If I had children I would probably be inclined to homeschool them, because I would feel like guarding them from the failings of the public school system. However, as a teacher I am more inclined to work to reform the public school system from within than to seek alternatives or pour all funding and effort into charter schools or whatever. I know my experience of public school in a very small town must be wildly different from that of people who went to public school in the town I live in now, though.

The only homeschooled kids I knew growing up where hybrid-homeschooled because they lived on a ranch 30 miles out of town and it just made sense for their family not to drive in at 5am (plus like, ranch work), so they homeschooled all their kids until they were old enough to ride the bus. They still got the socialization because they would come to the extracurriculars - soccer on Tuesdays, our art and music classes every Friday, little league in the summer, etc. When they finally started full-time in our school they were in fourth grade and miles ahead of the rest of us in both knowledge and work ethic.

It depends on the parents. I think they should have to get some kind of certification or hire a private teacher if they're going to be homeschooling their kids. I don't trust people not to be idiots.

We've had this discussion with Mordor before.

While I agree with the arguments for home schooling, the life experience of bullying, friendships, social interaction, etc, are some things that the home can never provide and are an absolutely essential part of growing up. Schools also provide a lot of great resources such as expensive computer software licenses, and database access to help students that want to learn more than what's in the classroom.

There is no reason for a child not to be educated at home while attending public school. Stop letting the school raise your kids, and participate in their education. If you don't have time to do this you probably don't have time to home school either.

and @Pet_Sounds - it's a lot about test scores in college as well. :(




:shycouch:

Just wanted to throw some Tech at ja. :)

Lol, what can I say? It's the public servant in me. I don't have a savior complex or anything, it's more a matter of not wanting to complain about it without also trying to find solutions.

I think this is a good point.

A good friend of mine was home schooled for part of his childhood because his dad was a park ranger and they lived on an island where there were no schools. That's a pretty reasonable situation to home school in I guess. I mean what else were they going to do? But he said once they were living somewhere where they sent him to a regular school, he and his brothers had kind of a hard time adjusting and he really felt like they missed out a lot on learning how to interact with variety of other people. I think people are really doing a disservice to their kids on that front if they home school them. I also think there's a pretty high probability of parents' overestimating their own skill at teaching, which is also problematic.

So much this.

So much depends on the situation. I watch a cooking show called Frontier Woman where the family lives on a cattle ranch a million miles from anywhere so she home schools. If I had lived in a crappy neighborhood when my kids were young I would have considered it but both me and Linda had to work full time so we moved to a nicer place and went public.

If you live in a decent area go public and let your kids not only experience the education but also the social experience.

IMO.

My wife and I homeschool. There are great programs out there, but the system can also be an excuse for lazy parents to let their children rot in ignornace.

You could say the same for homeschooling though.