There's very little accountability in homeschooling. Very little. Add to that the fact that not every parent is equipped to do it. You can't teach something you don't understand yourself. Some can do it with success but the lack of accountability is phenomenal.

But I still don't see a mad rush after this for people to homeschool. These days parents have to work. Some of them more than one job. That's just reality.

Again, you can break out all the alleged "cons" but at the end of the day, they just aren't ringing true for the large majority of homeschoolers. For one, not all homeschooling is just "the parents teaching it" to begin with. I had access to certified professors. My parents hardly had to do any teaching. My grades were fine (The school gave 'em, not the parents). (And so far, they've held up pretty well in post-high school) Secondly, I say there is plenty of accountability. (Especially in my state.) I had to take the same standardized tests all my classroom peers had to. I also don't think public schools have much in the way of accountability at all, hence why our kids graduating from public schools are largely unprepared. (Especially compared with many homeschoolers)

Yes, it's a fair point that not every parent is equipped to do it. And those parents will have to decide for themselves what is right for them. Like just about everything, it's not for everyone. But so what? For those who want to make it work, it works beautifully. Nobody is saying everyone has to be homeschooled. See, the problem with every argument against homeschooling seems to be rooted in prejudices that don't ring true in the large majority of cases(ie the parents aren't eqipped to teach it, homeschoolers have almost no accountability) and irrelevancies (not every parent is able to do it).

Will there be a mad rush? Probably not. And that's a good thing. Mad rushes are typically emotionally-driven decisions that aren't thought through well enough. Homeschooling is something creeps up due to the cumulative effects of a failing system. Since no one event triggers it, it's increase in popularity won't be something that just shoots up. It'll happen little by little as schools continue to fail and people begin to realize that most of the arguments against homeschooling have almost no validity unless they give them it.

I know many homeschoolers and we were all very accountable, probably more accountable than the "classroom schooled" peers I knew. For all our parents supposedly didn't know, we seem to have learned quite a lot. For all the field trips we supposedly took to the mall, we got our work done. When all is said and done, if you are really homeschooling, none of these false assumptions really apply to you. A lot of the people who just don't send their kids to school might try to say that they are "homeschooling" but there IS a difference between actually doing it and just using it as an excuse to lounge around. The latter is NOT homeschooling, period.

So again, the shooting probably won't make people make a mad dash for homeschooling. It'll just be another check against a school system that already has a lot of checks against it, and is only going to get more. THAT is just the reality. Homeschooling happens, and is happening more and more, and is not happening only among the 1%ers. It's regular middle class folk like my family. For all of these arguments against the IDEA of homeschooling, it seems like reality just doesn't pay any attention to any of them.

Forgiveness Man wrote:

Again, you can break out all the alleged "cons" but at the end of the day, they just aren't ringing true for the large majority of homeschoolers. For one, not all homeschooling is just "the parents teaching it" to begin with. I had access to certified professors. My parents hardly had to do any teaching. My grades were fine (The school gave 'em, not the parents). (And so far, they've held up pretty well in post-high school) Secondly, I say there is plenty of accountability. (Especially in my state.) I had to take the same standardized tests all my classroom peers had to. I also don't think public schools have much in the way of accountability at all, hence why our kids graduating from public schools are largely unprepared. (Especially compared with many homeschoolers)

Yes, it's a fair point that not every parent is equipped to do it. And those parents will have to decide for themselves what is right for them. Like just about everything, it's not for everyone. But so what? For those who want to make it work, it works beautifully. Nobody is saying everyone has to be homeschooled. See, the problem with every argument against homeschooling seems to be rooted in prejudices that don't ring true in the large majority of cases(ie the parents aren't eqipped to teach it, homeschoolers have almost no accountability) and irrelevancies (not every parent is able to do it).

Will there be a mad rush? Probably not. And that's a good thing. Mad rushes are typically emotionally-driven decisions that aren't thought through well enough. Homeschooling is something creeps up due to the cumulative effects of a failing system. Since no one event triggers it, it's increase in popularity won't be something that just shoots up. It'll happen little by little as schools continue to fail and people begin to realize that most of the arguments against homeschooling have almost no validity unless they give them it.

I know many homeschoolers and we were all very accountable, probably more accountable than the "classroom schooled" peers I knew. For all our parents supposedly didn't know, we seem to have learned quite a lot. For all the field trips we supposedly took to the mall, we got our work done. When all is said and done, if you are really homeschooling, none of these false assumptions really apply to you. A lot of the people who just don't send their kids to school might try to say that they are "homeschooling" but there IS a difference between actually doing it and just using it as an excuse to lounge around. The latter is NOT homeschooling, period.

So again, the shooting probably won't make people make a mad dash for homeschooling. It'll just be another check against a school system that already has a lot of checks against it, and is only going to get more. THAT is just the reality. Homeschooling happens, and is happening more and more, and is not happening only among the 1%ers. It's regular middle class folk like my family. For all of these arguments against the IDEA of homeschooling, it seems like reality just doesn't pay any attention to any of them.

I have to agree, very much. It always annoys me when people act like you are an idiot if you're not a certified teacher. With so many people who basically say 'parents aren't to be trusted to teach their kids anything because they're too stupid', gee, why don't we just let the government reassign all of our kids to their teachers and the teachers can become the new parents and take them home with them? After all if parents don't know anything, that only makes sense as being the best option for the kids, doesn't it?

And, something else to consider, if you have a driver's license, does that guarantee that you're a safer driver, that you KNOW what you're doing? I guess not or so many people wouldn't be losing their licenses when they get arrested for reckless/drunk driving. So why does being a certified teacher automatically mean you know what you're doing there either? We've got tens of millions of people in this country who can't read above a 4th grade level, and they didn't all come out of homeschooling.

My neighbor kids were taught by their professional, certified, know-what-they're-doing teachers that they don't need to learn math because they will ALWAYS have a calculator to give them the answers for them. That they don't have to know how to spell because they will ALWAYS have spellchecker do it for them. That they don't have to do anything that's hard because if they don't already know it, they're never going to get it and they shouldn't bother trying. So because this is a certified teacher do we say 'well she knows better than parents who would actually make them study and read'?

Another thing that annoys me is when people will take one kid who is homeschooled and is a little offbeat and say 'see? What did I tell you? They're ALL exactly the same', and this makes them worse than the worst of the public school kids. The Delaney sisters said the same logic was applied to them being 'colored' 100 years ago in that "You've got to be as good as white people, in fact you've got to be even better, and the first time you make a mistake they say 'see? What did I tell you?'"

So then the question becomes which one child from public school should we take to apply the same logic to in that they're all alike, the Columbine shooters? How about the girl who put rat poison in her classmates' milk? I mean if one homeschooled kid speaks for all of them, as some people like to pretend they do, then we should take a look at all the failure public school kids and see why they're held in a higher regard. Nobody ever looks at those teenagers who kill their classmates and say in regards to all public school kids 'see? They're ALL alike', but if you don't do exactly what everybody else does and you're homeschooled, then you're all a bunch of clones that can't ever be different from one another.

And I also have to agree on how SAYING you homeschool is different from DOING it. When I was a kid, my neighbor's stepmom said she was homeschooling their kids, and what were they doing? These were teenaged kids she had decided one day to take out of school, or they got kicked out, one or the other, and they spent their day coloring pictures. At that time I was 10 years old and every day had 20 new spelling words, 20 new math problems, a new chapter in history, science, geography, grammar, and art history. So both our parents SAID they were homeschooling us, but does that make one like the other? Of course at that same time, the next year actually, my neighbor, who was 10, went back to school after summer break and they spent a whole week 'learning about the virtues and how to be nice to each other'. Give me a break, and give us our taxes back.

Gotta agree Super. It seems like so many so-called "educated" people throw logic right out the window when criticizing homeschooling.

Forgiveness Man wrote:

Gotta agree Super. It seems like so many so-called "educated" people throw logic right out the window when criticizing homeschooling.

That reminds me of a joke from Hee-Haw last week, after a skit in the school house with Minnie Pearl, one of the leggy blondes said 'the problem with education is it takes away all desire for learning'. Unfortunately true in a lot of cases.

Not really. Most parents work during the day and don't have time to do that home school mess. What I see happening as a result of this is schools coming under scrutiny for ensuring better security on the premises.