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The biggest trouble is not that more of us don't choose to home-school our kids but rather that we allowed public schools to become the embarrassing institutions that they have become by catering to the lowest common denominator. Instead we could have served the ideal of democracy much better by expecting the lowest common denominator to reach high. Many would have whereas others would have just stayed where they were - and that would be the collateral damage of sane democracy.
i think the term "homeschooler" is a misnomer, to be honest. It's more like real-world schooling or maybe life-schooling. I can see where the confusion lies. But yes, homeschoolers utilize a wide variety of resources to learn, just like adults do. They might take a course at a public high school, take a course at a community college, take a course given by a biologist or artist, take a class online, study French with a native speaker, learn Internet coding by using a free Internet program, study the culture of China by performing independent research, volunteer as a docent at a museum, use a history curriculum that they complete at home, apprentice at their parent's workplace, join a community theater, discuss literature with their mom and siblings, and use a grammar workbook bought at the bookstore. And it's all homeschooling, even though a lot of it isn't done at home.
In some areas, homeschoolers are allowed to take a class or classes at the local high school. I'm not sure why anyone has a problem with this. Teens are great at choosing resources by the time they are high school aged... I wish that were a possibility where I live, but it's not. Instead, teenage homeschoolers are encouraged to take courses at the local college. That's probably what my son will do next year for some of his credits.
Arguing about whether that makes kids "real homeschoolers" is beside the point. The beauty of homeschooling is that it allows a tremendous degree of freedom to choose what works for an individual child.
Do the parents of the home schooled children in your class dictate what you will teach? If not, how are they controlling what their children are exposed to in your class?
They choose which classes they will allow their child to take. And yes I've had them try to dictate what I teach. I don't roll like that. When they realize that will not work they then go to the administration and have their child excused from learning any objectionable material. In my class that would be the section on radioactive decay because we cover carbon dating. They have no idea some of the off topic discussions we get into in my class. Today for example we were discussing the possibility that electrons exist in multiple dimensions. It's not in my lecture but students often ask questions like that.
I find it very interesting that there is also a thread going on where people are complaining about all of the time wasted in schools preparing for excessive numbers of tests. But yet here, people are saying, how can you be sure that your kids can pass the tests if you homeschool?
I guess it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of situation....
Testing should be scaled back across the board. However, IMO, if one dime of money is to be diverted from the public education fund to homeschooling options (whether this is tax credits or whatever) then some level of testing accountability should be in place that is similar to the level of accountability demanded of public schools. The same goes for charter schools and parochial or private schools receiving public funds.
Unfortunately, this really depends on the administrators. If they want the extra money for having that child in the class bad enough there can be a lot of pressure to change the curriculum to be more appealing. I was fortunate that my district doesn't let parents try to tell us what to teach. And doubly fortunate that the worst case happened while I worked for a charter school where I could discuss my religious beliefs. The parents calmed down a lot when they realized I was Christian. Homeschoolers seem to assume I'm an atheist because I teach science.
Testing should be scaled back across the board. However, IMO, if one dime of money is to be diverted from the public education fund to homeschooling options (whether this is tax credits or whatever) then some level of testing accountability should be in place that is similar to the level of accountability demanded of public schools. The same goes for charter schools and parochial or private schools receiving public funds.
I don't disagree with you here. It's one reason why I would not take any government money for homeschooling.
Unfortunately, this really depends on the administrators. If they want the extra money for having that child in the class bad enough there can be a lot of pressure to change the curriculum to be more appealing. I was fortunate that my district doesn't let parents try to tell us what to teach. And doubly fortunate that the worst case happened while I worked for a charter school where I could discuss my religious beliefs. The parents calmed down a lot when they realized I was Christian. Homeschoolers seem to assume I'm an atheist because I teach science.
I'm not sure if it's just your area, or what, because I'd say that I have no idea what the religious affiliation is of half the homeschoolers I know. (The other half belong Christian homeschool groups, so I would assume that they're Christian.) Of the Christian homeschoolers I know (and I'm including myself in this), roughly half do not teach creationism or expect that a high school teacher would be atheist due to the subject being taught. We identify as Christian, but my kids take science from a biologist (and yes, they have learned evolution); I have no idea what religion he is, and I don't care. Unless he's going to start performing a bris or baptizing kids or otherwise conducting religious ceremonies in his science classes, I don't know what it has to do with anything at all.
I'm not sure if it's just your area, or what, because I'd say that I have no idea what the religious affiliation is of half the homeschoolers I know. (The other half belong Christian homeschool groups, so I would assume that they're Christian.) Of the Christian homeschoolers I know (and I'm including myself in this), roughly half do not teach creationism or expect that a high school teacher would be atheist due to the subject being taught. We identify as Christian, but my kids take science from a biologist (and yes, they have learned evolution); I have no idea what religion he is, and I don't care. Unless he's going to start performing a bris or baptizing kids or otherwise conducting religious ceremonies in his science classes, I don't know what it has to do with anything at all.
The reason is that while most Christians don't have a conflict between religion and science (just saw a survey on this the other day), or have any issues with evolution and the Big Bang, there is a small, but very vocal minority who give us Christians a bad name. My DD was often accused of being atheist by other students, and even some teachers because she wanted to study science and cosmology.
It's an unfortunate reality that the extreme fringe has created the image the homeschoolers are bigoted, nearly illiterate, fundamentalists, when best I can tell, that's just another stereotype driven by the fringe.
I've had several "homeschooled" students in my classes. I find it kind of funny that they're "homeschooled" when they're sitting in my class. It appears that "homeschooling" is a euphemism for parent controlled and limited education. The child is exposed to only what the parent wants them exposed to. That's kind of sad because I grew a lot when exposed to things my parents would NEVER have exposed me to. If my mom had controlled my education I would have grown up thinking creationism was a science and evolution a myth. My mom meant well but she was not in position to decide what was best for us to learn. She was not a scientist. She was great at teaching religion though. Fortunately, she knew that and sent us to public school where we were exposed to all kinds of things some good and some bad but all involved learning. You have to challenge your paradigms to really learn.
There appear to be a variety of motivations behind homeschooling but people seem to believe that the most prevalent one is ideology-driven CONTENT; as in "parents wanting their kids exposed to knowledge A but not to knowledge B". Many parents' problem though is not content - but pedagogy.
After all, I understand a selection must be made and schools cannot teach EVERYTHING. I also understand public schools are PC and they will teach certain things, from a certain angle. That's OK.
So you can go ahead and teach my kids whatever topics, within any given discipline.
But whatever you teach, don't insult their intelligence.
So to some of us, it's not WHAT the public school teaches, but HOW.
The superficial approach to just about any topic, the lack of centralized materials (a good textbook with quality applications); random flying sheets everywhere, no disciplinary canon and no chronological order of topics; being sent on the Internet to gather random information that fails to anchor that knowledge to a larger, logical framework; gut-based approaches to problem solving in mathematics; lack of emphasis on systematic, step-by-step methods; no emphasis on demonstration of one's work in writing; the over-use of pre-printed sheets to the detriment of student writing ...all of this should be enough to send any parent who knows better...screaming in the night away from public schooling.
It doesn't have to be evolutionism vs creationism, really. In fact, I find it pathetic that this is what people argue over when they debate the pro-s and cons of homeschooling. I couldn't care less as to which one you want to tell my kid is true. I can discuss both with them at home, compare and contrast, the jazz. No biggie.
The biggest problem is that the pedagogy of public schools is designed for mass-education, not quality education; and this applies from the most dangerous ghetto school to the most highly ranked public school in top notch suburb where parents do nothing but stay "involved" all day long.
If you give my kid one of those embarrassing MC quizzes and he gets an A because he circled them all correctly...do you really think I can believe that A reflects a well-educated child?
Not remotely.
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