Chad's thoughts on homeschooling...

For a while now I've been wanting to post some thoughts on Homeschooling. I was thinking I would take a few minutes to do that this weekend. But as noted by Becca below, we had 9 kids this weekend. Needless to say, I didn't get around to blogging. Had to wait for a few minutes break at work today to get to that ;)

Well, one of the lessons I've learned about homeschooling and 6-9 kids in the house depending on the day... is to take advantage of any time savers. For this blog post, I decided to use the power of the internet to copy and paste some excellent thoughts on homeschooling from James Dobson and Focus on the Family. Spending 5 minutes instead of 30+.

So here we go. Copied from http://www.focusonthefamily.com/:



Question to James Dobson:

Many of our friends have begun to homeschool their children with seemingly positive results. My wife and I are considering this possibility as well but aren't quite sure. What are your views on this educational option? What would you do in my shoes?

Answer:

This is a subject on which my mind has changed dramatically over the years. There was a time when I subscribed wholeheartedly to the notion that early formal childhood education was vital to the child's intellectual well-being. That was widely believed in the '60s and '70s. I no longer accept that idea and favor keeping kids with their parents for a longer time. Dr. Raymond Moore, author of School Can Wait55 and an early leader of the home schooling movement, had a great influence on me in this regard.

The research now validates the wisdom of keeping boys and girls in a protected environment until they have achieved a greater degree of maturity. Not only do they benefit emotionally from that delay, but they typically make better progress academically. That's why home schooled individuals often gain entrance to the most prestigious universities and colleges in the country.56

What parents can teach young children in informal one-on-one interactions surpasses what their little minds can absorb sitting among 25 age-mates in a classroom.You asked what I would do in your shoes? If Shirley and I were raising our children again, we would home school them at least for the first few years!

Question:

Don't you think home schooling might negatively impact the socialization process? I don't want my children growing up to be misfits.

Answer:

This is the question home-schooling parents hear most often from curious (or critical) friends, relatives, and neighbors. "Socialization" is a vague, dark cloud hanging over their heads. What if teaching at home somehow isolates the kids and turns them into oddballs? For you and all those parents who see this issue as the great danger of home education, I would respectfully disagree — for these reasons.

First, to remove a child from the classroom is not necessarily to confine him or her to the house! And once beyond the schoolyard gate, the options are practically unlimited! Home school support groups are surfacing in community after community across the country. Some are highly organized and offer field trips, teaching co-ops, tutoring services, social activities, and various other assistances and resources. There are home-schooling athletic leagues and orchestras and other activities.

Even if you're operating completely on your own, there are outings to museums and parks, visits to farms, factories, hospitals, and seats of local government, days with Dad at the office, trips to Grandma's house, extracurricular activities like sports and music, church youth groups, service organizations and special-interest clubs. There are friends to be invited over and relatives to visit and parties to attend. The list is limitless. Even a trip with Mom to the market can provide youngsters with invaluable exposure to the lives and daily tasks of real adults in the real world. While they're there, a multitude of lessons can be learned about math (pricing, fractions, pints vs. gallons, addition, subtraction, etc.), reading labels, and other academic subjects. And without the strictures of schedule and formal curricula, it can all be considered part of the educational process. That's what I'd call socialization at its best! To accuse home schoolers of creating strange little people in solitary confinement is nonsense.

The great advantage of home schooling, in fact, is the protection it provides to vulnerable children from the wrong kind of socialization. When children interact in large groups, the strongest and most aggressive kids quickly intimidate the weak and vulnerable. I am absolutely convinced that bad things happen to immature and "different" boys and girls when they are thrown into the highly competitive world of other children. When this occurs in nursery school or in kindergarten, they learn to fear their peers. There stands this knobby-legged little girl who doesn't have a clue about life or how to cope with things that scare her. It's sink or swim, kid. Go for it!

It is easy to see why such children tend to become more peer dependent because of the jostling they get at too early an age. Research shows that if these tender little boys and girls can be kept at home for a few more years and shielded from the impact of social pressure, they tend to be more confident, more independent, and often emerge as leaders three or four years later.57
If acquainting them with ridicule, rejection, physical threats, and the rigors of the pecking order is necessary to socialize our children, I'd recommend that we keep them unsocialized for a little longer.




Homeschool - Overview:

Introduction
She innocently asked, "So, where do your children go to school?"
Of all casual questions one teacher could ask another, this one always creates butterflies in my stomach.
"Well, uh, my wife and I tutor them," I say. Then I try to think of something to change the subject. But I never think of anything quick enough.
"Tutor them?" she might say, squinting her nose and ruffling her brows as if I had held a cockroach up to her face. "You mean, you home school them?"

These situations inevitably lead to an hour-long apologetic on why we educate our kids at home. This should not surprise me. Home schooling is still unusual and a bit radical. Teachers and others in education — or in any field, for that matter — naturally question new, innovative practices.

But home education is not so rare anymore. Twenty years ago there were roughly 15,000 home-schooled students in the United States. By 1991 the U.S. Department of Education figured there were 350,000 home schools in the U.S. and 40,000 in Canada. Today estimates stretch over 2 million home schools nationwide.

The world of education has had to adjust to this exploding movement. There are many magazines and newspapers for home schools, numerous home-school curriculum distributors and countless home-school network and contact groups. Why do parents choose to teach their children at home?

Social Reasons:

Home-schooling parents believe that children can learn basic life skills — working together, sharing, showing respect for others — without formal classroom experience. The students can develop social graces by being involved in community and church activities.

Pat Farenga, publisher of Growing Without Schooling, a catalog of home-school resources, has written: "Group experiences are a big part of education, and home schoolers have plenty of them.

They write to us about how they form or join writing clubs, book discussion groups and local home-schooling groups. Home schoolers also take part in school sports teams and music groups [in nearby public schools], as well as in the many public and private group activities our communities provide. These young people can and do experience other people and cultures without going to school."

Our children have many church and neighborhood friends. Our community has a home-school contact group where they often get together for field trips and outings that give our kids more than enough socialization. We have gone on camping trips, facilitated soccer tournaments, traveled to speech and debate tournaments and coordinated educational classes.

But not all socialization is necessarily good for a child. Certain social plagues like drugs, alcohol, premarital sex, violence and gangs damage a child's growth and development. A home-school environment frees the child from the increasingly persuasive peer pressure prevalent in many schools.

The positive side of socialization — building respect and communication, getting along with and relating to others — is wonderfully fulfilled in a home-school setting. Behavioral psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner concluded that "meaningful human contact" is best accomplished with few people.


Reasons for Home-Schooling:

While some parents may fear a home-schooled child would lack academic success, studies show otherwise.

by Chris Jeub

Academic Reasons:

While some parents choose to teach at home to promote positive socialization, others make the decision for academic reasons. Any teacher will agree that the smaller the class size, the more learning takes place. The one-on-one tutoring atmosphere is the healthiest, most productive and most progressive atmosphere for a student's academic success.

Take a look at some famous home-schooled students: Andrew Carnegie, Charlie Chaplin, Agatha Christie, Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Florence Nightingale, Woodrow Wilson and the Wright brothers.

People ask how parents — especially parents with little or no post-secondary education — can teach children every discipline available to public school students. Although I have my degree in English, am I qualified to teach math or science to my kids? My wife has a business administration degree; is she able to teach the language arts? With sufficient information and dedication to the task, we certainly are.

Even if parents do not have an abundance of academic training themselves, they can find solutions to fill the gaps. For example, many home schools will team up with other home schools to exchange skills. I traded skills with another home school family by going to their house once a week to teach English to three of their sons. In return, their mom taught algebra to my two oldest daughters.

Most communities today have enrichment classes students can sign up for much like college students sign up for electives. Here in Colorado Springs, the High Plains Christian Home Educators support group has hired a full-time administrator who coordinates 60 classes for over 200 students. Cooperatives such as this are becoming more popular as home schooling grows.

But education is more than individual academic courses — more than teaching what the teacher knows or training students in a particular skill. It is actually passing on a worldview. Separating the disciplines — as if English had nothing to do with math, and science was unrelated to civics — promotes a fragmented vision of true education.

A wise man once said, "A good teacher teaches himself out of a job." When I taught English in the public schools, I was not merely repeating what I learned in college; I was teaching students to love and passionately engage in the language arts. And when I taught, I integrated all disciplines — history, science, social studies, even math — into my lessons. Treating any learning discipline as separate from others misrepresents real life. Real life is interdisciplinary, and home-school instruction lends itself to a cross-disciplinary approach.

Students have the freedom to pursue their interests and strengths. They also receive the attention needed to improve skills in their more difficult learning areas. Pat Farenga explains the benefits of solitary reflection: "Children, like adults, need time to be alone to think, to muse, to read freely, to daydream, to be creative, to form a self independent of the barrage of mass culture." Granting such a time presents a struggle in traditional schools, but home schools allow such freedom.

Family Reasons:

Home-school parents see their role as the single most important responsibility they carry. The family helps to build strong minds and healthy personalities.

Along with strengthening the family and setting firm foundations for kids, home-school parents discover some personal pluses. Wendy and I are now much closer to our kids, more in touch with their needs and feelings. Alicia and Alissa attended public school through first- and third-grade respectively until I completed college and Wendy returned home from full-time work (to unpaid full-time work).

While Alicia's grades were excellent, she needed to be home for security's sake. Alissa, on the other hand, loved the social contact at school but struggled in basic writing and reading skills. Wendy and I noticed positive changes immediately in Alicia's esteem and Alissa's academics. They both become more confident. I can only accredit this improvement to the loving and affirming atmosphere of the family.

Religious Reasons:

It is no secret that public schools have not taken religion seriously. Fear of church and state laws keep some schools from even mentioning the influence of religion in American life. Instead of recognizing religion as part of our culture, civil liberties organizations have fought hard in the courts to make religion illegal in the classroom.

This has been too bad. With the exclusion of religion many parents have felt compelled to go elsewhere — even to their own homes — to teach their children basic moral and religious truths to provide a well-rounded and liberal education.

Teaching our kids at home frees us to handle religious questions and spiritual training without worrying about public school issues. While some districts restrict the discussion of religious influence in history, literature and science, home schools can incorporate the impact of spiritual beliefs into all curricula.

Mutual Respect:

Home schooling is being recognized by professional educators and by society as a reasonable educational option for families. Some public schools and private schools have formed alliances with home education groups and have adopted programs that suit the home education lifestyle.
Home schooling is not so much a rebellion against public schools as it is a choice made on social, academic, family and religious grounds. As educators and home schoolers get to know one another, we will see that we share many of the same goals for our children.