Home Schooling

[TromboneAl]

My neighbor has been unable to sell his house, and has started renting it. The first renter is a single mom with four kids. Although she is nice, she is quite flaky. Make that 100% flaky. Just one example: she is going to have some kind of a ceremony to eliminate the curse on the house because the owner used lava rocks in the garden. She seems totally serious about this.

Anyway, she is home-schooling the kids. All the kids are cute, and the two boys who are around 10 seem very smart and precocious. But she's got her hands full just keeping the kids out of trouble. I'd guess these guys are essentially not getting any education.

 

[Leonidas]

Buy one of these and plant it in your garden.

 

[Notmuchlonger]

Common knowledge T AL lava rocks carry curses.

 

[Texarkandy]

...
Anyway, she is home-schooling the kids. All the kids are cute, and the two boys who are around 10 seem very smart and precocious. But she's got her hands full just keeping the kids out of trouble. I'd guess these guys are essentially not getting any education.

Well, with home schooling you just never know do you.

Perhaps they are learning nothing as re: traditional academics or anything else useful.

Perhaps they are learning academics way beyond their public school peers.

And perhaps they are getting a unique alternative education that is not academic-centered, but will facilitate them to go on and lead successful and/or very happy lives as adults.

In any case I agree with the ruling of the Texas Supreme Court on home schooling which is that the Texas Constitution creates an obligation on the part of the State to provide for a public school system, but creates no obligation upon the citizenry to avail themselves of it if they choose not to.

The only legal obligation of a home-schooling parent in Texas is to send an annual notice to the local school board that they are educating their child at home. The State cannot force a citizen to comply with any particular "state approved" curriculum, hours of instruction, grading system, methods of instruction, etc. (or even divulge to the State what their curriculum is)

Now that's what I call "Liberty". I've no doubt there are some on here who will disgree with me (& the Texas Supreme Court) and call it something else -

I suppose we could discuss it, but the thread would then need to be moved to the Soapbox!

 

[HFWR]

I briefly flirted with the idea of getting my teaching certificate, but after considering the +/- 150 kids I would have to "teach", day after day, I reconsidered...

Class! Cl-aaaass! SHUT-UP!!
Thank you...

Sister Mary Elephant

 

[ERD50]

she is going to have some kind of a ceremony to eliminate the curse on the house because the owner used lava rocks in the garden. She seems totally serious about this.

Oh man, great quote from one of those inflicted with the curse:

These are actual quotes from former Big-Island vacationers:

I picked up a small piece of lava somewhere, (we are rock and crystal collectors), never dreaming of what might come. Since then we have lost half of our retirement savings....

Tell Congress, we don't need no stinkin' bailout! Just get everyone to PUT THE ROCKS BACK!

-ERD50

 

[Nords]

My neighbor has been unable to sell his house, and has started renting it. The first renter is a single mom with four kids. Although she is nice, she is quite flaky. Make that 100% flaky. Just one example: she is going to have some kind of a ceremony to eliminate the curse on the house because the owner used lava rocks in the garden. She seems totally serious about this.

Well, around here it's taken pretty seriously or the parks would soon be stripped bare of lava.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence for the curse. For example, ever since we returned our lava we've been protected against white elephants and land sharks.

Anyway, she is home-schooling the kids. All the kids are cute, and the two boys who are around 10 seem very smart and precocious. But she's got her hands full just keeping the kids out of trouble. I'd guess these guys are essentially not getting any education.

Hard to tell-- they may be giving themselves one heck of an education!

When our kid was a toddler I got a little concerned and did a lot of homeschooling research. It's not for every kid, and not every adult is up to the task, but there's just no double-blind control study method that can figure out the best way. Here's a scary thought: for all you're able to tell, those kids at home may be doing far better than if they were in school.

 

[donheff]

The only legal obligation of a home-schooling parent in Texas is to send an annual notice to the local school board that they are educating their child at home. The State cannot force a citizen to comply with any particular "state approved" curriculum, hours of instruction, grading system, methods of instruction, etc. (or even divulge to the State what their curriculum is)

Now that's what I call "Liberty". I've no doubt there are some on here who will disgree with me (& the Texas Supreme Court) and call it something else -

I suppose we could discuss it, but the thread would then need to be moved to the Soapbox!

This is a tough one Tex. I support home schooling but I also support state imposition of minimal curriculum standards. Liberty for the parent can be oppression for the child. What if the parent's belief is that boys should be taught the 3 Rs but girls should be taught to shut up and cook?

 

[W2R]

I seriously thought about home-schooling when my daughter was little due to poor academics and gangs in the schools in that particular school district. Instead, we sent her to a private kindergarten, which cost a lot of money ($5,500 was a lot for kindergarten in 1983!). I was still thinking of home schooling off and on and wondered how we could keep up with those gargantuan tuition payments.

But then, my ex took a new job and we moved to Texas and to a great school district. Also, I began to realize that my daughter was benefiting from normal school experiences which helped her to learn to interact socially with others, to raise her hand in class, stand in line, and things like that. She already knew most of the curriculum, but that isn't all that a child learns at school. So we sent her to public school instead of home-schooling.

In retrospect I am really glad things worked out that way, because I think home schooling would have driven me absolutely, totally nuts. At the time, I didn't care and just wanted her to have the best education possible. But hey, I deserve a good life, too.

 

[maddythebeagle]

Make that 100% flaky.

maybe you should invite her to post here then

 

[FinanceDude]

My neighbor has been unable to sell his house, and has started renting it. The first renter is a single mom with four kids. Although she is nice, she is quite flaky. Make that 100% flaky. Just one example: she is going to have some kind of a ceremony to eliminate the curse on the house because the owner used lava rocks in the garden. She seems totally serious about this.

Anyway, she is home-schooling the kids. All the kids are cute, and the two boys who are around 10 seem very smart and precocious. But she's got her hands full just keeping the kids out of trouble. I'd guess these guys are essentially not getting any education.

I think a single mom with 4 kids would be flaky BECAUSE of the kids.............

 

[FUEGO]

T-Al,

You should tell your neighbor lady that she can never remove the curse of the lava rocks. Tell her they ground up the lava rocks and used them as soil supplements for many years and that it would be impossible to ever remove them from the yard.

 

[Texarkandy]

This is a tough one Tex. I support home schooling but I also support state imposition of minimal curriculum standards. Liberty for the parent can be oppression for the child. What if the parent's belief is that boys should be taught the 3 Rs but girls should be taught to shut up and cook?

If that's how they want to raise their kids, I'm fine with it - who am I to impinge on anyone else's liberty to raise their kids as they see fit as long as no kids are being physically/psychologically abused or mutiliated. What business has the State to come into my home & tell me what I have to teach my kid? That's not freedom.

At least Texas does require 12 years of education (home, public, or private) unlike most other states.

Heres some interesting info from 2004/2005 I found:

Only three States have 13 year requirements:
(mandatory Kindergarten?)
NM, OK, VA

Nine States have with 12 year requirements are:
AR, GA, CA, FL, HI, OH, TX, UT, WI

Eight States require 11 years:
DE, MD, SC, MS, TN, KS, MN, OR

Sixteen states require only 10 years:
AZ, IA, KY, MA, MI, NH, NJ, NY, RI, SD, WV, WY, LA, ME, NV, WA,

Fourteen states require only 9 years:
AL, AK, CO, CT, ID, IL, IN, MO, MT, NE, NC, ND, VT

(Curriculum requirements I expect are all over the map!)

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

It is tricky. Not many kids realize they might enjoy being a great engineers, or carpenters or artists, or whatever until they are exposed to it in school. If the home-school parent isn't careful to provide a very broad exposure including fields they themselves may not be equipped to teach well, a lot of potential for happy and productive lives could be lost.

I agree that the parents' values and philosophies are going to be there with or without home-schooling. Also, if the public system failed to provide competent teachers, or couldn't maintain a safe environment for my kids, or systematically and repeatedy inflicted values that were contrary to my own, I'd consider changing schools or, in desperation, home schooling at least until high school.

Funny how this was never even an issue when I raised my kids. I'm glad they good good educations in public schools in Wisconsin (paid for handsomely by high property taxes).

 

[tangomonster]

Can you videotape the lava curse-removing ceremony for us? I can't imagine what that would be like! It could be a YouTube sensation.

 

[FUEGO]

I'm thinking about starting a new career as an expert lava curse remover. Should be a nice contrarian industry during this economic slowdown we are currently in.

Feng shui is out, now lava curse removal is in!

 

[Bestwifeever]

When I think of homeschooling I go all the way from the kids who win national spelling/geography/arithmetic bees and go to the Ivy Leagues to the sad story of Andrea Yates, the homeschooing mother in Texas who drowned her five kids. And homeschooling families don't have to report test scores like public schools do, so it's impossible to compare their overall success vs. the public schools.

I think it would be harder to homeschool than to just send the kids off on a bus every morning, if one were really going to try to educate children at home. But it's probably easiest of all to let everyone sleep in and do whatever they want all day. That would be an unusual child who would be able to combat that lazy education, I would think.

Maybe during the lava curse removal ceremony Al will see the children engrossed in the process and working on cultural studies and experiments as part of it.

 

[Frugality_of_Apathy]

Regardless of how superstitious she is it's pretty silly to assume all lava rocks are being shipped in from Hawaii when there's plenty of lava flows in oregon, washington, and california.

I don't know how beneficial public school was for me. Forced socialization with the illiterati might be good training if you want to get along in prison some day, but not so much for the work environment.

Apparently home schooled kids on average outperform all of the national averages on standardized tests like the ACT an the SAT. Homeschooling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I'd take wacky parents over no child left behind. At least with homeschool the kids aren't going to have to waste half of their childhood waiting for the willfully ignorant to learn by osmosis.

 

[Texarkandy]

.... And homeschooling families don't have to report test scores like public schools do, so it's impossible to compare their overall success vs. the public schools. ...

In Texas - other states differ. I understand some have varying degrees of oversight (intrusion?) by the local school district in terms of grades, curriculums, attendance, etc.

I think it would be harder to homeschool than to just send the kids off on a bus every morning, if one were really going to try to educate children at home. But it's probably easiest of all to let everyone sleep in and do whatever they want all day. .....

I think in most situations it's easier for parents who want to be lazy to just pack their kid off on the school bus to the local public school (be it good or bad) every morning - then they are out of their hair all day.

I'm guessing most home schooling parents actually care greatly about their kids' education and overall well being - or they wouldn't bother.

There are exceptions to every rule of course.

 

[Bestwifeever]

I don't think most home schooling parents are at all lazy, Tex--I'm sure most of them put a lot of time and thought into deciding to pursue it. And I don't think it's an easy job.

In Illinois there is no testing required for home-schooled children (and that could be a good thing or a bad thing, since a lot of public schools are perceived as teaching toward test scores) so there really is no way at least within our state to compare results, apples to apples.

 

[HFWR]

Feng shui is out, now lava curse removal is in!

After we get rid of the rocks, let's start on the lamps...

 

[Notmuchlonger]

After we get rid of the rocks, let's start on the lamps...

Why you never sat and zoned out on a lava lamp eating Doritos? Memories..

 

[Nords]

The thing I really like about homeschooling is that (most of the time) the child learns how to learn, not just how to socialize with the rest of the collective and be fed the material for next week's test. They learn how to do for themselves, not just pester the teacher what questions they should study for.

OTOH I know a couple homeschool kids who would've been better off anywhere else. The best that could be said is that they're extremely motivated to strike out on their own, they're very creative, and they shrug off adversity. They know they have to make life work because there's no way they're goin' home again.

Our kid keeps coming home from (public) school getting brainwashed into impossible projects by hyperagressive glory-seeking teachers. "I want to spend spring break replanting Kaho'olawe. I'll have to give up my part-time job and quit taekwondo, I'll have to go to training every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning for the next five months, I'll have to swim off the outrigger canoe with my supplies in a trash bag on my head, we dig the holes with C-4, and they'll work us like dogs on leashes. But I'll be saving the 'aina and it'll look great on my transcript!"

Or "Our Russian foreign-exchange student seems to be having a really good time here. I want to be a foreign-exchange student for my first semester senior year, and then I'll apply for college during my second semester after I get back. It'll look great on my transcript!"

Or "I want to take AP U.S. History next year. It doesn't have anything to do with my goal to attend an engineering college, the teacher is called a "Dementor" by her students-- to her face-- and her class barely has a "C" average because she works them three hours a night and 10 hours a weekend. They're miserable & stressed out, they have no social lives, and they're failing their other classes, but I enjoy learning history and it'll look great on my transcript!" Took us six months to deprogram her from that one and we had to threaten the teacher to accompany us on a little visit with the principal.

And so on... because she's been institutionalized most of her life, it never occurs to our kid that she could wait until she's in college or until she's on a Navy deployment or until she's a civilian on her own and then just go do her own thing. No, she has to do it with the classmates in platoon formation after practicing holding hands & singing Kumbayah for a few months. Can't really hold her at fault-- she's just a product of her environment.

Whenever she kvetches about school a little too much, I offer to let her drop out and attend Dad's Homeschool. Cheers her right up. Or at least she stops complaining...

... a lava lamp eating Doritos?

Dude, next time you see a lava lamp doing that, save some of those pharmaceuticals for us!

 

[TromboneAl]

I can easily see both sides of this issue. In theory the idea of "perhaps the parents know better than the state about how to give a good education" is a good one.

But in practical terms, I have come face to face with some issues. Certainly I don't know the entire situation (I'm just making conversation here). I've seen:

1. Pretty much zero interaction with other kids. They are in the house all day. They seem a little starved for attention from outsiders.

2. There's no way she has time for any real schooling. These kids are all over the place. Conversation:

Kid: We're both ADD!
Me: You guys seem OK to me.
Kid: You should see us in the house!

3. They had an assignment of writing a recipe and making it for me. I'm not familiar with how well a fourth grader should spell, but I'm guessing "Put in the ovn for 5 sacins" indicates a problem.

California's low regulation approach to home schooling may be letting them down, and they might be behind the eight ball when they grow up.

 

[FUEGO]

3. They had an assignment of writing a recipe and making it for me. I'm not familiar with how well a fourth grader should spell, but I'm guessing "Put in the ovn for 5 sacins" indicates a problem.

Nope, that sounds about on par for fourth grade. Here on the right coast, my nephew wrote on his Christmas wish list that he wanted a "Remoken Troll Car". He was in fourth or fifth grade at the time. I gave him a dictionary instead.