Is home schooling really a good idea?
Melissa Ferrell
that I attended was very large, somewhere in the neighborhood of over
3,000 students. I ran into several people in my first year of college
that had been home schooled. What I found was that they were not
current on some of the things that they needed to know such as how to
write a cohesive paragraph, or they didn't know basic history, math,
science etc. My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
children really helping they at all? Sure they stay safe during the
day and we don't have to worry that a classmate is going to bring a
gun to school. But are we doing our children any favors by denying
them the chance to attend public schools? This is where I learned to
make friends and gained the skills to function in society as a human
being. If we home school our kids, are they still going to gain those
skills? Can anyone out there help me?
Bruce D. Ray
Lillipa...@yahoo.com (Melissa Ferrell) wrote:
> I had the advantage of attending a public school. The high school
> that I attended was very large, somewhere in the neighborhood of over
> 3,000 students.
That is a very large facility. Would I be correct in thinking
that you lived in a large city? Have you ever considered how
many of those students might have been mind numbingly lost in
that vast facility simply because of its size? Would that not
have been a disservice rather than an advantage to them?
> I ran into several people in my first year of college
> that had been home schooled. What I found was that they were not
> current on some of the things that they needed to know such as how to
> write a cohesive paragraph, or they didn't know basic history, math,
> science etc.
Could not the same be said for graduates of at least some
rural public school systems? Given the numbers of home
educated National Merit Scholars, national academic
competition finalists and winners, and the like, could
there be some bias in the sample you claim to have?
> My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
> children really helping they at all?
That would depend on the content, would it not? Would
that not also depend on the environment?
> Sure they stay safe during the
> day and we don't have to worry that a classmate is going to bring a
> gun to school.
Why do you bring in an extraneous issue?
> But are we doing our children any favors by denying
> them the chance to attend public schools?
Why the emphasis on "public" schools? Do you have some
hidden agenda against private schools? Are you aware
that in at least parts of the USA, the modern compulsory
education based public school system was a development
of religious bigotry? Are you aware of how many of the
political and economic leaders in the USA are educated
in private settings? Are you aware of how public education
theory became oriented towards production of employees
for these leaders?
For that matter, does it not occur to you that there are
many subjects of high ideological content that it simply
is not advisable have a governmental entity instruct
children about? Some of these, are subjects, such as history,
that require a selection from the vast amount of data in
order to be taught effectively. Of course, any selection
must proceed by some principle of selection. In the case
of history, public school instruction in the USA typically
has used either the great civilizations paradigm, or the
great men paradigm. Respectively, these selection principles
reduce to the political principles of statism, and hero worship.
These were chosen because the other choices, providential
historiography, cyclic historiography, historical marker group
struggles historiography (e.g. class, race, or gender histories),
and lists historiography have obvious religious or ideological
overtones. Providential historiography is the historical
method of both Calvinist and traditional Roman Catholic
Christianity. Cyclic historiography is the historiography
of Hinduism and Buddhism. Thus, neither of those is acceptable
for a government run educational system in the US. The various
marker group struggles are represented by Marxist historiography,
the various forms of racial historiography, and feminist
historiography. In most communities in the USA, none of those
would be acceptable, either. Statism, or the cult of the
leader ought not be acceptable either, but they are more
amenable to disguise.
> This is where I learned to
> make friends and gained the skills to function in society as a human
> being. If we home school our kids, are they still going to gain those
> skills?
Ought public school, or any school, be the place where one
learns to make friends and where one gains the skills to
function in a community? Ought we be giving any system of
governance such a task? Should any system of governance be
allowed to engage in mass indoctrination? Should these not
be functions reserved to families, and to religious and
fraternal organizations?
> Can anyone out there help me?
1. Have you tried the archives of this group at google?
2. Have you examined the record of home educated overall?
3. Have you studied in depth 19th and 20th developments
in theories of education?
--
Warning to commercial e-mailers {spammers}: The e-mail
address provided above is for information purposes only
and is subjected to extensive e-mail filtering. Do not
send unsolicited commercial e-mail to this address.
Cindy Cotter
What sort of help do you need? You sound like you think you've got everything
figured out.
I have no doubt that homeschooling can be a bad idea in some circumstances, but
so can public school. What I have trouble grasping is why anyone thinks that
the method of education they prefer must be right for everyone else. That's a
little like assuming that they job you like is the best job for everyone, or
that the place you choose to live would be the ideal place for everyone else in
the world.
**But are we doing our children any favors by denying them the chance to attend
public schools?**
"We?" That's an editorial "we," right? I mean, you aren't denying your kids
the chance to attend public schools, right? As for my kid, I didn't deny her
the chance either. I responded to her repeated pleas to escape from public
school. When she chose to return, she did. "Deny?" Where did THAT word come
from?
**This is where I learned to make friends and gained the skills to function in
society as a human being.**
That's where you learned those skills because that's where you WERE. If you'd
been somewhere else, you'd have learned those skills elsewhere. Surely you
don't think that no human beings had friend or were able to function in society
prior to public schools, right?
Cindy Cotter
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cotte...@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/cotter1225/wildgrape.htm
http://members.aol.com/cotter1225/CA-HS-Law.htm
Matt C.
news:20030217212730...@mb-mj.aol.com:
> **[School] is where I learned to make friends and gained the skills to
> function in society as a human being.**
>
> That's where you learned those skills because that's where you WERE.
<grin>
Matt
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 17th of February, 2003
Melissa Ferrell writes:
I had the advantage of attending a public school.
The high school that I attended was very large,
somewhere in the neighborhood of over 3,000 students.
I ran into several people in my first year of college
that had been home schooled. What I found was that
they were not current on some of the things that they
needed to know such as how to write a cohesive paragraph,
or they didn't know basic history, math, science etc.
I had the misfortune of attending a public school.
The high school that I attended was large,
somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,400 students
for grades 10,11, and 12. I met many people there
and throughout college and graduate school that had
been schooled in the public schools. In fact, I
teach physics to students now at university who have,
for the most part, been to public schools in the
United States. What I have found is that many
of these students are not knowledgeable about anything
much at all, and that they reckon each titbit of
information given to them in class solely in mercenary
terms: Is this going to be on the test? Do we have to
know this? Hardly a one of them can write a cohesive
paragraph expressing a logically reasoned argument from
beginning to end. And, it isn't just physics, since they
seem equally ignorant on average of literature, grammar,
language, music, art, history, mathematics, philosophy,
and all the rest of science.
Melissa:
My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
children really helping the[m] at all?
The question I pose is this: Do the public schools
teach anything anymore?
The important political point that I assert is this:
It is the duty and responsibility of the parents, and
not the state, to attend to the schooling of their own
children.
The fact that I assert is this: By every standardized
test measure, homeschooled children excel or equal their
public schooled counterparts.
Melissa:
Sure they stay safe during the day and we don't
have to worry that a classmate is going to bring a
gun to school.
This is simply not the reason my children are being
homeschooled. My children are being homeschooled so that
they may learn Latin so as to read Caesar, Spanish
so as to read Garcia Marquez, mathematics so as to be
able to do calculus-based physics, music so as to be
familiar with "The Art of the Fugue" and "Yellow Submarine",
art so they know Botticelli and Edward Hopper, history so
they can place in chronological order Salamis, Marathon,
Plataea, Artemisium, and Thermopylae because they know the
story.
Melissa:
But are we doing our children any favors by denying
them the chance to attend public schools? This is
where I learned to make friends and gained the skills
to function in society as a human being. If we home
school our kids, are they still going to gain those
skills? Can anyone out there help me?
Why is it I *knew* you were not interested in whether
they learned calculus-based physics or not, but were
*really* concerned about what we homeschoolers call
the "s" word---socialization?
What you are concerned about is *the* Great Modern
Myth, which probably dates from Sigmund Freud---it's
the idea that we humans have psyches that instead of
being formed by choice and habit are formed by sociological
and psychological (genetic) buffet forces---and,
God forbid, if there be human beings who have their
psyches formed in a different way than everybody else.
They won't be normal. They won't be able to gain those
social skills (such as how to stand in line and eat
your institutional slop that they call lunch in silence
and how to spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week being bored
to tears because you get about half an hour of new learning
in that time).
My children meet other homeschooled children in
homeschooling support groups, they meet neighbourhood
kids, children in church (my daughter at least attends
church with her grandma), kids in Little League, ballet,
the YMCA's weekly Homeschool Swim and Gym, fellow piano students
of the same teacher, and so on and so forth. My son is shy
and has maybe three fairly close friends (one is a neighbour
and the other two live maybe an hour's drive away and he
only gets to see them, usually on a sleepover, every few
months or so---we live kind of far out in the country).
My daughter is very outgoing, and spends several hours
a day on the telephone with a half dozen or so of her friends,
and she is always plotting overnight stays for herself
with them or for them with us. Of course, my children (daughter
soon to be 11 and son now 13), spend about til noon
until they are finished with their school. That means,
for example, math every day (the assignment is the next
chapter in the math text, work all 30 problems, and then
correct any that are marked wrong), history every
day, literature every day, science every day, recitation
every day, art or music every day, piano and guitar or ballet
practice every day, Latin, Spanish, writing every day.
I repeat: They are typically done with this stuff by noon.
(Well, not on days when they go out to piano or
guitar or ballet lessons or Swim and Gym, but I
mean the home academic stuff.) They test several years
ahead of their age on the Iowa tests. And they simply
have loads of leisure time, with their friends, with each
other, by themselves, and with their family.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Dalene Barnes
Does this not smell like flame-bait to anyone but me? LOL
--
Dalene Barnes
******************************************
"And you shall teach them (God's commands) diligently unto your children,
and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the
way, and when you lie down and when you rise up." Deut. 6:7
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Dalene Barnes" <dal...@txbarnes.com> wrote in message
news:b2sim0$57o$1...@news.tamu.edu...
> Melissa Ferrell <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I had the advantage of attending a public school. The high school
> > that I attended was very large, somewhere in the neighborhood of over
> > 3,000 students. I ran into several people in my first year of college
> > that had been home schooled. What I found was that they were not
> > current on some of the things that they needed to know such as how to
> > write a cohesive paragraph, or they didn't know basic history, math,
> > science etc. My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
> > children really helping they at all? Sure they stay safe during the
> > day and we don't have to worry that a classmate is going to bring a
> > gun to school. But are we doing our children any favors by denying
> > them the chance to attend public schools? This is where I learned to
> > make friends and gained the skills to function in society as a human
> > being. If we home school our kids, are they still going to gain those
> > skills? Can anyone out there help me?
>
> Does this not smell like flame-bait to anyone but me? LOL
>
I agree!!!
Daisy
Elizabeth Stapel
>> I had the advantage of attending a public
>> college that had been home schooled....
>> [They didn't know] how to write a cohesive
>> paragraph, [and] they didn't know basic
>> history, math, science etc....
Dalene Barnes wrote:
>Does this not smell like flame-bait to anyone
> but me? LOL
Oh, yeah; no kidding! She claims she met
"several" homeschoolers in college? What
college what =that=? And =all= of them
were so stunningly ignorant as to seem
abnormal to a product of public education?
She must have met every single statistical
outlier in the country, and all at the
same college!
Yeah, she's a lyin' spammin' troll.
<whack!> Get back under that bridge where
you belong!
Eliz.
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http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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Vepxistqaosani
I've worked in publishing in the New York area for 20+ years. I can
attest that it is getting harder and harder to find graduates of any
college or university from Podunk Agricultural Community College to
Harvard who are capable of writing a well-formed paragraph (the Podunk
graduates are often better, in fact, since they haven't learned
deconstructivist and politically correct jargon). People in their
twenties are uniformly much more ignorant than I was at their age; and,
worse, they have not the slightest notion of just how ignorant they are
(which goes a long way towards explaining the sheer idiocy of the
slogans on display in the recent "peace" rallies).
It is for that reason that my wife and I are very seriously considering
homeschooling: the public schools are failing to teach our children to
read, write, and cipher -- much less anything of history, art, music, or
literature. Indeed, I cannot think of anything the public schools do
well: they can't even protect children from the predators that roam
their own hallways. (I once had to take my daughter home early because
she had had her head knocked into the floor -- and she was just a
bystander!)
It is also true that homeschooling is not for everyone. We are looking
at a serious commitment of time for the next seven years -- I'm
estimating 3-5 hours a day, every day. But if we can manage that
commitment, I have no doubt that our children will be much better off
for it.
Fred
Vijay
> Melissa,
>
> I've worked in publishing in the New York area for 20+ years. I can
> attest that it is getting harder and harder to find graduates of any
> college or university from Podunk Agricultural Community College to
> Harvard who are capable of writing a well-formed paragraph (the Podunk
> graduates are often better, in fact, since they haven't learned
> deconstructivist and politically correct jargon).
Bravo Fred! Well put.
> People in their
> twenties are uniformly much more ignorant than I was at their age; and,
> worse, they have not the slightest notion of just how ignorant they are
> (which goes a long way towards explaining the sheer idiocy of the
> slogans on display in the recent "peace" rallies).
Do you have some examples of the idiotic slogans? Were they funny at
all or just frightening? I can't tell you how scary it is watching
"Jay Walking" on Jay Leno and having college students -- some from Ivy
League schools -- answer the most basic questions incorrectly. It's
supposed to be funny . . .
-V.
Barbara Needham
Melissa Ferrell
My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
children really helping they at all?
Dalene Barnes
Does this not smell like flame-bait to anyone but me? LOL
Barbara Needham
Perhaps it is flame-bait but I enjoyed reading Mr. Morris's
well-reasoned reply, and others who are coming to read this newsgroup
might be helped by what he has to say, whether or not the original
poster actually cares or even returns.
Michael S. Morris
Tuesday, the 18th of February, 2003
Barbara Needham wrote:
Perhaps it is flame-bait but I enjoyed reading
Mr. Morris's well-reasoned reply, and others who
are coming to read this newsgroup might be helped
by what he has to say, whether or not the original
poster actually cares or even returns.
I thank you muchly for the vote of confidence,
Barbara, but I guess I see myself as having been
not so much "well-reasoned" as argumentative
here---i.e., it was just a way of striking at
the bait. I kind of personally enjoyed reading
Bruce Ray's alternate way of doing what I think
was the same thing. Anyway, I did what I did
essentially agreeing with Dalene (though in advance of
seeing her post) that it probably was just flame-bait.
But, the thing is I like argument and human disagreement
in most of its manifestations, so why not hit
Melissa back with something that breaks everything
she says down point by point and which would require
her to argue specific points in detail if she really
wants to argue?
I have to hand it to Melissa, by the way. For flame-bait
of that sort, hers was one of the better spelled and
grammatically more correct ones that I have seen.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Dalene Barnes
> Perhaps it is flame-bait but I enjoyed reading
> Mr. Morris's well-reasoned reply, and others who
> are coming to read this newsgroup might be helped
> by what he has to say, whether or not the original
> poster actually cares or even returns.
Very true, and as Mr. Morris' reply *was* very good, and he always presents
a very well thought-out and concise 'argument' (even if not being
argumentative!), it was beneficial.
I would just hope that there were not irrate, emotional responses to a post
which seemed to clearly be looking for irrate, emotional responses.
Joyful day,
Melissa Ferrell
Mr. Morris brings up a really good point. I'm sure that your children
are very well socialized. But how many children are as well
socialized as yours are? I highly doubt that there is a large group
of kids who have as many friends as your daughter does. I don't
regret being sent to public school, and I don't think that you shoud
either. You gained skilles in public school that you most likely
would not have gained in home schooling whether you know it or not. I
am still a student and will be for the rest of my life as I plan to be
a teacher. I'm not just saying all this because I'm afraid that I
wont have a job in 20 years. I enjoy opening the minds of students to
Literature and get great enjoyment from this. But ask yourself this,
are your children ever going to read Latin or Greek in their adult
professions? Now I'm well aware that most of what we learn in school
is stuff that we will never use in the real world. And I'm sure that
this is why kids ask "is this going to be on the test?" Students tend
not to care to retain knowledge of plate techtonics when they plan to
go into teaching Literature (such as myself). The only real question
I have regarding home schooling is are these kids learning anything?
I have never been in a home schooled setting, but how do we know for
sure that all of these kids are learning, and not having someone else
do the homework for them? I knew of one student who paid his "smart"
friends to do his assignments for him so that he could graduate. This
actually worked for him. As it turned out, this kid couldn't read
past a third grade level. What kind of job does this kid have now,
three years after high school? He works as Wendy's and wishes that he
had attended public school so that someone could have caught his
inability to read. I just think that while home schooling might be
good for your children, Mr. Morris, but I don't think that parents are
doing it for the right reasons.
Melissa Ferrell
For your information, I'm not a"Lyin' spammin' troll". I attend a
well respecteed school for future educations called Eastern Michigan
University. Ever hear of it? Or maybe you're too ignorant to realize
that some people actually know what they're talking about.
tun...@spamindra.com
MF = lillipa...@yahoo.com (Melissa Ferrell)
MF > I don't regret being sent to public school, and I don't think
> that you shoud either.
i don't regret the education i received going through the public
schools system, either. but that's hardly a compelling argument as to
why i should choose to do the same with my own children.
MF > You gained skilles in public school that you most likely would
> not have gained in home schooling whether you know it or not.
isn't it also possible at least some children gain skills through
home-schooling that they would likely not have gained through a
public-school education? who is to decide which skills are more
important?
MF > The only real question I have regarding home schooling is are
> these kids learning anything?
it seems extremely likely that the only reasonable answer to this
question is "some are, and some aren't". note that this is exactly the
same answer i would give if you were to ask the same question with
respect to public-school education.
MF > I knew of one student who paid his "smart" friends to do his
> assignments for him so that he could graduate. This actually
> worked for him. As it turned out, this kid couldn't read past a
> third grade level. What kind of job does this kid have now,
> three years after high school? He works as Wendy's and wishes
> that he had attended public school so that someone could have
> caught his inability to read.
this is not an argument favoring public schooling over home schooling,
but instead an argument favoring good education over bad
education. both kinds of education can happen in both kinds of
settings.
kirk
(note trivial anti-spam hack)
Bruce D. Ray
Lillipa...@yahoo.com (Melissa Ferrell) wrote:
{snippage}
> Mr. Morris brings up a really good point. I'm sure that your children
> are very well socialized. But how many children are as well
> socialized as yours are? I highly doubt that there is a large group
> of kids who have as many friends as your daughter does.
Why would you express such doubts? Do you have any
evidence that would suggest this? Do you know of
some study that refutes prior studies on the socialization
of the home educated?
> I don't
> regret being sent to public school, and I don't think that you shoud
> either. You gained skilles in public school that you most likely
> would not have gained in home schooling whether you know it or not.
Why would you make this claim? What skills in particular
do you believe are not gained in home education? What
do believe is lost by having home administration of the
education given rather than public {i.e., political}
administration of the education? As a home educating
father with three now attending colleges and universities,
and as a participant in this newsgroup since shortly
after its inception, I have asked this question numerous
times and I have not yet received any answer to this
question.
> I
> am still a student and will be for the rest of my life as I plan to be
> a teacher. I'm not just saying all this because I'm afraid that I
> wont have a job in 20 years. I enjoy opening the minds of students to
> Literature and get great enjoyment from this. But ask yourself this,
> are your children ever going to read Latin or Greek in their adult
> professions?
Since quite a bit of English vocabulary is based on Latin
and Greek, would you not suspect that Latin and Greek would
improve reading English? Thus knowledge of Latin and Greek
might come in quite handy when confronted with a technical
statement.
> Now I'm well aware that most of what we learn in school
> is stuff that we will never use in the real world. And I'm sure that
> this is why kids ask "is this going to be on the test?" Students tend
> not to care to retain knowledge of plate techtonics when they plan to
> go into teaching Literature (such as myself). The only real question
> I have regarding home schooling is are these kids learning anything?
Every year in Indianapolis, Brebuf Preparatory School has
reception for National Merit Finalists in the 9 counties
of central Indiana. Every year, this private preparatory
school has to request release of the addresses of home
educated National Merit Finalists because so many of the
National Merit Finalists in these 9 counties are home
educated. Does this not suggest that at least some home
educated children do learn something?
> I have never been in a home schooled setting, but how do we know for
> sure that all of these kids are learning, and not having someone else
> do the homework for them?
How do we know for sure that all public school kids are
learning and not having someone else do their homework
for them? We don't. We know just the opposite. Therefore,
I would suspect that there are some home educated that
are not learning. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else
other than their parents can ever be responsible for
this situation either in the case of those in public
school or in the case of the home educated. Neither
public administration of education nor home administration
of education gives any guarantee that some will not try
to slide by however they can. However, one might suspect
that the larger the number of students to supervise, the
easier it is for those who lack self-discipline to slide
past simply because it becomes easier to be lost in the
crowd.
> I knew of one student who paid his "smart"
> friends to do his assignments for him so that he could graduate.
What type of supervision was given to this person's
education?
> This
> actually worked for him. As it turned out, this kid couldn't read
> past a third grade level. What kind of job does this kid have now,
> three years after high school? He works as Wendy's and wishes that he
> had attended public school so that someone could have caught his
> inability to read.
The published accounts I have read state that many graduate
from public schools with limited reading ability. This
failure to catch pupils' inabilities to read is one of the
reasons given in state legislative debates for mandatory
state-wide skills assessments {e.g., ISTEP+ in Indiana} of
public school students. Doesn't this suggest that public
administration of education does not imply that failures
to learn will be caught and corrected?
> I just think that while home schooling might be
> good for your children, Mr. Morris, but I don't think that parents are
> doing it for the right reasons.
Now we seem to be getting down to some serious issues.
What reasons do you believe parents have for home
educating their children? What reasons do you believe
would be the right reasons for parents to home educate
their children? What are the bases for your reasons?
Barbara Needham
> For your information, I'm not a"Lyin' spammin' troll". I attend a
> well respecteed school for future educations called Eastern Michigan
> University. Ever hear of it? Or maybe you're too ignorant to realize
> that some people actually know what they're talking about.
Calling you a lyin spammin troll may have been going a bit overboard.
But one wonders why you have come here to express your opinion about
homeschooling. It does not seem like you are really interesting in
hearing different viewpoints, but only expressing your view that public
school is the ONLY way to be schooled.
If you have studied the history of education you should have learned
that over the course of history there have been many ways to be
schooled. I am more familiar with the United Stated and England [not by
personal experience, but by correspondence] than other countries. But
even in those there have been many ways to obtain an education.
The person who paid someone else do to his work does not sound like a
homeschooled student to me, wouldn't his parents know he wasn't doing
it? There is something not right with that story, either something wrong
with the story or something wrong with the [home?]school. And those
things of course do happen in public school. In fact, here in Fresno,
California, there are a few college basketball players and a team in
trouble because they paid someone to write papers for them. Actually,
someone in the school forked over the money which is why the school as
well as the students are in trouble. The administration was horrified
when they found out.
I wasn't sure if your comment about not using Latin later meant that you
thought that a person should not learn something that they think they
might not need later. This is one of the things that makes a difference
between an "education" and technical training. The truly educated person
understands things that are outside of his narrow area of interest, and
understands some of "why" things are instead of only "that" they are.
And he never stops learning, whether he is in the teaching profession or
not.
More later, if you respond here.
--
Barbara Needham
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8547c067.03021...@posting.google.com...
> I had the advantage of attending a public school. The high school
I, too, had the advantage of attending a public school. My mother and I
would have killed each other if we'd homeschooled. Also, I was able to be in
French Immersion throughout my school years, providing me with a
bilingualism my mother never could have provided. However, my kids, in
attending public school, would not be able to continue English, French and
German instruction all at once. They would not be able to work at their own
pace, going ahead when ready or spending more time as needed or wanted for
TRUE learning.
> that I attended was very large, somewhere in the neighborhood of over
> 3,000 students. I ran into several people in my first year of college
That, IMHO, is TOO large. I lived in Yellowknife, where there were about
600-700 students grades 10-12 the last year I was there. This is a good
size. We have one high school with 3000 students and it's considered one of
the most dangerous schools in town and one you want to avoid sending your
kid to if you are one of the lucky ones who knows better.
> that had been home schooled. What I found was that they were not
> current on some of the things that they needed to know such as how to
> write a cohesive paragraph, or they didn't know basic history, math,
> science etc. My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
> children really helping they at all? Sure they stay safe during the
Where were these kids homeschooled? How long had they been homeschooled?
Were they incapable of learning the things they were not up-to-date with?
How many public schooled kids do you know who DO know "basic history", can
write a cohesive paragraph and so on? Also, the students you met are hardly
representative of the whole. You can't go and meet a few homeschoolers and
assume the other million or so in North America are the same.
> day and we don't have to worry that a classmate is going to bring a
> gun to school. But are we doing our children any favors by denying
> them the chance to attend public schools? This is where I learned to
Let me tell you, Melissa, I was a public school teacher. My husband IS a
public school teacher. It is because of what we see in schools that we
decided to not have our daughter in that situation for at least elementary
school. For us, the question is the reverse: would we be doing our daughter
(5yo--and our 2yo son) any favours by denying them a safe, caring
environment for their early school years, allowing them to learn at their
own pace, where we are there to coach them and truly instill our values in
them?
> make friends and gained the skills to function in society as a human
> being. If we home school our kids, are they still going to gain those
> skills? Can anyone out there help me?
My daughter is having no problems making friends. Do you know the Little
House on the Prairie series? They are based on the life of the real Laura
Ingalls Wilder. She lived in a house with her sisters and her Ma and Pa wait
out in the wilderness for a long time. Did she have trouble making friends
later on? No--why not? What about before there was mass schooling--did those
people have trouble making friends? Learning necessary social skills?
No--why not? Because it social skills have nothing whatsoever to do with
schools. If we focus simply on SOCIAL SKILLS, it honestly seems like the
more massive public schooling becomes, the worse the social skills of
society in general are.
From reading your other message, I think you have the idea that in 20 years,
EVERYONE will be homeschooled and you'll be out of a job. Melissa--nobody is
suggesting that EVERY child be homeschooled. I think we'd be doing a great
disservice to many kids and families if the gov't decided everybody should
homeschool. But we're also doing a disservice to many families and kids if
we don't let those who feel it's important, do so.
Snippets from your other message:
>Mr. Morris brings up a really good point. I'm sure that your children
>are very well socialized. But how many children are as well
>socialized as yours are? I highly doubt that there is a large group
>of kids who have as many friends as your daughter does. I don't
Do you think people need a large group of friends in order to be properly
socialized?
>are your children ever going to read Latin or Greek in their adult
>professions? Now I'm well aware that most of what we learn in school
>is stuff that we will never use in the real world. And I'm sure that
Then why question him what he chooses to teach his kids? While the kids may
never use Latin or Greek later on, the skills the kids have acquired in
learning these languages will remain forever.
>I have regarding home schooling is are these kids learning anything?
Some are, some aren't. Different states and provinces have different
requirements. I believe Texas doesn't strictly monitor any school (could a
Texan confirm or not?) How do you know if ANY of the kids in Texas are
learning anything? Because the people in charge of their education care
about the kids and want to make sure they are learning something.
>I have never been in a home schooled setting, but how do we know for
>sure that all of these kids are learning, and not having someone else
>do the homework for them? I knew of one student who paid his "smart"
Melissa, this doesn't make any sense. Do you know how homeschooling works?
These kids do not get work sent from school to do at home. Except for those
registered in some sort of program, they are not filling in worksheets and
sending them off to a teacher to be marked. In most cases, the PARENTS are
the teachers, which means the parents are certainly not going to be doing
the work for their kids (what would be the point??????????)
>three years after high school? He works as Wendy's and wishes that he
>had attended public school so that someone could have caught his
>inability to read.
Honestly, if this kid's parents didn't realize he had a reading problem,
then they were neglectful. But you know what? There are kids who go through
public school able to do the same thing. What's to have stopped this kid
from doing the same thing in public school? Of many, many, many
homeschooling families I have personally met, there has only been *1* whom
I've considered somewhat educationally neglectful. (Of the extreme
unschooling variety--she figured her son (12yo) would read when he's ready,
he's been wanting to learn for sometime but she won't teach him because she
figures he'll learn on his own when he's ready...) To take ONE case and
apply it to the whole is nonsense.
>I just think that while home schooling might be
>good for your children, Mr. Morris, but I don't think that parents are
>doing it for the right reasons.
Each parent will have his/her own reasons. For me, it's primarily a concern
of socialization--I do NOT want my children to be like public-schooled kids.
I do not believe in single-age segregation (this just encourages reliance on
peers at a time in one's life when the child should be relying on parents
for guidance) and there's no way a teacher or school can adequately coach
all 20-35 kids in proper interactions (do you KNOW all the things kids say
and talk about?--when I'm somewhere with homeschooling families, there are a
LOT of adults around who can pick up on what kids are doing and saying and
intervene when necessary.) The things that go on at recess and afterschool
are absolutely atrocious, even in the best of schools.
There is also the academic concern but that comes after socialization. Dd
has always been advanced--she is mid-Kindergarten age, but doing late gr.
1-mid gr. 2 level of work. Ds (2yo) has had a pattern since birth that may
cause obvious problems at school--he'll lag for awhile in some skill area,
then all of a sudden shoot ahead and be advanced at times, then doesn't
progress so he evens out, lags again, jumps ahead and so on. This pattern
may dissolve over time or may stay with him. But it's there now and will
likely be there when he is school age. Either school won't help at all or
they'll make him into an exception where he will have to be different from
everybody which is totally contrary to the nature of school socialization.
This is not what I want for my kids. I want them to be an environment where
lots of love and learning opportunities are available, and this is certainly
not what most elementary schools provide.
Daisy
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 20th of February, 2003
Melissa Ferrell writes:
Mr. Morris brings up a really good point.
Which one are you singling out as good?
Melissa:
I'm sure that your children are very well socialized.
Well, I am sure, too. But, what *I* mean by "well socialized" is
that they have been taught (and that includes discipline)
from an early age to bahave themselves and to treat
others with respect, and in point of fact they usually
behave much better in public than many adults do around them.
But, again, my older son is shy, my daughter is outgoing.
They are socially very different people. And I am perfectly
happy that they are who they are.
Melissa:
But how many children are as well socialized as yours are?
In my experience many children are not very well
behaved at all. I suspect this has to do with
poor parenting, and in particular lack of swift
and consistent discipline starting at an early age,
and I suspect the moral instruction that *I* am
talking about happens (or does not happen) far in
advance of any child reaching school age. So,
I'm not sure what homeschooling versus public schooling
has to do with it.
Anyway on the "s" word, my experience of meeting lots of
other homeschooling families is that it would knock
your socks off how much these children are out in the
community socializing with other children and adults.
We simply have more time to do that.
Also, there are the studies. This web page ought to
give you a lead on two homeschool socialization studies,
the research by Shyer and that by Smedley. Basically,
they measured how well socialized homeschooled kids
were against public-schooled kids, by some arguable measure,
and concluded that there was either no difference or
that the homeschooled kids were more mature than
the public-schooled kids:
<http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html>
Melissa:
I highly doubt that there is a large group
of kids who have as many friends as your daughter does.
Oh, I don't know. My impression is that lots of
parents have daughters who reach a certain age and
then constantly yammer on the phone with a circle of
their girlfriends. Again, I'm not sure
this has anything to do with homeschooling one way
or the other.
Melissa:
I don't regret being sent to public school, and I
don't think that you shoud either.
I'm not sure how you can make that statement. I
mean, I did all right for myself out of it. I had
some teachers I would be glad to praise to the skies
to you. I graduated number one (valedictorian) out
of a class of over 800. OK, but my point was not that
there weren't good things to public school, my point
was that we were prisoners there 40 hours a week (or more
for those of us who did all the extracurricular stuff
like band and various clubs) *plus* we had homework
to do at home, *and most of that school time was utterly
wasted on the school administrating us, processing us,
moving us around from place to place and telling us
to shut up and handing out high grades for mediocrity
on our part*. The actual time per week spent learning
anything new was tiny.
Melissa:
You gained skills in public school that you
most likely would not have gained in home
schooling whether you know it or not.
You have no evidence whatsoever for such a statement.
It may well be I could have gained the same skills
without public school at all. Or better and different
skills. Who knows? I was very good at school indeed,
but I'll tell you *the* big advantage I had over everyone
else was my Mom had taught me to read on her lap when
I was 4. By the time I got to Kindergarten, the teacher
could hand me a book and just let me read aloud for story-time.
Melissa:
I am still a student and will be for the rest
of my life as I plan to be a teacher.
It was sort of obvious to us that you were probably
an education major.
Melissa:
I'm not just saying all this because I'm
afraid that I wont have a job in 20 years.
But, you probably will have a job in 20 years.
I certainly can't see that homeschooling would
be so popular with enough people that it would
matter to your job prospects at all. It takes
a great deal of work to homeschool one's children.
I don't think that it is for everyone.
But, I *do* think that the primary authority and
responsibility for the schooling of children rests
with the parent, and not with the government, and not
with public-school teachers. And so, *I* see the public
schools as just one option open to parents, not the norm
or the standard by which all other educational
programs should be judged. (The public schools fail
too miserably for that.)
And I, at least, do not regret taxes I pay as a taxpayer
to support the public schools locally, in my state, and
nationally. (At least, what I mean is that I don't regret
them in principle---I do regret that the public schools
in the United States in practice cost so much in dollars and
in childrens' time and teach so very little.) So, it
seems to me that if more people homeschool, it means
that you have the fine prospect of having the same
public-school dollars from the same taxbase spread over
fewer students, i.e. you could really face smaller class
sizes, which is exactly what teachers have
been clamoring for for years.
Melissa:
I enjoy opening the minds of students to
Literature and get great enjoyment from this.
That is nice, Melissa. Umm, would that more teachers
really felt that way---that literature brings joy in
and of itself, that it does not matter whether we *use*
it in our professional lives, it is still valuable to us
as humans, and, as such, one of the things that true
education should be about. Not job training, but the
life of the mind that an adult human being will be able
to lead in his *leisure* time when he is 40 years old.
Will all knowledge be open to him then, or will he forever
shut the door on, say, appreciating classical music because
he has never learned anything about it, and because that is
something one needs to approach intellectually in order
to appreciate it? Will he watch TV sitcoms when he has free
time at the age of 40 as opposed to reading _The Tempest_,
because he finds the language of Shakespeare too difficult,
a chore to try and read? Will he be unable to read or calculate
for himself anything technical because he didn't like math
in school, and avoided all the math classes they'd let him
avoid? Will foreign languages be closed to him?
Melissa:
But ask yourself this, are your children ever going
to read Latin or Greek in their adult professions?
Oh, I spoke too soon. You apparently *are* one of those
usual sorts of education majors who cannot imagine that
knowledge can be beautiful and joyful in and of itself,
and is valuable in and of itself, and needs no vocational
justification whatsoever. I have learned ancient Greek
in my leisure time because I needed it in order to
read Homer. I am a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. Reading
Homer has nothing to do with my "profession", but Homer
has everything to do with my life of the mind, which
is simply much more important to me as a person than
you would get from defining my "profession" narrowly. I
wish to God the public schools I attended could have
given me instruction in ancient Greek rather than
spending all the time they spent on, say, taking
attendance and making stupid announcements and
having us do repititious makework homework and having us
attend useless home rooms, etc. Then maybe I wouldn't
be having to learn Greek first as an adult as a tool
in order to read Homer, I could just read Homer. There was
so much wasted time in school.
Melissa:
Now I'm well aware that most of what we learn
in school is stuff that we will never use in the
real world.
I would suggest to you that your notion of the real world is
rather different than mine. My home is furnished in
Early American Book. There are something like four or
five thousand volumes here, including Homer in Greek
and Vergil in Latin, and Dante in Italian, Goethe in
German, Cervantes and Garcia Marquez in Spanish, Tolstoy
and Dostoevsky and Pushkin in Russian. They are much more
real than anything on TV.
Melissa:
And I'm sure that this is why kids ask "is this
going to be on the test?"
And that is why no teacher who is ever going to be any
good at teaching can ever buy into these students' mindset.
A teacher who does not believe that Literature is
fucking beautiful in its own right, and ought to be
read because we are humans and we have minds and these
books will take our minds to one of the highest places
our minds can go, has no business teaching.
Melissa:
Students tend not to care to retain knowledge of
plate techtonics when they plan to go into teaching
Literature (such as myself).
I agree with you that there are students like that
who think like that, who compartmentalize knowledge,
and who do not see plate tectonics theory as intrinsically
beautiful in its own right---every bit as beautiful
and essential to uplifting the human mind as Homer or
Billie Holliday, simply a different highest that the human
mind may reach. A lot of students especially I know avoid
math like the plague. God! Just think of them becoming
*teachers*! I think this especially has infected
schools of education and their teacher products with
a sort of evangelical ignorance about mathematics and
science that has been simply devastating to a generation
or more of schoolchildren. It would be great if those
students were never encouraged or allowed to become
teachers---like even with a literature teacher I
would require mastery of something like two years of
calculus before ever being granted a teaching
certificate. There's just no excuse for an educated
person being ignorant of basic mathematics. You know,
what I would want to require in all public-school
teachers of children of any age would be mastery of the
stuff that every high school graduate should have had
anyway. I mean, sure, if the teacher is going to be a
math or a science teacher, he should really have a lot
more mathematics than that, but what we really need for
public-school teachers are that teachers *value*
learning, period, and I imagine the only way really to
do that is to demand at the very least mastery
of the whole of a high-school liberal-arts curriculum.
Melissa:
The only real question I have regarding home schooling
is are these kids learning anything?
Whether my children are learning what they ought to
learn is something that is my business as their parent,
and certainly not, for instance, the state's business.
But, as I said, I have my two older (school-age) children
tested with Iowa tests every year, and every year they
come out several years ahead of the general population
of public-schooled kids. So, if you accept that such a
test measures anything relevant to "learning
anything" (I don't, but, still, it's a nice check and I
figure a good thing to have on hand should local school
officials ever get nosy), then yes, my children are learning
some things.
As I said, standardized tests do not test
what I think is important for my children to learn,
but I am happy to go into detail if you want to know
what specifically they do study or what specifically
they have studied and learned at any given age. I'd
even be happy to show you where I think we
were failing to teach something, and corrected
what we did---since I think that, in particular,
would illustrate what homeschooling can really do
for a student. I am convinced that Helen, my daughter,
would have been left behind in math at one point, and
there is no way a teacher in a classroom of 20 or 30
students could have gone back half a year in the material
and done it over and differently so that the teacher could
be certain that Helen had mastered long division.
Melissa:
I have never been in a home schooled setting, but
how do we know for sure that all of these kids are
learning, and not having someone else do the homework
for them?
Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "we". I mean,
who the hell are you to question whether these kids
are learning anything? Shouldn't that be the business
of the parents? The parents' responsibility *and*
the parents' authority?
OK, probably there *are* homeschooled children who
are not learning anything. But, see, so what?
I mean, if you answer me that the state should step
in and, say, *make* those kids go to public school,
then where exactly are you going to draw the line?
If a homeschooled kid scores less than average on
a standardized test does he get sent to public school?
OK, then surely half of the public-schooled kids
score less than average on standardized tests, should
there be a law requiring all of them to be sent to
homeschool? What if public-schooled kid doesn't learn Latin
or about plate tectonics, or maybe "has a class" in
plate tectonics at one point, and gets an A in it, but
it turns out three years later he can't remember anything
coherent about the most important geological unification
theory there is? What if this kind of glaring ignorance
is true of much more than half the public-schooled students?
How does a correction to that failure to teach anything
really beautiful or important ever get fed back into the
public schools?
Melissa:
I knew of one student who paid his "smart" friends
to do his assignments for him so that he could graduate.
Hey, I don't know if your student was a former
homeschooler or not, but as far as I can see, students
cheat all the time on their work, and most of these
students are the products of the public schools.
Melissa:
This actually worked for him.
Well, I don't really think it did, from what you say.
Melissa:
As it turned out, this kid couldn't read
past a third grade level.
Uh-huh. And, umm, what reading level do you imagine
the hundreds of thousands of new public-school graduates
have who score, say, in 10th percentile and
below in standardized tests?
If you are an education major, that ought to be
a statistic you'd know where to go and get. Look
at standardized test scores for graduating seniors from
public high schools. Here's the math: Let's see, there're
roughly 250 million Americans and, umm, guesstimating
people live to 100 years, that means roughly 2.5 million
Americans at age 17/18, most of which are in public-school
high-schools as seniors. The bottom 10% of these would
be approximately 250,000 graduates in the United States.
Obviously this is an overestimate because not everybody
graduates, and an underestimate because people don't
live to 100 years, so I should have divided by 75 or
something like that. But, take the set of people who
actually do graduate public-school high school in any
given year, and take the bottom 10% of those in reading
ability. There's gotta be a few to several hundred thousand
of them. What is *their* reading level?
Melissa:
What kind of job does this kid have now,
three years after high school? He works as Wendy's
and wishes that he had attended public school so that
someone could have caught his inability to read.
Again, the issue is not what happened to one person,
but how does he stack up against those his age who
graduated (or, heck, one should count, too, the ones
who dropped out) from public school? How representative
is he of the average experience of homeschoolers?
Some data you can link to on Karl Bunday's "School Is Dead!
Learn in Freedom!" website:
<http://learninfreedom.org/hsarticles.html>
Follow the link to the Rudner study. Also see the
criticism of the Rudner study. I.e., the best
information we have---which information is not
without sample bias---is that homeschooling kids
test better than do their public-schooled counterparts.
So, apparently, the guy you know who was homeschooled
and never learned to read is way towards the bottom of
the homeschooling curve.
Melissa:
I just think that while home schooling might be
good for your children, Mr. Morris, but I don't
think that parents are doing it for the right
reasons.
I personally doubt, from what you have said to me,
that you know what the right reasons are even
for schooling children in the first place, let alone
for why a public school would be any better than
a homeschool. So far, you have shown no indication that
you have knowledge of the studies that are out there
(which contradict what you say), nor have you shown
that you understand what the statistics might mean.
Instead, you told me an anecdotal story about someone
you know who was apparently homeschooled and was never
taught to read and has ended up flipping burgers at
Wendy's. But two can play that game---I've had two homeschooled
students come through Butler's Department of Physics and
Astronomy and go on to earn Ph.D.'s in physics (acoustics)
and engineering. And I know of some public-schooled dropouts
who are flipping burgers. So, there.
Well, anyway, now I've given you some links, and
you can follow them and read them, and, well,
I suppose if you understand the statistics well enough,
maybe you can find something to criticize in them, or
point me to some countervailing studies on the academic
performance of homeschooled children versus public-schooled
children. I teach physics part-time as an adjunct at
university, so I'd be happy to go and read articles
in educational journals if you want to cite any which
show that homeschooling is academically worse than
public-schooling.
Also, why don't you surprise me and say what
you think the reasons are that children should be
schooled?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Peggy Rogers
> > Melissa Ferrell wrote:
> > >> I had the advantage of attending a public
> > >> school.
So did I. And my children have the advantage of being homeschooled. In both
cases, there are things that can be done better in a school setting, and
things that work better at home. Schools have a much more difficult time
adapting curriculum to the interests and learning levels of each student. On
the other hand, my children have participated, in the last two years, in the
school play at the local school -- an experience I would not have managed to
give them on my own. One of the loveliest things about homeschooling is the
flexibility that is possible
> For your information, I'm not a"Lyin' spammin' troll". I attend a
> well respecteed school for future educations called Eastern Michigan
> University. Ever hear of it? Or maybe you're too ignorant to realize
> that some people actually know what they're talking about.
I agree that the negative characterizaation of your remarks was unfortunate
and uncalled for -- but then your response was similarly unhelpful. On the
other hand, I have to wonder what your intent was in posting your original
message. If you were at all interested in the reasons people have for
homeschooling their children, asking politely would probably have worked
better. If you were intending to convert us to the advantages of attending a
public school, then you might have anticipated just a bit of hostility in
return. After all, people do not come to the decision to homeschool their
children as a simple whim: it means going against a great deal that is
currently understood about the way children are and should be raised.
Your question:
> The only real question
> I have regarding home schooling is are these kids learning anything?
> I have never been in a home schooled setting, but how do we know for
> sure that all of these kids are learning, and not having someone else
> do the homework for them?
makes us think that you have a very shallow understanding (if any at all!)
about what homeschooling is, and how it works. There are many approaches,
and many philosophies. A lot of us don't have "homework" at all -- we have
_learning_, all day, every day. We don't see "school" as being something
different from "life." And are they learning anything? Well, a couple of
weeks ago I checked out the book
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know
from the library, and picked random pages from each section to ask my kids
about the subjects listed there. They were familiar with about 70-80% of the
people and concepts listed. So I think they're probably doing okay.
You say,
> ... but I don't think that parents are doing it for the right reasons.
What, pray tell, are the reasons that you _think_ motivate parents to do
this? And what would be the "right" reasons?
Peggy
Daisy Witherell Déry
> For your information, I'm not a"Lyin' spammin' troll". I attend a
> well respecteed school for future educations called Eastern Michigan
> University. Ever hear of it? Or maybe you're too ignorant to realize
> that some people actually know what they're talking about.
Perhaps YOU are the one too ignorant to realize that people come in here
posting things like you do simply to argue. You obviously don't know what
you're talking about when it comes to homeschooling, which is FINE, because
nobody can know everything. Just don't go being hypocritical and rude about
it.
Daisy
Melissa Ferrell
I was not the one who started the rudness by calling you a Lying
spammin' troll. Just go back and read what you wrote. I was simply
posing a question and wanted a professional opinion on the matter. If
you will go back and read Mr. Morris' posting, he actually adressed
some of my concerns. You have not. All you have done is insult me
and make me lash back. He (Mr. Morris) was simply replying in
disagreement with me, which is fine, and was actually what I was
looking for when I posted my original message. I never would have
gotten involved in this discourse with you if you had just kept your
opinions professional rather than personal and childish. That's just
something for you to think about next time you personally attack
someone for their opinion. I see now that you are a person who just
assumes any opinion other than the one you hold is wrong, which in my
opinion is completly...I'll just let you finish that thought for me
since I think you know where I'm going with it.
Melissa Ferrell
My spelling while not always perfect and my grammatical structure not
always top notch, I did learn most of that in public schools. The
rest came from almost four years of college. Would I have aquired
these skills in home schooling? Maybe only if you or Peggy were my
teachers. However the rest of the home schooling parents do not seem
to be interested in having an adult discussion, but would rather
attack me personally by calling me names but not really responding to
my original post. I thank you Mr. Morris for your thoughts and will
continue to keep them in mind.
Vepxistqaosani
My eldest daughter is now on the honor roll of her middle school (she's
an eighth grader in central NJ; report cards just came out). Her
achievement has increased our determination to home school, for it is
clear both that she is learning as much as she possibly can from the
public schools and that that is not enough. Simply put, she is far more
ignorant than she should be of spelling, grammar, arithmetic,
mathematics, science, and history.
There are at least seven problems with the public schools that can be
eliminated, or at least alleviated, by homeschooling.
1. Teachers. Parents have not had to endure years of content-free
courses in educational colleges; instead, they will actually have
learned real stuff (in our case, literature, history, languages,
science, math, art, music -- any one of which one or the other of us
could teach at the high-school level). It is notorious that teachers are
drawn from the bottom half of college students; it follows that most
college-educated parents are more intellectually capable than most teachers.
2. Textbooks. Now, I work for a textbook publisher (but college, not
el-hi! In fact, I've seen our books mentioned favorably by Mike Morris).
Still, honesty compels me to say that textbooks have been dumbed down
dramatically in the past 30 years. My daughters' history books, for
instance, could have been produced by MTV. Homeschoolers can write their
own, find old ones, or at least choose carefully.
3. Tests. Being a rigid, doctrinaire, conservative type, I like tests --
but I like tests that have something to do with the material taught. The
standardized tests that afflict kids today are quite awful. The math
problems are sometimes wrong and often unrelated to the curriculum.
Homeschoolers, again, can choose.
4. Curriculum. Here in NJ, we have a set of Core Curriculum Content
Standards (http://www.state.nj.us/njded/cccs/). Here's one:
Standard 1.6: All Students Will Develop Design Skills For
Planning The Form And Function Of Space, Structures,
Objects, Sound, And Events
Building upon knowledge and skills gained in the preceding
grades, by the end of Grade 12, students:
Identify, plan, and provide solutions to design problems
of space, structures, objects, sound, and/or events in a
public or private environment.
Professional designers often miss that mark; in any event, it is clearly
a perversion of the schools' basic educational mission to transform
every high school into the Parsons School of Design! So one can only
hope that the curriculum standards -- despite being hundreds of pages
long and years (and millions of dollars) in development -- are not
intended seriously. I trust that it's easy to see that homeschoolers
will not invest in this sort of nonsense.
5. Discipline. Either there isn't any (quotidian life in school
corridors) or it's applied unthinkingly (zero tolerance). Do you think
any parent would countenance for an instant what goes on every day in
the public schools?
6. Parents. Public-school parents are scarcely involved. Homeschoolers
couldn't be more involved.
7. Nonacademic junk. Negotiation skills, health classes, anti-drug
indoctrination. All worthwhile, but scarcely academic. Again, what
homeschooler would devote the equivalent of a semester on anti-drug
education? And the funny thing is that, even without that important
education, homeschool kids do fewer drugs that public-school kids.
Respectively submitted,
Fred
Matt C.
news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com:
> teachers. However the rest of the home schooling parents do not seem
> to be interested in having an adult discussion, but would rather
> attack me personally by calling me names but not really responding to
> my original post.
Interesting. Perhaps we have a parallel universe problem here. My
recollection is that you got firm but mostly polite responses, containing a
good many questions back to you, that I have not yet seen you make any
attempt to answer.
Matt
susabean
So....if you want to address the person that actually CALLED you the name,
thats one thing. But it wasn't Daisy.
Secondly, no one can MAKE you respond by lashing back. That was totally and
completely your decision. Like I tell my children, YOU are responsible for
your responses, your actions, and your words....no one else.
Anyway, thats all I have to say about that.
Blessings,
Tammy
--
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of
the originality.
Beatrix Potter
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.449 / Virus Database: 251 - Release Date: 01/27/2003
Barbara Needham
> My spelling while not always perfect and my grammatical structure not
> always top notch, I did learn most of that in public schools. The
> rest came from almost four years of college. Would I have aquired
> these skills in home schooling? Maybe only if you or Peggy were my
> teachers. However the rest of the home schooling parents do not seem
> to be interested in having an adult discussion, but would rather
> attack me personally by calling me names but not really responding to
> my original post. I thank you Mr. Morris for your thoughts and will
> continue to keep them in mind.
Melissa, it is not true that "the rest of the home schooling parents" do
not seem to be interested in having an adult discussion. You have had
perhaps two infer that your post was flame bait; which I think is really
a non-issue because a person who thinks a post is flame bait does not
have to respond to it, they can just ignore it.
Then, I do believe I tried to answer you constructively, if you look up
thread a bit. There are items in my posting that are invitations to
further discussion if you so desire. I am interested in Literature and
wonder if your course discusses some of the historical antecedents to
certain kinds of literature. Take, for instance, Harry Potter - whether
or not you consider that truly literature. In England it was named Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone which made its historical reference
immediately obvious. Here, in the United States, it was "felt" that we
wouldn't understand that reference and so used "Sorcerer's Stone." I
think that was a mistake. Although apparently not a marketing mistake.
I learned a lot of things in Public School also. My children learned a
lot of things in Christian private school. My grandson is learning a lot
of things in Home School. People can be educated IN schools or out of
schools. People can get bad educations in schools or out of schools. So,
perhaps every single person you have met who had any homeschooling in
their background is not truly educated. That does not extend to "every"
homeschooler in the world or even in the United States not being truly
educated.
--
Barbara Needham
susabean
here it is. I think as parents, WE are responsible for deciding how to meet
the educational needs for our children. Period. Not the government, not
the teachers, not the people who write textbooks.
I feel this way because, as a parent, I *know* my children. I *know* what
makes them tick, I *know* how they learn a particular skill....I understand
their personalities, their quirks, their strengths and weaknesses. And I
want what is the very best for them....more than any teacher ever could, no
matter how good or well intentioned that teacher may be.
That said, if I thought that public school or private school was the best
option for my child, that would be *my* choice, fueled by what I know about
my child. Of course, because this is the norm, very few people would
question this decision. I do not fault anyone who makes this decision, and
I feel that there *are* children that might be better off being schooled
outside of the home. In other words, I *respect* that parent's decision on
how best to educate their child.
However, *because* I know my children, I think that the best possible
arrangement for them is to be schooled at home. My oldest child is very
bright, and very social. She is also like quite a few bright children, and
would rise to only as high as the bar was set for her. In other words, she
would do what was expected of her.....no more, no less. I would have to
supplement her education in order for her to reach her goals. If I am going
to do that, I may as well teach her at home! She would settle for what for
her would be mediocrity....and she would be rewarded with A's and B's for
it. With homeschooling I can work on whatever weaknesses she may have,
encourage her strengths, and challenge her without pushing her too hard. I
can customize our lesson plans for her learning style, and incorporate her
interests. For example, my dd wants to be a zookeeper. We have been doing
"zookeeper math" so that she truly understands the importance of mathematics
in anything she chooses to do. She also had an opportunity to go with a
zookeeper for several hours behind the scenes. Both of these things would
not happen if she was in public school.
My youngest dd has processing issues and is delayed with her learning. She
has had speech for 4 years (she is 7) and shows delays in receptive and
expressive language. She is not reading yet. Do you know what she would
receive in public school? 3 hours a week of individualized reading
instruction. Guess what. She gets it DAILY at home. She is showing
progress, and there is no one to make her feel as if she is "slow" or
"behind". And guaranteed, she will catch up with the rest of her peers, and
most likely surpass not a few of them, because like her sister, she is smart
as a whip. But with homeschooling, we can take our time, learn at HER pace,
and pursue some interest driven learning that doesn't bore her out of her
skull.
To address the socialization issue: When is the last time you went to work,
college, church, clubs, etc. where you were segregated by age?? The social
structure of the school setting is artificial. Children do not go to school
to socialize. In fact, it can be a discipline issue when children *do* try
and socialize, as it disrupts the learning process. My children are as
comfortable with a 2 year old as with someone within their age level..and
they interact very well with adults. They are not used to being age
segregated and will not exclude someone because of their age when playing
with a group of children. They are in AWANA's, co-ops, Sunday school,
church, 4 H, out in the nursing home visiting residents, helping in food
pantries and soup kitchens. I would dare say my children are more rounded
socially than a child who spends 8 hours with age segregated peers might be.
I *went* to public school. I soon learned that to want to explore any
rabbit trails past the core curriculum was not possible, that to ask too
many questions got you the exasperated look from the teacher, and that the
best approach was to sit down, shut up, study hard, and get good grades. Do
you know WHY children want to know what is on the test? Because the LOVE of
learning becomes dimmed, to be replaced by the necessity of performance.
School becomes a performance/rewards system that quite frankly is NOT
conducive to true learning.
I was socialized in public school. I had a 2nd grade teacher who was most
likely mentally ill that *encouraged* the class to pick on me. I was the
class scapegoat, and even though my parents tried to have me removed from
the classroom, they could not. The abuse continued until we moved in 8th
grade. To be beaten up on the way home from school, shunned, hit, laughed
at, and verbally abused is NOT a form of socialization I EVER want my
children to have to be party to.
I do not judge others if they feel a public school education is best. For
them, perhaps it is. What *does* offend me is the mindset that parents are
too stupid to teach their children without 4 years of specialized education.
Some of the greatest people in our time were not educated in the system but
at home. I believe it was Thomas Edison that was thought to have been
uneducable and retarded. His mother taught him. Lincoln was largely self
taught. The list is extensive. Public school is a fairly new institution.
Parents have been doing a most excellent job without much assistance long
before it became mandatory to send children to school, and the tests and
statistics are proving that for the large part they still are.
THAT'S why I think homeschooling is a good idea and a choice that should be
recognized and respected as a valid one.
Blessings,
Tammy
--
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of
the originality.
Beatrix Potter
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
---
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com...
> "Daisy Witherell D ry" <dd...@shaw.ca.dontsendmespam> wrote in message
news:<hiq5a.294853$sV3.9...@news3.calgary.shaw.ca>...
> > "Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > > For your information, I'm not a"Lyin' spammin' troll". I attend a
> > > well respecteed school for future educations called Eastern Michigan
> > > University. Ever hear of it? Or maybe you're too ignorant to realize
> > > that some people actually know what they're talking about.
> >
> > Perhaps YOU are the one too ignorant to realize that people come in here
> > posting things like you do simply to argue. You obviously don't know
what
> > you're talking about when it comes to homeschooling, which is FINE,
because
> > nobody can know everything. Just don't go being hypocritical and rude
about
> > it.
> >
> > Daisy
>
> I was not the one who started the rudness by calling you a Lying
> spammin' troll. Just go back and read what you wrote. I was simply
What I wrote? What did I write? I wrote an entire post to which you have not
commented yet and the above, which I will repeat:
> > Perhaps YOU are the one too ignorant to realize that people come in here
> > posting things like you do simply to argue. You obviously don't know
what
> > you're talking about when it comes to homeschooling, which is FINE,
because
> > nobody can know everything. Just don't go being hypocritical and rude
about
To be ignorant means to have a lack of knowledge. You have an obvious lack
of knowledge of homeschooling (which you admitted to in another post) and
your first post didn't come across at all as anything but somebody looking
to cause trouble--be it someone who would hang around to cause trouble or
someone who wouldn't even bother to hang around and see the response. Yes,
there are people who do that. And they do it often enough that people assume
that posts like yours are spam. There are people who will lie and make
things up and post in here just to cause problems--the response to you about
lying spamming troll had absolutely nothing to do with YOU, but past
experience. If you assume that the homeschoolers you met are representative
of the whole, then you need to accept that people will use the same
assumption based on their experiences with trolls in this group.
> posing a question and wanted a professional opinion on the matter. If
> you will go back and read Mr. Morris' posting, he actually adressed
> some of my concerns. You have not. All you have done is insult me
How have I not addressed your concerns? Did you read my other post?
> and make me lash back. He (Mr. Morris) was simply replying in
*I*, missy, did not make YOU do anything. Nor did the person who called you
a lying spamming troll. Each of us chooses our response and therefore have
the ultimate responsibility in what we say, write and do.
> disagreement with me, which is fine, and was actually what I was
> looking for when I posted my original message. I never would have
> gotten involved in this discourse with you if you had just kept your
> opinions professional rather than personal and childish. That's just
Where did I get childish?
> something for you to think about next time you personally attack
> someone for their opinion. I see now that you are a person who just
When did I personally attack you for your opinion?
> assumes any opinion other than the one you hold is wrong, which in my
> opinion is completly...
Eh? I only see that I am totally confused.
>I'll just let you finish that thought for me
> since I think you know where I'm going with it.
Unfortunately, not being on your wavelength, I have absolutely NO CLUE where
you're going with that.
Daisy
Daisy Witherell Déry
news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com...
>
> always top notch, I did learn most of that in public schools. The
> rest came from almost four years of college. Would I have aquired
> these skills in home schooling? Maybe only if you or Peggy were my
> teachers. However the rest of the home schooling parents do not seem
> to be interested in having an adult discussion, but would rather
> attack me personally by calling me names but not really responding to
> my original post. I thank you Mr. Morris for your thoughts and will
> continue to keep them in mind.
You aks if you would have acquired those skills if you were homeschooled? Go
ask your parents! What do you think your parents would have done if they had
homeschooled you? Would they have ignored spelling and grammar? And all the
other stuff you think homeschooled kids are missing? What do you think YOU
would do if you homeschooled your kids?
Also, Melissa, you have to check to see if your newsgroup provider is giving
you all the messages. People other than Mike have responded to your posts
and you haven't responded to them--well, none except the off-topic posts.
And may I point out how childish you sound (since you said I was being
childish) with your "however, the rest of the home schooling parents do not
seem to..."? You've got a bee in your bonnet that you need to squash so that
you can read what people are saying and consider what it is you are writing
and the effects thereof.
Daisy
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 21st of February, 2003
Melissa Ferrell wrote:
My spelling while not always perfect and my
grammatical structure not always top notch, I did
learn most of that in public schools.
Most of us did. Most of us that are poor spellers
and poor users of the language *also* are the products
of the public schools. So, I'm not sure that one can
take away anything from that one way or the other.
Melissa:
The rest came from almost four years of college.
In my case, if you count post-docs still as training,
about 15 years of college.
Melissa:
Would I have aquired these skills in home schooling?
I really do not know. You certainly *could*
have acquired these skills in being home
schooled, but my remark about grammar
and spelling was prompted by the fact
that we have seen people step into the
group before and make outrageous claims
about how evil homeschooling is, and do
so using atrocious grammar and spelling.
I mean, not just typo stuff but where it
was apparent they really didn't know any better.
They were, umm, rather easily dispensed with.
Melissa:
Maybe only if you or Peggy were my
teachers.
Well, actually, as I understand the data, where
it shows that homeschooling children score better
than public-schooled children on standardized
tests, it also shows that there is zero correlation
with the level of education achieved by the parent.
That seems surprising, doesn't it? I mean,
you might expect college-educated homeschooling
parents to have children who test better than
non-college-educated parents, but apparently no.
What I suspect is simply that reading is of fundamental
importance and most homeschoolers manage to teach that
well.
I think, by the way, that in terms of grammar and spelling,
umm, reading lots of good books is more important than
anything for teaching them. It's a little wierd with
my kids. Both can be atrocious spellers (though their English
grammar and syntax is usually pretty good), and this seems
to be whenever they write something they don't particularly
care about (such as an answer to a physics question).
But, when they write creatively (usually stories, and
sometimes extended ones), the quality of their spelling
goes way up. When they were more in "elementary" grades,
we made them do weekly written spelling tests, with the rule
that any word missed on this week's list got *added* to
next week's. Whenever we did that, both kids typically
aced their spelling tests every week.
My wife and I do a fairly *structured* homeschool
curriculum with our children, though it is not a
bought curriculum (it is of our own devising). But
you have all kinds of approaches to homeschooling, some
specifically for the sake of religious content in
the curriculum, some not, some structured, some
is called "unschooling", and there are levels of
structure or lack thereof among unschoolers.
Melissa:
However the rest of the home schooling parents
do not seem to be interested in having an adult
discussion, but would rather attack me personally
by calling me names but not really responding to
my original post.
But stop and think about it a moment. You stepped into
a homeschooling newsgroup and made a sort blanket statement
about how you doubted "we" (who was "we" since you yourself
apparently hadn't homeschooled) were doing best by our
children. From what you've told us, you are a young
thing, a baby as it were. In other words, you're probably
what? 21 or 22 years old? Stepping to a group of experienced
homeschooling parents (who are probably most of us in our 30's
and 40's and I know there're a grandparent or two)---people
who have read the books which advocate homeschooling, and
have seen most of the arguments before. I mean, you want
to see a lioness bare her claws, just go and tell a mother she
is raising her kids wrong. What did you expect?
Melissa:
I thank you Mr. Morris for your thoughts and will
continue to keep them in mind.
I'd really like to see you look at the statistics,
and try and articulate what are the reasons for children
to be schooled in the first place. Then I would like to
hear you say what reasons you think parents have for
choosing homeschooling, and which of those reasons are
bad ones, and which good ones.
You *did* make some rather sweeping claims about
homeschooling parents having the wrong reasons.
I;d like to know what you think are wrong reasons.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
Ferrell) wrote:
<snipped>
>
>My spelling while not always perfect and my grammatical structure not
>always top notch, I did learn most of that in public schools. The
>rest came from almost four years of college. Would I have aquired
>these skills in home schooling? Maybe only if you or Peggy were my
>teachers. However the rest of the home schooling parents do not seem
>to be interested in having an adult discussion, but would rather
>attack me personally by calling me names but not really responding to
>my original post. I thank you Mr. Morris for your thoughts and will
>continue to keep them in mind.
"The rest of the homeschooling parents?" How many of us have engaged
in this discourse with you? How many homeschooling parents have you
spoken with personally? How many are there in the US? And how many
in the world?
Please do not make blanket statements. That is one of the worst
things you can do in any forum, but especially on Usenet. The written
word is your only means of conveying your thoughts and feelings.
There are no facial expressions nor body language to assist your
"audience" in interpretting your meaning.
I had not taken the time before now to address your posts, although I
was in the process of answering one when other things took precidence.
I will try to finish that response later this evening, if time allows.
At this point, I have only a few minutes before we conduct a lesson on
the anatomy of the bovine heart, to then be translated into a cooking
lesson as per our personal homeschooling style.
Many of the things you addressed in your posts hold some bit of truth,
but it seems you are seeing through a filter. You've neglected to
mention the many public school students who epitimize the problems you
see with homeschooling. I attended and graduated from a very good,
small, rural public school that had a higher than average percentage
of graduates obtaining academic scholarships for college. After
obtaining my mathematics degree and my teaching certificate, I taught
in one private and two public schools. In all those years, I saw and
dealt with the problems you've specified as being homeschooling
problems.
Children "falling through the cracks," not learning what they should,
has been a long-recognized issue with public schools. When you have
classrooms with a minimum of 20 students, it is difficult to identify
and address every student's needs. Those whose needs are identified
are often removed from the general population and placed in
specialized classes. Too often, these specialized classes aren't
equipped to fully address the needs of the students.
My husband attended large urban schools and was in a graduating class
of 1,500 (vs the 44 in my graduating class). He has attended public
and private colleges. When we chose to remove our children from
public school and begin homeschooling, his focus was on the dismal
[safety and academic] state of the public school system rather than on
the concept of public schooling. My focus was on the inability of the
public schools to provide the quality of education and the challenge
our children need and desire. We have no regrets with our decision to
homeschool.
Our children are exposed to a much more challenging educational
environment now than when they were in public school. They have
friends of many ages and levels rather than just friends their own
age/grade level. They are able to play on the floor with infants and
toddlers, to play RPG's with children and teens, or to participate in
political debates with adults. They are able to adapt their learning
environment to match their skill and interest levels. These are
things that are far too often not seen within the public school
environment.
That is not to say that these things *never* happen with kids who
attend public school. However, the only public school children I've
ever met who have the flexibility I've described above are those whose
parents are extremely involved with the children's education. IMO,
those children can be considered to be dual-enrolled. Their parents
are educating them at home as well as sending them to public school
for a portion of their lessons. Why have them dual-enrolled before
high school/college dual-enrollment?
Kitten
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
You can always tell a Texan, but you can't tell him much. - Chris Wall
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Courage, Real courage, is no quick fix. It doesn't come in a bottle
or a pill, It comes from discipline. From taking everything life
hands you and being your best either because of it or in spite of it.
-- Ty Murray
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
<dd...@shaw.ca.dontsendmespam> wrote:
>
>"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com...
<snipped>
>
>> and make me lash back. He (Mr. Morris) was simply replying in
>
>*I*, missy, did not make YOU do anything. Nor did the person who called you
>a lying spamming troll. Each of us chooses our response and therefore have
>the ultimate responsibility in what we say, write and do.
>
OUCH!! The "Mommy Voice!"
Melissa, perhaps you should find out where the nearest homeschooling
group meets. It's interesting to observe 35 kids chaperoned by 10
moms who deal with things in fairly similar ways.
Kitten, who's heard more than once, "You sound like my mom."
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
<dd...@shaw.ca.dontsendmespam> wrote:
>
>"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:8547c067.03021...@posting.google.com...
<snipped>
>>are your children ever going to read Latin or Greek in their adult
>>professions? Now I'm well aware that most of what we learn in school
>>is stuff that we will never use in the real world. And I'm sure that
>
>Then why question him what he chooses to teach his kids? While the kids may
>never use Latin or Greek later on, the skills the kids have acquired in
>learning these languages will remain forever.
>
FWIW, Latin, and possibly Greek, can be very helpful to the person
going into medicine or law. Those are just the two specializations
that come immediately to mind. But then those lead to the thought of
veterinary science, the study of which is more difficult than the
study of human medicine (more body systems to learn).
>>I have regarding home schooling is are these kids learning anything?
>
>Some are, some aren't. Different states and provinces have different
>requirements. I believe Texas doesn't strictly monitor any school (could a
>Texan confirm or not?) How do you know if ANY of the kids in Texas are
>learning anything? Because the people in charge of their education care
>about the kids and want to make sure they are learning something.
>
We're in central Texas. She can come visit our hs'ing group if she
likes. Since she doesn't feel there is value to learning Latin,
perhaps she would prefer to observe the Conversational Spanish class.
Or perhaps geography, geology, or cooking. History of law?
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
<msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
<snipped>
>Melissa Ferrell writes:
<snipped>
> I highly doubt that there is a large group
> of kids who have as many friends as your daughter does.
>
>Oh, I don't know. My impression is that lots of
>parents have daughters who reach a certain age and
>then constantly yammer on the phone with a circle of
>their girlfriends. Again, I'm not sure
>this has anything to do with homeschooling one way
>or the other.
The option of surgically removing the telephone from the daughter's
ear has been mentioned in our house.
<snipped>
>
>Melissa:
> I enjoy opening the minds of students to
> Literature and get great enjoyment from this.
>
>That is nice, Melissa. Umm, would that more teachers
>really felt that way---that literature brings joy in
>and of itself, that it does not matter whether we *use*
>it in our professional lives, it is still valuable to us
The problem is, the way the public school system is set up, it is very
difficult to teach that love of a subject to the kids.
>as humans, and, as such, one of the things that true
>education should be about. Not job training, but the
>life of the mind that an adult human being will be able
>to lead in his *leisure* time when he is 40 years old.
>Will all knowledge be open to him then, or will he forever
>shut the door on, say, appreciating classical music because
>he has never learned anything about it, and because that is
>something one needs to approach intellectually in order
>to appreciate it? Will he watch TV sitcoms when he has free
>time at the age of 40 as opposed to reading _The Tempest_,
>because he finds the language of Shakespeare too difficult,
>a chore to try and read? Will he be unable to read or calculate
>for himself anything technical because he didn't like math
>in school, and avoided all the math classes they'd let him
>avoid? Will foreign languages be closed to him?
Will he decide to learn something new, just for fun? Or will he
decide that he doesn't need it to advance his career, therefore there
is no sense in learning?
>Melissa:
> But ask yourself this, are your children ever going
> to read Latin or Greek in their adult professions?
>
>Oh, I spoke too soon. You apparently *are* one of those
>usual sorts of education majors who cannot imagine that
>knowledge can be beautiful and joyful in and of itself,
>and is valuable in and of itself, and needs no vocational
>justification whatsoever.
Along this same vein, why would anyone learn to appreciate art, to
create art, to appreciate music, or to create music unless s/he is
planning to go into art/music as a career? Why learn these things
simply for enjoyment?
>I have learned ancient Greek
>in my leisure time because I needed it in order to
>read Homer. I am a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. Reading
>Homer has nothing to do with my "profession", but Homer
>has everything to do with my life of the mind, which
>is simply much more important to me as a person than
>you would get from defining my "profession" narrowly.
Kudos!
>Melissa:
> Now I'm well aware that most of what we learn
> in school is stuff that we will never use in the
> real world.
>
>I would suggest to you that your notion of the real world is
>rather different than mine. My home is furnished in
>Early American Book. There are something like four or
>five thousand volumes here, including Homer in Greek
>and Vergil in Latin, and Dante in Italian, Goethe in
>German, Cervantes and Garcia Marquez in Spanish, Tolstoy
>and Dostoevsky and Pushkin in Russian. They are much more
>real than anything on TV.
And I thought my husband's eclectic collection of physics,
metaphysics, religions, and philosophies was impressive...
>
>Melissa:
> And I'm sure that this is why kids ask "is this
> going to be on the test?"
>
>And that is why no teacher who is ever going to be any
>good at teaching can ever buy into these students' mindset.
>A teacher who does not believe that Literature is
>fucking beautiful in its own right, and ought to be
>read because we are humans and we have minds and these
>books will take our minds to one of the highest places
>our minds can go, has no business teaching.
The same can be said for mathematics. It has a beauty all it's own,
but people only see the functionality.
Wonderfully said. I want to respond further, but it seems that my
tired brain isn't functioning well ATM.
<snipped>
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe" <kit...@whitepine.com> wrote in message
news:3e56c204...@news.moment.net...
And might I say more explicitly that those 10 moms may not necessarily only
respond like that to their own kids! Instead of 1 teacher trying to guide 35
kids, you've got 10 teachers guiding the same amount. Who's going to be
better behaved and socialized?
> Kitten, who's heard more than once, "You sound like my mom."
With my 5yo in the house and someone else's 6.5yo (whom I'm homeschooling),
I get that "You made me do this, you made me..." a lot. I must have snapped.
:) Although, her line does somewhat attest to the truth of her being a
university student (late teens, early 20's...) I don't feel that old, but I
must be getting there if I see that as typical of the age group. :)
Daisy
DanL08
>courses in educational colleges; instead, they will actually have
>learned real stuff (in our case, literature, history, languages,
>science, math, art, music -- any one of which one or the other of us
>could teach at the high-school level). It is notorious that teachers are
>drawn from the bottom half of college students; it follows that most
>college-educated parents are more intellectually capable than most teachers.
I agree with almost everything being said about the benefits of HS here. I also
think that the person who started this was looking for a fight by making fairly
simplistic and generalistic comments about HSed students. My experience with
HSers has almost always been very good and I have personally seen many students
who have been HSed who are exceptionally bright.
What I am objecting to is the attack on teachers. As a former teacher I think
you are way off base when it comes to understanding the art of teaching (and
more importantly learning). People who have never stood in front of a class of
30 students and tried to guide their learning for 180 days a year are amazed at
what actually needs to happen in almost any classroom, nevermind one with
challenges (innercity, etc). While I agree that there are plenty of teachers
that are not professional and do not do a great job, I think that you could say
that about almost any profession (see NC transplant doctors from this past
week). I take great offense at the statement that "most
college-educated parents are more intellectually capable than most teachers."
I have met many people in the education field who are brilliant about areas
such as learning, psychology, and yes, even, specific content areas.
The generalizations that the original author made about HSers is exactly what
you are trying to do in this post which is marginalize a group of people by
generalizing the lowest common denominator of the group. I would think you
would make a much better point by simply listing all of the great things that
occur in a HS environment without having to denigrate other forms of
education. You never lift yourself up by pushing others down.
DAN
Vepxistqaosani
> What I am objecting to is the attack on teachers. As a former teacher I think
> you are way off base when it comes to understanding the art of teaching (and
> more importantly learning). People who have never stood in front of a class of
> 30 students and tried to guide their learning for 180 days a year are amazed at
> what actually needs to happen in almost any classroom, nevermind one with
> challenges (innercity, etc). While I agree that there are plenty of teachers
> that are not professional and do not do a great job, I think that you could say
> that about almost any profession (see NC transplant doctors from this past
> week). I take great offense at the statement that "most
> college-educated parents are more intellectually capable than most teachers."
> I have met many people in the education field who are brilliant about areas
> such as learning, psychology, and yes, even, specific content areas.
> The generalizations that the original author made about HSers is exactly what
> you are trying to do in this post which is marginalize a group of people by
> generalizing the lowest common denominator of the group. I would think you
> would make a much better point by simply listing all of the great things that
> occur in a HS environment without having to denigrate other forms of
> education. You never lift yourself up by pushing others down.
> DAN
Yes, I've met a few good teachers -- too few. My wife is one, though; my
generalization is based on her (and my mother's) experience as much as
it is mine and our daughters -- and on a fair amount of reading of
research and textbooks from the wacky world of colleges of education.
Let it stand.
For the record, I have never met anyone with education degrees (and only
those) who could fairly be characterized as "brilliant"; nor do I think
I ever shall, for much the same reasons that I have never met anyone
with a Ph.D. in physics or mathematics who insisted on the honorific
"Dr." nor anyone with a Ph.D. in education who didn't.
So, here's another gross generalization for you:
Bartlett's Law of Educational Research
The results of educational research are always either obvious or wrong.
Fred
Michael S. Morris
Sunday, the 23rd of February, 2003
DanL08 wrote:
What I am objecting to is the attack on teachers. [...]
I guess I more or less agree not only with the
poster's other points, but with the attack on teachers.
Or, not teachers maybe so much as the products of our schools of
education. That is, I told Melissa there are individual public-school
teachers who taught me that I would be happy to praise
to the skies hereon, but *every one of them that I
have talked to about teaching* has told me that they valued
courses they took at university specifically geared to teaching
them advanced content in their field, and *none* has told me
they rate courses in education as anything other than
makework Mickey Mouse time serving that they had to do in
order to get certified.
DanL08:
I take great offense at the statement that "most
college-educated parents are more intellectually
capable than most teachers."
I'm afraid I suspect it is simply a factual statement.
Note, that we are talking not most parents, but most
college-educated parents. That would mean the average
intellectual capability of degreed adults. OK, now
stack that up against the fact that education majors
simply are drawn from the lower levels of college
admissions, in terms of grades and SAT scores and
all that. Doesn't mean there can't be brilliant teachers.
Doesn't mean there can't be dunce parents who are college
graduates. But it does assert something that I think
is the average case about education majors relative to college
students as a whole. I teach physics, usually one class
a term at Butler University. I swear to you the most
baby physics class I have ever been assigned to teach
is the one populated by education majors who took the
class as a university lab science requirement, and resented
it as general knowledge, because, to their mind, it did
not relate to what they imagined themselves doing as
elementary ed. teachers. (We are talking almost pre-algebra
physics here. We are talking material that would be
shameful for a high school graduate not to know.)
I'm a theoretical physicist by training, so, I suppose
it isn't too surprising if I say I could run circles
most high-school science or math teachers. But, I swear
I could *also* run circles around most high-school Literature,
Music, Art, and History teachers, as well. And that's stuff
I didn't get by any specialized training other than being
a voracious reader, and loving the subjects for themselves.
DanL08:
I have met many people in the education field who
are brilliant about areas such as learning, psychology,[...]
"Learning" and "psychology" are, in my opinion, simply
non-subjects. It's like I know they give degrees in
administration, and I have no doubt that such degrees
require enough courses in "administration" (whatever the
hell it is) as to teach a specialized vocabulary and
the simulacrum of a subject. But, that doesn't make
it a subject, or an area of human knowledge that is
validly about something real.
I own a machine shop. We manufacture jet-engine parts.
If you want to be CEO of my company, come to
me as a mechanical engineer with experience
of aircraft engine design. Do not come to me
with a "business management" degree.
DanL08 continues:
and yes, even, specific content areas.
Well, as I said, the teachers I know who were
good were the ones who cared about "specific content
areas". They also were the ones who would never have
written "specific content areas" if they had meant
liberal-arts subjects like literature, history,
physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, music,
art, foreign languages, composition.
DanL08:
The generalizations that the original author made
about HSers is exactly what you are trying to do in
this post which is marginalize a group of people by
generalizing the lowest common denominator of the
group. I would think you would make a much better
point by simply listing all of the great things that
occur in a HS environment without having to denigrate
other forms of education. You never lift yourself up
by pushing others down.
It's a nice sentiment, but the problem is that
we have many teachers who are graduated with teaching
degrees who know next to nothing about anything other
than "learning" and "psychology", and even that
knowledge is jargon-based gibberish about, well,
nothing. Melissa herself---a school of education
major by her own admission---was right there ready
to dismiss plate tectonics as specialized knowledge
not intrinisically thrilling to the human mind,
but something a Literature teacher did not "need
to know". I would suggest to you she has either
received that attitude from the culture of her school
of education, or she has been abetted in it. And I
would suggest to you that attitude is endemic to
schools of education in the United States. And, finally
I would suggest to you that attitude is the very opposite
of that which makes a good teacher---the love of learning.
To any that doubt the specific evil and culpability
of schools of education in the failure of the public
schools in the US to teach our children, I would strongly
recommend a reading of _The Graves of Academe_ by
Richard Mitchell, aka "The Underground Grammarian".
A site dedicated to the late Richard Mitchell, together
with some description of this book, can be found
at: <http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/>
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Dalene Barnes
(a bunch of really good stuff which didn't need any additional comments....)
AND..
> And, finally
> I would suggest to you that attitude (Dalene's note..Melissa's "I don't
need to knwo that") is the very opposite of that which makes a good
teacher---the love of learning.
I have noticed, among the home school parents I hang around, that THIS is a
common trait among the parents....the love of learning! Many times, at our
field trips to various locations, long after the scheduled deal is over and
the kids are either starving or exhausted, it's the MOMS keeping the tour
guide occupied with many extra questions. We just want to know! I have
been VERY excited to see my kids lingering to ask more questions as they
mature (and don't need food as desperately as the younger ones...) More
than any general specific knowledge to fill in a blank on a test, I want
them to want to learn!
Joyful day,
Dalene
Cindy Cotter
interested in education and worked as an aide at a junior high during my last
few years at school. At one point I considered switching majors to education.
In my psych department I was required, in order to get a masters, to take
certain core courses, define an area of interest, take a test in the area
specially devised for me by a committee of three faculty members, do some
original research on the topic, write it all up and defend it to the committee.
I asked someone in the education department what they had to do. I was told
it was really tough. They also had to take a test designed by a committee.
First the student would choose a subject and a list of readings and get
committee approval. After reading he'd devise his own test questions and get
those approved by the committee. Then he'd write the answers -- at home, at
leisure -- and get the answers approved by the committee. Finally the student
would memorize the answers, come in, and take the test.
I was interested in computer assisted instruction at the time. I took two
courses in the topic. One was an upper division course taught out of the
computer science department. The other was a graduate level course taught in
the education department. The computer science course consisted of some
lecture and a series of programs to write. Each program had a deadline.
The education course was a farce! You were given a simple assignment to write
a program. If it didn't work, you simply tried again. The teacher was there
to help when you got studk. If it took several tries, that was ok. You got
full credit as long as you eventually finished it, no matter how much help it
took for you to get there. Your grade was based almost entirely on those
assignments, but if you wanted an A you had to take a test at the end of the
semester. The test was extraordinarily simple.
I was massively discouraged. I didn't switch majors.
Cindy Cotter
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cotte...@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/cotter1225/wildgrape.htm
http://members.aol.com/cotter1225/CA-HS-Law.htm
Rebecca
> Years ago I was a psychology major with an interest in learning theory. I was
> interested in education and worked as an aide at a junior high during my last
> few years at school. At one point I considered switching majors to education.
>
I also got my masters in Psychology, but in my case it was Clinical
Psych. I also resist the comparison between the two departments. I
graduated from undergrad with a BS (not BA - it required many more
courses from math and other sciences) in Psych, with Phi Beta Kappa. In
graduate school our courses were very rigorous, with a special emphasis
on good empirical research methodology, Statistics and Computer Science.
I was in the PhD program but left early to become a systems programmer
for a major computer vendor because I personally found it much easier.
Since then, I found that even though I didn't ever pursue a career in
Psychology, my background in that field has made me especially suited
for many of the positions I've found myself in since then. Raising and
homeschooling my children, running a homeschooling support group, and
helping to run the statewide organization that I am a part of, as well
as lobbying the legislature for good homeschooling treatment, not to
mention training our dogs, and holding classes in my home for children
other than my own, have all been much more successful because of my
continuing interest in how behavior is learned and motivated.
I understand the interest in having leaders (Michael's CEO example) who
are experts in their field, but I have seen many technically excellent
people who were promoted out of the technical area to become quite
mediocre and ineffective managers. Knowing how to even talk with other
human beings without offending them, or explaining a technical point
without completely losing the person they're talking with is not a skill
that comes automatically to everyone.
It is typical that someone in the "hard sciences" would assume that all
the behavioral sciences are simplistic and a waste of time and effort,
but airing that view here will only offend people who have otherwise
been appreciative of your experience and advice.
Rebecca
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 24th of February, 2003
Rebecca wrote:
It is typical that someone in the "hard sciences"
would assume that all the behavioral sciences are
simplistic and a waste of time and effort, but airing
that view here will only offend people who have otherwise
been appreciative of your experience and advice.
At issue was not so much psychology, but "psychology",
as used by an education major---meaning ed majors took
some courses in what was supposed to be the development
of children, leading ultimately to the whole institutional
age-segregation and age-appropriate thing.
Anyway, I confess that I do underrate psychology and
sociology as sciences. That is, I think of them as
sciences only in the sense that Aristotle's observation
and classification of plants and animals was scientific.
There's a quote by Rutherford I think it is who says,
"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
I agree with him, taking "physics" and "stamp collecting"
as metaphors, the former for science where we may really isolate
mechanism and investigate simple direct rules of causality
versus the latter for science where we collect information
about complex systems and attempt to classify and categorize
this information.
Physics is embedded within philosophy at a
pigeonhole once known as Natural Philosophy. There are
I think metaphysical assumptions that one needs to
make in order to do physics. But, see, once one makes
those assumptions, one ends up with a program that
is so succesful at what it does that it, more or less,
snips its own umbilical cord from philosophy. In other
words, what matters to a physicist is the 12-to-14-decimal-place
predictive accuracy that physics can give us with respect to
fundamental aspects of the real world (I am thinking in
particular of the two best scientific theories we own---the
first being quantum electrodynamics where the magnetic moment
of the electron is predicted to something like 12 decimal
places, the second being General Relativity Theory, where
the period of the binary pulsar is predicted to some 14
decimal places). It becomes an endeavour, a science, in its
own right, without necessarily calling into question at any
point those metaphysical assumptions, except insofar as one steps
outside of science and chooses to do philosophy.
Psychology is different, I think. it is Maybe pre-scientific,
maybe not ever really to be scientific. That is, the
human behavioural sciences---psychology, sociology,
political science, some kinds of history, and economics---
are embedded in Moral Philosophy in the way that physics
is embedded in Natural Philosophy, and one needs to make
similar assumptions within Moral Philosophy in order to
investigate Human Nature as a science that one made over
in Natural Philosophy in order to do chemistry, physics,
biology, or, say, archaeology. The question, however, is
whether the behavioural sciences ever successfully separate
themslevs from ethical philosophy in the same way the natural
sciences do. I would say no---that there is never in the
prediction of human behaviour the kind of ten-decimal-place
predictivity that you have in physics. Oh, I fully grant
and understand that, say, it *is* predictively known that
alcolhol consumption impairs reaction time, so there
is an obvious physiological component to behaviour that
does have its scientific predictability. However, it is
entirely unclear to me that more interesting causalities
(such as the hypothesis that violent TV show watching
causes violent behaviour in children, to allude to
one famous study) have anything like a scientific basis.
Yeah, if you exclude "free will" as a nonscientific
term in the first place, then I suppose you can do a study
and find a weak correlation in your study this way or that way,
but the correlations are *always* weak, which *always* means
to me (as a hard scientist) that there are variables that
have not been understood or controlled for, and
this religious/philosophical/nonscientific idea of "free
will" seems to me, well, probably simply wrong to leave out,
and possibly not ever even assumptively excludable by
scientific method.
I do not want to be seen as dissing or dismissing
"stamp collecting" science. I think that it is intrinsically
valuable as a human pursuit of knowledge. *I do* mean to diss
and dismiss, however, the psychologist who lends himself
and his study results out to either Oprah or either political
party in order to support this or that legislation. *Then*
I say there is a humility towards the very real complexity and ambiguity
of his subject that is being jettisoned.
In particular, Rebecca says:
I understand the interest in having leaders
(Michael's CEO example) who are experts in their
field, but I have seen many technically excellent
people who were promoted out of the technical area
to become quite mediocre and ineffective managers.
I wholly agree that there are such cases of people
who are technical but *not* people persons, and therefore
not good managers. However, I sincerely question that
becoming a good people person is learnable through, say,
reading the published results of psychologists.
There's a lovely quote I should dig up about here
from Ezra Pound about how the artist is the *true*
investigator of the human, whereas that behavioural
scientist only makes a false report.
In short what I think is that much so-called
human science isn't science so much as scientism.
I've even codified my skepticism, in what is known
as Morris' Law:
To any causal explanation of a correlative study
in human behaviour may be opposed an ideologically
opposite explanation causally explaining the same
correlation with equal success.
And there is its corollary, Morris' Ax:
In the social sciences, entities cannot be
kept from multiplying, except by party
discipline.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Rebecca
I think you are oversimplifying what psychologists do. Maybe you need
to just apologize and then stop. Going on to explain how the study of
psychology is sort of like stamp collecting is just as offensive as your
previous statements.
Those of us who spent 6 years studying existing research and doing
research of our own also believe that we were "isolating mechanism and
investigating simple direct rules of causality". Especially those of us
with a more behavioral slant to our discipline. Simple correlational
studies are only one type of study that a psychologist might do.
That is not to say that I don't see a a difference between the social
sciences and the physical sciences. Of course, learning how to control
and predict behavior is not as exact as learning how to build a bridge
that can carry a certain load, or how to lift a rocket up above the
atmosphere. And you're absolutely right that much social science is
frequently misused by politicians with an axe to grind or an activist
with a particular bias. But don't scorn social scientists. That's just
a good argument for making sure that more people get at least a basic
education in it so that they can be better judges of the arguments that
others try to use on them.
I find that even now - 20 years after earning my degree - I can look at
almost any study - sociological, psychological, economic, or medical -
published or discussed in the newspaper, or any of the scientific
magazines that I often read, and instantly tell you whether their
conclusions are justified by the methodology used and the results
obtained, or if they are just using big words to impress the reader.
(More often than not, it's the latter.) Since much public policy is
based on such research I wish more college graduates had at least some
of my training.
Rebecca
Melissa Ferrell
Dan,
Please allow me to clarify a few things for you and for everyone else.
I was the original author, but I was not trying to push others down
as you say. I was seriously considering mentioning home schooling to
a good friend of the family for her 10 year old son. I was asking
what some of the parents of HS students think the benefits are. The
response I got was rather harsh, but I'm not surprised. I expected to
come in to a support group for parents fo HS students and ruffle a few
feathers. I have gotten many good responses such as yours (Dan) and
some not so friendly responses that I have in fact forwared to my
friend. She has since decided not to place her child in HS, but to
hire a private tutor three days per week to help her son.
I also have to agree with you on how hard it is to be a teacher.
Having done some pre-student teaching, I have found that it is very
difficult to reach each child and stimulate their minds to the
required cirriculm. I have to agree that the previous post was a bit
harsh on teachers. You have given me some good points to think about
and I thank you for them.
Melissa
Melissa Ferrell
I find no need for condesending remarks or irritating pet names
"Kitten" and "Missy". I posted originally not to attack parents of
homeschooled kids, but to find out what parents think the advantages
are. I am older than you think I am and find you take sterotypes too
much to heart. Maybe instead of attacking my every thought, you
people (not just you Daisy, but everyone) should be civil enough in
responses, such as Mr. Morris, to try and influence my thinking to the
positive aspect of homeschooling. Just a thought.
Melissa
Melissa Ferrell
Matt,
The responses I was refering to were the ones where I was called a
"Lyin' spammin troll". Believe me, I did notice the polite responses
and thanked those people for their honesty and respect. I also thank
you for your respectful response.
Melissa
Melissa Ferrell
Oh Barbra! I'm so glad you asked that question regarding Harry
Potter. That has actually been the source of some debate in my Lit
courses this semester and last semester. Whether or not someone
thinks Harry Potter is Literature, I found has been a personal
opinion. I have not read the books or seen the movies, but from what
I hear, they are postively wonderful! My definition of literature is
whatever an individual finds joy in reading. For that is Biographies,
and classic Literature (Gulliver's Travels and Moll Flanders). However
my classes tend not to get too much into modern literature though I am
sad to say. For the most part I have been taking courses that center
around 18th Century British Literature.
I don't doubt that children learn in HS, but my original post was
intended to find out what parents of HS kids see as the benefits of
homeschooling since I have seen so many negative outcomes. Mr. Morris
provided some wonderful points and so have several others and I thank
them for their honesty. I have been trying to ignore (with limited
success) the nasty responses. I thank you for your interest and
response and look forward to reading more from you.
Melissa
Melissa Ferrell
Tammy,
Thank you so much for your post. You have provided many points for me
to think about. I see your point about fitting learning around the
student. I think that it makes a world of difference for a kid. I
have been forwarding these responses to my good friend who was
considering placing her son in homeschooling. Since then she has
decided to keep him in public schools and hire a tutor.
Earlier someone mentioned that I have not responed to many questions
asked to me in regards to my original posting. I have to say that
while I have tried to post and check the postings as often as
possible, I do work full time, attend school full time, and commute 45
miles to school and work each day. This leaves me very little time
for much of anything-hence the reason my husband and I have decided to
put off having children until things settle down. (I do this not
because I am selfish and want my career. I can't wait for babies, but
I also want them to have the things I never had, and with a college
degree and a steady job, I can provide that). I thank everyone for
their posts and if there is a specific question that you would like
answered you can send me an e-mail at Lilli...@aol.com and please
include something about homeschooling in the subject line-if I don't
know the e-mail, I tend to delete it.
Melissa
Melissa Ferrell
I don't remember who wrote it because I can't find it now, but it was
written that someone doesn't think that Literature can be used in real
life...I have one word for that : VOCABULARY. Have you ever had to
read a book with the same descriptive words over and over? It becomes
redundant and irritating. I do think that the original question was a
good one.
Melissa
Dennis Hancock
"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com...
news:<dfh45v8e6v9l8b8ik...@4ax.com>...
> > Melissa Ferrell wrote:
> > >> I had the advantage of attending a public
> > >> school....I ran into several people in...
> > >> college that had been home schooled....
> > >> [They didn't know] how to write a cohesive
> > >> paragraph, [and] they didn't know basic
> > >> history, math, science etc....
> >
> > Dalene Barnes wrote:
> > >Does this not smell like flame-bait to anyone
> > > but me? LOL
> >
> > Oh, yeah; no kidding! She claims she met
> > "several" homeschoolers in college? What
> > college what =that=? And =all= of them
> > were so stunningly ignorant as to seem
> > abnormal to a product of public education?
> > She must have met every single statistical
> > outlier in the country, and all at the
> > same college!
> >
> > Yeah, she's a lyin' spammin' troll.
> >
> > <whack!> Get back under that bridge where
> > you belong!
> >
> > Eliz.
> >
> >
> > -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> > http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> > -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
>
> For your information, I'm not a"Lyin' spammin' troll". I attend a
> well respecteed school for future educations called Eastern Michigan
> University. Ever hear of it? Or maybe you're too ignorant to realize
> that some people actually know what they're talking about.
Ah,, she finally comes out of her shell and shows her true identity. Isn't
it amazing that everyone else is too 'ignorant' to realize that she 'knows
what she's talking about'?
Her arrogance is just one of the many reasons people choose to homeschool in
the first place. The public schools have been deteriorating for decades,
and throwing more and more money at the problem, and to the same people who
created the problem, only makes them defensive.
Melissa, what have we seen from the public educators who seem to be the only
'authorities' on the topic of what a person's children must lear. We've
seen too many left behind. We have seen a continual lowering of standards
so that children can move up in classes and the teaching profession
considers that a 'solution' as to why many in the public schools are not
learning.
Then the 's' word which is so popular these days, as if you guys have run
out of logical reasons as to why you are failing so many children. Every
study done has shown that homeschooled children on the average are much
BETTER adjusted socially than those in public schools. (I have yet to read a
story about a homeschooled child going on a shooting rampage because they
are being bullied or put down by their peers). They are not lumped in with
kids their age for six hours a day. Oh yes, while Im at it, if so much
time is spent on 'socialization', when do you get the time to actually
TEACH?
The public school system has a one size fits all approach. One cannot
honestly say that it is best for every child and be honest that they care
about helping children attain their fullest potential. Who would have a
more vested interest in helping a child attain their greatest potential than
that child's parent? Certainly not some 9 to 5 lackey who has 30 kids in
their class and is trying to juggle 'standardized' means of teaching to all
in the same manner.
Bruce D. Ray
Lillipa...@yahoo.com (Melissa Ferrell) wrote:
{and there was snippage}
> Please allow me to clarify a few things for you and for everyone else.
> I was the original author, but I was not trying to push others down
> as you say. I was seriously considering mentioning home schooling to
> a good friend of the family for her 10 year old son. I was asking
> what some of the parents of HS students think the benefits are. The
> response I got was rather harsh, but I'm not surprised. I expected to
> come in to a support group for parents fo HS students and ruffle a few
> feathers. I have gotten many good responses such as yours (Dan) and
> some not so friendly responses that I have in fact forwared to my
> friend. She has since decided not to place her child in HS, but to
> hire a private tutor three days per week to help her son.
> I also have to agree with you on how hard it is to be a teacher.
> Having done some pre-student teaching, I have found that it is very
> difficult to reach each child and stimulate their minds to the
> required cirriculm. I have to agree that the previous post was a bit
> harsh on teachers. You have given me some good points to think about
> and I thank you for them.
I find this new statement of purpose rather troubling. Melissa,
you did not start off by presenting your situation to us in that
manner. Just to refresh memories, mostly for my own benefit, I
suspect, your original statement to us was:
> In article <8547c067.03021...@posting.google.com>,
> Lillipa...@yahoo.com (Melissa Ferrell) wrote:
>>
>> I had the advantage of attending a public school. The high school
>> that I attended was very large, somewhere in the neighborhood of over
>> 3,000 students. I ran into several people in my first year of college
>> that had been home schooled. What I found was that they were not
>> current on some of the things that they needed to know such as how to
>> write a cohesive paragraph, or they didn't know basic history, math,
>> science etc. My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
>> children really helping they at all? Sure they stay safe during the
>> day and we don't have to worry that a classmate is going to bring a
>> gun to school. But are we doing our children any favors by denying
>> them the chance to attend public schools? This is where I learned to
>> make friends and gained the skills to function in society as a human
>> being. If we home school our kids, are they still going to gain those
>> skills? Can anyone out there help me?
You should understand that we get many who post to this group
trying to explain to us how ignorant we must be to even think
of home educating our children. Indeed, your original statement
read very much like statements posted here several years ago.
As a student of education, you no doubt appreciate, far more
than a biophysics research lab manager such as I, how one's self
presentation affects others' responses. The responses you received
were predicated on your statements in your original post. These
statements were all the information about you and about your
particular interests and concerns that we had. If you had
originally posted that you were looking into the benefits and
disadvantages of home education on behalf of a friend, you would
have received an entirely different set of responses because you
would have been perceived differently. Others have come into
this group, have asked that question, and did receive a different
response than you received. Instead, you posted a statement
that reads as if you believe home education to be deterimental
in the vast majority of cased. Therefore, you were perceived
as being another in that long line of college students convinced
that they have more knowledge about the processes of and
requirements for proper education than all of us combined despite
the fact that some here have been involved in education for
decades.
To summarize, your present statement causes me to feel that
you have mislead me as to your particular interests and
concerns. Fortunately for you, you are not a post-doc
working in my lab. If you were, I would be going to your
supervisor at this point over your conduct because laboratory
management is dependent on being able to trust those one
allows to work in one's laboratory. You may wish to give
this problem in your self presentation some thought. The
conclusion you drew before the fact, that you were going to
ruffle feathers, may well be a contributing misconception of
yours about the nature of social interaction.
--
Warning to commercial e-mailers {spammers}: The e-mail
address provided above is for information purposes only
and is subjected to extensive e-mail filtering. Do not
send unsolicited commercial e-mail to this address.
Dennis Hancock
> Tammy,
> Thank you so much for your post. You have provided many points for me
> to think about. I see your point about fitting learning around the
> student. I think that it makes a world of difference for a kid. I
> have been forwarding these responses to my good friend who was
> considering placing her son in homeschooling. Since then she has
> decided to keep him in public schools and hire a tutor.
> Earlier someone mentioned that I have not responed to many questions
> asked to me in regards to my original posting. I have to say that
> while I have tried to post and check the postings as often as
> possible, I do work full time, attend school full time, and commute 45
> miles to school and work each day. This leaves me very little time
> for much of anything-hence the reason my husband and I have decided to
> put off having children until things settle down. (I do this not
> because I am selfish and want my career. I can't wait for babies, but
> I also want them to have the things I never had, and with a college
> degree and a steady job, I can provide that). I thank everyone for
> their posts and if there is a specific question that you would like
> answered you can send me an e-mail at Lilli...@aol.com and please
> include something about homeschooling in the subject line-if I don't
> know the e-mail, I tend to delete it.
>
> Melissa
Melissa,
Your friend should do as much research as possible into homeschooling before
embarking on it. My sister spent three years doing research on the net,
checking into the requirements, the benefits, joining newsgroups like this,
and joining many of the homeschooling associations and getting as much
material and information together as she could in order to help her make her
decision.
She had put up with a lot of nonsense in the public schools with her two
older children, and had intended to merely homeschool her youngest. After
much research, and finding many sources from which to draw upon, she
undertook homeschooling under a public charter school which allows her the
freedom to select the ciriculum and methods of teaching. She meets with an
ES who is a public school teacher and submits samples of the kids work about
every three weeks, and has been getting nothing but encouragement on the
children's progress.
Her daughter was way below grade level, and losing interest, her son above
grade level and being bored with the redundancy of going over the same
things again and again, which he found too simplistic. Now, she can
challenge her son, and we have just discovered that in some areas where her
daughter was very behind, such as math, she has actually progressed to
slightly above her grade level.
Homeschooling is not for everyone, and many students are better off in
public schools. However, as others have posted, if the parent has the
desire and dedication to put into seeing that their children get the type of
education they deserve, then they should perhaps look into homeschooling as
an option for them.
I think they key is the parents willingness and desire to become a part of
their childrens education. Im sure there are some who simply don't want to
be bothered, and feel they can fake their way through it, but the net has a
wealth of resources available to anyone who has the desire to make it work
for them.
Mike Sabo
I must agree with Melissa on her statement that she is not a troll. She does not
fit the Usenet definition. I contend that her original post clearly falls within
the shill catagory.
****
SHILL vs. TROLL
A shill is different from a troll in that a shrill posts messages as a
spokesperson or front for some unseen/unknown group or organization, usually
taking the other side on the topics being discussed. Shills appear most commonly
on 'reviews' and 'readers opinions' scripts, on Usenet, lists and message
boards.
There are some techniques for telling whether a contributor is a shill:
1.Look for other reviews/contributions on the same forum to see
how they compare.
2.Look for other reviews/contributions by the same reviewer.
3.If there aren't any, look out!
4.Look for a review/contribution made by a recognized
reviewer/contributor.
5.With respect to bad reviews, look for an obvious agenda.
6.Contributors who appear out of nowhere and use highly
inflammatory or gratuitously insulting language are suspect.
Always check the real meaning of the contribution - between the lines.
Try to understand if it could be the competition or someone else with a bone to
pick.
****
Let's test the hypothesis.
1. I think that we can all agree that this is her first time posting here.
2. Doing a quick Google search on groups using "Lillipad2192003" as the
search string shows that here only contributions have been to
misc.education.home-school.misc.
3. Bzzt.
4. No previous contribution history to compare to.
5. Original post is written like an anecdotal story justifying resolution
B-67.
6. Maybe not particulary inflammatory (unless your thin skinned) but I would
catagorize it as condescending.
>
>
> Her arrogance is just one of the many reasons people choose to homeschool in
> the first place. The public schools have been deteriorating for decades,
> and throwing more and more money at the problem, and to the same people who
> created the problem, only makes them defensive.
There is no reason for her to be defensive as she has not yet had a chance to
create these problems. My wife was an education major when I first met her. She
is not a "Teacher" now, rather she is a homeschooling mother. A degree in
Education does not make anyone a teacher and neither does a lack of a degree
preclude one from being a teacher. (I'm refering to the definition of the word,
not some legislative drivel.)
>
>
> Melissa, what have we seen from the public educators who seem to be the only
> 'authorities' on the topic of what a person's children must learn. We've
> seen too many left behind.
It would be nice if these Professors in Education could stick to trying to
enable the next good crop of teachers. A quick review of the Faculty listing of
the "well respected school for future educations called Eastern Michigan
University" had a couple of surprises in it. Most of them I've never heard of
but two stood out.
The first was Dr. Martusewicz. This one rang a bell and then I recalled
having to read a section of her work concerning environmental racism for one of
my planning classes. Until now I would not have guessed that such tripe had come
from a Professor in Education. I guess this is a good example of "Appeals to
Authority" and Fallacies of Relevance.
The other was Dr. Polakow. Boy, I can remember my wife and the wife of a
collegue getting into it over Dr. Polakow's position on state control over child
care for infants. It didn't help that my collegue's wife had been living in
Denmark for nearly a decade and saw nothing wrong with universal child care
starting at 6 months of age.
> We have seen a continual lowering of standards
> so that children can move up in classes and the teaching profession
> considers that a 'solution' as to why many in the public schools are not
> learning.
>
> Then the 's' word which is so popular these days, as if you guys have run
> out of logical reasons as to why you are failing so many children. Every
> study done has shown that homeschooled children on the average are much
> BETTER adjusted socially than those in public schools.
And here is the difference between having peer-reviewed sources to fall back on
as opposed to making an assertion on anecdotal evidence alone.
> (I have yet to read a
> story about a homeschooled child going on a shooting rampage because they
> are being bullied or put down by their peers). They are not lumped in with
> kids their age for six hours a day. Oh yes, while Im at it, if so much
> time is spent on 'socialization', when do you get the time to actually
> TEACH?
>
> The public school system has a one size fits all approach. One cannot
> honestly say that it is best for every child and be honest that they care
> about helping children attain their fullest potential. Who would have a
> more vested interest in helping a child attain their greatest potential than
> that child's parent? Certainly not some 9 to 5 lackey who has 30 kids in
> their class and is trying to juggle 'standardized' means of teaching to all
> in the same manner.
We can all pray that Melissa gets the opportunity to intern at a sucessfull
private institution like the Ann Arbor Academy. Not only is Ms. Brockbank the
founder and director of the academy, she is also an EMU alum and former
homeschooler.
Gemma
I think it depends on where you are and what your situation is when
deciding whether or not home schooling is a good idea. I come from a
rural area and feel that home schooling would have had no benefits as
we had enough teachers for the pupils and it was a chance to see
people our own age. In a bigger school pupils may benefit from getting
more individual teaching.
L. Miller
Ferrell) wrote:
>
>I find no need for condesending remarks or irritating pet names
>"Kitten"
Excuse me, I believe Kitten is someones screen name and not a pet name
meant to irritate you.
Daisy Witherell Déry
>
> I find no need for condesending remarks or irritating pet names
> "Kitten" and "Missy". I posted originally not to attack parents of
Melissa, "Missy" is a term parents will often use with a girl who mouths off
at them or forgets their place.
> homeschooled kids, but to find out what parents think the advantages
That's great that we know that now. But there was no way of knowing that to
start with. We had another guy in here a few months back who posted somewhat
the same thing. He only did it to cause trouble. Actually, I can't think of
a time I've seen a post like yours when it wasn't to cause trouble.
> are. I am older than you think I am and find you take sterotypes too
Well then, you should know better than to say things like, "See what you
made me do?"
> much to heart. Maybe instead of attacking my every thought, you
> people (not just you Daisy, but everyone) should be civil enough in
I gave you a completely civil response to your original post. You either
have not seen it or refuse to respond to it. And I think you are being
somewhat hypocritical in your accusations.
> responses, such as Mr. Morris, to try and influence my thinking to the
> positive aspect of homeschooling. Just a thought.
>
> Melissa
Just a thought, Melissa: really think about the things you have written. You
get snippety about someone using Kitten (which is simply the woman's
NICKNAME that she ALWAYS uses and has absolutely NOTHING to do with you),
accuse people of making you do things, and essentially accuse homeschooling
parents of spending too much time calling you names so that they can't teach
their children grammar and spelling. How would YOU react, Melissa, to
someone saying such things to you? I also find it interesting that you have
not admitted to having been mistaken--I do believe you thought *I* was the
one who had called you a lying spamming troll when I clearly wasn't. And
honestly, Melissa, if someone had called *me* a lying spamming troll when I
posted my first post in a group, I would not retaliate, but try to better
explain myself to show I had no ill intentions.
If you are NOT a late teen or early 20's, then you certainly have the
sensitivity and knee-jerk reaction common among that age group. (That's a
shame because it means you will likely take a lot of things personally when
you needn't.) This has nothing to do with stereotypes--it's a matter of
experience and seeing _tendencies_. It's not just that the made me think you
were late teens or early 20's: your constantly referring to Mike as Mr.
Norris was another aspect. Adult peers just don't tend to do that.
Daisy
Cindy Cotter
Norris was another aspect. Adult peers just don't tend to do that.**
School people do that. At least, they often do that. I think it's part of a
campaign to ensure that teachers are respected by the kids over whom they're
trying to assert authority, but sometimes it goes farther than that, and they
seem to be wanting to claim respect for their professional status from the
world at large.
Melissa Ferrell
Good Morning all.
Some of you have brought up some really good points. I thank the
person who provided some information about their sister and her
children. Now that I look back on my original post, I do see how I
mislead most of you, if not all of you. I apologize if anyone thought
I was attacking parents for homeschooling their children. That was
not my intention. My post was based on what I had knowledge of, and
that was a group of about 15 students. If I wasn't writing from what
I know, what good would I be as a writer? However, I do feel as
though I know what I'm talking about here, and most of you know what
you're talking about. I can tell the serious parents who believe
strongly in their decision to HS from the ones who feel as though they
need confirmation from the rest of the world that they are doing the
right thing. Those are the parents who provided no constructive
feedback, but instead only posted to call me names and tell me how
ignorant they think I am. I refuse to believe everything I hear and
see, but when it's so common, I feel as though there might be some
truth to the information. That's why I posted my original message.
If anyone can provide me with some web sites I might observe or some
books, I would appreciate that. As for anyone else who may think that
I'm just another author of flame bait and do not care to provide some
real help in my questions, you need not respond. I don't have the
time to wade through messages of hostililty to get to the messsages
with real content.
Melissa
susabean
concise, verifiable information on homeschooling. If you feel that people
are not taking you seriously, or if you feel you are a "victim" of
unkindness, then why not put that education degree to work and research the
subject yourself?
Coming onto a newsgroup devoted to homeschoolers and posting what could be
taken as inflamnatory comments is NOT research. Asking people to do your
legwork for you by asking for websites and books is NOT research, either.
It would take 30 seconds to put homeschooling in any search engine. I did
it and came up with some 386,000 responses. It would take a little more
effort to go to the library and look up the subject in the computer, look
for the books, and read them, but that's what I did prior to homeschooling.
For what its worth, I agree that perhaps *some* of the responses (like 1 out
of 10!!) have been less than productive, or even mean. HOWEVER....even you
agreed that you understand why people mistook what you had to say. And you
have YET to respond to Daisy's long, thought out post regarding
homeschooling, choosing instead to concentrate on any negatives and slights
you have perceived (in one instance WRONGLY) to her. You expect people to
apologize.....where's YOUR apology to Daisy for mistaking her for the troll
post? To Kitten for getting upset with her over her NAME?
Stop looking at the negatives. Take from the thread what you can use and
throw the rest away. Life is NOT fair, not everyone is gonna be nice, play
nice, or like you, and acting in a defensive, childish way will not get you
very far in life....as you can see, it certainly didn't get you very far
here.
If you are still reading thus far, try to find any books by John Taylor
Gatto. Read them with an open mind. They will most likely offend you,
since you are so entrenched in the educational system, but ask yourself when
you are reading them WHY they offend you.
And put the word homeschooling in a search engine. You'll be amazed at the
results.
Blessings,
Tammy
*who heard "look it up" most of her life and tells her children to do the
same.
--
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of
the originality.
Beatrix Potter
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
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Daisy Witherell Déry
"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com...
> Some of you have brought up some really good points. I thank the
> person who provided some information about their sister and her
> children. Now that I look back on my original post, I do see how I
> mislead most of you, if not all of you. I apologize if anyone thought
> I was attacking parents for homeschooling their children. That was
Thank you!
> not my intention. My post was based on what I had knowledge of, and
> that was a group of about 15 students. If I wasn't writing from what
> I know, what good would I be as a writer? However, I do feel as
> though I know what I'm talking about here, and most of you know what
> you're talking about. I can tell the serious parents who believe
> strongly in their decision to HS from the ones who feel as though they
> need confirmation from the rest of the world that they are doing the
> right thing. Those are the parents who provided no constructive
> feedback, but instead only posted to call me names and tell me how
> ignorant they think I am. I refuse to believe everything I hear and
I am the ONLY person who pushed the "ignorant" back in your face, and I DID
provide feedback that you chose to ignore or simply didn't get in your
newsreader. I post it again below. And actually, I asked you some pertinent
questions in another post. You were wondering how kids would learn spelling
and grammar if they didn't get it at school. I asked you what you think YOUR
parents would have done or what YOU would do if you homeschooled your kids.
People who are unknowledgable about homeschooling tend to assume the worst
about parents, that they don't know enough or something to actually think
about teaching their kids spelling and grammar.
> see, but when it's so common, I feel as though there might be some
> truth to the information. That's why I posted my original message.
> If anyone can provide me with some web sites I might observe or some
> books, I would appreciate that. As for anyone else who may think that
> I'm just another author of flame bait and do not care to provide some
> real help in my questions, you need not respond. I don't have the
> time to wade through messages of hostililty to get to the messsages
> with real content.
>
> Melissa
Repost of message below:
-----------------------
"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8547c067.03021...@posting.google.com...
> I had the advantage of attending a public school. The high school
I, too, had the advantage of attending a public school. My mother and I
would have killed each other if we'd homeschooled. Also, I was able to be in
French Immersion throughout my school years, providing me with a
bilingualism my mother never could have provided. However, my kids, in
attending public school, would not be able to continue English, French and
German instruction all at once. They would not be able to work at their own
pace, going ahead when ready or spending more time as needed or wanted for
TRUE learning.
> that I attended was very large, somewhere in the neighborhood of over
> 3,000 students. I ran into several people in my first year of college
That, IMHO, is TOO large. I lived in Yellowknife, where there were about
600-700 students grades 10-12 the last year I was there. This is a good
size. We have one high school with 3000 students and it's considered one of
the most dangerous schools in town and one you want to avoid sending your
kid to if you are one of the lucky ones who knows better.
> that had been home schooled. What I found was that they were not
> current on some of the things that they needed to know such as how to
> write a cohesive paragraph, or they didn't know basic history, math,
> science etc. My question that I pose is this: Is home schooling our
> children really helping they at all? Sure they stay safe during the
Where were these kids homeschooled? How long had they been homeschooled?
Were they incapable of learning the things they were not up-to-date with?
How many public schooled kids do you know who DO know "basic history", can
write a cohesive paragraph and so on? Also, the students you met are hardly
representative of the whole. You can't go and meet a few homeschoolers and
assume the other million or so in North America are the same.
> day and we don't have to worry that a classmate is going to bring a
> gun to school. But are we doing our children any favors by denying
> them the chance to attend public schools? This is where I learned to
Let me tell you, Melissa, I was a public school teacher. My husband IS a
public school teacher. It is because of what we see in schools that we
decided to not have our daughter in that situation for at least elementary
school. For us, the question is the reverse: would we be doing our daughter
(5yo--and our 2yo son) any favours by denying them a safe, caring
environment for their early school years, allowing them to learn at their
own pace, where we are there to coach them and truly instill our values in
them?
> make friends and gained the skills to function in society as a human
> being. If we home school our kids, are they still going to gain those
> skills? Can anyone out there help me?
My daughter is having no problems making friends. Do you know the Little
House on the Prairie series? They are based on the life of the real Laura
Ingalls Wilder. She lived in a house with her sisters and her Ma and Pa wait
out in the wilderness for a long time. Did she have trouble making friends
later on? No--why not? What about before there was mass schooling--did those
people have trouble making friends? Learning necessary social skills?
No--why not? Because it social skills have nothing whatsoever to do with
schools. If we focus simply on SOCIAL SKILLS, it honestly seems like the
more massive public schooling becomes, the worse the social skills of
society in general are.
From reading your other message, I think you have the idea that in 20 years,
EVERYONE will be homeschooled and you'll be out of a job. Melissa--nobody is
suggesting that EVERY child be homeschooled. I think we'd be doing a great
disservice to many kids and families if the gov't decided everybody should
homeschool. But we're also doing a disservice to many families and kids if
we don't let those who feel it's important, do so.
Snippets from your other message:
>Mr. Morris brings up a really good point. I'm sure that your children
>are very well socialized. But how many children are as well
>socialized as yours are? I highly doubt that there is a large group
>of kids who have as many friends as your daughter does. I don't
Do you think people need a large group of friends in order to be properly
socialized?
>are your children ever going to read Latin or Greek in their adult
>professions? Now I'm well aware that most of what we learn in school
>is stuff that we will never use in the real world. And I'm sure that
Then why question him what he chooses to teach his kids? While the kids may
never use Latin or Greek later on, the skills the kids have acquired in
learning these languages will remain forever.
>I have regarding home schooling is are these kids learning anything?
Some are, some aren't. Different states and provinces have different
requirements. I believe Texas doesn't strictly monitor any school (could a
Texan confirm or not?) How do you know if ANY of the kids in Texas are
learning anything? Because the people in charge of their education care
about the kids and want to make sure they are learning something.
>I have never been in a home schooled setting, but how do we know for
>sure that all of these kids are learning, and not having someone else
>do the homework for them? I knew of one student who paid his "smart"
Melissa, this doesn't make any sense. Do you know how homeschooling works?
These kids do not get work sent from school to do at home. Except for those
registered in some sort of program, they are not filling in worksheets and
sending them off to a teacher to be marked. In most cases, the PARENTS are
the teachers, which means the parents are certainly not going to be doing
the work for their kids (what would be the point??????????)
>three years after high school? He works as Wendy's and wishes that he
>had attended public school so that someone could have caught his
>inability to read.
Honestly, if this kid's parents didn't realize he had a reading problem,
then they were neglectful. But you know what? There are kids who go through
public school able to do the same thing. What's to have stopped this kid
from doing the same thing in public school? Of many, many, many
homeschooling families I have personally met, there has only been *1* whom
I've considered somewhat educationally neglectful. (Of the extreme
unschooling variety--she figured her son (12yo) would read when he's ready,
he's been wanting to learn for sometime but she won't teach him because she
figures he'll learn on his own when he's ready...) To take ONE case and
apply it to the whole is nonsense.
>I just think that while home schooling might be
>good for your children, Mr. Morris, but I don't think that parents are
>doing it for the right reasons.
Each parent will have his/her own reasons. For me, it's primarily a concern
of socialization--I do NOT want my children to be like public-schooled kids.
I do not believe in single-age segregation (this just encourages reliance on
peers at a time in one's life when the child should be relying on parents
for guidance) and there's no way a teacher or school can adequately coach
all 20-35 kids in proper interactions (do you KNOW all the things kids say
and talk about?--when I'm somewhere with homeschooling families, there are a
LOT of adults around who can pick up on what kids are doing and saying and
intervene when necessary.) The things that go on at recess and afterschool
are absolutely atrocious, even in the best of schools.
There is also the academic concern but that comes after socialization. Dd
has always been advanced--she is mid-Kindergarten age, but doing late gr.
1-mid gr. 2 level of work. Ds (2yo) has had a pattern since birth that may
cause obvious problems at school--he'll lag for awhile in some skill area,
then all of a sudden shoot ahead and be advanced at times, then doesn't
progress so he evens out, lags again, jumps ahead and so on. This pattern
may dissolve over time or may stay with him. But it's there now and will
likely be there when he is school age. Either school won't help at all or
they'll make him into an exception where he will have to be different from
everybody which is totally contrary to the nature of school socialization.
This is not what I want for my kids. I want them to be an environment where
lots of love and learning opportunities are available, and this is certainly
not what most elementary schools provide.
Daisy
Dalene Barnes
> I think it depends on where you are and what your situation is when
> deciding whether or not home schooling is a good idea. I come from a
> rural area and feel that home schooling would have had no benefits as
> we had enough teachers for the pupils and it was a chance to see
> people our own age. In a bigger school pupils may benefit from getting
> more individual teaching.
This statement is based on the assumption that size and setting are
primarily why you choose to home school your children. This is simply not
true for us (and probably many other home schooling families). Our base
reasons for home schooling would not change if we moved to San Antonio or
Houston, or Cut-N-Shoot or Dime Box. Our reasons include: religious
instruction; learning styles of our children (one is tactile with possible
mild dyslexia, not a good combo for a classroom setting); family time;
health benefits (more sleep, better food); parental control vs. State
control; the ability to allow our children to deeply pursue personal areas
of educational interest; real-life instruction vs. made up "situations;" the
ability to allow our children to learn at their real level and speed (i.e.
my 9th grader is currently reading Dr. Steven Hawking's lectures...hardly
standard 9th grade science material, while my 12-year old still *likes* to
read at about a 4th grade level for fun, reading at her "grade level" only
when she *has* to).
The above statement also seems to assume that, if you home school, you
therefore do NOT get to see people your own age. That is simply a matter of
parental choice; you are neither forced to spend 9 hours a day with 30 peers
not of your choosing, nor are you forced to sit at an isolated table in your
home with no peer contact. Our children are involved in a home school
basketball team, a history/Spanish/science co-op, volunteer at the library,
AWANA's at church, an acting group, home school skate day, home school
sports days, teen book reviews at both the library and Barnes and Noble. We
deliberately try to make sure they are involved in activites with both other
home schoolers, AND non-home schoolers; church people and NON-church people.
We personally do not feel isolating our children from anything is a good
idea, but we definitely want to monitor and be totally aware of what our
children face so we can direct and advise as needed.
So, I guess this may answer Melissa's first bait-like post as to WHY we home
school. There is no longer one concise reason; it is our entire life style,
no longer simply an educational choice. We feel it is the BEST we can offer
our children, not simply what is "good."
Dalene Barnes
Michael S. Morris
Tuesday, the 25th of February, 2003
Rebecca wrote:
It is typical that someone in the "hard sciences"
would assume that all the behavioral sciences are
simplistic and a waste of time and effort, but airing
that view here will only offend people who have otherwise
been appreciative of your experience and advice.
I said:
At issue was not so much psychology, but "psychology",
as used by an education major---meaning ed majors took
some courses in what was supposed to be the development
of children, leading ultimately to the whole institutional
age-segregation and age-appropriate thing.
Anyway, I confess that I do underrate psychology and
sociology as sciences. That is, I think of them as
sciences only in the sense that Aristotle's observation
and classification of plants and animals was scientific.
There's a quote by Rutherford I think it is who says,
"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
I agree with him, taking "physics" and "stamp collecting"
as metaphors, the former for science where we may really isolate
mechanism and investigate simple direct rules of causality
versus the latter for science where we collect information
about complex systems and attempt to classify and categorize
this information.
Rebecca:
I think you are oversimplifying what psychologists do.
OK, I do not believe that that is the case, Rebecca. But, I
do hope you understand that I regard this issue between us
as a separate one from my remark about "psychology" which
prompted your response in the first place.
Rebecca:
Maybe you need to just apologize and then stop.
Umm, please understand that this is an argument that
I have made at length before, that I would relish pursuing
in detail just about anytime it comes up, and which I
remain convinced that I am on the correct side of, so
I certainly have no intention of apologizing for ruffling
anyone's feathers here. In fact, I will add fuel to the fire
with a quote from another great "hard scientist", Einstein,
who said (if I remember this correctly): "Applying the axioms
of the physical sciences to human beings has something
reprehensible about it."
Rebecca:
Going on to explain how the study of
psychology is sort of like stamp collecting
is just as offensive as your previous statements.
It is only offensive to you I think because you underrate
the importance of the stamp collecting mode of science.
Rebecca:
Those of us who spent 6 years studying existing
research and doing research of our own also believe
that we were "isolating mechanism and investigating
simple direct rules of causality".
I have no doubt that you believe this. That you believe
this is precisely what I am complaining about.
Rebecca:
Especially those of us with a more behavioral slant
to our discipline. Simple correlational studies are
only one type of study that a psychologist might do.
That is not to say that I don't see a a difference
between the social sciences and the physical sciences.
Of course, learning how to control and predict behavior
is not as exact as learning how to build a bridge that
can carry a certain load, or how to lift a rocket up
above the atmosphere.
People are not like particles or planets or billiard balls.
Yes, but the issue here is what a real scientist does when
his experiments consistently *do not* give him back
ten-decimal place predictive repeatability. He does not
elevate his weakly predictive hyotheses into theories. In
fact, he hangs his head in humility before the complexity
of the system he is studying. He lets the empirical facts---
observational and experimental---rule any conclusions that
might be drawn, including whether conclusions can be drawn
in the first place.
Rebecca:
And you're absolutely right that much social
science is frequently misused by politicians with
an axe to grind or an activist with a particular bias.
But, it is not politicians, it *is* human scientists
who are used by politicians and by political ad-men
to advocate legislation designed to "engineer" society
in ways consistent with what these human scientists are
convinced their conclusions demonstate about human behaviour.
The public and the politicians are to blame for being
uncritically ignorant about it, yes, but the social
scientists are to blame for prostituting science itself.
Rebecca:
But don't scorn social scientists.
I don't scorn social scientists. I think there
is a definite thing there, of a stamp-collecting
science nature, to be studied, analyzed, written up.
What I scorn is the pretension that we have
moved beyond that stage, when the data do not in fact
support that we have moved beyond it. That, I think,
is scientism, and not science.
Rebecca:
That's just a good argument for making sure that
more people get at least a basic education in it so
that they can be better judges of the arguments that
others try to use on them.
I personally think that some good "hard" science---
with lots of mathematics behind it---would be the
best innoculation against the sort of social-science
bullshit that we see everywhere in the pop
culture.
Rebecca:
I find that even now - 20 years after earning
my degree - I can look at almost any study -
sociological, psychological, economic, or medical -
published or discussed in the newspaper, or any
of the scientific magazines that I often read, and
instantly tell you whether their conclusions are
justified by the methodology used and the results
obtained, or if they are just using big words to
impress the reader. (More often than not, it's the
latter.)
Me, too. And I agree with the "more often than not".
Rebecca:
Since much public policy is based on such
research I wish more college graduates had
at least some of my training.
My point is that if people understood at a basic level
what science is and what science is not, then it would be
more widely understood that such research mostly does
not justify *any* public policy whatsoever. An example
would be the whole violent video games, and movies,
and television causes kids to go bonkers and shoot up
Colubine High School debate we had in the popular press
several years ago. Social scientists were trotted out in
abundance, quoting this and that research supporting this
and that conclusion, when the simple scientific fact of the
matter is that no scientist has observed in *any*
experiment any subject going postal in response to any
stimulus. As a business owner, I had the Indianapolis
newspaper call me up and ask for contributions to some
fund to try and counter "the plague" of violence in
video games and television that was breeding murderous teens
that was destroying our high schools. I told him it was
causal nonsense, and that the notorious violent behaviour
was a statistically insignificant problem, and he was
of course aghast at my callousness and I guess lack of
civic-mindedness. But we've got something like three quarters
of a million high school students in the country and
if even ten of them go postal in a given year, we have an
effect that is less than 1 in 10 to the 4. If someone
proposes that video games, or lack of corporal punishment,
or the prevalence of guns in American society, or whatever
is the cause here of the behaviour, and if we find even one
other person who was exposed to the same stimulus but
did not murder his classmates, the *scientific* conclusion
is that that stimlulus cannot be "the cause" of the
behaviour. Period. It certainly might be part of a combination
of causees of the behaviour, but it can never be as simplistic
as it has been debated in public, and in public
*by* some social scientists, is my point.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Barbara Needham
> Oh Barbra!
Name spelled wrong.
> I'm so glad you asked that question regarding Harry
> Potter. That has actually been the source of some debate in my Lit
> courses this semester and last semester. Whether or not someone
> thinks Harry Potter is Literature, I found has been a personal
> opinion. I have not read the books or seen the movies, but from what
> I hear, they are postively wonderful!
This is interesting. You are glad I asked the question, yet you respond
that you haven't read the books but take it on hearsay that they are
wonderful. This to me is very much the way you have treated
homeschooling, taking a sample of 15 and extending it to at least many
other if not all other homeschoolers.
> My definition of literature is
> whatever an individual finds joy in reading. For that is Biographies,
> and classic Literature (Gulliver's Travels and Moll Flanders). However
> my classes tend not to get too much into modern literature though I am
> sad to say. For the most part I have been taking courses that center
> around 18th Century British Literature.
Part of my point was that you can't really understand modern literature
without the background of having studied 18th Century British
literature, ancient literature such as Homer, etc.
> I don't doubt that children learn in HS, but my original post was
> intended to find out what parents of HS kids see as the benefits of
> homeschooling since I have seen so many negative outcomes.
If that is what you wanted to find out, as you are studying literature,
perhaps you could go back and see how you could have worded your
question differently.
> Mr. Morris
> provided some wonderful points and so have several others and I thank
> them for their honesty. I have been trying to ignore (with limited
> success) the nasty responses.
Well, it seemed for a while more like you were only responding to what
you call the nasty responses and ignoring the several others with
"wonderful points." If you are too busy to read all the responses to
something you post in a newsgroup, then perhaps it would be better to do
your questioning somewhere else.
> I thank you for your interest and
> response and look forward to reading more from you.
Well, here it is. There has been some discussion about science in
another branch of this thread. I'm not planning to get into THAT debate,
but I think that in either psychology or physics a sample size of 15
would be considered quite small. I'm not sure it is even the total
number of students at your college who were homeschooled. Even if it is,
you have to consider factors such as why did this particular students
choose to enroll there, etc. etc.
Also, you have never provided information as to how someone could buy
their way through homeschooling. I'm thinking you meant that he was
homeschooled and then went to college and when in college bought his
work, but that wasn't at all clear from the way you stated it.
--
Barbara Needham
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Bev Hamilton" <pha...@cox-internet.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:phamton-57B502...@corp.supernews.com...
> In article <bZL6a.332818$Yo4.12...@news1.calgary.shaw.ca>,
> "Daisy Witherell Déry" <dd...@shaw.ca.dontsendmespam> wrote:
>
> > Different states and provinces have different
> > requirements. I believe Texas doesn't strictly monitor any school (could
a
> > Texan confirm or not?) How do you know if ANY of the kids in Texas are
> > learning anything? Because the people in charge of their education care
> > about the kids and want to make sure they are learning something.
>
> Agency. There are state mandated test. Schools where students do not do
> well are put on probation and monitored, or even run, by TEA. There are
> also state adopted textbooks. Schools can only use textbooks from the
> state approved list. Number of days in school and even when the school
> year can begin is mandated. The number of students per teacher in the
> classroom is mandated . (23:1 in grades K-3rd.) The curriculum is
> mandated for all public schools in Texas.
>
> You would be correct if you are referring to private schools in Texas
> (homeschools are considered private schools.) They are not monitored
> and there are few guidelines for private schools.
>
> Bev Hamilton
Thank you for clarifying!
Daisy
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Barbara Needham" <barba...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:1fqxhac.1utzdii1uzfr28N%barba...@newsguy.com...
How come you aren't Ms. Needham?
> > I don't doubt that children learn in HS, but my original post was
Um, that's not what you said in one of your posts. Unless my memory is
horribly faulty, you asked, "How do we know if they're learning anything?"
That implies doubt.
I'm sorry to be so nitpicky, Melissa, but I can't stand it when people are
illogical (for example, you calling people ignorant then getting mad at me
for putting it back at you) and I can't stand it when people change what it
is they said.
Daisy
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
<ninj...@attbi.com> wrote:
<snipped>
>The public school system has a one size fits all approach. One cannot
>honestly say that it is best for every child and be honest that they care
>about helping children attain their fullest potential. Who would have a
>more vested interest in helping a child attain their greatest potential than
>that child's parent? Certainly not some 9 to 5 lackey who has 30 kids in
>their class and is trying to juggle 'standardized' means of teaching to all
>in the same manner.
>
This is precisely why I will not go back into a public school system.
If I continue to teach after our children are grown, it will be other
people's hs'ed children, not public schooled children. When I was
attempting to teach an average of 30 children per class, five classes
a day, I was not able to actually *teach*. It drove me nuts trying to
help the kids who were behind on a lesson, keep the ones who were on
course going, and not bore the daylights out of the ones who were
ahead. I'd much rather be mom, teacher, advisor, counsellor,
principal, chauffeur, and financial consultant to just a handful of
kids.
Kitten
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
You can always tell a Texan, but you can't tell him much. - Chris Wall
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Courage, Real courage, is no quick fix. It doesn't come in a bottle
or a pill, It comes from discipline. From taking everything life
hands you and being your best either because of it or in spite of it.
-- Ty Murray
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
wrote:
Precisely. It's from my own name. Originally, my nick in certain
places was PureGoddess, also taken from the meaning of my name. That
eventually changed to GoddessKitten, then to just Kitten. Perhaps if
she'd looked at my "From" info (Caitriona), she'd have been able to
determine just who "Kitten" is.
Daisy Witherell Déry
> I was the original author, but I was not trying to push others down
> as you say. I was seriously considering mentioning home schooling to
You covered this in another message and I'm glad to see you've reconsidered
your original post. Think of a
newsgroup like this: a group of people hanging around in a cafe, talking
about similar interests (in our case, homeschooling). All of a sudden, some
stranger pops into the group, no introduction, and starts saying, "Are we
doing our children any favors by denying them the chance to attend public
schools?"
Of course, with newsgroups, you have to be even MORE careful of the wording.
There's no way to be certain in what tone of voice that would have been
said. The other parts of your message gave the impression that such a line
was not meant in curiosity, but in critically questioning people who have
already made the choice to homeschool their kids and have them out of
schools.
> a good friend of the family for her 10 year old son. I was asking
> what some of the parents of HS students think the benefits are. The
No, you didn't. You didn't once mention "benefits".
> response I got was rather harsh, but I'm not surprised. I expected to
Yes, but for the wrong reasons, Melissa.
> come in to a support group for parents fo HS students and ruffle a few
> feathers. I have gotten many good responses such as yours (Dan) and
Ah, so you admit it. You came in to ruffle feathers. ;-) The fact of the
matter is, Melissa, you could have come in here questioning homeschooling in
a far different manner that would not have made people assume you were here
to cause trouble.
> some not so friendly responses that I have in fact forwared to my
> friend. She has since decided not to place her child in HS, but to
> hire a private tutor three days per week to help her son.
Hopefully she's doing this because she actually understands homeschooling
and not because people got mad at you.
Daisy
Barbara Needham
> It's not just that the made me think you
> were late teens or early 20's: your constantly referring to Mike as Mr.
> Norris was another aspect. Adult peers just don't tend to do that.
On the other hand in debate and other venues one does. I would not take
exception to that. I call my piano teacher Mrs. XX and I am 20 years
older than she is.
--
Barbara Needham
Vepxistqaosani
My wife and I have been talking to homeschooling parents, reading this
newsgroup, and buying and borrowing books on the subject. As a result,
even without the experience that other posters have, I think I can
enumerate the downsides:
1. Time. Homeschooling parents have to be able to put in hours of direct
instruction, checking and/or grading, and supervision every day. I
estimate 4-5. If both parents have full-time jobs, it will be impossible
to homeschool well. (It'll certainly cut into TV-viewing time!)
2. Organization. You have to know what you want to do and remember what
you've done. (This may be less true among unschoolers, but I doubt it.)
3. Family dynamics. Everybody has to like each other. I can't imagine
how horrible homeschooling would be in a seriously dysfunctional family
(my own family is comically dysfunctional, so we're OK).
4. Curiosity. If the parents have not always read widely for pleasure,
they are unlikely to have enough breadth to lead and follow their children.
Someone suggested that it sounded like you were worried that
homeschooling was a threat to the livelihood of professional educators.
Given the criteria above, surely you can see that homeschooling will
always be a minority pursuit -- but it does mean that parents who would
be extremely involved with the public schools will drop out to
concentrate on their own children, so you are not wrong to worry that
there will be a deleterious effect on the public schools as more folks
homeschool. (On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if the teachers,
principals, and administrators I've dealt with will be happy to see me go.)
So I would be shocked if homeschoolers ever numbered as much as 10% of
the school-age population.
Fred
Dalene Barnes
ROTLF! If this is **not** written tongue-in-cheek, it really should have
been, because it would be so hilarious if it were. If, however, it's real,
it is just a very accurate statement about the majority.
Dalene Barnes
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
<vepxist...@netscape.net> wrote:
<snipped>
>Someone suggested that it sounded like you were worried that
>homeschooling was a threat to the livelihood of professional educators.
>Given the criteria above, surely you can see that homeschooling will
>always be a minority pursuit -- but it does mean that parents who would
>be extremely involved with the public schools will drop out to
>concentrate on their own children, so you are not wrong to worry that
>there will be a deleterious effect on the public schools as more folks
>homeschool. (On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if the teachers,
>principals, and administrators I've dealt with will be happy to see me go.)
>
>So I would be shocked if homeschoolers ever numbered as much as 10% of
>the school-age population.
>
Fred,
In the very first homeschooling family to which Chewy (my husband) was
ever exposed, the mom was/is a public high school teacher. For some
reason, she didn't want her son in public school. Go figure.
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe" <kit...@whitepine.com> wrote in message
news:3e5bdf49...@news.moment.net...
> On Tue, 25 Feb 2003 01:37:35 GMT, "Dennis Hancock"
> <ninj...@attbi.com> wrote:
> <snipped>
> >The public school system has a one size fits all approach. One cannot
> >honestly say that it is best for every child and be honest that they care
> >about helping children attain their fullest potential. Who would have a
> >more vested interest in helping a child attain their greatest potential
than
> >that child's parent? Certainly not some 9 to 5 lackey who has 30 kids in
> >their class and is trying to juggle 'standardized' means of teaching to
all
> >in the same manner.
> >
>
>
> This is precisely why I will not go back into a public school system.
Hear, hear!!!!! I feel the same way. The only way I'd end up teaching in a
school is if it were a Montessori elementary.
Daisy
Daisy Witherell Déry
someone in a newsgroup who will refer to someone as Mr. And NEVER have I
come across someone who will refer to one person as Mr. then refer to
everyone else by their first names...
Daisy
"Barbara Needham" <barba...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:1fqxx5v.vyvghq180k7eoN%barba...@newsguy.com...
Mike Sabo
> I think it depends on where you are and what your situation is when
> deciding whether or not home schooling is a good idea. I come from a
> rural area and feel that home schooling would have had no benefits as
> we had enough teachers for the pupils and it was a chance to see
> people our own age.
I live in a rural community and as a homeschooling parent I challenge
your broad assertions. My first question for you is what is "enough
teachers"? My second is what are the benefits of interacting in a
confined setting with a large group of individuals that are the same age
(+/- one year)? How do these compare to the detriments of interacting in
an open environment with a single individual or small group of individuals?
> In a bigger school pupils may benefit from getting
> more individual teaching.
While much of this can only be applied to my state (Illinois), here are
my points. First, the vast majority curriculum standards and testing
requirements are mandated at the state level. As a result, the material
taught does not vary significantly between public schools within the
state. Because of these higher level mandates the is little opportunity
for control of the schools to be wielded at the local or even county
level. This is doublely true for rural communities because power and
influence at the state level is controlled by urban centers (In our case
the City-State of Chicago) with their high populations and greater
nummerical representation in the state legislative bodies.
Because of population shifts, most rural counties are staying even or
losing individuals. This, combined with the increasing average age of
rural populations, is driving the consolidation movement in our state.
Thus state-mandated goals of student to teacher ratio have not become a
cap (like in the suburbs), but instead are goals to reach through
consolidation. This means that two,three, or four counties are combined
into a single district. Bus rides (none to short to begin with)for
schools and intermural events become increasingly longer and take a
heavier toll on students and the power of a given superintendent and
school board is increased over a larger geographical area and the
influence of a given family diluted proportionally.
Mike Sabo
Melissa Ferrell wrote:
>
> Good Morning all.
> Some of you have brought up some really good points. I thank the
> person who provided some information about their sister and her
> children. Now that I look back on my original post, I do see how I
> mislead most of you, if not all of you. I apologize if anyone thought
> I was attacking parents for homeschooling their children. That was
> not my intention. My post was based on what I had knowledge of, and
> that was a group of about 15 students. If I wasn't writing from what
> I know, what good would I be as a writer?
The you would also acknowledge that words have specific definitions
depending on their usage. That was my point in challenging the use of
the word "troll."
> However, I do feel as
> though I know what I'm talking about here, and most of you know what
> you're talking about.
A fine example of circular reasoning. If we test one of your statements
and find it faulty, then based on this premise we must also question our
authority to test any of your statements.
> I can tell the serious parents who believe
> strongly in their decision to HS from the ones who feel as though they
> need confirmation from the rest of the world that they are doing the
> right thing. Those are the parents who provided no constructive
> feedback, but instead only posted to call me names and tell me how
> ignorant they think I am.
Oooh! Petitio Principii. The premise of "no constructive feedback" begs
the question of one motivation for name-calling. I freely admit to my
ingnorance in many things. No one has the capacity of complete knowledge
in all things.
I did not take a Philosophy course until my Senior year. I only took a
Critical Thinking class because I had an elective to fill. For the class
project I went back and critiqued papers that I had submitted for my
Augument and Persuasive Writing, English Lit, and honors-level American
History classes. Despite having gotten "A's" on the work, various
fallacies and use of opinions as fact kept popping out.
There is always the opportunity to review the basis of your beliefs and
distill out the opinions that you have accepted as fact. You may just be
surprised where you find yourself.
> I refuse to believe everything I hear and
> see, but when it's so common, I feel as though there might be some
> truth to the information. That's why I posted my original message.
> If anyone can provide me with some web sites I might observe or some
> books, I would appreciate that. As for anyone else who may think that
> I'm just another author of flame bait and do not care to provide some
> real help in my questions, you need not respond.
****
flame
1. An electronic mail or Usenet news message
intended to insult, provoke or rebuke, or the act of sending
such a message. Sometimes a flame will be delimited by marks
such as "flame on...flame off".
2. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively
uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude
or with hostility towards a particular person or group of
people.
****
Nope! No flames around here. Just a lively discussion that has resulted
in more posts to this news group than I've seen in a while.
> I don't have the
> time to wade through messages of hostililty to get to the messsages
> with real content.
Let's see, messages that I deem hostile have no real content. Let me
think on this one.
>
> Melissa
David
>To any that doubt the specific evil and culpability
>of schools of education in the failure of the public
>schools in the US to teach our children, I would strongly
>recommend a reading of _The Graves of Academe_ by
>Richard Mitchell, aka "The Underground Grammarian".
>A site dedicated to the late Richard Mitchell, together
>with some description of this book, can be found
>at: <http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/>
Is Richard Mitchell indeed dead?
He's been M.I.A. for so long that I assumed he had in fact died. Why
no word about it in any of the newspapers? It's also odd that his huge
following (although he'd detest the notion of having a "following"
because it suggests blind loyalty & unreasonable fanaticism), which
included so many notable writers & scholars, is so quiet about his
death.
That's a shame. Mitchell never finished his book, I suppose---the one
about Eros & Psyche. All we have of that are four or five essays in
the final issues of The Grammarian ten or twelve years ago.
Mitchell appeared on a panel of a group called the Separation of
School & State Alliance on November 11, 1995, in California. I have a
recording of his debate, & he was quite a pistol. What a great writer,
too. I think back on so many of his extraordinary TUG articles, like
"Hunger in America" or "Curriculum from Hell." He certainly wiped the
floor with the doofs who are (or were) responsible for public school
policy.
kanga mom
> Gemma wrote:
>
> > I think it depends on where you are and what your situation is when
> > deciding whether or not home schooling is a good idea. I come from a
> > rural area and feel that home schooling would have had no benefits as
> > we had enough teachers for the pupils and it was a chance to see
> > people our own age.
>
> I live in a rural community and as a homeschooling parent I challenge
> your broad assertions. My first question for you is what is "enough
> teachers"? My second is what are the benefits of interacting in a
> confined setting with a large group of individuals that are the same age
> (+/- one year)? How do these compare to the detriments of interacting in
> an open environment with a single individual or small group of
individuals?
We live in a rural school district. My next door neighbor just started
homeschooling his high school son. The boy wished to take algebra. He was
given a book and a desk, and had to figure it out himself. His dad figured
he could do that more productively at home, with a little help from Dad.
Kanga
Melissa Ferrell
Tammy,
As I have stated before, I have done some research on the web
concerning homeschooling, but wanted input from the people deep in the
trenches. So far all I have see on web pages concerning it are stats,
but I wanted to hear from parents. In regards to you statement of how
I have not responded to Dasiy's log, I have stated before that it is
impossible for me to respond to everyone. If someone wanted a direct
answer from me, it might be more helpful to email me. I have given
the address. I try to answer as many questions and respond to as many
logs as I can, but I would have to spend hours on the computer reading
and responding. I simply don't have the time. I have also stated
before how much I appreciate the constructive response that people
have posted. I do read as many as I can and just because I don't
respond to each post doesn't mean that I ignored them. I also do not
think that I responded in childish ways. That's the problem with
electronic communication-no emotion. I was simply defending myself;I
am not one to lay down and take abuse, I fight for what I believe in
and if you think that's childish I'm sorry. And if you would read one
of my last postings, I did apologize for anyone thinking that I was
trying to offend anyone, but so far I have not recieved any apology
from anyone that I can recall. Maybe I'm not the only one not
reading carefully. As for mistaking Daisy for being the one who
called me a troll, I do apologize for that. That's a price we pay for
skimming and not checking before posting. I also do not get screen
names, only first names-so I never saw the Kitten part until I was on
my computer at school-then I saw that Kitten was a poster. I think
that everyone (including myself) needs to read between the lines
before posting.
Have a Great Day all!
Melissa
Melissa Ferrell
Daisy,
I stated eariler that I do not ignore posts. I cannot possibly
respond to everything and I apologize if you think I was igoring you.
I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can.
1. All of the homeschooled kids I have met have been homeschooled in
the state of Michigan and one in Indiana.
2. They were homeschooled from 1-4 years-mostly middle and high
school.
3. Most of them were very intelligent students, but were not being
taught the proper material in home school-once they were brought back
into public schools they caught up, but most of them needed summer
school and private tutors.
4. After working with them in public schools-being a tutor to some of
these kids-most of them do know how to write a cohesive paragraph and
can remember basic history-but only after some exercises that they
were not given in homeschool.
5. I don't think that kids need a large group of friends to be well
socialized, but I do feel that they need to experience different types
of people in order to be socialized. They need to be exposed to all
different people to know that they are making the right choices in
their friends. Being in public school I went through three or four
different groups of friends before knowing which one's were best for
me. Maybe other homeschooled kids are good for each other, and you as
a parent might know that, but does your child/children?
6. My question of "how do we know these kids are learning?" may be
answered by parents or the homeschool teachers-but not me as I don't
know enough yet to make that assumption-I base all my posts on what I
know which is what I see.
I do believe in age segregation to a point. I do feel that kids learn
when they are comfortable, and sometimes that's with kids their own
age and sometimes that's with kids of other ages, but did you allow
your children in to the decision making process when deciding to place
them in homeschooling?
I also would like to apologize for assuming that it was You who called
me a troll. I did not read carfully enough before posting my response
and have learned the hard way that it's important. But please put
yourself in my place for a moment. When you have several people
responding all at once, it's very hard to distinguish who is being
serious and who is just tossing out insults. However I do apologize
since it was not you.
Have a Wonderful Day!
Melissa
Melissa Ferrell
The reason that I refered to him as Mr. Morris was that originally I
was trying to be respectful, and didn't realize that I used other's
first names. There are just times when I feel more comfortable using
Mr. or Ms. instead of a first name, but since we have all been
corresponding for a while now, I will begin to use first names. And
just so there is no more confusion about my age (which I wonder why
this is relevent) and am 28 years old.
Melissa
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
Ferrell) wrote:
<snipped>
>I think
>that everyone (including myself) needs to read between the lines
>before posting.
>
Usually, trying to read between the lines in Usenet posts is what gets
people into trouble. If something in someone's post isn't clear to
you, it's better to ask for clarification than to try to interpret
their meaning.
BTW, all my posts are signed "Kitten." (Except for the really old
ones, back when I was working for a Usenet portal, that is.) Taking
offense at that was a result of your attempt to read between the
lines. If I ever wish to insult or denigrate you, believe you, you
won't need to read between the lines.
Mike Sabo
> I stated eariler that I do not ignore posts. I cannot possibly
> respond to everything and I apologize if you think I was igoring you.
> I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can.
> 1. All of the homeschooled kids I have met have been homeschooled in
> the state of Michigan and one in Indiana.
> 2. They were homeschooled from 1-4 years-mostly middle and high
> school.
> 3. Most of them were very intelligent students, but were not being
> taught the proper material in home school-once they were brought back
> into public schools they caught up, but most of them needed summer
> school and private tutors.
How is this different from a student that comes from a state with a completely different curriculm standard. The child could be very
intelligent (and even educated) but would still have to "catch up" and maybe even need tutors or summer schools. Would you be
equally willing to condemn the Public School system of a neighboring state for children who were not "taught the proper material?"
>
> 4. After working with them in public schools-being a tutor to some of
> these kids-most of them do know how to write a cohesive paragraph and
> can remember basic history-but only after some exercises that they
> were not given in homeschool.
So their capacity to learn was not diminished by homeschooling, but rather what they knew did not match what you were told that they
needed to know given their grade level. Were they able to speak clearly and relate clear thoughts to you? Were they computer
literate? Perhaps they had just come to rely to heavily on the ever-more-sophisticated Grammar checking tools in their word
processor.
>
> 5. I don't think that kids need a large group of friends to be well
> socialized, but I do feel that they need to experience different types
> of people in order to be socialized.
By different types do you mean ethnicities, personalities, professions, what? Can you expound on this point for us?
> They need to be exposed to all
> different people to know that they are making the right choices in
> their friends. Being in public school I went through three or four
> different groups of friends before knowing which one's were best for
> me. Maybe other homeschooled kids are good for each other, and you as
> a parent might know that, but does your child/children?
What makes you think that homeschooled children only interact with other like themselves? Scouts, 4H, the Y are all filled
predominantly with children from Public or Private schools.
>
> 6. My question of "how do we know these kids are learning?" may be
> answered by parents or the homeschool teachers-but not me as I don't
> know enough yet to make that assumption-I base all my posts on what I
> know which is what I see.
Webster defines to learn as to acquire knowledge of or skill in by study and experience. Your questions seem to indicate that you
are less concerned with the act of learning in homeschoolers, but rather would wish to focus on WHAT they are learning and the RATE
at which acquisition occurs. Curriculum determines the WHAT and there is no absolute for this. Even in states with Standards you
would have to agree that not all Public School students acquire the same, exact knowledge package. As to the rate, homeschoolers are
fortunate in that we can adjust the rate to the individual learner. Because our learning environment is polytypic it is nearly
impossible to go to slow. On the a caring parent is directly in the feedback loop, can consider all the variable, and adjust how
fast things are introduced accordingly. Going too fast is far more detrimental than going too slow. Compare a fire hydrant to a
water fountain. Which is it easier to drink from? Which would you prefer to come back to when your thirsty?
>
> I do believe in age segregation to a point. I do feel that kids learn
> when they are comfortable, and sometimes that's with kids their own
> age and sometimes that's with kids of other ages,
And some children can only learn in environments other than a group setting.
> but did you allow
> your children in to the decision making process when deciding to place
> them in homeschooling?
Why would I give my five year old a role in the decision making process? It is well establish that cognitive development does not
usually develop to the level of formal operational thought until an individual in into adolescence. There would be little value
added to the process and it would be merely an illusion of participation.
Rebecca
> Daisy,
> I stated eariler that I do not ignore posts. I cannot possibly
> respond to everything and I apologize if you think I was igoring you.
> I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can.
> 1. All of the homeschooled kids I have met have been homeschooled in
> the state of Michigan and one in Indiana.
> 2. They were homeschooled from 1-4 years-mostly middle and high
> school.
You saw a child who had been homeschooled only one year and was behind,
and assumed he was behind because his homeschool failed to teach him the
right things? My experience (and I have counselled hundreds of
prospective homeschoolers) is that when a parent reaches the point of
pulling a middle or high school level child out of public school to
homeschool him it is because the child has already been taught poorly
year after year by the public school system. Those parents often are
ill-prepared to deal with the problems that the public school has caused
and so it doesn't surprise me that they don't last very long at home
either. Getting private tutors is a valid way to *do* homeschool,
Melissa. Many of us look for outside help when our children reach that
age. It is not a sign of a weakness, it is a sign of the parents taking
over and finding the child what he needs.
> 3. Most of them were very intelligent students, but were not being
> taught the proper material in home school-once they were brought back
> into public schools they caught up, but most of them needed summer
> school and private tutors.
> 4. After working with them in public schools-being a tutor to some of
> these kids-most of them do know how to write a cohesive paragraph and
> can remember basic history-but only after some exercises that they
> were not given in homeschool.
It is also not surprising that it took time to relearn how to "play the
public school game". Success in a public high school is not the most
important measure of a homeschool's success. Instead you should ask,
"How do children who homeschool all the way through (not just for 1 or 2
or 3 or 4 years), do when they become adults and have to live on their
own and make their way in the world?"
> 5. I don't think that kids need a large group of friends to be well
> socialized, but I do feel that they need to experience different types
> of people in order to be socialized.
My homeschooled children have more experience with a wider variety of
people than children who spend their days in public school. And yes,
everyone who meets them is very impressed by their maturity and ability
to interact socially.
> I do believe in age segregation to a point. I do feel that kids learn
> when they are comfortable, and sometimes that's with kids their own
> age and sometimes that's with kids of other ages, but did you allow
> your children in to the decision making process when deciding to place
> them in homeschooling?
I think children learn best when they are not being distracted by the
task of making friends with the kid sitting next to them. That's why we
have our children learn at home and do their socializing elsewhere.
Nope, I didn't ask my 5-year-old child which school she should go to.
Parents make all sorts of decisions about what is best for their
children without expecting input from the child. Parents decide what
religion to belong to, what country to live in, and what kind of food to
cook for dinner. I also don't ask my children what age they want to
learn to drive a car, or whether they want to keep pet elephants. I
make these decisions based on my superior knowledge of the world and my
own abilities and resources, things that my children cannot possibly
know, especially in the early years. As my children get older and they
express preferences, we discuss different options but I sometimes will
still make decisions anyway. My children respect me for that and my
daughter, who is now at college earning straight A's, is very grateful
for having been homeschooled. My other two children see what
homeschooling has done for her and they are quite satisfied to continue
themselves.
Cindy Cotter
to place them in homeschooling?**
Before my daughter ever attended school she was in daycare. She pleaded to
stay home for the several years she spent there. The center ran a
kindergarten. The summer before kindergarten she refused to go into the
kindergarten room with the other kids her age. The idea was for them to become
used to the room and comfortable in it, but she didn't want to be there and
insisted she'd only go when she had to.
She knew that in kindergarten the children were assigned homework. The work
was usually some small, pleasant game involving letters or numbers that you
would do with one of your parents, but she didn't know what to expect, and she
was very anxious. When I talked to the director of the school, the director
said that sort of anxiety was common prior to kindergarten. Some of the kids
cry, some stop eating, some regress and become babyish in some way, some begin
to act out. One girl just stopped pooping for days. Who gave those children a
choice?
Tina didn't like first grade at the public school anymore than she had liked
kindergarten, and continued to have stomach aches in the morning before school.
Finally I asked her pediatrician, who hadn't been able to find a cause, if it
could be school anxiety. He said yes. I said I was thinking of homeschooling,
what was his opinion? He said that many of his patients tried it and were very
happy.
Yes, my daughter was allowed to participate in the decisions about her
schooling. What about all those children unhappy in public school? Are THEY
asked? Are THEY given a choice?
Cindy Cotter
Cindy Cotter
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cotte...@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/cotter1225/wildgrape.htm
http://members.aol.com/cotter1225/CA-HS-Law.htm
L. Miller
Ferrell) wrote:
>
>Daisy,
>I stated eariler that I do not ignore posts. I cannot possibly
>respond to everything and I apologize if you think I was igoring you.
>I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can.
>1. All of the homeschooled kids I have met have been homeschooled in
>the state of Michigan and one in Indiana.
>2. They were homeschooled from 1-4 years-mostly middle and high
>school.
>3. Most of them were very intelligent students, but were not being
>taught the proper material in home school-once they were brought back
>into public schools they caught up, but most of them needed summer
>school and private tutors.
I attended school in Florida through 10th grade, we then moved to
North Carolina. I came home from school one day about half way
through the school year and told my mother she needed to find me
someplace else to go for the next year because I wasn't learning
anything where I was. My point is public schools can fall short in
one area of the country compared to another area of the country, it is
not just some homeschoolers.
>4. After working with them in public schools-being a tutor to some of
>these kids-most of them do know how to write a cohesive paragraph and
>can remember basic history-but only after some exercises that they
>were not given in homeschool.
>5. I don't think that kids need a large group of friends to be well
>socialized, but I do feel that they need to experience different types
>of people in order to be socialized. They need to be exposed to all
>different people to know that they are making the right choices in
>their friends. Being in public school I went through three or four
>different groups of friends before knowing which one's were best for
>me. Maybe other homeschooled kids are good for each other, and you as
>a parent might know that, but does your child/children?
My son takes karate (homeschoolers, kids not in school yet, parents of
kids also taking karate), plays t-ball and soccer, takes swimming
during the summer and will be joining the littlest boy scouts (public
school, private school, other homeschool kids) in the fall. We also
attend playgroup and have playdates and we will start visiting a
nursing home soon. I have people in stores that I don't even know
compliment me and my son on his politeness ( I also have employees of
stores ignore him when he is trying to politely ask them something,
which is very annoying).
>6. My question of "how do we know these kids are learning?" may be
>answered by parents or the homeschool teachers-but not me as I don't
>know enough yet to make that assumption-I base all my posts on what I
>know which is what I see.
Some states require yearly testing. If you look at the test results
you will see that most homeschooled kids are indeed learning.
>I do believe in age segregation to a point. I do feel that kids learn
>when they are comfortable, and sometimes that's with kids their own
>age and sometimes that's with kids of other ages, but did you allow
>your children in to the decision making process when deciding to place
>them in homeschooling?
>
Actually, my son has stated on many occasions that he doesn't want to
go to school he wants to homeschool.
Melissa Ferrell
Dear Poster, (the name did not appear)
When I said different groups of people I mean all the areas you stated
as well as things like groups sub-named the "Jocks", "thugs"
"preppies", "goths", etc. I just meant that the kids you allow your
children to interact with might not be best suited to your child's
personality. Maybe they are, I don't know your children. What I do
know is what I have learned in psychology classes and that is that
kids mature even faster than normal when they are involved in
decisions affecting them. Don't you agree?
Melissa
Sara
may be taught at home with great love and care, but how do they learn
to interact with other children and the art of problem-solving? How do
they learn new languages and meet and mix with children of different
cultures? Is providing tutors really the answer?
Please let me have more views.
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Sara" <sa...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:5e2068c4.03022...@posting.google.com...
> Hi Melissa. I still have my doubts about this whole issue. Children
> may be taught at home with great love and care, but how do they learn
> to interact with other children and the art of problem-solving? How do
If they have siblings, this is built in. :))))) Other than that, most
homeschoolers I know are involved in a lot of things and meet up a lot. The
kids have lots of opportunity to interact, problem solve, etc.
> they learn new languages and meet and mix with children of different
There are at least a few programs people use to teach other languages to
kids. PowerGlide and The Learnables come to mind. As well as classes offered
in their city by various organizations or by homeschoolers who speak the
language and are willing to teach it to others.
> cultures? Is providing tutors really the answer?
So, if somebody lives in a small White Anglo-Saxon town, should he move his
family to the city so that kids can be with others from different cultures?
Daisy
Daisy Witherell Déry
"Melissa Ferrell" <Lillipa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8547c067.03022...@posting.google.com...
> school.
If they were pulled out of school in middle and high school, it is likely
because there was already a problem.
> 3. Most of them were very intelligent students, but were not being
> taught the proper material in home school-once they were brought back
> into public schools they caught up, but most of them needed summer
> school and private tutors.
What is "proper material"? According to whom? To Michigan State public
school standards? What if a Michigan student were to suddenly move here to
Alberta--would he have been taught "the proper material" at home or at
school? And what is more important: the "proper material" (aka knowledge) or
the ability to really learn?
> 4. After working with them in public schools-being a tutor to some of
> these kids-most of them do know how to write a cohesive paragraph and
> can remember basic history-but only after some exercises that they
> were not given in homeschool.
If that's the worst after 1-4 years of middle/high school homeschooling,
that doesn't seem bad at all. If *I* had to go be in a Michigan high school
right now, I'd certainly not have "basic history" (what does that mean?). I
wonder how many in here would.
> 5. I don't think that kids need a large group of friends to be well
> socialized, but I do feel that they need to experience different types
What do you mean by socialized? To me, it means being able to respectfully
talk, play, work, etc. with people. Of all ages.
> of people in order to be socialized. They need to be exposed to all
> different people to know that they are making the right choices in
Most homeschoolers I know are exposed to different people. Much more so than
kids single-age classrooms. Often, the exposure to those of other classes is
hostility, condescension and the like.
> their friends. Being in public school I went through three or four
> different groups of friends before knowing which one's were best for
> me. Maybe other homeschooled kids are good for each other, and you as
> a parent might know that, but does your child/children?
Melissa, this is so ridiculous. Homeschooled kids don't need to go through
cliques of friends to find "the ones that are best". That's like saying
people need to move to different countries "to find the one that is best".
And many kids don't bother to find "the ones that are best", otherwise
they'd all be good. :-) And what do you mean by "the best for you"?
> 6. My question of "how do we know these kids are learning?" may be
> answered by parents or the homeschool teachers-but not me as I don't
> know enough yet to make that assumption-I base all my posts on what I
> know which is what I see.
It's a simple matter of really thinking about and analysing a matter instead
of needing to have all information provided beforehand. If you really want
proof of their learning, do a search for the studies on homeschooled
children which have shown them to be usually more advanced than their
schooled peers. Here might be a good place to start:
http://www.tnhomeed.com/Research.html This one looks at the history of
homeschooling, the reasons, the academic performance of homeschooled kids
and socialization as well:
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=253
> I do believe in age segregation to a point. I do feel that kids learn
> when they are comfortable, and sometimes that's with kids their own
> age and sometimes that's with kids of other ages, but did you allow
> your children in to the decision making process when deciding to place
> them in homeschooling?
What, and most parents ask their kids if they want to go to public school,
private school or do homeschooling? And do teachers include kids in the
decision-making process of what and how they will learn? I can tell you that
kids are often a part of the decision-making in what goes on in their
homeschooling environments. Not all kids, but definitely more than what
happens at school.
> I also would like to apologize for assuming that it was You who called
> me a troll. I did not read carfully enough before posting my response
> and have learned the hard way that it's important. But please put
> yourself in my place for a moment. When you have several people
> responding all at once, it's very hard to distinguish who is being
> serious and who is just tossing out insults. However I do apologize
> since it was not you.
Thank you. I do understand how it can be confusing when you are new to a
group.
Daisy
susabean
"Sara" <sa...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:5e2068c4.03022...@posting.google.com...
Hi Melissa. I still have my doubts about this whole issue. Children
may be taught at home with great love and care, but how do they learn
to interact with other children
Sara, let me count the ways OUR family learns to interact with other
children.
1. homeschool co-op
2. Sunday School
3. Youth choir
4. 4H
5. AWANAS
6. Horse camps
7. play dates/birthday parties/etc.
8. siblings
9. Not now, but in the past, art, music lessons
10. Homeschool gym class
and the art of problem-solving?
My children have learned how to problem solve because I don't solve
everything for them. They are told to figure it out (with guidance, of
course..) look it up, think it through. My children often figure out
solutions to things that would stump me. Its called real life.
How do they learn new languages and meet and mix with children of different
cultures? Is providing tutors really the answer?
my children are learning French, and is being exposed to Spanish and German
through a co-op. We go to French camp in the summer, and we have one
semester (12 weeks) of small group French lessons (10 children, one teacher,
arranged by me and held in my living room). For the rest of the year, we
use French language workbooks,tapes, and "speak only in French" days. My
child has, while homeschooled, had the opportunity to play with a child who
was visiting from India....my dh's co-worker had family visit. If my child
had been in kindergarten at the time, she would have missed out on meeting
this girl, having an Indian meal, and learning about this little girl's
culture. We have corresponded with missionaries and with children in other
countries. Even though our town is pretty whitebread, they have been
exposed to and have befriended people from Mexico, Russia, South America,
Switzerland, and Poland, to name but a few countries. When my dd was very
small, we had neighbors from Zimbabwe. We had a lot of fun learning about
their culture as well....mostly by Q and A. My kids can tell you what Sour
leaf soup tastes like, and my oldest loves borscht, which would have NEVER
happened if we had not had opportunity to socialize with the people we have
met. We did not meet these wonderful people through school. We met them
through real life situations, like friend's grandmoms, visitors/missionaries
to our church, neighbors, etc.
Please let me have more views.
My view is that school in the traditional sense is artificial. Real life
and real life experiences make much more of an impact than that of just
reading about it and answering the questions on a test. I have nothing
against traditional schooling as a CHOICE. But I certainly don't think it
the only choice. And in our case, it is not even a good choice.
Blessings,
Tammy
Vepxistqaosani
> Hi Melissa. I still have my doubts about this whole issue. Children
> may be taught at home with great love and care, but how do they learn
> to interact with other children and the art of problem-solving? How do
> they learn new languages and meet and mix with children of different
> cultures?
Sara,
Three points here. First, you seem to have been infected by the
diversity myth -- but there is no reason to believe that a "diverse
student body" has any effect on "educational outcomes". The most famous
study I know of that claims to show such a thing was based solely on
self-reports from college students -- who are universally subjected to
4-year indoctrinations in political correctness and whose reports can
therefore be regarded as quite suspect. You can see the study at
http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/legal/expert/gurintoc.html
"Diversity" as it is usually meant (a stand-in for lowering of standards
and affirmative action rather than actual _learning_ about other
cultures) quite simply has nothing to do with either socialization or
education. To prove the utility of diversity, one would have to show
that children taught in "diverse environments" actually learn more,
write better, and think more creatively than otherwise.
Second, even were we to grant that children must "meet and mix with
children of different cultures", the public schools are a monoculture:
The students all talk, dress, and think alike, whatever the superficial
variations in skin color, dress, and accent. (And woe betide any student
who fails to conform!)
Third, peer pressure is a wholly malign influence on children. It is
much more important for children to learn to interact maturely with
mature adults than for them to learn to follow the latest fad or join
the most popular clique. After all, unless one is a teacher, one spends
the vast majority of one's life dealing solely with adults (though,
admittedly, the level of maturity among adults is subject to alarming
variations).
Fred
susabean
German
through a co-op."
I had changed it from child to children and did not fix the tense. I hate
when that happens!
Caitriona Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe
Ferrell) wrote:
>Mike Sabo <nuclea...@civgaming.net> wrote in message news:<3E5EE29B...@civgaming.net>...
>> > Daisy,
<snipped>
>
>
>Dear Poster, (the name did not appear)
Actually, it was right there in *your* response to him, in the
attributions. His name is Mike Sabo, his email address is
nuclea...@civgaming.net. Look just above the portion I snipped
(his entire post, which you included in your reply).
>When I said different groups of people I mean all the areas you stated
>as well as things like groups sub-named the "Jocks", "thugs"
>"preppies", "goths", etc. I just meant that the kids you allow your
>children to interact with might not be best suited to your child's
>personality. Maybe they are, I don't know your children.
In the hs'ing community, we have many jocks, preppies, goths, etc. We
try to teach our children *NOT* to be thugs, though. Especially in
places where one of the state hs'ing requirements is that we teach
*Citizenship* to our children. Aside from the state requirement, it's
just plain *nicer* to be around people who aren't thugs.
>What I do
>know is what I have learned in psychology classes and that is that
>kids mature even faster than normal when they are involved in
>decisions affecting them. Don't you agree?
I'd have to agree that children who are involved in the
decision-making process do mature at a greater rate than do children
who have all their decisions made for them. Do a survey of your local
public school population. In that environment, you have children
who've been involved in their families' decisions and children who
haven't, much the same as in the private school population, of which
homeschooling is a subset.
Barbara Needham
> Hi Melissa.
Why am I beginning to get the idea this was a class assignment?
Matt C.
> Sara <sa...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Melissa.
>
> Why am I beginning to get the idea this was a class assignment?
*ding*
Matt
Daisy Witherell Déry
You ask how they will learn to interact with other children. The real
question should be: how will they learn to interact with PEOPLE? Having
children interact with other children is only part of the whole real-life
picture. When children are stuck in single-age classrooms, they have only
each other to interact with. It's an "us and them" mentality. They don't
have older kids to guide them nor younger kids to guide nor a variety of
adults to interact with. How do children learn to interact with kids older
than themselves this way? How do they learn to interact with adults?
I recall a Time article some time ago (can't seem to find it now and
everything seems to cost at the Time site now) where the author had met with
public schooled and homeschooled kids. His criticism of the homeschooling
kids' socialization skills was that they were too much like adults! They
actually initiated conversations with kids (and adults) they didn't know,
were more apt to exchange information and the like. How come? Because
homeschooled kids are much more used to talking and interacting with people
of all ages, whereas schooled kids are used to being lumped together
according to their age, forming cliques and they tend to stick with that.
Daisy
"Sara" <sa...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:5e2068c4.03022...@posting.google.com...
Daisy Witherell Déry
Daisy
"Barbara Needham" <barba...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:1fr308b.6fkr4j1ld4c52N%barba...@newsguy.com...