Home schooling
A friend of mine from high school lives with her husband, a classmate of mine as well, in a city where she describes the schools as “disappointing at best”.
She continues, “there’s nothing like Pembroke Hill (our private school in Kansas City) within reasonable commuting distance, especially for an elementary school kid. I love home schooling but sometimes I get burned out.”
A friend of hers commented, “I’ve taught in 78 urban schools. Sometimes home schooling is right for a time (been there, done that), and sometimes it’s ok to put your child in a school that isn’t the best. Just make sure your child knows she’s there to make it a better place for others.”
Her subsequent response was interesting to me, “My child is not there to make it a better place for others. My child is a child and needs to have an education. Once that has been accomplished, then my child will be able to turn around and give to the next generation.”
TS has lived in Arlington for all of 3 weeks andwithin 10 days of being here, realized the challenges withregard to the public school system. While where we reside is what I would consider to be a “good neighborhood”, it’s populated with young professionals and few children. While we readily acknowledge our love of the ethic diversity represented in our neighborhood, that same mix makes for challenges with public school education. There are as many as 18 different languages spoken in Arlingon County Public Schools; ESL dominates larger classes where teachers are burdened with lesson planning where the primary language at home is anything but English. Anecdotal, I can report that the few school aged children I see are with dual-income parents getting by with hourly jobs in the service industry, working 2nd and3rd shifts which leaves them little time for the kind of parental involvement that any education requires. In turn, even the best teachers can only do so much and it makes sense to me that public education is uneven.
Should parents send their children to lesser schools in part to lift up those around them? Can a child be assured academic success irregardless of the school they attend?
Had I not had the tremendous advocacy of False Auntie, I would have gone to Westport Jr. High School and Paseo High School. Instead, I went as the poor kid to a very wealthy private school from 7th-12thgrade. At both Westport and Paseo, I would have been one of few white kids there. To what extent would that have shaped me personally and academically? Assuming for a moment that the academic rigors of Paseo were a fraction of what they were at Pembroke, would I have succeeded in ways that would have bolstered my self confidence? Instead, I had poor grades from the best school in Kansas City.
According to the National Home Education Research Institute, Home Schooling grows at a rate of 8% annuallywith about 2 million K-12 students currently home schooled in the US.
There are alturistic questions like, ”hey smarty pants, if you’re such a great teacher, why not share your gifts where you can make a bigger impact to society?’ or “hey smarty pants… what makes you think that your C- is 8th grade biology makes you qualified to teach your kid?”
There are issues related to parental rights:
“One of the most significant recent court rulings on homeschooling, and parental rights in general, was handed down by a California court in late February. The California Court of Appeals, on February 28, 2008, essentially declared that homeschooling is illegal in California and no constitutional right to its practice exists in either California or the United States at large. The three judges have contradicted and deemed illegal at least 25 years of the modern practice of parent-led home-based education by their ruling in a single family-services-related case proceeding”
There are issues related to religion in that home-schooled curriculum is largely unregulated; if you want to teach your child that Darwin was a fascist and that dinosaurs andman cavorted with one another in the tall grass, that Eve was born from Adam’s rib, you can do that.
And, I would think there are social issues; missing classroom debate among your peer group, having to raise your hand, learn to take your turn, being number 1 or 40 in a class of 40… matters. It shapes you.
Still, if the alternative is your child walking through a metal detector…
Never really took the idea of homeschooling my own children too seriously, but I know people whose kids absolutely thrived from an educational standpoint by being home-schooled. They aren’t home-schooled forever, of course, most home-schooled kids just do that in elementary school, very few get home-schooled beyond that age. So it’s not like they’re forever removed from the public system, only in their very young years.
I don’t see how a court could force people to use public schools if they don’t want to, and fortunately California courts are infamous for handing down stupid, not well thought out rulings that get overridden in the federal courts. It’s practically their motto. C’mon, aren’t libs supposed to be the “live and let live” types? If a person wants to home school, and the kids are meeting their educational requirements (yes, home schoolers have to test out of the same requirements that public schoolers have) have at it, more power to them. Kids mature at different ages and some younger kids are better off starting out their school years at home. In those cases where the public school alternative is a behavioral nightmare, such as you might see in inner-city schools, I’d hardly worry that my kids weren’t being ‘socialized’ in that environment; heck, I’d be glad they weren’t. That kind of socialization they can do without. Prohibiting home schooling would hit disproportionately hard on lower income groups for whom private school is not an option and their public school options sometimes very poor.
My best friends from FL home-schooled their kids for several years, and recently since the Mrs had to return to work, they had to put the kids in public school. They’re just sick about it, they say the kids there are mean, not interested in learning, and the class is basically dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator so it’s way slower than what they’re used to and at a lower level than what they’re capable of.
Not all public schools are bad of course, the ones I’ve had my kids in have all been good ones that I’m proud they’ve attended. But not everyone is so lucky and to me, it should be a basic right and freedom to home school your kids if you want.
Two of my children were home-schooled. From 6th grade to 8 and 9th grade. Then back to a hand picked high school were they were in AP classes, on the A honor role, graduated with more credits then were needed. Went on to college and did just as well. My daughter is now working towards her Phd.We home-schooling because the school system where we were living at was in bad bad shape the middle and high school were failing down. And I seen the kind of peer pressure they were getting.They have turned out pretty damn good. Adults that any parent would be proud of.