There are many, many things I find dubious about the practice of parents homeschooling their children. I wonder how a mother or father who has not been educated as a teacher, who in many cases has not even been to college her/himself, can possibly provide their child with as good an education as students receive in our much-maligned public schools. And I can´t help but think that these homeschool students, of whom there are several million in the United States, are being robbed of a crucial formative experience by not attending school with other people their age and being forced to interact with a diverse group of peers.
Nevermind the fact that the highest qualification to teach that most public school teachers have is an education degree and a minor in the subject that they are going to be teaching, nor the fact that education majors are typically the lowest scoring students to enter into any university. Objectively speaking, the average person going into a major state university is by virtue of their graduating GPA and SAT scores more qualified to teach their own children than the majority of people who have an education in "education."
You also have to wonder what sort of person you are dealing with when they look back on high school and find it to be an environment rich in rewarding and educational social opportunities. Such delusions would be forgivable for someone from the in-crowd, but I find it unlikely that someone who is so obsessed about the teaching of a handful of scientific theories, none of which have an overriding importance to any major field of science, was a popular kid in high school. For many students, high school is just four years that can best be described as a four year long reenactment of Lord of the Flies. The high school environment does little to prepare students for joining the workplace, as the rules of survival in the workplace are significantly different from anything they'll learn in high school, let alone mass education in general.
In terms of overall education, homeschoolers tend to do exceedingly well. Much more so than their public school counterparts. Instead of making them get a "proper biology education," focus instead on the fact that a significant number of public education system students cannot even read enough of a biology textbook to follow what it says about evolution. Society is far better off with literate, generally educated homeschool students getting diplomas, even if they couldn't tell you evolution from emo, than public school students who can tell you basic points about evolution, but whose literacy barely extends beyond fast food restaurant menus.
Where would students be without the opportunity to stand around and watch a fellow student pummel a teacher?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24047456/
Homeschooling and more importantly homeschoolers ROCK! :) Having gone to "real" school and was later homeschooled, "real" school is overrated. I was bored, uninspired and could do my work in 1/10 of the time it took everyone else, which lead to more boredom.
I went over to the other site and tried to read it but after about halfway thru I realized it was the same old diatribe against homeschooling. What the guy fails to realize is that teaching is best done by someone who knows the child very well. That way the child can be taught in a way that is tailored to his style of learning. The only way for a PS to affect this would be to have a teacher start of teaching 1st grade and then keeping the same class for the next 8+ years, and grouping children in a class depending upon their learning styles. That, of course, will never happen.
Not to mention the fact that the author completely misses out on the fact that it is a lot like Lord of the Flies, and that that is the experience for a lot of unpopular kids.
I was bored, uninspired and could do my work in 1/10 of the time it took everyone else, which lead to more boredom.
Which leads to a child who is far more likely to disrupt the class, lose respect for authority, and is often the reason that smarter kids drop out.
Once again it sounds like a public school wonk talking/complaining about homeschooled kids. I guess it is just too damn bad that the homeschooled kids do so much better on every metric of learning then the public-schooled kids. And in full discloser I went to public school.
I went to public school as well. It's why I am more of a vicious critic of the public school system than your average homeschooler.