December beginner's tournament: Homeschooling is superior to the public primary school system

They made me do even more research. In this round I’m going to defend against con’s rebuttals and show why homeschooling is superior to the public school system. Homeschoolers performing better than public students Con points out that the research I used only looks minimally at the conditions of the families. Conditions like race and income might explain a part of the performance gap between homeschoolers and the public school system, but not the entire gap. After all, homeschoolers perform on average a whole 34-39 percentile points higher. But let’s look at all of the factors to see if they might explain a part of the gap. Race 68% of the homeschoolers are white while 52% of the total students are white (1). Furthermore, white students perform better on the SAT than other races (2). In 2008-2009 the average SAT score of white student was 528 on reading, 536 on math and 517 on writing (2). In the same year the average homeschooler scored 550 on reading, 578 on math and 555 on writing (3). So the average homeschooler is still performing better than the average white public school student. This is evidence that race only doesn’t explain the entire gap. Educational level of the parents (1) Con brought forth the hypothesis that the educational level of the parents might explain why homeschoolers are performing better than students from public schools. But the image above shows the parental education of the homeschoolers and all students. As you can see the parental education of the homeschoolers is roughly the same as those of the other students. Therefore the parental education can’t possibly be the reason homeschoolers are performing better than public school system. Homeschooling provides a safe and free environment while public schools struggle with those Con brought up the idea that bullying is part of life and that it might benefit children, because it helps the children cope with hurtful experiences. I don’t know what kind of rebuttal I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting that. There are two things to mention about con’s point. First of all, the idea that bullying helps people to cope with hurtful experiences is highly theoretical. Con didn’t provide evidence of these advantages of bullying, so it’s uncertain if these advantages actually exist. Second of all, it seems like this rebuttal has a lot of overlap with con’s argument about the social development of children. So my rebuttal of round 3 to the social development argument can also get used to defend against con’s claim that bullying might help children to cope with hurtful experiences. Over there I already showed that research suggests homeschoolers are socially slightly better developed than students from public schools. So they are also slightly better at coping with hurtful experiences. Furthermore, when I argued homeschooling provides a safe and free environment I also brought up the increased freedom parents experience. They can go on vacations when they want, go on excursions with more ease, etc. Con didn’t rebut this point, so I consider it dropped. Homeschooling strengthens the bonds between children and the family Con points out I didn’t give evidence to back up my claim that homeschooling strengthens the bonds between children and the family. It’s very hard to prove something strengthens the bond between people, because there’s no such thing as a bond strength unit. So the best evidence is to show that the activities that are done during homeschooling overlap with activities that people believe strengthen the bonds between parents and children. I found a few things that seem to improve the bonds between parents and children (4): 1. Know what your child's favorite things are The parents of homeschoolers spend a lot of time with their children. So It’s easier for them to find out what their children like. Not only that, but helping your child improving in things he likes also strengthen bonds. Parents of homeschoolers are often helping their children learn what they like. So if their children like math, they help them with that. 2. Help them develop intellectually The parents of homeschoolers often read books with their children or go the museum together. The goal of all of those activities is to develop the child intellectually, so that’s another way parents bond with their children. The second part of con’s rebuttal is about religion. He points out I have little evidence to back up this argument, but just like with bonding, this is hard to prove. The best I can do to back this up is pointing out that many homeschooling families believe the freedom to teach their children their own religion is the number one reason they chose homeschooling (5). Summary In this debate I gave multiple reasons why homeschooling is superior over the public school system. These are: - Homeschoolers score 34-39 percentile points higher on the academic subjects than students from public schools. The gap can only partially be explained by things like race. - Homeschooling provides a safe and free environment. There are no bullies and there’s no group pressure. Furthermore, parents are free to decide many aspects of the education like when they go on holidays, when they go on an excursion and when school starts. - Homeschooling probably strengthens the bonds between parents and children. Furthermore, many parents believe raising their children with their religion is important, which is also doable with homeschooling For these reasons I urge the voters to vote pro. With this I end my defenses and hand the debate back to con so he may provide his defenses. Sources 1) . http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org... 2) . https://nces.ed.gov... 3) . http://www.raisingaselfreliantchild.com... 4) . http://www.wikihow.com... 5) . http://www.homeschoolacademy.com...