OT: Home Schooling

That's sad to hear. And I do believe is part of our current social problems. Everyone wants to be so independent that we've lost the glue that holds us together. We seem headed toward a cultural path of "fear the other guy. Whoever he is." Your neighbor might be a child molester. Your teacher a pedophile. The guy down the block is an athiest and might influence. The school doesn't teach intelligent design. The family next door doesn't attend church. Over in the next block, he looks Arabic . . . and you know what THOSE people are up to.

I can understand this mindset. Perhaps it is because I have seen both great and poor results that I shudder at the thought that it become more fullblown than it currently is: a very tiny segment of society.

I do believe, as a society, that education is the key to a better society. So, if someone isn't doing a good job of home schooling, that affects society. Of course, one could argue that the public system fails many children. Of that I wouldn't disagree.

Illinois had an interesting concept in that children had to pass certain tests in 3rd grade and 8th grade to make sure the children were learning what they should be learning. I don't see a problem with this. If you're truly enamoured with home schooling, this would prove your point: you can do it as well or better. It also protects the child from well-meaning parents who may have bit off more than they can chew.

You are one of the lucky ones. I have seen other success stories. I have also seen poor results.

And that is a very real possibility, although the numbers, currently, certainly don't warrant that type of fearful reaction.

I really haven't seen this echoed anywhere. Unless you might be referring to the recent phenomena of parents barely able to raise their voice to a child in public lest they be hauled into court for abuse. I've seen that.

Dianne

I can go along with that. California has a high school exit exam, but, of course, by then, it's too late to go back and fix what wasn't learned in 3d grade, and most of the semi-literate home schoolers don't give a hoot if the kid gets his high school diploma or not. So what if he doesn't pass the exit exam?

Now, if they were testing in lower grades, and the semi-literates were discovered early enough to send a professional tutor for remedial teaching, that would solve a lot of the problems with parents who cain't not teach whut they don't not know theyself. I'm sure we could find trained Christians to tutor who would honor the parents' desire to have the kids learn from the Bible instead of (oh horrors) reading Shakespeare, and who could teach math in terms of "Moses had two tablets containing Ten Commandments; how many commandments, on average, were there on each tablet?"

Dianne Lewandowski wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

No, you miss my point. The "it takes a village..." philosophy's ultimate end is "You as a parent are not capable of knowing how to raise your own child; you need everybody else to tell you how to do it." It's not a matter of independence for me, it's a matter of having a higher standard for my children than current society says is reasonable. And in my case it has paid off, and other people comment on how nice my children are all the time.

Where the rubber meets the road on this issue is that in the same way that Michael Newdow was offended that his daughter had to say the word, "God," in school (interesting side note here -- Michael Newdow is the noncustodial atheist parent of the aforementioned daughter, who is a Bible-believing Christian along with her mom and who had no problem with including that phrase), I don't want someone else thinking that they know best and trying to train my children to accept values or a value system that I believe is wrong or that I take offense at.

You are *totally* misunderstanding what I am saying here, and you can't even logically come to that conclusion from my statement that I prefer to take primary responsibility for the raising of my own children. In California, if one's minor-aged daughter of *any age* gets pregnant and is afraid to tell her parents, she can either get an abortion without her parent's knowledge that her parents will have to pay the bill for, or she can run away from home and apply for welfare, food stamps, etc., and she is automatically determined to be an emancipated minor and the state will not try to reunite her with her parents. If, however, the parents find her and agree to support her through her pregnancy and she returns home, the state will bill the parents for every cent they paid her in public assistance plus a very stiff administrative fee (30%, I think it was) for the costs of giving it to her, even though they had nothing to do with her applying for public assistance.

Our public library encourages children to get their own library card as soon as they can sign their name. But when they started the policy that even though I, as the parent, must sign for a child under age 13 stating that I will take responsibility for any materials checked out on their card, I as the parent am not entitled to know the name of the book they checked out even though I am obligated to pay to replace a book checked out, I cancelled all my children's library cards, because I feel it is morally wrong to make someone have to be financially responsible for something without giving them the ability to control or limit the cost of that responsibility.

There are very few home-school failures compared to public school failures.

I have no problem with that as long as I am not held to a stricter standard than the public schools are.

No, I'm just an *average* one. I think there are probably fewer home- school failures than public school failures, because a parent who realizes that home schooling is not going well is more likely to put their child in school than a public school parent who sees their child failing in public school would be to find them an educational alternative.

And sometimes there are children who just plain can't learn, and they may look like a failure but what they are doing is trying to preserve their child's self-esteem.

However, if it happens to be that a parent might have different educational goals that you think are correct, you can't say that they are wrong just because you personally disagree with them.

It still happens.

My local public school district feels that they are the professionals when it comes to children and that you as a parent don't have a clue on how to raise your child right and you need them to tell you how to raise them, what to teach them to believe, etc., etc., etc. I have seen children crash and burn under their philosophy. I only wish I lived in a different school district that was more parent-friendly, because I hate being at odds with the public school people.

Karen C - California wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

I sure hope you aren't serious here. There are sound Bible principles to be found in many of Shakespeare's plays. Why would anybody object their student reading a carefully-selected Shakespeare play?

Karen C - California wrote in news:3evleiF59598U1 @individual.net:

I wonder how far they had to look to find someone like that. *shudder*

P.S. Would you happen to be the same person as a Karen Campbell who posts on at least one of the MSN court reporter/scopist forums (as opposed to the Karen Campbell who is the tech support person for

If not, I now know three Karen Campbells online.

Melinda Meahan - remove TRASH to reply wrote: snip

snip

To see what our local community is doing, check out the following link:

Back in October, closing our rural elementary school was one option that the local school board mentioned. The link shows what a rural community can do by working together and not alienating any particular group. Working in a library, we see lots of home schoolers. Since the library is next to an elementary school, we also see lots of school children. Some home schoolers shouldn't be home schooled and some school students should be pulled out and schooled at home! :-))) A lot depends on the child, the parents and the local school atmosphere. Quite a few families in this area will do traditional school, pull a child out if he/she is having trouble (too advanced or too challenged) and then put the student back in traditional school if it seems appropriate some time down the line. I know home schoolers who did exceedingly well in their school work who are now in their 20s working at sandwich shops and craft stores, still living with their parents and I know traditionally schooled children who have gone on to do great things. On the other hand, I also know of cases where the opposite is true! Public/Private school graduates who moved back home with dead end jobs as opposed to home schoolers who have moved on and are doing wonderfully. IMHO, those who depend on public schools to teach their children manners and morals AND an education are just as goofy as those home schooling families who are afraid of what their children may be exposed to but DON'T take the extra time to expose their children to different ideas and then explain why they do or don't agree with them. Not all home schoolers OR public/private school teachers are good or bad. Liz from Humbug

"Liz" wrote in news:1116396659.555385.123540 @g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Exactly. It's not a matter of one is always right and the other is always wrong.

Personally, my philosophy is that the only reason to teach your child at home is that you are convinced that it is the best education (all factors considered, educational, social, etc.) that your child can get, and if you are convinced of that and want to make it work, you will.

Actually, I can believe it - there is (or at least was) a church run school here that only used the Bible as the ONLY text book. The math was purely addition and subtraction.

Used to scare the heck out of me, as I worked with a man that sent his kids to this school. He was counseled by his preacher that engineering was an evil way to make a living.

Cheryl

I'll admit I only know personally about 100 homeschool families, but NONE of them are semi-literate. I've never heard of families that are like that! And I live in Alabama! LOL The media does "play the public" you know. I'm sure they searched hard to find someone to be put on TV that would inflame the public against homeschooling. Same as they didn't bother to cover the soldier being awarded the silver cross last night but fill the airways with the ones who behave atrociously. They want the news to get attention and draw people in. They want controversy! If they interviewed a bunch of well educated, or even "normal" people about homeschooling, well that would just be boring, wouldn't it? Kim

Well, I disagree. That may be one point of view on the statement, but it's certainly not the only point of view.

And I applaud you for your conviction. I certainly have no romantic notion of the success of public education. I'm just leary of home schooling without some safety net for the child, similar to what I pointed out that Illinois is doing.

As a parent, Newdow had every right to object.

I may have misunderstood where your head was at, but I think you misunderstood me as well. :-) We're just coming at this from two different directions.

I haven't seen any statistics, so I really can't judge. I've known 5 families who have home schooled and have seen the successes, the mediocrity, and the failure.

Nor should you be.

Of course. And they don't do well in public education, either. But there is help for them if parents scream loud enough. :-) Although, I know that isn't always the case because my own daughter suffered through. But I certainly didn't feel qualified to home school.

I would hope that home schooled children have as broad an education as possible. Karen C's posts have pointed out the problems form *some* home schooled children.

I don't disagree. But that's just looking at the negative side. There are also many positive benefits in public education.

I'm not against home schooling, by the way, nor am I approaching this conversation from that conviction.

Dianne

And I know of several others! There's the Karen Campbell who used to write for Ear magazine (music geek), there's a Karen Campbell in upstate NY, and I used to send letters to a Karen Campbell in the midwest -- we not only shared a name, but we also had identical return address labels, which really drove her mailman nuts! He could never figure out if it was coming or going.

Unfortunately, I am serious. One set of parents interviewed on TV actually said that the only book they were using for home-schooling was the Bible, because it contained everything their kids needed to know. Simply were not concerned about math or US history, and apparently there wasn't a thing the government could do about it, till the high school exit exam, which these folks didn't give a hoot if their kids passed or not. They firmly believe that any book other than the Bible has influences their kids shouldn't be exposed to. A couple of backwoods semi-literates themselves who have no business teaching anyone.

Yes, the media DO find Lunatic Fringe people to inflame public opinion, but just because they are the "few" instead of the majority doesn't mean that we can't be horrified that they're out there and raising children just as ignorant as themselves because they're afraid of being exposed to anything new. "If being a farmer or fisherman was good enough for everyone in the Bible, then it's good enough for me and my kid"; except that there are business owners in the Bible, judges (and, by extrapolation, lawyers), physicians.... They weren't all hand-to-mouth farmers and fishermen. Some of them had very good educations (for the time).

And (pssssst), the Bible doesn't say "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" -- the Proverbs 31 ideal woman owns her own business, as do several New Testament women.

Unfortunately, no one knows whether or not it was the right thing to do until a child is an adult. It is only then that the child can say, "Gosh, I wish you had put me in a public school. I really didn't like "fill in the blank" about being home-schooled."

I'm impressed there are some families that can actually afford to home-school their kids... What a privilege :)

take care, Linda

Linda D. wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You know, that doesn't go just for home schooling, it goes for everything a parent does in raising their child. But I think that if a parent stays in tune with their child and watches them and the effects of how they are being raised carefully, they aren't going to make any major mistakes. Now, maybe the child won't have liked something, but that in itself doesn't mean that it was wrong. My children have never liked doing chores, but as they got older and developed a reputation for being dependable workers and reaped the consequent benefits of a good reputation, they have appreciated the results of having had to do them.

Personally, I think the Aesop's Fable of the old man, his son, and the donkey is a really good philosophy of child-rearing as well as any other decision in life -- if you listen to everybody and try to accommodate and please everybody, and especially if you keep vacillating because you are not sure what you are doing it best, you are likely to suffer ruin, and your best bet is carefully consider your options, make your best decision, chart your course, and go and follow it as far as you can go until you hit something that tells you that you need to do something different -- and don't go listening to all the people standing on the sidelines as long as things are going well.

On paper I can't afford to home school my children. I qualified for Earned Income Credit for the past three years. It is a financial sacrifice to teach my children at home, but I think it is worth it, and so do they.

I know it's not the only point of view. What I was saying is that the part of that philosophy that ruins the whole thing for me is the above. As someone who was practically cloistered from the world as a child and who still struggles with life sometimes even as I approach the half- century mark of life, I agree that the more people my children have contact with, the better.

Even if his daughter and her custodial parent were supportive of and in agreement with it? I personally don't think it was the right thing to do for him to specifically target his daughter as someone who was offended by having to include that phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance. He should have just made it a general thing, and to me that sounded sort of like sniping at an ex-wife he is angry at and using the child as a pawn rather than something he was legitimately concerned about.

Which is exactly why I am trying to explain what I mean *and* understand where you are coming from.

Sounds about the same as what would happen in public school to me.

A lot of teacher's union groups want home schooling parents to be held to a stricter standard. It's an attempt to try to force parents to discontinue home schooling. This is what I have read in NEA: Trojan Horse of Education by Samuel Blumenfeld as well as a few other books.

Yes, but they are not problems *only* of home schooled children, so AFAIC you can't label it as strictly a problem of home schooling but really as a potential problem of any education in general. A school district two or three communities over from me has eliminated spelling from their curriculum because there are a lot of itinerant farm workers' children in the district (along with the parents who can afford the new $300.000-

400,000 houses that are springing up out there like weeds) who get no help at home with their school work (although they speak perfectly fluent English), because they don't want the children to feel like failures. So instead of giving them extra help with spelling, they just eliminate the subject in the entire school district. POOF! Problem solved, right? (NOT!)

I was just trying to give you a flavor of where I am coming from on this issue, and I felt a disclaimer of my beefs with the local school district was an important background disclaimer to make in the sense of "truth in advertising" (G) or whatever. I think I can match every bad home schooling story someone has with a bad public school story, and that's my point -- one is not automatically better than the other. They both have their place and both work reasonably well in some cases and pretty horrendously in others, both have problems and are imperfect, but solving the problems in both of them would cause other problems and might not be feasible.

That's perfectly fine with me, and I think we're having a perfectly fascinating discussion. I always like hearing from people with different perspectives on such issues than my own, because it generally helps me clarify my own viewpoints.

I object to taking a statement, such as "It takes a village . . . " and extrapolate to mean what it doesn't mean. :-) "It takes a village" means that parents and people in general can't do it alone. It takes all of us caring, nurturing, being watchful, and thinking about the future and each other. It's a lesson we're losing in this nation, in my opinion.

This doesn't have anything to do with home schooling. I respect anyone who has the will, the creativity, and the knowledge to do it. Provided the children are given plenty of opportunities in general society - which you seem to provide.

We're hearing what the press wants us to hear. Children don't always say what they mean, but often say what they think will please a parent. As a father, he had every right to fight for what he believed in when it came to his daughter. Whether or not he had physical custody.

I think it's hard to separate the bias from the story. If you're for having "under god" in the pledge, then you look at the situation one way. If you're against it, you tend to look at it another way. :-)

That's what I already said: there are successes, mediocrity, and failure . . . just as in the public school system.

It's one thing to "want something", it's quite another to get it. I don't think the general public would allow that nonsense. Then again, you never know, so it's always wise to remain vigilant on a given "cause".

And I have been agreeing with that. I *am* concerned, however, with children who are home schooled who get an extremely biased education because of religious issues. Or because the parents are truly illiterate to begin with. My neighbor, who home schooled, did so because she didn't want her children to learn about dinosaurs pre-dating man, or that the world was older than her religion preached. The woman couldn't write a coherent sentence . . . and she admitted it.

It's this sort of fear-driven home schooling that I object to. So, I believe there should be some sort of testing of the children to make sure they can read, do math at grade level, etc. etc. Just as the school districts are testing children to make sure they're doing their job.

Now, if you want to argue that public schools still aren't always doing their job, you'll get no argument from me. :-) I'm more at trying to prevent gross illiteracy.

We don't disagree at all. I think most here would be in agreement. Heavens, there's been enough topics through the years about poor school systems. I think where a few of us draw the line is the lack of some kind of monitoring so that at least we know there is a semblence of education going on; i.e., periodic testing.

I had a young girl for piano lessons that was being home schooled. I immediately recognized a learning disability. Exactly what kind I'm not educated to guess. But it was obvious that the child couldn't learn to read music. And if she couldn't figure out this symbolism, then she obviously was having some other difficulty in her school work. I've been at this long enough to know. She was young enough, and if it could be corrected early, then everybody wins.

I cautiously mentioned this to the parent. The response? MY child? NEVER. There is no problem. And she was yanked from piano lessons. And I became the brunt of a lot of gossip.

So, this is another of my cautions about home schooling: the ability to recognize problems. Dianne

Oh, I don't know... I have seem too many screwed up teens caused by dysfunctional families to say parents are always observant to their childs needs. A parent can often 'not see the forest for the trees'. One young lady I know of was cutting herself, her parents had absolutely no idea until they took her out to purchase the bridesmaid gown for her sisters wedding :( A very, very sad situation...

Linda

Linda D. wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I never said they all were. I just said that *if* they were....

Dianne Lewandowski wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

My apologies for the misunderstanding. I am just relating how far the people I know of around here who believe in that philosophy take it. But please don't forget that the person who made that phrase popular in this country was the lawyer who handled the first case of a pre-teenaged child divorcing his/her parents because he/she didn't like how his/her parents were raising him/her.

I have no problem with families having an extended support group of family and friends. I just think that the buck has to stop with the parents and not anybody else when it comes to how the children should be raised. And in those African villages, everybody was raised with the same faith, the same value system, the same morals, etc. In this country that is absolutely not the case. So whose morals, values, etc., should the children be raised with? I vote that they be raised with the morals, values, etc. of their own parents.

The news quoted Newdow's daughter and mother saying they were both Christians and had no problem with the Pledge the way it has been for the past 50-ish years. It wasn't publicized widely, but I saw the article where the daughter was quoted.

It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with being sensitive to the needs, wants, beliefs, etc., of your own child and how your actions are going to affect them and whether any negative repercussions can be minimized.

Is that any different than public school children who get an extremely biased education because of a desire to eliminate religious issues from life?

*chuckle* I tell people that I really don't think that the evolution/creation argument is worth worrying about, because the more they revise evolutionary theory, the closer it comes to creationist theory, and I figure eventually they will overlap.

Well, I have already stated that I strongly feel that the only legitimate reason to teach your child at home is because you feel that it is the best education they can get. I have known people who have HSed to save the cost of private school tuition and for all sorts of other crazy reasons, and it never works.

But the difference is that the teacher doesn't get fired if they are doing a lousy job, so why should the parent?

I will agree with you 100% that preventing gross illiteracy is important.

Well, the point of a particular group of home schoolers -- and *not* religious-oriented ones, the unschooler types -- is that they want to teach their children unimpeded by government standards.

There is this lady named Mary Pride who is a Christian home schooling author and magazine publisher. She had something funny in one of her books that was probably only half-serious but designed to make one think

-- that she would be perfectly happy with public school districts testing home schoolers and forcing them back into public school if home schooling didn't work, as long as they also held public school students to the same standard and forced the parents to pull the children out of public school and have them educated elsewhere if public school wasn't working. :)

I know what you are saying. Some parents just don't want to be told that their child is less than absolutely perfect. But this is also not limited to home schooling parents, believe me. My children have had problems with uncontrolled little brats before, and when I have tried to talk to the parents to say that their and my children are having a problem and could we all sit down and talk about it, they weren't interested and insisted that their child couldn't have possibly done anything wrong and it had to be my child's problem. So maybe you have only seen it in home schoolers, but I have seen it equally inside and outside the home schooling community.

I am not saying that you are wrong. I am just saying that where I live and the experiences I have had have led me to different perspectives, different opinions, and different conclusions than yours. That's perfectly okay with me, and I hope it's perfectly okay with you as well.