I have no objection to home schoolers but just don’t sk for money. Why take gratuitous shots at the local school?

I wasn’t taking a gratuitous shot at the local school. It’s just that home-schoolers’ class sizes are so much smaller that other schools don’t stand a chance, don’t you know.

The Home School Legal Defense Association also has statistics on the performance of homeschoolers. To me the most interesting is that the homeschooled children of well educated mothers perform about 10 percentiles better than those in school, but the children of mothers who never finished high school perform about 30 percentiles better than similar children in school. Clearly families that homeschool have other advantages, they usually have two parents and strong community connections so it is hard to draw conclusions. However it gives evidence to support what Malkin says so often: our schools fail those they are meant to help.

The Fraser Institute also has an excellent publication on home schooling available from their web site. I have recommended it to other home schooling parents who have family and friends uncertain about homeschooling. One remarkable thing is shows is that homeschooled children who do little formal schoolwork still out perform their schooled counterparts. Something to help me relax when my homeschooled 15 year old has spent his week sking, building a tree house and e-mailing his friends.

Doug, you can be very nasty when you want to be, but it is par for the course dealing with a person who has a close mind, that filters out knowledge that does not fit in with your ideology and dogma.
Back to home schooling, I wish I had the confidence in the early days to home school my youngest. I too, felt I had no choice but to send my youngest to the local school.
There is two thoughts here. The parents confidence and the less obvious one, where the public education systems, discourages home schooling by remaining silent on the subject.
There is now a great deal of home schooling information available, compared to only 5 years ago. The resources are there, and support for parents who are home schooling, given by the home schoolers. Frankly, I am glad to see it. If I had this information, I may very well have decided to home school, where I knew I would have support from others, where I would be the only one in my small community to home school. There was another factor at play, with my decision not to home school, and sometimes I do regret it for not being brave enough. The forces in my community, would be upset with me, because it would represent one less student in their schools. That was then, and now all home schoolers must register with the local school on a yearly basis, use the provincial curriculum, and get approval on a yearly basis. So my province solve the problem, by including the home schoolers in student population for the local schools, but now has added difficulties and burdens on the home schoolers. That is running two curriculums at the same time, the one that the home schooler is opting for at their own expense, and the provincial one that is force upon them. Of course this is in my province, and other provinces are much better at it, where the education authorities will work with the home schoolers, to ensure their children will meet the standards of admittance to post-secondary education and of course, they are not ordered to use the provincial curriculum, as it is in my province.
In the United States, home schooling has always been an option, and a well known option. This stems from the historical and political values, that parents are the best ones to educate their children. Here in Canada, the words are voice by many in the public education system, but there is no action behind the words. If anything, they make it very difficult for parents to home school, by keeping silent on home schooling for the most part. Add the media, who for the most part do not actively report stories on home schooling, and when they do, it is often with a slant, that strikes of biases and misconceptions of the writer, or interviewer.
What often stops parents are the open and often hard stances toward home schooling, from the local teachers and administration. If my own experience is any indication, re-teaching the lessons at school, in the home environment, has been a trying experience, when I was openly being ridiculed and mocked at the school level. It is hard to stay the course, as I did, when face with such ridicule and mockery from professionals.
I stayed the course, and the local high school teachers are better off for it. I brought to the table, issues that they have seen in their classrooms, to a new level of awareness and understanding. The big issues of low reading, writing, and numeracy skills. The big issues of teaching methodology, curriculum where knowledge is more important, than the skills needed to access the knowledge.
Unfortunately, the teachers at the school, do not hold any power, and are force to follow the dictates of the union, board, the department of education and the ministry of education. Otherwise, there is dire consequences if they should break the pattern.
The teachers have a new respect for home schooling, and they see what I have done at the home, as home schooling,  part time. Without the home schooling that my daughter received, and if it was left up to the school, she would be still in special education, trying to figure out her multiplication tables, or write a sentence that makes sense. The very practices at the home, are the very teaching practices that are look with scorn by the teachers’ unions, and boards.
Home schooling, offers an opportunity for the public education system, to look at the practices that are conducted in most home schools. Practices that are more in keeping, with well research-based practices and common sense, that is sometimes lacking in the public school system because of the completing political agendas.

I think as much preparation and thought should go into the choice parents make on their child’s education as go in to prenatal care.

That parents are incapable of offering and meeting the education needs of their child is another one of those myths spun by some.

Given that we do have our very own homegrown statitics
on the benefits of home-schooling and by the virtue of some provinces offering help(both financial and resources) with little threat to the public system what’s obvious is that homeschooling in Canada is a recognized choice along with some others.

Even some Ontario public school boards recognize the benefits of creating positive partnerships with homeschoolers and ware welcoming them into the schools should they wish to use a facility or be involved i things like spelling bees etc.

When post-secondaries keep a percentage of acceptance spaces open to home-schooled children I do believe their success far outweighs the nattering of naysayers.

It’s now safe to say that the homeschooling choice is yet another true picture of the choices open to parents in Ontario.  The public system is no longer the only game in town, or the best way to meet the needs of all children.

It is fine with me. If the parents are happy go for it. Myself, I would have never even considered denying my daughter the full socializing experience of the public school system and its open inclusive liberal moral socializing influence.

Explain that one Doug: ” the full socializing experience of the public school system and its open inclusive liberal moral socializing influence.”
Inclusive liberal moral socializing influence, includes outright discrimination, biases, against students who do not meet the grade, because of the rules, regulations, and criteria that excludes rather than includes. Do a survey on students perceptions on others who are different from the norm. No matter what, somehow the students think that a person who is blind, in a wheel chair, the dyslexia have lower intelligence than the normal student population. The education system practices it every single day throughout a child stay in the public education system, where being the norm is the higher priority, and the norm is set by the education authorities. Anything that lies outside the norm, are force to rise to the standards of the current norms, regardless of the difficulties of the individual has, using the same materials and resources of the normal students. Quite a less that our students are being taught, intolerance for anything that is different, plus a number of lessons on why it is better to strive for the norm, rather than to excel, and triumph. A good thing that parents of Thomas Edison, or Albert Einstein did not listen to the current education systems of their day, or otherwise as a society we would had to wait a little bit longer, for some pretty nifty technology and earth shattering science theory. Often public school systems, have discriminate as a rule, rather than the exception.
Morally speaking, the public education system do not teach morals in any shape or form, where debate can take place and all facets are discussed, and allowing the students to come to their own conclusions. Just look at a history class, and the material now a days, one would question the obvious slants and biases woven in, where students have no choice but to accept the current thinking of the political ideology, because it would be in their best interests to do so.
There is a problem, when students coming out of the public education system, think that there are too stupid for school, and the other group, who think they are entitled because they think they are morally superior to the other group, because they were never subjected to the same biases and discrimination practices opposed on the stupid group.
And Doug, it does exist and the last place a student learns morals, values that are vital to a society, at least a civil society in the education system of K-12, is tolerance and understanding to all. Homeschoolers for the most part, know only too well what is practice in our schools as morals, is one of their reasons to leave the public education system.
Morally speaking, what is the public education practicing, when they fail to teach all students the skills of reading, writing, and numeracy? Why is it, in our public education system, why we have the majority of students all over the place when it comes to the skills of reading, writing and numeracy, and blame is place on the parents, rather than on the education authorities?  Skills that must be taught, and not skimmed over or omitted as often is the case. Why are parents being told, it is our responsibility to teach our children to read, write and be skillful in numeracy? Yet, the school authorities have seen fit to give us the responsibility for the essentials of duties that schools had previously taught, but are now in charge of being the gatekeeper of morals, where parents and children, must conform to the current values/morals of whatever sitting government is in power.
So explain your line on inclusive liberal moral socializing influence, because it is a mouthful, each word with a defined meaning, that is design to move debate down to the lower rungs of the ladder, to polarized positions, rather than deep discussions on the benefits and disadvantages of home schooling and public education.

Nancy, I just do not read your posts anymore, not because you do not have anything interesting to say but simply because they are far too long and dense. I just don’t have the time to pick my wat through all that.

If you want people to read what you say you need to get to the point far faster, leave more white space between your paragraphs, break things up more and supply the links (which you do) so people can get more information.

This is not an ideological point Nancy just a style point.

How much support, financial or otherwise, is offered to parents who choose to homeschool?

Denying them at least some of the money they pay to support a public school system they’re not benefitting from is a barrier to them via the back door.  Doesn’t have to be the full amount but surely they could and should receive at least some of their money back.

Alberta is the only province that funds homeschooling. Here is the Fraser link, and a home schooler praising the funding of home education.
http://www.ontariohomeschool.org/fraserstudysummaries.html

http://quiverfullfamily.com/2008/05/24/no-funding-this-year-homeschooling-in-alberta/

From what I know, depending on ages of children, the costs depend on the curriculum and other teaching resources, that on the average, a home schooler spends about $1000 for materials, and it drops down in various years, because the same materials can be reused. Alberta is generous with their $700 grant, compared to the rest of the provinces, zero dollars. Also home schoolers cannot avail of any tax credits, toward the costs of the education materials, and something like a tax credit that is given to students who are going to private schools.

Seems a little bit more reasonable.

  Tapping folks for the full cost of the public system, which they’re not using PLUS the additional costs of homeschooling is, essentially, taking the option off the table for many families.

They’re not being told they can’t do it but serious barriers are being put into place to make it very difficult to use it.

Some of the home schoolers that I have observed over the years, will group together in small units of 10 or so, to take field trips, go to the local library, and use other resources such as art classes, at the local community centres. Some American states, allow home schoolers to attend public school part time, to avail of the sport activities and other educational classes, that are pretty hard to do at the home.

Hi Nancy;
BC also has money available to homeschoolers. The children are enrolled as distance students with the district of their choice. The districts offer various programs some of which allow $1000.00 to be spent on educational resources and activities. The children are not called homeschoolers by the province, but basically they are.
Rachel

The Birth of the Home Education Movement – 1972 – Mexico (Part One)

I remember people ardently ranting and raging against oppressive compulsory schooling.  About poverty and the thwarted aspirations of the poor. About the escalation of school restrictions and demands being as destructive as the escalation of weapons. About school and medical systems showing declining results as more money was being poured in …

These were the heady discussions students and academics enjoyed at CIDOC (Center for Intercultural Documentation) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the Spring and Summer of 1972.  I had just completed teacher training at Ottawa Teachers College and was there (two young daughters in tow) to listen to the lectures of Ivan Illich who had just published the book “Deschooling Society”.  His ideas had already spread via many articles in magazines and book reviews.

His complete book is available, all short 116 pages, for reading online or downloading at http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/

If you dare comprehend the book, you will be a different person. 

“School is obligatory and becomes schooling for schooling’s sake: an enforced stay in the company of teachers.”

“Unquestionably, the educational process will gain from the deschooling of society even though this demand sounds to many schoolmen like treason to the enlightenment. But it is enlightenment itself that is now being snuffed out in the schools.”

“Two centuries ago the United States led the world in a movement to disestablish the monopoly of a single church. Now we need the constitutional disestablishment of the monopoly of the school.”

These words were spoken way before we had online education.  If people pride themselves now on the advances of this technological magic, just read the chapter of 40 years ago, “Learning Webs”.

“Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. … a huge professional apparatus of educators and buildings which in fact restricts the public’s chances for learning … It should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational.”

Illich was a priest, a philosopher, an inspired prophet.  He laced his talks with Greek myths and poetry.  When we heard his version of how Prometheus tricked the gods out of their monopoly of fire, we tried to project that concept to health, education, welfare and other fields monopolized by the state.

The Birth of the Home Education Movement – 1972 – Mexico (Part Two)

Neither Illich nor any of our discussions at that time ever conceived of the notion of home education as a “movement”, though we frequently talked about home care of the sick as a movement.  It was not till I had a discussion with John Holt, the author of such books as “How Children Learn” and “How Children Fail” that the movement toward home education started to percolate.

So, one morning, beneath a heavily-laden mango tree from which John partook, this was our conversation in January, 1972.

John:  Now that you have completed teacher training, where are you going to teach?
Tunya: I didn’t get training to teach in a school.  I took it to teach my own children.
J:  Is it legal”
T: Yes, I’ve studied the legislations. It’s possible across North America and England. Parents are to cause their children to obtain an education at a school or elsewhere.  It’s this “elsewhere” clause that allows home education.
J: Well, at least you’re now qualified to teach them.
T: I also found out that you don’t need a qualification to teach your own children.
J. What about socialization? They’ll be different.
T: Kids should be individuals.  They’ll have plenty of friends from the groups we belong to.  Besides, there is a lot of negative socialization in school …
J:  What if they want to go to college?
T:  They will probably be strong, independent learners and will have an advantage to transfer in …
J:  SMART CITY!

5 years later John Holt, who already had a large mailing list of people interested in education reform, started the Home Education Movement with his newsletter, “Growing without Schooling” and the rest is history …

Who cares, they will always be an insignificant minority.

The Birth of the Home Education Movement – 1972 – Mexico (Part Three)

Meanwhile, Dr. Raymond Moore was spreading the word amongst his mainly Christian audience (The Learning Home) and paid frequent visits to Vancouver, Canada, especially when we held Home Learning Fairs in the 80’s.

Besides jump-starting the home education movement John Holt had the wisdom and foresight to caution against the threats and antagonisms that arise from people splitting off from conventional schooling. This quote is worth posting front and center on our bulletin boards, and worth a lot of pondering in our present day (March 2010):

      “Today freedom has different enemies. It must be fought for in different ways. It will take very different qualities of mind and       heart to save it.”

The link to my 1987 article which helped validate the movement in Canada is here:  Home Education – The Third Option http://education-advisory.org/Involved/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/home-education-third-option.pdf  Please note, at the end of this article, how I suggest that home education is a good way to retrieve individual responsibility from “disabling” professionals and the predatory state and at the same time restoring parents to their central role in the education of their children.

(What I have written about is the “movement”, not exactly a crusade or campaign, but a gathering force in the 70’s and 80’s that policy-makers had to take notice of.  It was legal and spoke to a pent-up demand of frustrated parents.  While I always refer to it as home education, others speak of homeschooling.  Others, like Wendy Priesnitz in Ontario, called it unschooling. She has written a best selling book: School Free - The Homeschooling Handbook and one I’m really looking forward to reading: “Challenging Assumptions in Education”.  See her website:  http://www.wendypriesnitz.com/index.html)

PS:  About the funding question.  While Alberta is generous in comparison to other provinces in helping home educators, BC also provides some assistance.  Here is their description:

Funding Grants for Home Schooled Children

Provincial funding grants are sent to the registering school; no funding is sent to parents. The provincial funding grant amounts are as follows:

  - Public schools receive $250 for each registered homeschooled child.
  - An independent school authority holding a certificate of group 1 or group 2 classification receive $175 for each registered homeschooled child.

(The experience is that parents might get help in purchasing a computer via the school or other such help.)

Home educators and home learners will NEVER be an insignificant minority.

They are the leading upholders of freedom and individual liberty today!

They are the single-most important movement today against the steady, encroaching growth of the state into our lives.

It is worth repeating the important conclusion reached by John Holt, one of the world leaders in home education: 

      “Today freedom has different enemies. It must be fought for in different ways. It will take very different qualities of mind and     heart to save it.”

Thanks Tunya, for this wonderful information. As I was reading the material, I comment from the school, repeated often enough, has been running through my head. ” She doesn’t need to know that.” or “She doesn’t need to know that at all.” or the one directed at me via through my daughter, “I wish your mom, would stop teaching you at home.”
Other comments like that over the years, and it was in reference to the school’s insistence on parents to follow the school curriculum, and never stray from the path. The remarkable thing was, that most teachers never sat down with her, and discuss the deeper knowledge, that no other child knew in her class. The debate of 0, chemistry topics from base to the chem table, tales from ancient history that could be used as examples in social studies or I would simply teach her the whole concept, and not the piece that was required.
I saw it as an affront and interference with my parenting ability, but after reading the articles, I now see it, for what it was, the school felt threaten, that my re-teaching methods was much more effective, than the teachers’ methods, for my LD child.
Another illumination, I never saw my home as a mini-lab, using the latest advance knowledge, lifting the knowledge right out of research articles, using resources I had, and conducting my own experiments at home. One of the first experiment, was the use of stencils, and within 3 months, I solve the problem of her handwriting, where her ‘a’ look like a ‘o’, and her ‘o’ look like an ‘a’. By that time, the school had given up on her, and they came looking for me, asking me what I did, to improve her handwriting over-night.
Through this time, and even now, many of my ideas came from the mailing lists of LD sites, education sites, home schooling sites, and various other people who are on the net, promoting ideas,methods that are completely against the institutionalized schools. Just the other week, the teacher asked my daughter, where did she learn how to research. She responded, my mom but she taught me a long time ago.  I taught her, like it was taught to me at home, if a child is more than the ‘average curiosity’, show them how to look for the information. When I did not know the answers to her questions, I became the model to find the answers. These moments became teaching moments at home.
The public schools of today, have an aversion to methods that seem too simple, using inexpensive tools to do the job. Nor do they want to listen to methods that are simple, and does not take an army to produce inexpensive effective methods.
“Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. … a huge professional apparatus of educators and buildings which in fact restricts the public’s chances for learning … It should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational.”
In your post, the above paragraph struck me as the most important. All parents need to know this, but from my own experience and observations, that public education’s learning, guided by scientific knowledge, is being dismantled by the top researchers of the world, and the public education systems have their ears, eyes, and mouths covered, just in case they expose themselves to the real knowledge, they are partners working to dismantle democracy, by not giving them the tools needed to participate in a free society.
Thanks again Tunya, because I came up with another idea for my little cause, in this corner of the world. It is still a glimmer, but a working idea. I just need to have it simmered for a while, until it congeals into a working solution.

They have been around for decades and never made a ripple in the larger system. Obviously very few families want this option.

Tunya, you say the encroachment of the state as if it is bad thing. Most people love it. Just watch them eat up the ELP. Anytime we offer people more ‘state’ they want it faster and bigger.
rods, airports,schools,hospitals,libraries,medicare,universities,colleges,publictransportation,environmental controls, what part of all of this do you think people reject?

Doug, parents are not aware of it, because the state makes it their business to keep alternative schooling, very close to the chest. This is knowledge, that they do not want parents to know. Most parents bump into it, and schools do a really good job, at discouraging parents to teach at home.

You might also want to rethink encroachment of the state, and that people will love ELP. Since I been through the system back in the late 1990s in Ontario, there is a few problems of how healthy pre-school children who have delays are handled in the system as it was in the late 1990s and as it is today. As my first interview with the JK teacher, the first thing she said to me, “I meet few parents that know how to work the system, to get timely help for their children. Now, tell me how you did it, so I can pass the advice to other parents.”
The way that ELP is set up, I can predict there will be major problems in providing the proper environment for all children, in a cookie-style approach. For children, who are already receiving help through the health system, such as seeing a speech pathologist twice a week, or other types of therapy, are parents who are sent home with activities (I use to call it homework) that reinforce the therapy sessions. The bulk of these parents were told to promote social activities to send them to nursery school, structured play groups and other physical activities, and often the health system, would find and locate reasonable priced activities,

The biggest problem will be in this area, is that professionals who work with children, such as speech pathologists, have close contact with the outside activities, such as nursery school. As parents we signed the consent form, so when they have time, they check in on these children and speak to the staff to ensure that they are following the plan, as they also ensure that parents are following the plan. They also come to observe the child in the setting, and suggestions are made after that. When my child enter JK, the teacher had to work around the rules, in fact she had to plain out ignore them, because as it stands now, my child is not considered special-needs under the education system, nor are healthy children with some type of learning disorder or had a speech delay really consider special-needs under the health system.

Now,  I did get her labeled under special-needs, but that was only because I went to child-services who had the power and authority to put the label on her. The health system kick in, and now could have this label attached to her, until she was 8 years old. At the public education level, this is where it stops, unless one has a very knowledgeable and understanding teacher. In my case, I got lucky and the first two years was the best ever, in cooperative discussions, ideas, suggestions going back and forth regarding promotion of speech whenever possible. Due to the experience of the teachers, they certainly came up with very creative ways of doing it. For example, she was quite capable of talking, she had a higher vocabulary than the average child, but at this stage she did not a whole lot of talking in public settings such as school. One day they discover she had a unique ability to understand children who either has English as their second language or children who had oral speech problems. So they place her between them, and she became the translator for the teacher and the rest of the class.

My fear is that the ELP in public schools, will do little to improve the outcome of children in the long term without making deep integration with the other government departments of health, social services, child services and the many different arms that deal with children. Without them, ELP will be a very pale version that would not be able to offer the expertise and in depth knowledge of the other government departments.

As I have discovered over the years, public education systems, are not fans of the experts that lie outside the education system. Just ask any parent who brought in an expert, to read the school the riot act, on the harm they are causing their child. As with bullying, another hot spot - it is another area where our public education system have failed to talk to the experts and now parents are suing the school and board, in small claims court.

Home Education Helps Crystallize the Issues

Individual rights and freedoms can easily be threatened by the state, especially in matters relating to the family.  Yes, the state, with all its special interest groups dependent on public service jobs, seems to increasingly encroach on individual and family freedoms.  Look at how early learning programs are being sold, pushed, and subtly and insidiously coerced.

With the recent case of the German homeschooling family being granted political asylum in the United States (Tennessee) we are seeing more interest in the politics of home education.  The family with five children was granted refugee status because in Germany home education is forbidden and the children were subject to state seizure. (Time magazine, Mar 2, 2010)

The decision from immigration judge Lawrence O. Burman in Memphis said the German government violated the Romeike family’s “basic human rights … Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress … This family has a well-founded fear of persecution … therefore, they are eligible for asylum.”

Today, March 22, 2010, a front page story in the Globe and Mail describes how another German family is seeking asylum in Alberta for the same reasons of persecution and possible seizure of their three children.  While the Romeike’s were homeschooling for religious reasons (they are Christian) this family in Alberta had conscience and medical/academic reasons why they chose to homeschool.  This case before the Immigration and Refugee board can take months before a decision is rendered.

See Globe and Mail story plus over 200 comments http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/german-home-schoolers-seek-asylum-in-canada/article1507683/

The issue of state versus home educators was not unforeseen in Canada.  In 1988 we had the report of the Royal Commission on Education in BC reporting the following:

“The home schooling issue clearly contains within it some of the most fundamental tensions between competing ideals and values to be found in educational and social policy today. It involves the question of parental rights in schooling versus those of the state, questions about where the public good should supersede private interest, questions about who should be accountable for children’s education and well-being, and questions about the limits of individual choice and participation in schooling.” (p204, A Legacy for Learners, Report of the Royal Commission in Education, BC, 1988)

The School Act was changed to provide for formal and legal acceptance of home education in BC.

Tunya, I have observed with people of low income, and especially those on welfare, are least likely to avail themselves of specific help for those children, where the health, social services and education are involved. It was never stated in direct words, but beating around the bush.

” I can’t be bother signing all the papers, being asked all kinds of questions that is none of their business, and being lecture by some goody-two-shoes who thinks she can push me around.” Words to that effect. I discovered it, quite by accident when a few of the parents in the neigbourhood, were curious of the little school bus who was picking up my daughter for her one nursery school. I have also seen the same thing when I move to rural NL
.
Underneath the words, are fears of having their children taken away from them, including the working poor. In my opinion, there fears are valid from their perspective, in the same way as the German families. And for those, who do not know Germany, you should see what they do to the students who have LD, autism, and any other child who are not ideal academic material, and are warehouse in separate schools, away from the general population.

Apparently, from what I have read, it is a left over of Nazi Germany, living as strong today, as it was in Hitler’s time.

It appears those who would choose to home school are at a significant financial disadvantage form the getgo so claiming nobody wants it is a little disingenuous.

I suspect there are lots of folks who’d be happy to consider it if they were’nt contributing thousands every year to a PS they’rehoping not to use.

Simply put their options are to send their kids to “free” public schools or make up the thousands of dollars in lost earnings and additional costs in order to remain home and do it themselves.

Until there’s a level playing field on the financial end there’s no way of determining how popular, or not, home schooling really would be.

The money was raised for public schools. It is good for everyone to have strong public schools. That is why we tax childless people or people who’s children have graduated.

If you choose to hire your own security you don’t get your police taxes back. If you buy your own books you don’t get your library taes back. If you opt out of the public system, you have no right to ask for your money back. It isn’t your money.

“Strong public schools”. 

I daresay people would happily support a system if they consider it strong, whether schools or anything else.  The issue is that lots of people don’t.  In any case why would the minimal number of home schoolers, even if given some financial assistance, possible pose a hreat to the public system you claim is so marvellous?

I suspect the real issue is that, contrary to your claims, lots of people would opt out if they had the means and that scares lots of people. 

Typically educators are in favour of testing theories to see what the results show, right?

Nobody is afraid of homeschoolers. They have been around forever. They are almost boring as an education topic.

Doug, What you are afraid of, is school choice period, or any alternative forms of schooling. Centralization of the public education, entrenches the powerful boards, unions and ever growing education bureaucracies, and it imposes inequalities across the land.

The inequalities are based on geographical, property taxes and the natural activity found in centralization education models, that has a tendency to root out individualism within the system. So a maverick principal, who chooses to follow a radical format, will be rooted out, as they would to a teacher who is not following the required format, dictated from above.

It does not allow creativity, solving problems as they occur, and schools are not elastic enough, where thinking outside the box is a rarity. As a result, the natural forming of discriminatory practices occurs, because it is often the only choice in a centralized model.

Home schooling, other school choices, and allowing independent practices at the school level, are practices that a centralization model eschews for a reason. The reason being, the above practices are all about individualism, creativity, thinking outside of the box, and not the collective whole to ensure power structures are maintain.

Folks every time Little chimes in he’s doing what he planned to do when he abruptly landed at some conservative blogs(thankfully not all we still have a few he hasn’t found).

His mission is to “provoke” and each post is the bait that he tries to lure participants into useless discussion and throw them off their game.

Not going to happen here, but just remember this man’s agenda. He likely wasn’t getting much attention for his own site so came here to drum up ideas and visitors.

The Big Difference Between “Schooling” And Education (Part One)

Schooling, unfortunately, does not necessarily produce education.  Schooling means nothing more than providing “accommodation”, or a seat at school, or at best, babysitting during school hours.  Whatever is absorbed as far as curriculum goes, or the skills acquired (3R’s), might even be incidental to the “hidden curriculum”.

Generally, the hidden curriculum refers to the “socialization” process – the acquisition of cultural norms.  Now, if the norms are acquired, as a majority of our young do, in government schools, taught by teachers who are public service workers, then it is easy to see how generations of citizens may, as if by osmosis, absorb values such as:  1.  Governments solve problems; 2.  Governments provide services for people; 3. Government services are provided by government workers;  4. Government workers are paid by taxes collected from working people … etc., etc. 

We are currently the generations habituated and moulded to these behaviors. Only a few can really resist this socialization – the acquisition of socialist values.

In 1971 when Ivan Illich wrote “Deschooling Society” that is what he saw as a danger.  He said: “School has become the planned process which tools man for a planned world, the principal tool to trap man in man’s trap …Inexorably we cultivate, treat, produce, and school the world out of existence.

As I wrote in earlier posts on this topic, it was out of these heady discussions in Mexico that the idea of a world movement to home education started to percolate.  John Holt was an eager participant in these discussions.

The Big Difference Between “Schooling” And Education (Part Two)

As far as “education” goes and parent duty and home education relates, I bring forward the First School Laws in America (Massachusetts, 1642). 

- 1.  Universal education of youth is essential to the well-being of the State.
- 2.  The obligation to furnish this education rests primarily upon the parents.
- 3.  The State has a right to enforce this obligation.
- 4.  The State may fix a standard which shall determine the kind of education, and the minimum amount.
- 5.  Public money, raised by a general tax, may be used to provide such education as the State requires. The tax may be general although the school attendance is not.

From this we can see that government-provided education was seen as a back-up to parents who failed to do their duty.  In fact, “public education” may be seen as one of the first of many “safety nets” where a government steps in to fill in for those not self-sufficient or able to provide for themselves. 

Of course, these safety nets have grown so that it’s not only what governments deem to be necessary, but what governments do to oblige in response to lobby groups such as public service unions who would like nothing better than to have government as the main employer in our communities.

Now, please read the press release by the Fraser Institute on October 4, 2007 with respect to their last research on home education

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/newsandevents/news/4933.aspx#

After reading that release, would you agree with me that we can make the statement below?

Home education would be a valuable resource to help social mobility and alleviation of poverty in that it educates and empowers two generations at the same time, especially in lower SES families.

Would not this statement be a good starting point for some further serious research development based on that completed by the FI in 2007?

Tunya, yes it would be an excellent starting point, to gather more evidence, that proves overwhelmingly that home education is a valuable resources to help social mobility and alleviation of poverty. It should also help to transform home education into a valid option for the public education system, who often look at it with a rolling of the eyes.
I have also noted that part-time home education is not an option either, where parents can use the resources at the school when ever they wish, including having access to the teachers as well as the specialists.

The skillset required to dominate the discussion in a classroom setting don’t necessarily translate well into a setting where one is only one of several equals, various of whom can, and quite probably do, know as much about the issues being discussed.  In that setting one must support one’s claims with compelling evidence.  Then the claims will be judged as to their quality and accepted or dismissed as appropriate.

See it as going from telling people how things are to being obliged to convince them of your case.  One is less easy than the other.