Home schooling

[Random George]

a good friend of mine was home schooled in a small town, and i think it's really a mixed bag. i got a much better grounding in the sciences at my public school, and a better preparation for college. i also developed better social skills, and i'm finding myself a lot more skilled at resisting peer pressure. a lot of people home school their kids to keep them away from 'bad influences', and i admit that my friend had it easier not having to deal with puberty, peer pressure, p.e., and physics all at the exact same time. but you have to remember that eventually, the kids are going to go into the world. in high school, i took advanced courses in biology, ecology, chemistry, trigonometry, english, psychology, and history. i had access to people with a great deal of knowledge on the subjects, and i was able to start college intellectually ahead of the game. most parents do not have the grounding in the higher maths and sciences or the exposure to literature available in advanced courses in public or private school. mine certainly didn't. i know resources are available to them, but minds are stimulated most by other minds at a similar point of development. not everyone understands calculus well enough to teach it to a 15-year-old. i know that i don't. honestly, parents who want to protect their children from drugs, weapons, gangs, and the parts of public or private education they may not agree with would do just as well to spend the same amount of positive quality time with their kids to teach them moral values, and send them to school to learn history, chemistry, and math. i went through public schools in four states, and still somehow managed to avoid drugs, weapons, alcohol, and pregnancy, so don't tell me it can't be done. there is no substitute for taking an active role in your childrens lives, whether it's home schooling, taking them to worship with you, taking a daily walk (my mother's approach--each day she and i took a walk after dinner and talked about our days), or just knowing your children and their friends. augment your child's education. supplement your child's education. go to school and talk to his teacher. but pulling kids out of school because it's 'not safe' or they'll be exposed to bad influences does three things:

1. it leaves the kids less prepared socially and intellectually to cope with things like college, not to mention that in this world the guy with the high school diploma gets the job before the guy with the GED, because GED still makes a lot of people think 'dropout' whether it's true or not.
2. it promotes the attitude that it's better to give up on something than fix it. we pay taxes. taxes pay for schools. we have a stake in the schools. we, as citizens, can make the schools better--not by introducing prayer, or metal detectors, or political silliness. do it by introducing ourselves. if you have kids, know your children's teachers well enough that if you saw them in the grocery store you could hold a two-minute conversation. if you don't have kids? be a scout leader. a little league coach. a bus monitor. go to a local school and offer them your time. be prepared in this day and age for some hard questions about why you want to work with kids, maybe a background check.
3. if you take out all the 'good' kids, whose parents care about them and take an active role in their development, you further the decline of the schools. they become little more than jails to house the kids whose parents can't or won't provide other educational options, creating a subclass of the community with no marketable skills, no hope, and no guidance.

i'm not speaking against home schooling, especially in rural areas where schools are often poorly funded and up to an hour from home. i'm just saying it might be a little more effective to augment available educational options than to shun them.

peace out,
geo

_________________
"What do we want?"
"Patience!"
"When do we want it?"
"Now!"

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Random George on 2002-04-05 08:34 ]</font>

[Jamestox]

Good views, George. I, too, am a product of the public school system...from a number of years ago, when behavioural standards were higher, corporal punishment was allowed (no tellin' how many paddles MY behind wore out... - funny how behaviour and corporal punishment seem related, eh?), and the educational standards meant something. Unfortunately for me, I didn't take education as seriously as I could have, else I'd have gone further in life; today, I have a highly technical position based on my military training and experience in the field. Where would I be had I applied myself? Sky's the limit, as the saying goes. What dismays me most is the apparent educational level of today's students...and not just in scholastic subjects, but in logical thinking as well - today's product of today's public education system and today's parental involvement. Upon having children, I'd seriously consider home schooling - not for the aforementioned reasons of religious/societal isolation from "bad influences" (although they do exist in abundance), but for a higher-quality education. The same school system that generated me no longer exists, as evidenced by documented collegiate admissions scores and a reduced literacy rate in today's teens. American knowledge, engineering, imagination, and drive sent men to our nearest neighbor in space and "safely returned them home again." Today, we have a space station under construction....and the vast majority of our citizens couldn't care less, despite the unrealized promise of the cure for AIDS and other diseases from hyper-pure protein crystals grown "on orbit", better nutrition based on NASA experiments aboard ISS, better/stronger construction materials, and the list goes on. The PROBLEM with all this is the number of educated, interested, and skilled people that could accomplish these tasks is dwindling....due to an educational system that isn't preparing them for the future.

J (getting off the soapbox, now) T

[RHJunior]

What is rarely brought up is the fact that the public school system, *as originally and envisioned deliberately designed,* was modeled after the Prussian form-- whose total goal openly stated was to create, not educated and capable individuals, but an intellectually homogenous working/soldier class--- with a spare handful of hand-picked "elites" to do the leading. To this end schools were built around a regimented routine, in drab, featureless buildings designed to provide minimal mental stimulation (to "focus" the children on the rote-learning classes), and made in such a way as to minimize parental influence in the educational process, because parents were viewed as inimical to the agenda of the social engineers setting up the system.
If you think that this is paranoid conspiracy ranting, you are very, very wrong. It's not the delusions of a perturbed mind seeing MIBs around every corner-- it is the basic tenets set forth by the founders of the modern public school system.
http://nj.npri.org/nj98/05/prussian.htm<--- a good summation
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropol ... ments.html
http://www.educationreformbooks.net/dif ... eacher.htm
http://www.hometaught.com/app_traditional.htm

The primary reason that the educational system of America-- the adopted Prussian system post 1800-- produced so many well-educated students for as long as it did was because teachers taught and students learned *in spite of* the system. Not because of it.
Even then, from WWII to the Vietnam war, we had a 500% increase in the rate of illiteracy-- based on identical literacy tests administered by the draft boards of the military. The schools were failing *long* before the socialist washouts of the 60's took over; application of hippy ideology to Prussian cog-creation merely accelerated the process to lightspeed.

Flawed model, flawed lessons, flawed teachers. Game over, folks, unless we haul butt and get our kids *out* of the grip of a system that flaunted its failures almost 2 centuries ago.

[LadyXan]

The following is a rambling and may not be important, but it is my belief and what works for us...

Homeschooling doesn't mean you are left out of the public schools every time. A lot of HS families dual enroll and if you choose to do so for Sciences, or what ever you think the child is lacking or you cannot give them, then you get that class at your local schools. Most (not all) HS children have better test skills, better test scores, and better manners than PS children.

If you teach your children about good and bad and peer pressure, they can usually avoid it. There are still peers to interact with, but I prefer to choose who they are then to let my child run free in PS and not know what is happening in the bathrooms, halls, or outside to my child.

You all talk like we do not have social interactions at all. There are sports, band, classes, and gatherings going on all the time. Not all of them are just HS children neither. It is what you and your child choose that makes the difference.

BTW, how do you all think school started? Being sent away to a classroom? Did you know that Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) was homeschooled? Abraham Lincoln was too.

I think it is what the family makes of it that matters, not what the stereotype is... just like Christians. =)

And Ralph is correct in saying schooling was made into a place where we were all to learn the same things and be put into the work force... like soldiers. Not much individuality in PS children like in HS ones. It is tough on the teachers these days to help a child. It is difficult to work on one's potential when others think you are playing favorites. Plus, the law says you cannot touch a child to commend them on a job well done. Or the teachers that abuse that priviledge and then no teacher is trusted.

_________________
<br>
>

[The JAM]

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.

It also depends on what curriculum you're using, and the intellectual capacity of the child. I, too, will homeschool my kids.

Until next time, remember:

I AM THE J.A.M.

Good evening.

[WARP!!!]

[Random George]

i see the verdict, as usual, is that it's better to abandon than to fix. yes, let's everybody take the easy isolationist way out. "oh, that doesn't work, so i'm turning my back on it." while we're at it, let's abandon our system of government, our legal system, and anything else that doesn't work exactly like we want it to. if everyone subscribed to the theory that it was better to walk away from things that didn't work instead of putting the effort into fixing them, the highways would be graveyards for broken cars, our towns and cities would be full of empty houses with leaky roofs, and we'd all sit around in the dark instead of changing light bulbs. i've had it with the attitude--especially pervasive in this country but prevalent worldwide--that it's better to give up on something entirely than to try and make it better. i'm tired of listening to armchair sociologists detail the ills of a world they're too inert to do more than criticize. yeah, change is hard. no fun at all. i don't like it either. suck it up, boys and girls. lose the "if i ignore it then it doesn't hurt me" attitude. if all the parents who cared enough about their children to keep them out of public schools put the same amount of caring, concern, and effort into fixing what's wrong with them in the first place, then it would be a non-issue. but it's easier to give up. to take your toys and go home. well, the schools are producing tomorrow's adults, whether your kids attend or not. we all have a stake in it, no matter whether we have children or not. the people the schools are turning out will be our leaders, our politicians, our captains of industry. they'll flip our burgers, clean up our water systems (because we've failed abysmally at that!), and educate the next generation. if you think the only quality of education that matters is that of your own children, you're dead wrong. go ahead. stick your head in the sand. take the easy way. fine. but when things aren't magically better in thirty years, and you're bemoaning the sad state of society, even higher crime rates, even lower literacy, think about the fact that you had a chance to make it better, and you walked away instead.

peace
geo

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Random George on 2002-04-08 15:50 ]</font>

[Andrick]

Woah! Uh... everything okay, Geo? I understand being on the losing end of inertia sucks and all but letting it get to you that much is likely to eat a hole in your stomach.

Just because some parents would rather home-school their child is just a parents perogative to do what they believe is in the best interest of their child. My sister-in-law is doing such for my oldest nephew principally because going to the local school would have him riding the bus a minimum of four hours each day. Hardly what would be called anti-social or xenophobic. If the local schools are not up to snuff then those parents which can homeschool and do so are looking out for their kids best interest.

I've been through an education system which has consistently rated among the worst in the country for decades, Los Angeles Unified School District. Parents knew it was the worst; many with the money turned to private schools. Others seemed to revel in it. When I've witnessed kids being talked down to by their parents with the intent of telling these children of theirs that they will never be smarter than their parents and no schooling will change this 'fact', you begin to wonder how much is the burden of change. There are others who see school issues as their personal platform for social issues which have nothing to do with education. Always will they sacrifice education for 'liberation' and 'politically correct' doctrines. These two forces continue to crush the true reformers between them. Inertia wins out.

The power to change this rests within a mass of people who still venerate Rodney King as a hero and see the removal of an ineffective black police chief by a newly elected white mayor trying to reform the LAPD as being a purely racist act. Call me negative, but I don't hold out much hope for change in a system which had graduated five people, all I knew personally, whom did not know how to read.

The problem in a democracy is getting most people to agree with you. Scott Adams once described a meeting as everyone walking into a room with the thought of plan 'a' but finally storming out with a grudging consensus on plan 'b'.

[Random George]

what's getting to me should be clear. most of world culture, and american culture particularly, is focused on getting some sort of recognition for pointing out things that are wrong with this world as if noticing a problem is some sort of achievement, and not on fixing a dad blamed thing. i have no issue with people who choose to home school their children, or send them to private school. not everyone has that luxury. my parents both had to work full time jobs, and still did not have the money to send me to private school. i'm not in the minority. i'm the status quo. and yet, somehow, i made it through--drug free, not pregnant, and a national merit scholar to boot. i can read, and so can all my friends, most of whom are also drug free and not pregnant (i'm far enough out of high school by now that many of them have started families, so the claim loses a little something in the translation). i'm just saying that keeping your children out of school because school is a bad place is ultimately a self-fulfilling prophecy. there's a large segment of this culture that is only worried about what directly concerns them. water quality doesn't matter until someone wants to put in a landfill. the morality of the draft isn't a concern until you have an 18-year-old son. corporate responsibility is only a buzzword after you've been hurt by negligence. we've created an entire population of people who don't care if the whole darn social machine falls apart, as long as they can still get hot coffee and fluffy pillows in their little corner of the world. liberal, conservative, moderate, independent--it's all the same. everyone's so concerned about their own needs being met in the short term. everybody'd rather just give up on things and complain about how things should be than take the hard steps to make it right. i understand the desire to have a safe place for your children. eventually, that will mean gated communities for everyone who can afford them, because it's easier than fixing the larger societal problems. and then the gated communities won't be safe anymore, so you'll have to live in a compound--or a full-service high rise apartment building, complete with offices, grocery stores, and parks inside. and those of us who can't or won't pay to be cut off from the world will just be left on our own to deal with what comes. to use the dilbert metaphor? in this company (our culture), we all walk into the meeting with an idea of plan 'a', and half the people walk out mentally updating their resumes, looking to jump ship. people can either throw up their hands in disgust and give up on society, or they can show the courage and tenacity to work for real change. but until people are willing to come forward with real solutions, willing to work on real change, all this complaining and ranting about society's ills and social injustice is just empty rhetoric and coffeehouse posturing. how nice for you that you know the origins of education. how lovely that you can pontificate about why things aren't the way you want them to be, and have such a clear idea of where to place the blame. we'd be so awfully lost if just this once we didn't have someone, some institution, some incarnation of a bad guy to blame. liberals blame conservatives. conservatives blame liberals. independents blame everybody. the midwest blames the east coast. the east coast blames the west coast. the west coast blames mercury in retrograde. i'm upset and i've spent a lot of time in this forum hearing whose fault it all is and whose pet theory is right, and whose dead ancestors offended each other. what's been missing from this is any sort of forward view. no one looking further than the next few years. i've sat in a lot of coffeehouses in the last ten years, listening to everyone from the government to the media to martian spies being accused of all sorts of nefarious plots--but no one coming up with any sort of plan of action, even against the martian menace. this culture is doomed to failure if its people don't start accepting that it's not enough just to see a problem and point it out to others. and rather than accepting that doom and looking for some way to remove myself from a society i neither created nor control, i'm looking for a way to wake people up to the fact that it won't get better if you just bolster up your little corner. i'm frustrated and angry with the way things are, and using the logic i see in this forum, that entitles me to just stop associating with people i don't want in 'my' culture. it entitles me to feel self-satisfied for noticing that something is wrong, but doesn't give me any responsibility to remedy the situation. perhaps while i'm at it, i'll stop in at the police station, and put my name on the list of people who aren't responsible for the current crime rates or social ills, and therefore shouldn't be affected by them, so they can tell all the criminals, "oh, that's george. you can't rob her, because it's not her fault you turned to a life of crime."

[Andrick]

I've finally figured it out! If one takes too long composing a message while logged in, the BB logs out the user as inactive. So when you 'post' it will be refused because you are not logged in and there is no password field for verification. Natch! I had a nice lengthy, response with researched data just go POOF!

That's okay, I was playing Devil's Advocate anyway. No loss.

[RHJunior]

Homeschooling is not "dropping out" of society. It is *restoring* society.
What is more socially responsible than seeing to it that the next generation of scholars, artists, scientists, businessmen and leaders recieve the best possible education-- rather than leaving them to get by with the wretched leftovers of the failed government school system?
Strapping your children to the deck of a sinking ship is not responsible-- "socially" or otherwise.
This up and coming generation will prove it: those who have recieved a *real* education-- who not only know facts, but also know how to *think for themselves*-- will be the ones who rule the rest.

[Random George]

hey, man, if that's the way it works, that's the way it works. on the same note, i think i'll remove myself and my family from the american legal and judicial system. i'm just as qualified to be a cop or a judge as i am to be a teacher. there are resources that will help me gain proficiency with firearms and self-defense. i can read a law book as well as anyone, and besides, who needs law books when i know right from wrong? i can buy handcuffs, a baton, a gavel, and a little spinny light for my car at surplus stores. i still have my 'junior detective' badge from my field trip to the police station in elementary school. i'll decide what laws apply to me, i'll enforce the laws i deem appropriate for others in situations where they apply. i don't like the legal and judicial systems, i think they don't work, and i think they put too many people back on the streets who didn't learn enough in jail, so from now on i'm going to be responsible for the law in my little world. i think this new ruling class of people who don't have to put up with the parts of society that they don't like will be a lot better off if they're not bound to petty things like public safety laws and traffic codes. sure, it's unorthodox and people will label me a quack, but it's certainly easier to do what's just simplest for me than it would be to fix what's wrong with the existing system. besides, they're just harassing me because i'm different and i don't conform. you know, i think i saw a website somewhere or other that said the legal system we use is based on babylonian law, and that's really close to the middle east, and we all know what uncivilised butchers they are, so i'm not going to be forced into some conformist agenda made up by some secret society (oooo, most of the founding fathers were deists *and* masons....ooooo...hey, man, the truth is out there!) to oppress me. i'm a good person, so it's not like i'm going to go around doing drugs and killing babies. i think i have a better idea of right and wrong than most of the people making the laws these days anyway--i didn't vote for them, so they don't represent me. so, from now on, i'll make all the illegal left turns i deem appropriate, because if i decide it doesn't affect me, i don't have to notice the rest of society.

oh, and in light of this thread, i asked a home schooled friend (21, no GED, and answering customer service phones eight hours a day with little prospect for advancement in his company) how the people in the 'network' his mom used as a resource were faring. less than five percent (2 in 40) had gone on to college, and one of those had dropped out. over half of them (25), now in their early 20s, were working menial or minimum wage jobs. six of them are unemployed and still living with their parents. and less than a quarter of them have completed their GEDs. you know, while those numbers may not be that different from the stats on high school educations, they sure don't seem like much of a ruling class to me. they were using the available resources. they had a network. they did all the stuff they were 'supposed' to do. but their kids are no better off, maybe even worse, because a kid coming out of high school at least has the piece of paper that says, 'i graduated high school', that gives him a little bit of a leg up in this world, whether *you* like it or not. now, maybe your home-schooled child is better off than that. but since there's just as much wiggle room in a home schooling education as there is in a public one, maybe not everyone's is. the moral of this story? those kids would be your 'ruling class' if those parents had used their concern and caring for their children's futures to augment a public education instead of trying to replace one. but now they're just like everybody else...trying to make the best of what they have with the resources available. my kids are going to public school. and museums. and the zoo. they will be read to and read with. i will check their homework, and help them with it. and at the beginning of every year, i'll pay a little visit to the teacher, and discuss what will be learned that year, my thoughts on discipline, and what i consider to be unacceptable behaviour for my child and wish notification regarding. i will encourage my children to obey their teachers even when they disagree with them, but to come home and tell me if they think something happened that shouldn't have. i will know their friends. everyone in the family will eat at least two meals a week at a table with the rest of the family, be it breakfast, lunch, or dinner. and lest this sound unrealistic, please understand that this is no more than my parents did for me and my sibling, who also graduated high school not pregnant, not into drugs, and a national merit scholar. good kids can come out of high school. good kids can come out of home schooling. great kids come out of both.

peace out,
geo, who's sure she's bound to misquoted, but has adjusted to being misunderstood as the price of genius...

[Kanaeda Kuonji]

My thoughts?

If it can be fixed, do so. If it cannot be fixed, salvage what can be useful, take notes, and act accordingly.

All too often, I have seen people with the book knowledge, the sheepskin, and the works, but lacking sorely the ability to apply it. Measures need to be taken that use of information is proper, and that wisdom in its application is shown.

Problem is, we like to hold down students who work too fast for everyone else. Take it from someone who was the only person NOT to cheat in his senior-year English class.

[Sutut]

I find homeschooling more akin to things like "Gated Communities" and "Bottled water" for example.

The water in my town is really bad. (you can't use it in a car, for example, because of hard water alone) Of course, the refineries meet all applicable federal standards, so no one bugs them. Therefore, bottled water is sold as often as soda in convenience stores.

Mind you, I live in MONTANA, a rather rural, natural place in the USA. We should have about the cleanest local enviornment in the country. (still do in some remote places)

Fighting the refineries that likely contribute to this would be an uphill battle that would likely be lost, even if won. (Impact on small local economy) Therefore, what do we do? Just buy bottled water. I'm guilty too, 'cause after accidently discovering all kinds of weird sediments while 'cracking' the water for a science project, I went to filtered water myself. Currently, I'm looking into a distiller.

Thus, we, and I, are dodging this problem, and letting it get bad or worse. BTW-This is on the Yellowstone river, which feeds the Missisippi.

How about "gated communites"? Affluent neighborhoods seperated by brick walls and security guards. Million dollar houses in the middle of crack slums. It's thier right, right? Well, if the gangs organized and besiged the place, they would depend on the national guard to rescue them.

Likewise, my relatives send thier younger children to private schools at a dear cost. Public schools are run down, so that's the best option. Of course, all thier attention will now be on the quality of the private school, not the public one.

We are all dodging problems. The problems don't go away, they grow.

[RHJunior]

I find this a source of amazement.
You seem to consider taking responsibility for your own well being, and your children's own well-being, to be "abandoning ship"?
First, you shriek that homeschooled kids don't get a good education. That is proven to be a lie, as homeschooled kids proceed to trounce the academic snot out of public schooled kids.
That approach now scuttled, you resort to the foaming and frothing about 'socialization.' (Lord knows we've heard about the epidemic of homeschooler drug sales and drive-by shootings...) funny, last I checked, they were *better* socialized than their peers. And politer, too-- because they were being raised by their parents, not their playmates or their disinterested schoolteachers.

And now, all pretense stripped aside, the truth comes out and the howls about duty to the Fatherland begin... that those who salvage their children from the clutches of social engineering malice and governmental incompetence are traitors to the homeland-- rather than stick it out, they're abandoning ship and leaving the 'less fortunate' to their doom.
Total Marxist bull shite.
You want to know why we're not sticking around to "save" the schoolsystem for all the po' li'l chillun?
FIRST, because it's a crap system from the start, and irreparable by nature.Hell yes, we're abandoning ship--- that's what you do when the boat sinks.
SECOND, because it's not our damned responsibility to educate or raise YOUR damned children. It's YOURS. WE are supposed to be responsible for ourselves and for any children of our OWN. Get off your fat ass and care for your own kids.
THIRD, because we're not about to sacrifice our children on the altar of 'social consciousness.' Any parent who does that deserves to have their skull pounded into a doughlike substance with the nearest bludgeon.
FOURTH, because for countless years, decades even, we have tried to fix the school system, we provided countless rational methods for improving this mess, we provided the fix, *and you didn't want it.* You fought us tooth and freaking nail all the way down... every reform, every complaint, every alternative was ignored, mocked, and shut down. Now the hull on the Titanic is stove in, we're taking on water like a spaghetti colander in a bathtub, and you want us to sit around and listen to the band play on? Up yours.

The reason the school system sucks is because it is, effectively, *a government-controlled monopoly.* Not a complete monopoly, there is some resistance. But it is all but squashed... homeschoolers are harassed and threatened with arrest for 'truancy;' private schools are run through a bureaucratic wringer; school vouchers-- which would put school choice in the hands of even the poorest parents-- were slammed.... This sort of coercion and intimidation is beyond the most amoral Robber Baron's wildest wet dreams.
It is daft beyond all measure that the same populous that gnashes their teeth on Bill Gates and Ma Bell for having an alleged monopoly on software and telephones would blithely accept a monopoly on the education of their children. .. and accuse those who oppose this government enforced monopoly of being antisocial traitors.

You are a parent. The government takes your money by threat of force, takes your *children* by threat of force, and then uses your money to not only render your children ignoramuses, but to teach your children ideologies that directly violate every moral and value you hold dear. Is this not the worst sort of tyranny?


And *homeschoolers* are the social traitors?

[Kanaeda Kuonji]

"The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

This describes the school system quite nicely. And not just the public school system, but the private ones as well.

I would think that if we had something more like an apprenticeship in advanced education, we would do far better, with the addition of a paycheck based on work.

But, for the moment, at least, home-schooling may be a better solution in some areas.

[Sutut]

On 2002-04-16 13:28, RHJunior wrote:
I find this a source of amazement.
You seem to consider taking responsibility for your own well being, and your children's own well-being, to be "abandoning ship"?

Ralph,

Actually, I consider it more of a hard choice, a "Devil's Choice" if you will.

I was about to again make a similar argument to the destruction of Babel, but then I realized something: I'm not married yet, but when I do have kids I will definitely make sure I have the option of sending them to a better school, even at dear financial cost. Locally, it's not that bad, but it's getting worse every year, though there hasn't been a shooting yet.

You see, my Dad, who is a Christian, told me stories when I was a kid about this great guy who lived and died about 2000 years ago. One time, he saved a prostitute from getting stoned to death. He told the audience "Let him without sin cast the first stone!" Great man, his initials were J.C., though few other Christians I've met would recognize him if they met him.

You see, I'm frankly as guilty as you and most others here. It's too big a problem to face, so we do the 'practical' thing of running from it. I'm afraid that this will eventually lead (again) to a small upper class getting a vast education, a small middle class getting a good, but limited education, and a massive underclass getting the rudiments, maybe.

Aside from personal moral values (which vary from person to person), how can home schooling teach people properly? I mean, do people learn the English system or the Metric system for measurement? Both? Niether? Let's hope they co-ordinate if they get a job for NASA! (Remember that Mars probe)
"How DARE you say that I should learn METRIC, they SYSTEM OF SATAN! Wanna fire me, I'll SUE you for religious prejudice!"
There are lots of things we (in a society) need to know to get things done. If education is not only privatised (private schools), but totally decentralized (home schooling), how are neccesary standards communicated? Forget about the Gay clubs, does everyone learn English, Metric, or BOTH? In that NASA mission, if both sides had used Metric, OR English, OR used conversion software, there would be no problem. It is the lack of proper set standards that caused the failure.

P.S. (a funny, here)
Ever saw the movie "Teachers"? Amazingly, it was considered extreme back in the early 80's, though it's tame now. A scene I liked:

Two teachers are sitting at home (after hours) drinking beer and talking. One of them, is depressed and looking at his bandaged hand that a student recently bit a chunk out of.

Teacher 1: "What are we doing this for? I mean, those kids aren't learning anything, and no one cares?"
Teacher 2: "Ah Ah Ah! When you get depressed, I gotta cheer you up! Don't worry, there is a good reason for our jobs!"
Teacher 1: "Let's not go into this- I don't"
Teacher 2: "WE are on a MISSION! A Mission for UNCLE SAM!"
Teacher 1: "Hey, not the bit about-"
Teacher 2: "Our students are young, healthy, in the prime of our lives. It is our mission to jail them for the better part of thier waking hours. Do you know why?"
Teacher 1: "Cause they'd be -"
Teacher 2: "SAY IT!"
Teacher 1: (quietly) "boinking."
Teacher 2: "F***ING! F***ING like what?"
Teacher 1: "Rabbits.."
Teacher 2: "F***ING and F***ING and F***ING like rabbits! Sing along!"
Both teachers start chanting: "F***ING and F***ING and F***ING like rabbits! F***ING and F***ING and F***ING like rabbits! F***ING and F***ING and F***ING like rabbits!"

Teacher 2 collapses back on the couch, drinking a beer: "We are here as our mission to Uncle Sam to do our part to keep the population explosion down. We got a personal stake in this, too!"
Teacher 1, in a better mood: "How so?"
Teacher 2: "'Cause if we fail, there will be so D--- many of them that by the time we retire we will be turned into soylent green to FEED THEM. (Points to friend's bitten hand) They are already ready to eat us alive!"

[Andrick]

Umm... there are guidelines. The goal of home schooling is acquiring a GED.

There seems to be a lot of flared tempers for, what I see, no good reason. What's worse is arguments were jumping off topic to irrational examples in rabid responses to decry the other.

Stop it!

I swear there isn't this much dogma in religious debates. Yeah, I'm exagerating but it's not that far from the truth. Take a break from the computer the next time you see red instead of firing off an instant reply to a board where your message will linger for months afterwards.

[Random George]

two points:

1. i have seen no information from any reputable source that clearly and concisely and inarguably shows that home-schooled children do better than public-schooled children whose parents take an equal interest in the quality of education their children receive. i have seen little information that publicly educated children whose parents take an interest in their quality of education do better than home-schooled kids, either. unrestricted web sites and propaganda from either side don't count as reputable. any idiot can call himself the national association of something and put up a website of completely untrue and grammatically incorrect information. the numbers are still pretty open to interpretation. before you go off 'foaming and frothing', please do note that i am making the distinction among public school kids that you so conveniently ignore: there is a difference between kids whose parents shuttle them off to school to keep them from setting fire to the house, and parents who are sincerely concerned with how well their children do in life, and choose a public school education, as mine did. i will gladly put myself and my peer group of public education examples up against any group of home-schooled kids--not just academically, but socially as well. how many unplanned pregnancies, how many problems with drugs, alcohol, and smoking, how much we've accomplished. we'll easily hold our own. but comparing home-schooled children whose parents have taken an active role in their lives to the performance of kids in deep urban populations whose parents are either working so hard to make ends meet they never see their kids or so drugged out and far gone they don't care isn't any sort of accurate measure of the educational system. compare apples to apples, and you get apples.

2. the government is doing things with my money. they didn't let me decide whether or not to give it to them. so i can shut my eyes to a system being run in my name, essentially, and "do what's best for me and mine", or i can be a part of my freaking community. it's not some garbage about the fatherland, or any other paranoid ravings. i choose to live in this country. in this country, we have a stake and a voice. i was taught (in a public school, no less), that it is the duty of responsible americans to use that voice and to consider that stake. many, many people are dead because they believed so strongly that you and i should be able to shoot off our mouths about social issues. some of them volunteered, some of them didn't, but i think i owe it to them to try and keep this country from falling completely apart. many people in this country seem to have lost sight of the fact that we cannot forget our neighbors and hope to survive. to paraphrase, if we can't stand together we'll all hang separately. i work for change in my community when i don't like what i see, instead of shutting myself away in some insular invented reality where things are the way i want them and things are best for my nuclear family. you're right. your neighbor's kids aren't your responsibility. but if you do only what's best in the short term for your kids and yourself, his kids will become your problem. lotta kids in this world don't have a strong family. don't have a lot of role models. don't have a lot of reason to stay clean and out of trouble. those kids are looking for something. there's already a whole class of people out there ready to give them guns, knives, drugs, and a sense of invulnerable entitlement. i choose to try to give them something else: responsibility, respect, discipline, and tools. so i didn't spawn them. they're not my problem. i don't have to do anything. but the government already took my money. that milk is spilled, and no amount of yowling about it and things not being my problem is going to put it back in the cup. i also didn't spill gasoline in the kansas river, or put ammunition tailings in the local dump to leak lead into the groundwater. but if i want that river and that groundwater clean, it not being my problem isn't going to accomplish much. same thing with schools, and with 'kids these days'. i didn't break it. you talk about attempts at reform in the 70's and 80's. well, hrm, they don't appear to have worked. so we keep trying. you can take your kids out of the public education system. be my guest. i don't care--just keep paying those taxes and denying your involvement. but do not imply that those who are socially responsible and concerned about the welfare of their communities are a bunch of mindless brainwashed fascists, and then wonder why the social fabric of our society is falling apart. there's a lot wrong with this country. it's falling apart because too many people who could guide the children choose not to, and too many people just don't know how. we've got a whole generation of people, who are all between 20-40, who never got the guidance they needed. they were latchkey kids, they were the first video game generation, blame it on whatever you want. but they don't have any parenting skills, and now they're parents. they don't have the skills needed to parent their kids, who won't have the skills needed to parent their kids, and so on. i choose to take a role in my community that steps in and stops that cycle. some people choose to view that as misguided sacrifice on the altar of social consciousness. so be it. i say leaving millions of kids to suffer inadequate educations from teachers who do in fact care but are hampered by poor administration and lack of funding is a misguided sacrifice on the altar of self-righteous, self-interested ignorance. you to your altar, me to mine. so be it.

geo, who made her point without foaming, frothing, shouting, or swearing, and wishes more people could do the same.

[LudiNimTazral]

"How DARE you say that I should learn METRIC, the SYSTEM OF SATAN!"

That is exactly what Metric's reputation was for its first hundred years.

The Metric system is the only survivor of the decimal mania of the French Revolution -- the only thing left of the ten-day weeks, ten-hour days, hundred-minute hours, and de-Christianization and depopulation (i.e. mass extermination) programs. Because of the bloodbath of La Revolution (which served as the pattern for every revolutionary movement for 200 years -- including the Bolsheviki and Khmer Rouge), anything connected with it was looked at askance.

Especially by the English (whose measuring system -- now used primarily in the US -- is now Metric's only alternative). Not only was Metric created in the French Revolution, it was invented in France, and no Englishman would credit anything to their traditional enemy across the Channel...

[Mothspiral]

But wasn't it Ben Franklin who tried to get the nascent U.S. to adopt a metric time system, and a 10-hour clock? It would make time calculations easier for those of us who are allergic to mental math. Not that I think we should switch at this date!