Home-schooling

[kcnalp]

Well, I am a social worker and work with children and families, so there's that

Many social workers steal children from good families.

 

[Prayer Warrior]

Well, I am a social worker and work with children and families, so there's that

So...your job as a social worker would involve working with families when the parents aren't doing an adequate job, for the most part. I don't see how this qualifies you to say "that many parents are not qualified or disciplined enough to homeschool."

Perhaps you should leave this judgment to educators--people who actually teach. I have both credentials as a certified teacher and experience teaching both in the classroom and at home, as well as tutoring children. I believe that most parents are perfectly capable of teaching their children at home, especially up until high school. If a student needs extra help with higher math, science, etc., the parents can utilize the help of a tutor, and some families take advantage of co-ops that employ experienced teachers. My area has a co-op that offers various courses to home school students.

Plus, parents can find many lessons/classes taught by certified teachers on the internet. I've used YouTube to find different ways to teach a concept in order to help my students understand it. For instance, I found a YouTube video of a teacher explaining factoring in a way that I had not seen before, and it was very helpful.

Like I said in another post, home school students typically score higher on nationwide standardized tests than their public school counterparts. It's hard to argue with these statistics. I would say that most home school parents do a great job!
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[kcnalp]

Big Brother always thinks he can raise our children better than we can.

 

[junobet]

Yes, there are children who suffer in bad families. I lived in a neighborhood years ago where two young teenaged girls would roam the streets sometimes during school hours. When I saw them at the house of someone I thought was possibly dealing drugs, I called the truant officer at their school and told her the situation. Unfortunately, she was very rude and didn't seem to care....

The fact is that many public school children fall through the cracks and don't receive the help they need. IOW, attending a public school doesn't ensure that children who are being abused get help. Sadly, some children are abused by teachers and others in the public schools. In America there has been what seems like a rash of female teachers having sex with their young male students.

Yes, sadly a lot of children fall through the cracks of the system, even here in Germany. Imho the answer to that is not to drain the system even further, but to invest in it and make it better.

What you say about home schooling parents being well-off is not what I have seen at all, and many don't have college degrees (which really isn't necessary to home school). So, these factors don't account for the better standardized test scored of many home schoolers.

Many factors account for the higher tests scores of home schooled students. I have used several of the most widely-used home school curricula, and I can say that they are strong on basic skills, like teaching math facts (1=1=2...). They are also strong in teaching systematic phonics (all of the letter sounds and blends), which most kids need in order to become strong independent readers.

It’s just a wild guess of mine that it’s just as unfeasible for most families in the US to live from just one income alone as it is for most families in Europe. So how do you hold down a job, when you have to make time to home-school your kids? You’d have to have a partner who’s well above the average income bracket, wouldn’t you?

Also, home schooled students tend to get a lot more one-on-one time with their teacher, usually the mom. As a public school teacher, I mostly taught 8th-grade English. Sometimes, I had as many as forty students in a class. Needless to say, I wasn't able to give students much help. English can be a very tricky language because there are so many exceptions to the rules. (I must say that your English is very good.) Imagine trying to teach a room full of young teenagers the finer points of English grammar.

40 children? Blimey! I can well imagine that teaching gets next to impossible under such circumstances and that it must have been frustrating for you. Again imho the answer can’t be home-schooling, but must be to invest in teachers and classrooms, so that such classes can get halved and all children can get a chance at a good education.

Thanks for the compliment concerning my English. I’m sure it is still full of mistakes and weird phrases. It would be much worse though if my parents had taught me. Their English is just about good enough to order a sandwich. And my fantastic English teacher with an actual university degree in Anglistics could get a class of twenty succulent teenagers excited about Macbeth, no problem.

Well, as far as children facing "the wild real world out there," I don't think it's good for young children to have to face this on their own. IMO, it's like throwing a child into shark-infested water to teach him to swim. They can learn to face the big, bad world with a parent holding their hand at first. Then, as they get older, they can learn to stand on their own two feet....

Sure, but by the time they get to school age children already want to discover the world independently without their parents. School is the safest place to start with, then their circles will get wider and wider. Having tendencies to be rather overprotective myself, I know that this can be tough for parents. But oh the look of pride in my boys face when he was first allowed to venture out to the local supermarket all on his own to get me some lemons! That look was well worth nervously staring at the kitchen clock for half an hour, always reminding myself of Janusz Korczak’s dramatically phrased postulation of the “right of a child to its own death”.

I have some insights about social development that may interest you. I worked with several children who were adopted--one as a baby, but the other two as young children. One thing I noticed is that they didn't have the stability that comes from bonding with parents from the womb, especially with the mom. I believe that the unborn baby begins to bond while IN the womb. These children struggle with forming strong social bonds even though they attended school and other social functions.

I'm not saying that this applies to ALL adopted children. It seems that most are able to form bonds, but perhaps because two of these children were not adopted as babies, this has affected them into their teens.

Thank you. Insecure bonding is indeed a big issue for foster and adoptive children. What gives me hope for mine is that he seems to be blessed with a lot of resilience. We got him at age 7 and as soon as he felt safe enough with us, he started displaying regressive behaviour to compensate for the lack of nurture he experienced in those first crucial 2 years. Gotta say it’s hard work to rock a big ten year old like a baby, but if that’s what it takes … . Mind you I’m talking about the toughest kid in the playground here.

So that’s another reason why I think teaching is just not a mum’s job. A mum’s job is to give a child a safe haven full of unconditional love, a teacher’s job is to challenge children academically. Completely different types of authority figures.

Hey, sometimes it's the quirky kids who grow up to do great things in life!
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That's the beauty about kids: they all have potential to do great things in life

 

[junobet]

My son in law was the principal of a Christian School. My daughter a qualified teacher. She home schooled my grandchildren until such time as she ended up being asked to work full time at the same school.
Public curriculum, no matter where you come from, presents a worldview in direct contradiction to the Christian worldview. And even Christian Schools cannot legally offer the kind of education they would prefer. And now with the recent decision by the Supreme Court, who knows what or who will be teaching your children in the future.

Public curriculums should be religiously neutral because they have to accommodate students from all kinds of religious backgrounds. .

As for the Christian worldview you are talking about, which one is that? I have an inkling that your Christian worldview differs vastly from mine or those of American mainline Churches. Who’s to decide whose worldview is the correct one? As far as I know there isn’t a Pope yet whom all American Christians would accept.

The only ‘worldview’ that should be presented in public schools are the values of the constitution, or in Germany’s case the “Grundgesetz”.

Both allow for us to vote for/against the politicians who decide on the curriculum. And as it is in Germany (sadly not in the US): the majority wins and the minority will have to put up with whatever curriculum the elected politicians deem fit. Now I’m in the comfortable position that my Christian worldview is in no way in conflict with the curriculum taught in my kid’s public school. Seeing that you’re not so lucky, I recommend you let Romans 13:1 ease your heart.

Home schooling, using approved curriculum and with support from dedicated interest groups and professionals, will always be better than public schools.

I would not commit to the “always”, but the more I’m beginning to learn about the public school system in the US, the more I’m tending to think you may have a point. Your funding system is ridiculous! Then again: if the US funding of public schools is based on local wealth, I’d guess kids in the most underfunded schools are least likely to have parents who are able to do home-schooling. But that’s just me with my personal Christian values again, thinking poor children from disfunctional families have as much a right to a good education as rich children from functional ones.

And as far as being socially well adjusted through the public system? What does that mean? It means you are risking your children's eternal destinies against temporary oneness with the world...a world that hates Christian values and despises those that promote them.

Our children’s eternal destinies are entirely in God’s hands. There’s nothing to risk here on our part.

As for Cristian values that the world supposedly hates: whose Christian values? Most people I know in the world love charity, caring for the poor, seeking justice for the oppressed … well, I suppose I’m surrounded by what you'd see as bleeding heart liberals, but I should hope these values are pretty universal.

And as far as the German public system is concerned, I would tend to believe it more in line with Catholic ideology rather than Lutheran. I have listened to some brilliant investigative lectures on education in Europe. From what I've learned the most influential group in transforming modem Education in Europe and others even the world were the Jesuits. I don't think they promoted Lutheran ideals.

Undoubtedly the Jesuits were and still are keen on education and – as far as I could find out - the first Jesuit school for non-clergy opened as early as 1548 in Italy. Cudos to them!

What I was talking about when I said public schools in Germany go way back to Martin Luther were the pamphlets he wrote on the need for public education, in particular his “Ratsherrenschrift” from 1524. Subsequently Protestant cities and heads of state implemented the first public (city council/state funded) schools in Germany, beginning with the city of Worms in 1527. Eventually Catholic states in what is now Germany also founded public schools, but were comparatively delayed.

The reason Martin Luther wanted everybody - including peasants and girls - to be educated was his belief in the “Priesthood of all Believers”. And yes, that is a concept Jesuits didn’t promote.