Homeschooling, Should it be banned?

[Cairber]

I am with the regulate it crowd. I actually looked into homeschooling, but we decided on Montessori instead. I can understand why some people do it with the way some of our districts are.

However, there needs to be some kind of regulation. Just check out the unschooling thread to find out why...

[Cairber]

By the way, this map shows the current level of regulation by state:

map

Notice only a few states require high regulation such as testing and portfolios as well as regulation of parents as teachers. Many require no regulation at all, not even notification of intent to homeschool.

[Alex Moon]

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.

It's religious, but not in a "Waaaah, sex is bad!" way. My experience with Sex ed classes has been that the instructors are quick to promote "If it feels good, do it." and start passinjg out condoms. I dislike that attitude in general, and think that especially when it comes to sex that it leads to a lot of hurt and problems.

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.

No, I wouldn't say. I disagree that there is really that much culturally diversity in the average public school classroom. In most places, students will generally be from similar racial/cultural/socioeconomic backgrounds.

Gah, I'll try to clarify all this later. I have class all day with no computer access...

[Alex Moon]

By the way, this map shows the current level of regulation by state:

map

Notice only a few states require high regulation such as testing and portfolios as well as regulation of parents as teachers. Many require no regulation at all, not even notification of intent to homeschool.

I don't know how you're getting "many" when only 20% require no regulation at all, while twice that many require testing.

[Cairber]

23 states require no testing...just notification of intent (and some not even that).

[drachefly]

It's religious, but not in a "Waaaah, sex is bad!" way. My experience with Sex ed classes has been that the instructors are quick to promote "If it feels good, do it." and start passinjg out condoms.

Where the fuck do you live? I never heard anything like that. Even when they were admitting that some of us had probably had sex already, it was conveyed in the tone that there is some information about it that we really should know, and here it is.

Passing out condoms isn't at all the same thing, either. I remember having them available (though they weren't passed out), and their availability wasn't a factor in any decisions.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There's no need to ban it, just require anyone who's doing it to have a college degree and pass a competency test and you'll weed out all of those who shouldn't be teaching their kids.

[Coyote]

The option I want isn't on there: Homeschooling done for religious purposes should be banned. Otherwise, I think it's just fine.

[General Zod]

There's no need to ban it, just require anyone who's doing it to have a college degree and pass a competency test and you'll weed out all of those who shouldn't be teaching their kids.

Or make them go through the same certification process that teachers at your average public school would require. Degree(s) in the relevant fields and a teaching certificate from reputable schools.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There's no need to ban it, just require anyone who's doing it to have a college degree and pass a competency test and you'll weed out all of those who shouldn't be teaching their kids.

Or make them go through the same certification process that teachers at your average public school would require. Degree(s) in the relevant fields and a teaching certificate from reputable schools.

That's utterly excessive and outright silly. Most teachers at schools actually just have a generic "education" degree which serves merely to perpetuate a legacy of unprepared teachers who don't know the subjects they're teaching. I have a friend who was allowed to be a substitute with a BA in History but couldn't actually teach history classes, which is utterly silly; they needed substitutes so much he worked every day of the damned school year and was around the kids just as much as the regular teachers, but he needed a special education degree to do the exact same thing except with one single class and making more money?

And then you want to apply those same standards to anyone who wants to home educate? No, there's absolutely no reason to do that whatsoever.

Much of the certification process covers how to handle groups of children, and how to behave to avoid lawsuits. Neither of those is remotely relevant in any way to a home school setting. And if you force them to get all that, they'd probably just go on to start a private school and you'd have effectively banned home schooling. Which is probably your intent, but it's really just stupid.

Anyone with a reasonably generalist college education (this is the only area they're useful in--teaching children--but specialist degrees cover the same general material and so are just as acceptable for this task) can teach all the basics for children. Just make sure that they themselves have a high school diploma, took the SAT or whatever, and have at least an AA or an AS with, say, math knowledge up to calc 1. Give them a 2 - 3 hour comprehensive test, require them to make a yearly statement of intent and to have administered all state-mandated comprehensive tests (There's usually 3 - 5 over the course of a child's education depending on the state), and then leave them alone otherwise. Their children will come out fine.

The final cap will be that the children don't get diplomas, however; they have to test for a state GED like anyone else who didn't finish real high school. So there's no danger of the parents doctoring transcripts and so on to apply for a diploma for their children, and they know going in that if they choose that route their kids can only get a GED, and will have to take the test for it like everyone else.

I wouldn't require any other regulation, though, it would be unnecessarily restrictive. As for the religious issues, you can send your kids to a fully accredited Christian high school these days where biology class consists of watching Creationist video-tapes, so how is home schooling worse than that?

[Gil Hamilton]

The option I want isn't on there: Homeschooling done for religious purposes should be banned. Otherwise, I think it's just fine.

Despite me being an Evil Sinful Atheist Who Feeds on Christian Tears, I don't see even this. You can ban certain programs, but you can't really effectively ban motive and usually it's a bad idea to try. For some reason, I'm envisioning a pair of atheist or Muslim or what have you parents who want to keep their kids out a school where the heavily WASP student body keeps beating the shit out of them, then being forced to attend because the school board decides that they aren't keeping them out because of the threat to their kids, but because it's a "religious" thing. Banning homeschooling for religious reasons sounds like it would trip the Law of Unintended Consequences, even if it survived the inevitable court battle challenging the law (which I doubt it would).

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a legitimate legal way you can ban homeschooling. What you can do is regulate and test the crap out of it, in a way that anyone attempting to homeschool their kids that isn't competent in all the subjects necessary to provide an education for that level can't possibly do it and they have to school them anyway.

[Mange]

I do not approve of home schooling and I'm sure that the vast majority of parents are unqualified or wants to shelter their children from 'dangerous influences' (Jesus Camp shows a good example with a parent pulling uninformed crap from where the sun doesn't shine). At the same time there could be reasons when homeschooling could be an option and then my opinion is that the parents (or whichever tutor it may be) in some way must be tested and/or certified. Here in Sweden homeschooling is legal as long as the educational standards meets the same requirements as the regular schools (independent schools must also have a value free curriculum and religious schools aren't allowed to teach for example creationism as a valid alternative to creationism and parents must also live up to that).

[Superman]

It's religious, but not in a "Waaaah, sex is bad!" way. My experience with Sex ed classes has been that the instructors are quick to promote "If it feels good, do it." and start passinjg out condoms. I dislike that attitude in general, and think that especially when it comes to sex that it leads to a lot of hurt and problems.

This sounds like the typical right wing talk show host/preacher straw-man argument. Anyone can get free condoms from almost any clinic or pharmacy these days. I'm not sure that schools even pass out condoms in sex ed. class; mine didn't.

I think the problem is that acknowledging the fact that kids have sex somehow equals pushing an agenda in the minds of some people. Education is always better than pretending something doesn't exist.

[Uraniun235]

I think if we're going to ban home-schooling on the grounds that it represents an unacceptably socially-controlled environment, we need to go the whole distance and ban private schooling as well for the same reasons.

[cadbrowser]

I don't think (at least in the US) that regulating home schooling will work. Now, I don't have anything to refer to to back up my claim, save personal observation, but it seems to me that we have a lot of regulating entities (by the government) that are very much underfunded, and under-resourced.
So I don't think it wise to burden the taxpayers with yet ANOTHER program that might be to costly to manage and run.

I also am not totally convinced that banning it outright would work either. I agree with a lot of the posts with regards to religious motivation behind the home schooling, but I also know there are legitimate reasons as well.

How would the Amish be handled? Their home school is specifically designed to perpetuate that dogma.

I also agree with a lot of the posters with regards to the needed social skills involved with interacting with other childeren from different beliefs, and backgrounds.

I went to a private Christian school myself, and when I got into the "real" world, I was VERY unready for it. Surprisingly I did come out with very good math skills. I was too much of a free-thinker...I got in trouble a lot for my ideas.

I am now an Athiest - so much for indoctrination...LOL

My opinion would be to concentrate on upgrading the standards (for the US) of education in the publically funded system. Get our students to perform very well against other schools from other countries.

There is a quote from the bible that I think applies here, and it says, "Let the ignorant be ignorant still."

IMO...If religious motivation is their reasoning for home schooling, then let them do it...in the end, the one that has the better REAL education will be the more successful one.


Thats my two cents!

[Gil Hamilton]

My Sex Ed class didn't either. The teacher usually started out with the "abstinence is the only sure protection against pregnancy and VD..." when talking about sex. However, the difference was that the cirriculum didn't even pretend that many students weren't having sex anyway and made it comprehensive. But it wasn't the "abstinence" speech that changed any students mind on the issue on way or the other one whether or not to have sex. I think credit for that went to the infamous Sexually Transmitted Disease video, which actually succeeded in making a girl in class throw up.

If you want to put someone off sex, you don't tell them about abstinence, you show them a video where a guy is pissing green because he's up to his eyeteeth in gonorrhea. *shudder*

[Eris]

I think if we're going to ban home-schooling on the grounds that it represents an unacceptably socially-controlled environment, we need to go the whole distance and ban private schooling as well for the same reasons.

You could go even farther, actually, since even public high school demographics are very sharply divided along economic, and by extension racial grounds. It quickly becomes a problem of just getting silly, but there's no immediately clear way that I can see to draw a principled distinction about how much the government should interfere in ensuring children are socialised.

@Crown

About the vicious and backstabbing thing... I actually hadn't thought of that. Although I question how much being in high school actually prepares you for it, and feel somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that it's good to get socialisation that itself probably contributes to perpetuating the kind of behaviour it is supposed to prepare you against, I'll concede that it's a good point.

@ Gil Hamilton (sort of...)

Reading your post, something just occurred to me, that I can't believe never has before. Christians, at least in the US, are the primary force backing the abstinence only education, and one of the arguments they always trot out as you point out is it's the only sure protection.

Leaving aside that this is a monumentally stupid argument for a plethora of reasons, isn't it also ruled out by their own doctrine? The Virgin Birth supposedly was a case of abstinence only education failing, not because the person had sex, but because in the Christian mindset, you can get pregnant without having sex. Only after you reject Christianity can you claim that abstinence is the only sure way.

[Junghalli]

Leaving aside that this is a monumentally stupid argument for a plethora of reasons, isn't it also ruled out by their own doctrine? The Virgin Birth supposedly was a case of abstinence only education failing, not because the person had sex, but because in the Christian mindset, you can get pregnant without having sex.

I don't think this would be a very persuasive argument, since the odds of you actually being the second Immaculate Conception are pretty darn low compared to the failure rate of condoms and birth control pills.

[Eris]

Leaving aside that this is a monumentally stupid argument for a plethora of reasons, isn't it also ruled out by their own doctrine? The Virgin Birth supposedly was a case of abstinence only education failing, not because the person had sex, but because in the Christian mindset, you can get pregnant without having sex.

I don't think this would be a very persuasive argument, since the odds of you actually being the second Immaculate Conception are pretty darn low compared to the failure rate of condoms and birth control pills.

The difference in likelihood between birth control failing and an immaculate conception are, oh, I'd say about the same as unprotected sex and birth control. Seeing as they gleefully exaggerate the same, if anything I think the irony of the affair is enhanced.

[Surlethe]

Leaving aside that this is a monumentally stupid argument for a plethora of reasons, isn't it also ruled out by their own doctrine? The Virgin Birth supposedly was a case of abstinence only education failing, not because the person had sex, but because in the Christian mindset, you can get pregnant without having sex. Only after you reject Christianity can you claim that abstinence is the only sure way.

This is an interesting argument, but according to generally accepted Christian doctrine, the virgin birth was a miracle. So your argument only holds on semantics, I think. Interesting nonetheless.

[Junghalli]

The difference in likelihood between birth control failing and an immaculate conception are, oh, I'd say about the same as unprotected sex and birth control.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that you have a 1/3 chance of getting pregnant every time you have unprotected sex, and the failure rate of birth control is .01%. I'm certain the latter is far lower and I believe former is higher though I'm not sure, but let's just use it as an example.

That gives you a roughly 3,333 times greater chance of getting pregnant if you have had unprotected sex than if you use birth control, unless I screwed up my math badly (which I conceed is always a distinct possibility with me).

By contrast only one person in all human history has been the Immaculate Conception, and it's only supposed to happen at most two more times (assuming both Jesus and the Antichrist come to Earth this way), so your odds are at most 2 in 3 billion - probably lower but let's just use the present world (female) population for the sake of argument.

This means even at the most ludicrous high end possible your odds of conceiving with abstinance are still more than 450 thousand times lower than your odds of conceiving if you're on the pill.

I must say I can't believe I'm actually debating this.

[Junghalli]

Ghetto edit

I'm certain the latter is far lower and I believe former is higher though I'm not sure, but let's just use it as an example.

That should be "I'm certain the former is far lower and I believe the latter is higher".

[Soldier of Entropy]

Don't ban homeschooling; regulate it. Have the students have to take standardized tests to make sure their parents aren't exclusively teaching them the fundy version of how life came to be or are teaching them that evolution is rediculous with fallacious arguments. My best freind has been homeschooled all his life (though he will be going to the high school next year, in 10th grade), and he is fine socially, having done school sports teams and many other socialization opportunities since elementary school (and his parents are actually teaching him well; he's on the same level as me which is honors for most things, and he's not getting fundy education). In addition, he goes to a sort of home-school group every few weeks or something. If all homeschooled children were homeschooled in this fashion, or something else appropriate to their intellect, it would be fine.

[Patrick Degan]

It's religious, but not in a "Waaaah, sex is bad!" way. My experience with Sex ed classes has been that the instructors are quick to promote "If it feels good, do it." and start passinjg out condoms. I dislike that attitude in general, and think that especially when it comes to sex that it leads to a lot of hurt and problems.

That's why there's this thing called "parenting", in which you're supposed to take an active hand in shaping your child's values instead of leaving it entirely up to others to do so.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Institute a vigorous exam system that is administered to all children at certain ages, regardless of how they got their schooling. Does it matter how one receives an education, as long as it creates solid results?