To repeat a famous Buckley quote, I will not insult your intelligence by assuming that you actually believe what you just said, because what you have said is the most pathetically ignorant, illogical and indefensible statement I have ever read. First, the logically exclusionary "ALL" states more than you could possibly know. It means you would personally have to examine each and every academically succesfull person and determine whether as a child he was homeschooled, a practical impossibility.
Second a lot of academically successful people went to private schools and were not home schooled at all.
Third, as a matter of fact, the vast majority of academically successful children go to public schools. This is simply a matter of statistics, since the vast majority of children in the US attend public schools, and there are many fine public schools, schools that are as good as any private school in the country. ANY! Even in mediocre schools there are excellent and dedicated teachers and so some students will beat the odds of mediocrity and succeed. Finally, there are a lot of brilliant or capable individuals who learn readily regardless of the quality of the environment, and they succeed anyway. Again the vast majority of these students attend public schools simply as a matter of statistics.
You go on to say:They will begin to compare the home life of the academically successful homeschooled child and that of the academically successful institutionalized child.
But such cannot be because you said that ALL academically successful students are homeschooled.
By the way, I have been a health professional nearly all my adult life
In other words you are not a medical doctor, explaining that you do not have the experience of dealing with the vast number of brilliant and talented professionals who were schooled before college at public schools.
it depends on whether or not you are a government teacher or someone sucking a living off the government school teat.
And your guesses are entirely wrong. It is a simple reality that folks have to get used to, that while there are many advantages to non-public education, many many brilliant and talented invididuals have attended public schools all of their lives, and have some distinct social advantages as a consequence including a better understanding of how to survive and get ahead in impersonal institutions, and the sociology of dealing with and finding friends among a diverse group of folks.
Finally, I think your position is immoral. Given that the vast majority of people must go to public schools because of practicalities, the right thing to do is to hold government officials feet to the fire to ensure that public schools are as good as they possibly can be. Letting these officials off the hook by stating that folks have other options, options they may not actually have, is a soft way out.
Wow! Well said.
That's illegal and against FR rules to advocate violence.
But seriously, don't you think the best sanction against schools is to pull the kids out? Not only does it benefit the kid but the school loses a lot of federal financial assistance when the student body diminishes.
Frankly I don't believe schools can be reformed. Schools are dominated by an insane, leftist teacher's union, the most powerful political lobby in America, that does not want to be reformed.
Ok,,,I see that you focused on my first sentence and did not read one word further.
Let's compare the home lives of the academically successful institutionalized child and academically successful homeschooler:
* Both have parents that value education.
* Both have parents that read to them from an early age. In the process of doing this their children are gently introduced to phonics, even if the parents are unaware of doing this.
* Both have parents that have books and magazines in the home.
* In each household the parents of young schooled aged children check the child's homework for neatness, completion, and comprehension.
* In the child's early years, both the homeschooled and institutionalized child's parents have regular homework hours.
* In both the homeschooling and institutionalized child's homes the parents are mindful that the child has memorized their basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division math facts.
* TV and video games are supervised and controlled.
* The parents see that child has enriching out of school activities such as karate, music lessons, soccer, baseball, community theater, and scouting.
* The parents describe taking their children to museums and planing vacations that have educational value.
* As the child grows older, both the homeschooler and institutionalized child take on responsibility for their own homework.
* At the first sign of difficult both sets of parents ( homeschooling and institutionalized ) seek out specialized tutors.
As conservatives think about the similarities between the homelife of academically successful homeschool and institutionalized children, they will begin to see that the real learning is occurring at home. The real teaching is being done by the parents in both homes. As the child grows older, both the homeschooled and institutionalized child are teaching themselves at home. What a brick and mortar school is doing is sending home a curriculum.
I fully admitted in my previous posts that my observation s are anecdotal. These are **personal** observations. Perhaps as this idea that academically successful children are homeschooled ( even if instituitonalized) will catch the attention of a researcher. Perhaps those who work against compulsory government schooling can use this idea in their quest for educational freedom for all children.
I can tell you, that I don't post for your benefit or the benefit of any government school defender...But...Thanks anyway for providing a backboard against which I and others can bounce around ideas and refine talking points.
Can an exception exist to the above? Yes! But...I **personally** have never met one.