Homeschooling

My ArgumentsQualification of the parent to teach: What makes someone a qualified teacher? Washington State defines a qualified teacher as this: "Someone who holds at least a bachelor degree from a four-year institution, is fully certificated or licensed by the state, and demonstrates competence in each core academic subject area that a teacher teaches." (1) In public school, students will be getting education from such teachers. Now take a look at the qualifications a parent needs to teach their child: Psychology Today notes that most states require the teaching parent to have a high school diploma. In some states, there are absolutely no qualifications. In fact, only one state requires a college degree that doesn't even have to be in education (2). Take a look at this chart from NCES: This diagram shows us that 61.1% of all parents who home school their kids are do not have a degree. The other 38.9% do have degrees, but there is no way to ensure their degrees are in teaching. The impact here is that students are being taught by ill qualified individuals who simply do not have the ability to teach them the things they need to know.Looking at the other side- actual reasons for home schooling: I think one of the major questions asked about home schooling is: Why exactly do parents home school?Religion: This one is especially a big deal. Here's why it is wrong to pull a child out of public school for religious reasons. The child will receive a highly biased education. Generally if a parents wants to home school their child for religious reasons, they will do it early on. Here's the problem. If a child is taught by a religious curriculum, they will most likely be blind to a lot of important issues. Look to the PBS evidence I listed earlier. Often home schooled kids are oblivious to opposing viewpoints. Parents who are home schooling for religious reasons can often shelter their children a little too much. A lot of Christian home schooling programs have been considered "cults." Take a look at ATI (Advanced Training Institute- Equipping Youth and Families to do Great Works!!) Homeschoolers Anonymous contains a huge amount of testimonies from children that participated in the program. Essentially ATI is a cult. In the words of a regretful mother, "We are still working through the damage caused by those many years in ATI." (3) Of course, there are many secular homeschoolers. With this argument I simply aim to give you, as a reader, a glimpse of what religious home schooling can do. Many kids involved in such programs end up rebelling which is exactly the opposite of what the programs intend to make kids do.The School Environment: Many parents want to "protect" their kids from the negative home school environment. As I've said before: you can't shelter kids forever. Eventually they will have to move into the real world. Look to the multiple examples I've given of homeschoolers who didn't know what to do when they moved to public school or college.How the student feels: Take a look at this chart from a survey taken from Homeschoolers Anonymous This chart shows that most home school students in the lower class have experienced some form of abuse. The statistics are actually similar with the middle class and the higher class (4). Homeschoolers anonymous notes that when surveys from homeschoolers of all classes were averaged together, the score was a 3.06, just barely at the medium score of "so-so."(1) https://www.k12.wa.us......(2) http://everydaylife.globalpost.com......(3) http://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com......(4) http://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com......My Opponent's ArgumentsAmount of People that Agree with Home schooling My opponent's first argument explains that 1,770,000 people agree with home schooling; therefore, home schooling must be a good idea. This is a common logical fallacy known as bandwagon. "The bandwagon fallacy is committed by arguments that appeal to the growing popularity of an idea as a reason for accepting it as true." My opponent's argument of popularity proves nothing because their source doesn't actually show why home schooling is good, it simply shows the large amount of kids that are being home schooled.Homeschooler's GradesMy opponent provides evidence that homeschoolers get higher grades than kids that attend public school. However, the evidence doesn't explain exactly HOW home schooling makes this happen. Obviously, most parents who are willing to take time out of their day to help their kids learn would be considered "involved." University of Illinois (1) notes that parental involvement generally results in higher grades. Essentially, the reason homeschoolers are getting better grades is because their parents are very involved, not because they are receiving the best possible education. My opponent's source never explains why homeschoolers do better than those in public schools; unless my opponent can actually prove that home schooling itself gives students better grades, this point falls.Parent InvolvementMy opponent's final argument explains that home schooling is better because it is tailored towards the child's needs because students can get extra help in subjects they struggle with. This point is completely non unique to home schooling. Students can easily stay after class or get tutored if they need extra help. As I showed in my argument over qualification of the parent, most parents do not have the qualification levels of a teacher; therefore, a tutor trained in a subject or a teacher willing to stay after school is better suited to give a child extra help.My opponent also explains that students can have a one on one relationship with their teacher (or parent), as opposed to public schools. As I showed in the chart of home school abuse, large amounts of parent involvement are not necessarily a good thing. Unintentional verbal abuse is very common, and (in extreme cases) other types of abuse follow. Also, parent's reasons for home schooling can cause the parent to home school in a way that harms their child. Even if the extra help from a parent benifits the child, it is important to observe that homeschoolers will eventually have to go out into the real world. If they are used to being babied by their parents, they will not be successful. I'll get into that more in the next round.(1) http://urbanext.illinois.edu...For these reasons, I take the con position.Thank you, debatingequality for your arguments. I am looking forward to a great debate!!