Topic : 11/24 Great School Debate

Homeschooling and public schooling are completely different. There is no need for homeschoolers to have a teachers certificate.

I homeschooled my children. Since public school teachers are graded on the success of their students consider this. My son scored a 28 on the ACT at 15, started college at 16, made the Dean's List, and is in his second year of a Computer Science Major. Obviously I know how to teach without a teacher's certificate.

Do you have a culinary degree? Do you ever cook for yourself or your family? People do things they don't have degree's in all the time. Usually successfully. Some people work on their own cars, remodel their own homes etc. You aren't making a big fuss because they don't have a degree in that particular field.

I am beginning to wonder if the reason the teachers on this board are so intolerant of homeschoolers is because we generally have a better success rate with our students, without educational degrees.

Academically
Home school students scored significantly higher than their public and private school counterparts. The studies below prove homeschool students do exceptionally well when compared with the nationwide average. In  every subject and at every grade level of the ITBS and TAP batteries. 

Socially
Studies also show homeschoolers mature and better socialized than are those sent to school. Dr. John Wesley Taylor's nationwide study revealed that the self-concept of home school students was significantly higher than that of public school students for the global and all six subscales of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale. The Galloway-Sutton Study (performed in 1997), showed that from five success indicators (academic, cognitive, spiritual, affective-social and pyschomotor), comparing with public and private schooled students, "in every success category except pyschomotor, the home school graduates excelled above the other students."

http://homeschoolinformation.com/homeschooling/homeschool_statistics1.htm

Public school parent

I send my kids to public school so I don't have to deal with them, boy will I be glad when summer vacation is over.

I hear them saying that all the time, at the grocery store, at the soccer fields, whenever I am around public school parents. It make you wonder why some of them even have kids.

Yes, there are some good (professional) teachers, yes, there were some great professional teachers - I was lucky enough to have had some, but that was before schools (especially public schools) quit hiring real academics with advanced degrees to teach.  OK, that acknowledged, as to future teachers - I doubt it!  (or at least they are becoming fewer and farther between) mainly because you are majoring in "education/crowd control" instead of a partcular subject in depth.

Is your curriculum anything like my forays into that field?  In a teachers' ed program, I was "taught" to run a mimeo machine, in another, (an M.A.) it was all feel good discussions - this, from two different schools.  I ran, horrified at the lack of rigor, back to real academics.  Those standardized tests - I took them to get into the programs - were also a joke - compare them to the GRE's, GMATs, or LCAT's and MCAT's.  I would fail an 8th grader if they couldn't pass them.  These "ed programs" required - as in many states, only a C+ average to get in, while other grad programs require A's and B's.

Today, I teach at the university.  I deal daily with the products of many public and private school systems.  While privately schooled students tend to be a bit better at most academic skills, I have to re-teach my students often. They can't have discussions on many subjects because they don't have the knowledge required to have that discussion - this is general knowledge of history and science.  They can't read an assignment to get that knowledge-anything but the  pre-digested reading textbooks stymies them.  They don't know how to take notes from a lecture. Many can't write a paper due to bad grammar, but worse, they don't know how to organize an essay to defend an opinion, and many claim they have no opinion to defend.

Worse yet, they never exhibit any intellectual curiosity; when they have a question about something assigned, they don't bother to look it up, they don't email me, they don't even use a dictionary or wiki, they don't read newspapers.  These products of professional teachers are going to make damned poor citizens.

Among my colleagues, we often joke about how we know the ed majors - they're the ones who ask questions like "are we responsible for that on the test" or "how many sources do I have to have on my paper."  It seems somewhere that ed majors became exclusively concerned with form but forgot substance.  You are now like those hosts who set a beautiful table, with very expensive china, the finest crystal, a  multitude of silverware, and then serve the most mediocre food - you've forgotten what the purpose of serving a meal is. 

Oh, my children are  homeschooled.

A few posted have quoted the research done by Lawrence Rudner and used it to compare public schools to homeschooling. I read the research report, and here are Rudner's own words. The bolds are mine.

These comparisons between home school students and students nationwide must be interpreted with a great deal of caution. This was not a controlled experiment. Students were not randomly assigned public, private or home schools. As a result, the reported achievement differences between groups do not control for background differences in the home school and general United States population and, more importantly, cannot be attributed to the type of school a child attends. This study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools. It should not be cited as evidence that our public schools are failing. It does not indicate that children will perform better academically if they are home schooled. The design of this study and the data do not warrant such claims. All the comparisons of home school students with the general population and with the private school population in this report fail to consider a myriad of differences between home school and public school students. We have no information as to what the achievement levels of home school students would be had they been enrolled in public or private schools. This study simply shows that those parents choosing to make a commitment to home schooling are able to provide a very successful academic environment.

I do not deny that some, perhaps many, homeschooling parents do a wonderful job educating their children. I do not agree with invalid comparisons.  

These parents that were featured are ABUSING their children. Yes, I used the politically incorrect word, abuse. These kids are being so sheltered and protected they will not ever make it in business, socially, or marriage, unless they marry someone that has had the same sheltered upbringing.. Which I would like to see the "actual" statistics on how well these kids function that are not in regular schools. I went to public, private and boarding schools. I graduated from high school (a non accredited school that I had picked out from the back of a magazine - because they had horses there!!). Even though I technically got my diploma, I never took math in high school  so I didn't really have the "proper" credits. The Vice Principal "wrote them in" under other subjects (horseback riding) so I had enough to graduate. I was a "C" student and as I am 51 and went to schools in the 60's and 70's, my high school years were spent partying.

However, what happened to me is I had the ability to learn and had so much exposure socially to all kinds of situations (and almost no parenting whatsoever - left home at 15 in 1970, when it wasn't a "fashion statement" as it is today. I went from riches (my dad, who never completed the 9th grade became a self made millionaire and retired at age 42.  He made it very clear that it was his money, and trust me, he lived by his word. ) I learned "on the job". I gained that ability by dealing with all the crap you deal with in school. How to handle adverse situations as well as competition or achieving a goal. If you knew my life, I was "set up" to fail. I had a mother that was a drug addict that never got out of bed from the time I was 8 years old until she died at age 52. A father that hated the fact that he had children and basically myself and my 2 older sisters were on our own. I never receive money from my father or mother. When I left, I was on my own. I only went to school because it was in their divorce papers that my father had to pay for schooling through high school. While he certainly had the money to send me to the best schools in the world, when I graduated high school and told him I wanted to go to college, he said "well, better get a job so you can pay for it, because I'm not." Needless to say, I ended up not going to college.

ONLY because of my exposure to all types of kids in school and from my life and the people I was exposed to (from Gov. George McGovern (who ran for president - friend of my father's) and stayed at our home while on vacation during the year he ran) to people who are probably either dead from drugs or in jail and everything in between). For the past 4-5 years I earn (I am divorced and do not receive money from any other source but my job, which has been the case for the past 10 year and actually, when I was married I always made more than my spouses) an income in the top 10 percent of people in the Country. I currently run a large corporation that up until a year ago we did 30 million a year and I had approximately 450 employees;I have run law firms (yes, I was the boss of the lawyers), owned my own company, been a secretary, milked cows, sold cemetery plots, worked in a juvenile detention home....you name it, I've done it. I've been a mediator and have helped literally 100's of people with their life problems (as one of my jobs).

The point in giving you part of my life story is that I learned how to deal with people and situations from being in school for 12 years (K-12th) and dealt with the successes and the failures and problems that life throws at you during those formative years.

YOU CAN NOT LEARN HOW TO DEAL WITH LIFE BY "PLAYING" IN SOME ACTIVITIES WITH OTHER CHILDREN. You are depriving your children the REAL tools one needs in life to deal with it. A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF HOW INCORRECTLY THIS "home schooling, etc." IDEA AND MOST IDEAS THAT HAVE BEEN CREATED SINCE THE EARLY 1980'S IN PARENTING ARE IS ALL THE KIDS (well over 1 MILLION CHILDREN) THAT ARE ON ANTI-DEPRESSANTS!! This is nuts. We are turning our children in to helpless victims that can't deal with life. Solving now with a pill. Believe me, I was a very assertive child and I guarantee you that if I were a kid today, they would have put me on Ritalin or god knows what other drugs to stop me.

America is in serious trouble as a "group" of people trying to survive. Hey, who said life was going to be easy. Who would want it that way? People thrive on the "game" of life. Games have barriers. Taking your children out of school takes them out of the game!!

If these bleeding heart parents are so concerned then why don't they grow some balls and take on the department of education and the school systems to correct the security issues and the fact that American children rank I believe 48th in the world in competence from education. THAT'S the solution. Not "protecting" your children (which you are not doing at all) by teaching them NOT to confront problems. THE ONLY WAY TO WIN AT ANY GAME IS TO CONFRONT THE BARRIERS OR STOPS THAT HIT ALL OF US.

Get the psychs out of the school system (which, by the way, they entered in to the public school system in the late 1950's and you can see how effective our public school system has become from their "ideas" of what works with handling education!!).

I raised 2 step daughters (girls). I got them at 5 & 9. They are now 25 and 30. I divorced their Dad 10 years ago and I am still their "Mom", by THEIR choice today. (I don't do anything as a spectator!!). My joke is, I did the work, I paid for them, I raised them, I have the "pink slip" on both of them. When I raised them my motto was and remains "I don't care if you're "good", but you will be competent". I can very proudly say that both my girls (who mainly went to private school once I got them) are successful, competent, adults. I had NO problems with drugs or promiscuity with them as teenagers. Or the fact that I was their step mom. I took on the responsibility and they became "my" kids. They both have relationships with their biological mothers (yes, they didn't have the same mom's) but in their minds they recognize I did the work. I own the title.

Sorry this is so long, it's basically a laundry list of items that have pissed me off while watching your show and listening to these parent that can't "control" their kids. My god, I knew where my kids were at all times. They would never had considered some of the things you've done shows on. I always told them, you may not like me, but you WILL respect. The truth is, I never had to push the issue of respect. I earned it. I cared enough about them to devote over 10 years of my life raising them. Once they got old enough, they realized that "caring" about a child and parenting them (and I was pretty strict), comes from the definition of being RESPONSIBLE for them. Part of the definition of RESPONSIBILITY is caring enough to demand your child show you respect and respect the rules and regulations or not allowing them to do something that you know is harmful to them. And my friends, the ONLY way that can occur once they are 10 or older is communication. Taking the time to get your children to understand that morals and values are important and what the consequences are when they make bad choices. And caring enough about them (again being RESPONSIBLE) to allow them to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Unlike those things the people you featured are trying to teach children don't exist - I would hate to experience their "wake up call" when those kids leave home and learn that LIFE WILL BE NOTHING LIKE WHAT THEY WERE EXPOSED TO AS  CHILDREN and how crippled they will be socially when they try and deal with the cards they get in their card game of "life".