Posted on 02/08/2011 9:54:44 AM PST by all the best
The home-school movement is expanding rapidly. No one knows how many home-schooled children there are in the United States, but one U.S. government estimate was 1.5 million as of 2008. Another organization puts it at 2.1 million in 2010. This is a large market. It is growing. There is no reason to think that it will shrink.
The rights of parents to home school vary, state to state. It is still a battle, but there is little possibility in the future that the United States will ever impose what Europe has: a system of state-run schools in which home schooling is illegal.
We see a growing market. We also see information-delivery costs at zero: YouTube, WordPress.com, Blogger.com, and PDFs. We would expect to see a large number of videos and curriculum strategies on-line. But we don't.
As is true of almost every phenomenon, about 20% of the curriculum publishing companies control about 80% of the market. The main ones are Accelerated Christian Education, A Beka, and Bob Jones University. There are others: Alpha-Omega, Rod and Staff. These are printed materials. They are expensive. If you print your own, you can buy low-cost, high-quality materials. By far the best for the money is the Robinson Curriculum: $200, once, for the entire family. It is on CD-ROMs.
Then there is the growing influence of the Khan Academy. Salman Khan, a graduate of M.I.T. and the Harvard Business School, teaches mathematics (K-12), physics, chemistry, and business, free of charge, using YouTube as the vehicle.
Think of what Khan has done. He is a man with no experience in teaching for money or in home schooling, yet he has launched by far the most promising secular home school curriculum on earth. His nieces and nephews told him that he is a good teacher.
(Excerpt) Read more at garynorth.com ...
No more excuses. Excuses do not win wars.
I tutor.
I really do not understand this attitude. All I need is a laptop, access to a printer, access to the internet, email, a phone, and a whiteboard.
That’s about 500 bucks investment every 5 years or so, costs of about 30/month for internet and 30 for the phone.
About the same as 25 hours of instruction. That’s all I need. You do not need professionally prepared materials to teach effectively. All you need is familiarity with the topic at hand.
All homeschoolers have an enormous leg up on the public (and many private) school systems just because they are willing to use throwback curricula that work instead of adopting the sort of foolishness that is chronicled here:
http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/
Our kids are long gone, married with kids of their own. Our youngest was home schooled several years by us and another set of parents who we joined with to “team teach”. Just follow a good curriculum and not only is it easier than imagined but enjoyable.
Warning: the kids probably won’t appreciate it nor realize the value of it.
But what makes it enjoyable? Teaching REAL knowledge instead of social pap.
When our kids went back into HS level (this in rural Texas), the other family’s boy graduated Valedictorian of the class, it was a hoot. One of the most vocal opponents of our efforts was a teacher who had to eat her words (although she didn’t publically) when the boy took all the honors.
What about Maria Miller’s Math Mammoth? http://www.mathmammoth.com/about.php
It’s the best math curriculum I’ve found. It is about $30/year, my daughter loves it, and it was developed by a “math teacher turned housewife and homeschooler.”
Or what about Cheryl Lowe (Memoria Press, Prima Latina, etc.)? She was also a homeschooling mom and her materials are reasonably priced, although not free. http://www.memoriapress.com/about/index.html#clowe
I don’t think the author of this article did enough research. I don’t even homeschool, and I am familiar with those two examples of homeschooling moms who developed their own curricula for other homeschooling moms for a reasonable price.
I think homeschooling moms must be inherently self-confident to take on the task of educating their children! Now I just wish my husband was on board and I’d be doing it, too.
And Obama's educrats are saying, "Oh my God, I had no idea the infestation was so bad! But we can get rid of this problem. If Eichmann can do it, so can we."
I like the idea of virtual tutoring. Is there any kind of national organization I could talk to about accreditation or their program? Or is this a solo kind of gig?
A lot of people do have local networks, but more would always be welcome.
It seems like the parents who homeschool constantly worry about whether they’re doing enough, while the public school teachers constantly worry about whether they’re getting enough.
We love Well Trained Mind!
It’s a solo gig for me. I could do virtual tutoring, but I prefer the hands on feel of actually going in and working with the student.
I believe the one on one instruction is most beneficial. The bonus is that I don’t need an office, and can rent space at the local library to meet with the student if desired.
I home schooled my son from 5th through 12th grade.
He was a member of the home school honor society, president of his chapter, attended Boy’s State where he was elected governor, dual enrolled at the state university in 11-12 grades studying Russian language, culture and literature.
He tutored reading in the local public elementary school, won the Bishop’s Award for outstanding youth for service in our diocese, and attended the state university’s teen leadership program then served on the advisory board for that program.
That is just the things he did that immediately come to mind there was more, much more.
He has now graduated college, after being accepted everywhere he applied with scholarship offers.
I help tutor homeschool kids in science. They have to have curriculum, because in many states they have to document it. It’s part of the state overlook and regs making sure all those homeschoolers are “accountable”, doncha know.
Many of the more experienced families want to fly without curriculum, but that’s not totally possible because of the state.
Government: messing up its own and then coming in and wrecking what you’ve got right.
I wish I’d been either homeschooled or gone to a Christian school AND, further, done the same for our son. Husband’s family was BIG in education, just about made a religion out of it and would have had a fit if we’d done anything unorthodox with our son in the area of education. My husband had finished his college education in the Air Force, but my FIL was still harping on me to make him go back to school and get his teacher’s certificate so he could “stay in the old hometown and TEACH” in the public schools there. - By the time I got in high school in the old “hometown”, I was SO exhausted with all the “mean girls & boys” games they played there that once I graduated, that was IT for me on school. (If you weren’t born and REARED (with the emphasis on REARED!) in that little “hometown”, you weren’t ever going to “fit in”, and they’d fix you and freeze you out if you got out of your “place”.)
What a great resume’, we have seen quite a few such success stories with homeschoolers. May it continue to grow and raise up among us real leaders for our nation.
“It seems like the parents who homeschool constantly worry about whether they’re doing enough, while the public school teachers constantly worry about whether they’re getting enough.”
Beautifully stated! So true.
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