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To argue that public education has given any benefit especially since the early 70's is an exercise in futility.
Pushed along, brain washed, sub standard citizens who come out with only a sense of entitlement and false self esteem with no values as productive citizens, each generation worse then the last.. sorry Steve, if you really want a quality educated populace.. scrap it.. yeah you will. still have the uneducated minority but you will also end up with a better final product from the parents and family that make the sacrifice.. and that will be your majority.. people will flock here looking to hire people with a proven history of a work ethic coupled with fortitude and self reliance.
Dang, Dave. I gradiated in '87 from public skool and done turned out purty well
I'm over 40, so I tend to think that most teenagers these days are lazy, video-game-playin slugs who'd rather tweet their BFFs than actually learn something. But that may be a curmudgeonly attitude. It ain't ALL the school system's fault - I think a significant part of it is how we raise our kids today and popular culture, where it's cooler to be like Snooki from Jersey Shore than be a smart person. Can you imagine Snooki homeschooling her kids
To argue that public education has given any benefit especially since the early 70's is an exercise in futility.
Pushed along, brain washed, sub standard citizens who come out with only a sense of entitlement and false self esteem with no values as productive citizens, each generation worse then the last.. sorry Steve, if you really want a quality educated populace.. scrap it.. yeah you will. still have the uneducated minority but you will also end up with a better final product from the parents and family that make the sacrifice.. and that will be your majority.. people will flock here looking to hire people with a proven history of a work ethic coupled with fortitude and self reliance.
Why dont you take a poll in the relocation forum then.
What I find disturbing about this thread is that the most vocal advocates of home schooling have demonstrated their ignorance of so many essential and elemental aspects of English, math and civics that for them to homeschool their children would be equivalent to child abuse. The poor kids would not be able to function in a normal society. Well not one that existed prior to the 1600s anyway.
This is an interesting topic. I personally believe that school performance has as much to do with the parents as it does the teachers. There is no shortage of data pointing to the parents (success, education, etc). For example, I think that if you took the kids from the worst school in NH and swapped them with the kids from the best school in NH, you would hardly notice the difference. The kids from the good performing school would still perform well in the worst school, and the kids from the poor performing school would still perform poorly in the good school. Why? Because they didn't swap parents, only schools.
I know an elementary school teacher in FL who taught in an affluent planned community. She would tell me how easy her job was. The kids were a joy. And then the housing boom occurred. Homes were being purchased and rented. Her job was no longer easy. Same school, same teachers, different results. I can spend a day in a town and tell you how good the schools are just by observing the residents.
So, back to the topic at hand. If I'm correct about what I say above then there is no way kids are going to get a better education being home schooled by the same parents partly responsible for their poor performance in a regular school. Home schooling is not for all parents. Some adults can barely spell and put together a sentence. It works well for some parents, but not for others. Not to mention what others have said about both parents working.
I've benefited from living in a lot of places. It's good to get a different perspective. Primary education in America is very average. Quite a few countries outperform us. I spend my summers in the Czech Republic. They outperform us in most tests. I lived in Germany 7 years. They outperform us. Nobody is home schooled in Germany. Somehow it hasn't failed them. Ditto for the Czech Republic. I find it sad that parents even have to think about home schooling. A good education is one of the most basic services provided in any good society. Most of the parents I know who home school do so purely for religious reasons. They can't afford a private school but want their kids to receive a Christian based education. However, I no longer live in NH. NH's backwards tax structure allows for disgraceful schools. Heck, Laconia HS is rated so poorly you'd have to look at a ghetto, gang-infested neighborhood in Oakland to find a school that bad.
CarawayDJ – Thank you for your comment. I agree with your premise that New Hampshire schools and their funding system along with stupid or apathetic parents are reason for the poor results of most of our public schools. I would note the kids graduating from the Londonderry system seem to be smart decent people with bright futures. Of course Londonderry spends a LOT of money on its schools and most of the parents are smart decent people that pay attention to their kids and their schools.
The problem with our schools is we fund them with a highly regressive property tax that burdens the working class regardless of their ability to afford to have good schools. The result in much of New Hampshire is underpaid teachers working in dilapidated buildings trying to teach apathetic kids of economically frustrated parents. The really smart kids realize that no matter how hard they work there is very little available for them after they graduate except a very expensive State College or, if they are very smart and lucky, a scholarship that might let them get the hell out of New Hampshire and its permanent economic and cultural depression.
CarawayDJ – Thank you for your comment. I agree with your premise that New Hampshire schools and their funding system along with stupid or apathetic parents are reason for the poor results of most of our public schools. I would note the kids graduating from the Londonderry system seem to be smart decent people with bright futures. Of course Londonderry spends a LOT of money on its schools and most of the parents are smart decent people that pay attention to their kids and their schools.
The problem with our schools is we fund them with a highly regressive property tax that burdens the working class regardless of their ability to afford to have good schools. The result in much of New Hampshire is underpaid teachers working in dilapidated buildings trying to teach apathetic kids of economically frustrated parents. The really smart kids realize that no matter how hard they work there is very little available for them after they graduate except a very expensive State College or, if they are very smart and lucky, a scholarship that might let them get the hell out of New Hampshire and its permanent economic and cultural depression.
Just imagine how much our competitiveness would go down with an uneducated populace. It'd be like medieval times.
Or like colonial times:
“I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.”
-- Sir William Berkeley, Charles I’s royal governor in Virginia, 1671
Quoted in W. Hening, 2 The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia 517.
Keep 'em dumb and subservient. So yeah, you're right, just like medieval times.
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