NationStates Jolt Archive

The current US education system is widely considered ineffective.
Is Home Schooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_schooling) a viable alternative?

(Wait for the poll!)

I was homeschooled for part of my primary education.

Whether that is an argument for or against it, I will leave for you to decide.

The current US education system is widely considered ineffective.
Is Home Schooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_schooling) a viable alternative?

(Wait for the poll!)

No

no, there is far more than education that happens at school

social adaptation and integration is absolutly necessary. If anything we need more of that to help the children who are isolated.

Not unless the kid has an extensive after-school social life. Home schooled kids may learn as much from textbooks but their interpersonal skills are usually quite lakcing.

no, there is far more than education that happens at school

social adaptation and integration is absolutly necessary. If anything we need more of that to help the children who are isolated.

I really have to agree with the above, simply because of the social input that you can have from the other kids

The primary purpose of state-sponsored compulsory education through high school is to inject the state's ideas into the heads of your children.

Evolution, creationism, abstinence, gays, hate guns, like guns, and any variant of political correctness form a large portion of the curriculum. A curriculum chosen by the elected officials in your area, who may lean left, right, or center.

If you don't want your child to be exposed to those ideas without your direct input, you can either find a private school that meets your needs, or you can homeschool.

The current US education system is widely considered ineffective.
Is Home Schooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_schooling) a viable alternative?

(Wait for the poll!)

I count 5 who need to learn how to read. (Thats the number who posted before the poll was up...)

I count 5 who need to learn how to read. (Thats the number who posted before the poll was up...)

Hey, I waited around and now I responded. I have to answer questions when I see em. I'm all about the action like that. :p

To elaborate on what I wrote before, I think home schooling should be used in cases where the student wouldn't benefit from the typical education setting. For instance, a child who is teased about a handicap should be considered for home schooling as the usual classroom setting can actually hinder their development. Placing this child in a handicap-only class can also hinder education based on the level and type of handicap.

I count 5 who need to learn how to read. (Thats the number who posted before the poll was up...)

i frankly just dont care what you say

54 million people voted for Bush

I don't want those people to educate ANYONE!

The primary purpose of state-sponsored compulsory education through high school is to inject the state's ideas into the heads of your children.

Evolution, creationism, abstinence, gays, hate guns, like guns, and any variant of political correctness form a large portion of the curriculum. A curriculum chosen by the elected officials in your area, who may lean left, right, or center.

If you don't want your child to be exposed to those ideas without your direct input, you can either find a private school that meets your needs, or you can homeschool.


Kids don't accept the things they learn in school anyway. Parents need to teach children to think for themselves before they are sent to school. Besides, such controversial ideas are not taught until at least middle school, and more often high school. By that point, a student often has his or her own opinions anyway.

Kids don't accept the things they learn in school anyway. Parents need to teach children to think for themselves before they are sent to school. Besides, such controversial ideas are not taught until at least middle school, and more often high school. By that point, a student often has his or her own opinions anyway.

Yes. But most parents don't teach children to think, and neither does the school.

Yes. But most parents don't teach children to think, and neither does the school.

Well, that indicates that parenting needs to be re-evaluated, and hopefully assisted in some improvements.

I had public schooling through Freshman year in high school and I am now in a private high school. I;ve never had homeschooling (except for a teach-at-home summer review program).

I have to say that Public school gives you a decent education, but you get great social skills out of it. Private school generally gives you a superior education and the social skills depend on what type of school it is. I go to an all boys provate high school. Because of that, I'm pretty much left up to myself to go out and meet girls.

All of the homeshool kids I've met don't really have very good social skills and their education is on par or slightly below that of public school.

It all depends on your viewpoint I guess.

One big argument against homeschooling (and this is the same reason that most universities don't hire their own grads as professors) is that it's kind of like incest. Just like you want a robust genetic pool for a healthy organism, you want a broad spectrum of ideas in education. Otherwise, you wind up with closed pockets of self-corroborated delusion. You wind up with kids who believe that the world is what their parents want it to be, not what it really is. A lot of time this isn't a problem (all parents want to instill something of their worldview in their kids), but say dad's a history revisionist with a penchant for holocaust denial.

That said, there's nothing wrong with homeschooling if you've got good curriculum. Look at Alaska's IDEA program. They provide all the textbooks and resources you'd normally see in class and the state-administered tests guarantee some degree of adherence to this material.

social adaptation and integration is absolutly necessary. If anything we need more of that to help the children who are isolated.

Being taught at home does not deny one the pleasure of interaction with peers. This is a common misconception about homeschooling in general and really needs to be set straight. In regular school you only get to interact with your peers for maybe an hour or two a day anyway (between classes, at lunch, and during recess or similar activities). Many homeschoolers even belong to groups that go on outings and participate in sports and other activities together.

The answer to america's educational woes is simple:

Observe the most successful education systems around the world and emulate them.

There is no great secret to it.

I was Home school for third grade. I got A's in regular school since.

So I say Home school up to High school is acceptable. But High school is important for children's development so regular school than.

Homeschooling should only be allowed if the parent who wishes to homeschool is certified to teach and demonstrates adequate knowledge of all areas of study in which he/she wishes to teach the child.

Homeschooling sounds like a good practice in theory, but let's face it-- You're forcing your kid to lead a hermited existence. Public school teaches only one thing well... Life Sucks. Socialization is a necessary part of growing up, and so is seperation from your parents. On an educational level, if you want your child to succeed it's obvious that you'll need to supplement their awful public education at home.
I think the point is that public schools are awful and seem like a waste of time. They often hand out diplomas to grads who cannot read them. Or correctly spell the word diploma.
A better alternative would be school vouchers for $3,500 per year per child. A public education costs taxpayers on average $6000 a year, and it's just a waste.
Inspire your own children to read and love it. That's the best you can do to help them in the right direction, because if they want to be successful they'll have to teach themselves almost everything they know. Just my opinion.

Hmmm... the proper part of the question seems to have been missed. :)

Anyway, with proper homeschooling, the questions of socialization and quality issues can be addressed. There are plenty of non-school social activities for children. And what about "negative socialization"?

So, if those issues are addressed, do the objectors still object?

I've done homeschool, private school, and public school, in that order. I was amazed that every time I switched schools, the subject matter got dumber. I was in high school composition class, and I was reviewing things that I learned in 3rd grade at home. The education at home is definately superior to that in the public sector.

As for the socialization issue, it is so easy to get kids socialized today outside of school, whether it's in relgious groups, sports teams, etc., that it doesn't seem like a serious argument to me. And keeping your kids at home will keep them away from the bullies anyway. Plus there are plenty of unadjusted kids in the public school system, so I don't see how putting your kids in there will guarantee a well-socialized kid, anyway.

Besides, I object both to kids being thrown into the factory model of schooling (one size fits all) and to the possiblity for government control over the kids. Every dictatorship in recent times (Hitler, Stalin, etc.) have taken over control of the school system in order to indoctrinate the kids to believe as they do. It might be noted that after teh invasion of Iraq, the worst guys that we had trouble with were the young Fedayeen, who had been the first generation to go K-12 through Saddam's schools.

If the spelling of this thread's headline is representative of "home schooling", then that speaks for itself.

If the spelling of this thread's headline is representative of "home schooling", then that speaks for itself.

oh yay another spell checker.... :rolleyes:

Just like you want a robust genetic pool for a healthy organism, you want a broad spectrum of ideas in education.
You sure as hell don't get that in public education!

The public schools I've been through (NZ) have seemed to me like Labour-Voter Factories.

My education was almost entirely self-motivated. I say almost entirely because as a very young child my mother did do some actual teaching of reading and math skills. I'm not sure whether her interference was necessary or not, but at any rate I didn't mind it since even when I was needing help with learning I loved every moment of it. Since then I have educated myself, on the topics that I either enjoy or that I know I ought to learn more about. I imagine I will go on that way for the rest of my life, since I feel that life itself is meant to be educational.

Advantages:
1. If you can find an emotional bond to what you're learning - which is essentially what self-motivation is - you are far more likely to remember it for many years, if not the rest of your life. Forced learning may teach people well enough that they can pass the next test about it (more on test-taking later) but in my experience it with surprising frequency causes their minds to throw it out once it becomes 'unimportant'. Since this is about education, not the inner workings of the mind and the way that memory is stored, I won't go into great detail about the science behind this process; I feel confident that everyone will grasp the basic idea without me ranting about it.

2. Self-motivated (and self-chosen) education is actually more likely to be relevant to later life, especially in the teenaged years when interests are getting more refined. People ideally wind up with a career that is connected to their interests, and the topics they chose for education is therefore likely to come in handy with their dream career; not only will it help them be good at it once they have it, but it can often help them get it. I, for instance, have always loved literature and other book-related subjects, and therefore liked to spend time at the library; subsequently I started volunteering there, and I now have a job there which I love and which if I so choose I can keep for the rest of my life (I may not choose, since I would really rather live somewhere different than I do now, and also since if possible I plan to make a living as an author... but in the mean time it's a great job.) Most of my life people encouraged me to stop reading so much and learn more math and such, but I think that so far evidence has shown that they were wrong.

3. I have never in my life experienced stress about any factor of my education. Honestly. Taking tests (especially multiple choice, probably just because their easier although aside from that there is something I love about the elimination process) is something that I do for recreation, and even when I'm taking a test for serious reasons I don't stress out about it like some people do. This may be just a part of my personality, but I think a lot of it was my education. There were never any serious consequences if I hadn't learned something properly; I just had to try harder. My education focused on learning things and enjoying it rather than not failing the class, and therefore that is the way of think of things. I know that with any question I either know the answer or I don't, and I can conclude which it is and deal with it appropriately when the time comes.

4. Self-education is bound to be much more unique than public school educations, and therefore promotes diversity in thought and encourages children to stand up for their beliefs.

Socialization, friends, and other commonly raised issues: my views
I feel that too much socialization can be a bad thing. Group mentality is rarely a healthy thing, yet in public school it's hard to avoid that. Children spend all day with children their own age, all of whom want to fit in so that people will get along with them (a reasonable desire, but a decision that children shouldn't be forced to make.) Wouldn't it be far better if children could spend a moderate amount of time with people of all different ages, and either listen to what they have to say or actually converse with them? That would allow them to get used to associating with other people, while understanding that it's all right to have your own opinions about things. Children don't need to spend a lot of time socializing in order to have good social skills. School doesn't even teach good social skills, it teaches how to have petty grudges and jealousies. Likewise, children don't need to be forced to make friends. As long as a child is given enough opportunities to meet people roughly their own age, they will make friends if they encounter one with whom they can have an enjoyable friendship. They may not have as many friends, but I for one would far rather have a few great friends than twenty mediocre ones. Homeschooled children, like adults, make friends through circumstances other than school.

Other issues raised - how will they learn to raise their hands when they want to talk, how will they learn about standing in line, how will they learn to respect authority, how will they learn to share, how will they learn to get along with people who are different than they are, et cetera - are explained by a point I made earlier: Life is educational. Some author (I believe it was Robin McKinley, but I'm not sure) said that the only thing she learned from high school was how to go to high school... I think in many cases that is true. The majority of non-curricular things learned in school are either unnecessary or you will learn in later life. Standing in line is very self-explanatory, and they will probably learn by going places with their parents where you have to stand in line. Raising a hand when you want to talk is not something that comes up a lot of out of school, but regardless most children do learn about the practice and realize when it is appropriate to do so. Respecting authority is something they will learn from their parents, and therefore will probably realize in later life that rather than blindly respecting authority it is best to respect anyone who you feel is worthy of your respect (although they will still have an understanding of what authority means, and therefore won't get themselves into trouble by ignoring it.) They will learn sharing with friends and siblings, not that the concept is one that takes a lot of drilling in; even without a lot of contact with other children they could pick up the habit from books and such, the same source from which I'm pretty sure I got most of my personality. The accepting differences argument makes no sense, considering the fact that in school children often seek out a difference between the majority and a specific child in order to give them some bullying ammunition. Children are more likely to learn about accepting differences from adults who set a good example and from not having those differences pointed out at an early age.

Conclusion
Self-motivated self-education not only works, but can (in my opinion) prove to be an asset in later life. Children, when not pressured to do otherwise, always have an interest in learning. Schools, although in most cases well-meaning, are often counterproductive to actual learning; not only do children feel the need to rebel from the authority of the teachers, they feel compelled to dislike it in order to fit in with the rest of the students.

Ooh...I was home schooled...does it show?

I think from a purely academic perspective, home schooling is not only acceptable but in many ways superior to regular schooling. My parents, and especially my mother, knew what I was learning, they were obligated to get involved in my education, they made sure I understood instead of letting me coast through to the end of the semester, they encouraged me to complete projects with minimal supervision, thus becoming independent in my learning.

Notice that I said 'purely academic.' I was sent to boarding school when I was 12. I was horrifically unskilled in social norms, and abused to within inches of my sanity. But I was admitted to a good university, and the money I'll make when I graduate can pay for the therapy I need.

Home schooling is appropriate, as long as the child's entire spectrum of learning is accommodated. Mine was not, but I have a pleasantly surprising IQ score and the capacity to critically evaluate my tormentors.

Damn- Are we really down to gravedigging from December? :confused:

I dropped out of High School to work, but finished through a homeschooling program, which was the only possible way to do it. So my options were homeschooling or nothing at all. Yet, no one informed me of my options, and in fact, refused to talk to me about what they were. Why? Because, with the NEA acting like a liberal activist group and the teachers union becoming the largest in the U.S., they can't afford to. Public schools get paid by the number of students attending - if one leaves to homeschool, that's a dollar out of the pocket of liberal special interests. There's no other way to put it.

Damn- Are we really down to gravedigging from December? :confused:

Wow, I didn't notice that. That's really.. odd. :confused:

Damn- Are we really down to gravedigging from December? :confused:

*l* Sorry, my fault... I just happened across the thread and couldn't help replying.