From: Mischa_Sandberg@mindlink.bc.ca (Mischa Sandberg)
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: Home Schooling?
Date: 19 Dec 92 07:52:26 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada

> Leonard Toohey writes:
>
> 1. What are the reasons for home schooling?

Many. They tend to fall into three rough groups, depending on personal
experience, and people tend to cross the lines:
- social reasons: schools share a remarkable resemblance to prisons.
        Even when they have something of potential interest, they
        present it on THEIR schedule, broken into unrelated time chunks,
        with inherent problems to motivating kids' natural curiosity, anyway.
        Our children play and "socialize" (the buzzword) with adults,
        and with other children twice and half their ages (6,9).
        This tends to be normal in homeschool groups and unusual in
        age-segregated hierarchies.
- scholastic reasons: schools tend to mix a lot of filler into the feed.
        My daughter has self-taught herself fractions and multi-digit
        multiplication in her head in the last two months (she's 9),
        from the copious supply of workbooks we keep around, and from her own
        persistence. She is
        a fanatic expert on opera (don't look at me, I stop at
        The Pirates of Penzance), and reads Dickens for fun.        2. How
> long do you home school?

- I'm not sure if you mean, how long *have* we homeschooled, or, how long
        does one continue the practice. We've homeschooled since the kids
        were zot old. I hope that both of them will have the experience of
        going to university, and the route to that around here (for HS'ers)
        seems to be, take a year of community college so that you have
        papers that university admin people can sniff. I don't know if
        the kids will decide in teenagerhood to visit/attend a high school.
        I tend to doubt it, but it's up to them.
> 3. What are benefits of home schooling?

- Whew! Where to start? As a parent, I enjoy knowing, and just plain *enjoy*,
        what my kids are learning. Their schedules are utterly flexible,
        so that we can pick up and go see something. They can talk as and
        with adults on their own level. They have strong notions of what
        is in their own interest, and positive self-images that aren't
        based on "peer" group.

> 4. What are the disadvantages of home schooling?

- Fundamentally economic. One parent is at home. That is becoming more
        like a luxury as people are hounded into becoming economic units,
        rather than members of families or communities. My wife and I
        are getting by on one income, and that's an upper-middling
        semi-professional one.
> 5. How have home schooled students compared to public schooled
>    students in standardized tests?

Some interesting studies have been done. Across the board (in the US;
no Canadian studies I'm aware of), in the top 20% of high school
graduation tests (SAT's, et al). This appears to be completely independent
of the parents' own level of schooling, which jibes with the
child-driven style of later homeschoolers. Harvard has shown a
positive preference for homeschoolers.
> 6. Any other comments, information, etc.

It is a lot of fun. My kids have a very clear idea that, if they want
to do something, they can learn how to do it. Our younger daughter
is in training with a full-fledged circus troupe; our older daughter
is getting deeper and deeper into mathematics (as opposed to just
arithmetic); though with her notions of debate I'd figure her for
a lawyer yet. I am pretty sure that, whatever they attempt, they
will enjoy and learn from the attempt.
> Thanks,

... any time.


--
Mischa Sandberg ... Mischa_Sandberg@mindlink.bc.ca
                 or uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!Mischa_Sandberg
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Engineers think equations are an approximation of reality.
Physicists think reality is an approximation of the equations.
Mathematicians never make the connection.
Xref: sparky misc.education:5164 soc.culture.african.american:12789