But how do you know if the research you cited is true if it was paid for by Pro-Home schooling groups? The fact that they are the ones paying for it loses all its credibility to me (even if it is true). That is like citing one of those scientists who says that smoking doesn't cause cancer, who just happened to have their research paid for by Marlboro.
This is my point. This comes down to discernment of information. Discernment of information is not the focus of the public school systems and in our society in general.
You say this debatable information "loses all its credibility to me (even if it is true)".
In reality, we have some information on homeschooling. It's possible that it's accurate and it's possibly biased. And yet due to the power you give to the concept of "independent research", you've distorted your own research and have handed over your ability to discern possibilities, fine lines and facts/data, to where there is no credibility here for you at all. You have therefore minimized potentially valid information to your own self, even knowing it may be true!
Such shortcuts distort the truth, and are taught to us all the time. And many of us choose to buy into them, often without realizing the cost to our own awareness.
Again, I refer to self-actualizing people who are known to have superior reasoning abilities, and the ability to see beyond social structures to what is there....
"Realistically oriented, a Self-Actualizing (SA) person has a more efficient perception of reality, and has comfortable relations with it. This is extended to all areas of life. A Self-Actualizing person is unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown."
By being unthreatened by the unknown, one can truly discern possibilites beyond what is "taught" and socially sanctioned. Therefore, one is more able to have polar opposites of exact truths/untruths resolve into an acceptance of "what is". Sometimes not knowing, and being able to embrace the possibilities around us is the only way to be realistic. Ask any true scientist.
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr
This is largely correct. Also, negative peer interactions and exposure to negative social elements. (Drugs, sexuality, bullying, etc.) i don't really have a problem with that. i think the problem arises when the child does not learn how to socialize at all due to such strict sheltering. Also lack of exposure to all of what society has to offer may lead to an inability to deal with it as an adult. Not only are these kids suddenly exposed to things they have been isolated from, they have not had an oprotunity to build up an immunity, so to speak. Kind of like how your flu shot actually contains some of the flu virus.
I think you gutta expose your kids to these negative things. it's all part of life. And not only the negative things, but you have to expose your kids to diversity- other cultures, other languages, other types of families, other socio-economic groups, etc. I don't know how kids get that at some private schools, let alone when they're home schooled.
T
As far as I know, you already have to have a high school degree to home school your kids, and that makes perfect sense. But to take it as far as having to have credentials, thats stupid.
damn, I would NEVER let someone with just a high school diploma educate my children. I have a problem with the number of teachers who go to crappy colleges and don't have graduate degrees and just teach cause they get summers off as it is.
damn, I would NEVER let someone with just a high school diploma educate my children. I have a problem with the number of teachers who go to crappy colleges and don't have graduate degrees and just teach cause they get summers off as it is.
"College isn't the place to go for ideas."
~Helen Keller
"The number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes."
~Denis Diderot
"Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. "
~G. M. Trevelyan
"Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices."
~Laurence J. Peter
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".
~Mark Twain
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
I think you gutta expose your kids to these negative things. it's all part of life. And not only the negative things, but you have to expose your kids to diversity- other cultures, other languages, other types of families, other socio-economic groups, etc. I don't know how kids get that at some private schools, let alone when they're home schooled.
Agreed. Was kinda my point.
"When all your friends and sedatives mean well but make it worse... better find yourself a place to level out."
Bullshit... just another way to make sure your children are brainwashed and partt of the status quo....
Yup... learning advanced math and science from people who spent years studying it sure is brainwashing them.
:rolleyes:
My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Yup... learning advanced math and science from people who spent years studying it sure is brainwashing them.
:rolleyes:
What do you think of this earlier quote apparently from the judge's ruling, as cited earlier by 1970RR?:
“ A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."
Do you agree that the above is a primary purpose of the educational system? Do you see even a hint of indoctrination in the idea of such practice?
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr
if my school's job was to indoctrinate me into a good loyal citizen, they failed miserably.
i've said this before but most school systems can't find their ass with both hands, much less brainwash kids into doing jack shit, unless its brainwashing them into sleeping. most of my teachers were mostly liberal, and I lived in the most conservative hick state in the union.
in college my western civ teacher had tenure, so he didnt even bother to teach the class. instead he taught out of a book he wrote preaching about the evils of the military industrial complex and pollution. i liked the guy. Some of you freaks might like college if you actually checked it out. Of course, you might also find those with -'GASP'- differing opinions!
school (from home or or not) is what you make of it. use it to learn what you need.
but keep on preachin about them poor brainwashed kids and their fancy textbook learnin'!
i've said this before but most school systems can't find their ass with both hands, much less brainwash kids into doing jack shit.
Really?
For most people the school system was able to indoctrinate them, at the tender age of 6 years old when they are full of life and energy and with a natural curiosity to explore the world around them, to sit in one spot for approximately 6 hours per day, listening to one adult and what that adult has to say about "reality". The same school system was quite successful in indoctrinating most with the idea that it's not only natural to sit in basically this one spot ongoing hours per day, going against their base nature, following man-made instruction, but most adults, when they were 6 years old, were also indoctrinated with the idea that to step outside of what was expected of them, they would be labelled as "bad" or wrong, somehow, and socially shamed and punished.
Most adults I know have been so indoctrinated by the school system that they don't even question why they've been trained for years and years to access basically 1/4 of their brain--being the left neo-cortex which deals with basic academic subjects, at the expense of whole-brain functioning. As a matter of fact, many adults have no idea that this has even happened, because the process has been totally unconscious for them. This means it happened while their attention was focused elsewhere...
And further, these same adults actually look down on more whole-brained or alternative awarenesses, believing theirs to be the superior way, due to lack of understanding or knowledge on the subject.
Then, of the children -the 6 year olds and up - who were less willing to sit still, and accept the "rules" of the classroom, of sitting still and focusing on a very small segment of the world around them, they were often convinced, alongside their parents and the other children who observed them, that they were "disordered", by labels such as ADD or ADHD, among other "learning disabilities".
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr
For most people the school system was able to indoctrinate them, at the tender age of 6 years old when they are full of life and energy and with a natural curiosity to explore the world around them, to sit in one spot for approximately 6 hours per day, listening to one adult and what that adult has to say about "reality". The same school system was quite successful in indoctrinating most with the idea that it's not only natural to sit in basically this one spot ongoing hours per day, going against their base nature, following man-made instruction, but most adults, when they were 6 years old, were also indoctrinated with the idea that to step outside of what was expected of them, they would be labelled as "bad" or wrong, somehow, and socially shamed and punished.
Most adults I know have been so indoctrinated by the school system that they don't even question why they've been trained for years and years to access basically 1/4 of their brain--being the left neo-cortex which deals with basic academic subjects, at the expense of whole-brain functioning. As a matter of fact, many adults have no idea that this has even happened, because the process has been totally unconscious for them. This means it happened while their attention was focused elsewhere...
And further, these same adults actually look down on more whole-brained or alternative awarenesses, believing theirs to be the superior way, due to lack of understanding or knowledge on the subject.
Then, of the children -the 6 year olds and up - who were less willing to sit still, and accept the "rules" of the classroom, of sitting still and focusing on a very small segment of the world around them, they were often convinced, alongside their parents and the other children who observed them, that they were "disordered", by labels such as ADD or ADHD, among other "learning disabilities".
I love you
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
all I know is, my mother is a trained secretary. she has beautiful penmanship, can type "correctly" and can balance a checkbook. But I can guarantee that if she was in charge of teaching my brother and I science, math, and literature, we would NOT be the people we are today...
The other crazy thing about home schooling is when I think back to my elementary and high school education. There was maybe a couple of times where I got first year teachers. Most of the time I got teachers with years of experience teaching their grade or their subject who developed their teaching style over many years, figuring out what works and what doesn't. But if you are being home schooled, especially if you are an only child or an eldest child, every year you are getting a first year teacher for your grade. So every year your teacher is figuring out what works and what doesn't on you rather than drawing on their years of experience. That is like going to the hospital and asking to see a first year intern every time you need medical assistance. Personally if I sent my kids to a real school and every year from kindergarten to grade 12 they got a first year teacher I would be pissed.
The other crazy thing about home schooling is when I think back to my elementary and high school education. There was maybe a couple of times where I got first year teachers. Most of the time I got teachers with years of experience teaching their grade or their subject who developed their teaching style over many years, figuring out what works and what doesn't. But if you are being home schooled, especially if you are an only child or an eldest child, every year you are getting a first year teacher for your grade. So every year your teacher is figuring out what works and what doesn't on you rather than drawing on their years of experience. That is like going to the hospital and asking to see a first year intern every time you need medical assistance. Personally if I sent my kids to a real school and every year from kindergarten to grade 12 they got a first year teacher I would be pissed.
i'm sort of on the fence about homeschooling. There definitely are some cases where it works well. There are without question many cases where it simply does not. Whereas i'm not opposed to homeschooling by parents with adequate motivation and ability, there are obviously issues i have with homeschooling in general. That being said, i think your analogy here works only halfway, and, in some regards could be turned around. Yes, you make a point about the homeschool parent teaching new subject matter for the first time every year, but you should also consider that a child's general learning style, whereas it is not static, does remain fairly consistent. In that aspect, the homeschool parent may have an advantage. They know their child better than anyone else. Hopefully this includes learning style. The material may be different, yes, but the learning style of the child likely is not. In this regard, a homeschool parent may have an advantage over a school teacher that has to "get to know" each child every year.
"When all your friends and sedatives mean well but make it worse... better find yourself a place to level out."
I wonder how homeschooling makes up for the other things you learnt when you were at school.
You have to deal with bullies, crushes, you lose best friends and you gain new ones. You have teachers who try to convince you love is the most important thing in the world and others who insist that your life will be ruined if you don't work hard and make lots and lots of money.
Also, do homeschoolers have the same materials? We dissected a rabbit, we did a lot of experiments in chemistry... I learnt a lot from these things.
We had teachers who were obsessed with mathemetics or history, each day they passionately tried to teach us new things. Can a parent or parents bring forth that same enthousiasm for every course?
We had class discussions, that means you have to listen to 20 other kids' opinions. Class trips, which often meant you had to work together with kids you didn't like, or just work together in general.
I think if I had at least 60 different teacher during high school, and I can't even guess how many kids I talked to, did assignments with, had fights with etc. I wonder if home schooled kids get the same diversity.
But keep in mind I'm not really familiar with the North American school system and I'm talking about my experience here in Europe.
A couple quick points before I go to work while my husband homeschools our children...
Socially inept? All the examples are anecdotal. While we're on anecdotal examples...I work with several adults who were homeschooled and many who were not, you can't tell a difference in their social skills. I must say though that the homeschoolers reasoning abilities and adaptability to changing demands of the job and life are far higher than the non-homeschooled kids. Just to generalize futher, I work with a high school jock who only has a job because his father is a manager in the company beyond that he is the slowest worker and has zero social skills...therefore should I extrapolate that all high school jocks are lazy and dumb? Great theorizing there! And who is more socialy adjusted? Someone who sits in a classroom all day with 30 kids of the same age or someone who talks with people of all ages everyday on every subject?
Gee...when did you ever have a teacher that didn't know the answer to a question? How about in college? What did you do? You went out and found the answers. Who's a better person...the one who always goes to one resource for any and all answers or a person who goes out into their community to find the answers to their questions? In kindergarten my son was doing thrid grade level science. Where did he get the information? He asked me and his father and we showed him some things, then he went to the library and talked with the librarian and found some books and then he asked to go to the Nature and Science Museum and has spent hours on the space exhibits and talking with the docents. What's the point in always going to the same source for an answer? To think that homeschoolers only use the set of public-school-like books for their education is underestimating the entire demographic.
Since when was the priority of public school education to be loyal patriot? If it is then I'm glad my kids aren't in there. Instead my kids are out helping their community and being a good citizen in addition to learning the three R's.
And when has the public school system ever failed a student? The stats speak for themselves. More kids fall through the cracks of the public school system than those who are homeschooled.
Homeschooling is a personal choice. One bad example shouldn't be generalized to the entire population. Homeschooling families have proven time and time again that they are better educated on a broader range of subjects than public school children. Homeschooled children are required to take the same standardized tests as public school children. The homeschoolers score just as well if not higher, consistently and they win all the national spelling bee contests!
Governement fears free thinking therefore it fears homeschooling.
Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation. ~ Nature, Emerson
i'm sort of on the fence about homeschooling. There definitely are some cases where it works well. There are without question many cases where it simply does not.
I'm really confused about this comment.
Besides what seems to me the obvious irony here in that there are many many many cases of the public school system failing entirely, i can think of NO comparable cases with homeschooling.
Can you (or someone else who takes this position) please expound on what you mean by "many cases where it simply does not" work well?
I don't recall the last time i heard of a homeschool "dropout" for starters. And beyond that, i had very few experiences in my youthful service industry positions coming across homeschoolers. One homeschooler did pop through for a year stint at Starbucks, but only until he went on to ... get this ... become a personal assistant to a senator.
I guess what i'm saying, and granted my "evidence" is anecdotal, but in my experience there are a far more disproportionate number of dumb public schoolers than there are homeschoolers.
I'd love to see some statistical rhetort to my admittedly weak anecodotal counterclaim.
I do fully acknowledge that SOME homeschooled children are very often not as "socialy aware" as public school students, but i think the point here should be that there is (and should NOT be) a law forcing public schooling, particularly if the best defense of that position is, "yeah but homeschoolers are socialy ackward". Another side of this would be that i think the number of students with anger management, violent tendencies\outbursts, and true antisocial personality disorders are much greater in public education.
At what point in history did parents lose claim over their children to the almighty state? :(
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I wonder how homeschooling makes up for the other things you learnt when you were at school.
You have to deal with bullies, crushes, you lose best friends and you gain new ones. You have teachers who try to convince you love is the most important thing in the world and others who insist that your life will be ruined if you don't work hard and make lots and lots of money.
Also, do homeschoolers have the same materials? We dissected a rabbit, we did a lot of experiments in chemistry... I learnt a lot from these things.
We had teachers who were obsessed with mathemetics or history, each day they passionately tried to teach us new things. Can a parent or parents bring forth that same enthousiasm for every course?
We had class discussions, that means you have to listen to 20 other kids' opinions. Class trips, which often meant you had to work together with kids you didn't like, or just work together in general.
I think if I had at least 60 different teacher during high school, and I can't even guess how many kids I talked to, did assignments with, had fights with etc. I wonder if home schooled kids get the same diversity.
But keep in mind I'm not really familiar with the North American school system and I'm talking about my experience here in Europe.
Homeschoolers don't sit at home all day! They are out in the world learning about everything. My kids and our friends children attend community lectures and events on all subjects. The people they meet are passionate about what they do and it passes on to the children. My husband and I are passionate about so many things and we pass that to our children.
My kids are in a public school program where we receive cirriculm for free. They also attend school one day a week with other homeschoolers. Homeschoolers have access to the same materials taught in school. It can be very expensive to purchase all the materials on your own. But with a program like ours we get some fantastic materials for free. My son dissected a cow's eye last week at his school-for-homeschoolers. So in that regard, he's getting the best of the public school education in a homeschooling situation. Why do people need to be exposed to all the crap in school on such an elevated level when they're exposed to all in daily life? Being faced with challenges builds character buy why does a child need to be exposed to bullying in school to be a better person? That argument doesn't add up.
I remember teachers in school who made kids feel ashamed because they didn't read as well as other kids, teachers who told kids they couldn't learn anything outside of the cirriculum and squashed all their hopes and dreams for what?
There's good and bad stories on either side.
Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation. ~ Nature, Emerson
I'm wondering, does anyone have any studies that show negative fallout from home schooling? Why are we not seeing any in this thread?
I've studied homeschooling and haven't come across any studies showing a negative fallout. However, the number of cases of children who graduate from high school today and are still illiterate is quite startling.
Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation. ~ Nature, Emerson
A couple quick points before I go to work while my husband homeschools our children...
I just love to hear this stuff! Thank-you for sharing.
I've heard, from many sources over the years, too, about homeschooled children scoring consistently higher across the board. They in general pass the tests beyond what is expected.
I think a big part of the problem is that those who challenge the homeschool concept don't really understand it and the benefits the children get far beyond what the public system can offer. For example, we think it's natural to send very impressionable children off to an institution, run by adults who have little personal time for our kids at age 5 or 6 or 7. What a difference in the learning process when these same 5 or 6 year olds are being taught with one on one attention by a person who loves them more than anyone, and wants the absolute best for them!
Even "ADD" or "ADHD" children, who present as "learning disabled" in the austere school setting, change dramatically, and show a complete turnaround... a hyper-focus, when given one on one attention.... it's like magic....or really, truth be told, it's just not natural that we put our children into a cold institution at such impressionable ages and by doing so, we create mass fallout on a large scale. Some merely pay a higher price than others.
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr
Homeschoolers don't sit at home all day! They are out in the world learning about everything. My kids and our friends children attend community lectures and events on all subjects. The people they meet are passionate about what they do and it passes on to the children. My husband and I are passionate about so many things and we pass that to our children.
They are out in the world learning about everything? What does that mean?
I've attended many lectures and events on all subjects as well, which the school organised. You can't compare a person who talks to a student once with a teacher who sees them daily or weekly. Who gets to know them, engages in discussions etc.
And it's great you are passionate about so many things and try to pass that on to your children, but again I don't think you can compare that with a corps of all very different teachers.
My kids are in a public school program where we receive cirriculm for free. They also attend school one day a week with other homeschoolers. Homeschoolers have access to the same materials taught in school. It can be very expensive to purchase all the materials on your own. But with a program like ours we get some fantastic materials for free. My son dissected a cow's eye last week at his school-for-homeschoolers. So in that regard, he's getting the best of the public school education in a homeschooling situation.
That's cool.
Why do people need to be exposed to all the crap in school on such an elevated level when they're exposed to all in daily life? Being faced with challenges builds character buy why does a child need to be exposed to bullying in school to be a better person? That argument doesn't add up.
I never said bullying in schools makes better people. And to kids school is a social network where you can meet people and make friends for life. You say your kids go to a school one day a week along with other home schoolers. My question is, if they didn't would they meet a lot of kids? Have the same opportunity to make friends as other kids?
And if a kid never faces a bully in his life and is always protected by mom and dad, in a safe environment, I wonder how well he will deal with bullies and assholes when he's a little older. And it doesn't necessarily have to be bullies, there are so many different types of kids in schools. It's not just about learning to deal with bullies and annoying people, it's about finding your place in a group, it's about learning to work in group, to help others and let others help you.
I remember teachers in school who made kids feel ashamed because they didn't read as well as other kids, teachers who told kids they couldn't learn anything outside of the cirriculum and squashed all their hopes and dreams for what?
Actually, I had teachers who ridiculed kids because they couldn't read as well as others, in fact, I was one of those kids. I had teachers who told me I was too dumb to pick up trash and teachers who said kids like me were a waste of time. It sucks, yeah. But that didn't squash my dreams or hopes. Because I had teachers who helped me read, who praised me and encouraged me to be creative and not to be afraid. And I had my parents and grandparents who said I was smart enough and I could do it. Whose opinion do you think I accepted?
I was home schooled for a number of years (6th through 8th grades). Honestly, those were some of my favorite times in my life. My mom prepared a lesson plan, and gave it to us each week. We worked at our own pace. When we finished the days work, we were done with school for the day. When we finished the week's work, we were done with school for the week. I finished the same amount of work as my friends in school in less than half the time. If there was something that interested me, my mother would make sure that we had plenty of time to explore our interests. For example, I developed an interest in trees. My mom arranged for us to meet a forester, and he took us on a tour of a state park, emphasizing different types of trees and how trees grow and work.
Much of our learning came in other forms. After we finished school for the week, my dad would take us on job sites with him. We got to see why math was important. People had to measure things, and figure out how and where to make cuts in the wood to build buildings. We helped him with his bookkeeping some, and we learned how to keep good financial records. We held a job of our own....we had a paper route, and had our own checking acocunts at the age of 13. I paid for most of my extraciricular activities from age 13 on from the money I earned from my checking account. Becasue of that, I have never, ever bounced a check in my life.
At one point in my home school proceess, I had an idea that I wanted to be a baseball player. Mom called the manager for our minor league ball team, and I went and hung out with the team for a day watching their workouts, pre-game activities, etc. Every one of them told me to get a good education, and that really stuck with me. I saw that what they do is not all fun and games, and that school is very important. I would have never had that opportunity had I not homeschooled.
One group in my area arranged for us to have a class once a week with a biology professor at the college in our town. He could help us with experiments, disections, etc. He would teach us about biology at a much higher level than high school students would learn.
I had a good network of friends through activities outside of school....boy scouts, baseball, church group, karate, etc. I did not miss out socially.
My brothers homeschooled from a child through 10th grade, and so did my sister.
Out of 4 children, here is where we are at today:
I am a lawyer,
My brother is a doctor (OBGYN)
My other brother is an accountant,
and my sister is in her senior year at college (Graphics design major).
Homeschooled students can do very well. Many children do not learn as well in a formal school environment. Many will do much better at home with their parents teaching them. I know that I did. My years of homeschooling made me a better writer, made me more interested in subjects, and gave me the chance to see how school mattered in the "real world."
I know some homeschoolers give all a bad name. Some are socially inept, religious fundamentalists, but most are not. Most are well rounded people who can do extremely well in this world. I do agree that if a child is homeschooled, the parents must make sure they are invovled in many social activities so that they are not socially inept.
Parents should have the right to do what is best for their children. Government should not have the right to take that away. How to educate your child is a choice for parents to make.
Parents of the approximately 200,000 home-schooled children in California are reeling from the possibility that they may have to shutter their classrooms - and go back to school themselves - if they want to continue teaching their own kids. On Feb. 28, Judge H. Walter Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles ruled that children ages six to 18 may be taught only by credentialed teachers in public or private schools - or at home by Mom and Dad, but only if they have a teaching degree. Citing state law that goes back to the early 1950s, Croskey declared that "California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children." Furthermore, the judge wrote, if instructors teach without credentials they will be subject to criminal action.
Down with the government teaching system and their school education!
Home schooling and public schooling and private schooling can all work pretty well. Whatever floats your boat will work the best. No one educational system works for everyone. No one system is better than the rest. Home schooling parents don't need to be looked down on unless they're the kind that flip on the TV, essentially, and go back to doing drugs. But, those folks are just posing as home schoolers.
I was home schooled for a number of years (6th through 8th grades). Honestly, those were some of my favorite times in my life. My mom prepared a lesson plan, and gave it to us each week. We worked at our own pace. When we finished the days work, we were done with school for the day. When we finished the week's work, we were done with school for the week. I finished the same amount of work as my friends in school in less than half the time. If there was something that interested me, my mother would make sure that we had plenty of time to explore our interests. For example, I developed an interest in trees. My mom arranged for us to meet a forester, and he took us on a tour of a state park, emphasizing different types of trees and how trees grow and work.
Much of our learning came in other forms. After we finished school for the week, my dad would take us on job sites with him. We got to see why math was important. People had to measure things, and figure out how and where to make cuts in the wood to build buildings. We helped him with his bookkeeping some, and we learned how to keep good financial records. We held a job of our own....we had a paper route, and had our own checking acocunts at the age of 13. I paid for most of my extraciricular activities from age 13 on from the money I earned from my checking account. Becasue of that, I have never, ever bounced a check in my life.
At one point in my home school proceess, I had an idea that I wanted to be a baseball player. Mom called the manager for our minor league ball team, and I went and hung out with the team for a day watching their workouts, pre-game activities, etc. Every one of them told me to get a good education, and that really stuck with me. I saw that what they do is not all fun and games, and that school is very important. I would have never had that opportunity had I not homeschooled.
One group in my area arranged for us to have a class once a week with a biology professor at the college in our town. He could help us with experiments, disections, etc. He would teach us about biology at a much higher level than high school students would learn.
I had a good network of friends through activities outside of school....boy scouts, baseball, church group, karate, etc. I did not miss out socially.
My brothers homeschooled from a child through 10th grade, and so did my sister.
Out of 4 children, here is where we are at today:
I am a lawyer,
My brother is a doctor (OBGYN)
My other brother is an accountant,
and my sister is in her senior year at college (Graphics design major).
Homeschooled students can do very well. Many children do not learn as well in a formal school environment. Many will do much better at home with their parents teaching them. I know that I did. My years of homeschooling made me a better writer, made me more interested in subjects, and gave me the chance to see how school mattered in the "real world."
I know some homeschoolers give all a bad name. Some are socially inept, religious fundamentalists, but most are not. Most are well rounded people who can do extremely well in this world. I do agree that if a child is homeschooled, the parents must make sure they are invovled in many social activities so that they are not socially inept.
Parents should have the right to do what is best for their children. Government should not have the right to take that away. How to educate your child is a choice for parents to make.
I really appreciate hearing your experiences, nick!
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr
Comments
You say this debatable information "loses all its credibility to me (even if it is true)".
In reality, we have some information on homeschooling. It's possible that it's accurate and it's possibly biased. And yet due to the power you give to the concept of "independent research", you've distorted your own research and have handed over your ability to discern possibilities, fine lines and facts/data, to where there is no credibility here for you at all. You have therefore minimized potentially valid information to your own self, even knowing it may be true!
Such shortcuts distort the truth, and are taught to us all the time. And many of us choose to buy into them, often without realizing the cost to our own awareness.
Again, I refer to self-actualizing people who are known to have superior reasoning abilities, and the ability to see beyond social structures to what is there....
"Realistically oriented, a Self-Actualizing (SA) person has a more efficient perception of reality, and has comfortable relations with it. This is extended to all areas of life. A Self-Actualizing person is unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown."
By being unthreatened by the unknown, one can truly discern possibilites beyond what is "taught" and socially sanctioned. Therefore, one is more able to have polar opposites of exact truths/untruths resolve into an acceptance of "what is". Sometimes not knowing, and being able to embrace the possibilities around us is the only way to be realistic. Ask any true scientist.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
I think you gutta expose your kids to these negative things. it's all part of life. And not only the negative things, but you have to expose your kids to diversity- other cultures, other languages, other types of families, other socio-economic groups, etc. I don't know how kids get that at some private schools, let alone when they're home schooled.
damn, I would NEVER let someone with just a high school diploma educate my children. I have a problem with the number of teachers who go to crappy colleges and don't have graduate degrees and just teach cause they get summers off as it is.
"College isn't the place to go for ideas."
~Helen Keller
"The number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes."
~Denis Diderot
"Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. "
~G. M. Trevelyan
"Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices."
~Laurence J. Peter
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".
~Mark Twain
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Agreed. Was kinda my point.
Yup... learning advanced math and science from people who spent years studying it sure is brainwashing them.
:rolleyes:
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“ A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."
Do you agree that the above is a primary purpose of the educational system? Do you see even a hint of indoctrination in the idea of such practice?
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
i've said this before but most school systems can't find their ass with both hands, much less brainwash kids into doing jack shit, unless its brainwashing them into sleeping. most of my teachers were mostly liberal, and I lived in the most conservative hick state in the union.
in college my western civ teacher had tenure, so he didnt even bother to teach the class. instead he taught out of a book he wrote preaching about the evils of the military industrial complex and pollution. i liked the guy. Some of you freaks might like college if you actually checked it out. Of course, you might also find those with -'GASP'- differing opinions!
school (from home or or not) is what you make of it. use it to learn what you need.
but keep on preachin about them poor brainwashed kids and their fancy textbook learnin'!
For most people the school system was able to indoctrinate them, at the tender age of 6 years old when they are full of life and energy and with a natural curiosity to explore the world around them, to sit in one spot for approximately 6 hours per day, listening to one adult and what that adult has to say about "reality". The same school system was quite successful in indoctrinating most with the idea that it's not only natural to sit in basically this one spot ongoing hours per day, going against their base nature, following man-made instruction, but most adults, when they were 6 years old, were also indoctrinated with the idea that to step outside of what was expected of them, they would be labelled as "bad" or wrong, somehow, and socially shamed and punished.
Most adults I know have been so indoctrinated by the school system that they don't even question why they've been trained for years and years to access basically 1/4 of their brain--being the left neo-cortex which deals with basic academic subjects, at the expense of whole-brain functioning. As a matter of fact, many adults have no idea that this has even happened, because the process has been totally unconscious for them. This means it happened while their attention was focused elsewhere...
And further, these same adults actually look down on more whole-brained or alternative awarenesses, believing theirs to be the superior way, due to lack of understanding or knowledge on the subject.
Then, of the children -the 6 year olds and up - who were less willing to sit still, and accept the "rules" of the classroom, of sitting still and focusing on a very small segment of the world around them, they were often convinced, alongside their parents and the other children who observed them, that they were "disordered", by labels such as ADD or ADHD, among other "learning disabilities".
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
I love you
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
i'm sort of on the fence about homeschooling. There definitely are some cases where it works well. There are without question many cases where it simply does not. Whereas i'm not opposed to homeschooling by parents with adequate motivation and ability, there are obviously issues i have with homeschooling in general. That being said, i think your analogy here works only halfway, and, in some regards could be turned around. Yes, you make a point about the homeschool parent teaching new subject matter for the first time every year, but you should also consider that a child's general learning style, whereas it is not static, does remain fairly consistent. In that aspect, the homeschool parent may have an advantage. They know their child better than anyone else. Hopefully this includes learning style. The material may be different, yes, but the learning style of the child likely is not. In this regard, a homeschool parent may have an advantage over a school teacher that has to "get to know" each child every year.
You have to deal with bullies, crushes, you lose best friends and you gain new ones. You have teachers who try to convince you love is the most important thing in the world and others who insist that your life will be ruined if you don't work hard and make lots and lots of money.
Also, do homeschoolers have the same materials? We dissected a rabbit, we did a lot of experiments in chemistry... I learnt a lot from these things.
We had teachers who were obsessed with mathemetics or history, each day they passionately tried to teach us new things. Can a parent or parents bring forth that same enthousiasm for every course?
We had class discussions, that means you have to listen to 20 other kids' opinions. Class trips, which often meant you had to work together with kids you didn't like, or just work together in general.
I think if I had at least 60 different teacher during high school, and I can't even guess how many kids I talked to, did assignments with, had fights with etc. I wonder if home schooled kids get the same diversity.
But keep in mind I'm not really familiar with the North American school system and I'm talking about my experience here in Europe.
naděje umírá poslední
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
Socially inept? All the examples are anecdotal. While we're on anecdotal examples...I work with several adults who were homeschooled and many who were not, you can't tell a difference in their social skills. I must say though that the homeschoolers reasoning abilities and adaptability to changing demands of the job and life are far higher than the non-homeschooled kids. Just to generalize futher, I work with a high school jock who only has a job because his father is a manager in the company beyond that he is the slowest worker and has zero social skills...therefore should I extrapolate that all high school jocks are lazy and dumb? Great theorizing there! And who is more socialy adjusted? Someone who sits in a classroom all day with 30 kids of the same age or someone who talks with people of all ages everyday on every subject?
Gee...when did you ever have a teacher that didn't know the answer to a question? How about in college? What did you do? You went out and found the answers. Who's a better person...the one who always goes to one resource for any and all answers or a person who goes out into their community to find the answers to their questions? In kindergarten my son was doing thrid grade level science. Where did he get the information? He asked me and his father and we showed him some things, then he went to the library and talked with the librarian and found some books and then he asked to go to the Nature and Science Museum and has spent hours on the space exhibits and talking with the docents. What's the point in always going to the same source for an answer? To think that homeschoolers only use the set of public-school-like books for their education is underestimating the entire demographic.
Since when was the priority of public school education to be loyal patriot? If it is then I'm glad my kids aren't in there. Instead my kids are out helping their community and being a good citizen in addition to learning the three R's.
And when has the public school system ever failed a student? The stats speak for themselves. More kids fall through the cracks of the public school system than those who are homeschooled.
Homeschooling is a personal choice. One bad example shouldn't be generalized to the entire population. Homeschooling families have proven time and time again that they are better educated on a broader range of subjects than public school children. Homeschooled children are required to take the same standardized tests as public school children. The homeschoolers score just as well if not higher, consistently and they win all the national spelling bee contests!
Governement fears free thinking therefore it fears homeschooling.
I'm really confused about this comment.
Besides what seems to me the obvious irony here in that there are many many many cases of the public school system failing entirely, i can think of NO comparable cases with homeschooling.
Can you (or someone else who takes this position) please expound on what you mean by "many cases where it simply does not" work well?
I don't recall the last time i heard of a homeschool "dropout" for starters. And beyond that, i had very few experiences in my youthful service industry positions coming across homeschoolers. One homeschooler did pop through for a year stint at Starbucks, but only until he went on to ... get this ... become a personal assistant to a senator.
I guess what i'm saying, and granted my "evidence" is anecdotal, but in my experience there are a far more disproportionate number of dumb public schoolers than there are homeschoolers.
I'd love to see some statistical rhetort to my admittedly weak anecodotal counterclaim.
I do fully acknowledge that SOME homeschooled children are very often not as "socialy aware" as public school students, but i think the point here should be that there is (and should NOT be) a law forcing public schooling, particularly if the best defense of that position is, "yeah but homeschoolers are socialy ackward". Another side of this would be that i think the number of students with anger management, violent tendencies\outbursts, and true antisocial personality disorders are much greater in public education.
At what point in history did parents lose claim over their children to the almighty state? :(
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Homeschoolers don't sit at home all day! They are out in the world learning about everything. My kids and our friends children attend community lectures and events on all subjects. The people they meet are passionate about what they do and it passes on to the children. My husband and I are passionate about so many things and we pass that to our children.
My kids are in a public school program where we receive cirriculm for free. They also attend school one day a week with other homeschoolers. Homeschoolers have access to the same materials taught in school. It can be very expensive to purchase all the materials on your own. But with a program like ours we get some fantastic materials for free. My son dissected a cow's eye last week at his school-for-homeschoolers. So in that regard, he's getting the best of the public school education in a homeschooling situation. Why do people need to be exposed to all the crap in school on such an elevated level when they're exposed to all in daily life? Being faced with challenges builds character buy why does a child need to be exposed to bullying in school to be a better person? That argument doesn't add up.
I remember teachers in school who made kids feel ashamed because they didn't read as well as other kids, teachers who told kids they couldn't learn anything outside of the cirriculum and squashed all their hopes and dreams for what?
There's good and bad stories on either side.
I've studied homeschooling and haven't come across any studies showing a negative fallout. However, the number of cases of children who graduate from high school today and are still illiterate is quite startling.
I've heard, from many sources over the years, too, about homeschooled children scoring consistently higher across the board. They in general pass the tests beyond what is expected.
I think a big part of the problem is that those who challenge the homeschool concept don't really understand it and the benefits the children get far beyond what the public system can offer. For example, we think it's natural to send very impressionable children off to an institution, run by adults who have little personal time for our kids at age 5 or 6 or 7. What a difference in the learning process when these same 5 or 6 year olds are being taught with one on one attention by a person who loves them more than anyone, and wants the absolute best for them!
Even "ADD" or "ADHD" children, who present as "learning disabled" in the austere school setting, change dramatically, and show a complete turnaround... a hyper-focus, when given one on one attention.... it's like magic....or really, truth be told, it's just not natural that we put our children into a cold institution at such impressionable ages and by doing so, we create mass fallout on a large scale. Some merely pay a higher price than others.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
They are out in the world learning about everything? What does that mean?
I've attended many lectures and events on all subjects as well, which the school organised. You can't compare a person who talks to a student once with a teacher who sees them daily or weekly. Who gets to know them, engages in discussions etc.
And it's great you are passionate about so many things and try to pass that on to your children, but again I don't think you can compare that with a corps of all very different teachers.
That's cool.
I never said bullying in schools makes better people. And to kids school is a social network where you can meet people and make friends for life. You say your kids go to a school one day a week along with other home schoolers. My question is, if they didn't would they meet a lot of kids? Have the same opportunity to make friends as other kids?
And if a kid never faces a bully in his life and is always protected by mom and dad, in a safe environment, I wonder how well he will deal with bullies and assholes when he's a little older. And it doesn't necessarily have to be bullies, there are so many different types of kids in schools. It's not just about learning to deal with bullies and annoying people, it's about finding your place in a group, it's about learning to work in group, to help others and let others help you.
Actually, I had teachers who ridiculed kids because they couldn't read as well as others, in fact, I was one of those kids. I had teachers who told me I was too dumb to pick up trash and teachers who said kids like me were a waste of time. It sucks, yeah. But that didn't squash my dreams or hopes. Because I had teachers who helped me read, who praised me and encouraged me to be creative and not to be afraid. And I had my parents and grandparents who said I was smart enough and I could do it. Whose opinion do you think I accepted?
That is true.
naděje umírá poslední
It was a fairly honest, straight forward comment, so i'm sure you are.
Much of our learning came in other forms. After we finished school for the week, my dad would take us on job sites with him. We got to see why math was important. People had to measure things, and figure out how and where to make cuts in the wood to build buildings. We helped him with his bookkeeping some, and we learned how to keep good financial records. We held a job of our own....we had a paper route, and had our own checking acocunts at the age of 13. I paid for most of my extraciricular activities from age 13 on from the money I earned from my checking account. Becasue of that, I have never, ever bounced a check in my life.
At one point in my home school proceess, I had an idea that I wanted to be a baseball player. Mom called the manager for our minor league ball team, and I went and hung out with the team for a day watching their workouts, pre-game activities, etc. Every one of them told me to get a good education, and that really stuck with me. I saw that what they do is not all fun and games, and that school is very important. I would have never had that opportunity had I not homeschooled.
One group in my area arranged for us to have a class once a week with a biology professor at the college in our town. He could help us with experiments, disections, etc. He would teach us about biology at a much higher level than high school students would learn.
I had a good network of friends through activities outside of school....boy scouts, baseball, church group, karate, etc. I did not miss out socially.
My brothers homeschooled from a child through 10th grade, and so did my sister.
Out of 4 children, here is where we are at today:
I am a lawyer,
My brother is a doctor (OBGYN)
My other brother is an accountant,
and my sister is in her senior year at college (Graphics design major).
Homeschooled students can do very well. Many children do not learn as well in a formal school environment. Many will do much better at home with their parents teaching them. I know that I did. My years of homeschooling made me a better writer, made me more interested in subjects, and gave me the chance to see how school mattered in the "real world."
I know some homeschoolers give all a bad name. Some are socially inept, religious fundamentalists, but most are not. Most are well rounded people who can do extremely well in this world. I do agree that if a child is homeschooled, the parents must make sure they are invovled in many social activities so that they are not socially inept.
Parents should have the right to do what is best for their children. Government should not have the right to take that away. How to educate your child is a choice for parents to make.
Down with the government teaching system and their school education!
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!