Homeschooling

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I know there are a lot of people on the forum that home school their kids, I didn't do mine because I'm not even close to being qualified, nor do I have the patience to do it, so my kids are in school - public.  We had them in private for a few years, but our oldest had some learning disabilities that the private school couldn't deal with so we decided to put her in public and she thrived in an environment set up for her.  She graduated HS.  The private school told us that they would not give her a HS diploma, but a certificate that she attended school.  With this being said ... 

I've noticed a lot of people pulling their kids out of private schools lately that are "home schooling" them.  The reason I'm quoting "home schooling" is because that's whey they say they are doing but I know they are no way qualified nor near as organized and the kids won't learn anything. 

I know it takes a lot of organization to home school children, especially if you have them in different grades.  I talked to one mother who started last year and she's right on the daily schedule with teaching her kids at home. 

But this one couple I'm thinking about will fail from day one.  And, I feel sorry for one child in particular because they need the social interaction with other kids their age.  Education to me is so important for kids and this particular family is doomed to fail.  I know them that well.  The mother is not organized and she told me the other day she doesn't even have any of the materials or doesn't even know what she's going to teach them.  :mad: 

Schools (private & public) have already started and their kids are sitting at home while mom post cute pictures of them sitting in front of the TV and playing gameboy and with other cute things on Facebook.  This to me is not home schooling.  You can't just let them sit in front of the TV all day long. 

I'm worried for the kids.  Do I say something or just turn the other cheek and look away??
 
Still There said:
I know there are a lot of people on the forum that home school their kids, I didn't do mine because I'm not even close to being qualified, nor do I have the patience to do it, so my kids are in school - public.  We had them in private for a few years, but our oldest had some learning disabilities that the private school couldn't deal with so we decided to put her in public and she thrived in an environment set up for her.  She graduated HS.  The private school told us that they would not give her a HS diploma, but a certificate that she attended school.  With this being said ... 

I've noticed a lot of people pulling their kids out of private schools lately that are "home schooling" them.  The reason I'm quoting "home schooling" is because that's whey they say they are doing but I know they are no way qualified nor near as organized and the kids won't learn anything. 

I know it takes a lot of organization to home school children, especially if you have them in different grades.  I talked to one mother who started last year and she's right on the daily schedule with teaching her kids at home. 

But this one couple I'm thinking about will fail from day one.  And, I feel sorry for one child in particular because they need the social interaction with other kids their age.  Education to me is so important for kids and this particular family is doomed to fail.  I know them that well.  The mother is not organized and she told me the other day she doesn't even have any of the materials or doesn't even know what she's going to teach them.  :mad: 

Schools (private & public) have already started and their kids are sitting at home while mom post cute pictures of them sitting in front of the TV and playing gameboy and with other cute things on Facebook.  This to me is not home schooling.  You can't just let them sit in front of the TV all day long. 

I'm worried for the kids.  Do I say something or just turn the other cheek and look away??

My wife and I know people who do a great job homeschooling, and others who seems to do a bad job.

We just let them do their thing.

Unless it is your grandchild .... I wouldn't worry.

But, I suppose you could always call the local department of education and report them.
 
When I homeschooled a looooooong time ago, I did the ABEKA correspondence school. I had to be held accountable! I needed that as a mom. I knew of a family that slept during the day and homeschooled at night, they gave homeschooling a bad name-and it made me mad at the time.  But it really was none of my business.


BUT just because someone doesn't homeschool the way you would doesn't make it wrong. And we really don't know that child's heart and what would work for him, unless we were his parents.  Homeschooling at the time worked for me and my children, but don't know if I would do it over again.
 
A child is going to have the same parent whether the child is at a public school, private school or home school.  A good parent will help their child thrive in any environment.  A lazy parent will allow their child to skip school, neglect homework assignments, or fail to learn whether he is in a public or home school. 
 
Still There said:
I know there are a lot of people on the forum that home school their kids, I didn't do mine because I'm not even close to being qualified, nor do I have the patience to do it, so my kids are in school - public. 

Please pardon me, but as a committed home educator, I feel that is a very sad confession.  What qualifications do you feel one needs to educate their own children?  And if you lack the patience, why have anything to do with having kids in the first place? 

Back when my first child was about to start her education, I was poorer than Job's turkey, and very intimidated when I noticed most Christian/Church schools were expensive, with lots of ancillary expenses.  But I also knew that with the state of morality in that society, the LAST thing I wanted for my daughter was to put her in a "free" public institution.  If an alternative had not made itself available to me then, I would have begged on the street or sold myself to keep her from the clutches of the world. 

Consider, if you send your child to an educational center be it public or private, someone else has that little soul which God placed in YOUR hands and will call you to account for, for a lot longer time each day than you spend with them.  Read their text books and their assignments, and very likely you will find that they are being indoctrinated with a lot more that you do not agree with than what you do.  This is true whether it is public or private, but especially so in a public school.  And the idea of "education" today has become much more philosophical in nature than practical, especially in the public sector.  In other words, they feel it more important to teach their version of morality (your birth sex does not matter, its how you feel -- don't believe?  See Jerry Brown's new transgender law in CA) and basic distrust of religion.  Why Johnny Can't Read may be an old book, but time has shown it to have been very prophetic and true. 

Still There said:
I've noticed a lot of people pulling their kids out of private schools lately that are "home schooling" them.  The reason I'm quoting "home schooling" is because that's whey they say they are doing but I know they are no way qualified nor near as organized and the kids won't learn anything. 

I am no Calvinist by any means.  But I do believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Examining the scriptures, I very strongly believe that God is the one who places the gift of children in their homes, and it is the primary responsibility of the parents to train their children.  Not the church's, and not the state's responsibility, but the parents.  (You interested in scripture citations for all this?  Proverbs is full of them & Psalm 127 is a good starting point)  Beginning at that platform, I would hesitate to claim I know better than the LORD does.  Case studies have long proven that children learn more naturally from their immediate family members than from any other source. 

Now, to address the qualification and organization statement.  Going back to when I faced my dilemma about educating my daughter, I stumbled upon a book on "Unschooling" by John Holt.  You can find a short explanation of unschooling in a Wikipedia article.  Or this link is good, too. 

Unschoolers make the claim, and have a lot of raised children to back up their claims with, that each child is "wired" differently with strengths and weaknesses.  The traditional method of education which forces them to speed ahead or slow down to keep step with their peers actually hinders their progress.  The logic runs like this:  A ditch digger never needs Algebra.  But in school, he is forced to take it anyway, but his mindset and skill set directs him ultimately down the path of ditch digging where for the rest of his life, those 2-3 years of algebra & geometry he took in his training facility was purely wasted.  On the other hand, a student born with a natural capacity and gift for mathematics has a thirst for that area where he excels.  He is capable of doing advanced trig and higher level mathematics by 9th grade, but has to slow up and wait for his class peers, unlike many of his forefathers before him who were doing very advanced mathematics and languages at young ages (Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Einstein).  That is why in the 1800's and before, this nation produced lots of inventive geniuses, but since the 20's and 30's, our creativity and inventivenss has declined severely ... which was the period of growth and development of compulsory education in America.

Holt's major theory is that developing children have a natural thirst for learning.  They WILL learn what interests them and what they gravitate to if allowed to do so.  He called it "Learning by Living."  You may only see children doing housework and playing video games, and think, "Oh my, those kids are just wasting time."  But they are learning skills such as math, geometry, chemistry, and reading all because they WANT to in order to achieve in their activities of daily living.

Another book I read was "Homegrown Kids" by Raymond and Dorothy Moore."  A lot of emphasis is given in this book about develpment levels.  He stated children develop best at their own pace.  He was with the Dept of Education, and she a reading teacher, both well qualified to write on the subject.  When that door of a child's mind opens, they naturally try to excel, unless pressure and concern for failure before the child was ready causes them to use psychological avoidance techniques.  That, according to the Moores, explains much of the increase in learning disabilities in modern students.

As a result of my reading, I made the decision that we would home educate whatever children we had with confidence.  My wife, who had never been an "academic" person and was even held back one year in her public education, was not so thrilled.  We began my daughter with some A Beka materials in preschool when she was age 4.  Age 5/6 she went to first grade, and we became concerned that she learned numbers, colors, and even letters really well, but was not reading ... not even the simple words.  The summer break between 1st and 2nd grades, my wife really tried to talk me out of home education because she worried she was not "qualified" and that had to be what was holding our daughter back from reading.  But then, shortly after she started her second year, like both Holt and the Moores had written, "the light switch turned on."  My daughter not only learned to read, but developed a thirst for it. 

I do not have a television, and so my children learned different ways to satisfy their creativity.  For my daughter, it became going to the library, and the world of books.  It was comical years later when my daughter was a teen highschooler and my wife complained to me about her reading "too many books."  I gently reminded her of her former worries before 2nd grade about her reading ability, and that now, to discipline our daughter, one of the methods was "grounding her from the library." 

There were other bumps in the road, which I need not go into.  But the point is that she learned what she wanted or saw she needed to learn.  But my daughter could be as stubborn as any other kid when it came to learning subjects she had no desire for or saw the need to learn.  Both of my children have displayed natural gifts and talents that were never a result of anyone's training.  God does that, which is why some can play a piano or a guitar quite expertly at an early age without formal lessons.  There is a lot more "miracle" within a child than you appear to expect.

Still There said:
Schools (private & public) have already started and their kids are sitting at home while mom post cute pictures of them sitting in front of the TV and playing gameboy and with other cute things on Facebook.  This to me is not home schooling.  You can't just let them sit in front of the TV all day long. 

I'm worried for the kids.  Do I say something or just turn the other cheek and look away??

Leave it alone.  You have no idea of what the dynamics within the home truly are, you are an outsider looking in.  The many things you have claimed to "know" about education and home education in particular within this post have already revealed that you have not studied the subject well, you only assume to "know" what the propaganda machine has fed you.  Children have a natural inborn desire to learn their own unique set of subjects and will do so quite well at their own development level.  Neither the government, nor you, have the right to invade that home and force a parent to conform to your educational standard.  As the Bible says in 1Thess 4:11, "... do your own business..."  I would recommend you mind the same.  It would be a greater error to be the reason for the traumatic possible separation of a child from its parents than if they never once walked in the doors of a school room or cracked a book.

Also consider the scriptural truth of the law of sowing and reaping.  The day very well come that someone does not like how you train the children in your home, what you are teaching them.  "What?  You are telling these little urchins that it is wrong for men to love men?  Why, that's abuse!"  Would you want someone going to children's services on you based upon their ideas of what you are or are not doing right by your own children which God gave you?  Then don't set the precedent by doing such yourself.

Them's my thoughts.  You asked.  Hope you will read a little and consider.  Trust the LORD to know what He is doing, and don't determine that it must be that these kids are doomed to fail.  A child really is a resilient and miraculous marvel of God's engineering, and He and the angels watch over them.
 
I thing parents should homeschooling to ensure their children are getting a top notch education. There is not real education going on at schools anyhow, so it needs to be done at home. There is so much time wasting and silliness that goes on at today's schoolhouse. Teachers divide their time between 30 or so children, so your kids for sure want be the main focus. Homeschooling is focused, loving and time efficient if it is done right.
 
PappaBear:  I didn't mean that I'm not qualified parent  - I'm not a qualified teacher and have to work outside the home.  I know of a  lot of qualified people who who homeschooled their kids and did wonderful, but she was a home mom.  I have to work.  As I indicated earlier, my child has some learning disabilities that the private school couldn't deal with.  I'm very proud of where my children are now and what they're doing. 
 
We have a really unique situation... homeschooling on the road.

I can no longer count on both hands how many things I have learned that we did not learn in high school (or had to unlearn).

If you take a vacation or have the ability to do some extended traveling, get your kids to a National Park and have them complete the Junior Ranger booklets. My youngest, never interested in the Alamo, is now our resident expert on the Alamo and the other 4 missions!
 
What you're doing is priceless with your kids... I'm serious about writing it down and publishing it ...
 
Still There said:
PappaBear:  I didn't mean that I'm not qualified parent  - I'm not a qualified teacher and have to work outside the home.  I know of a  lot of qualified people who who homeschooled their kids and did wonderful, but she was a home mom.  I have to work.  As I indicated earlier, my child has some learning disabilities that the private school couldn't deal with.  I'm very proud of where my children are now and what they're doing.

And what I meant is that a parent *IS* a qualified teacher.  It is nearly impossible to separate the two skills.  Parents are the best qualified teachers there are, and statistics have proven that time and time again. 
 
[quote author=PappaBear]And what I meant is that a parent *IS* a qualified teacher.  It is nearly impossible to separate the two skills.  Parents are the best qualified teachers there are, and statistics have proven that time and time again. [/quote]

Ideally, parents would be skilled teachers, but it definitely isn't a guarantee that they are.
 
rsc2a said:
PappaBear]And what I meant is that a parent *IS* a qualified teacher.  It is nearly impossible to separate the two skills.  Parents are the best qualified teachers there are said:
Now, to address the qualification and organization statement.  Going back to when I faced my dilemma about educating my daughter, I stumbled upon a book on "Unschooling" by John Holt.  You can find a short explanation of unschooling in a Wikipedia article.  Or this link is good, too. 

At the above link, since I realize spending too much time reading lengthy articles is not to your taste, I recommend especially the sections on Raymond Moore and John Holt.  I am especially fond of these two paragraphs under the John Holt section:

Isabel Liman]In summary said:
... Children have a natural inborn desire to learn their own unique set of subjects and will do so quite well at their own development level.  Neither the government, nor you, have the right to invade that home and force a parent to conform to your educational standard.  As the Bible says in 1Thess 4:11, "... do your own business..."  I would recommend you mind the same.  It would be a greater error to be the reason for the traumatic possible separation of a child from its parents than if they never once walked in the doors of a school room or cracked a book.

... Trust the LORD to know what He is doing, and don't determine that it must be that these kids are doomed to fail.  A child really is a resilient and miraculous marvel of God's engineering, and He and the angels watch over them.
 
PappaBear said:
rsc2a said:
[quote author=PappaBear]And what I meant is that a parent *IS* a qualified teacher.  It is nearly impossible to separate the two skills.  Parents are the best qualified teachers there are, and statistics have proven that time and time again.

Ideally, parents would be skilled teachers, but it definitely isn't a guarantee that they are.

My reply to that has already been given in reply #5 on this thread.  Sorry that you missed it.[/quote]

I read it. It wasn't any more convincing the second time you posted it either.

[quote author=PappaBear]At the above link, since I realize spending too much time reading lengthy articles is not to your taste, I recommend especially the sections on Raymond Moore and John Holt.  I am especially fond of these two paragraphs under the John Holt section[/quote]

Heh...

I won't even bother comparing literary exposure. Let's just say that my wife and I probably read more individually than everyone we know likely reads corporately.
 
groupie said:
I thing parents should homeschooling to ensure their children are getting a top notch education. There is not real education going on at schools anyhow, so it needs to be done at home. There is so much time wasting and silliness that goes on at today's schoolhouse. Teachers divide their time between 30 or so children, so your kids for sure want be the main focus. Homeschooling is focused, loving and time efficient if it is done right.

Having 30 students per classroom is not the norm. My daughter teaches Third grade Reading in a public school. She has three classes, each classes has only 15 student, and she adores her student! My youngest son attends a private Christian school, average is 18 per class. E ety state, every school, every classroom is different.
 
kaba said:
groupie said:
I thing parents should homeschooling to ensure their children are getting a top notch education. There is not real education going on at schools anyhow, so it needs to be done at home. There is so much time wasting and silliness that goes on at today's schoolhouse. Teachers divide their time between 30 or so children, so your kids for sure want be the main focus. Homeschooling is focused, loving and time efficient if it is done right.

Having 30 students per classroom is not the norm. My daughter teaches Third grade Reading in a public school. She has three classes, each classes has only 15 student, and she adores her student! My youngest son attends a private Christian school, average is 18 per class. E ety state, every school, every classroom is different.

Average class size as published my the NEA for 2011

States with the highest number of students enrolled per teacher in public elementary and secondary schools in fall 2011: California (25.6), Utah (21.9), Oregon (20.2), Washington (19.7), and Michigan (18.4). States with the lowest student-teacher ratios were Vermont (9.4), Nebraska (10.7), Maine (11.9), New Jersey (12.0), and Virginia (12.1). Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia had average student-teacher ratios below the U.S. average (16.0) (C-6).

These are state wide public school averages and will vary by school district.

 
Timothy said:
Still There said:
I know there are a lot of people on the forum that home school their kids, I didn't do mine because I'm not even close to being qualified, nor do I have the patience to do it, so my kids are in school - public.  We had them in private for a few years, but our oldest had some learning disabilities that the private school couldn't deal with so we decided to put her in public and she thrived in an environment set up for her.  She graduated HS.  The private school told us that they would not give her a HS diploma, but a certificate that she attended school.  With this being said ... 

I've noticed a lot of people pulling their kids out of private schools lately that are "home schooling" them.  The reason I'm quoting "home schooling" is because that's whey they say they are doing but I know they are no way qualified nor near as organized and the kids won't learn anything. 

I know it takes a lot of organization to home school children, especially if you have them in different grades.  I talked to one mother who started last year and she's right on the daily schedule with teaching her kids at home. 

But this one couple I'm thinking about will fail from day one.  And, I feel sorry for one child in particular because they need the social interaction with other kids their age.  Education to me is so important for kids and this particular family is doomed to fail.  I know them that well.  The mother is not organized and she told me the other day she doesn't even have any of the materials or doesn't even know what she's going to teach them.  :mad: 

Schools (private & public) have already started and their kids are sitting at home while mom post cute pictures of them sitting in front of the TV and playing gameboy and with other cute things on Facebook.  This to me is not home schooling.  You can't just let them sit in front of the TV all day long. 

I'm worried for the kids.  Do I say something or just turn the other cheek and look away??

My wife and I know people who do a great job homeschooling, and others who seems to do a bad job.

We just let them do their thing.

Unless it is your grandchild .... I wouldn't worry.

But, I suppose you could always call the local department of education and report them.
Indiana has no regulations concerning homeschooling.  You may educate your children however you may see fit.  So there's no one to call.
  If the kids want to learn, they will learn.  If the parents don't guide em, they will learn whatever is on tv.  They will fit in with most of the other kids in our society, since their parents are uninvolved as well.
Hopefully, they are influenced to seek God at church. 
  Still There should pray for them, maybe God will bring some influence into their lives, someone capable of helping them and their parents. 
Anishinabe

 
If you can't teach your child yourself then you should have contacted some other homeschooling parents or some online tutoring services. Putting them in public school is not a viable option.
 
treykmason said:
If you can't teach your child yourself then you should have contacted some other homeschooling parents or some online tutoring services. Putting them in public school is not a viable option.


I disagree.

My daughter is a Christian and is a public school teacher. Not all public schools are the same.

A more accurate statement might be, "putting my children in a public school is not a viable option", said treykmason
 
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