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Originally Posted by fatboy
Absolutely. School boards are elected officials and school boards routinely have public meetings to determine the curriculum. Additionally, some parents are very vocal in what their kids should be taught (as they should be). Unfortunately, these "recommendations" are adopted without regard to the children's broader educational needs.
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In here parents can also help in the making of the curriculum, but the basis for it (ensuring the fulfillment of the education objectives) comes from the state. And I believe each curriculum has to be approved by the National Board of Education. I think it's very stupid to let parents influence the curriculum very heavily since, as you pointed out, parents can have a very narrow view. And they can be pretty stupid too...
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To be fair, many homeschoolers cite the existence of these disciplines in the curriculum as their reason for homeshooling.
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This I understand perfectly. If the only school in your area is a creationist school, I would encourage you to homeschool your child.
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It's pretty close to that. Sex education is a hot issue. Many school systems won't even allow the discussion of contraceptives. Drugs get the same attention; we're still living in the Barbara Bush era of "Just Say No".
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There seriously is something wrong with the US. You can't talk about sex in school but you have metal detectors in fear of guns. Not right....
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Adolescence is a difficult and confusing time. Information from your well-meaning parents and your uninformed friends gets pooled into an amalgam of conflicting data that ends up causing more confusion.
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True, but I don't agree with your point of public schools bombarding the kids with false information. But again, I'm talking about Finland.
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It's more common sense than research, but perhaps a few names off the top of my head will help you understand where I'm coming from:
Grover Cleveland, James Garfield, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Eli Whitney, Michael Faraday, William Lear, John James Audubon, Wilbur and Orville Wright, John Moses, Peter Cooper, Oliver Heaviside, Elias Howe, Cyrus McCormick, Guglielmo Marconi, Sir Frank Whittle, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Robert Frost, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Willa Cather, Agatha Christie, William Buckley Jr, Margaret Atwood, Noel Coward, Alex Haley, Sean O'Casey, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louis Armstrong, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yehudi Menuhin, Irving Berlin, William Blake, Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Andrew Wyeth, Ansel Adams, Frank Loyd Wright, George Patton, John Paul Jones, General Douglas MacArthur, John Barry, Matthew Perry, John Pershing, David Dixon, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, Benjamin Franklin, David Crockett, Thomas Paine, William Jennings, Henry Clay, Alexander Hamilton, Sam Houston, Charles Evan Hughes, Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Mary Wallker, Mary D. Leakey, Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Blackwell, Jill Ker Conway, Gloria Steinem, Frances E. C. Willard, Sandra Day O'conner.
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Still, consider how many truly great people are products of homeschooling. Then consider how many truly great men and women have come out of public schools.
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Nice list. But what's it supposed to tell us? I can also produce thousands of names of succesfull/wise/famous/etc. people that have gone to public schools. And many of those names on your list are pretty old (e.g. Mozart) and the education system and public schools have changed since. Besides, Mozart wasn't actually a social wonder according to history books. Should we say that homeschooled kids do after all lack the proper social skills? Your list proves nothing. Talented and succesfull people come from public schools as well as from homeschool environments.
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That's just in the last few centuries. We could go further back and talk about Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, etc. The point is, "homeschooling" used to be the norm. Public education is the "new" thing that, as yet, hasn't really proven to be more effective than the original.
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Effective in what sense? Education-wise, for the economy or what?
And so what if homeschooling used to be the norm. The society has changed a little bit from the time of Aristotle, so I would leave him alone.
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I agree that kids need to make mistakes. But I don't want one mistake to be their last. You should take a walk down the hallway of a typical American public school. Then decide if that's the best place to learn social skills.
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Ok, it may be that in the US if you want to get a proper (and safe) education for your kids you have to teach them yourself. But this does paint a pretty gloom picture of the American society. The lack of proper education would also explain why so many voted for Bush.....
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By nature, children have a need to imitate and to identify with others. When a child is put into an age-segregated classroom, he begins to develop identity based on the feedback from the group of peers he's been placed with. He is constantly getting feedback about his appearance, behavior and values and is strongly influenced to adopt the beliefs and behaviors of the peer group. Children who don't "fit in" are likely to be ridiculed, ostracized or worse. People become like whom they are around - and the pressure to conform is intense. The sense of identity these groups provide can be so strong that the child may be forced to choose between the values of the group and your values - all in the name of "positive socialization".
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The pressure can be pretty intense, that I'll admit. But I believe that if you have raised your child properly, he will have nice values and will be smart enough to choose his friends carefully. The basic values are, after all, quite hard to change. This is of course a generalisation, but still more or less true imo.
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When children spend time with their parents in a nurturing, accepting environment, they usually learn to enjoy being with all age groups, including their own. As children are allowed to associate closely with their parents in daily routines of work, play, rest, and conversation, they learn to share responsibility and to feel that they are an integral part of the family team. They feel a sense of self-worth, of being needed, wanted, and depended upon. By watching and imitating others, children learn politeness and to express themselves confidently with good conversational skills. Before the child is forced to deal with the effects of peer pressure, he is able to develop confidence and independence in his thinking and values. This leads to children who are both productive and self-directed in their activities.
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And this does not apply to children going to public schools? Sounds like the myths travel both ways...
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As children are allowed to associate closely with their parents in daily routines of work, play, rest, and conversation, they learn to share responsibility and to feel that they are an integral part of the family team. They feel a sense of self-worth, of being needed, wanted, and depended upon.
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This can all be achieved also without homeschooling. The above described situation should exist in every home. And what has a sense of being needed has to do with what school the kid goes to? Do homeschool homes have also more love in them?
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In a blind study of both homeschooled and public schooled children (Self-Confidence in Home-Schooling Children - John Wesley Taylor, Ph.D.) homeschooled children scored significantly higher on the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale (a widely accepted measure of self-esteem) than did their public schooled counterparts. Larry Edward Shyers, Ph.D., reported in his 1992 dissertation, Comparison of Social Adjustment Between Home and Traditionally Schooled Students, that homeschooled children display fewer problem behaviors than their public schooled counterparts when playing with mixed groups of children from both educational backgrounds. Other researchers concur with these conclusions. Among them are M.M. Delahooke, in a 1986 doctoral dissertation, Home educated children's social/emotional adjustment and academic achievement: a comparative study and L. Montgomery, in the study,The effect of home schooling on the leadership skills of home schooled students.
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Ok, there are a few studies. So let's say the results of those studies are accurate (that homeschooled kids are more succesfull than publicly schooled kids). Does the studies take into account the difference in the amount of pupils in public/homeschools? And do they exclude the possibility that there may be many other variables affecting these kids. Maybe the families choosing homeschooling are more wealthy, live in better areas, have healthier values to begin with etc. Maybe the kid from a homeschool environment would've done exactly as well in life had he gone to a public school?
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I'm glad you were educated somewhere else, but the fact is that American schools are prisons, some even have gates, guards, and metal detectors.
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This is sad, that's all I can say. And maybe if I lived where you do my views on this issue would be very different.
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I say again, you create the dress code. If you want your kid to do his school work in a coat and tie, make him wear a coat and tie. Once you send your child to public school, his dress code will be dictated by the latest MTV video.
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Shouldn't children be able to create their own dress code? Do you also determine the type of music they are allowed to listen to?
And whether you want to decide about their clothing or not, they still live in the society with MTV and all the trends. They will see them in the streets, in tv etc. and make opinions based on this.
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Also, nobody homeschools through college. Do you believe homeschool children will continue to believe they can wear pajamas anywhere they want? The business community is starting to take note of the decline in the quality of high-school and college graduates. Not just their poor reading, writing, and speaking skills but also their apparent lack of interest in their own hygiene.
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Of course I don't believe that they will continue to believe that.
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And everyone is off at the same time. Florida in the summer is brutal, and even more so when you're standing in line with 1,500 other sweating, whining, fat, rude, obnoxious people whose (largely public schooled) kids are demanding this or that, and their overworked, overstressed parents are caving in just to get the spoiled brats off their backs.
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Here the vacations are distributed throughout the summer.
You make the public school kids and their parents sound like some mythological monsters 
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I say "according to them" because the study was not an observational study but a questionnaire. I could have just as rightly said, "according to public schooled children, they are not as civicly minded and happy in their relationships". Here's the study I'm quoting: http://www.nheri.org/modules.php?nam...howpage&pid=27
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Brian D. Ray, the author of the book is the President of NHERI (National Home Education Reseearch Institute), so I wouldn't call this study very objective. That's a bit like me doing a research on my amazingly good looks. You do know that studies can be manipulated in many ways to show the desired results?
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Well, first of all, it doesn't take all that much to become a public school teacher. Most get their degrees in 2 years. There is little requirement for maintaining your education in your particular field and there is little to no accountability for being able to actually teach what you know.
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It takes 4 years in Finland. One more thing to explain the differences between our public schools systems.
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The next attack was made on this theory of "socialization". This too has be laid to rest with studies that only recently have come to fruition (due to the long time necessary to see the effects).
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Again I wonder if the possibly better social skills of homeschooled kids any way related to the actual homeschooling part, or just the general healthy upbringing. I'd think that certain kinds of families choose homeschooling and that it could be one thing distorting the results of these studies.
And when you talk about social skills remember Mozart.... ;)
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Now, is it because the parents of children who have a predilection toward a homeschool environment are more likely to be homeschooled? I don't know. I do know that it works for me. Academically, my children are 2 and 3 years ahead of where they would be in public school. Socially, they are as comfortable around adults as they are around other children. They are responsible, caring, happy individuals who understand far more of their world and its inhabitants than many adults.
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I didn't say homeschooling couldn't work for anyone. Did I? Well, didn't mean to. But you make it sound that homeschooled kids are absolutely smarter, more talented, have better social skills, are more active, have better manners etc. That I don't buy. It may work for some but I don't believe that it's a miracle factory from which every kid comes out as a potential nobel prize winner. But since I don't have any first hand experience of American schools this is a bit difficult discussion, because our views are apparently based on quite different experiences.
So maybe you're right. Maybe the public education in the US really is so bad that the parents need to refer to homeschooling or private schools to get their children educated to the same level as children from other countries. And in that case there should be lot more crucial problems for the government to be worried about than Saddam or gay marriages.
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Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
-Mark Twain
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