maevele | for the record

Inspired from some shit being said elselj.

The reasons we homeschool do not include:

Fear the schools will teach evolution.
Trying to keep the kids away from Godless Influences
Fear of mixing with other races/classes
Fear of not being in control of our kids flow of information
Trying to only give them information from our own point of view/lies and half truths

A small sample of reasons that do apply:

Fear the schools will not be allowed to teach evolution
Lack of Faith in the honesty, integrity and motivations of my government
Trying to keep my children from being indoctrinated with christianity and kyriarchy
Avoiding institutional gender policing
Fear of the government being in control of my child's stream of information

and then there are the actual educational theory based reasons, where my kids learn at their own paces, based on their interests, and without the distractions caused by trying to teach thirty kids with different needs and learning styles with one teacher and one lesson plan all scrambling to just get everyone up to No Child Left Behind, instead teaching self education, and teaching the things I feel are most valuable, such as arts and sciences.

ETA And I should make it clear, I do not judge people for public schooling their kids, because every family has different needs, and I totally respect the work parents who public school do to support and balance their kids education.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mm hmm. Seriously, USian public schools are fucked up.

ZOMG I missed that you were home-schooling. That's awesome -- and hard!

(Also, I can just imagine how weird it is to represent a company that markets to home-schoolers. Cause you'd have to be able to talk with radical flexible people like you, and also with very rigid my-truth-and-nothing-but-my-truth folks like you're disambiguating from above.)

actually there seem to be 2 streams of marketting to homeschoolers. the fundamentalist/flat earth types have their own supply companies. Where there is overlap, ot often errs on the fundy side because they assume liberal homeschoolers can just cherry pick what works for them out from amongst the, um, horseshit.

yeah, we've been homeschooling all along, HQ has never been to school. It's not as hard as I expected it to be.

There are many excellent public school systems in the U.S., though not as many as in the past. It depends so much on where you live.

A major contributing factor to the failure of so many public school systems is the number of children put into private schools -- and these aren't the traditional, for the U.S., parochial schools of various religions. These are competitive, very expensive schools, that are part of the consumerism of the last three decades or so.

Of course, another major contributing factor is school systems that are primarily black and latino, who have traditionally a lower income tax base. There are schools in these systems where parents and teachers and administration have put in heroic efforts and kept standards high, or re-established standards. Alas, also, the heroic efforts have not been enough, too often.

It's really sad.

I also have a completely private opinion about another primary cause of so many public school systems' failures, and that is the growth of "Education" as a separate School in colleges and universities. This one is a hard one to defend, but it seems the more academic teaching teaching becomes, the more trendiness must be invented to change teaching so the facultry in Education depts can publish books and articles and get tenure. I have never been impressed with the calibre of university Education administration and faculty -- which began long ago, when I was a freshman and worked for a while work-study job in one of those depts. - schools. It really concretized when working for a while in another one, while waiting to get the job at Penguin USA, at NYU -- the most expensive school in the country. I felt every one of these people were ignorant, lazy bastards who were on a gravy train.

Love, C.

Not that I thought any of the former, but I do really like your reasons. Mostly I think that it would be way too much work especially since I work outside the home.

I do understand your concerns.

And I should make it clear, I do not judge people for public schooling their kids, because every family has different needs, and I totally respect the work parents who public school do to support and balance their kids education.

I hear ya. Before I went on the Interbutts, I was surprised to hear so much frothing over homeschooling because all of the homeschooled kids I've known have been really well-adjusted and intelligent. In fact, the private school kids ended up being the most obnoxious.

Buuuuut admittedly my experience is hardly the norm.

Most of the homescholed kids I have known have been extraordinarily courteous and well-socialized kids...who also take any given Wacky Conservative Conspiracy Theory as gospel truth. It makes me feel conflicted. These are not the people I want growing up to run the government, but... they're really nice and clearly they're getting something positive that the public school system doesn't seem able to provide.

(This was in a Bible-Belty area -- obviously there are lots of homeschoolers out there who aren't conservative evangelicals, it's just that I didn't know many.)

I hope I can homeschool any future children I choose to have. My reasons are pretty much the same, plus having endured a lot of danger when i went to school.

I didn't know that you homeschooled -- good for you!

I am going to post here a shamelessly selfish self-promotion:

My business caters to home schoolers. Part of my business plan is to create some outreach to homeschoolers once I have my mall store set up (that won't be for a few months as we are waiting on a new roof). When I sold antiquarian children's books at antique shows homeschoolers were a major part of my customer base. I not only sold them what they were looking for, I helped them find wonderful things they didn't know existed, and I did it all with an eye towards keeping the price down for them (such as carrying other 1950s readers than the Dick and Jane -- which they were looking for because they wanted books from that era, and that is all they knew about. Dick and Jane books were selling in the $60 - $150 range; other school books from that era were selling for under $10. I could have sold them one Dick and Jane, instead I sold them many books for the same price; I helped their dollars stretch.)

The name which will be on the door of my store is "Paper Emporium and Teacher's Supplies". The teacher's supplies are all old -- out-of-print titles and out-of-production toys. Also, much other paper, some of it over 100 years old. So, for history classes the customer can purchase contemporaneous documents. Or, for other classes the customer will be able to purchase historical stuff which fits in with that subject. Or, if a customer just wants to save some bucks and find some neat things there will be items as low as $1, all of which would be useful in the classroom.

I will mention that the teachers I have been selling to from my yard sales are ALWAYS impressed with the quality of the stock, the reasonable prices, and the organization within which it is displayed (it helps people find what they want when it is well organized).

So, when you are up in the Dells again perhaps you might want to check out my new store! It will be in the back room of Antique Mall #1 (that is the name of the store; Antique Mall #2 -- also the real name -- is the one by the expressway). Antique Mall #1 is on Oak Street in the downtown Dells, and my store will be in the very far back of the mall where there is a separate room (and I will have the entire room).

Hope this shameless self-promotion was okay! I love working with homeschoolers! Good luck with your experiences home-schooling -- I agree with your reasons!

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