I am a homeschooling mom...
May. 12th, 2008 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agilebritAnd I will not wank. No, I won't. Not there, anyway. Eh. *grabs a tissue and cleans up* Seriously, I couldn't let that go.
However, all you have to do is look at the "quality" of fic at FFN to see the sort of "education" that public schools are churning out. Semi-literate snowflakes who bristle at the merest hint of criticism? Pretty much.
Yeah, not in my house. Da Boy already gets corrected if he doesn't capitalize "I" or the word at the start of a sentence, and he's seven. And I don't think I'm stunting his creativity.
However, all you have to do is look at the "quality" of fic at FFN to see the sort of "education" that public schools are churning out. Semi-literate snowflakes who bristle at the merest hint of criticism? Pretty much.
Yeah, not in my house. Da Boy already gets corrected if he doesn't capitalize "I" or the word at the start of a sentence, and he's seven. And I don't think I'm stunting his creativity.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 05:43 am (UTC)As for schooling, I think parents are best at evaluating what is best for their child(ren). We did a combination private school/public school. I was very disappointed in much of what public school had to offer. Our children did have some excellent teachers, but they had many mediocre ones.
I respect parents who choose home schooling. It still comes down to each parent choosing the best solution for them.
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Date: 2008-05-13 05:47 am (UTC)And wow. I seriously spooged all over that post. Tissues will be ineffective. *grabs a towel instead*
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Date: 2008-05-13 10:17 am (UTC)“The thing to remember about sweeping generalizations is that they're always wrong.”
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Date: 2008-05-13 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 05:55 am (UTC)The most important variable is the child's willingness to learn. Unless public school has gotten considerably worse since I graduated, it has all the resources for a motivated kid. The problem is most kids aren't. That's what parents and teachers are for.
The next important variable is how engaging the teachers are. I've been lucky, in that many of my teachers cared, and could make us care too. Perhaps I hogged all the good ones? (In my senior year, class sizes approached forty, and yet a calculus class was made available for me and less than ten other students.)
Teaching is a skill and a talent. Obviously, many of the teachers in public schools don't have it. Having gotten to know you, I'm prepared to believe that you have this talent, but I'm not prepared to believe that all those parents who do it have any more skill as teachers than the ones in schools. The standards required of a public schoolteacher may be inadequate, but what are the standards required of a homeschooler?
(There are also subjects that I feel ought to be required, but that many homeschoolers will carefully omit on, say, religious grounds. Indeed, one of the motivations cited by some homeschoolers is the intention of not covering these subjects. But let me not descend too far into wank...)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 06:23 am (UTC)I think the schools have changed significantly since you and I were there. I mean, all you have to do is look at the fic we rant about every day at
The advantage that a homeschooling parent has over a public or private school teacher is that my time isn't nearly as subdivided. I have a 1:1 ratio in my classroom right now. Of course, when he gets older, and into advanced math and chemistry and all that other stuff that I'm not very good at, we're going to have to change our paradigm, and I'm prepared for that. This is what co-ops are for, and we have a huge homeschooling community in Utah. You can bet that I'm going to take full advantage of it if I need to.
I didn't have to pass any sort of test to homeschool. The only standard the State imposes on me is that he has to have 180 (might be 181, not sure, one day, pft) days of school in the year, four and a half hours per day in first grade, going up to five and a half hours thereafter. The school doesn't monitor his progress at all. That being said, it's insanely difficult to fire a crappy teacher in a public school, and every time I see a news story about public schools it's like a Just Say No To Public Schools ad campaign. I saw one not too long ago about an illiterate high school teacher who was in the classroom for 17 years. And they never caught him; he outed himself.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 06:06 am (UTC)I've attended public school since I was six, and I do want to defend public schools a little. Movies like Drillbit Taylor are not going to be an accurate portrayal of anything resembling real life. You know this, obviously, but I do want to confirm that things like that - the bullying, the total apathy of the faculty? Would never happen in my high school, nor the middle and elementary schools I attended. I can only speak for my own city's school system - I'm just south of Boston. There's varying education quality, yes. I'm also of the opinion that homeschooling is great for the same reason that smaller college classes are desirable to prospective students. It's personalized to fit the students' needs, more time is devoted to the individual student, and without a twenty-five student class who all need to learn the material, the pace is accelerated.
I still feel public schools are undeserving of this very poor reputation. Do we have unintelligent, often semi-literate students? Yes. Obviously. There is no placement test to get into public school. With large student bodies, there is going to be a range of intelligence within that body. There are also those students who are Harvard, Brown, or MIT-bound.
I watch my teachers make an effort every single day, and I do bristle when I see it implied that every single one of them sits on their hands all day and let the kids pee on each other or something. They reach out to the kids they see struggling in classes and grades. What it boils down to most of the time isn't the quality of the material, it's that in public schools it's up completely to the student to accept the teacher's efforts or not, because unlike in homeschooling, there are many other students who require that teacher's attention as well.
I feel a little at a loss here, because I'm certain you were aware of all the points I attempted to make above. What I tried to get at is that I'm getting the vibe that intelligent people who attended public schools are being viewed as the exception, while I know from personal experience that's not the case at all. I'm not saying the smart kids are the rule, but neither are the truly dense ones - who I really do think are in the minority, but I don't have stats or IQs so I won't go there - and there are far more intelligent public school students than popular culture (let's not talk about shows like The Hills, okay?) would have anyone think, I suppose because kids going out party hard are more exciting than kids reading or watching the SciFi channel with their friends in the living room on a Friday night (also assuming that smart kids don't party, which, come on).
I'm going to admit, I don't see what the particular problem is here (in regard to the post you linked). I think either the post was edited to be less offensive before I got to it, or perhaps what you were talking about were the rude comments about homeschooled students? All I saw in the post itself was a very defensive rant about the negative generalizations that tend to be made about public schools.
I do hope this doesn't sound like an attack, toward either you or toward homeschooling. It isn't meant to be in the least. It is, however, and forgive my defensiveness, me bristling quite a bit at the criticism - forgive me. While public schools are certainly deserving of some criticism, I don't think they are deserving of the attitude that the education they provide shouldn't garner any respect, and I do feel it's a bit of a put-down, unconscious or not.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 06:56 am (UTC)I'll admit that I have a knee-jerk reaction when people bitch about the "social retardation" aspect of homeschooling, which is where the wank is in the comments on that post. Da Boy is a pretty self-assured 7-year-old who plays with kids of all ages in the neighborhood. And I'm looking at it from the standpoint of what's best for my kid and what we can do to facilitate it. I've seen what the public schools here produce, and he's going into one over my dead body. The sad thing is that Utah public schools are considered some of the best in the country--our test scores are good and everything. And yet I went to work with people who didn't know the difference between "they're" and "their."
It's down to the kids caring, and the teachers making sure they care by creating consequences if they don't. And from what I've seen (it may be different where you are), the consequences have disappeared. A kid can still get an A on a semi-literate piece of trash because correcting her will stifle her creativity. This is utter twaddle to me, and I won't put up with it in my kid.
I also realize that this is partially the parents' fault as well. The Hubby went to a school where the teachers were physically threatened if they looked like they were going to fail a kid, and I can't imagine that it's got much better where he was. We have parents who won't let the teachers do their frelling job, and teachers who are so jaded that they don't care anymore. 'Cause, you know, it's not like they'll get fired for incompetence or anything--the union protects them from that.
And you, my dear, are an exception. You care about your grammar and your spelling, whereas many of your contemporaries don't. Just look at the dreck that FFN is filled with. You'd die before you published something that didn't capitalize "I" or a story that spelled Rogue's name wrong. And if someone gives you crit, you don't go off on them like they just stomped your favorite puppy. Too many high school kids think they're above crit, and "it's just fanfic anyway." This attitude frosts me.
And don't ever worry about a comment that's "too long." I welcome them. *hugs*
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Date: 2008-05-13 06:07 am (UTC)GOD FORBID YOU CRITICIZE YOUR CHILD'S SPELLING. IT MIGHT HURT HIS SELF ESTEEM.
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Date: 2008-05-13 07:04 am (UTC)I worked with people who couldn't put a coherent sentence together on paper to save their lives. I see signs all over the place with extraneous apostrophes. And I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's because they're not being taught the difference between "their" and "they're," and that an apostrophe doesn't mean "HEY, THERE'S AN S COMING!"
I'm also convinced that kids don't learn anything good from each other. Seems to me that "socialization" in the classroom setting comes down to "survival of the fittest."
Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 07:38 pm (UTC)Back on topic: I'm a public school graduate and I think I turned out alright. However, I was in mostly honors courses, and I took a very active part in my own learning. I suspect I'm in the minority on that last part.
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 07:53 pm (UTC)Are you going to CONduit?
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 07:57 pm (UTC)Sadly, no conduit for me. I have a standing commitment to do WisCon every year (http://www.wiscon.info if you're curious). But with how costly it's getting to go to Madison every year, I may skip it next year and stay for CONduit. And I do every other Utah con, so I'm sure I'll see you at something.
Are you coming to MountainCon maybe? Or do you like anime? Because I think I'm going to go to Anime Banzai this year, just for fun.
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 08:14 pm (UTC)Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 08:15 pm (UTC)Do you attend LTUE as well?
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 08:30 pm (UTC)Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 08:40 pm (UTC)This is my picture in the icon. Do I look familiar to you?
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 09:17 pm (UTC)I don't have a photo of me, I don't think. I don't photograph well, and I'm the family picture-taker, so we don't have many of me in any case.
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 09:38 pm (UTC)Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 09:42 pm (UTC)I'm Julie Frost. I don't know if the name will ring a bell. :)
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 09:44 pm (UTC)Mmh. Julie. Yes, yes it does. But I'm not sure why. Are you married to a fella named Bruce? And/or did you lead the workshop at LTUE on weather and geography in world-building?
Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 09:59 pm (UTC)Re: Hihi
Date: 2008-05-13 10:02 pm (UTC)Hmmmm. OK, then I must have seen you at the publishing panel as I didn't attend the one on Firefly. I'm not recalling a spread sheet though... but it has been several months, so maybe I'm just forgetful.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 07:52 pm (UTC)I loved middle school and high school, which probably makes me kind of a rarity among people. But I hated elementary school because I was bullied and even sexually assaulted by other students from about ages 7-11. This severely impacted my ability and interest in learning and kept me in pretty basic classes for the first two years of middle school, because I was about a D student throughout elementary school. I actually was abused so badly that I developed PTSD and have spent thousands in therapy trying to treat it. And this was in the 1980s and early 90s.
If I ever have a child (I don't want to and don't intend to, but hypothetically), I would prefer to home school him or her because I wouldn't want my child to go through what I did - which was to learn how to be traumatized, not to stand up for myself and "work things out on my own" (preposterous!). I don't think, however, that this is necessarily a flaw in public schools but rather a social flaw in understanding how much each individual child needs in the way of protection from their peers.
As far as the socializing argument goes ... I basically had only a few friends in high school and almost none in college because I was a depressive, socially stunted mess thanks in part to being bullied as a child. So I don't think I learned a darn thing about socializing from public schools, either. In fact, I think I learned awful socialization and coping strategies as my default.
However, I also had wonderful teachers at all stages of my education, and only one public teacher who was lazy and incompetent. The rest were fair to outstanding, and more often than not it was the students' fault for not wanting to learn from them. I'm not entirely sure how one can push education on a student who doesn't want it in any schooling arrangement, including home school. I mean, you can punish a child or teen for not doing his or her homework or goofing off, but you can't make them do it - or want to do it - in the first place, yeah?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 08:05 pm (UTC)I'm firmly convinced that children learn nothing good from each other. And involvement of parents in education is paramount. Unfortunately, I see a lot of attitude amongst public school teachers that "they know best," and no one screeches louder than they do when parents get too involved. As long as parents are going along with everything they're doing the teachers are all for parental involvment, but let a parent buck against the braces and the teachers don't like that at all, generally.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 08:10 pm (UTC)Parents definitely need to be involved with their kids' education. But I don't know as parents are always right or justified when they do buck against the braces (awesome phrase, by the way). When would you say that teachers get like this when parents get involved? (I would guess you mean sex education, but I may be wrong).
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 08:29 pm (UTC)And the other major area is evolution. Which can of worms I'd really rather not open right now. :)
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Date: 2008-05-13 08:39 pm (UTC)Actually, I quite agree with you on your comprehensive sex ed. Waiting until you're married (or in my case, in a committed relationship) makes the most sense to me, and if I had a child I would definitely raise her or him with this belief - knowing, of course, that s/he may not follow it. And while condoms and the like can protect one and often do, they're not magical. It's good to note that.
My personal biggest problem is with abstinence-only programs. I can understand why people support them, but I don't think they're all that helpful. I wish more parents would actually talk to their kids about sex openly, and that more kids felt comfortable asking questions and having such discussions with parents. I could with my mother, and I think I'm pretty healthy for it.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 09:15 pm (UTC)I think it's honestly about disease control and stopping teen pregnancies for students who won't be abstinent, not about teaching free love or amorality. I mean, I don't think you'd find many teachers who would say, "yeah, teens having sex is totally awesome and empowering!"
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 09:37 pm (UTC)IT's definitely good to teach them that it's a dumb idea (a dumb idea and a really awful choice though, not that they're somehow immoral or awful or bad if they make that choice - and especially not if they get pregnant or an STD because a fellow student rapes them - because that creates a ton of other problems).
I don't see how stressing abstinence while teaching students how to be safe if they don't remain abstinent is a conflict, though. Especially if you tell them that there may be consequences - such as disease and unwanted pregnancy - even if they try to be safe.
The thing is, teens have always had sex and I don't think the demographic ever will stop having sex no matter what adults do, say or offer. I do think the best way to stem it though is through a comprehensive sex-ed course and with parental involvement. Although, for kids who have parents who are unconcerned, or who even may have sexually abused their kids themselves, I don't know what you do there. :(
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 10:57 pm (UTC)Teen pregnancy rates have been dropping over the last few years. I don't know why, but I like to think that it might have something to do with abstinence education taking hold.