Some Thoughts on Homeschooling
We're looking at homeschooling and as a result, everyone and their dog has an opinion.
Typical Objections
Homeschooled kids are weird/socially awkward.
Yes, they're weird. I had a good go at interacting with some homeschooled kids earlier this week while looking at possibilities for our own. They're not weird because of homeschooling, however. They're weird because of their parents.
The parents of kids who I saw having the most problem interacting with others were generally fucked in the head themselves. They prevented the kids from freely playing with other kids, prevented them from making small decisions like where to sit or whether they should sit together or not, had all their items (pens, lunch, etc) compartmentalised, and spent an hour hugging them in preparation for a separation of a few hours. For the record, the kids were participating in a one day camp that mixed kids from regular schools, religious schools, and homeschooled. By the end of the day the kids were interacting freely with other kids outside their circle of siblings.
Parents aren't qualified to teach.
Image source (Black parents are sick of kids left behind and are instead homeschooling)
I agree and disagree with this one. I agree that someone who barely finished highschool themselves, never read a book that's meant for adults, never travelled or opened their mind to anything in any way, and has the vocabulary of a washing machine shouldn't be teaching anything past kindergarden. Probably shouldn't be doing that either. You need to know the multiplication table yourself to teach it. Just because you got through life working at the local supermarket doesn't mean little Billy won't want to be an engineer.
I disagree as well-educated, rounded individuals are more qualified than most teachers. Teachers typically have a bachelors. Some have an associates. There's no reason that a similarly-educated parent can't self-learn the material typically part of teacher training or, if they're keeners, go through the teacher's college program themselves. More so, the coursework and educational material is available from myriad online and local resources. You don't need to sit there yourself writing up lesson plans every day.
Homeschooling is fucked up; they don't teach their kids anything.
There are some parents who think that pushing their bullshit social ideals on kids is smart. They're found everywhere in the world. They're the ones who pull girls out of school to take care of siblings and who think that not teaching their kids how to read magically empowers them to take on life. They're the ones who indoctrinate kids into following some extreme political ideology that only makes sense to them and only because they're complete and total morons.
Those people aren't us and they're not you. Those people are themselves. No two people are the same no matter what CNN and other scaretactic drivel sources tell us. Just because buddy down the street is filling his kid's head with all sorts of crap, largely inspired by that time a decade ago when he was doing 40 over and got pulled over by a cop of a different race than his own, doesn't mean you're going to do the same thing.
The kids play video games all day.
Don't let your damn kids play games all day. End of problem. Schools are phasing out homework (there is no point in assigning anything if the kids aren't required to complete it on time) as is; it's not a homeschooling issue.
Reasons to Homeschool
Politically-charged lessons/teachers
WTF is that? No matter who you voted for, this is messed up. Image source (I read the article and encourage you to do the same)
I'm not letting some retard who gets all their information from whatever television station they prefer to infuse politics into Cat in the Hat and teach that to my kid.
No homework
Idiots don't think ahead. What's going to happen to kids when they need to do work at home? Image source (not reading this)
I blame parents on this one. What's the point in assigning homework when the snowflake parents take on a crusade against the teacher and the schoolboard because their little Susie is too stressed out and has no time for Netflix?
Discovery education
We don't live in Aristotle's times when you actually had to discover everything. Shit's been discovered already. Teach it as it is.
Common Core
Those who don't know estimate, those who do calculate. Image source (no I didn't read it)
This one is a doozy. If anyone has ever held an office job, they'll instantly realise that this is math for the moron in the workplace who forgot everything they learned in school and are trying to compensate. Little Jenny doesn't need to create Google metrics if she's going to be a computer scientist. She doesn't need to produce guesses because to code an algorithm you need concrete numbers. And what if she wants to be a plumber? It's either 1" or it's not. This entire program trains kids to be web marketers and other low-paid workers that will soon be extinct. As a result, all parents are constantly scrambling to find schools that haven't been infected with the Common Core virus.
Teaching obedience
Teachers we spoke to all identified a kid as a "problem child" when the kid did any of these. The kid either required medication, to be singled-out as needing extra help, or removal/separation from other kids.
- talking when not spoken to/not permitted
- talking a lot
- answering every question
- asking too many questions or telling stories
- getting up
- fidgeting
- finding boring shit boring
- multitasking (coloring while listening)
- not focusing during long periods of boring shit
- looking out window
- medical issues (deaf, eyesight, etc)
- anything that makes them visibly different than most kids (dwarfism, hearing aid, attire, etc)
- dyslexia
- some non-existent disorder
- language/skills gap (difficult time reading)
- and pretty much anything that a kid may do that would interfere with reciting the lesson plan as timed and intended
If shit's boring, it's boring. Everyone knows its boring. It's boring to teach and it's boring to sit through. That's just how it is. Penalising or making kids feel like shit for the natural reaction of boredom is absurd.
*Just to clarify, we're not on the whole "resist authority" bandwagon.
Homeschooling Prep Challenges
Image source (This isn't what library time actually looks like)
Here are some we've dealt with to date.
Homeschooling is expensive
One of the parents must always be at home with the kid. That means income opportunities are lost. Books must be bought, classes attended, things like library times attended, you get the drift. Losing one income entirely or cutting two in half is difficult, both mentally and monetarily.
You can't control your kid
The kid needs to have a degree of autonomy even when always around the parent. We're careful to ensure that happens even at the early age. The kid needs to have the same capacity for making decisions, good or bad, and the freedom to carry them out as they would when unsupervised at school. That means you have to get over your own mental issues.
Dealing with other parents
Taking your kid out for library time means you'll run into crazy parents who don't want to let their kids associate with yours or anyone else for that matter. Their child is only allowed to play with them in an environment/program meant for interaction between kids.
Nagging from family members
Repeatedly telling family members to fuck off gets old fast.
Title image source Good resource, take a look.
Homeschooling is the better option for children, as there is so much brainwashing and propaganda pushed onto young and impressionable minds, through public schooling. Plus, the public school system sucks in most low-income areas, with the children learning very little. Public school teachers in the States aren't paid that well compared to other professions such as nursing. Sadly, some teachers view this as low incentive to do a great job, thus doing the bare minimum in order to keep their position.
Their earnings probably depend on the state. I recently stumbled on an article that said that the SJW twat who labelled Cat in the Hat as racist makes 100k+.
Public school is shit, here in Washington they are teaching gender studies in kindergarten as of this year. no student left behind has graduated many kids that cant even spell the street name around their own town. It has been proven over and over that home school children are way smarter then their public school counterpart.
I agree with what you said about how the weird kids have weird parents. If you home school and your kids never leave the house and don't go out and play with kids in the neighborhood then they will become anti social but that is all kids even the ones in school. homeschool is not t blame for that it is lack of interaction with other children when they are young. even often before they even enter school.
Children quickly lose the joy of learning new stuff because of school. they go into kindergarten wanting to lean everything in the world and by 3rd grade all the joy of learning has been stripped from them. It is a place so people learn to follow rules and to accept authority. Learn to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day and parrot facts without any real understanding of the subject. It is a place where they try to make people think like computer when that's not how our brains work.
With access to the internet I don't see any reason to send kids to school. If you instill the joy o learning and give them access to the information they are interested in they will learn more in a week then they would a year in a class teaching the same thing. you might even be able to find a website that covers your states mandatory curriculum.
Offten it comes down to time, a lot of parents couldn't survive without a place to send their kids for 8 hours a day so they can go to work to survive another week. If you have the ability and time to home school Then do it
IMO at least.
That school paper was pure SJW propaganda. #6-7 are pretty bad too. im interested to see the rest of the questions on that school test. also good for the parents to send that back to the teacher like that.
Yeah we see the results of no fucktard left behind at work. Most people can't fill out a form to save their life. They can't write a sentence, not to mention a paragraph.
You're right on about losing the joy of learning. You can't learn if you can't ask a question and if you do you end up with a moronic answer even a 6 year old knows is pure bullshit. The whole purpose of going to school is to become conditioned to attend a facility for the entire day and sit there in the same spot with only the pre-designated breaks. There is literally nothing taught for the most part except how to sit in one spot. The parts of the curriculum that are worthwhile aren't presented in a way where they make sense. Math is pretty handy for calculating Steemit rewards but who gives a fuck why Jack went and gave two apples to Jill?
On the internet now that I've been looking into education it's a double-edged sword. A lot of online courses are designed by money-grabbing morons. Anyone can publish a course out of his asshole. But I think that'll change in time.
Yeah its quickly changing and their should be a lot of online schools pooping up and we should start to see competition for price and quality soon. Anything has to be better then public schooling at this point.
I'd like to see educated teaching professionals start up online schools. Some PhD's or something. Not just a bunch of fuckwits with 'alternative ideas'.
anything has to be better then gender studies in kindergarten like public school is here in Washington.
"One of the parents must always be at home with the kid. That means income opportunities are lost. Books must be bought, classes attended, things like library times attended, you get the drift. Losing one income entirely or cutting two in half is difficult, both mentally and monetarily."
I didn't look at homeschooling from this perspective but you're right. Homeschooling is so time consuming and it takes time away from opportunities to earn money, whether through a home-based business on the internet or at a traditional 9-5 job. And there is no compensation for homeschooling, other than the satisfaction of knowing that the child is probably gaining a better shot at life and teaching the child how to think outside the box. It's definitely a sacrifice but probably well worth it.
No compensation or financial assistance at all. Same as if you get stuck taking care of your elderly parents; screwed up the creek without a paddle.
As someone who has been homeschooling for 10 years, I love this post. You are right on so many counts. Yes, kids need autonomy and if you don't give them that, they will be weird. I recently put my oldest into the public school system for high school and can tell you he is more socially adjusted than many peers. Hovering parents in the public school sector are a reality. Also, I am appalled at the lack of homework. He works harder for his extra-curricular activities than for his academics. (He is at a very highly rated public school.) He is having fun. Learning? Not so much.
There's some retarded no-homework movement prompted by loudmouth morons who either couldn't help their kids with the homework or projected their own incompetent anxieties onto their kids. Some parents are such idiotic pieces of crap that it amazes me how they managed to reproduce with anything other than their pillow. They tell the kids what to feel, what to say, where to look. We see both homeschooling and regular schooling parents at various places. Only those with special needs kids are sane or at least try to raise their kids in a sane manner. That's just my observation.