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Government Schools overstepping their boundaries?

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Meril36
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Posted: Fri 05 May , 2006 8:21 pm
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An interesting article about homeschooling.

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Feredir
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Posted: Sat 06 May , 2006 6:04 pm
 
 
Excellent article. He clearly states many of the things I explain to people who ask why we homeschool. It is not for everyone, but for those who can bear the one income and some ostricizing (sp?), its worth all the time and effort. When people ask me about socialization I always challenge them to compare my kids to public school kid and tell me they aren't getting socialization.

Remember a few years back? The kid in California who scored the first and only perfect score on the SATs? Homeschooled and living out of a car (w/ his mother due to a divorce).
freddy


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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Sat 06 May , 2006 7:23 pm
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I don't think public school is any better than homeschooling. Learning is what you make of it. You either try to get something out of it, or you do nothing.

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Riverthalos
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Posted: Sat 06 May , 2006 9:05 pm
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I didn't realize homeschooling was controversial until I joined TORC. I still don't understand what the fuss is all about. When it comes to educating children, families need to find what works for them. It's not an option that would have worked for my family just because of the nature of my parents, but that sure as hell never stopped my parents from being intimately involved with my education. They weren't roomparents or on the PTA or anything, and they could rarely chaperone field trips, but they were involved. I remember during the summer my dad would leave us the atlas and a list of things we were supposed to learn and if we hadn't done our assignments by the time he got home there was hell to pay. I remember my parents taking us to the library and letting those of us kids that were old enough to read on our own check out whatever we wanted. This was not just educational - this was survival as we had no TV. To this day I still get this strange feeling of utter peace among the shelves in a library. I remember them making me do extra work froma math workbook they found somehwere becuase I couldn't add or subtract.

Sometimes I thought they were being cruel. I know this isn't true...if left to my own devices my education would have been horribly uneven, and if left at the complete mercy of the school I might still struggle with algebra, but man did I hate those extra math problems. I still cringe when i recall those workbooks and the stupid stickers I could never earn.

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Meril36
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Posted: Sun 07 May , 2006 2:42 am
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It's "ostracize," Feredir. Close though. A lot of people I've met wouldn't even be able to use that word in a sentence.

I remember being horrified in high school because a group of students I was talking to didn't know what "obstinate" meant.

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Feredir
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Posted: Tue 09 May , 2006 1:34 am
 
 
Meril, I'm really not a bad speller and will usually look things up but I tend to be lazy when it's not important. Lali said that you and CG are planning to homeschool also. Glad to see that we agree on something :D . Just proves that most people can find common ground somewhere.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Tue 09 May , 2006 2:24 am
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I'm never homeschooling just to keep from finding common ground. Let's duke it out! :D

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Feredir
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Posted: Tue 09 May , 2006 4:15 pm
 
 
TED, I get the feeling that your looking for a fight........ Give me a few days, I'm buried in work and don't have much time. I say dump all the GICs and give me my tax money back. I can do better for my kids than any stranger!!!!! (How's that?)

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Cenedril_Gildinaur
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Posted: Wed 10 May , 2006 1:01 am
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At least this time we're spared the silly argument that the parents who are involved enough to home school should send their kids to public school for the sake of their neighbors' children.

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Wed 10 May , 2006 3:30 am
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Tsk-tsk, CG. :poke: Trying to poke the bear that's no longer here?

How well I remember that argument and how well I remember being completely astounded that people would think that way.


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Riverthalos
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Posted: Wed 10 May , 2006 4:09 am
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My parents' arguments for public education were first, they're paying the taxes anyway and second (and more importantly to them) they wanted us exposed to the broadest possible cross section of humanity, including people we'd generally choose not to associate with (snotty rich kids, druggies, etc.). Well, we lived in suburbia because that's where the schools are good, but they still got their wish. Especially after I more or less quit the honors program because I got sick of my classmates.

Strangely enough, for all his talk about being exposed to different sorts of people, my dad was oddly unsupportive when I decided to become an EMT. Never mind my people skills made a quantum leap or two as a result of that experience. Maybe he just didn't like the thought of me getting my gloved hands bloody or something.

That said, the worst bullying I personally encountered did not happen at high school, and at least one of the people involved was home-schooled. Kids can turn toxic no matter where or how they're educated. :/

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Wed 10 May , 2006 4:20 pm
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That is very true, River. Very true.

(And it's one reason I don't get on any high horses when it comes to homeschooling. What works for one family or even one child, will not necessarily work for another. So my viewpoint is very libertarian in this regard: leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone.)

Unfortunately, the government has a hard time with this concept. And, even more so, in my experience, so do schoolteachers. :roll: The biggest resistance we encounter--when we actually do encounter some--is from the public/private schoolteachers we know, mostly at church. You should've seen the furor we caused because we moved our eldest daughter up a grade in Sunday School.

"But, but, <splutter> she's not technically in the 5th grade!!!"

Um, nevermind, that she only missed the cut-off by 2 weeks. Nevermind that she is doing 5th grade work (and 6th and 7th, and, yes, some 4th grade work too). Nevermind that to have made her stay in the class she was supposed to meant that her 2 closest friends would be gone. Nevermind that to have left her in the class she was supposed to be in meant that she would be the ONLY girl in the class of about 10 boys. Nevermind that WE are the S.S. teachers for the 5th and 6th graders, so we were not asking another person to deal with the situation.

:rage:

But you know what? We did what we wanted to despite it all. Why? Because we're her parents, and we get to decide what's in her best interest. Period.

But some people don't get that concept. :scratch:

Okay, enough venting. Off to clean a house.

Bleah. :bawl:

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Estel
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Posted: Wed 10 May , 2006 5:43 pm
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I don't know if public schools are all that bad, but I guess I can't really judge since my schooling was rather unique. I lived in a very small tourist town where the population basically doubled in the summer. Because we had both high property taxes in our town, plus a huge number of homes where they paid taxes, but didn't send their kids to our school, we had a very small school and such a suplus of money that the state didn't fund our school at all. All the money came from within the district and we only had 165 students in the entire high school. If the state said that certain books were banned, our school board basically said, "Screw you. You don't fund us, so you don't have a say." We actually had a banned book week at our school where each student was required to choose a book from the banned book list to read. We were too small to have an AP program, so the school simply made an arrangement with the local liberal arts college for students to take classes there for free - the school paid for it. New textbooks every two to three years was another unique benefit. I know that many schools don't replace their textbooks for even up to ten years or more.

There also was arrangements made for kids who were homeschooled. I remember one girl who was taught by her parents, but came to school for the math and the music programs. A sort of mixed education experience. ;)

Heck, even the teachers were treated differently. There was a teachers strike about pay in the state at one point, and none of our teachers participated in it simply because they were paid quite a bit more than the average teacher in the state. Long term teachers were encouraged to get their masters degrees, which most schools don't want because it means that the teacher would expect to be paid more. The teachers that did take that option were paid more in order to encourage them.

I suppose the cops were more involved with the school than in other communities as well, however. It wasn't necessarily at the schools request. It was just that the vast majority of the cops in the town came out of the school and knew exactly where the problems were, and how to fix them.

Very few schools in the U.S. have a situation where there are few students, a surplus of money, and no state funding. I suppose it creates a rather private school type of atmosphere. All that said, Wisconsin does have an extremely high graduation rate, and is one of the better states in the U.S. when it comes to schooling. The combination of that, and the unique situation in my town, was probably what made my high school experience better than most.


Sorry about running off on a tangent like that. Just wanted to point out that not all public schools are government indoctrination programs :P


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Riverthalos
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Posted: Wed 10 May , 2006 7:24 pm
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That's weird the teachers would get all up in arms about your daughter skipping a grade in Sunday school. Skipping grades isn't super common but it is allowed in the public schools I went to and my parents went to. For the record, I did K-5 in MD and 6-12 in WA (talk about big moves...). When i was in 5th grade we had a girl join us mid-year. Her family had just moved from Brazil, she'd been placed in the fourth grade because she was in that age bracket and then about a week later it was decided she was better off in the fifth. We lived in a suburb of DC so there was a HUGE international community in our district (diplomats, guest researchers at the NIH, etc.) and I guess they were used to dealing with this sort of thing. But when we moved there were also students who'd been allowed to skip grades, either because they were that smart or that ready to fly. And my dad, who grew up in rural Iowa, was offered a chance to skip second grade because he was so ahead academically. His parents refused; they felt that the difference in maturity between 2nd and 3rd grade was too great.

So it's not like this is unprecedented. Just sayin'. Maybe the teachers making noise are the ones who already have sticks up their butts about this sort of thing.

As far as the cut-offs go, those are kinda arbitrary. In MD the kindergarten cut-off was January 1st. My middle sis was born a couple weeks before that date, so she was young in her class. However, she was also ready to go, so my parents enrolled her. My youngest sister was born in November. She also would have been oyung for her kindergarten class, but she wasn't so ready, so my parents held her back in pre-school for another year.

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Thu 11 May , 2006 3:54 am
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Estel, that's really interesting! I enjoyed reading about your unique situation. One thing I'd like to see is more cooperation between schools and homeschoolers. It can really be a win-win situation, if people will let it be.

River, I skipped a grade in school myself, so I know of what I speak. :) And it's not like she's skipping a grade in a school system--which would be a bigger deal. It's just Sunday School at church. I think some lose sight of that fact.


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