home schooling

Bravo littlek!!

Great point, Bill; kudos !




David

I knew a 10 year old boy in Florida
who, in theory, was home schooled,
but who in practice coud not even tell time.
His education was 100% neglected; he had a few younger siblings.

That's terrible. What did you do about it?

I agree with that, especially when looking at my soon to be teenager,
and frankly, I am glad that my relentlessly harping away at things, has paid off to a certain extend already.

Meanwhile, I can't help realizing that dancerdoll still hasn't shared her own experience being homeschooled yet. Come on, don't be shy, don't hit'n run on us. We won't bite!

An acquaintance of mine has home schooled her son from third grade through
high school. I could understand why she did it, as her son - an introverted shy boy - was bullied a lot at school and suffered to the point that he cried every morning before school. She did what probably a lot of mothers would do, she
tried to protect him or rather shield him from the outside world where he
couldn't defend himself. My friend did a good job educating her son (she had teaching credentials) but he remained a socially inapt person.

He did not go to college after high school, even though he was smart, the
social phobia of being with his peers presented him with too much anxiety.
They moved, so I lost track of this friend, but I always wondered if she made
the right choice to shield her son from his peers. Had she taught him to
defend himself, sent him to martial arts classes, and encouraged him to participate actively with his peers, I am almost certain he would have turned
out differently.

As for my daughter, she is an only child and very social, she thrives with other kids around her. Up until 4th grade she thought school was just there to socialize, and any learning part was pure coincidental. Luckily she's smart or we would have major problems. Yet, a few hours a week she is "home schooling". With a group of other kids she gets Spanish lessons with one mother, German lessons with me, and math lessons with someone else.
It's much more fun when there are more kids in the group and the mothers
rotate.

So if you woke up as the secretary of education tomorrow morning, what would you do about home schooling? Introduce mandatory tests at the end of each year to produce statistics that might inform later legislative action? Criminalize it, as it currently is in Germany? Something in between?

Funny you should ask. I just had a long discussion about this with my brother who is also getting a master of ed, but for sight impaired students. The students he teaches might be more apt to be home schooled because they have significant physical, emotional, behavioral and or intellectual disabilities.

1.) There should be tracking:
I think that every home schooled child should be registered by the state into a database. Some kids, like CJane's, are doing a hybrid education and should be included in the database if they are attending school less than full time.

2.) There should be periodic assessments:
All home schooled kids should be required to take yearly or bi-annual standardized tests. If not the state/federal tests, than a test home schoolers and state/feds can come up with together and agree on. All able students should have to pass the GED or senior year federal test whether they are going on to college or not.

3.) There should be data analysis:
This seems a given, but there needs to be an analysis of the data, yearly, to assess home schooling and track trends. Also to see what progress is made over the years.

4.) There should be other components added to the data analysis.
At some point, but maybe not right away, info about parental credentials, types of home school environments, regions, etc should be included in the database for analysis.

If public education systems need to go through rigorous testing and face consequences for failing to meet targets, than home schooling should have the same expectations. Where homse schooling is working, let it go and keep tracking it, where it's not, well, call social services or something.

Kids who have disabilities should have similar accommodations set for them. If they are impaired in a way that makes it hard to test them, they should have access to what ever they need to perform on the tests (it's expected of public school students).

That's been my experience and what I was trying to express to Thomas earlier. I am very interested in this and have tried hard, but don't find a lot of good academic information about it.

Kids who get into college after being home schooled are often not visible as such to the colleges. Hell, sometimes they even come with a local High School Diploma.

So while I know that home schooled kids have entered just about every prestigious university there is, I don't believe reliable statistics exist for their admission rates because there's no systemic tracking of the information yet.

Dammit littlek -- I was hoping for a passionate confrontation here, and you're getting all reasonable and sense-making on me! I agree with almost everything in your post, with only two modest exceptions

For one, there's the practical problem of the feds and homeschoolers (which I understand is a pretty diverse group) agreeing on on a test. I don't really see that happening. Do you have an idea?

And the second, more significant difference is about the following sentence: "If public education systems need to go through rigorous testing and face consequences for failing to meet targets, than home schooling should have the same expectations." I disagree with that, because there's a fundamental difference between the two. Public schools are funded with the money of taxpayers, who in turn have a right to know what they're getting for their money.

By contrast, homeschoolers school their children on their own money, so there is no corresponding right of taxpayers to demand an account of their performance. There is only the right of children to protection against abuse and neglect (like David's case, which I, too, would like to know more about). This justifies only a much lesser level of scrutiny.

But other than that, no disagreement. Just a question: What consequences would you draw when a test is failed?

Thomas
the points u made were superb.
So stipulated.




David

Thank you. So, what happened in the case of the boy who was technically home-schooled but practically neglected? What did you do to help him, and to which extent did you succeed?

I only met this family on very few occasions,
and only for a few days each time. The last time was at a resort in Florida
over the George Washington 's Birthday weekend maybe 4 or 5 days several years ago.
I remember being somewhat taken aback by something I saw him do,
that I had not thought a human being was able to do:
I ordered in a pizza. Since he was in the area I invited him to have some.
His jaws snapped down on that slice of pizza in a manner that reminded me
of the motions of alligators; I did not think that was possible; surprize.

There was a mini-scandal among the residents who complained
of his educational neglect, which I found to have a factual basis.
His mother is ( or was and probably still is ) on welfare.
I gave him a new digital watch, in addition to cash,
when I found out that he did not know how to tell time at age 10.
We were about to make an appointment
for me to explain to him how to read the watch, but he told me later
that his mother woud teach that to him. I had to defer to that decision.
She is the authority in her own family. It coud be possible that she DID tell him.
He is probably around 18 by now; I guess somehow he found out
how to tell time by now.

I remember when my mother explained how to tell time to me.
I was 4 years old. It was a warm n memorable moment in my life.
She traced out circles from a teacup with a pencil onto white paper,
and drew clock faces showing the different hours of the day.
As I remember, it only took about half an hour.




David

Thomas, I like the idea of home schooling. But I know that different home schooled students have different experiences and that there is little or no research to help us understand the results.

First point: Regulating home schoolers would indeed be hard to do. No disagreement there.

Second point: I strongly believe that it is the responsibility of the tax-paying public to be sure that all citizens of the nation get an education that they can use to be good co-citizens. If a public school can't support and educate a student with serious needs, the tax-payers are responsible to making sure that child gets the best education he or she can get. If that means paying thousands of dollars for transport fees to a school that will cost thousands of doallars for tuition, so be it. This is the tax-payers' responsibility. Did you know that?

When America got started,
there was no such "responsibility" that I know of.
If u believe that historically there was indeed such a responsibility,
will u be good enuf to point to its origin ?

Did I miss something in the Constitution ?




David

In the constitution??!? How does this have anything to do with the foundation of our country? And, the whole theory about school and education producing good citizens goes back to the ancient greek philosophers.

Well, u asserted that:

When someone alleges the existence
of a responsibility that I do not know about,
it is my general practice to ask him to
show the origin of that alleged responsibility.

In candor, I will admit that the legislatures of many states,
perhaps all 50 states have enacted statutes that u might use
to support your position, but that is not something that any
of those legislatures HAD to do, if thay did not wish to do so.




David

Why doesn't the law suffice for you?

Someone has observed that one shoud never watch
the manufacture of sausage or of legislation. It can be very arbitrary.

I can think of a very important statute of my state which was enacted
at the behest of a madman (in the advanced stages of syphilis), a suicidal maniac,
as vengeance against a certain corporation that failed to continue paying him graft.

The fact that something becomes law does not prove
that it is right or good, or that the legislature had the authority to enact it.





David