Home schooling in CA

[Alex]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I think you can be a good teacher without being a parent, but every good parent is a teacher.

I'm going to call bull**** on that one unless teacher is used only in the broadest sense of the word.

No matter how well intentioned, my mom would not have been able to teach me algebra or the fundamentals of chemistry.

Sure, she could have read the book the night before I did but if pressed she could only parrot the book back to me, which isn't much help if I'm already not getting it.

There is no magic that happens when a penis is put in a vagina that gives a person instructional skill.

But I'll agree, that a good teacher will be a good teacher whether it is in a classroom or not. However, if a parent is not a good teacher there really won't be any easy means of detection until after much damage is done. Yes, this can happen in schools as well, but the safeguards for at least detecting failure (if not fixing it) are greater.

I'm sure my sampling is skewed but in my experience most home schooled children were not home schooled because the parents were confident that they could better teach a curriculum than the school district but rather because they wanted to "protect" their children from perceived evils in what the schools will try to teach them.

It is one thing to reject the truth of evolution because you've been exposed to it and another completely to reject it simply because it has never been to you or taught to you as a materialist conspiracy. I remember my first week of college, in a geology 100 seminar a home-schooled student who interrupted class absolutely enraged and flabbergasted that the professor was teaching the class on the assumption that the earth is more than 6,000 years old. She stood up in front of 500 students and said this. She was a perfectly well educated home schooled kid, she'd just never actually been exposed to the ideas that her parents thought irreligious.


And that, for me, is the biggest failing of most home schooling. Not lack of socialization. Not failure to teach the basic educational facts. But rather that there is a single, overly emotionally involved person making the decisions about what facts the child will even be exposed to and capable of making sure that nothing "horrible" sneaks in: whether that be evolution, religion, capitalism, competitiveness, the homosexual agenda, etc.

Also, the inclinations of the parents can't help but drive things in major and minor ways. There's a reason that as you advance academically you move from having a single teacher all day to have separate teachers for separate subjects. There are certainly drawbacks to this but one of the great advantages, hopefully, is that for each subject you are presented with a person passionate about that subject who interacts with it on a level of pleasure rather than just necessity. If a parent loves American history but isn't much into meteorology, sure they can teach both subjects but they can't convey passion about them both at the macro level and at the subtle level will tend to emphasize one over the other. And just like it is oh so convenient for the stage dad that his little 5 year just happens to love the pageant circuit it will be an equally wonderful coincidence that his 10 year does better in American history than meteorology.

I'm not saying any of the homeschooling parents here are guilty of these sins. I've never met (at least not to sufficient degree) any of them to have an opinion. And I've known fabulous home schooling parents and home schooled kids but even the best of them have to work very hard to overcome these challenges. And worst, many of the parents don't want to overcome them because these are the very benefits they see in homeschooling: not "I can teach this child better" but "I can make sure this child grows up thinking like me."

No, public schools are not a panacea, they have huge problems. And a certain number of children will fail regardless of what system they are in while some will fail in one but not the other. But while I would be very hesitant in moving towards strong regulation of home schooling I remain extremely bothered by the "defensive" rather than "proactive" stance of a large part of the homeschooling movement.

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Alex

I'm going to call bull**** on that one unless teacher is used only in the broadest sense of the word.

Of course I mean it in a broad sense.

I completely understand the whole higher math and science aspect. Not many home are set up for a chemistry lab. The home schooling families I know have a pseudo-consortium in which someone who is skilled in math teaches a group of 10 HS students higher math and another might teach chemistry, set up more like a college course (meaning two-three extended classes each week). I suppose that isn't home schooling in the truest sense of the word.

I do believe home schooling works best only up through the end of elementary, and perhaps through 7th and 8th grade, but that's about it. However, I know many in the arrangements set up as above, including a choir and one mom who sets up field trips, etc, and that seems to work out fine.