Homeschooldebate.com

[Enforcer Talen]

as long as you learned to learn, its ok

[Demiurge]

as long as you learned to learn, its ok

Shit.

[Enforcer Talen]

lol

[Howedar]

1) You think you can educate your children better than the public schools or even private schools can, and you can afford the enormous outlay of personal time, effort, and lost wages (which virtually guarantees that one of you must not seek employment throughout your child's entire upbringing, not just his or her early years).

2) You're a religious fanatic.

Now I don't know how good your public schools are in Toronto, or how available private schools are, but in my area there are no non-relgious private schools and the public schools are widely believed to blow chunks.

You can get a good education in our public schools, but you need to really work at it. The schools are bad, and public perception of them is worse.

I know quite a few people whose parents were scared off by stories of the public schools, without any religious aspect whatsoever.

Given the magnitude of the sacrifice, the availability of private schools, the fact that most people are not really qualified to teach effectively, and the fact that the private school costs are lower than the personal and financial costs of homeschooling, it is not surprising at all that only people with a fanatical fear of "dangerous influences" would do it.

I dunno, this may be true in your area, but it is not in mine.

[Kitsune]

Just... Found it and had to share.

I thought it was a joke but was not 100% sure sop searched for it on amazon and found a listing..ouch

[Stark]

These are the most common reasons. However, there are other reasons - for example, H.P. Lovecraft as a child was homeschooled for a period because his health was so poor that he was all but unable to attend public school.

(now that explains a lot!)

However, Lovecraft's family at least hired professional tutors.

Lets not forget that Lovecraft's entire, extended family were loons, not to mention a mildly aristocratic family who'd recently gone broke, and his father had been institutionalised when he was a child... these are pretty overriding reasons to homeschool him, considering his 'nervous disorders'... and note that his early writings indicate alot of racist, intolerent attitudes, while he seemed to mellow after contact with friends... hardly a shining case for isolating children with their spinster aunts
Its a good example, in any case - I guess alot of peopel would be in situations where they can't send their kids to any kind of school, but even Lovecraft himself supplemented his homeschooling with his own need for learning throughout his life, which makes an important point - if you can just teach someone how to learn, they'll be fine.

[Peregrin Toker]

Lets not forget that Lovecraft's entire, extended family were loons, not to mention a mildly aristocratic family who'd recently gone broke, and his father had been institutionalised when he was a child...

There must be something strange about a family with such a bizarre surname.... (First time when I saw H.P. Lovecraft's name on a book, I thought "Lovecraft?? You can't have such a strange surname! It must be a pseudonym!")

and note that his early writings indicate alot of racist, intolerent attitudes, while he seemed to mellow after contact with friends... hardly a shining case for isolating children with their spinster aunts

It wasn't just Lovecraft's early writings which indicated racism - for example, some people have interpretated The Shadow Over Innsmouth (written in 1931) as an allegory about miscegenation, and therefore an indicator of Lovecraft's "campy turn-of-the-century racism". The only Lovecraft tales I've found to be implicitly or explicitly racist are The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Horror At Red Hook and He. (There's also The Rats In The Walls where a cat is named "Nigger-Man" - but I found that to be more silly than racist)

One could also interpretate some elements of The Thing On The Doorstep as somewhat misogynist, even though it of course pales compared to a certain and more recent pulp-fantasy writer....

[Stark]

There must be something strange about a family with such a bizarre surname.... (First time when I saw H.P. Lovecraft's name on a book, I thought "Lovecraft?? You can't have such a strange surname! It must be a pseudonym!")

You should have seen the look on my English teachers face all those years ago. 'Lovecraft, eh? Sounds like your sort of thing.' HA!

I think its difficult to avoid the racist leanings of stories like Red Hook and Innsmouth. Not just the premise, in the case of Innsmouth at least, but the entire tone of the story, the narration - Lovecraft uses the word 'blasphemous' so much it's now become the catch-all word for my friends and I!

[neoolong]

For a laugh you should check out the abeka ad for their "science" courses.

PDF link.

[Sir Sirius]

For a laugh you should check out the abeka ad for their "science" courses.

PDF link.

It's scary how clearly that ad is designed to appeal to fundies.

BIOLOGY: GOD’S LIVING CREATION
 Thoroughly Christian in perspective and tone
Truly nonevolutionary in philosophy, spirit, and sequence of study.

[Xenophobe3691]

Don't those fundies ever learn the lesson the USSR learned from Stalin's inability to accept evolution?

[NapoleonGH]

that is the most absurd listing ever, and i want to buy a few copies of each of those books just to burn.

[Cromag]

This is the kind of thing that makes me fear for the mental well-being of my cousin's kids.

Both he and his wife are very religious, he being an ex-preacher (or whatever you call the head of a Baptist congregation). I worry about the science education they will receive.

As for the social aspect, I've heard they take the kids to little get-togethers with other homeschoolers, but I've also heard that the kids can't stand to be apart for even a single night.

[RedImperator]

I knew a few people who were home schooled, but their parents had enough money to hire well-qualified private tutors for substantially more than those tutors would have made as teachers, so they weren't exactly representative.

[Kitsune]

that is the most absurd listing ever, and i want to buy a few copies of each of those books just to burn.

Then you are giving them money

[TheDarkOne]

My sister was homeschooled for er...2 or 3 years, my family isn't religous at'll, my mum just got pissed off with the teacher my sister had.

[Peregrin Toker]

Don't those fundies ever learn the lesson the USSR learned from Stalin's inability to accept evolution?

To be honest, I don't know about much about Stalin's inability to accept evolution - and more importantly, which ideas he replaced evolution theory with.

What was Stalin's explanation of life on earth??

[Raptor 597]

Don't those fundies ever learn the lesson the USSR learned from Stalin's inability to accept evolution?

To be honest, I don't know about much about Stalin's inability to accept evolution - and more importantly, which ideas he replaced evolution theory with.

What was Stalin's explanation of life on earth??

His explanation was too kill everyone. Sounds reasonable enough for him.

[DPDarkPrimus]

One of the mods, while still being a mindless fundie, scored some points with me just recently by helping me tag-team that homophobe I mentioned earlier, then talking to me on AIM about what a big idiot he was.

[ZOmegaZ]

Hey, it's a thread entirely about me!

I homeschooled, and know a few families that do as well. My main reasons for homeschooling were that not only did the public schools suck, the private Christian ones did as well. (I still say that Ezell-Harding is one of the greatest recruitments that homeschooling has in the Nashville area. I've met at least two other families who went there for one year then started homeschooling their kids.) For the record, I'm probably what y'all would call a fundie, though I don't advocate disembowling gays or anything like that, so I'm not quite sure whether I qualify for that particular club. I've known people who homeschooled for religious reasons, for financial reasons, for geographic reasons, because all the schools around them sucked, because they couldn't leave their kids for ten minutes, and just for the heck of it. If you really want to learn, then then only real disadvantage of homeschooling is the social aspect, and that can be taken care of with minimal effort. Part of my personal reason was that I'm (supposedly) uber-smart and nobody would deal with me, either on an educational or a social level. My social skills improved immeasurably because of homeschooling, because unlike Ezell, very few homeschoolers are total jerks.

Oh, and for the record, my science education, along with most other areas of thought, is just fine, thanks. I think evolution's crap due to my own analysis, not because I've never been exposed to it.

[Shrykull]

Does it strike anyone as ironic that there's a website called "homeschooldebate.com" which does not really allow debate?

Most people who try to argue in favour of homeschooling use arguments like "homeschoolers score higher on SATs". However, this argument ignores the fact that there is a large proportion of homeschoolers which has no intention of going to university and never takes the SATs at all, thus skewing the statistics.

It is the same with their other arguments; they pick and choose examples of well-educated homeschooled kids (it is certainly possible, given the right parents), and generalize to conclude that all homeschooled kids are actually better off. However, the fact remains that most people who homeschool their kids don't do it to teach their kids more; they do it to teach their kids less. Specifically, they do it to keep their kids away from "dangerous influences".

The funny thing about homeschooldebate.com is that they simply prove the point, that while not 100% of homeschoolers are rabid fundie idiots, most of them still are.

Yes, I met this woman on paltalk who homeschools her kids, saying that secular humanism is evil and she doesn't teach her kids that they came from pond scum.

[Shrykull]

I can only speak for Pittsburgh, but here, homeschoolers always were strictly average. Granted that they scored better, on average, than the kids who only went to school because they had to and such didn't take it seriously or do any work. On the other hand, they are strictly average compared to the middle tier students in the schools and were crushed by the AP students (and that's not much of an exaggeration, the AP Students in Pittsburgh Public whipped the homeschoolers in the district on standardized testing).

But these particular homeschoolers, on that message board, seem to be of the variety that have been pulled from school because of stuff like sex ed or that the biology text books don't have the parts about evolution censored.

I think I'd do better if I might have been homeschooled, the advantages of it being one on one individual attention, no having to set aside time if you needed extra help, like it is in school, but a parent wouldn't have the qualifications and degrees that high school teacher would. pretty much all mine had degrees.

[SeebianWurm]

Oh, and for the record, my science education, along with most other areas of thought, is just fine, thanks. I think evolution's crap due to my own analysis, not because I've never been exposed to it.

Please, do tell. What is this analysis that shows evolution to be "crap?" And what theory do you propose to replace it?

[ZOmegaZ]

Sorry, but that's off-topic for this thread, and off-topic threads tend to piss me off slightly. If I decide to debate evolution (again), I'll post in that thread.

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

Lets not forget that Lovecraft's entire, extended family were loons, not to mention a mildly aristocratic family who'd recently gone broke, and his father had been institutionalised when he was a child...

There must be something strange about a family with such a bizarre surname.... (First time when I saw H.P. Lovecraft's name on a book, I thought "Lovecraft?? You can't have such a strange surname! It must be a pseudonym!")

and note that his early writings indicate alot of racist, intolerent attitudes, while he seemed to mellow after contact with friends... hardly a shining case for isolating children with their spinster aunts

It wasn't just Lovecraft's early writings which indicated racism - for example, some people have interpretated The Shadow Over Innsmouth (written in 1931) as an allegory about miscegenation, and therefore an indicator of Lovecraft's "campy turn-of-the-century racism". The only Lovecraft tales I've found to be implicitly or explicitly racist are The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Horror At Red Hook and He. (There's also The Rats In The Walls where a cat is named "Nigger-Man" - but I found that to be more silly than racist)

One could also interpretate some elements of The Thing On The Doorstep as somewhat misogynist, even though it of course pales compared to a certain and more recent pulp-fantasy writer....

Who, may I ask? You can answer in a PM to me if you don't want to cause a lot of controversy. Just add a little detail.