Home-School: Responding To Comments

There were a couple of comments left on my blog post about my life as a home-schooled child that I think need to be addressed. The comments came from anonymous posters (imagine that), so I have no way of contacting these people directly. Therefore, I shall do my best to demolish them in full view of my readers.

Anonymous said...
While I agree that there are many parents who have no business schooling their children, your premise is flawed.
http://suite101.com/content/homeschool-laws-for-north-carolina-a39919
November 23, 2010 6:15 PM

First of all, thank you for commenting. Now, the link that you provided did not in any way invalidate the premise of my argument. Perhaps I should have provided a link to the NC Department of Non-Public Education. I am rectifying that mistake now.

NCDNPE - Requirements, Reminders, and Recommendation

There is nothing in the rules of the NCDNPE that controls what I explained. I remember quite vividly my mother sitting down every now and then to make up my school records, grades, etc. I was required to take a CAT every year, which was administered by a family friend who would change the grades on sections of the test that we didn't do so well in. I was great at reading and sucked at math. When the results of the test came out, I was awesome on all levels of my education.

If you want to invalidate my argument, please come at me with something a little stronger than a list of vague regulations that are easily circumvented.
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I am going to take this comment in pieces so that it makes more sense.

Anonymous said...
I agree with most of what you're saying; I was also home schooled, not just for a year but for my entire k-12 education. My experiences, especially in my science and history education, were almost exactly like yours.

A horrifying time. At least I was lucky enough to make it back to public school for my 11th and 12th grade years. I am sorry to hear that you were stuck in that situation for your entire school life.

Even though home school kids are notorious for having poor social and science skills, don't they often outscore the publicly educated children on skills like reading and mathematics? Parents may not be the most effective teachers, but most of them are not outright neglectful of their children. Saying home schooling shouldn't exist is a little extreme, since that is based off of just your experience.

The children who do well in home-school would have done well in any setting. Children who are home-schooled already have parents who have an interest in their education for the most part. I would like to see how children that have parents who are concerned with there education score against home-schooled children. I can almost guarantee that the difference would be within the margin of error.

I guess my take on home schooling is this: I personally dislike it; I think it should be regulated by the same testing system our public schools have (if a parent neglects to teach their children, they lose the right to teach at home; just like if a parent abuses their kids they lose the right to keep them); but I also think that freedom of thought and religion is too important to compromise by forcing everyone who is too poor for the private schools to go through the public schools. If a parent thinks that a religious education is more important than a science education, I disagree, but I think that is one of the excesses that a free society needs to tolerate.
November 27, 2010 12:07 PM

Freedom of thought and religion is great. However if you are teaching children something that is false, then why do you get a pass because of a ridiculous belief in an invisible man in the sky? If I believe that the Lord Of The Rings trilogy is 100% true, do I have the right to teach my child only things that are said to be true in those books? Rubbish! I would be ostracized and would be forced to put my child in an accredited institution, and rightly so.

Home-schools are generally not used by poor families, just families with poor educations. So to say that just because a parent thinks a child should have a religious education, then who is supposed to administer that? Most religious people have no idea what their own “holy” books say.

Your statements sound more like a relativistic view on how society should operate. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but society is not all rainbows and butterflies. When you make it to a university or to the real world, a home-school education isn't going to help you in the least, that is unless you are going to become a preacher.