
I used a program called Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), It is designed specifically for homeschooling. It covers everything in an easy to follow program. You don't have to "teach" the program, the kids "learn" it on their own, so even if parents are not that knowledgeable in any subject, the kid will be able to learn it just fine. By the time my kids were in the middle grades, they were scoring post high school on standardized tests.
Good luck.
Becky
I want to do away with socialist schools all together. Return to a capitalist, free market, system.
My hope is that as these outrages continue, and Boomers start living on fixed incomes, parents will pull out of the socialist schools and not want to "pay twice" and the Boomers will not want to pay confiscatory taxes for a failed system they aren’t using any more.
I think the greed that kept Boomers on the dole will help kill the program when their lifestyle is no longer being subsidized.
Well, actually the article says that homeschooling is growing by 7 to 15 percent each year. So if we had 100 students homeschooling this year, we might have 107 to 115 next year and so on. If 7 to 15 percent of all kids were starting to homeschool each year, the public school system would be defunct in a matter of several years. As it is, estimates have the total number of homeschooling kids around 2 to 5% nationally. My numbers are out of date so someone correct me if you have newer estimates. It is hard to count homeschoolers because the laws are different in every state and not all are actually registered as homeschoolers.
Homeschooling is still in its early phases, so it's too soon to evaluate its results. But it has the potential to bring educational excellence to the United States, something that the public schools have never done in their 100-plus year history.
Thanks both of you for your info.
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