<p>I totally get that, but you came on a homeschooling board and challenged people here on that choice. I don't have any particular interest in debating it either --BTDT-- but you can't come on here and criticize and expect no response. I am very pleased you are happy with the choices you have made, and very pleased I had different options. All is good.</p>
<p>Oh dear. I did not "home school" my kids, but I have the utmost respect for those who did (do). My kids went to a public school with 85 kids per grade. This was their choice. They did not want to be home schooled, unlike danas' kids. If they had I would have tried to accomodate them, though in my kids' cases I'm afraid it would have involved a lot of television. They are not as motivated as some kids, although they did excellently in school and attend elite colleges.</p>
<p>My only worry would have been with high level chem, physics and calc. I don't have the expertise there, though I suppose tutors could be hired.</p>
<p>There are so many options. I respect each family's choice.</p>
<p>Mythmom, I know different families do it differently, but mine has been homeschooling a long time and I know many others who have too, and I don't know any homeschooled teens who only did adv. math and science at home with mom and dad. My son is taking calc. at the local public college, he took chem and physics at the high school. All of the college-bound homeschoolers that I have personal knowledge of take classes outside the home.</p>
<p>The term "homeschooling" is very misleading, I think. It's not as though kids really stay home all the time. Maybe when they're little most of the learning is at least home-based -- if not actually indoors ;) -- but as they get older they take classes, work jobs, do internships, sports, and all the rest. The difference is that the decision making about how, when, and what resources to access is situated in the home; either by the student's choosing, the parent's, or a combination of both. There is no insitutional protocol pre-determining what to take to graduate, which classes should follow which, etc.</p>
<p>It's worked out well for my kids. Not to say it's right for anyone else.</p>
<p>When my oldest daughter was getting ready for entering high school, from our exceptional public school system we decided to send her to a Catholic school a few towns away.</p>
<p>There was a few of us that sort of fell into the trap, thinking that this was a good alternative to sending them to our regional high school, which was in a state of disrepair. It took several years of arguing before the new school was built in it's place ( politics )
Her would be guidance counselor called me and told me to have her take the placement test for math. I told her she would be going to school X.
She told me to have her take the test anyway, because she would leave that school and come back.
I was insulted..how dare she presume that ???</p>
<p>Well, she was right. My daughter was not challenged, bored, no goood EC's. Her honors classes were filled with the most disrespectful kids. She got a much better education from K-8th in our public. The kids in the Catholic were far behind what she had been doing. She absolutely hated that school.</p>
<p>We pulled her out after freshman year and enrolled her in our public HS. When her GC asked why we left, we told her that we thought she would have had better opportunities in a smaller school. She answered me that the world is not small, why shelter your kid in hopes of them shining in a limited environment ?
She was sooooo right ( and the woman who once aggravated me became a major influence and mentor to both of my girls she has guided )
If she had stayed at first school, she would've had a good chance of graduating as valedictorian or salutatorian.</p>
<p>Her rank dropped down to the 20's in the public, but in retrospect, first school had no students accepted to Ivies...the valedictorian went to a mediocre state school as did most of the students.
Her graduating class had several accepted students to every Ivy, and many other top schools.They were unbelieveably competitive as a class.</p>
<p>My point here is, why gear your kids up for a sheltered life and education when the world is so big ?
I happen to think that education in an actual school environment is much more beneficial to them, since there is more than just testbook learning.
Interaction with peers, good and bad is invaluable in preparing them for real life.
In my business, I meet several home school families in the early fall
( a choice vacation time for them )
I am sure it is a very personal choice, and do not mean to criticize those who do choose this...I would never do it.</p>
<p>In many ways I agree with you lje62, but those very same reasons --experiencing a wider, more diverse and challenging world -- was precisely why we didn't send our kids to school.</p>
<p>I could take the above paragraph and answer your questions with more questions. When the world is so big, why not offer them an opportunity to do more than sit in a school all day? I agree that interaction with peers is invaluable. But why limit their interaction to just peers? Our view of homeschooling was very broad. It was certainly not a narrowing of experience.</p>
<p>Piano/MT,
Kids in school do more than sit all day. They interact with more than just their peers. There are teachers and other personel that they converse with every day. There are exchange students, coaches volunteers.</p>
<p>They have to deal with conflicts with kids outside of their immediate social circles. They have access to diversity from students of different socioeconomic backgrounds.
School kids also take field trips ( not something unique to homeschooled students ) They play sports against other schools and learn how to cope not only with their teams losses , but wins. They have a comraderie with fellow classmates...they travel back and forth to school with fellow students.</p>
<p>They have study groups that can be mutually beneficial to both the weaker and stronger students. There are multiple clubs and other organizations that cannot be duplicated in a home enviroment, no matter how well intentioned a parent teacher is.
There are only twelve or thirteen years to let kids have the experience that schools have to offer. Learning is a lifetime experience.</p>
<p>Life does not come with kneepads, and helmets. Sheltering our kids too much from life's bumps and bruises , IMO only makes it harder to adapt to life beyond the confines of our households.</p>
<p>Also, kids that are in traditional school setting also travel and experience the same things as homeschooled kids...sometimes more than a homeschooler.</p>
<p>Some of us have kids who want a different kind of learning; independent, more out in the world, spending time with adults who are mentors for them. I never felt my kids were sheltered. They adjusted well to college and employment. And as others have said, they spent little time at home when they were older.</p>
<p>It's good for your family that school met the needs of your child.</p>
<p>'rentof2: Thanks for the clarification. I hope you didn't think that I was judging. Just feeling a wee bit inadequate. I can't understand how anyone can judge the decisions other families make.</p>
<p>"Home schooling" sounds wonderful to me. It just wasn't the destiny of my family. Neither was private high school, though both kids went to private elementary school.</p>
<p>I think a little genie guides parents to provide what their children need.</p>
<p>And thank you for making room for me on your thread. I am a college prof. and all issues about education interest me.</p>
<p>I never thought you were judging at all, mythmom! It's common for people --not referring to you, here-- to perpetuate the misunderstanding that homeschoolers do all their learning from mom and dad. It's a problem with the term "homeschooling", I think. Maybe there are homeschoolers like that, I've just never known any. It's certainly not typical for teenager homeschoolers.</p>
<p>From HopefulDad:</p>
<p>""....to spare their kids from school..."</p>
<p>Is school such misery that you have to be 'spared' from it? I thought it was a learning experience in and out of the classroom. What about learning to deal with the opposite sex? What about settling disagreements with others? Can they be spared from a job with others too? All those issues come up in college, work and life. I'm trying to understand the rationale in general, but just can't get there."</p>
<p>HopefulDad, I was bored to tears in public school in a town that people moved to in part because of the good public schools. I skipped third grade but the student body was the same, just one year older than me. In ninth grade, they asked to skip me again. I tried it for two weeks. Still the same population, just two years older than I was -- and my sister was in tenth grade, which made things somewhat awkward. But, I found things intellectually stultifying and socially not very much fun. The only saving grace was that the work was not very hard for me. I remember arriving at Princeton and saying to myself, "there are people like me here."</p>
<p>My son is extremely bright and has a capacity to think in ways that are unusual (in the good sense). Unlike me, however, he is extremely dyslexic and has slow processing speed. We sent him to a private school that had a two year program for kids with high IQs and language-related learning disabilities, which was great, but kept him there through middle school, where they didn't have much else to help him. We decided to send him to the local, highly reputed public high school rather than one of the local private schools, in part because he could get real accommodations and modifications of courses so that he could focus on learning skills he would need to be successful in college. However, teachers early on found it hard to believe that someone who was so bright could have learning disabilities and we were still learning what would help and my son became extremely frustrated. He found the intellectual pace painfully slow but couldn't cope with the workload (much of it busy work) and asked to be homeschooled. He was exhausted and sick and completely unchallenged in the high-track courses. I really understood the first part of his complaint ("we started this concept on Monday and I got it on Monday and we're still doing it on Friday). I sympathized with the second. However, my wife was very uncomfortable with the idea of homeschooling (I was not) and we compromised and worked out a program of partial homeschooling with the school district. He has taken lab science, art, and social studies (e.g., outstanding courses in things like constitutional law) at the school. He's taken math and English outside. In math, I hired a Harvard grad student to work with him. He covered the regular high school course in half a year in greater depth and spent the second half year on other topics (e.g., game theory, number theory, etc.). In English, he worked with a tutor on writing and on creative writing (he's writing a novel). At the HS, creative writing is a very structured course where you write one short story of this type, on of that, etc. He took the expository writing class Harvard requires of its freshman at Harvard Summer School. The work in English has helped him acquire a lot of writing skills that he didn't have at all when he entered HS. He's been quite happy with the arrangement. He competed in Moot Court and has made friends at the HS, but he doesn't have to be bored to tears and overwhelmed with work volume at the same time. [His HS teachers have also adjusted more to him. The science teachers now tell him he only needs to do as many problems as he feels he needs to do well on the tests; they will only count the test scores.] He doesn't understand what is difficult about AP Chemistry or AP Physics. He just doesn't have to work much to do really well. Perhaps we should have sent him outside for science as well.</p>
<p>In any event, the partial mix has been a lifesaver for him. But, HopefulDad, for me and for my son, school was a pain. Relatively slow pace from an intellectual standpoint and for him lots of painful busywork. I would have been happy to fully homeschool him, but think the compromise has been effective.</p>
<p>One observation. I was struck that at my son's school, the teachers (who are among the best paid in our state and are generally pretty good) in a school system that is regarded as one of the best in the state don't start the course or back to school night talking about how exciting the subject is and what they are going to cover. Instead, they use at least one period to discuss how they give grades and rules (bathrooms, lateness, ...). As an outside observer of the HS, I was struck that the critical function of the teachers was grade-giving and the critical function of the students was grade-making and that the broader goal of educating kids was often subservient to the grade-giving function. I think most students who are trying can master the material being taught in the freshman year; a grade of C and perhaps even B is an indication that the student has not mastered the material and thus really should reflect a failure of the teacher/school for the students who are trying. Instead, teachers see their job as finished when they give grades, whatever those grades may be, and a lot of their effort involves distinguishing between the performance of various students so that they could give grades. In my son's Honors Chemistry course, for example, the class expectations include an example of a worksheet that shows a student how to calculate his/her grade that will be included in the student’s binder and the grade includes a daily grade, that is broken down into three sub-components that the student is encouraged to calculate. I understand that this flows from the demands society places on our educational system as a sorting device, but I think it reduces the effectiveness of teachers and the quality of the education received by students. I think at least some of the teachers lose perspective on the more important goals. (This seems similar to companies in which sales people have monthly and quarterly sales goals and make marginally profitable or unprofitable sales to reach their goals.) I am happy that we pulled my son partly from that cathedral to grade-giving and grade-making so that he could concentrate on actually learning and would have done it fully had it not made my wife so uncomfortable. That doesn't mean I would have had him sitting at home contemplating his navel, but working in settings and with tutors who could really challenge him, while making sure he learned the particular skills he needed to work on in reading and writing prior to college.</p>
<p>It sounds like you definitely went to the effort to put together a winning educational plan for your child who also had some unique needs. I think you are fortunate to have access to a Harvard student to assist and the Harvard Summer School was a great idea. I think though, unfortunately, most blame falls on the teachers, when in fact, some kids just can't do very well in any setting; they all inherit our genes, good and bad. Sometimes the parents think the teacher and the school have ALL the responsibility of the child's learning and have no clue what is going in with the kid's classes or homework. I understand your points regarding grades, but for the masses, I don't see any other way to evaluate progress. Same in the workplace, we all hate annual evals, but what other way can they measure our success in non-sales roles especially? The interim sales goals you mention lead to exactly what you say they lead to, but knowing many sales people, unless they have a roadmap to get to the final target, they get lost. (I know I am generalizing there, but I did refer to the ones I know....). I think those guys say something like, you have to inspect what you expect and I think grades are a way to inspect what you expect when it gets to time to take college entrance exams.
To sum up, I think you went to excellent efforts to build an educational plan for your child and 'homeschooling' is clearly an inaccurate term for what you did. Keep in mind, I am in the largest city in the South and my homeschool references are generally, not always, but generally, the people who rebelled against the school system because they can't teach religion in the schools and in absence of funds for private school, have chosen to homeschool and in these cases, it consists of some school work and then an equal amount of bible study. This may be a southern thing mostly( I think I can say these things without attack because I am a native southerner). Before all the hate postings get started, I also know some homeshool parents who are college professors and former high school teachers. At the end of it all, we have to do what it right for our kids in our opinions. Homeschooling fits that description for many. For me, I'm going to either stay with the AP program in a good public high school we have or move him to the best private school here. They will all do fine I think.</p>
<p>HopefulDad,
Thank you for giving some spark to this thread.
To mythmom, re: our parental shortcomings as educators, particularly in the sciences.
We are lucky in living in a major city. My daughter volunteered at the natural history museum in the mammal department. The first day she took apart a Siberian Tiger (okay, it took a couple of weeks) given gloves and a scalpel. She also worked on bats, wombats, a giraffe, and a series of bobcats from the Wisconsin hunting season, among other animals. She also reclassified the collection (with some specimens over 100 years old) according to a new system. She worked 15-20 hours a week under working scientists, who loved having someone to guide through the collections and the science.
Let's face it. School experiments aren't truly experiments at all.
But there is no "one best system" for everyone. I wouldn't argue that everyone should unschool. My son in Three Village had a worthwhile (gay, I don't know why I am mentioning this) 3rd grade gifted teacher and also a worthwhile fourth grade one who wore her "Nafta We Hafta" hat and tee-shirt to school everyday.
I am happy to live in a country where choices are possible, and I think most loving parents don't err too far.</p>
<p>HopefulDad,</p>
<p>I have no intention of convincing you that you should homeschool your kids. In the South and in other parts of the country, evangelical types homeschool because they want to avoid the evils of secular education. I have friends who live in the East Village in NY, an artist and a former executive, who homeschool for that reason. Creation science, anyone? I understand your discomfort with that kind of homeschooling and I feel sad for kids whose educational needs are not met as the economy of the next two decades will not be as unforgiving on poorly educated Americans as it was in the last two decades.</p>
<p>A story: One of my girlfriends in college grew up in Bloomington, IN, the daughter of a music professor. The school district included the city and lots of farm areas as well. The school district decided to add foreign languages to the curriculum (or require them or something) and it was holding a meeting to get parental feedback. A farmer stood up opposing the need to spend money on foreign languages and said, "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for my kid." Unfortunately this story is true.</p>
<p>You asked if anyone found school to be a misery that they needed release from. Answer: yes. And, given my observation, likely the vast majority of gifted kids with learning disabilities. My son is indeed rare in that the IQ is pretty high and the disability is pretty severe (psychologists tell me that rarely see such extremes) but kids with a lesser version of the same profile will suffer and may find it harder to survice and succeed than my son. My son has survived and learned how to play that game (nothing but A's except for one A- and about 6 A+'s and perfect scores thus far on standardized tests) but the cost has been high. Exhaustion, illness, and in the first 1.5 years, a withdrawal from ECs. If my wife had not been so reticent(I travel a lot and she works at home and rationally feared for her career), we would have done full homeschooling (study at Harvard Extension School, tutors, and one of the local art schools would have replaced the HS) and I suspect he would have learned more at lower cost. The kids for whom the school system was not made can do better with homeschooling. For many more typical kids, schools can work well, although for gifted ones without LDs, I suspect less well than I'd like. But, I'm not against either publics or privates. My son has three superb teachers this year and a rather flexible arrangement. My daughter attends a private school that is terrific for her -- she benefits from lots of structure, high standards, and a warm touch that you can't get at our public schools. So, other posters and I aren't trying to convince you to do something different, but there are also good reasons to do what we do and I hope have identified for you a population of kids for whom homeschooling can be truly superior.</p>
<p>Looking back on it, I would have liked my parents to home schooled me. My education, even though now is phenomonal, it would have been even better. </p>
<p>Yet, sometimes I think that the high school and school system gives you a lifetime changing experience. Schooling teaches you so much.</p>
<p>well some people are homeschooled cuz they're wayy smarter than anyone else</p>
<p>On the other hand, just a bit of LI reality here. The kids at my kids' publics are so smart there blew the private school kids out of the water. It's a rich district and everyone just sent their kids public. The kids are S and D of university professors, doctors, and physicists from an international lab. So the competition was fierce and the exposure to interesting kids plentiful. Musicians, physicists, intel candidates, classical singers, kids from all over the world.</p>
<p>The quality of the teaching could have been better at times, especially in English, my subject, but I could easily compensate for that and S, who is not a voracious reader, won the school English award a senior. D, who is a voracious reader, won it as well.</p>
<p>And they always wanted to go (with the exception of having to get up early.) So I floated idea of less structured learning, but they were content enough.</p>
<p>School went states in science olympiad and quiz bowl. </p>
<p>The competition in music was so fierce across the county (several fab Suzuki schools) that S, a committed musician, never made it past county to state.</p>
<p>I agree, you have all enlightened to situations where homeschooling is appropriate. shawbridge raised several good points. I don't want to open up the creation science/Christianity/etc. discussion here, but there certainly are many situations I have learned where classroom school might not be best. Mythmom, our public system is similar to yours, not the best in the state, but one of them. Kids do come from generally well-educated families (not the wealthiest in the city) who care about education. They do offer 28 AP courses, etc. so unless I am looking at truly the best private schools, I don't think academically they would get enough from private to make it worthwhile the incremental costs. I have researched many so-called top flight private schools near us only to find out that their academics are more limited than his public school, but they offered more religious learning.....Instead, I have applied on his behalf to the very best one, one widely recognized as an Ivy feeder school and with a long track record of such, and I am comfortable with the smaller grade size(about 180) versus 500/grade public. Again, not for everyone, but I am going to err on the safer side and possibly over invest in his education. Let's all hope we all make the best decision for our kids in their unique situations.</p>
<p>Yeah, the private school here, the only one my kids could attend as a day student, does teach creationism. And it's an elite feeder prep, not associated with any particular church.</p>
<p>When they said (as answer to my questions) that they teach that homosexuality is a sin, I knew it wasn't for my kids.</p>
<p>Our public, did I say this? has graduating classes of 80 - 90!</p>
<p>I caved in and accepted the creationism aspect of the school we have chosen. However, I rejected the idea of him attending the best private school in close proximity; it required a letter from his pastor regarding him and one regarding us! It certainly would have been convenient butthat is just too much...I better stop this post-I don't want to get started on that.....</p>