Sunday, February 13, 2005

HOMESCHOOLING REPORTS

I am on a discussion list that has been comparing public schooling and home schooling. Below are a few posts from it:

From America (1):

You are quite correct to point out that some parents do a poor job of home schooling. However, all the recent research indicates that on the whole the students best prepared for college are first the home-schoolers, next the parochial school students, and last (and least!) public school students.

Also, our friends in the United Kingdom should realize that very often in our public schools very young children are iintroduced to age inappropriate materials designed to sensitize students to the problems of gays and lesbians. Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddie's Roommate are designed to indoctrinate children between the ages of six and nine with the progrmmatic demands of gay activists. Please understand that I believe it is essential to treat all people with dignity and respect and this includes those who have same sex attractions. However, I believe that parents have the right to teach their children that it is morally wrong to act on these inclinations if that is what their religious beliefs are. Those I know who teach their children at home do not introduce issues concerned with homosexuality until the early adolescent years and then they balance instruction on the need for respect for all with their own traditional attitudes about sexual morality. Children in the public schools are often led to believe that their own parents are behind the times because they oppose same sex marriage on moral grounds. Yes, we do have in this country hate mongers who exploit people's fears and ignorance. But there is a serious threat coming from the ultra-liberal crowed who would like to classify even the most civil language used to teach traditional sexual morality as "hate speech". I believe that this will in the near future pose a very serious free speech problem as it already has in certainly European countries (the Lutheran minister in Sweden jailed for reading biblical passages on homosexuality).

Home-schooling in America was started by evangelicals (many in the South) who objected to the secularist agenda of the public schools. Not all of these were opposed to teaching evolution, but they wanted a faith perspective integrated into their children's education and this was not possible in the public schools. The next wave of home schoolers (and these were found in almost all fifty states) were Catholics who objected to the hostility toward the teaching of John Paul II and the authentic interpretation of Vatican II that had become very common in the parochial schools. After the nuns abandoned the educational forms of service to become advocates for the poor in the inner-cities, the religious education establishment went with watered-down touchy-feely catechesis. Lots of radical feminism (God as mother, agitation for ordination of women, married priests, gay friendly sex education, etc., etc.) and an odd spin of the conservative social doctrine of the Church in the direction of liberation theology (a sort of baptizing of Marxian socialism!). Catholics who were sympathetic to the reforms of Vatican II and who oppossed the radical feminist spin to every area of doctrine started educating their children at home.

Finally, the third wave of home-schoolers were parents who had no particular ideological objections to the secularist framework for public schools. However, they strongly objected to the "dumbing down" feature of so much of recent public school instruction. When I graduated from grade school, I had already studied (in a parochial school) world and American history and geography, mathematics through pre-algebra, fundamentals of English grammer including the art of diagramming sentences, an expose to famous American writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Baltimore Catechism, health and basic science, spelling all eight grades, and civics (study of the U.S. Constitution and the structure of our states government and the various types of local government. When I taught in a high school shortly before retirement, there were very few students who had graduated from public schools who had basic reading skills, most were clueless about what adjectives, adverbs, etc. were, and none knew what a continent was or how many there were! I used to ask them what century the first world war was fought in and they often replied the thirteenth! Many did not know that the Crusades happened after the birth of Christ! They were unable to name a single figure from the Protestant reformation. Now you see why some parents threw up their hands in desparation and said to themselves "We can do better than this!"

Finally a true story on the state of Education at any rate in parts of California. I knew a young girl from California. Not a stupid girl, and as it happens a re-enactor (her period was Renaissance). At one time I showed her a map of America and she asked:

"What's all that stuff at the top?"

I said "That is Canada."

"Oh," she cried. "I thought Canada was a little place."

I promise I am not joking - and neither was she.




From America (2):

A relative of mine put his 7 year-old daughter in the Cleveland public schools temporarily until he could find a Catholic or private school. Everybody knows the schools in most every urban area are rotten in every way. I guess he figured how bad can it be for only a few weeks. Well, within a couple weeks his daughter was nearly gang-raped by some of her fellow "students." Three or four of the little monsters had her pinned to the floor with her dress up over her head with one or two others standing-by ready to do the deed. Luckily, someone intervened in the nick of time. Keep in mind, we're talking about the second grade. Anyway, when he took the matter to the school officials it was a farce. He said the first person he was directed to was some hippy-type white women whom he suspected was under the influence of some kind of narcotic. Not getting any satisfaction from her, he took the matter to the principal, whom was a black women. Immediately, she tried to dismiss the whole thing as just kids playing and when he insisted that it was a sexual assault, she called him a racist at which point he realized the situation was hopeless.

To make a long story short, he ended up putting the kids in a Catholic school for a couple years and eventually had to leave the area when bullets started whizzing through his yard. Now he lives 80 miles away in a rural area and commutes two hours each way to his job.

Maybe some people unfamilar with the situation will assume I'm exaggerating, but the truth is there are many details I left out.




From America (3):

I attended public schools in the southern USA in the years just after forced racial integration. EEK, talk about scary and violent! I was so terrified at times that I would come home practically begging to be schooled elsewhere. My liberal parents who were either ignorant as to how bad things had gotten or just didn't care told me that this experience was good for me and I had to learn to get along with all classes of people because that's what the real world was like. What a bunch of garbage.. in the real world you can call the police if someone hurts or threatens you, when you're a young child in public school you are absolutely helpless.




From America (4):

The area in which I live has one of the highest concentrations of homeschooling families in the country. In the county which I reside, and the county next to it, there is a group called LEAH (Loving Education At Home), which shares books, knowledge, and the parents help each other out, especially when getting to the high school levels of curriculum, since some parents are especially good at teaching chemistry, they might teach a class of high schoolers on that, or math, etc...

The largest complaint in the area about homeschooling is the public school teachers who whine about lack of socilization among home school pupils....That is not always the case. In the LEAH groups, they have sports teams, field trips, and plays they perform. I think all in all, it's pretty well rounded. I know a young lady who was homeschooled throughout K-12, and she is one of the most mature teenagers I could ever meet. She is academically brilliant as well. Her lessons didn't take her 8 hours a day to do...Often, by the senior year (she graduated at 17), she needed to only spend about 1.5 hours a day on her studies to get them done. Tells us something about the time and effort wasted on public schools, doesn't it? If I am especially gifted at history, and I do the reading on my own, and the study, and do well on the tests, I still need to sit through 45 minutes of history class a day. If I am poor at math, I only get 45 minutes, which I have to share with an entire class room of kids, a day, then, after my 8 hours in a class room, seek out extra help elsewhere. If I'm poor at math in homeschool, there is the chance to spend more time on that subject, which I think can inspire more confidence in the student when they do well.




From America (5):

My niece had home-schooled her four children from pre-school to 7th grade. They are currently in a private, Christian high school whose emphasis is on a classical education (as well as theology, the Bible, etc.). Her kids are so far advanced compared with the mainstreamed kids of the same grade/age. They also perform full-length Shakespearean plays and their knowledge--no, mastery-- of math, history, science, literature, languages, and all the classics is exemplary.

I don't denounce mainstream education; most of it is very good. But having seen my niece's kids, their home-schooled friends, and so many more, I'm convinced it goes beyond the "very good" into the realm of "excellence."

These young people are no shrinking violets who have been sheltered from "real life" at mainstream schools. Quite the contrary; they are debaters, athletes, and budding politicians, actors, artists and educators-in-the-making. Needless to say, I'm rather proud of my niece and her children for the level and quality of education they have absorbed. And they are not "geeks!" These young people shine. They are happy, grounded, humorous, kind, sensible, and feel a real duty to serve mankind.

I only wish more kids could be home-schooled, even during just the early years, to get a foundation and firmer foothold on what it's like to be successful in other diverse arenas besides the traditional academic or athletic fields of endeavor in our schools.




From America (6):

There is a teacher in Santa Barbara, California, that I am seeking to have dismissed. She is currently on "administrative leave" due to the complaints of the parents of nineteen children she abused to tears to "teach them a lesson about discrimination." The way she treated these children would be prosecuted as a "hate crime" if her victims had been black. She marked them with tags that designated them as "inferior," which got these children signaled out for tormenting.

The children in Santa Barbara at Monroe Elementary are only in the third grade, but this sort of nonsense goes on at the university level as well, starting with "freshmen orientations" that are basically just indoctrination with "guilty White" speeches and "exercises" that actually constitutes hate speech and violates federal anti-hazing laws.

If young people manage to survive all this while in school, they can still be subjected to it at the corporate level in mandatory "sensitivity training" or "diversity training" seminars employees must attend to keep their jobs. I am a woman who would be terrified of men taught gender sensitivity with the tactics used to guilt-trip Caucasians. A perfect gentleman before the seminar could actually be a danger to women after he left, which is precisely why I think these "anti-racist" propogandist are nothing but skinhead factories.

Nothing that demeans another human being is acceptable to me. I am just sick of these double standards that require us to believe that whether or not an act is even considered racist depends on the race of the racist.




From England:

In Britain most children who have the basic State "education" - including those who go to what are laughingly termed "Universities" - cannot spell or write a sentence of gramatical English. They are, however subjected to hours of propaganda of a nature that any one before the 1960s would have termed extremist and also to a "socialisation" process which consists essentially of de-civilising them and encouraging them (often on pain of physical intimidation) to adopt the language and manners of the lowest classes.

If home schooling taught them nothing at all it would at least keep them out of these State hell-holes.

A friend of mine who was a teacher sent her chilren (at the cost of re-mortgaging her house) to a private school which she knew to be very bad (that was all she could afford) just t keep them out of the sort of hell-hole schools she herself taught in. She was frequently insulted, assaulted and robbed by pupils. This was an ordinary South-London black-majority comprehensive. There are hundreds of them. If your school is not like that, lucky you! And luckier your pupils who have no choice about being there!

My dearest friend taught English for years at a University and attests to the abysmal standards of pupils direct from the State school system. Many Universities now spend part of the first year doing remedial English of the sort that would have been done in primary schools in the 1950s.

Some of the books that chldren are made to study at A-level contain language, incidents and attitudes that no decent parent would permit in the house.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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