One birth - so much controversy...
Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 10:21 am
Same can be said for teachers, public or private school, sadly enough. A teaching credential isn't a guarantee of intelligence or competence either(and in fact at least at one point on the 90s when I read the article in Newsweek those going into teaching programs in the US generally were ranked in something like the bottom third of their college graduating classes) and I've known people with no better than a high school degree and even some without even that much who've done a pretty amazing job of providing an excellent education for their kids and even sent them off to Ivy League colleges - and if homeschooling is so questionable then why are so many colleges these days, including schools like Stanford, actively recruiting homeschoolers? There's no arcane magic formula to creating an educated and informed human being, much as the public schools and teachers unions would like us to think. It's really pretty amazingly simple, really, and has worked for a pretty long time. Some of the most brilliant and best educated people in the history of our nation (or any other) didn't have much or any formal education. My father had an 8th grade education due to the Depression and WWII and he was a very well-educated man, he simply got most of it on his own.Originally posted by The Drastic SpasticThis is the problem I have with it. There don't seem to actually be any controls on who can do it. Some people are probably great at it, some are okay, and some are just horrible. In general, I think kids are better off attending school outside of the home, with qualified teachers. Of course there are some parents who are genuinely up to the job but I don't think that's the rule.
The only homeschoolers who really worry me - and I still wouldn't want to see their right to educate their children at home being taken away by the government - are the far right and far left who are using home education to brainwash their kids into their narrow and stifling worldview...because whether you or I or anyone else likes it or not it's not against the law and shouldn't be (at least here) for people to pass on their values and beliefs to their children and it's not the governments right or responsibility to counter-brainwash our nation's children with whatever the political party currently in power thinks they should know/think/believe instead.
If you want to argue against homeschooling I can give you any number of resources both on-line and in print to consult so you can at least come up with a better argument than, "I don't think people should do it because schools are awesome and you just can't trust those scary uneducated people not to screw up their kids."
As I said, though, from everything I've seen and read about them the Duggars are the kind of scary, radical right wing, quiverfull, dominionist fundies who give homeschooling a bad name and who just concern me in general even if they weren't homeschooling. (And while religiously motivated homeschoolers are still a statistically huge sample of the population it is becoming a more and more common educational choice for people who simply want their kids to get a better education than they'll ever get parked in a classroom with 20-30 of their age-mates and supposed peers with the minimal supervision provided by one adult who has to provide crowd control almost as much as a supposed education.)