Gabriel Sechan wrote:
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:06:21 -0700 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[email protected] Subject: Re: Schooling funding debate
... again (Was Re: Wifi leeches (Was: Multiple NAT layers))
Why does she need to be equal to 10 educators? Homeschooled kids
do *better* than public school kids. That is a *fact*. Explain
why that is true *now* if homeschool parents *aren't* equal to
10 professionals.
One thing to keep in mind though, education aside, is that public
or private school also lets the kids experience socializing with
their peers, along with adults that aren't related to them.
Peers/adults outside their family and immediate neighbors, and it's
usually a wide range of races, religions and social backgrounds.
Dealing with a variety of different people is a valuable experience
to kids.
That's what most homeschoolers want to avoid. Apparently there's
exceptions on this list, but every one I've ever met were right wing
religious nuts who didn't want their kids to learn how to think or to
appreciate diversity- they wanted them to be carbon copies of their
racism and religion. They home schooled specifically so they
wouldn't meet Jews, blacks, hispanics, etc.
Ayup, that's the big danger. The homeschoolers tend to sweep that wing
of their movement under the carpet. It's one of the reasons why I find
the homeschooling data suspect. It should be bimodal with people like
Chris in the high lump, and the wingnuts in a much lower lump merely by
simple socioeconomic arguments.
However, the socialization argument doesn't hold water anymore, in my
opinion.
First, you're going to have a hard case to prove that "socialization" in
high school isn't heavily screwed up. Look at how many bright students
absolutely hated high school. And, for most of them, it wasn't the
teachers or classes that were the problem.
Second, many students are heavily booked (we can argue whether that is a
good thing another time) with outside of school activities that provide
at least as much opportunity for socialization with far fewer of the
negative repercussions. The interesting problem is how or whether to
integrate homeschool into the local district for group activities or
not. I expect the issues will be larger for football, basketball, etc
than for choir, orchestra, drama club, etc.
The danger, of course, is that the students may self-select for
individual pursuits. However, there are normally group associations
even with those (orchestras and choirs for music, group art projects
with the schools, etc.).
-a
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