November 23, 2004
It's almost too easy
Fisking this is so easy I almost don't want to bother. But since I haven't posted anything in two days....
The popularity of home schooling has soared in recent years. According to USA Today, some 2 million children are being home schooled and the number of kids being home schooled is rising about 10% a year.
I wonder why....
The proponents of home schooling say it gives parents control of their children's curriculum and protects them from the violence, sex, drugs and other social ills that beset the public school system.
I can just picture the sneer on his face as he typed that.
I'm not jumping on the home schooling bandwagon; I don't think it's a wise or viable option for most households. There are many sound reasons why home teaching is a bad idea both for the sake of the innocents involved and for society at large.
Care to present any credentials before you pull that opinion out of your ass?
News flash: Not everyone is qualified to be a teacher. A lot of parents can't balance a checkbook or find Iraq on a map -- let alone teach their young-uns Algebra & Geography.
Newsflash. Many "certified" teachers aren't qualified to teach either. Nor can they find Iraq on a map. They can, however, find the local anti-war protest about a war they know nothing about.
The education and intellectual well- being of our progeny are too important to be left to rank amateurs. My mom and dad loved me but it was a 6th grade teacher that instilled in me a love of reading and writing.
Just because your parents outsourced your education to a government employee doesn't mean the rest of us need to follow suit. My kids are way too important for me to put their well being in the hands of a government employee.
Most parents home school their children because they are dissatisfied with public schools. I wonder if these same parents home treat their kids when they are severely ill, instead of taking them to a hospital, because they are dissatisfied with the health care system?
No actually, we love the public school system. This is all a college psych experiment in reverse psychology. Didn't you get the memo? The interesting thing about health care is that we have the ability to choose our doctors. If a Federal Dept of Health care assigned me a government employee doctor - I likely would home treat them. They'd have better odds of recovery.
Home schooling a small child stunts his emotional and psychological growth. It's at school that a child learns how to communicate with his peers, respect those different from himself and to work as a team to accomplish goals. No, matter how loving and nurturing a home, it can't replace a school as a crucible for social development.
Sort of like how being a "journalist" for a small Podunk paper stunts your intellectual growth as an adult? Did you do one iota of research before you wrote this crap? Or did you just do a few shots of Jack Daniels and type whatever spilled out?
A dog that's been confined to a kennel for years will not make a good pet and a child who's been confined to his home during his formative years will find it extremely difficult to adjust to the real world. We don't need any more Jerry Dalhmers and Paul Hills let loose on our society.
Actually his name was Jeffrey Dahlmers, and he went to public school, as did the Columbine kids. And whose is more confined, the homeschooled kid who goes and does what he and his parents want to do all day, or the kids locked up in a institutional classroom for six hours a day? The interesting thing about homeschoolers is that they are rarely at home. You'd know that if you pulled your head out of your ass long enough to speak to a few.
Most parents who home school their offspring are religious zealots. These impressionable youngsters who are captive to the rigid dogma of their parents are robbed of the wonderful diversity of ideas and cultures that thrive in our public schools. If the number of kids being home schooled continues to grow our democracy will soon resemble the theocracies of Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Funny how all those theocracies use GOVERNMENT MANDATED SCHOOLS to make sure the kiddies are indoctrinated properly. If there is indoctrination going on, at least the parents have some moral right to do so by giving birth by giving birth to the kids in the first place.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead of complaining about the dismal state of your public school; why not join the PTA, help raise funds or become a teacher's assistant?
Go for it, it's a free country - much to your apparent chagrin. My kid are too important to be a social experiment in a failed government institution.
Home schooling poses a serious threat to our educational system.
We can only hope.
Laws should be passed making it illegal for parents without a teaching credential to home school their children
Can we also pass a law making it illegal for anybody with a double digit IQ to be employed as a journalist?
A parent without a teaching credential who home schools his child is as irresponsible as a parent who lets a physician without a license operate on his child. Parents who home teach their kids in blatant disregard of the law should be prosecuted. Eventually we will all pay the price for their stubbornness and rebellion.
What is it about government licenses and these people? Over 100,00 people die every year from mistakes made by government licensed doctors. Government licenses only exist to limit competition, not to ensure quality. The free market does a much better job at that.
I have a sneaking suspicion we are getting Punk'd on this. I hate to believe somebody is really this ignorant.
PermalinkComments
Even the masters need to stay in practice -- consider it your scales for the day.
Posted by: Tim Haas at November 23, 2004 06:07 PMI get a kick out of folks who claim that public school is the place to learn how to interact with other kids.
Social skills come from diverse activities, hence the existence of little league, boy scouts, church retreats, you name it.
The day I learned socialization primarily from public school was the day I became a delinquent.
Posted by: James at November 23, 2004 09:25 PMWow, you're right, that was too easy.
I get a kick out of the "official" numbers that show how many children homeschool. We removed one child from government education after one year, and told them he was going to another school. The second will never be registered with a school to be removed from. So those two will never be counted by any government bean counter.
Posted by: Ogre at November 24, 2004 08:22 AMI believe Walter Williams had an article a few years back about teachers and educational quality. He said until recently teachers had to get a degree in the subjects that they taught, ie a math teacher needed a degree in math. Now, however, a teacher needs a degree in teaching, regardless of teh subject.
He also studied test scores. The people in the humanities (teachers and sociologists) scored the lowest on all standardized tests (GMAT, SAT, etc). So basically our current teachers are the dumbest kids that college had to offer learning little about the subjects they are supposed to teach.
Pathetic
Posted by: Damon at November 24, 2004 01:15 PMWalter Williams is amazing. His clarity of thought...These are the articles I was refering to in my last post.
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/04/ineptitude.html and
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/04/ineptitude2.html
Even more interesting, as a follow up to WW's writings --
I work in a private, non-government school of higher education. While all the government schools require degrees in teaching, the private school accrediting boards all demand that all instructors have advanced degrees in their field -- and cannot teach outside that field without risking loss of accredation.
Posted by: Ogre at November 26, 2004 09:20 AMIf the comment entry box is gone it's because comments are closed for this entry. Please feel free to use the "contact" link above to get in touch.