Replies

We have homeschooled our three sons for 10 years. Number 1 son went to UT-Dallas on a full academic scholarship -- and kept it until he graduated (cum laude) with a degree in engineering.

Why did you stop at 10 years? The University of Texas system is a public institution and your son would have been exposed the same kind of social ills there as in high school, wouldn't he? Why don't you homeschooling parents take on collegiate studies as well; after all aren't all colleges and universities dripping with liberal tenured professors? What's the difference? I really believe there should be homeschooled doctors, scientists, lawyers, even preachers--you homeschooling moms and dads can do it all!

Many homeschooling parents are doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, nurses, etc., who do appreciate the value of their college educations, and at an appropriate time, are more than happy to send their children to university. That's AFTER their children have had a chance to mature and grow up free from the influences of the liberal NEA, and all the assorted troublemakers in high school.

My latest homeschooler is going to the University of Texas - not exactly a bastion of conservatism. I don't have to worry about her being converted by some liberal professor. She's strong and knows what she beleives in, and can articulate it very well.

I can assure you that if a homeschool college degree was accepted by most job companies from their applicants, there would be college homeschooling going on.

Online universities are becoming more and more accepted.
EVERY continuing education class I've taken which did not require hands-on lab work, I've taken online.
I would think all history and literature classes could be completed online. Math requires some demonstration.

For one thing, at 18 kids can choose what they want to do.

At 18, you hope that you have raised your child to make good choices in life. You have basically done your job. If you have done it well, then they should be able to handle the pressures of college life.

Plus, in college kids are there that want to be. Most of them are fairly academic. No one is forced to go to college. No ones is going to be truant. Public elementary and secondary schools are full of kids that do not want to be there or shouldn't be there.

Colleges have a lot to offer that parents cannot afford: good libraries, science labs, computers, etc.

Most importantly colleges offer diplomas that most companies require to get a good job.

"Why don't you homeschooling parents take on collegiate studies as well; after all aren't all colleges and universities dripping with liberal tenured professors?"

That may well happen. No joke. Take MIT courseware and you are all set.
If anyone needs some college textbooks, there are literally hundreds/thousands of them online as torrent files.

Within 10 years, education as we have known it will be changed forever. The classroom is quickly become obsolete for the motivated learner.

I have a PhD, 15 years of experince, and still I am learning new things, in my home. "homeschooling" never ends!

Actually, there have been online colleges established by the homeschooling and anti-gummint skewel community. There is even discussion of the establishment of brick-and-mortar colleges for people who care enough to see to it that there is a leftistectomy performed on their kids' educations. We are a century or two behind the ignorance factories and their enthusiasts in terms of fund-raising and won't take gummint money on principle but we wiull get there or the US is finished. An important goal would be to rip the credentialing function off of schools altogether. Go back to apprenticing in the professions and trades. Each professional should be required to tell each person treated or represented what education if any. Examinations (like bar examinations for lawyers) can be used to credential the professionals. One of the sharpest lawyers I ever had to oppose in court was an elderly man who never finished high school or attended college or law school. He apprenticed when it was still possible and had an encyclopedic knowledge of our state's law at his fingertips.

If the University of Texas or Yale for that matter are so good, they should not fear competition from those whose learning is done by alternative methods. Let there be consultancy corporations to assist both conventionally educated professionals and others. In medicine, computers routinely screen for drug interaction. That was not the case forty years ago. Computers are already heavily used in law. Is engineering immune??? Certainly accounting is open to computer effort. The teaching profession has never been worse. There are plenty of online universities already and plenty of brick-and-mortar institutions doing computerized courses online already.

This century will see greater changes in higher education than will be seen even in the abolition of gummint education as a norm. The ancient Lancastrian factory model of primary and secondary education is pretty well finished except as an extraordinarily expensive baby-sitting service. It makes very little sense for higher education as well, as experience teaching part-time at several colleges has shown me.

"Why did you stop at 10 years? The University of Texas system is a public institution and your son would have been exposed the same kind of social ills there as in high school, wouldn't he?"

You don't read too well, do you? Our objection to the public school system was that they were not doing their job -- teaching my children. Unless you interpret teachers not teaching as a social ill I do not think that was discussed in my post.

As to why I sent (and send) my children to Universities, it, too has to do with the difference between trades and professions. Teaching on grade levels 1-12 is definitely a trade. Always has been. Teaching on the University level is a profession. Always has been. (That is one reason those that teach at Universities are called professors.)

I leave professions to professionals. If one does not do a good job, I find another one. (And yes, there are good colleges and bad colleges. UT-Dallas is an excellent school for engineering and business. OTOH I would not recommend my son go to a school like Cornell because it is my belief that for the last ten years being politically correct is more important than being technically correct.)

I leave trades to tradespeople only so long as (a) the there are competent ones around or (b) getting the job done is more important than getting the job done right. If I cannot hire a tradesperson competent to do a job right -- and the job is important enough that it has to be done right (and getting an education for my kids falls into that category) -- I'll do the job myself.