Ruth Institute Blog

Few things concern me more than a rise in home schooling. No standards to follow, children isolated. And our country is already lagging far behind other nations.

Public education has pulled the foundation out from under students, and can’t figure out what went wrong.
Homeschooling and other options provide wonderful educational opportunities for young people.
This is a golden age of education.

Betsy, I am aware of those but my main concern is how to evaluate programs. So many parents seemed to be pulling kids out of schools due to low expectations of public schools yet there are no standards for home schooling. In addition, this country has always held public education highly as an educated populace is helpful in a representative republic. With no standards; and wildly varying amounts and accuracy of education, our nations children will simply not be prepared for the future.

Ruth: “Homeschooling and other options provide wonderful educational opportunities for young people.”

Perhaps, for those privileged to be able to afford the time to educate their children.

It’s truly sad that the home schooling idea is merely an off shoot of those who are so closed minded (mainly Christians) that they fear what their children may learn in a public setting. Sorry, those very people, who are so frightened by the questions that their children bring home from school, have no business home schooling.

If the implication is that people are keeping their kids out of public schools because the public schools are indoctrinating children and teaching them that there is no difference between being gay and straight, the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise would solve that problem and we could restore faith in public schools.

My experience with homeschooled kids has been a crapshoot. Some are great, brilliant people. Some are more socially awkward then the pink bunny pajamas from a christmas story. I think homeschooling is a valid option, but one that reeks of, dare I say, elitism. It certainly isn’t an option for everyone, and feel that as a nation we should be fixing the public school system.

@Betsy
“They could be homeschooling because they have the misfortune of being located in an area with very poor public schools.”

And that is part of my concern. The PUBLIC has a stake in education. The PUBLIC needs to assure that the next generation has the skills to succeed. Instead of abandoning the public schools (which may be the only option for some kids – as nerdygirl mentioned, homeschooling seems elitist), we should all be working hard to improve public education.

Some states have much high education standards then others, why not encourage failing states to adopt the practices of more successful ones? (And this is coming from someone earning teaching certification) Why not change up how teachers are rewarded and evaluated? The success of a class should be given due attention, instead of just the failures (Cutting aid to a school district thats failing seems kinda stupid, don’t they need the aid the most?) Education should not be a for profit industry, and treating it as such is only going to continue the trend of the poorer, economically depressed areas, (and their children) getting shafted.

(We should also move away from the agrarian school year and go year round. It’s outdated and allows young minds to atrophy and forget nearly everything)

And actually, yeah you kinda can. A not so great school district isn’t a dead end for a kid. Colleges are going to look at three things, GPA, the application essay, and SAT/ACT scores. (If the end goal is getting into a good college) There are plenty of (free) test aids and writing tools out there, so you can’t blame the two arguably most important factors on getting into college on the school district, because help is out there.

@Betsy
“What better way to send a message to school boards that they need to improve things?”

Uh, by getting involved. I have numerous friends who are teachers and most parents are AWOL. Except, when their precious child is disciplined, then it’s scream and yell at the school.

Again, if we want an educated public, we ALL need to get involved with public education. Dismantling an education system (with no fair, equitable replacement) is socially suicidal.

Okay, I just have to wade into this one… 😉

I am a home schooling parent. My two daughters have never gone to school. My oldest will be 18 in a couple of months and will “graduate” this year, and my youngest is 14. I’m Canadian, and we have home schooled in three different provinces with three very different sets of rules, regulations and atmosphere. At the moment, we live in a province with a lot of government support and parents have a lot of autonomy, though hs’ing families are constantly wary of support being turned into interference. We do have to register with a school board, and we chose to be registered with a Christian board dedicated solely to home schooling, after looking through the various options available to us.

There are many, many different reasons families choose to hs, and those reasons can change over the years. Our initial reason was because I recognised early on that, in the school system, my older daughter would be “diagnosed” as ADHD by the school (some kids really are ADHD, but all too often it’s just a convenient way to drug kids into submission, and too many doctors are willing to just accept the school’s diagnosis and hand out prescriptions) because of her highly interactive learning style. Over the years, many new reasons have been added to the list. It was the best decision we ever made and lately – especially as we know more and more teens who’ve chosen to go to high school – they have emphatically thanked me and my husband for hs’ing them.

To address a concern mentioned, school standards are arbitrary. They were designed as an efficient way for schools to process large numbers of children. Hs’ing families have the unique ability to adjust their children’s education to fit each child’s individual devleopment. As an example with my own children, that meant one daughter taught herself to read by age six and by age 11 was reading university textbooks and encyclopedias for fun. Her sister learned to read more slowly and didn’t particularly enjoy it all that much until the last two years. Now she’s as much of a bibliophile as the rest of us. While one daughter excels in art (she’s already a professional artist, selling her paintings and doing art shows), the other is mechanically inclined and loves classic cars, so she’s entertaining thoughts of becoming a mechanic. Because of our children’s learning styles, we have been more “unschoolers.” We ignored grade levels, curriculum, and school-based timetables and calendars – their lives weren’t segregated into subjects; they weren’t told they had to learn something, or that they weren’t allowed to learn something, just becuase they happened to be a certain age. Yes, this means that they are “ahead” in some things and “behind” in others, but once again, those concepts are arbitrary. This happens to work with our family, but it doesn’t work for others. Each family has to find their own path – assuming the laws where they live allow parents to actually do so.

There is a place for public education – I am not “anti” school – but the government needs to remember that it’s the parents’ responsibility to educate their children, and the state has to answer to them, not the other way around. Unfortunately, after decades of public school systems, in both Canada and the US, telling children that only “experts” are qualified to teach children, they grow up to be parents far too willing to hand over their parental responsibilities to those “experts.” For some, they simply cannot believe they are capable, no matter how capable they are in every other aspect of their lives. For others, it’s just plain easier to let the state take responsibility. Most, though, don’t even really know they have a choice. In the last few years, I’ve encountered an amazing number of parents who’s kids are grown lament that they didn’t home school their kids, simply because they never knew they could.

Kunoichi
“…the government needs to remember that it’s the parents’ responsibility to educate their children, and the state has to answer to them, not the other way around.”

And if the government forgets, we need to remind them.