April 26, 2012
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Home Schooling: Is a Home Education Healthy
What are your thoughts on Homeschooling?
Homeschooling is legal in many countries. Countries with the most prevalent home education movements include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some countries have highly regulated home education programs as an extension of the compulsory school system; others, such as Sweden and Germany, have outlawed it entirely. Brazil has a law project in process. In other countries, while not restricted by law, homeschooling is not socially acceptable or considered undesirable and is virtually non-existent.
Approximately 1,230,000 U.S. children are being taught at home, according to data in a study conducted by the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Oregon.
Homeschooling laws can be divided into three categories:
1.In some states, homeschooling requirements are based on its treatment as a type of private school (California, Indiana, Texas, for example) In those states, homeschools are generally required to comply with the same laws that apply to other (usually non-accredited) schools.
2.In other states, homeschool requirements are based on the unique wording of the state’s compulsory attendance statute without any specific reference to “homeschooling” (New Jersey, Maryland, for example). In those states, the requirements for homeschooling are set by the particular parameters of the compulsory attendance statute.
3.In other states (Maine, New Hampshire, Iowa, for example) homeschool requirements are based on a statute or group of statutes that specifically applies to homeschooling, although statutes often refer to homeschooling using other nomenclature (in Virginia, for example, the statutory nomenclature is “home instruction”; in South Dakota, it is “alternative instruction”; in Iowa, it is “competent private instruction”). In these states, the requirements for homeschooling are set out in the relevant statutes.
What are your thoughts on Homeschooling?
Comments (19)
If done in a way that is well rounded and scientifically accurate, I have no problem with it. If, however, the parent decides to foster an atmosphere of scientific illiteracy by teaching their children nothing more complex and challenging than ‘goddidit’, I see this as completely wrong and unfair to the child. At some point the child will be out in the world and likely to attend a school at which the curriculum teaches actual science.
Parents that home educate because they fear having their children learn about evolution do their children a terrible disservice and leave them ill-prepared for the world beyond their front door. ‘Goddidit’ satisfies religious sensibilities, but is otherwise lazy thinking that does nothing to actually educate a child about the world they live in or foster critical thinking skills. If that’s the way someone sees everything, why bother to learn more about it? The desire to investigate and draw one’s own conclusions has already been indoctrinated away by the time the child is old enough to attend middle school.
i’d never do it, personally. i want my children to be taught by people who are educated in their fields. i don’t want them to be held back by the reality that i haven’t taken a math class since 2004 and can’t remember a damn thing about calculus.
I was home schooled from the 2nd grade all the way through high school. It’s definitely not for everybody. It worked well for me because I was very self-motivated. In fact, the biggest role my parents played in my early education was just buying me the textbooks. My mom would give me all my subjects at the beginning of the next grade (which was usually late July because I didn’t really like big breaks. I loved learning). It worked out okay for me because we moved a lot and I didn’t have to worry about changing school every couple of months. It didn’t work out so well for my sister, who I suspect has some learning disability. My mom ended up with brain cancer as I was beginning highschool, so both of our educations went out the window. As a result, my parents didn’t take any initiative to get me set up to take the SAT and generally gave up on both of us.
I guess to an extent it worked for me, but it definitely did my sister more harm than good. I’m worried she won’t ever be able to get a college degree. It all depends on the child I suppose.
I don’t think home education could provide to children the social abilities they aquire at school. That would be the only thing I could find against it. Learning has always been a social process and schools also provide to children the models of society and roles to a healthy development in the future. I don’t know if my stand would be the same if I lived in US where the school environment is a lot more hostile than in my country. Home schooling could work in kids with special needs but also I’ve seen amazing developments made by kids with special needs when they’re around kids their own age.
I don’t know how much more hostile school is here than anywhere else in the world: kids are kids. They should be protected from real abuse, but they need to know what’s really out there and learn how to deal with it. As with home schooling, I feel that parents are the key to the whole thing. For homeschooling to be successful, the parents have to be competent in many subjects and command the respect of their children. In my opinion discipline is woefully missing today–and I mean discipline without violence or belittling.
I understand that bullying goes on and that there are mean kids and submissive kids. You hear an awful lot about it in the media–but if you depend on the media to tell you the true condition of the world, you’re screwed.
As long as the parents are competent and the kids get some socialization I see nothing wrong with it.
@haasite - Cool, I understand.
Maybe take a look at THIS first.
i really have mixed feelings about it. i guess it depends on the family/their needs. i’ve heard success stories and nightmares.
i know of a family where the kids all played musical instruments very well, and so homeschooling made sense for them b/c they all wanted to focus more time commuting to and from lessons and devote more time to playing. but i’ve also heard of environments that were suffocating for the children b/c parents isolated children from others too much and it ended up being crippling for the kids in later life.
there was a time that i wished and hoped i could homeschool, but i am glad in retrospect that i hadn’t. i think homeschooling can work if families provide other opportunities to get kids involved with other kids and other adults. the cool thing about how homeschooling is done these days, is that homeschooling parents can have their kids interact with other kids and parents. kids also take part in other extra curricular activities that can aid them socially.
one bonus with homeschooling could be that your kid can get extra attention, and who knows their kid better than the parent? in that regard, there’s less distraction and time wasted b/c of dealing with a classroom of 30 kids who might need discipline and more supplemental material. you also can tailor things better to your own kids needs. with that said, part of learning and growing means having challenges that sharpen you. in a public or even private school setting, kids learn how to get along and make the best of challenges and different learning styles, different paces and personalities. you might get some differences with your siblings, but there would still be a family dynamic that is uniform. perhaps being in a homeschool environment which is too tailored and not as challenging, might not prepare kids enough for the real world challenges after graduation? might be sheltering and stunting in a way (?). i think whatever parents decide, they will find ways hopefully to make the best of their decision.
i am for homeschooling if it can be healthy. i get leery of it when it involves isolation from outsiders or involves some kind of indoctrination or strict adherance to a lifestyle or mindset
Other than the academic perspective of home school, there is also the social component. I believe in a school community, the child have more opportunities to learn to interact with peers and society. That is a very important part to the development of any child.
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Homeschooling sounds hard and would require a lot of effort. Therefore, I don’t do it.
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Well personally I think our education system is backasswards. You don’t need to be nearly as qualified to teach grade school as high school, for example. Of course things that were put in our heads as children won me a loooot of bets in high school…last one was about rabbits being rodents. Yep won myself $10 and a chocolate muffin. I don’t expect public school to be teaching about the difference between rodents and things like rabbits (rabbits aren’t rodents just for the record) but I think its wrong for a kid to ask and get a completely wrong answer. ”I don’t know” would have worked. Oh yes and my sister was almost suspended for cursing. What was her word of choice? Urinate.
Not all public school teachers are bad though. I have run into a couple good teachers in my day. I do want to homeschool my children when they are little. I think at a young age, so many schools generalize everything. Example, I didn’t know how to divide or multiply till I was like…11. It was introduced to us when I was 8. I felt pretty dumb and lost hope but hey, my class generally got it right? I was just one of many. I’m just not good at math and need to go over it way more than a lot of other people. With state tests and other kids that need to learn other things, its easy to fall behind.
My first college tutor was homeschooled and was wonderful. He was probably one of the best “teachers” I will ever have lol. We had two homeschooled sisters in one of my classes that seriously were just great at everything. All of them were chatty and really you couldn’t tell they were homeschooled…just really smart. However, I have a friend that was homeschooled after Jr. High. She is kinda social but probably shouldn’t have been totally taken out of school. She went from kinda talking to completely socially withdrawn. She really only hung out with two people she met back in Jr. High and hadn’t really talked to anyone else. Other than those two and family, she was pretty isolated.
So yes I think if done right, homeschool can be wonderful. If someone is gonna isolate their child or just not educate them (I believe some Christians were completely leaving out important lessons) then yeah its freaking terrible lol.
Home schooling is a middle to upper class luxury. Working people do not have the financial where-for-all required.