From: pburch@roc.mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu (Paula Burch)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Homeschooling?
Date: 26 Aug 1992 21:43:46 GMT
Reply-To: pburch@bcm.tmc.edu (Paula Burch)
Originator: pburch@roc.mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu


In article <3459@master.CNA.TEK.COM>, judyd@aspen.CNA.TEK.COM (Judy E. Drake) writes:
|> I have to agree with Keith--I've always felt sorry for home-schooled
|> kids because they miss out on the social aspects of going to a school
|> outside the home.  To me, school isn't just academic subjects, it's
|> a whole social learning experience as well.  I just can't see how
|> parents who teach their kids at home can provide anything near the
|> social experience that public school does.  

Ah, yes, think of all that I would have missed if I'd been home-schooled. 
In second grade, I would have missed out on being sent to the library with 
the other two bright girls to color in my see-it-and-and-say-it-in-Spanish 
coloring book because the teacher didn't know what to do with us--we spent 
most of the time arguing over which of us the teacher hated most. She must 
have hated us, we figured, to send us out of class like that. I would have 
missed being totally bored in third, fourth and fifth grades because the 
school did not cater to bright kids. I would have missed being emotionally 
tortured each day in fourth and fifth grades by the other bright kids who 
were similarly bored and had nothing else to do. I would have missed being 
beaten up on, physically, on a regular basis by those kids who figured the 
second-shortest person in the class was especially appropriate to brush up 
on their fighting skills on, especially since she was such a nerd.

In middle school, I would have missed spending hours in the "media center" 
wasting time with the other bright kids because we got the "privilege" of 
doing independant study because there weren't any classes advanced enough 
for the brighter kids. (How many kids are self-disciplined enough at 12 or 
13 to make themselves work when they can get out of it?) Is this the much-
valued "socialization"? It wasn't worth much.

There was nothing about socialization before high school that I wouldn't 
have been better off without. What did that socialization teach me? That I 
was a nerd, disliked, unworthy. It was incredible when I got into the right 
classes in high school and discovered that people actually like me for 
myself, that I wasn't really ugly, and that intelligence can even be a 
good thing!

It all depends on the school, I think. ANYTHING would have been better than 
my school experience! I was seriously depressed for years, but back then 
nobody believed that children could suffer from depression. My mother got 
very involved in the PTA, and when that failed to help she got into the 
county level PTA. Maybe it's better now because of her, but it was impossible 
for her efforts to change the entire focus of education in our county (Howard 
County, Maryland) quickly enough to benefit me much. She did everything 
she could, short of putting me into a private school. I will always regret 
that my parents didn't see that as a possibility--I'm fine now, but what a 
waste to suffer so for so many years!

I really meant to write only a short paragraph or so on this....I would 
like to hear about the laws on homeschooling. It's not quite what I got a 
PhD in biochemistry/biology to do, but I'm keeping it in mind as a last 
resort, just in case my children get sent to terrible schools, too.

Paula Burch
pburch@bcm.tmc.edu
_________________________________________________________________________
The Republican platform calls for the extension of the 14th amendment to
 "unborn children." Saving the life of a woman with an ectopic pregnancy
would thus require deliberate murder of the embryo--which the state could
   not possibly then allow. About 1% of U.S. pregnancies are ectopic.
Newsgroups: misc.kids