Home schooling

[Jon Miller]

In other words, I know you are wrong. I know that decent parents can have loser kids.

Jon Miller

[DanS]

One thing that I noted going through public school (through 8th grade) is that my mind was idle more than half the time. I think I got a reasonably good education even though the public school was built for mediocre, but my parents could have looked at that as an unacceptable waste of talent or time.

[Agathon]

Home schooling seems to be as bad an idea as "home doctoring".

Sure, a few people will have doctors as parents, but the majority will be drinking stump water to cure what ails them. That's why standards have to be set, even if a small proportion of the population would be better off homeschooled.

[Imran Siddiqui]

and the highschool age daughter and mother shared a boyfreind

Let's talk more about this .

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jaguar
I know a girl who was homeschooled out to 9th grade. Her dad makes a living as a tutor for rich kids who flunk out of private schools and such (good money where I live) so he was a very competent teacher and she's doing quite well in high school.

That is an exception. Most kids' parents aren't teachers by training even if they happen to be knowledgable about some subjects.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DanS
One thing that I noted going through public school (through 8th grade) is that my mind was idle more than half the time. I think I got a reasonably good education even though the public school was built for mediocre, but my parents could have looked at that as an unacceptable waste of talent or time.

Pekka and joncha have a nice point here - school is the place where kids start the long hard process of building up their social skills.

[Eli]

Pekka and joncha have a nice point here - school is the place where kids start the long hard process of building up their social skills.

And it is also the place where the brighter kids start the not so long process of crumbling under the social pressure of the dumb, ignorant majority.

Most 20 years olds can, when being laughed at for reading books or being interested in anything beyond TV and sports, laugh back and hold their position, knowing that they are doing the right thing. Most 10 years old cant and wont.

If I could return in time and homeschool myself, I would've done it. I spent highschool in a handpicked class of good students and most of my time there was wasted staring on the ceiling. Primary school was an even worse waste of time.

The socialization problem is an important one but it can be easily solved, whether by learning in groups with other homeschoolers, encouraging "after school" activities, etc. So attacks on homeschooling on these grounds do not invalidate the concept, but faulty implementations of it.

[VetLegion]

You were one of the bullys laughing at the handpicked good students and now you complain... why exactly?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Eli

Pekka and joncha have a nice point here - school is the place where kids start the long hard process of building up their social skills.

And it is also the place where the brighter kids start the not so long process of crumbling under the social pressure of the dumb, ignorant majority.

This clearly demostrates the difference between an optimist and a pessimist.

Or maybe the schools in Israel are different?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

My Ivy-League alumni monthly did a great article a couple of years ago about home schooled kids getting into exclusive universities. They basically said what you did, DanS: there are all kinds of home schooling, and the best produces extraordinary kids.

Broadly, I'd say this: home schooling seems motivated either by a belief that kids need to be protected from the world (as represented by the public schools -- the typical religious motivation), or kids need to engage the world even more fully than public schooling will allow. The former motivation doesn't do much for kids, but the latter can really have extraordinary results.

[mrmitchell]

They basically said what you did, DanS: there are all kinds of home schooling, and the best produces extraordinary kids.

Which is a worthless statement. The best public schools produce extraordinary kids, as well.

[DanS]

Even the best schools must teach to the lower half of a particular class and encourage mediocrity (of course, some mediocrities are better than others...). It's how it must work, if you have larger groups of kids. The brighter children will just be idle much of the time.

Previously, I thought this idleness was the price you pay for efficiency. You can have a single teacher teach 20 or 30 kids -- very efficient. However, now I'm starting to ask whether this is the wrong way to look at it. In a class of 20 or 30, half of the students are idle-minded half of the time. We could look at it narrowly and say that the teacher's time is worth more than the pupil's time, but that discounts the potential value of the pupil's time in the future.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
My Ivy-League alumni monthly did a great article a couple of years ago about home schooled kids getting into exclusive universities.

Maybe I am just cynical, but I think it is the connections of the parents that get them into exclusive universities more than anything else.

For example: Mr George W Bush, the President of the United States.

[mrmitchell]

half of the students are idle-minded half of the time.

This is not necessarily true. If half the students in a given class are idle-minded half the time I would say the teacher is teaching wrong.

There are many things public schools are doing these days to keep advanced students thinking.

Besides, you're starting to jack into the "smaller class sizes are better" theory, which is a different subject from home schooling. Of course a student will do better in 1-on-1 tutoring. Do you want to pony up the tax dollars to hire thousands of extra teachers, DanS? While schools could certainly do better with more teachers, there's a point at which you start getting diminishing returns on your money.

[DanS]

Do you want to pony up the tax dollars to hire thousands of extra teachers, DanS?

I'm trying to keep an open mind about it. At a minimum, I'm willing to entertain arguments about why home schooling as a general phenomenon is good for society and in any event has no extra immediate monetary cost to me.