PoAC: Home schooling
Aug. 16th, 2006 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageAn interesting article at CBC got me thinking, again, about home schooling.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_ekoko/20060816.html
Here are my thoughts: when done well, homeschooling can be a valuable experience, however it has certain glaring drawbacks. The first is social. Most adults have a certain common ground in public, or at least institutionalized, education. There's a whole cultural vacabulary surrounding things like pop quizzes, lockers, schoolyard bullies, and report cards that a homeschooled kid is not going to understand in quite the same way. Then there's the type of socialization-by-age-group that occurs at school, which is missing from homeschooling. I'm not certain if that lack would be classified as a drawback or an advantage; I suppose it would depend on the child. But there is a certain value to learning to work with one's peers, that is harder to develop when homeschooling.
The second is exposure to a variety of viewpoints. For many people, the main reason for homeschooling is to give their children a religious education, thereby excluding certain values that don't fit with the religion. The Southern Baptist Convention is one of the largest associations worldwide to promote homeschooling. Their viewpoint is that the public school system promotes a "secular humanist" ideal that goes against Christian teachings. Aside from suppression of exposure to other faiths, there's the lack of breadth in the life experience of parents-as-teachers. How is a child of non-musical parents going to discover a gift for music, if not at school? How could I, who can't draw a stick person, teach my child art? As a teacher at school, I can either trade off the subjects for which I have no passion, or I can hope that the teacher they get the following year will have complementary skills to mine. Homeschooling associations need to be big and broad to emulate that. How many of them manage to teach languages other than English at all?
Thoughts, anybody?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_ekoko/20060816.html
Here are my thoughts: when done well, homeschooling can be a valuable experience, however it has certain glaring drawbacks. The first is social. Most adults have a certain common ground in public, or at least institutionalized, education. There's a whole cultural vacabulary surrounding things like pop quizzes, lockers, schoolyard bullies, and report cards that a homeschooled kid is not going to understand in quite the same way. Then there's the type of socialization-by-age-group that occurs at school, which is missing from homeschooling. I'm not certain if that lack would be classified as a drawback or an advantage; I suppose it would depend on the child. But there is a certain value to learning to work with one's peers, that is harder to develop when homeschooling.
The second is exposure to a variety of viewpoints. For many people, the main reason for homeschooling is to give their children a religious education, thereby excluding certain values that don't fit with the religion. The Southern Baptist Convention is one of the largest associations worldwide to promote homeschooling. Their viewpoint is that the public school system promotes a "secular humanist" ideal that goes against Christian teachings. Aside from suppression of exposure to other faiths, there's the lack of breadth in the life experience of parents-as-teachers. How is a child of non-musical parents going to discover a gift for music, if not at school? How could I, who can't draw a stick person, teach my child art? As a teacher at school, I can either trade off the subjects for which I have no passion, or I can hope that the teacher they get the following year will have complementary skills to mine. Homeschooling associations need to be big and broad to emulate that. How many of them manage to teach languages other than English at all?
Thoughts, anybody?
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Date: 2006-08-16 07:51 pm (UTC)Maybe homeschooling is a good thing at an early age - with the idea that you're training the kid to have a good sense of self, and that part of that good sense of self is that it's okay for other people to be as they are and that there's more to know than just what Mom and Dad know. Then, when they have a core that can't be destroyed by abusive teachers and peers, you send them packing off to public schools to learn that the world has a far greater extent.