Why homeschool?

[KnitNut]

Wow I can believe people think it’s fine to be illiterate. Some parents shouldn’t be teaching. If they can’t write, read and do math then nope they are actually abusing their kids. Not sure how me teaching has anything to do with it, but a year of it is not the same thing as parents who are illiterate. Btw I have been a college professor so I am qualified to teach. No not everyone should go to college but not fair to deny a child if that’s what they choose.

Well, I realize it is a grammatical muddle of rhetorical flame-bait up there, but I’ll have a go anyway:

a) Some parents are not effective teachers. Some paid/professional/certified teachers/professors are not effective teachers. shrug The bad parents get taken to court. The bad teachers get tenure. Don’t get me started on the lack of accountability in “public” education.

b) I challenge you to point out ANYWHERE in this thread where a poster advocated for, or even implied support for generational (or any variety of) illiteracy. (This may help: coursera.org/course/thinkagain - It’s from Duke. They’re sorta reputable.)

c) A year of poor teaching is as inexcusable as a lifetime of it. That’s why it matters. And in faith education, a year of poor teaching may have an eternity of negative consequences.

d) People are “denied college” all the time. Poor grades in public school. Lack of available funds. Work/family scheduling conflicts. It happens all.the.time. I await your statistics demonstrating that ineffectual home education is a significant factor within the population of people “denied” college. I further encourage you to consider that many lucrative professions (hey, even web design!) are accessible to people without a college degree (or even any formal college, at all!). Personally, I’m more concerned about the numbers of kids being shepherded into college “because it’s what one does after high school”…so much wasted time and money, kids racking up massive amounts of debt while winding up with worthless degrees, no career path, etc. Just because one can doesn’t mean one ought.

In any case…others have done a fine job discussing the importance of invested religious education instructors, the role of the government in education, current research findings regarding home education, specific teachings of your (Catholic) faith concerning education of children, etc. I just want to say, quite seriously, that after having reviewed certain other threads & seen what I can only categorize as an overarching derision towards certain family/parenting models, you might consider exploring this further with your priest and/or counselor (particularly if you are seriously considering working in the counseling field yourself). There seems to be a deeper issue here. Perhaps the problem isn’t really those bad ol’ parents/SAHs/homeschoolers after all.

 

[EasterJoy]

A lot of good responses on this thread, but I doubt they’ll do anything to convince the OP that when homeschooling is practiced, it is usually a good move, or that parents ultimately should have the prerogative to direct their children’s education, rather than the state doing so.

Well, the OP doesn’t need to be convinced. This isn’t a debate taking place within the OP’s family. It could be true that homeschooling is far better the vast majority of the time, and that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes the homeschooled student comes far short of making academic benchmarks.

The more relevant question is–what then? **How do you handle it when you see that the home-schooled child of someone close to you is far short of their academic benchmarks? **Obviously, you know both the student’s parent and teacher. Taking into account that you may not know if this is a child who is being homeschooled in the first place because of learning disabilities, if the parent is simply not good at what they’re doing, or even if this is a case of neglect or abuse.

So, homeschool parents, let’s say one of your homeschooling friends, loved ones, or acquaintances has a child in this position. What would you say are the "do"s, "don’t"s, and "be careful"s that are the most important for a non-homeschooler to know before getting near an expression of concern for this student?

 

[TeachCatechism]

So the poorly educated parent should return the child back to the system that failed the parent???

The problem with modern education is not the homeschool community. I suggest you dig a little deeper and find why there illiterate parents. You may discover why many of us homeschool.

So illiterate parents should homeschool? great, more illiterate kids.No, maybe they should send the kids to private schools.

 

[UbiCaritas]

Wow I can believe people think it’s fine to be illiterate. Some parents shouldn’t be teaching. If they can’t write, read and do math then nope they are actually abusing their kids. Not sure how me teaching has anything to do with it, but a year of it is not the same thing as parents who are illiterate. Btw I have been a college professor so I am qualified to teach. No not everyone should go to college but not fair to deny a child if that’s what they choose.

While I do not have an advanced degree (B.A. here), my husband does. I am…curious…why you think that you would be more qualified to teach my child than I am, especially given the rife grammatical errors in the above quote. I’m not ordinarily a grammar Nazi, but to be told by someone who herself isn’t writing terribly well that she would be a better educator of my child than I am because she holds a degree that I don’t is a bit much.

I am, for the record, not especially rah-rah about homeschooling. I think that it has some serious cultural issues, and yes, it can lead to educational neglect. However, DH and I plan on homeschooling. Why?

First, the public schools in our area are atrocious in terms of academics, and the private schools are impossible for anyone except the very wealthy. We’re far from poor, so we wouldn’t qualify for need-based aid, but we certainly can’t afford tuition that is, at some schools, higher than our (highly-ranked) state colleges.

Second, I spent the last two years of college proctoring exams for would-be education majors in my state. I was horrified when I looked at the candidates, most of whom did go on to be teachers. The vast majority were very poorly educated, couldn’t write a coherent paragraph, and had a strong sense of entitlement. I was not alone in this impression, to say the least. The quality of these students was sufficiently bad that one of the professors at the school, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, ended up retiring in part to homeschool her granddaughter because she didn’t want the granddaughter to ever end up in the classroom of one of these future teachers.

Third, I do know my limits. Higher math and science are definitely on that list. Therefore, our kids will take those classes at a community college once they reach levels that I’m not capable of teaching. In our state, community college is free for high school students, homeschooled or otherwise. The kids might as well get two years of (free!) college under their belts by the time they graduate high school, and they’ll be taught by people who really know their stuff in subjects in which I am ignorant. DH did this; he had his associates’ degree when he graduated high school as a homeschooler, and as a result got enough scholarships to ensure that he didn’t have to take on any debt from either his undergrad or grad degrees.

Fourth, our state allows homeschooled children to participate in extracurricular activities with their school district. Should our kids be interested in sports/music/drama/other group activities that aren’t terribly feasible on a homeschool level, they can do these activities with the appropriate local school.

Finally, there is a huge need for trade workers. I believe I’ve told this story on CAF before, but let me regale you once more with it.

I recently had a plumber to our house to do some work. For background, he works with a large plumbing company in the areas. When he’d finished doing what he needed to do, he noticed our vast library of books. A little defensively, he said, “I went to college, you know, and I did get a degree. I couldn’t make any money at it, though, so I went into plumbing.” He went on to explain that there’s such a shortage of plumbers in our area that his company is willing to hire people with no background in plumbing, apprentice them to a master plumber, get them through whatever classes and such they need, and then, if they do well in the apprenticeship and classes, hire them once they’ve gotten the appropriate certificate and licensing. The apprenticeship pays well, too.

I chuckled, and told him that for our kids, there’ll be a standing offer of “We can pay X amount towards college or trade school, so use it well. If you choose trade school, or an arrangement like you just described, we’ll be happy to cut the you a check for whatever the difference is in order to help them start their business at the end of trade school, if that’s what they want.”

Not everyone is college material, and there’s nothing wrong or shameful about working with one’s hands. If someone’s supporting themselves and their dependents appropriately and in a way that’s not immoral, who cares what it is?

 

[UbiCaritas]

So illiterate parents should homeschool? great, more illiterate kids.No, maybe they should send the kids to private schools.

In our area, private schools start at 10K/year for high school. Some cost $25K/year.

How can anyone except the a) extremely-poor-but-highly-intelligent (read: need-based scholarships for star students) or b)extremely wealthy afford that, especially for more than one child?

 

[TeachCatechism]

Wow so now people are attacking me because I oppose uneducated parents teaching kids. That shows me they know they can’t disagree with what I write so they decided to attack. I could talk about your horrible grammar but I’ll take a higher road. Thank you for proving my point! Just don’t ask me to support your illiterate children when they are too stupid to get a decent job.

 

[UbiCaritas]

Wow so now people are attacking me because I oppose uneducated parents teaching kids. That shows me they know they can’t disagree with what I write so they decided to attack. I could talk about your horrible grammar but I’ll take a higher road. Thank you for proving my point! Just don’t ask me to support your illiterate children when they are too stupid to get a decent job.

I believe I specifically said that I am aware of problems in some homeschooling circles, and agreed that homeschooling can lead to educational neglect.

I also used to live in a school district wherein 25% of the eighth-graders were functionally illiterate because the district had a policy which didn’t allow teachers not to pass their students on to the next grade, even if the student had grasped none of the material presented in the prior one. Based on that, if I had five kids and only one of them couldn’t read well by the eighth grade, I’d be doing better than my (former) local school district. Doesn’t mean it’d be an acceptable educational standard, though. *

“Stupid,” incidentally, refers to intellectual ability, rather than educational level. The two are far from being one and the same.

• Unless the child in question had some sort of serious learning disability/mental retardation issue, of course, but that’s a horse of a different color.

 

[TeachCatechism]

Many areas have charter schools and many private schools have tuition waivers. Like I said earlier I get this if a school is bad but in my case the school is fantastic. The schools here are highly ranked.

 

[1990Domer]

It has no effect on where they spend eternity. However if they are illiterate they will end up in eternity sooner due to poor medical care if any at all or stress or other things.

In this culture of death we live in, I would personally welcome this.

 

[UbiCaritas]

Many areas have charter schools and many private schools have tuition waivers. Like I said earlier I get this if a school is bad but in my case the school is fantastic. The schools here are highly ranked.

The private schools here, at least the Catholic ones, have tuition scholarships for extremely poor students and extremely intelligent/athletic/what-have-you students. That’s it. Not every kid is a future Einstein or Peyton Manning.

Mind you, if the Catholic schools have to ration those scholarships–and barring a resurgence in the teaching orders, they will have to–I’d rather the scholarships go to those students who otherwise might not have a chance at all, but it does leave the less-desperate-but-not-wealthy in a hard spot. (In the big city near us, the Catholic kids in the worst neighborhoods get massive and often entire tuition scholarships because the archdiocese thinks it’s important to try to get them out of the schools where the gangs are recruiting by upper-elementary levels. That’s a whole 'nother and far more serious kettle of fish from my concerns about our physically-safe-but-academically-poor local-to-me school district.)

We have no charter schools in our district.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Wow so now people are attacking me because I oppose uneducated parents teaching kids. That shows me they know they can’t disagree with what I write so they decided to attack. I could talk about your horrible grammar but I’ll take a higher road. Thank you for proving my point! Just don’t ask me to support your illiterate children when they are too stupid to get a decent job.

Um, if you are concerned about people “attacking” you perhaps you should think twice about starting a thread and using the comments you use. One of the things we teach in my family for homeschooling is using the best words possible to convey the idea.

I teach my children. And yes, I have several degrees. But we know many homeschooling families who do not. And guess what, somehow some of those kids read and write better than you and I. We use a comprehensive curriculum. Here it is, see if it matches your approval. setonhome.org/

When my kids finish, they will have an accredited high school diploma, attend college knowing how to write and read better than their public school counterparts. But none of that has to do with my specific education at all. I have a theology degree and a biology degree. I don’t really use my degrees in homeschooling because it is basically following a curriculum. My kids (like the ones in your OP) are up extremely late. They can be because I don’t have to get them up and send them to school. This allows my wife, the mom to all five kids to be able to spend valuable time with them in the evenings. I am quite certain that my neighbors have no idea about the particulars of my children’s education and probably ignorantly assume I am neglecting them. Who knows, some busybody next door could be calling CPS as we speak.

Yes there are good and bad homeschoolers, just like there are good and bad public/private schoolers.
I am curious as to your insistence of a degree. My sister has a masters in teaching and is not a good teacher at all. Why would a person fresh out of her sorority parties have a better grasp of educating my child who I am with 24/7 than I do? Because she took some early childhood bunk classes? Now, I am sure that might offend some very competent and good teachers but you are the one who came on here talking about qualifications to teach a child. The state seems to throw tens of thousands of dollars at teachers who teach kids who perhaps do not perform. They get less instruction than my homeschoolers even if we were to homeschool 2 hours a day (we do more)

But one has to wonder why you have been so active in a situation you don’t really know much about and are not consistent with your passion for educated youth. Have you ever seen a classroom? There are many many skill levels involved but I ask you if you have the same drive to pick up the phone and call your congressman or even the state and report the kids who are not being educated well inside the government classrooms in a brick and mortar building by teachers who have little to no real experience except for what they learned in a child psychology class while hung over… That does exist.

PS

Please note that while I gave the worst examples of teachers it was to illustrate a point. Not to condemn those who dedicate their lives and brains into educating our youth in one of the highest noble callings!

I do worry TeachCatechism about your judgement of others and their children. This has come up several times on the boards. Were I in your parish I would probably homeschool my kids in religious ed as well… Just to make sure they get the information they need with the love they deserve by someone who understands them and knows them better than anyone else.

 

[1990Domer]

THIS.

Well stated.



In fact…kudos for a parent who recognizes where, how and why the system failed them and clearly moving mountains to be sure this doesn’t happen to their own children.

Agree! Look no further than the Philadephia SD.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Thank you for proving my point! Just don’t ask me to support your illiterate children when they are too stupid to get a decent job.

Wow. And you claim to teach the young? Where does this bitterness come from? What can we do to help you find peace?

 

[1990Domer]

So illiterate parents should homeschool? great, more illiterate kids.No, maybe they should send the kids to private schools.

What’s wrong with cyber school?

 

[TeachCatechism]

Wow. And you claim to teach the young? Where does this bitterness come from? What can we do to help you find peace?

So I’m bitter because someone attacked me. Grasping at straws.

I never said homeschooling was always bad. This is where reading comprehension comes it. What I said was if a parent isn’t educated they shouldn’t be teaching. High school dropouts might be geniuses but if they didn’t go through school then they aren’t qualified to teach. All kids deserve to attend college if they choose but denying them by not getting them a great education is cruel.

 

[1990Domer]

Many areas have charter schools and many private schools have tuition waivers. Like I said earlier I get this if a school is bad but in my case the school is fantastic. The schools here are highly ranked.

So are ours…and they still stunk to high heaven because of…not academics…but bullying. Yep, that ugly little problem isn’t going away soon!

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

So I’m bitter because someone attacked me. Grasping at straws.

I never said homeschooling was always bad. This is where reading comprehension comes it. What I said was if a parent isn’t educated they shouldn’t be teaching. High school dropouts might be geniuses but if they didn’t go through school then they aren’t qualified to teach. All kids deserve to attend college if they choose but denying them by not getting them a great education is cruel.

Why are you the arbiter of what is good and bad education? and do you fairly apply that to the illiterate children in schools?

I must say I am quite concerned about your views on children, marriage and things of the like. Are you sure working with children is a wise thing for you to do?

 

[EasterJoy]

So illiterate parents should homeschool? great, more illiterate kids.No, maybe they should send the kids to private schools.

Does your neighbor have a high school degree, or something less than that?

I understand you are frustrated at seeing school children reading so far below their grade level. Start at the beginning, though. According to the research, someone homeschooling a grade school curriculum does** not **have to have a college degree to be competent. Still, a teacher obviously has to have some degree of mastery of the subject being taught.

Do you think your neighbor is a poor reader?

 

[EasterJoy]

Honestly, OP, if I were in your position, I’d seek out my friend who is very active in the homeschooling movement and ask her for ideas. She had a friend who insisted on continuing to homeschool a student who, as it turned out in the end, had a serious disability. I mean serious enough that the student, having finally gotten into special education in the public schools, has been identified by the courts as someone who is going to need to be in adult foster care situation of some kind for the rest of her life. Her mother refused to recognize that she was in over her head, even though there was a severe limit to how much* anybody *could educate this particular student. A parent who homeschools has a huge personal investment in it. Just like a formal school, a homeschooling parent might be loathe to admit having a student he or she is ill-equipped to teach. That makes this a situation that requires great sensitivity and diplomacy, lest the parent/school become defensive and refuse to consider a change of tack for the welfare of the student.

You may not have any friends like that, but you do have people here who care a lot about every student and who aren’t wedded to the idea that every child is a good candidate for homeschooling. Ideally, you can start at Square One and get advice about how you might approach this delicate situation, for the good of both the child and the whole family involved. Otherwise, you’re going to be the gunshot messenger whose message never gets through. Nobody wants that!

 

[TeachCatechism]

I know someone who does homeschool and has qualifications (Ph.D). She thinks this is a case of abuse and neglect. Homeschool means to teach but the mom doesn’t do that. She spends all day drinking.