^^^^I think there are many ways a school can be bad. What good is passing a curriculum that isn't good in the first place? A lot of teachers today, IMO, have bad attitudes that I really don't feel have any place teaching my kid. Frankly, since I am paying for this education either directly or with tax dollars, I expect more than I am getting from "school." I would love for my kid to one day be able to go to school and receive a good education, but it's not gonna happen. Thus, you need to be creative and find alternatives to get what you want, and they'll probably end up working better.

I don't have a problem with kids being home schooled. Not only do they learn more because of 1 on 1 teaching, but it is also more economical than sending kids to regular school (save on school clothes, lunches, bus far, gas, etc.) I think all options home school and standard schooling should be considered. The only problem I have is that some (not all) home school parents come off as too distrustful of the outside world when it comes to their kids. I don't approve of home schooling as a way of shielding kids from society but that's a stereotype that most parents probably don't fall into. So long as they are still interacting with their peers then home school is no problem.

Besides, it's certainly not like parents with public school kids never bring them up to be distrusting of the world, even if it's not 'outside' to them.

SkwirtB wrote:

I don't have a problem with kids being home schooled. Not only do they learn more because of 1 on 1 teaching, but it is also more economical than sending kids to regular school (save on school clothes, lunches, bus far, gas, etc.) I think all options home school and standard schooling should be considered. The only problem I have is that some (not all) home school parents come off as too distrustful of the outside world when it comes to their kids. I don't approve of home schooling as a way of shielding kids from society but that's a stereotype that most parents probably don't fall into. So long as they are still interacting with their peers then home school is no problem.

I'd say they're distrust of the world is validated. I don't see homeschooling kids as shielding them FROM the world as much as making sure they get the proper education and preparation for dealing WITH the world. Schools these days leave a lot to be desired, so I think it makes sense that parents would want to have something better for their children. Most homeschooled kids I know are not shielded from the world, just merely exposed to it via a different scope/lens, one deemed by their parents to be more effective.

And most homeschool kids do interact with peers plenty, often more often than in schools. So I don't think that is a problem.

I think there are pros and cons to home-schooling, public schools and private schools. It depends on your child. I worked with a little boy with an attachment disorder and he couldn't handle a regular classroom. He had a very hard time focusing and spent most of his time out of the room. Socializing was difficult for him and he caused more problems than not. He did a decent job when he was one-on-one with someone but could not handle the classroom or even the playground at that point.

There are some kids who do better in smaller settings and some kids who do fine in regular classrooms. I had a friend who home-schooled his son for a period of time - I think it was 2 or 3 years - because he was AHDH and had a very hard time coping in the classroom. He entered back into the public school system when he was in grade 7 or 8, I think. He did quite well, but before she'd pulled him out, he'd been miserable and failing most of his subjects, as much as a 3rd grader can fail, anyway. He said those two or

I also think that there are many things to be learned in school that are harder to learn at home, unless parents ensure their children are involved in extra-curricular activities and places and areas that allow them to socialize. I had a co-worker who ranted and raved about the public school system - bashed it repeatedly and went on and on about how no one had the right to decide what he child learned and what did they know about her child - she was VERY rabid in her beliefs. She bashed everything about the school system and used a method of home-schooling called "un-schooling". All of a sudden, she decided to put her daughter in school in grade six because of late immersion French immersion. Her daughter LOVES school and is loving being there. She's a very social child. Now her Mom just sounds like a big hypocrite for how negative she was about the public school system, and then turning around and putting her daughter in school.

I think it depends on the child and on the parents. There are days I come home from school and swear that when it comes to the middle school years, I'll home school my kids! Also, it's something I might soncider in the begining, because I want to adopt internationally and if I adopt older children, it might take them longer to adjust. Coming to a new country, with a new set of parents, a new culture, a new language, and then being thrust into a school where they don't speak the language just isn't fair to the kids. I think I'd want some time home with them, esp. as they'll likely have come from a very different schooling system.

As I said before, there are pros and cons to both. It depends on the child and on the parents.

The Internet has made leaving the house for music, movies, books & clothes shopping unnecessary. How much you wanna bet school is gonna be the next thing people won't have to leave home to do. Already people can take college courses online. Pretty soon school buildings won't be needed. Kids will be taught online. I think homeschooling is the wave of the future not because it's a better alternative but because that's just the direction headed with computers. School buildings will become obsolete. What do you think?

I check on the homeschooling chapter we attended as kids now and then to see what material they'se using now and found out a lot of the stuff is online now. Personally I preferred it when we had a correspondance course with them, they'd mail us the books, I'd mail in the tests and they'd mail back the results. But this could also be why homeschooling is becoming more popular every year if a lot more of it's being done online than it used to be.

Of course...if you ask the kids in my town, the public schools have already gone to that, when they do bother actually having class, they're all done on the computer, which for them I think is doing more harm than good because they've learned you don't need to write because of computers, and you don't have to spell because computers have spellcheckers.

I suppose the possibility exists for on-line homeschooling to become the primary method of education but I don't think it's going to happen "pretty soon."

I think what will keep that from happening is the fact that people approach homeschooling with very closeminded ideas. Maybe if school was actually about education, it would happen. But school is basically a babysitter for parents. Kids don't really get the best socialization OR education there; it's just a place to dump them.

MAYBE college might go exclusively online, but not regular schooling yet. Even though the kids would probably be better off, America is still too closeminded to consider it. They're still too stuck in the past.

Probably, eventually, but not for quite a few decades. The physical experience of schooling is something that's too entrenched in our culture for society to easily accept virtual learning.

I keep saying I'm going to take online classes, but they really don't appeal to me like it prob. should. I'd much rather be in a classroom with a live teacher.

Maybe. I'm imagining something like teachers "performing" lessons, while kids tune into it from their computers at home. But that's years from now. I don't think most people will be content with such a thing now.

I actually thought about homeschooling my girls on the computer but I think it's important for socialization. I am currently taking online courses and am a junior studying forensics.

sailorlover wrote:

I actually thought about homeschooling my girls on the computer but I think it's important for socialization. I am currently taking online courses and am a junior studying forensics.

Unless they are taking classes online, they'll have time for socialization AFTER they are done with their lessons. It isn't as if they're socializing much when they're sitting in their desks, zoning out on their teacher's lecture. I'd argue homeschooled children can socialize MORE due to the lack of useless "homework" and more flexible hours.

Socializing. Not socialization. If you leave it up to the schools to socialize your children, you're doing them a disservice. A five-year-old shouldn't be learning cultural norms and proper behavior from other five-year-olds. That's like the blind teaching the blind.

I think the main thing getting in the way of mass virtual schooling is the NEA. Schools are big business.

2xy wrote:

... A five-year-old shouldn't be learning cultural norms and proper behavior from other five-year-olds. ...

Actually, isn't that called "childhood?"






(wait for it)

"Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly." -Deborah Markus

I think that good parents would help their children to acquire those skills BEFORE sending them off to school. Children should learn how to behave by watching and/or listening to people who know how to behave (i.e., responsible, ethical, kind adults).

Quote :

Shocker! On his own, judge demands home school student IDs
Issues order for attendance officers to provide names, addresses

Posted: April 07, 2011
8:12 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WorldNetDaily



A Mississippi state judge has issued an order to public school attendance officers in his judicial district to provide the names of all home schoolers there, prompting alarm at the Home School Legal Defense Association, which fights for the rights of homeschooling worldwide.

The order apparently is because the judge himself wants the information, as there appeared to be no case, motion or dispute prompting the request.

The HSLDA, which was alerted by its members in the 13th Chancery Court district in Mississippi, where Judge Joe Dale Walker issued the order, immediately sought and obtained a stay of the order from the state Supreme Court.

Have you considered homeschooling? For a very limited time, get 19 FREE gifts when you subscribe to "The Old Schoolhouse" magazine!

The judge's order noted that the "cause" for the order "came on for hearing on the court's own motion," but the HSLDA said apparently no hearing ever was held – and the order is the only document in the court file.

It also has no case number, the organization said.

Spokeswoman Beverly Kraft of the state court system told WND that the issue as it was presented to the state Supreme Court was a "confidential" case about which no documents, no information and no explanation was available.

The HSLDA said the order is highly unusual and could provide a "chilling" effect on not only home schoolers but any group whose members' names may at some point be demanded by a judge.

The organization said the state Supreme Court ordered a stay in all proceedings in the case in which Walker demanded the names of all home schoolers in his district. The order instructed Walker to explain to the higher court by April 18 exactly what's going on.

There was no explanation for why the judge issued the original demand for home schoolers' information.

"At this time it is uncertain how the Supreme Court will proceed after receiving Judge Walker's response," the organization said. "It may simply issue an order disposing of the case or may require legal briefs and/or oral arguments before issuing a final decision.

"In any event, we will keep members advised of the status of the case."

An attorney for the group, James Mason, told WND that in the years he has worked with homeschool issues, he never before has seen such an order.

"It's a very chilling prospect," he said. "The plain fact is if judges start behaving this way – [targeted could be] people who attend churches or synagogues [or other groups]."

"That would have a chilling effect on freedom of association, and the exercise of other freedoms," he said.

A judge in a similar order could demand the names of patriot organizations, tea party groups, Democrat groups, GOP groups or even labor, teacher or parent groups.

HSLDA said that after attendance officers at the schools got the order, they notified homeschoolers, enclosing a copy of the judge's order.

"The letters cited the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and asked the families to notify the attendance officer by April 8, 2011, if they intended to initiate legal action to prevent release of the protected information sought by Judge Walker," HSLDA said.

The notice from the HSLDA to its members said the judge also wanted the addresses of all home schoolers in Smith, Lawrence, Covington, Simpson and Jefferson Davis counties.

Walker's order listed no parties but only said "RE: HOMESCHOOL."

"We believe that Judge Walker's order is an inappropriate use of judicial power," said Michael Farris, chairman of HSLDA.

The state's court website says chancery courts "have jurisdiction over disputes in matters involving equity; domestic matters including adoptions, custody disputes and divorces; guardianships; sanity hearings; wills; and challenges to constitutionality of state laws. Land records are filed in Chancery Court."

The chancery courts also are given jurisdiction in juvenile matters in counties that have no county court.

Source:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=284529

So he wants to know where all the homeschooled kids are living for a reason he will not tell anybody....my that's very Nazi-ish of him.

Without an order or a case number or anything I think this judge is overstepping. I understand a need to know which kids are in public/private school, which are being homeschooled & the ones who are neither. Those are the ones who slip through the cracks. But homeschoolers also have a right to not be unreasonably interfered with without sufficient cause. In a lot of states you have to file with the states department of non-public education who has this information but I'm not seeing a reason for this judge to have access to it at all.

CeCe wrote:

Without an order or a case number or anything I think this judge is overstepping. I understand a need to know which kids are in public/private school, which are being homeschooled & the ones who are neither. Those are the ones who slip through the cracks. But homeschoolers also have a right to not be unreasonably interfered with without sufficient cause. In a lot of states you have to file with the states department of non-public education who has this information but I'm not seeing a reason for this judge to have access to it at all.

And what more he apparently refuses to GIVE a reason...what, he thinks just cuz he's got the robe and the gavel he's got a right to intrude on whoever's life he wants to for his own idiotic little pleasures?

I'd more than likely be a working mother, so home schooling probably wouldn't be that realistic. I'd have to hire a tutor, and if I'm going to hire a tutor, then I may as well just send them to private school.

If you want your homeschool to be like school, that's probably right. A good number of parents who homeschool do so because they don't agree with the school model. If I wanted my kid in school, I'd send him to school. We sort of prefer an approach that's more organic and closer to real-life than school is. Also, my kids have been homeschooled for over ten years and I've nearly always held employment. I know quite a few homeschooling families where both parents work, or where there is only one parent (who works).

About the judge in the article....it's not likely his order will stick. Homeschoolers in Mississippi are already required by state law to notify the school district of their intent. The superintendent should have records. There is no reason for a judge to have them, unless it's for pure harassment. I'm fairly confident the HSLDA will put him in his place. They're good for that much, if nothing else.