Home Schooling leads to emigration..

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Of course, home schooling finishes at the end of the Secondary curriculum.  After that, any student should seek admission to the universities of his choice, wherever situated.  If home schooling results in a person who is unfit to take this step, then the state has failed in its duty of care with respect to ensuring the education was in accordance with generally accepted principles.quote>

I wouldn't say that. Some people are just not cut out for college. If someone can't "take that step", it doesn't mean that whoever educated them (beit their parents, the state, or a private institution) has somehow failed them, it just means that the individual can't do it.

Some students are willing to accept the blinders of engineering, where everything is done by the rules,quote>

Engineering blinds people now?

Originally posted by: SC4BOY

...Are you saying college was calmer 40 years ago?quote>

I absolutely am claiming that.

{...}

And sorry I don't equate drugs (overwhelmingly "soft" drugs), sex and rock and roll to the current state which still has all those elements.. Really most of those behaviors that were "outrageous" in that day are routine parts of life today.quote>

So... how exactly has college gotten worse?

The biggest difference I see between college then and now is that the drinking age is 21 whereas it used to be 18 in most places. This has had the effect of forcing alcohol consumption "underground", and since drinking is central to college life, the culture has changed accordingly.

Otherwise... there were drugs, there are drugs. There was sex, there is sex. There were crazy parties, there are crazy parties. Where was this supposed calmness we don't have anymore?

[morriswalters 16]

Home schooling roots may more truly lie in school busing then in any fear of having their children  "indoctrinated".  Schools exist to do just that, and they always have.  From taking the Pledge of Allegiance to standing in line in the school cafeteria, to the teaching of civics and social studies.  Schools teach people that they are a part of society.  The difference today is society is more complicated. 

Home schooling isn't much of a threat to anything.  There will never be enough people who are willing to spend the effort to do it, or who have the resources to be able to do so if they have the desire.  It requires a stay at home parent who is literate enough and has sufficient discipline to pull off.  In  terms of a home schooled childs ability to advance in post secondary education,  desire may be a better indicator of how well they do than anything else.  Schools have programs to address any deficits that home schooled students may bring.

In terms of history, history as taught in schools is pabulum, taught  to give students some facts with a context of contemporary society.  Rigorous history can't be taught effectively until college.  I certainly wouldn't want to expose a student to the ambiguities and uncertainties that make history.  If history was the clear cut thing that people seem to think it is then why are people still writing books about the Civil War?

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

Home schooling isn't much of a threat to anything.  There will never be enough people who are willing to spend the effort to do it, or who have the resources to be able to do so if they have the desire.  It requires a stay at home parent who is literate enough and has sufficient discipline to pull off. quote>

But that's the thing.  A home schooling parent isn't required to do or be anything.   Anyone can say they are homeschooling their kids, regardless if they are literate or disciplined.  or competent at any level.  or mentally stable.  or even pretending to teach the kids at all.

[Duke87 1,070]

I think the point was that it's enough of a minority such that we can accept the potential failings of it, since it has no significant impact on the success rate of the overall system.

And well, there is a valid point here: it's unrealistic to expect we're going to properly educate everyone. No matter what we're doing, we're not going to do it flawlessly. Like it or not, some failure rate which is small but greater than zero must be acceptable. This is the problem with the whole "no child left behind" thing. Expecting that no one can be left behind is ridiculous. Someone, somewhere is going to not be able to make it over the bar if you set it anywhere above "drooling vegetable".

Similarly, when I hear someone say something of the form "X {instances of problem} is X too many", I want to smack them across the face. That's pure emotional rhetoric and it's out of touch with reality. Perfection is beyond human capability. Failures will occur. No need to shed any tears over them so long as they are sufficiently infrequent.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Some students are willing to accept the blinders of engineering, where everything is done by the rules,quote>

Engineering blinds people now?

quote>

Insofar as those who persist in undergrad engineering without really thinking about what they are doing, yes.  I pulled out at the beginning of my second year because I felt that it was going to be stifling to continue.  Please notice the use of the word 'some'.  If having that iron ring and a stamp is the goal, then they have only themselves to blame.  An undergraduate degree in an engineering discipline can lead on to better things, or it can be a dead end.  I know of at least one company that "stockpiles" engineers until they are thoughly imbued in the company way of doing things and have forgotton what they paid to learn, which is how to learn.

Originally posted by: Duke87

I think the point was that it's enough of a minority such that we can accept the potential failings of it, since it has no significant impact on the success rate of the overall system.

And well, there is a valid point here: it's unrealistic to expect we're going to properly educate everyone.

quote>

Agreed, but there is also a matter of trying to avoid disadvantaging children who are "home-schooled" for simple lack of checking on the final product and doing a little quality control during the process.

And to the idea that some people are unsuited to university/college, that is a possibility.  These people graduate directly into the School of Hard Knox, also known as the job market.

[morriswalters 16]

The word everybody should be thinking about is triage.  We can just barely keep public schools limping along.  There are no resources available in my state to do more than the bare minimum of checking on home schooled children, and there are unlikely to be anymore soon.  When a parent chooses to home school a child they have entered a part of the map that says " There be dragons here" and that's the way things are.  I worry more about kids who come to  public school lacking the one thing they need to succeed, parents who care.  This more then anything else is what's wrong with public schools.

The only thing wrong with the engineering curriculum when I was a student was too few classes that had books with pretty pictures rather then force diagrams and equations.  My schools unofficial motto, engineers do it better.  The radicals, Don't be a techno twit.  Ah, school daze.

.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

The word everybody should be thinking about is triage.  We can just barely keep public schools limping along.  There are no resources available in my state to do more than the bare minimum of checking on home schooled children, and there are unlikely to be anymore soon.  When a parent chooses to home school a child they have entered a part of the map that says " There be dragons here" and that's the way things are.  I worry more about kids who come to  public school lacking the one thing they need to succeed, parents who care.  This more then anything else is what's wrong with public schools.

The only thing wrong with the engineering curriculum when I was a student was too few classes that had books with pretty pictures rather then force diagrams and equations.  My schools unofficial motto, engineers do it better.  The radicals, Don't be a techno twit.  Ah, school daze. .

quote>

The school system in Ontariio tried the triage or streaming trick many years ago.  At the time, my sister was in the system and I, thank heavens, was out of it.  So-called guidance counsellors, of dubious qualification, attempted to place each student on the track that a set of aptitude tests pointed towards.  No allowance was made for kids who did poorly on tests but whose work was consistently good.

I agree that interested parents are the key.  If it weren't for the fact that parents these days have to run like hell to stand still it would be nice if they could take time to look after their irresonsibly conceived children.  Parenting is a fulll time job until the kids are at least in high school and no hireling can substitute for an at home parent.  Unfortunately, our social and economic set up are no longer geared to this mostly thanks to WW II and Rosy the rivetter who discovered that she liked the extra money after Johnny came marching home to his pre-war low-paying job.

As for the ungineers, well, that's how I feel about it.  "There was a Roman engineer waiting just around the block" the Engineers Hymn.

 

[hamsterTK 93]

I think they mean to say scientific management, not the actual field of engineering. Sometimes I think the only thing technical about the social "sciences" is the way scholarly articles refer to statistical concepts in an effort to confuse the reader with terms like "Gaussian distribution of soda preference among 2 year olds subjected to ink blot tests as proof that McDonald's Corporation is eevil"

[morriswalters 16]

N_O_Body,

I've never heard of streaming, I refered to Triage in it's medical sense. We spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying out new ways to teach children the basic skills they need.  My high school experience took place in one of those programs.  Today it's magnet schools, Center of Excellance schools, what have you schools.  We throw money at it but it doesn't work.  Schools should do one thing, teach children to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide.

[sneakeypete 16]

Some advice: maybe you should be basing your views of engineering on what your experience was from half a degree 30odd years ago. Admittedly, i'm only 3 years into a 4 year degree, but nothing of what your saying even begins to seem logical compared to what i've seen.

[fukuda 351]

I think they mean to say scientific management, not the actual field of engineering. Sometimes I think the only thing technical about the social "sciences" is the way scholarly articles refer to statistical concepts in an effort to confuse the reader with terms like "Gaussian distribution of soda preference among 2 year olds subjected to ink blot tests as proof that McDonald's Corporation is eevil"quote>

Oh but that's also true about some other scientific disciplines... Here in the department we mainly deal with animals but we also receive feedback from the biomedical research community, which is unluckily largely known for their merits in funny research. Most biomedical papers are excellent articles written by excellent people but the rest are..well.. let's say interesting.:

There are teams whose only purpose is to mash up statistics after (flawed)statistics to build even largely flawed statistics out of freakin nowhere that will be used to build other statistics by other teams. There are teams whose problem is exactly the opposite, some seriously think that they can announce an entire new brain processing pathway just by studying only one clinical case (screw statistics and error). There are others whose only purpose is to announce sensationalist discoveries. Others completely mistake correlation with causation (this is a veeery common mistake, 99% of what most teams do is to look for correlations after all) and give magic explanations about it. A big part of it ain't even testable experiments to begin with...

Oh, and beware about seemingly obvious error inducing methods that don't seem so obvious to most people ("what do you mean male metabolism is different than female metabolism?"):

report published by the National Academy Press pointed to evidence that the same was true for research using animal models: The sex of the animal can lead to qualitatively different results. Yet because male rodents are cheaper and easier to work with than females, almost nobody uses females in basic research.quote>

About engineering.... I did a small 2 year-license and got out of the engineering school 2 years ago. I don't consider it blinding, sure it wasn't my thing (though I enjoyed most parts of it), but I think it can give an interesting perspective about how to study, how to do teamwork (this was extremely hard for most of us though, most engineering students show an overt competitiveness against each other) and what real lab and math rigor means.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

N_O_Body,

I've never heard of streaming, I refered to Triage in it's medical sense. We spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying out new ways to teach children the basic skills they need.  My high school experience took place in one of those programs.  Today it's magnet schools, Center of Excellance schools, what have you schools.  We throw money at it but it doesn't work.  Schools should do one thing, teach children to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide.

quote>

It was a "triage" sort of experiment tried by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.  There were three streams, one of which led to university, one to business and the other to trades.  I think that definitely tried to divide the pie into thirds.  The large high school attended by both my sister and I had full courses leading to the three choices.  When I was there, it was up to the student to choose.  When my sister was there, there was a lot of pressure to go in one of the three directions depending on test results.

I quite agree that elementary schools must teach reading, writing, and basic arithmetic along with spoken language skills sufficient to communicate at a basic level.  High schools should carry this further by exposure to advanced thought from history, literature, mathematics (not "the new math"), the sciences, and some training in ethics.  Graduates have to decide where they will go from there, but should know what choices are available.  Learning to learn is the duty of the public school system, period!

Originally posted by: sneakeypete

Some advice: maybe you should be basing your views of engineering on what your experience was from half a degree 30odd years ago. Admittedly, i'm only 3 years into a 4 year degree, but nothing of what your saying even begins to seem logical compared to what i've seen.quote>

Well, the academic specifics are a little old, but my experience with "engineers" has shown there are two kinds.  Some of them have solid tool steel from ear to ear and stop learning when they get their iron ring.  The good ones keep going and through post-grad work or experience become much more.  One of the more influential ones was a lady who was the wife of a colleague.  She had a doctorate in engineering and was working on trace element detection for the airport security people.  She held several patents in the area of automated sniffers.

[SC4BOY 21]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

I quite agree that elementary schools must teach reading, writing, and basic arithmetic along with spoken language skills sufficient to communicate at a basic level.  High schools should carry this further by exposure to advanced thought from history, literature, mathematics (not "the new math"), the sciences, and some training in ethics.  Graduates have to decide where they will go from there, but should know what choices are available.  Learning to learn is the duty of the public school system, period!quote>

Along these lines, instead of feeling like we have to make every child "lock-step" together, we need to recognize that people are different at many levels including intelligence, desire, motivation, maturity, etc. I'd love to see school broken up by achievement with each student guaranteed "support to achievement" good for life, and can be used at any time in life. Let kids who've lost interest just drop out. If they want to learn it later, they are automatically guaranteed free access to the discipline to learn it whenever they like.. In each case they get "certified" in that discipline. The "certification" is required to undertake further "disciplines" based on some construct. At any time one could stop, restart, complete, or further their education over their lifetime. Of course this would involve restructuring schools and curricula in ways to make them available to a wide variety of ages and learning on a at least "semi-individualized" basis.. they could use any of various ways to access the education. I believe this approach offers many improvements in what I believe almost anyone would state is at best a mediocre system with neither a measurable result, nor a rigorous assurance of achievement. For now whether for better or worse, schools are just a giant baby-sitting service.

.... my experience with "engineers" has shown there are two kinds.  Some.. stop learning....good ones keep going and through post-grad work or experience become much more. quote>

In other words you mean pretty much like people in any discipline.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

SC4Boy:  That's all very well, but I believe it has been shown that the young learn things more easily than older folks.  Once learning habits have become dulled by day-to-day hard experiences, it becomes ever so much more difficult to return to any kind of structured learning environment.  An open licence to education supported by the state needs to be limited.  I'd like to suggest that public libraries are a better bet.  If discussion is necessary, the first line of access is the Internet followed by registration in an adult education programme.

[DocRorlach 25]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

SC4Boy:  That's all very well, but I believe it has been shown that the young learn things more easily than older folks.  Once learning habits have become dulled by day-to-day hard experiences, it becomes ever so much more difficult to return to any kind of structured learning environment.  An open license to education supported by the state needs to be limited.  I'd like to suggest that public libraries are a better bet.  If discussion is necessary, the first line of access is the Internet followed by registration in an adult education programme.

quote>

Since the topic has expanded into educational concepts at large, I would like to pour some doubt on N_O_Body's theory that the young will learn more easily than the older.

For one, and I think that holds true of any age from kindergarten to university, the distractions to the focus on learning are massive, whereas the incentive ("hey, learning might be useful") isn't as easily swallowed. I have no empirical data to back me up, only my own example which came at a rather tumultuous time (aka The Sixties) in Germany. While I manage to sneak past exams and actually got those scrolls saying I had a degree, what I've learned - in any sense of the useful - came after the official educational steeplechase was over and done with.

Yes, the basics (3R's??) were spoonfed to us between the age of 6 and 10, thereafter the main role of the schools seem to be to keep us out of the hairs of the adult world. Today I still consider it a small miracle that we learned anything at all, what with not having access to anything outside of local libraries and resident brains.

I think you can learn and relearn at anytime - given a real incentive, such as a need to support a family might provide. Heck, I am way past the sell-by date and since a week or so I have to learn a new approach, a new language (programming only, thank the demons), and any number of irrelevancies pertinent to the current contract job.

[Meg 368]

What children learn actually changes how their brains develop.  [link]

In the first decade of life, a child’s brain forms trillions of connections or synapses. Axons hook up with dendrites, and chemicals called neurotransmitters facilitate the passage of impulses across the resulting synapses. Each individual neuron may be connected to as many as 15,000 other neurons, forming a network of neural pathways that is immensely complex. This elaborate network is sometimes referred to as the brain’s “wiring” or “circuitry.” If they are not used repeatedly, or often enough, they are eliminated. In this way, experience plays a crucial role in “wiring” a young child’s brain.quote>

[SC4BOY 21]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

SC4Boy:  That's all very well, but I believe it has been shown that the young learn things more easily than older folksquote>

 

Indeed, but you're speaking of "average".. however those motivated can and do continue learning all their lives. And a motivated adult may well learn much faster and more in-depth than a totally distracted and uninterested young person. Sometimes the realities of "being adult" adds a lot of motivation to all those things your parents and teachers told you before, but somehow didn't seem relevant at the time..

...any kind of structured learning environment.  An open licence to education supported by the state needs to be limited.  I'd like to suggest that public libraries are a better bet.  If discussion is necessary, the first line of access is the Internet followed by registration in an adult education programme.

quote>

Adult ed programs tend to be total downers. I've spent a number of years trying to teach "adult ed" programs in higher ed so I have some experience here. Libraries at least as they exist today, do virtually no "teaching support" and of course all is completely unstructured.. the very format which most find a complete failure. There is no reason why the "model" cannot be highly varied. Mixing instead an array of people to address the subject (and it certainly doesn't have to even focus on a classroom.. perhaps 'life-labs" such as languages and internet sessions) is certainly not prohibited. There is certainly no reason to believe that what we have today is particularly successful either. Further the "burden on the state" is well balanced by what percent actually will do it (as we've discussed some folk just aren't interested).. and if they dropped out earlier, indeed the state was unburdened as well.  The general argument, though I don't buy a lot into it, is that an uneducated populace is a larger burden on the public.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You are right to a certain extent.  As a retired post-secondary educator (not, I hope, educaterer), I found that many of my young adult students were insufficiently motivated while the older students, placed by various "new career" programs were much more interested in getting new skills.

[DocRorlach 25]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

You are right to a certain extent.  As a retired post-secondary educator (not, I hope, educaterer), I found that many of my young adult students were insufficiently motivated while the older students, placed by various "new career" programs were much more interested in getting new skills.

quote>

I have had limited teaching experience, if I can even call it that, which ended after two semesters and my discovery of an allergy called "students". But I am certain that besides the motivation there is another aspect that tends to help learning as you pass the post-teenage barriers: filtering through experience. As you move along, you autmatically start the "with a grain of salt" acceptance process simply because you are continously shaped by everything around you. Coupled with motivation to acquire up to then unknown knowledge, both practical and theoretical, you might have abetter time learning something because you are more aware of your limits.

Of course, that can also work against you, especially when that grain of salt accumulates to bagfuls of the stuff.

The very young, i.e pre-school, pre-Kindergarten age, tend to absorb knowledge driven by sheer curiosity. Start formal schooling, at home or in public, and the endeavour tends to focus more on directing if not stifling that force. From "don't play with fire" to "don't listen to that person" is but a short jump.

[Jay Ess 15]

Personally, I think that all of this is a good thing. I'm homeschooled, and I've realized as well as many others have; that I'm less stressed, my attitude is better, and for sure my grades have improved.

People need to remember that homeschooling is not what it was 30 years ago. It's not something people from the boondocks and the backwoods do because their kids aren't smart enough to keep up in public school. Infact, it's quite the opposite nowadays. My mother works in Troy, Michigan [one of the most affluent 'big cities' in America]; and one of her co-workers lives in Commerce Township [still affluent - the median income is $72,702]. Her co-worker says that OVER FIFTY KIDS who attend the church in Commerce Township are homeschooled.

Personally, I think it's great that more people are getting involved in homeschooling, especially around the world. It's a much better alternative to both public and private school.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: colonel1

Personally, I think that all of this is a good thing. I'm homeschooled, and I've realized as well as many others have; that I'm less stressed, my attitude is better, and for sure my grades have improved.

People need to remember that homeschooling is not what it was 30 years ago. It's not something people from the boondocks and the backwoods do because their kids aren't smart enough to keep up in public school. Infact, it's quite the opposite nowadays. My mother works in Troy, Michigan [one of the most affluent 'big cities' in America]; and one of her co-workers lives in Commerce Township [still affluent - the median income is $72,702]. Her co-worker says that OVER FIFTY KIDS who attend the church in Commerce Township are homeschooled.

Personally, I think it's great that more people are getting involved in homeschooling, especially around the world. It's a much better alternative to both public and private school.quote>

I used to live in Owosso MI.

So now that we have a home schooled Kid thats posted,  we can ask colonel

What his home schooling is like, who teaches him, his subject matter, ect...

That is if colonel feel like shareing.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Yes, please share. Let's start with why you are home schooled.

[Jay Ess 15]

I'm homeschooled because the administration at my city's public schools are completely incompetent. The plan was for me to move to another school nearby, but since the school district of my city of residence refused to transfer documents to the other district; I was not able to join that school.

As far as schoolwork goes, it's a tremendous improvement. I'm able to finish quicker by cutting out the thirty minute lectures. There are very few distractions besides the ones I cause myself - cooking, cleaning, taking short breaks, and the likes. With the program I am on, I basically learn from a book, and then my parents correct it and review the material with me.

As an eighth grader this year, I tested into the middle of eighth grade in Science and Social studies; and early sixth grade in English and Math. Now that I've been homeschooled, I've finished all of the Science and Social Studies works in three months. I am currently working on the latter of the seventh grade year in English and Math, and I am also taking high-school level Health and French.

I spend about 6 hours less doing school work than most public school students; and accomplish about three times as much. Like I said before, homeschooling is no longer a bunch of kids gathering in a dirt pit in a trailer park to be taught how to count and say the alphabet. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

[DocRorlach 25]

Colonel, For us foreigners, i.e. non-US Americans, it might help explaining two things: 8th Grade: what age group is that? And why do you take exams at what appear to be two differetn grade levels?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If I might intervene here:  8th grade means he is around 14 years of age barring setbacks.  Since he is being home schooled, he is free to persue topics of interest and advance in subjects at any rate that seems suitable.  Being behind in English skills indicates that the curriculum was unsuited to him or was poorly presented (a failing in a lot of schools).

When one completes the work at a designated grade level, the evaluation should be taken for the credit.  It doesn't make sense for a home scholar to have to progress in lock step with some hypothetical grading level that is inapplicable.

To get a snapshot of his English skills, you need only note that his posts are quite literate and to ask what literature he has been exposed to.  Colonel, do you like modern American authors, 19th century, older?  How are you with drama (plays)?  Got any good Shakespeare quotes stuck in your memory?  Good poetry like that sticks to you.

Oh, and is English your first langauge?

[DocRorlach 25]

N_O_Body: Thanks for the clarification; I am not used to the "grade level" system applied in US schools;

Colonel: My was question was one of pure curiosity; in no way did I mean to disparage your standards. As a matter of fact, from your original post I formed the impression that you were an older person who had been home-schooled. Your command of the written English is far beyond what I sometimes get to see as examples of 12 or 14 year-old pupils.

But the fact that it does work out for you does still not validate the home-school idea. My doubts about it revolve around the at times dogmatic reasons for it.

That said, the discussion here and the forum that originated my initial creation of this topic sclearly indicates that when it comes to learning anything, no "system" has nay advantages because ultimately the results are dictated by the individual and its environment.

[saltandsauce 0]

well, i think colonel1 is proof that the cirriculum is too thin, i'm not knocking you or saying anything about you becuse i don't know you but, if anyone can learn the entire year's cirriculum in 3 months (and i'm imagining not at a stretch) then nobody is being pushed academically. home-schooling is a way of getting a decent education without moving to the expensive upper-middle class areas of town/avoiding the crap schools surrounding you.

put some content into the cirriculum. education is turning out like chocolate, the content (cocoa solids) is being removed and the crap (beeswax, palm oil, cocoa butte,r colourings and sugar) is making the education system less and less like chocolate and more like Nestle

[Barbarossa 51]

.

  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

Originally posted by: saltandsauce

well, i think colonel1 is proof that the cirriculum is too thin, i'm not knocking you or saying anything about you becuse i don't know you but, if anyone can learn the entire year's cirriculum in 3 months (and i'm imagining not at a stretch) then nobody is being pushed academically. home-schooling is a way of getting a decent education without moving to the expensive upper-middle class areas of town/avoiding the crap schools surrounding you.

put some content into the cirriculum. education is turning out like chocolate, the content (cocoa solids) is being removed and the crap (beeswax, palm oil, cocoa butte,r colourings and sugar) is making the education system less and less like chocolate and more like Nestle

quote>

It's curriculum (singular) and curricula, if plural.  =)

Barbarossa

quote>

Trouble with Latin plurals is that we still have them.  Curriculum is a first/second declension Latin neuter noun and we seem to be stuck with it.  I actually prefer another, more cumbersome, term namely: list of learning goals.  This removes the 19th century pomp from education, while being completely clear.  Left over terms like curriculum remind me of cursus honorem, which was a scedule of public offices for ancient Romans who wanted to be consul.  Never smile at a crock'd aedile.