Homeschooling, Should it be banned?

[Zor]

An issue that has come up on the board several times by several people is homeschooling and in general the board consesus has been against it for various reasons (lack of standards and trained professional educators, kids become antisocial, fundies using it to insure their progeny becomes fundies and such). So i was wondering, would it be a good thing if the US and other nations followed germany's footsteps and banned it? Personally i would advocate banning homeschooling unless it involves a trained and licensed tutor for the reasons stated above, but what is your opinion on the matter?

Zor

[CaptainChewbacca]

I almost voted no, but I'm unsure about the meaning of whether or not someone 'whats to teach there kids'.

I'll go with 'FISH'!

[Superman]

It's not just that these kids are denied a proper education, they are also denied essential socialization skills that we as humans need. Remember the South Park episode where the homeschooled kid watched some boys wrestle around, then ask. "why are they hitting each other?" There are just some things we only learn by being around other people.

The other problem is that a big chunk of the homeschooled children are homeschooled because the parents are nuts. Homeschooling allows the parents to mold them into religious idiots, tolerate abuse, etc., and the only other people these kids see are fellow screwballs.

I think it should be banned.

[Alex Moon]

Allow it. If I ever have children, I intend to homeschool them through their early years.

[Superman]

Allow it. If I ever have children, I intend to homeschool them through their early years.

What is your reasoning behind that? I'm not making a judgment or anything, I'm just wondering why.

[Alex Moon]

Allow it. If I ever have children, I intend to homeschool them through their early years.

What is your reasoning behind that? I'm not making a judgment or anything, I'm just wondering why.

Because I can do a better job. Quite frankly, up through about fourth or fifth grade the material is so basic that anyone with a high school diploma and some prep work can teach it. In addition, there are a lot of areas where I disagree with the curriculum and believe that the schools are failing. I'll be honest, I never liked the way sex ed was taught and thought PE was wasted on too many team sports.

As far as socialization is concerned, there are plenty of opportunities outside of school. Youth sports teams, scouting, homeschooling groups, and neighborhood kids are all examples of ways that a child can have interaction with other children their own age group and can learn social skills.

[Superman]

In addition, there are a lot of areas where I disagree with the curriculum and believe that the schools are failing. I'll be honest, I never liked the way sex ed was taught and thought PE was wasted on too many team sports.

I knew sex education would be in there somewhere. Is this because of religious reasons? I don't think there are too many schools that still have P.E. classes... at least not around here.

I'm not saying you can't teach an educational curriculum, but you have to admit there's much more to school than academics.

As far as socialization is concerned, there are plenty of opportunities outside of school. Youth sports teams, scouting, homeschooling groups, and neighborhood kids are all examples of ways that a child can have interaction with other children their own age group and can learn social skills.

Going into a culturally diverse classroom and having to interact with these kids on a daily basis is quite a bit different from hanging with friends on the block or a weekly boyscout meeting, wouldn't you say? I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily; I'm just not convinced that home schooling is a healthy alternative to a public or private school.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I would go with a more moderate option. Regulate the homeschoolers and hold them to actual standards.

[Surlethe]

I happen to agree with Alyrium Denryle. I know that I would like to homeschool my children, if everything works out as planned, unless I can get them to a good private school. I will have a bachelors in math and applied physics, while my (hopeful) wife will have a degree in history and classics education; this qualifies us to cover the majority of academics, and english classes are easy as pie.

[Patrick Degan]

As far as socialization is concerned, there are plenty of opportunities outside of school. Youth sports teams, scouting, homeschooling groups, and neighborhood kids are all examples of ways that a child can have interaction with other children their own age group and can learn social skills.

All those activities save one occur under controlled conditions for relatively brief periods in the week and the remaining one with the neighbourhood kids for only a small fraction of the day at best. It is entirely another matter when little Junior learns how the world works while completely outside the home and away from the parents for most of the day, surrounded by people who aren't automatically giving him the free pass and having to learn to live up to the expectations and demands of others to fit in. That sort of life experience you can only get in the schools with daily social interaction. That and he gets to learn how to cope with other ideas. Has to, actually.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Allow it, provided the parents can provide a quality education with standards as high as or higher than public education. This includes proper science education. Whether the parent does the teaching or hires a tutor to do most of the work is mostly inconsequential, IMO, provided the kid gets a real education. And gets out to interact with others too, obviously.

[ray245]

Ban it. The only way to ensure less religion extremist is to ensure children are growing up in a environment where they are forced to deal with people who have different views AND actually have their own views and choice of religion.

And I thought freedom of choice is part of Christianity.

American school systems or education system of letting creativity holding a important role in school no doubt produced a few genius. But it has also produce a number of retards.


Set a very CLEAR guide line to how school should be managed, and encourage competition for school grades. Sports and P.E. also should be a must, although not going to a crazy level...

Most of all ensure that religion should have ZERO say in education policies. Just because some people are Christians does not mean they can have the chance to force their belief on people who aren't Christian.

The school is NOT a church. Schools may have a religion subject, but make it TOTALLY optional.

Science cannot be ignored or allow parents to have a say in what topics cannot be touched on due to their religion.


Dammit, if USA wants to be a country of freedom, religion should not have a say in schools.


And they should provide basic education for children in schools NO matter what. You want fairness and equality, here equality. Pre-school children may be home-schooled.

But primary level education should be compulsory for all.


And to ensure schools does NOT degrade, encourage inter-school competition in academic and sports results heavily, not just for the school name, but to give parents an OPTION in which schools to enroll in for their child.

Survival of the fittest, and close down all the 'weak' school. The US is a first-world country for crying out loud. It's not like they cannot afford to build enough schools!



That's what I hoped the US education system will adopt, but can it work in US? I am not too sure about that though.

[DPDarkPrimus]

And I thought freedom of choice is part of Christianity.

So is punishing you for making the choice they don't want you to make.

[Ritterin Sophia]

And I thought freedom of choice is part of Christianity.

So is punishing you for making the choice they don't want you to make.

Don't forget God Punishing you because he told you not to eat an apple and you were created with no sense of right or wrong.

[Junghalli]

I'd say allow it, but have some sort of quality control.

[Instant Sunrise]

I'd say don't ban it outright, but regulate it heavily. Same curriculum, same standards. But 2nd thru 8th grade only.

My ideal for homeschooling would be the exact same education, just in a different location. Parent's are free to supplement their kids education from other sources, just like they could if their kid was in public schools.

According to the Department of Education, the majority of parents listed "Concern about the School Environment" defined as "safety, drugs or negative peer pressure." With the reasoning of "To provide religious or moral instruction" being a close second.

I would also have the parents write a letter to the school district explaining why they want to home-school their kids. People who wish to do so for religious reasons would be barred from homeschooling, but just about anybody else is free to do so.

To me, it doesn't seem right to make a child attend a school where a vocal segment of the student body has made it clear that he is not wanted there.

I would also not allow kids to go straight into home-school, except in the case of special needs.

Fundies make up a majority of home-schoolers, and they are a very vocal majority, but they are not the only ones who home-school. Banning it outright does more harm than good, when it just needs to be regulated.

[Instant Sunrise]

Fundies make up a majority of home-schoolers, and they are a very vocal majority, but they are not the only ones who home-school. Banning it outright does more harm than good, when it just needs to be regulated.

Just to amend this pont, that closing statement is in error, according to the linked study, only 29.8% of home-schooling parents cited "religious or moral instruction." With 31.2% citing concerns about the environment. This makes the self-identified Fundies a minority, but still extremely vocal about this issue.

[Bounty]

I'd say allow it, but have some sort of quality control.

Regular teachers are subject to inspection, so why not use the same standard for homeschoolers? Regularly test *both* the children and the parents to make sure that the former are at a proper level of development and that the latter are capable of teaching the material. If the parents fail, force them to find a tutor. After all, your education is only as good as the person who teaches you.

[Eris]

As a girl I was homeschooled from for the latter half of high school, and for generally legitimate reasons. Now, to be up front about it, I was an unusual case. I didn't have an option for normal schooling without receiving a pretty piss poor education, and both my parents are university faculty who were willing to put in the effort into me. I actually got a better science and maths education than most normally schooled children, but that puts me as I understand it in the extreme minority of homeschoolers.

That said, I'm against banning it. The two main arguments against it seem to be its use as a shelter for fundamentalism and because it avoids socialisation. Neither seem to me to be necessary at all. To avoid the religious problems, just carefully regulate it. Require that the children demonstrate their competency to the state every six months or so.

As for the socialisation, I have some admittedly non-standard views on the subject, but unfortunately I don't know of any studies that have been conducted on the matter, either for or against my opinions, so I'm not in a position to argue persuasively on the matter. As far as it concerns homeschooling, there are believe it or not ways other than school to socialise.

To be fair, you don't have the lack of choice in who your classmates are when doing things like clubs, classes, and other activities of that sort, but I would point out that at least in the US, schools are so highly racially and economically segregated in practice anyhow, that the difference might not be as extreme as all that. A white, middle class karate class with a sprinkling of minorities is probably going to be similar in makeup to a high school in a white, middle class neighbourhood with a sprinkling of minorities. While I can't speak for non-US areas, we here in the states are much much more ghettoised and demographically isolated than we realise, and our schools reflect that. You'd already have self-selecting populations even if you did make everyone go to a public school, let alone a private one.

To digress a moment on my own personal curiosities, why is it that we insist so much on socialising children in this way? I can understand wanting social skills, but where did the common wisdom that the best way to do that is have them interact with other children? It always seemed to me like a case of the blind leading the blind. As I said, I don't know of any studies on this either way, but it always seemed intuitive that to learn social skills, you imitated and learned from people with social skills, that is, adults. This emphasis on peer interaction at the expense of interaction with older people seems to me very counter-intuitive.

Back on topic, I don't think homeschooling should be banned; for all its difficulties and drawbacks, I think it still has use in certain cases, and that with proper regulation and oversight it can be a viable alternative to what's become traditional education.

Of course, there isn't an option for that on the poll, but there you have it.

[freker]

Ray245 wrote:

Most of all ensure that religion should have ZERO say in education policies. Just because some people are Christians does not mean they can have the chance to force their belief on people who aren't Christian.

The school is NOT a church. Schools may have a religion subject, but make it TOTALLY optional.

I think that religion should be tought, and I don't mean an hour full of praying and brainwashing in what religion is best. but there has to be education in what religions are out there and how they view the world.

children should be prepared for the world, and since religion still has a large part in it, they should know about it

[Broomstick]

I'm not saying you can't teach an educational curriculum, but you have to admit there's much more to school than academics.

Part of the problem is that in many areas everything BUT academics has been stripped from the curiculum in public schools, and even those are watered down. Sure, you can supplement at home in the evenings and on the weekends - IF your shitty school isn't overloading the kids with keep-busy homework.

It's not just religious nuts homeschooling - it's also parents who are in a shitty school district who feel they can do a better job at home, or parents who feel their local school isn't safe, or other reasons.

I, too, say regulate it and hold the parents to standards. If their kids can't keep up to basic standards then yes, they have to go to public school.

[Duckie]

Ray245 wrote:

Most of all ensure that religion should have ZERO say in education policies. Just because some people are Christians does not mean they can have the chance to force their belief on people who aren't Christian.

The school is NOT a church. Schools may have a religion subject, but make it TOTALLY optional.

I think that religion should be tought, and I don't mean an hour full of praying and brainwashing in what religion is best. but there has to be education in what religions are out there and how they view the world.

children should be prepared for the world, and since religion still has a large part in it, they should know about it

There's a difference between Comparative Religion classes and American ideas of "Religion Class", wherein you are taught Protestant Christianity.

Unless you're at a Catholic School.

[Crown]

To digress a moment on my own personal curiosities, why is it that we insist so much on socialising children in this way? I can understand wanting social skills, but where did the common wisdom that the best way to do that is have them interact with other children? It always seemed to me like a case of the blind leading the blind. As I said, I don't know of any studies on this either way, but it always seemed intuitive that to learn social skills, you imitated and learned from people with social skills, that is, adults. This emphasis on peer interaction at the expense of interaction with older people seems to me very counter-intuitive.

Because while older people, in this case most likely your parents, will teach you such things as politeness (scoffed as style of substance on this board, but oh my does it have mileage in the real world), picking up on non-verbal clues from others, decorum and proper conduct. They simply cannot teach you about; backstabbing, rumours, bitchiness, office politics, working with vipers, more than two types of personalities (assuming that your parents aren't clones of each other), and what you can expect from them.

That nice stuff you get to learn (if you're lucky) at school, and if you are an apt pupil, you get waaaaaaaay ahead of the game. If you're not lucky (and apt), the first time you'll learn this stuff is in the office/workplace. Office politics is a form of savagery that simply can not be instructed by the parents (unless one of the parents is His Most Imperial Majest, Dark Lord of the Sith, Emperor Palpatine).

They can teach you the 'good' stuff, the 'fluffy' stuff, but they cannot teach you what viscious little fucks inhabit this sphere spinning around the Sun with you. Unfortunately you'll have to learn that on your own. Better to learn it at school and early, then much later.

[Hillary]

I say ban. Whilst it is possible to implement some form of inspection process to ensure a minimum standard, I feel would be a criminal waste of scarce education resources to have inspectors dealing with one child at a time.

The argument that some parents feel they could do a better job doesn't really cut much ice with me. In a small minority of cases this may be true but by allowing a few children to gain a slightly better education, you are condemning many more to a far, far worse education.

That the public school system is not what it should be is a whole different issue, but not one that is resolved by home schooling.

Ban it, if only for the sake of Alex Moon's children

By the way, Zor, were you home schooled? Judging by your poll, I think you may have been

if someone whats to educate there kids

[Turin]

I'm worried, particularly here in the US, that if you try to ban homeschooling, there will be a significant backlash. You'll have the fundy contingent up in arms, obviously, but also the "think of the children!" crowd. I'd rather not give the fundies more ammo for claiming they're being oppressed. Call it a tactical decision.

I'd much rather spend the resources, that we'd otherwise be using to fight these people, on the education system. So allow homeschooling -- but heavily regulate and monitor it, as others here have suggested.