<p>Sorry, Katy_19, your posts came in while I was writing mine, so I didn't see them. Some of us are really sick of seeing this thread, titled "Homeschooling is SUCH a JOKE!". People who don't approve of homeschooling (and some who think they have to defend it) keep reviving this thread, which then draws more insulting posts.</p>
<p>In my post, I was simply asking who would like to join me in boycotting this thread.</p>
<p>
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How about this for an experiment: Whoever gets here first when the thread is revived says it using whatever language they want, and the rest of us agree to let it go with that one post. If that doesn't work and somebody new gets caught on a troller's hook, they could be invited to join the boycott, again with just one post (maybe including a re-post of DianeR's excellent links) from whoever gets to it first.
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</p>
<p>Sounds good to me!</p>
<p>Excellent idea....I'm in.</p>
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I mean you get an F if you don't have your P.E outfit, and your the one who has to supply that.I just don't get it...I am glad that my mother cared so much about me that she took me out of puplic school
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i find this innaccurate (about the gym uniform) and offensive (the second part). in the second statement, it seems like you're saying that if your mom does not take you out of public school to homeschool you then she does not care about you enough. each student and each family has its own specific needs. there are plenty of mothers who care about their children but choose to send them to private school or public school. i believe that parents just want the best for their children, which means different things for different families.</p>
<p>this is my first time on this thread and i just have to say that i agree with the boycott (though i wanted to post just this once before letting the thread die). this is too much of a flame war, like arguments about politics or religion. once a person has an opinion, they stick to it and sometimes act irrationally to defend their position. no one here is going to change their mind about homeschooling or public schooling or private schooling. all 3 of these forms of education have been proven to be successful while each has its drawbacks. okay, i'm done. thanks if you read my post all the way through.</p>
<p>DianeR: Most of the links you've provided come from pro-homeschooling sites, which are obviously biased.</p>
<p>And to be fair, I doubt there is unbiased research out there for either side. Why can't we just accept the fact that while homeschooling may be beneficial academically (homeschooled kids tend to score higher on exams), socially and extracurricular-wise, it's not?</p>
<p>I don't see how this is offensive. It's just the truth. I've met all of my friends at school; I did 6 clubs in high school, which were sponsored by my school. I did extracurriculars outside of school, which didn't really let me socialize with other kids though because it was more like individual piano lessons, etc. There were no "group" piano lessons, for example. Honestly, I met all of my friends at school, in class.</p>
<p>Watch out homeschoolers! People like this are going to grow up and try to take away our freedoms!</p>
<p>I'm in on the boycott idea.</p>
<p>Me too. I'm going to go read a good book.</p>
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</p>
<p>I don't think people like me care about how others are schooled. I personally won't homeschool my kids, unless due to a particular circumstance, but I don't really care if you do or not. </p>
<p>This thread is here purely for discussion purposes, and nothing more. </p>
<p>DianeR: I read a few of your old posts to find out more about your situation, and I think you made a right decision in homeschooling your daughter. It has helped her motor skills and ultimately helped her get where she is now. If I were in your position, I'd probably do the same. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if a kid doesn't need more personal attention (because of a learning disability or dyslexia, etc.) then I find no reason to homeschool a kid. Unless of course the kid either can't keep up with his/her work in school or is a "prodigy" so to speak that finds school far too easy. Disregarding these circumstances, there's no reason to homeschool a child. That's just my opinion though: take it how you guys want.</p>
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[quote]
And to be fair, I doubt there is unbiased research out there for either side.
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</p>
<p>But there is:</p>
<p>More than one million American children are schooled by their parents. As their ranks grow, home schoolers are making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities. The few studies conducted suggest that homeschooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized.</p>
<p>"This is a definitive study. For anyone interested in home schooling, this is the book to read. It musters an impressive array of evidence to explain why parents decide to home school their children, and it carefully considers the consequences of home schooling for these children. In the process, the book dispels many of the criticisms that have emerged around the homeschooling movement. Read sympathetically, the book also poses a significant challenge to the educational philosophies still present in most of the nation's public schools."--Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
<a href="http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7135.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7135.html</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
Why can't we just accept the fact that while homeschooling may be beneficial academically (homeschooled kids tend to score higher on exams), socially and extracurricular-wise, it's not?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Because there is no hard evidence supporting your view and quite a lot of hard evidence supporting the pro homeschool view. I mean, cmon guy. You are trying to tell folks who home school their kids that the kids are bound to turn into misfits when in fact time-after-time the home schoolers are turning out some amazing kids. These kids are coming from poor families, rich families and all kinds of families in between, and all you have to go on is some vague sense that maybe home schooling has a problem. Dont you think that is whacked? I mean, it would be one thing if you could show a pattern of how homeschooling produces social ineptness. But you aint showed squat in that area.</p>
<p>Now take a look at this:</p>
<p>Stough (1992),looking particularly at socialization, compared 30 home-schooling families and 32 conventionally schooling families, families with children 7-14 years of age. According to the findings, children who were schooled at home "gained the necessary skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed to function in society...at a rate similar to that of conventionally schooled children." The researcher found no difference in the self concept of children in the two groups. Stough maintains that "insofar as self concept is a reflector of socialization, it would appear that few home-schooled children are socially deprived, and that there may be sufficient evidence to indicate that some home-schooled children have a higher self concept than conventionally schooled children."</p>
<p>This echoes the findings of Taylor (1987). Using one of the best validated self-concept scales available, Taylor's random sampling of home-schooled children (45,000) found that half of these children scored at or above the 91st percentile--47% higher than the average, conventionally schooled child. He concludes: "Since self concept is considered to be a basic dynamic of positive sociability, this answers the often heard skepticism suggesting that home schoolers are inferior in socialization" (Taylor, 1987). </p>
<p>"From the findings of these two studies, it would appear that the concerns expressed by teachers, administrators, and legislators about socialization and home schooling might be unfounded. Indeed, Bliss (1989) contends that it is in the formal educational system's setting that children first experience negative socialization, conformity, and peer pressure. According to her, "This is a setting of large groups, segmented by age, with a variation of authority figures...the individual, with his/her developmental needs, becomes overpowered by the expectations and demand of others--equal in age and equally developmentally needy." </p>
<p>"Webb (1989), one of the few researchers who has examined aspects of the adult lives of wholly or partly home-educated people, found that all who had attempted higher education were successful and that their socialization was often better than that of their schooled peers.
<a href="http://www.ericdigests.org/1995-1/home.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.ericdigests.org/1995-1/home.htm</a></p>
<p>Now that is not pro-homeschooling stuff at all. It is just plain unbiased research research that not only supports homeschooling, but that pretty much slams public schooling.</p>
<p>I personally dont slam public schooling because I think we need more than one educational option for so many different people in our country. But man! All this stuff about how homeschooling turns out maladjusted weirdos is just silly, especially when (and I hate to do this) I can point to maladjusted kid-after-maladjusted kid coming out of the public schools.</p>
<p>Asian youth persistently harassed by peers (AP)
"Eighteen-year-old Chen Tsu was waiting on a Brooklyn subway platform after school when four high school classmates approached him and demanded cash. He showed them his empty pockets, but they attacked him anyway, taking turns pummeling his face."
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-13-asian-teens-bullied_x.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-13-asian-teens-bullied_x.htm</a></p>
<p>Students Sue Morgan Hill School District for Harassment
"On April, 21, five present and former high school students from Live Oak High School in the Morgan Hill Unified School District in Santa Clara County filed a suit in U.S. District Court in San Jose against the school district. The suit charges that school officials refused to take any action to protect the students from ongoing harassment on the basis of gender and perceived sexual orientation, violating of the school's own sexual harassment and hate violence policies, as well as federal and state law mandating school safety and equal protection for all public school students."
<a href="http://www.aclunc.org/aclunews/news398/student-suit.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.aclunc.org/aclunews/news398/student-suit.html</a></p>
<p>"In dark T-shirts, fatigues and the occasional knee-length black jacket, this cadre of self-described misfits is as close as it gets to a Trenchcoat Mafia within the Paint Branch student body, a blur of suburban ethnicity in Montgomery County. They listen to the bands Slayer and Fear Factory, trade insults with the Preppies and the Yos and the Jocks, and wear overcoats that are suddenly symbols of schoolyard violence. </p>
<p>"'We have nothing against other people,' says Skunk, a brooding 19-year-old senior known to his teachers as John Pizzuto. 'They just have something against us.'"
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/april99/cliques28.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/april99/cliques28.htm</a></p>
<p>Bullying in middle school may lead to increased substance abuse in high school
"Over the past decade, parents, educators and policy makers have become increasingly concerned about verbal and physical harassment in schools and the subsequent effects of peer victimization on teens. A recent study by Julie C. Rusby and colleagues from the Oregon Research Institute, published in the November 2005 issue of the Journal of Early Adolescence by SAGE Publications, found significant associations between peer harassment of students in middle school and a variety of problem behaviors, such as alcohol abuse, once these students reach high school.
<a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-12/sp-bim122905.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-12/sp-bim122905.php</a></p>
<p>2005 - The Tonganoxie School District in Kansas was ordered by a federal jury to pay $250,000 to a heterosexual teenager who suffered anti-gay taunting for four years. Dylan J. Theno, who was perceived as gay by some of his classmates, testified that other students spread rumors about him, threatened him, and called him "*****," "fag," and "homo." He finally dropped out of school during his junior because the harassment, which had begun when was in 7th grade, had become unbearable.
<a href="http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/youth/11898res20050620.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/youth/11898res20050620.html</a></p>
<p>I mean the list of public school misfits and maladjusted kids just goes on and on and on. The last case is just sad. I could find a gigantic number of public school kids who seem completely maladjusted socially. I am not saying good kids dont come out of the public schools. But man! I wonder if they are good kids despite being public schooled.
So I just think I have a TON more reasons to be for home schooling than you have for being against it. Shoot. Though I support the public schools, I think studies suggest that I have more reason to be against them than you have to be for them.</p>
<p>So maybe we all just ought to agree that what works for one person is good for that person and we all live and let live. Right?</p>
<p>Drosselmeier:</p>
<p>Firstly, I am female. Hence, I'm not a guy. </p>
<p>Secondly, I've attended both public and private schools, so why not critique private schools too? </p>
<p>Thirdly, I don't really care to be honest, so I won't bother searching for citations backing up my POV. Although, if you really want me to, I can, when I actually do have time, after my midterms are done.</p>
<p>Fourthly, I've already offered my opinion regarding when people should be homeschooled, and when they shouldn't be. It just seems unnecessary not given those circumstances. </p>
<p>Truth of the matter is: reality is full of crap like the last links you gave me regarding public schools. I don't see how that proves anything. This is life. The working world is like that, not just schools. Thanks for proving real life sucks...and?</p>
<p>Okay, that's at least four frequent posters to this forum ready to participate in the boycott experiment. That's plenty for starters, so we're on. </p>
<p>The idea is that whenever this thread is revived, just one person will post a short reply informing the new poster that a number of us in the CC homeschooling forum have decided to boycott this thread because of its offensive title, and the type of posts it attracts. Homeschooling is not a joke.</p>
<p>I think a consistent message title might help, so I'm suggesting "Please boycott this thread!" </p>
<p>
I agree! Drosselmeier, you provided some excellent information. Now maybe we can go discuss things elsewhere under a more respectful thread name.</p>
<p>NeedAdvice:</p>
<p>
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Secondly, I've attended both public and private schools, so why not critique private schools too?
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Of course you claimed in a prior post that I've attended both public and private schools, and I prefer the public environment. So I am just focusing on the environment you most prefer, an environment that several authoritative studies claim is likely inferior to home schooling when it comes to socialization. </p>
<p>In truth, I am not critiquing any school system because I think they all have good and not so good points. But if you are going to believe anything based upon the data, it seems you ought to be against conventional schooling and not home schooling. Oh I dunno. I guess all this generalization stuff you are doing here seems pretty airy to me, since you have presented no links to valid studies supporting your view. But maybe its just me.</p>
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Thirdly, I don't really care to be honest
(snip)
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Gotta love that public school morality.</p>
<p>Okay nan. Im done. No point in going on with a discussion here.</p>
<p>[boycott]</p>
<p>The world is one huge-a$$ public school. One day, when you finally open the curtains and unlock your windows and doors, you'll have to face it.</p>
<p>I'm sure you and mommy had a great time watching blue's clues, eating hot pockets, and learning what she remembered from 3rd grade math class, but if you never leave the gdmn house than yes, you are</p>
<p>SOCIALLY RETARDED</p>
<p>If any homeschoolers feel the need to defend the poor choice that their overattached smothering (OH I LOVE MY BABY!!!) parents actually made for them, (I don't even care if so were ****ed up you chose it for yourself), then see the above caps response.</p>
<p>(sound of gritting teeth) I will not respond. This thread is dead as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>I'm new to this site like I said before. All I have to say to those who don't know anything about Homeschooling....Try to walk a day in our shoes, believe they will hurt your feet. "this coment is not addressed to you NaN" Just anyone who has no idea</p>
<p>I will Join...Its the mature thing to do...</p>
<p>Yawn . . . this topic reminds me of the debates in the 80's when mothers argued over the quality/quantity issue in childcare/stay-at-home moms.</p>
<p>Part of the problem I think is that many of us homeschoolers have public schooled and rejected it for whatever reason. Public schoolers have never seen the other side. They just have no basis for judgement. </p>
<p>Thank God for our freedoms! I still say the many attitudes shown here make me realize not to take our homeschooling for granted! Watch the legislation folks!</p>
<p>Hey, RiskCareDream, I thought you were going with the boycott idea ... that means we can't talk about it either :)</p>
<p>Yes, you are right. This whole thing reminds me of when my daughter went back to public school one year. All of a sudden, those people who pretended to support homeschooling opened up and told us their REAL feelings about homeschooling. "Oh, I'm sure you will find public schooling to be a much better education . . . etc."</p>
<p>This thread just opens up that wound. Sorry. My lips are sealed. This debate could go on and on.</p>