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I appreciate that you are attempting to be fair-minded about this. There should be a middle ground that all can agree with.
I don't think anyone wants children to be abused or poorly prepared for 'flying right' in the outside world and it would seem to me that there should be some safeguards put in place to assure that children are not exposed to corrupting influences.
I did not think of this, but I read a few books about the FLDS and their pathetic educational system and how it helps/ed to put blinders on developing minds and instill fear of the 'outside' and how kids, especially girls, were usually ill prepared for anything other than FLDS life.
I have no doubt that some white supremacist groups are using this to isolate their children from other viewpoints and ideas.
Unfortunately, religious control is the second most common reason parents homeschool (the first being they think they are more qualified than the schools/teachers to teach their kids). Here there is potential for harm (and maybe this is why homeschooled kids don't perform as well as would be expected on tests like the ACT) because the reason for homeschooling has nothing to do with academics and parents who are not educated enough to be homeschooling might feel pressured to do so by religious groups.
If you belong to a group that wants to be separated from the mainstream, homeschooling would be a great way to make sure the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. If the only view your children are ever exposed to is yours, most likely, your kids will grow up to share your views. Another scary prospect for homsechooling.
Can't you see that a child is completely at the mercy of a parent? If the parent, as most are, is a decent human there is no problem. If the parent is mentally deranged he can prevent the child from socializing with neighborhood kids - which happens and is his right to do - and the only hope the kid has is sometimes a kind and concerned teacher.
How would you protect such a child in a home schooling environment? Or, does that child not matter in your view of things because he is someone else's?
What you are referring to is not homeschooling. It's child abuse. Please familiarize yourself with the difference then report back if you are still interested in carrying on the discussion.
Any deranged parent could isolate their kid in a closet and not send them to school/out to play/take them to the doctor. That's not homeschooling!
What you are referring to is not homeschooling. It's child abuse. Please familiarize yourself with the difference then report back if you are still interested in carrying on the discussion.
Any deranged parent could isolate their kid in a closet and not send them to school/out to play/take them to the doctor. That's not homeschooling!
Not the OP but I believe the point is, where is the safety net for the homeschooled child in an abusive situation? Do we simply tolerate these situations because it's a parent's right to educate their children any way they see fit?
If the child is not showing up to school and the parent hasn't filed homeschooling paperwork, then the truant officer comes a calling.
For example, if you're teaching algebra, it's best to know calculus so you know where you're going with algebra. If you're teaching general chemistry, it's best to know inorganic and organic so you know what concepts are important to going on in the subject. You need an education that goes beyond what you teach. Knowing where you're going changes what you teach.
I would agree with this statement, except that I don't think you and I have the same breadth in mind.
It's my experience that "experts in their field(s)" are fine, as far as they go, but they don't have much of a concept of how their subject relates to any of the others. Further, too many "experts in the field" of education are teaching younger children. Most know theories of education, and they have a familiarity with the tasks related to education, but overall they don't have the slightest idea of how to teach connections (or else they do, but just don't do it, which IMO would be worse). They teach math. Then spelling. Then reading. Then after lunch, social studies and that ubiquitous bean sprout in wet napkins (not one of my kids has ever known why they did that, just that it was kind of cool and beat the heck out of going to PE). Classroom teachers don't teach the spaces between (because, yanno, it's not in the curriculum)-- that's why kids get to AP classes and college only able to regurgitate facts, and unable to see the connections between, say, physics and world history (other than the class "brainiac" who can maybe acknowledge that Isaac Newton lived a long time ago). And most world history and physics "experts in their field" aren't going to bother covering it in their 45 minute slice o' the day, either.
Do I think this is every single teacher? No. Every single curriculum? Mmmm...I'll allow there might be one somewhere that teaches connections, but I personally haven't seen it in a public facility. Do I even think every child on the planet has to be able to recognize connectedness? Depends on how high up ol' Maslow we're functioning. I'm sure for some families it's not important. For mine, it is.
My main concern is that a child's view of the world can be skewered by that of the parent. There are systems with which to deal with teachers with prejudices and odd theories and emotional discomfort, but who polices parents who have problems? Who protects the child from the teacher who thinks science is not so important or who passed math in high school by the skin of their teeth or who just has a personality that is flat and uninspiring?
How does the student learn to defend or form persuasive and appropriate arguments by interacting with other students, or simply realize that there are others who approach a situation differently?
There are a number of cults with strange ideas and a great number of adults who believe in one conspiracy theory or another. Formal teachers may believe these things too, but know where to draw the line and leave inquiring little minds free to grow to develop their own opinions on such matters rather than brainwashing them.
I know that there are teachers who seem to not be too great, but a student has them for a very short period. A parent, he is stuck with.
We are not living in the days when many of us were farmers and the child had the hope of a good future by following in dad's footsteps. I think some parents could make excellent teachers, but I fret about those who are aberrations and that they will pass their skewered thinking on to their kids with the children never being aware that this is not the norm in society.
I would agree that a parent, to teach early grades, needs a high school diploma at the least with grades that are B/3 or above. For junior high and high school, I would require the same, but with a college diploma with heavy emphasis on liberal arts and credit requirements in various courses.
I think parents who home school should also be given psychological testing periodically, along with the child.
If those checks and balances are so good, why is it that so many kids are being assaulted in school, or sexually importuned by teachers, or killing themselves because of unchecked bullying? For that matter, why did I have a sixth grade social studies teacher who didn't know the difference between communism and socialism, and who thought the My Lai massacre was just a trumped up fuss over nothing?
Further, you assume (like Ivory has) that homeschoolers exist in a vaccuum. Aside from the fact that my car has the mileage to dispute that fact, it's been refuted already back a few pages. Even a family which homeschools to Promote Christian Morality And Avoid Those Nasty Heathen is no more seclusive than one which sends little Junior and Juniorette to Blessed Jesus Cornerstone Holiness Christian Academy to do the same thing-- or for that matter, one who lives in any of several small, racially and religiously homogenous towns across the US.
When you start insisting the people of, say, Oelwein IA move to Memphis TN to get a broader experience, we'll talk.
[quote=goldengrain;9806042]I went to a middle class high school at a time when there were no drugs or pregnancies, etc, that I heard of. A huge scandal was a temp teacher who had a short fuse and was an ex-prizefighter and threw a kid out the window. It was not a tough school. I had never heard of a teacher laying a hand on a kid or even violent student fights, for that matter.
quote]
Why hasn't anyone addressed this yet? Are you kidding? This is normal?
Use your imagination. There are many sickos out there whose maladies do not prevent them from having kids. There are many gun-toting nut jobs, Tim McVeys, who would love to raise their own little militia. There are many pedophiles who marry and have kids only to serve their deviant purposes. In a public school system at least a child can see that there may be another way.
Don't you care about these kids?
I might, if you could prove that they exist.
But I don't think that giving up my right , or Becky's or Charles's or even Ivory's and Urban's (because when you start mandating parenting and a specific form of education, you also begin to erode options within the mandated construct) to determine my own children's future is the appropriate way to go about securing theirs.
If those checks and balances are so good, why is it that so many kids are being assaulted in school, or sexually importuned by teachers, or killing themselves because of unchecked bullying? For that matter, why did I have a sixth grade social studies teacher who didn't know the difference between communism and socialism, and who thought the My Lai massacre was just a trumped up fuss over nothing?
Further, you assume (like Ivory has) that homeschoolers exist in a vaccuum. Aside from the fact that my car has the mileage to dispute that fact, it's been refuted already back a few pages. Even a family which homeschools to Promote Christian Morality And Avoid Those Nasty Heathen is no more seclusive than one which sends little Junior and Juniorette to Blessed Jesus Cornerstone Holiness Christian Academy to do the same thing-- or for that matter, one who lives in any of several small, racially and religiously homogenous towns across the US.
When you start insisting the people of, say, Oelwein IA move to Memphis TN to get a broader experience, we'll talk.
I do not assume homeschoolers exist in a vaccuum. They do, however, control what/who their kids are exposted to. They miss out on exposure to many different ideas and ideals simply because they are in a controlled environment that is controlled by the parent. Not sure that's a good thing given our world is made up of all kinds of people and we need to learn to live among them.
What I am saying is that the concept of home schooling is ideally suited to someone like a pedophile.
Not really. Large concentrations of children in one area are what generally tend to attract them. I assume here that you're actually confusing pedophilia with incest. Most pedophiles and ephebophiles, in fact, prey on easily accessible but unrelated children. Think altar boys. For that matter, think Mary Kay Letourneau or Debra LaFave (or Stephanie Ragusa or Pamela Rogers Turner or...).
I did not think of this, but I read a few books about the FLDS and their pathetic educational system and how it helps/ed to put blinders on developing minds and instill fear of the 'outside' and how kids, especially girls, were usually ill prepared for anything other than FLDS life.
I have no doubt that some white supremacist groups are using this to isolate their children from other viewpoints and ideas.
The problem with FLDS, though, was not their educational system. Given the remote location of their dwellings, they could have essentially have their own public schools-- or certainly their own private schools, just like the Catholics, Lutherans, Muslims, and Chasidim.
To descend into your little fantasy world of "might be" people: Say you have a whacked out born again church elder sending little Rebekah to a private church-run Christian school. She has fairly frequent bruising on the back of her legs, and tends to wear long sleeves even in hot weather, but hey-- he's an elder, and anyway, "spare the rod", bay-bee. Do we close all Christian schools because Daddy Dearest is a nutjob?
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