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Home Schooling
Good comment. Here are a couple of angles on the home schooling discussion.
Recent book (see editorial pages, Washington Times, last week) reports that school success is directly related to parental expectations, and cites white parents as being dissatisfied with less than a B- grade, asian parents as dissatisfied with less than an A- grade, and black parents as dissatisfied with less than a C- grade. Guess which group has poorest performance. Homeschoolers suffer when parental expectations, and / or parental teaching skills are low, but who would believe that a home schooler parent would have low expectations?
I learned to read with difficulty, ... until I was relieved from having to memorize words by sight. That happened after I got my head around the phonics "ladders" (ba, be, bi, ba, bu etc) -- which took a lot of practice. After that, I could read anything, and by 4th grade was reading at the 9th grade level. It was my mother who insisted I learn the phonics "ladders" to the great laughter of my 1st grade teacher. Years later my mother became an elementary education teacher, and won awards for teaching her kids to read early, and at accelerated levels.
It takes one to know one. That is, if you are a lefty, don't let your right handed father teach you how to bat. Home schoolers have a great advantage in this light. Most parents have a lot in common with their kids. There is another book, recently published, which may have triggered the media bash on home schooling. It reports the life success statistics that compare home schoolers to public school kids. The differences are startlingly in favor of home schooling. Parameters are things like number of books read recently, highest level of schooling, income, etc. Of course in todays world, most home schoolers start with a great advantage. They have smart parents.
Home schooling is one of several antidotes to system schooling. System-schooling doesn't work. For example, in Washington DC, where average spending for education per student is among the highest in the US, performance of most of those students is at the bottom. Large, well funded schools aren't necessary to produce high achieving, well educated graduates. It just takes good teachers. (I often think of a system schooled graduate who is the exception that proves that only a little money can still provide a good education. He studied K thru 12 in a one room schoolhouse, had the same teacher for most of those years, rarely had more than thirty kids in the school. His dad drove a beer truck, and wasn't rich by any means. On graduation from high school he won a scholarship to college, got a degree in physics, and today is an engineer / manager in the aerospace industry. This gent's history shows that schooling with a good teacher is all that is needed.)
One of the best antidotes to system schooling is the voucher process. Basically, it simply lets parents "vote with their feet" when they are dissatisfied with their kids' teachers or schools. Vouchers let parents find the schools that work for their kids. Guess who objects most strongly? Answer: two kinds of people. One kind is rich guardians of the concept of public education for other people's kids. (I think these people really just want to "keep the common men in their place." ) The other kind of objector to vouchers is people who work in the system schools. The teachers unions and the folks who politically support them are really down on vouchers. (Seems like these people are not arguing about better education, they are arguing to keep their bread buttered.)
What ever happened to old fashionned newspaper ethics. Once I took a class in journalism at Columbia University. It was an introduction for high school kids, not a real course, and they only covered a few topics. The one I remember is that reporters didn't get bylines (in those days) because they just report the facts. I'll bet that the homeschooling media blurb that started this blog, like most everything in the news today, has a reporters' byline. When I see one of those bylines I always remember that class, and realize that I am just looking at the opinions of "some reporter." Usually those opinions are of less use to anyone than most of the blogs on this site.
Oaf.
posted by
i-oaf
on November 3, 2003 at 2:16 AM
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I was home schooled for two years...
...when I was 8 & 9, while living in Switzerland, my Mom taught me and my sister with the Calvert Correspondence Scxhool. To this day (that was in 1950) I still remember that material!
posted by
arGee
on October 30, 2003 at 8:51 PM
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Well Done!
While I'm not enthusiastic about the idea of home schooling, I certainly understand why it is done. As you know, I've written several pieces on these pages concerning the deplorable state of public education and its misplaced values. As always, it is a pleasure to read a coherent essay in a sea of muddled thoughts.
posted by
barneymac
on October 30, 2003 at 11:37 AM
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I think that people should not be made to feel afraid to attempt homeschooling
their children if they feel that they are capable of it and really want to. Personally, I have heard astounding success stories from homeschoolers, and it seems to me that the limitations found within the public school system, as well as the lack of personal attention, can be overcome in a homeschooling environment where both the individual and the family are strengthened in ways that a stranger simply cannot achieve.
posted by
TARZANA
on October 29, 2003 at 10:23 PM
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This is a very well-written piece....
posted by
Celeste632
on October 29, 2003 at 10:15 PM
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