[myrmeleo]

Read this article on the liberal-leaning website Slate.com today:

Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids
Why teaching children at home violates progressive values.

Over the past year, there has been a resurgence of interest in homeschooling—not just the religious fundamentalist variety practiced by Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum, but also in secular, liberal homeschooling like Taylor’s. Think no textbooks, history lessons about progressive social movements, and college-level math for precocious 13-year-olds. Some families implement this vision on their own, while others join cooperatives of like-minded, super-involved parents.

[...]

Lefty homeschoolers might be preaching sound social values to their children, but they aren’t practicing them. If progressives want to improve schools, we shouldn’t empty them out. We ought to flood them with our kids, and then debate vociferously what they ought to be doing.

It seems humorous that this opinion piece is urging so-called liberals to stop pulling their children (of presumably higher intelligence/preparedness) and dollars (of presumably higher number) from crumbling public schools. Why would such a plea be necessary? Surely it's not just parents under the cloak of "liberal" ideology pulling their precious offspring out of a crumbling school system?

[Wolfman]

I don't trust anyone to home school their children if they base their believes on an organization that classified the beaver as a fish. That aside, we don't trust ourselves to diagnose our children with autism, pneumonia, or bronchitis, and yet we trust ourselves to teach our children world history and algebra? Yeah, right, bullshit. Homeschooling should be illegal.

[Wolfman]

I'm sorry, did I say something to offend? Public and Private teachers have specialized knowledge of a subject and how to teach. Parents do not.

Who do you trust to tell you whether you have a cold or pneumonia?

[Sceptic]

I'm sorry, did I say something to offend? Public and Private teachers have specialized knowledge of a subject and how to teach. Parents do not.

With the odd exception, most of my teachers were ignoramuses. I wouldn't say they had a specialised knowledge of anything extending beyond the course criteria. I learned most of what I know from myself or my parents. Yes, my parents were well educated.

Now not every parent can be a good tutor, nor do they necessarily have the time or money to home school which is why I propose an alternative liberal education system which is based on more freely structured courses centred around the individual child's need. The last thing a kid needs is to be droned at in class: he needs to be encouraged to be intuitive and curious about his subject. He needs to creatively explore the areas that interest him most. But that doesn't mean to say that society needs to leave him to spend his time on video games and skateboarding. I'd say most of his time should be spent in the library with open access to tutors if he needs help and this should be combined with a healthy dose of leisure time spent socialising or pursuing hobbies, physical activity, etc.

Lets be honest, schools today are more like prisons.

[Andropov]

The author is a shithead, public schools in America are atrocious and everyone with even the slightest bit of intelligence should withdraw and either be homeschooled or school themselves. The education system of the US in the 21st century will be its death knell.

[Rei Murasame]

Normally I would say that you should support the public school system, but the situation in the USA is so bad that while you are trying to fix the system, you still shouldn't send your child to it unless you are in a really good district.

What is needed is actually not a liberal-progressive solution now, since that is too tepid. What is needed is total overhaul and that can only come from total change of the USA's economy away from neoliberalism.

[Rainbow Crow]

I'm considering either private school, or figuring out some way to send my children when I have them to public school less than five days a week. I would expect to be able to teach my children more each Sunday than they would learn in a week or two of public schooling in the US.

Personally, I studied the same 200 years of American history for six years in public school. I don't remember much geometry and basically no trigonometry at all. Nor do I use it. Why was I taught trig?

[hip hop bunny hop]

Normally I would say that you should support the public school system, but the situation in the USA is so bad that while you are trying to fix the system, you still shouldn't send your child to it unless you are in a really good district.

What is needed is actually not a liberal-progressive solution now, since that is too tepid. What is needed is total overhaul and that can only come from total change of the USA's economy away from neoliberalism.

Eh? Come on, Rei, you've seen the PISA Reading scores broken down by demographics; American test scores are low because of our demographic issues.

Race & IQ Wiki Article; The Bell Curve (1994) stated that the average IQ of African Americans was 85, Latino 89, White 103, Asian 106, and Jews 113. Asians score relatively higher on visuospatial than on verbal subtests. The few Amerindian populations that have been systematically tested, including Arctic Natives, tend to score worse on average than white populations but better on average than black populations.[47]

We see IQ mirrored on average PISA reading scores:



Take the low-IQ groups out of the picture, and America is doing very well. What we need to do is just adjust the Federal Laws so local & state governments are allowed to treat their individual low-IQ populations in the manner most fitting for their environment and most fitting for the future employment these people will be find most important. Why bother teaching negros high school level history, english, or math when the vast majority of them are going to spend their life in menial labor jobs, jobs which they are ill-prepared for coming from the average high school?

I say, we give these people their own high schools, where they can learn skills they'll find both interesting and useful. Naturally, this leaves the traditional high schools the ability to focus on the high IQ populations, and to better serve them as well. Low-IQ groups would get more control over their schools, their children would get an education more suited for their needs - and vice-versa for high-IQ groups. It's a win-win for all involved.

[Negotiator]

Um.

I dont think the USA homeschooling has anything to do with your political conviction.

Its a question if you really want to send your kids to a school system of really poor quality.

[mikema63]

our school system is crap, its hardly progressive to send your kids to a violence filled school that will turn them into illiterate idiots.

[redcarpet]

I have no problem with it if it's done by a tutor/teacher.

Education is education. It doesn't have to occur in institutional form.

[Kman]

I have no problem with it if it's done by a tutor/teacher.

Because only a trained teacher can teach someone to read and write and do math....

Teaching is not rocket science, most people can do it.

[Wolfman]

^ No, most people cannot. You cannot teach someone information you do not have, and most information taught in high school is information forgotten in adult life. Besides, if you need major home repairs done, do you call a local handyman, or do you try to do it yourself by teaching yourself how to fix the thing while actually fixing it?

[Daktoria]

^ No, most people cannot. You cannot teach someone information you do not have, and most information taught in high school is information forgotten in adult life. Besides, if you need major home repairs done, do you call a local handyman, or do you try to do it yourself by teaching yourself how to fix the thing while actually fixing it?

I have to agree.

Rule 2 violation deleted

Some people don't think before they act in deciding to have kids. They think kids have to learn the hard way or no way.

[Kman]

^ No, most people cannot. You cannot teach someone information you do not have, and most information taught in high school is information forgotten in adult life. Besides, if you need major home repairs done, do you call a local handyman, or do you try to do it yourself by teaching yourself how to fix the thing while actually fixing it?

Depends on the thing that needs to be fixed, if it is something I know how to do I will do it myself since that is much much cheaper. Reading, writing and the kind of math that children age 6-16 learn is also skills that I already have and just like a carpenter can teach others to be a carpenter by showing them how to do things so too I can teach a kid how to read, write and do math because I already have these skills myself.

[Wolfman]

Depends on the thing that needs to be fixed, if it is something I know how to do I will do it myself since that is much much cheaper.

You need a new roof.

Reading, writing and the kind of math that children age 6-16 learn is also skills that I already have and just like a carpenter can teach others to be a carpenter by showing them how to do things so too I can teach a kid how to read, write and do math because I already have these skills myself.

You pretty much could not teach anything past middle school. If that. I doubt you still know all of the rules that makes it so that English can pretend to make sense, you were probably taught the whole "I before E,except after C" nonsense. And on and on I could go.

[Kman]

You pretty much could not teach anything past middle school.

Oh really? I have seen the stuff they teach children age 16 and it strikes me as piss easy stuff, if I can learn it I can teach it.

I doubt you still know all of the rules that makes it so that English can pretend to make sense, you were probably taught the whole "I before E,except after C" nonsense.

You dont need to know all the rules in the english language to learn to read, I dont remember any of the rules for english except that you capitalize the letter i and start sentences with a capital letter and yet I still read very well and I can write very well. I also remember reading recently about a guy who taught his 4 year old son to read by just teaching his son the sounds that each letter in the alphabet makes.

[Wolfman]

So, you're going to teach them how to read, but not how to write, or have a conversation. Wonderful. See, this is why parents should not teach their kids.

[Kman]

So, you're going to teach them how to read, but not how to write, or have a conversation. Wonderful. See, this is why parents should not teach their kids.

So you think you need to teach children how to have a conversation? Are you for real dude? You are aware that children pick up this stuff on their own right? The human brain is pre-programmed to learn speech, it is not a skill that you need a teacher for lol.... ridicilous...

I would also venture to say that if you can read well and decipher the code well then you will also be able to put down the code on paper (aka write).

[Rei Murasame]

No, no, it is easy to think that now that we are adults, but if you still have any of your old school exercise books in storage, or even files from essays you typed back then, it's pretty easy to see that it wasn't something that just came to you one day, it was in fact being slowly inculcated through the school system.

Yes, they pick up the basics on their own, but a child doesn't know what paragraphing is, or how to use a semicolon, or even how to avoid using English ambiguously, without someone actually telling them at some point.

When I look back, I can see for sure that how I talked and wrote as a child did change significantly along the way. Some things never changed, of course, but most of it did change along the way.