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November 25, 2006, 9:34 am PST
11/24 Great School Debate
Quote From: julie1418Sadly, in my experience, she is the exception. Most homeschool kids who end up back in the system are lacking in academics, social skills, and the ability to not be the center of the universe. Their parents had the "home" part down, but not so much on the "school."
This is what I posted. I was not insinuating AT ALL that most homeschool kids are falling through the cracks...but rather that most of them who end up back in the public schools. Most of the successful homeschooling parents do not need to put their kids back into public school.
I do agree that for special needs kids, the resources in the public schools can be less than adequate. I give tremendous respect to anyone who teaches special needs - it is a TOUGH job. The problem is lumping different needs together can be tricky. You can have an autism child in a class with an emotionally handicapped child, a conduct disordered child, etc. There are NO easy solutions, and I am glad that you were able to homeschool and that it works for you. Whenever I see the "end up back in the public schools" line in a homeschooling discussion, I have to wonder if the original poster has gone further back to check where the kids stood before they were pulled out of the schools or talked to the parents about why they pulled the kids. It's so easy to say that the problems are because of homeschooling, but those problems are just as likely to have been there before hand. Parents who send their kids to public school to start often need a pretty big reason to choose to homeschool.
From running homeschool information nights, problems with academic levels and problems with the special ed system not meeting needs are very high on the list of reasons people start looking for more information.
The other problem I've seen is that parents who pull their kids expect changes overnight. It just doesn't happen that way. The child needs some time to adjust to the new situation (as does the parent) and if they don't give themselves time to find their own family rhythym and style, they're likely to give up. Homeschooling requires the flexibility to change course if needed, and that is something that comes hard to some new homeschoolers.
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