Then I discovered that you don't have to be a qualified teacher to homeschool your kids. I still thought, hey, neat. Kids can learn a lot at home in a less structured environment. I read lots of web sites devoted to it, etc.

Then I started hearing the other side of homeschooling - how it's really popular among the fundamentalist, moral majority types because that way they can teach bigotry and fundamentalist religion to their children, unfettered by that nasty old public school system that is sure to send their kids to hell. And I thought, geez, that's scary, but surely that's just a fringe element.

And then I went on that horrid mommy board where I saw the nastiest women I have ever encountered, bar none, spewing racist, ignorant, uneducated, and totally uninformed TRIPE. Sure enough, some of the most ignorant and crude among them are homeschooling.

On the other hand, I also knew a mother who supposedly home schooled her daughter. She read extensively, but her math and science skills were extremely weak.

One has to be able to impartially rank another person's progress, to be able to correct mistakes gently rather than harshly, and so on, and so forth.

There's so much more than what I enumerated here, but I really don't think 100% of parents who homeschool have the faintest idea of what it takes to turn out a child that can ace the government-mandated final exams and be prepared for post-secondary education.

It's enough of a culture shock for people in the public and private school systems who have never had more than 30 or 40 students per class, to jump to 200+ students per class.

A lot of kids, many boys in particular, can't handle the formal structure and sit-downness (hey, new word!) of school. And for children who are younger, I think a person with a high school diploma who is willing to learn to find homeschooling resources (and most homeschoolers are, I think) is qualified enough to teach their children.

I don't agree that a home schooling parent needs a teacher's certificate. There are home schooling curriculums to follow, teacher's manuals, etc. etc. Especially for elementary/jr. high school, most adults with a high school diploma would do just fine. The benefits are having the one-on-one learning relationship. I can testify that here in the U.S., or at least in Oregon, our schools budgets are being cut DRASTICALLY. Many important programs are being cut completely, and no, I'm not talking about sports. Chemistry, Physics, Music, and Computers, to name a few. In my opinion, these are valuable things that our young people need to learn in our technologically advanced society. It is up to the parent to decide if they are capable of teaching their child, and it the child would benefit from it.

Of course socialization is another concern. My position is that if a parent chooses to home school, it is their responsibility to make sure their child has other opportunities to learn social skills, life skills, street smarts, whatever you want to call them. In my town, there are plenty of activities to bring home schooled kids, public schooled kids, and private schooled kids together. Our public school offers certain extra curricular activies to both public and home schooled children. On the mommy board, someone said that children do not live in a bubble, they do go out and experience the world, as long as the parent lets them. I completely agree with that.

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I think parents have a right to pass on to their children whatever knowledge, beliefs and values they wish. No matter how insufficient, bigoted or wrong other groups perceive that education to be.

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i also think another problem with home schooling arises from the fact that kids don't really get to pick their own friends. at young ages it is often the parents that do the picking.

Or when you develop two years earlier than everyone else and so become the butt of every 5th grade idiots jokes. Another fine memory.

Public school has many fine qualities but the socialization aspect isn't all cozy friendships and learning how to cope.

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I think parents have a right to pass on to their children whatever knowledge, beliefs and values they wish. No matter how insufficient, bigoted or wrong other groups perceive that education to be.

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I'm willing to accept that...up to a point.

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How will the kids function as adults if they're ignorant little bigots?

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how it's really popular among the fundamentalist, moral majority types because that way they can teach bigotry...

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*Snip* That's a pretty rich little quote. It illustrates something that we have to come to terms with: The Balkanization of America. ( The continent, not the country. ) McLuhan predicted this eventuality.

In order to stop trends such as home schooling, we need to have more fraternization with people who are different than you. This board and the baby board are a microcosm of what's happening socially, economically, all across America.

Why?

My favourite author, Spider Robinson, wrote an article in the Globe a few months ago about how if you were "weird" as a child growing up, you really had only yourself, and if you were lucky, you might find a group of other people who were as "weird" as you eventually. But with the advent of the internet, finding people who share your particular quirks becomes a lot easier. It's nice to know you're not alone.

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Why?

Gotta admit, fraternising with Moral Majority types sounds like about as much fun as pulling my own teeth out with pliers.

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I guess the axiom is "if you're not with us, you're against us". GWB uses this truth to dispatch American minds towards a war mentality, but there's a more natural aspect to it.

A large population cannot coexist if they're not speaking the same language, the tribe will split up and fight amongst themselves.

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: Alix ]

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generally for me it seems that elsewhere, I'm afloat in a sea of negativity.

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Very much so. Real life, for the most part, does not reflect my values or my priorities.

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Public school has many fine qualities but the socialization aspect isn't all cozy friendships and learning how to cope.

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I've said it before, I'll say it again, you ROCK Earthmom.

I'm of two minds on homeschooling.

I think it's a right to choose what is best for your child, home-schooling included. I'm sure some children really benifit from it. I know I hated, no, LOATHED, public school and the way it was structured. I spent my time either staring at the clock, bored to tears as an over-worked or uninterested teacher explained something for the 8th time, or avoiding assholes during lunch and recess. Soooo, I might have appreciated homeschooling.

OTOH, I agree with Michelle that it's an easy way to sequeser yout flock from the "real world", and that could lead to some problems I suppose.

Though, I'm stuck, because isn't the freedom to live our lives and rear our next generation how we (whomever that might be) see fit one of the fundamental flagstones of a free and democratic society?

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As for balkanization...well, whose fault is it? Who turned away? When did we stop being able to speak each other's languages, or was it always like this?

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Home schooling represents one tenet of a trend that pervades society: realignment of the tribes.

I remember seeing the film "Blood in the Face" about white supremecists and one of the womenfolk was talking about how comforted she felt being in the company of "her people". I felt shocked that I could relate to that feeling even though I found her views repellant.

Yes, an ideal existed back then, and it speaks to us in the documents of the era.

What we have left from era, from those documents, came from a very small group. Their own "tribe," if you will. That is who they were speaking as and for. But did they have any understanding of those other "tribes," what they needed and what they wanted?

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What I think Smith was saying (and please, I don't mean to put words in your mouth, so tell me if I'm wrong) and that I agree with is that those who were heard, those whose voices came down to us who propagated this ideal belonged to a very specific group. If you fell outside that group, if you were female, or of a different race, or if you were poor, your voice simply didn't "exist"

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Yes, this is very true.

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What we have left from era, from those documents, came from a very small group. Their own "tribe," if you will. That is who they were speaking as and for. But did they have any understanding of those other "tribes," what they needed and what they wanted?

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Maybe they were speaking for themselves or maybe they were trying to speak for all of their people.

I think they understood correctly that a declaration of rights was needed by all the tribes. I'm not sure if the other tribes wanted them or not.

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Just because the other voices are largely lost doesn't mean that they didn't exist, and that they didn't feel themselves to be of a profoundly different "tribe" than the founding fathers.

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Conversely, just because the founding fathers were of a different tribe, you can't assume that they only considered themselves when mapping out their idea for a new nation.

After all, it was based on documents that began with fundamental rights and freedoms and worked forward from there.

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Maybe they were speaking for themselves or maybe they were trying to speak for all of their people.

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reminds me very much of some of the fields of argument going on in feminism these days. When the movement started, it was predominantly white, middle-class women. Now there is a backlash - how can these women, coming from their particular point of view, presume to speak for women of colour, for women who are poor, etc. when they have no idea of the conditions in which they live? When they have no idea of what these women would even want, or what they would say for themselves, are saying for themselves, when they had a voice?

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reminds me very much of some of the fields of argument going on in feminism these days. When the movement started, it was predominantly white, middle-class women. Now there is a backlash - how can these women, coming from their particular point of view, presume to speak for women of colour, for women who are poor, etc. when they have no idea of the conditions in which they live?

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It might not make sense now, but perhaps it made more since in pre-sufferage. Just as the founding elite may not have cared as much for the "unheard voices" as for their own people.

Nevertheless, they acted in the best interest of others in some cases. They served the people as good leaders should.

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And you know, I think there's a point to be made there. The Founding Fathers may have had the best of intentions, and may even have created something great, but the people they considered people were probably not all of society. (My knowledge of American history is abysmal, so correct me if I'm wrong, but these universal human rights still allowed the enslavement of blacks, the dislocation of Natives, and women were still chattel.)

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This is kind of a side argument, but equally interesting. The foundations for this new society based on human rights and democracy to "promote the general welfare" were a marked improvement for the common person over the systems of government that had come before.

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The foundations for this new society based on human rights and democracy to "promote the general welfare" were a marked improvement for the common person over the systems of government that had come before.

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Even if an adequate or better achievement of the curricullum was accomplished, the fact remains we also have to learn to work and socially survive in large work places, and cooperate with others.

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The "common person" whose general welfare they were so concerned about was not female and was not black. They weren't even considered to be truly human.

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True, but I think it could be argued that the introduction of those principles paved the way for the recognition of blacks, women, natives, etc.

It's much easier to make a democracy more democratic than it is to make an autocracy into a democracy, I think.

As for "dropping out" of society - well, yeah, it has problems; however, a lot of people see schools - rightly or wrongly - as little worker factories, little indoctrinating machines. I mean, I grew up in quite a liberal neighbourhood in Toronto, and the messages were still shoved down my throat: Canada is great, don't litter, don't do drugs, don't go places with strangers, obey authority, don't talk back...

Not that those messages are bad - most of them are very useful and hard to dispute. ("Littering is good! Let's do it some more!") But sometimes the perspectives given are a little one-sided, a little simplistic. (There's a lot to be said for disobedience and talking back, at times.) I remember at seven or eight, correcting a supply teacher on a minor point of history (she said Canada was one of the only countries that had never had slavery; I knew we had had it in the 18th and early 19th centuries...and now I know that if it had suited our economy at the time, we probably would have had it a lot more). We are given particular images of ourselves and our society, most of which are innocuous, but some of which are misleading.

I agree that dropping out is not the answer; however, it makes sense to be vigilant and expose our children to points of view they don't get in school as much as we can.

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: Smith ]