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I have always loved school and am glad that I have always been around other kids. I am not sure how I feel about this court ruling, but I wonder if the judge asked the kids.
I like the questions that Nate asks. My only other addition is to ask if the judge would make a parent stop sending kids to an evolution-hating school run by fundamentalists.
Home-Schooling
Recently, a judge in Raleigh, N.C. ordered three kids who were being home-schooled to attend public school instead. The issue arose in a divorce proceeding where the father wanted the kids to go to public school, and the mother wanted to continue home-schooling her children. I have not had the opportunity to read the case itself, but if you’re interested in reading more, click here.
Apparently the problem was that the kids were receiving a creationist focused education when it came to science. However, the kids were also testing two years above their grade level. So that begs the question, why were they forced to go to public school? I don’t believe in creationism, but it does seem to me that no matter what they are learning, if they are testing two years above their grade level, then home-schooling seems to be working out.
My greater concern, though, is: when is it okay to home-school? The lesson here is that if a judge disagrees with the curriculum, then he can order the kids to public school. Not enough math? Too much math? Not enough structure? Not reading the right books? Cases like these can be slippery slopes.
What do you think? Did the judge make the right decision? Is it okay for parents to home-school their children?
from Nate at The Young Writers Blog: The Only Writing Blog For Young Writers And Everyone Else
Also at The Beach House and Political Teen Tidbits
12 Comments
Home schooling can be great – as long as it is supervised in some way. Many parents homeschool because of the condition of the public schools where they live. Many because of the creation vs evolution controversy. Kids can be homeschooled all the way up to 12th grade. State laws regarding home schooling vary across the country from zero supervision by the state education department to requirements for curriculum approval and participation in the same mandatory testing regimens that exist in the public schools.
When a parent is dedicated and has the time to spend doing this, it can work out very well (most of the national geography and spelling bee champions in the last few years have been home-schooled). In states where the education department cooperates with home-schooling, opportunities are provided for home-schooled children to participate in extra-curricular activities in the regular school system (band, sports, etc).
In some areas, home school associations have sprung up that also help organize mass field trips and other learning and interactive projects so the idea that home-schooled kids are isolated is not true in those states/areas.
This whole thing cannot be answered with simple yes or no answers because there are so many variables.
The public schools don’t like it because it takes away funding (most schools get money based on attendance). They claim that they want parents to be involved – in their literature, at public meetings etc. But when it comes down to a parent trying to get involved, that’s another story.
In Florida for instance, if you want to do a one-hour presentation in a public school you must pay $60 for fingerprinting and a background check. The requirements are even higher if you want to be a classroom volunteer.
Parents are supposed to be included on school site councils – they don’t get meeting notices and after a couple of missed meetings they are removed for non-attendance. And this goes on and on. It is no wonder parents get discouraged.
Most of the parents I know who home-school their kids are doing an excellent job. The kids are excelling in their studies, are usually way ahead of their peers in the public schools, participate in the arts (something most public schools have cut for budgetary reasons) and are generally well-socialized as well. That is not to say there are not people who just keep their kids home and claim they are home-schooling because they disagree with curriculum or because they are just to lazy to get the kids to school (yes that happens). It’s just not one of those things where there is an easy answer.
Homeschooling can be the best education in the world or the worst.
This is a huge experiment going on with a generation of kids. We don’t know how it is going to turn out. I expect fine for most of them, but we are also going to get some “horrors of the homeschooled child” memoirs and stories, too.
I’m sure that the homeschooling was one of the factors in the divorce, with the father against it. The only homeschoolers in my extended family busted up ugly, with the wife taking off to California with another man, saying she never had the chance to be young. I’ve worked with a man who despaired of his wife’s attempts to homeschool the kids, he really worried about their futures, that they were only learning what they liked and was easy for them, and that they were picking up his wife’s math and science phobias. But he saw that the only way to stop it would be divorce and winning custody, which he didn’t want to do.
That said, I work at a college, and audit some of the night school classes. They’ve got homeschooling high students there, who are trying to get some “real” grades and letters of recommendation for their college applications. I’ve been really impressed by almost all of them.
But homeschooling can be a way of deliberately holding a kid back, so that they won’t be able to survive outside of a closed community. It’s what the Amish do, taking kids out of school at 14. They end up without enough education to leave the community.
And those kids in the article would probably be testing two levels above grade level in public school, too.
Woo Hoo! You’ve got TWO post on the Oxdown ten best list today! Congratulations!
I agree that homeschooling can be very good– or not. I had friends who home-schooled their kids, and I’ve known parents of children with disabilities who home-schooled because they couldn’t get the school system to provide the services their children needed. I think it would help to get the school system to do its job right.
Cheers and aloha,
Bob in HI
I think there is more to this case that is revealed to the press and I would assume that it has to do with the divorce and the situation at home then where the children attend school.
To do homeschooling well, you need kids that are willing to work with their parents. Sometimes the kids will pay attention to the public school teacher but not the parents. Without the kid cooperating, there is no decent homeschooling.
I would be lousy at home schooling, and my son would be a lousy home-student. Public school has its problems (too much testing), but is the right place for him.
Clearly there are some topical areas and necessary curricular fields that would need to be taught to home schoolers. They were testing “above their grade level” but was that only in some of the topics? I can’t see how a student learning Creationist Science would be able to do that in the Sciences. A 6000 year old earth? The idea that there is no relationship between species? That the way scientists work is to refer to whether their ideas conform with the Scripture?
I teach basic biology in the University and find that many students who are taught the Creationist approach come in with so much negative baggage about evolution that they have to “unlearn” their HS biology (and even physics). They have erroneous ideas about everything from Scientific Theories to the idea that you have to personally observe events with your own eyes to accept them as valid.
Home schooled kids should be taught a standard of materials taught other students at their (or higher) level- whether it be History, Science, English Skills, Math, etc. They shouldn’t be taught that curses cause disease, that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, or that history is best understood by “signs” in the Bible. They should get a good, broad range of literature…and a taste of the societies in other parts of the world- including non-prosletizing (in either way) views on their culture and religion.
Home schoolers don’t have to worry about No Child left behind or the cost of no child left behind do they?
Kids have to learn science its more than just computers its everything these days its global warming, how disease is spread (food sanitation, child care, poisons kids should avoid) its buying a home in an earthquake zone, or knowing the conditions that cause tornadoes,
Science is Consumer reports how they test products what is the best buy and why. Its knowing the arguments for growing organic crops vs eating factory food. Its metal fatigue and cracks in cement that show the rebar on old bridges.
Its why nuclear power is a bad idea. Its why genetically modified crops are killing bio diversity. Its mercury in coal ending up in Sushi.
God gave man dominion over the world we must understand the world to rule it wisely or we will die.
Glad to see you, Cassie. How goes it?
The danger with home school is the appropriateness of the curriculum. That is very subjective in the absence of clear standards which vary from state to state and district to district. I wouldn’t want children to be homeschooled by a curriculum by the World Church of the Creator or some other wingnut/skinhead paranoid views about education.
Having said that, as long as the material in home schooling covers the material required to graduate, we should be cautious in attempting to censor views we disagree with. On the other hand, evolution is still the basis for biology and geology and as such should be part of any science curricula until we prove otherwise.
Somehow this debate has forgotten the history behind this issue. Yes, I believe in home schooling–every kid should be schooled by his parents in some way or other. But every kid should be REQUIRED to attend a public school.
Public schools were adopted early in this country’s history (in the early 1800s) at a time when the only other democracy in the world–France–had been forcibly suppressed by a reactionary coallition of monarchies and the Protestant and Catholic churches. Public education was adopted in this country in order to insure adequate separation of church and state, to form a cohesive society despite the wide-ranging backgrounds of a growing immigrant population, and to prepare citizens for informed decision-making in a democracy.
Control of education was a major source of strength for the oppressive Puritan theocracy in early New England (they whipped Quakes and killed Catholics) and for the Anglican and Catholic state churches in England and France. In the latter case, our sister democracy had recently been overthrown in large part as a result of the actions of a politicized Catholic Church that controlled education and used it to create ignorant, reactionary, antidemocratic forces. Public education thus became a basic tenet for defenders of Democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Immigration was already a concern in early nineteenth-century America. The country started with a much more religiously, ethnicly, and linguisticly diverse population than we sometimes think. German and Irish Catholics, in particular, were a concern because we were viewed as foreign and too closely identified with hostile foreign powers (I remember that worry as recently as John Kennedy’s election). Germans and Scandinavians couldn’t speak the majority languages and resisted assimilation. Uniform, secular, public education diffused these worries by giving Americans common ground for discussion of public policy.
Americans were also generally viewed as a pretty barbarous and ignorant lot in the early 19th century, particularly in the west of the country, where public schooling began. An educated elector was a much less scarey elector in the eyes of his neighbors.
I think all of the above concerns apply doubly today. The religious groups that want to monopolize the education of “their own” do so for purely political reasons–they want power over their children. That’s not in the interests of the nation–children are raised by their parents, but they aren’t property. They are citizens. We have seen all too well how the fundamentalist education and home-schooling crazes have been exploited to maximize divisions in the body politic. We have all lamented a public discourse that actively disparages public service and the public interest. I’m sure that we have all seen the consequences of ignorant electors.
So home education has its place. Parents should address the real or perceived shortcomings of the public system and should supplement it at home with parental or religious moral wisdom that cannot and should not be handled in a public, state-controlled system. But home schooling does not and cannot usurp the place of public education. Parents should want–and be required–to educate their children as citizens and members of a democratic, egalitarian community.