California bans homeschooling

[SCRawl]

What are the chances of failing in homeschooling?

I ask because I cannot envision a parent failing her own child, while public schools have atrocious failure rates. And say what you want about failing, but the possibility of failure is what makes education worth it in most cases.

Failure rates are atrocious? What level of school are we talking about? In my experience they only rarely fail anyone until they get to high school.

[Surlethe]

As far as "raising a social retard" goes, that is certainly not a safe generalization to make regarding homeschoolers. In many communities, homeschoolers pool their resources and teach cooperatively so that various parents can focus on teaching their strengths. This way, children gain plenty of experience socializing.

It is not the same thing as having the child in an open environment, exposed to children of many different backgrounds and ideas, learning how to fit in to a clique, how to defend themselves or avoid trouble, having expectations imposed on them from authorities other than Mommy or Daddy (like in the Real World), experiencing life outside the home and the family circle, and yes, even running the daily risk of falling in with the wrong crowd, getting into trouble, and running afoul of authority and all on a continual basis every day, eight hours a day, five days a week.

You are certainly correct in that the child does not receive a full exposure to human nature; however, that does not mean the stereotype of 'socially maladjusted' holds up at all.

Even if the school is crap, academically, it is still the only place where certain hard life-lessons get learned and also where a kid takes shape as his or her own person.

This isn't necessarily true. A child can certainly take shape as her own person even while being homeschooled. On the other hand, after eighteen years of living under parents' absolute authority, the transition to freedom can be difficult.

[Darth Wong]

You're assuming that this transition to freedom takes place at all. I know one home-schooled girl who transitioned to a regular public school and seems to be doing fine, but her parents are both very intelligent, conscientious people: the ideal people to be doing this sort of thing. However, I've also run into Jehovah's Witnesses who are home-schooling their children and who don't really intend to ever let them enter the real world. They're certainly not going to university, and they hope for them to go to the Jehovah's Witness HQ campus in America where they will become part of the JW organization. It is entirely possible that these people could live their entire lives without ever really being forced to deal with normal society.

[brianeyci]

Failure rates are atrocious? What level of school are we talking about? In my experience they only rarely fail anyone until they get to high school.

I'm talking about high school. Does home schooling generally refer to non-high school?

I honestly don't see the point in superior school before high school since it seems like babysitting, so might as well call it babysitting. I am not a believer in the new age teaching where parents give linear equations to children when they are three, thinking it will help them become math geniuses. But I have absolutely dick in parenting experience, so maybe the preteen years are important.

From my humble opinion, it seems as if the preteen years are when you have the most time to learn social skills, so it shouldn't really matter a shit if you go to homeschool or some kindergarten. Seems as if pre-high school is the best time to dump the child in a daycare and for him to get used to different kinds of people, before high school when the grades start to matter.

[brianeyci]

note: when I said atrocious I realized I was talking about an American news article, so I framed my comments that way knowing a lot of teenagers drop out of school. But I'm equating drop out rate with difficulty, which may not be totally honest. It could be that high school is better off failing nobody, and failure should only be in university. But I don't see the point in making a distinction between drop out rate and failure rate, when I'm asking the question of how many homeschoolers fail (drop out seems to be impossible -- how can a homeschooler drop out, leave the home?)

[Darth Wong]

I honestly don't see the point in superior school before high school since it seems like babysitting, so might as well call it babysitting.

Wow. You could not be more wrong.

By the time kids reach high school, their social behaviour is heavily imprinted already, and their foundational material is already learned. If they enter grade 9 with sub-normal reading abilities, do you really think they're going to become straight-A students? If they enter grade 9 with sub-normal math skills, do you really think they're going to be scientists or engineers?

You can't do shit in high-school unless your foundation is solid, which means you must have good literacy and basic math skills. By the time a child enters high school, he is expected to understand arithmetic, basic geometry, and basic algebra. If he's still struggling with the idea of isolating variables in an equation, he will never catch up. You can't catch up once you fall too far behind because you don't understand what the fuck they're teaching. They assume that you actually understood grade 8 math when they teach grade 9 math.

[brianeyci]

They assume that you actually understood grade 8 math when they teach grade 9 math.

Hm on hindsight you are right. I went into grade 9 enriched math, and if I had sucked I would've been stuck with advanced or general or even basic math.

I guess I took a lot for granted.

[Aaron]

I honestly don't see the point in superior school before high school since it seems like babysitting, so might as well call it babysitting. I am not a believer in the new age teaching where parents give linear equations to children when they are three, thinking it will help them become math geniuses. But I have absolutely dick in parenting experience, so maybe the preteen years are important.

Brian, the most important years for a childs social and educational development are from one to five. Which is one reason why kindergarden starts at four and why parents (with a clue) send their children to a structured daycare. If you have kids of your own, you'll notice that all the subjects you take from grade one to twelve in the core program are in the kindergarden program. French and math being big ones because if you don't start them on a second language before their five then they will have a big problem with it later on.

Socially it's important to get them exposed to people other than mom and dad as early as possible, the more kids the better. Dealing with other children is how they learn to negotiate.

From my humble opinion, it seems as if the preteen years are when you have the most time to learn social skills, so it shouldn't really matter a shit if you go to homeschool or some kindergarten. Seems as if pre-high school is the best time to dump the child in a daycare and for him to get used to different kinds of people, before high school when the grades start to matter.

Grades in elementry school are pretty important for indicating (for example) whether the child has a disorder (like ADD) that's going to affect their development. It's also a good indicator whether they should be in remedial, standard or advanced classes.

Mike pretty much covered the rest, so I won't go there.