brighid

I am not sure the relevancy of “strangers” having a relationship with a child in a professional setting, as related to home schooling being preferable. Most, if not all people do not know their doctors before they entrust their health or life to them, should they be discouraged from seeking medical help until they have a firm relationship established with said professional? Everyone, at some point in time is a stranger to everyone else and I don’t feel that should be a valid point from which to argue that public schools are some how worse for a child then a home environment. The fact that someone is a stranger does not make him or her incapable of educating a child, or being capable of caring for a child in a reasonable manner. I would say that engaging with “strange” and different people is an important developmental exercise in the socialization of a child and that children who are sheltered from the world to such a degree may be psychologically crippled. This is not to say that that parents who have chosen home schooling as an alternative are intentionally crippling a child, but those who aren’t allowed to meet with, talk to, or learn from others outside of their small world may not learn valuable social skills that will be pivotal in their future success.

Furthermore, it seems that strangers are by and large safer then family members, trusted friends and other acquaintances as these people are far more likely to harm a child in criminal ways then strangers are, and it can be argued that this could even be a benefit. I think that it’s easier to be objective with students if there aren’t preconceived notions as to who a child is.

We must place a degree of trust in the professional people we deal with in day-to-day life. I don’t believe someone should simply be trusted because of a credential like a teaching certificate, or a Ph.D. from Harvard, but that a certain level of skeptical trust must be extended to forge new relationships.

I do agree that parents should be much more involved in their children’s education both at school and at home. I think parents who are actively involved in their children’s lives have fewer problems with their children, as they grow older. Some parents don’t care much about the education of their children, and some are fortunate to have a school system that has qualified staff and the need doesn’t arise to be concerned about the goings on of the average school day. And many parents can’t take the time off of work to participate more actively in the school day, and even sometimes with after school activities. I don’t think this makes them bad parents and I don’t think parents who choose home, public or private schooling should be lumped into any general categories. It is impossible to accurately assess how active any parent is in the life of his/her child’s education unless one has direct and adequate knowledge to make such a judgment. Every type of educational choice has good and bad examples to provide the basis for a debate, but it is wrong to equate public school = automatically bad, or home school = automatically good and vice versa. Each school should be evaluated on an individual basis, as should each parent(s) and child(ren.)

Brighid

Ab_Normal

Brigid:

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

(Why does everybody else come with what I *meant* to say? Ah, well, as long as it gets said!)

Bree

I'm sorry that you had such bad experiences with public schools, Frogsmoocher, but please realise that all public schools are not the evil, nasty organisations that you believe them to be.

Quite frankly, I wish I would have had "strangers" as teachers. My school was very, very small (18 kids to a classroom was the absolute maximum, often times we had less than 10) and all the teachers knew everyone's parents. My mother was a teacher in my school all through my educational years. My teachers held me to a higher standard because they knew my parents were "quality" and oftentimes I was graded far differently than my peers, just on account that my parents were held in high intellecutal regard (how ironic).

My public school was also run by a church - every teacher in school except the chemistry/biology teacher (he was atheist)went to the same charismatic Baptist church. Ditto with all the school administrators.

2tadpoles

I think I wasn't clear about what I meant by "stranger."

Your child has a new teacher every year. These people, aside from being "teachers," are individuals. They come with their own styles, methods, and prejudices. How many people question these things before putting their kids on the bus? How many parents examine the curricula being used by the school?

Ideally, everyone should have a relationship with their doctor BEFORE needing treatment. If people cared for themselves better and went for checkups, they would know their doctor fairly well by the time something serious happened. Of course, if you collapse at work from a heart attack, you won't be likely to know the doctor that treats you at the ER.... but that's life and death. School isn't. There is no reason why a parent can't investigate the aforementioned things prior to school starting.

When having work done on a house or car, people often scope out different businesses. They try to make sure that the workers are capable and honest and use good materials. Yet many of the same people will send their most precious cargo off for 13 years without asking anything further than "what does lunch cost?"

Not at all. But they don't care about my children as much as I do. They don't care anywhere near as much about my children's dreams and ambitions, their likes and dislikes, or their needs as individuals.

So I suppose all the people who grew up on farms prior to the mid-19th century (before schooling was common) were psychologically crippled? After all, they often only associated with their families or very small groups in their communities. I suppose George Washington and Abe Lincoln were crippled, as well.

Come on now! That "socialization" argument no longer holds water. It is just as illogical as Pascal's Wager is to religious arguments. In what other environment, apart from school, is one segregated by age? How is spending your day with 20-30 other seven-year-olds (plus a couple of teachers) socially stimulating? Especially when most of that time is supposed to be spend quietly learning. The only time kids get to talk to each other at school is at lunch, recess, and on the bus. In some schools, they can't even talk at lunch (firsthand experience here...talking while eating leads to choking, and it leads to wasting food).

Are you saying that, without school, a child would never meet anyone new? If so, then it's not the schooling that's the problem....it's the parenting.

It all depends on what you mean as "evil" and "nasty."

If you mean drug, sex, and weapon infested, then I agree with you. They are not all like that.

However, schools rob families of time together. They remove young children from the "nest," and throw them in with large groups of other young children. Then parents wonder why teens care so much more about what their friends think than what their parents think. Why, it's because they've formed a new family. We call it "peer dependency."

Then they have the nerve to send home "homework," which further cheats the family of together-time.

Schools teach that people should all know the same things at the same age. They teach that most learning should come from a state-approved set of books. They teach that when the bell rings, it's time to stop learning one thing (even if you are still interested) and start learning something else. Children who aren't good at this transition are labeled "disruptive," as are children who are very inquisitive.

Schools coerce children into performing by using rewards and punishments called grades. They teach that it doesn't matter how proud you are of your accomplishment; what really matters is someone else's opinion of what you've done.

I could go on and on, but this post is long enough. If you'd like to visit this page, it will detail a long list of reasons why some people avoid schools.
<a href="http://www.nhen.org/nhen/pov/newhser/reasons_hmschool.html" target="_blank">http://www.nhen.org/nhen/pov/newhser/reasons_hmschool.html</a>

Anyway, those are some of the reasons I think schools are evil and nasty. Public, private, it doesn't matter. They all rob children of their individuality. JMO, of course.

"I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were. The proper relationship of the schools to home is the relationship of the library to home, or the skating rink to home. It is a supplementary resource.

"But the school is a kind of artificial institution, and the home is a very natural one. There are lots of societies without schools, but never any without homes. Home is the center of the circle from which you move out in all directions, so there is no conceivable improvement in schools that would change my mind about that." John Holt

2tadpoles

I really didn't mean to hijack the thread.

I would like to say that I think Christian families have every right to teach their children what they believe.

Someone mentioned that it would be terrible if fundy parents were allowed to shelter their children from certain science and history topics. These fundy parents think it's terrible that we don't. They are entitled to raise their children as they see fit. I believe in liberty for everyone, not just a select few Americans.

Bree

They also have the advantage of being objective.

My mother is, like I said, a schoolteacher. She sees many students come through with obvious learning disabilities and behavioural problems. The parents of these children are, more often than not, unwilling to acknowledge these perceived shortcomings in their children, and do nothing to help facilitate learning for their kids.

Bree

Of course they do. Neo-Nazis also have the right to teach their kids to hate Jews and other minorities.

I could really care less what you're teaching your children. It's when those teachings turn into actions and those actions hurt or hinder others - that's when my feathers get ruffled.

ohwilleke

Why exactly is this a bad thing? A dildo and condoms would seem like a very sensible way to teach 5th graders about safe sex. It is direct enough that no stupid 5th grader is going to misunderstand how it is done, and yet less graphic than showing the actual conduct of safe sex by a real man and woman.

ohwilleke

I certainly don't agree. Children are not the property of their parents. Parents are not and should not be entitled to raise their children entirely as they see fit. By analogy, we do let adults refuse medical treatment, but we don't give parents an absolute right to deny their children medical treatment.

Children have independent interests and aspirations from their parents. It is entirely appropriate that society should set minimum standards on behalf of children, on how those children should be raised. Society doesn't have the right to force mom or dad to believe something, or to force kid to believe something, but society has a duty to at least expose kids to at least a minimum pool of ideas whether or not the parents like it.

In the same way, I think it would be inappropriate for atheist parents to raise their children in an environment so insular that the children don't even know that religion exists.

Kvalhion

Which is really the problem of the parents, rather than a problem of homeschooling. It is not unreasonable to assume that most parents who are homeschooling their children can and do recognize a learning disability and are more than capable of making the decision to explore it with a specialist or someone objective. Besides, the reverse can also be true: those who do not know children as well as their parents may misdiagnose the children with having things such as ADD with hasty generalizations.

I will soon be a parent, and I am seriously considering the option of homeschooling. I am, of course, considering other options including normal public school as well.

I think it is disingenuous to assume that because a child is home schooled they are incapable of socializing with other children. This is especially true because most logically minded parents will realize this is an issue and take steps to participate in activities where their child or children can socialize with other kids.

There are a variety of tools and methods to help children get a good education. Yet these tools are not self-sufficient. How you use them is equally, if not more, important.