Author Topic: Home School  (Read 6490 times)

Offline Isildur

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Re: Home School
« Reply #25 on: March 05, 2014, 10:29:05 PM »
0
I guess I stand corrected then lol... I just have never met someone who was home schooled K-12 and has taken advantage of these programs.

Almost everyone I know who has been home schooled end up doing K-8 and go to a public school their last four years before college.
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Offline Alex_Olijar

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Re: Home School
« Reply #26 on: March 06, 2014, 10:38:20 AM »
+2
I have a huge bias against homeschooling and this thread hasn't helped

Offline AJ

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Re: Home School
« Reply #27 on: March 06, 2014, 11:16:00 AM »
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I have a huge bias against homeschooling and this thread hasn't helped

Why? What's wrong with parents teaching their children? Some kids learn at a different pace. When I was 8 years old I had alapatia where you start getting bald spots due to the stress of school about half way into my first year of home school I had a full head of hair and no stress one of my best friends was home schooled their hole life and loved it every kid I've ever talked to has " your home schooled wow I wish I was " IMO homeschool is an amazing way to teach people.
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Offline lp670sv

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Re: Home School
« Reply #28 on: March 06, 2014, 11:34:51 AM »
+1
My experiences at a Catholic Middle School are a large part of what led me to become agnostic and I'm just going to leave it at that.

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Re: Home School
« Reply #29 on: March 06, 2014, 12:19:47 PM »
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My experiences at a Catholic Middle School are a large part of what led me to become agnostic and I'm just going to leave it at that.
I'm very sorry to hear that (that you had horrible school experiences, not that you're agnostic; I am as well)

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Re: Home School
« Reply #30 on: March 06, 2014, 12:53:35 PM »
+2
Can anyone point to any legitimate study that suggests that people who were homeschooled have a stronger faith in God? I was homeschooled for nine years and cyber-schooled for the remaining three, and have attended a state university for the last three years. I've been exposed to a lot of people who were homeschooled and a lot of people who weren't, and in my experience, the people who seemed to be strongest in their faith tended to come from public schools. Obviously, my own personal experience means nothing, but the idea that homeschooling or Christian schooling is the best way to ensure someone's faith is strong is simply false. Not to mention the fact that sheltering children (particularly in the teenaged years) is pointless and may even be counterproductive. Eventually everyone has to enter out into the real world and be exposed to sin and evil, and I would argue that anyone who chooses to remain sheltered for their entire life is ignoring one of the key points of Jesus' message, which was that the sick need healing, not the healthy. Jesus chose to eat with tax collectors and prostitutes, not just other believers in Sunday School. When parents choose to shelter their children as long as possible, the result is young adults who have no idea how to react to stuff they can and will be exposed to. Bullying, sexual immorality, drug use, etc. all exists in the adult world, and by avoiding exposure to it early, you're making it more difficult for adults to cope.

Not to mention the fact that homeschooling itself has the serious problem of, in many cases, not allowing children being homeschooled to receive a proper education. People go to college (and often get graduate degrees) in teaching for a reason: There are methods of teaching that are more effective than others. It's easy enough to teach at a low level despite not having the proper education, but once you get up into high school, how is a parent supposed to adequately teach their children? History and English aren't just about the information or stories being taught, they're about what those things mean and what we can and should learn from them. Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math, etc. should all be taught by experts. I highly doubt many parents who are homeschooling their kids have a mastery of all high school level maths and sciences, and while being self-taught may seem acceptable to some, with no real accountability, it's impossible to know if the student is misunderstanding information and thus learning "wrong".

Warrior_Monk

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Re: Home School
« Reply #31 on: March 06, 2014, 01:22:54 PM »
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What's wrong with parents teaching their children? Some kids learn at a different pace. When I was 8 years old I had alapatia where you start getting bald spots due to the stress of school about half way into my first year of home school I had a full head of hair and no stress one of my best friends was home schooled their hole life and loved it every kid I've ever talked to has " your home schooled wow I wish I was " IMO homeschool is an amazing way to teach people.

one of my best friends was home schooled their hole life and loved it every kid I've ever talked to has " your home schooled wow I wish I was " IMO homeschool is an amazing way to teach people.

hole life
your home schooled
...
IMO homeschool is an amazing way to teach people.
Pro tip: if you're going to advocate for homeschooling (or anything else), check your grammar and spelling first.

As for Olijar's apprehensions, it's probably because he knows me. I'm basically the worst.

Time to get real though.

The main issue is once you get to a certain level, parents can only do so much, and you end up teaching yourself most of the information. While this is a useful tool in life, there are a lot of problems with it. I was very fortunate to have a sister who was willing to help me with my math, for example, because my mom didn't understand things like Geometry. Now I'm really good at math, but if I didn't have my sister as a tutor, I would have been screwed. I scored much lower on my ACT scores than my friends did, even though we're intellectually on a similar level, primarily because schools are focused on those sort of things. That's pretty crucial for getting scholarships and getting into college.

Speaking of scholarships, I'm pretty sure you're more likely to get them if you're not homeschooled.

Homeschooling can also seriously inhibit social interactions. I'm sure I wouldn't be as introverted as I am if I wasn't homeschooled. Being an introvert isn't a bad thing, but not knowing how to handle yourself is social situations is. I'm certainly not the worst homeschooler at it, but I do feel out of place in many social settings. Sometimes I wish I had the desire to go to college events, but I would simply prefer to stay in my room, watch movies that you probably wouldn't, and play Pokemon. I've never been on a real date, and at this point I really don't know how to get one. The blame certainly can't rest solely on Homeschooling, but I'm sure had I been schooled differently things would have been different, and I have regrets about that. Sure, I can change, but at this point I'm past that part of my development in life and would rather not. Sure, I have friends (most of whom live in other states from me), and I can conduct myself like any other person, but there's a level of comfortability that just isn't there.

Homeschoolers are generally arrogant too. Stereotyping, yes, but often true (hence my first post regarding ego). They think they're the hottest stuff around because statistically they're smarter, and blah blah blah. Hate that.

They're also completely ignorant about other things. There's no question that being taught that evolution is wrong will create a bias against it.  Closing yourself off to an idea before researching it is going to effect your conclusions for obvious reasons, and homeschooling can foster that sort of thought more so than public school, which is a mixture of all sorts of cultures and tends to promote openness. Sure, they're also more open to sinful things as well, but I'm talking about disadvantages right now, so I'm not going to expound on that.

I'm also bad at evangelizing. I haven't had much practice in that area, other than a mission's trip to Denver, but that's not the same kind of evangelizing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy with my life and wouldn't change it, but I definitely see some things in my life that would be different for the better had I not been homeschooled.

Now I'm going to college at a Christian institution and hear more F-bombs daily than I hear in any movie. I've even had teachers drop some language. A friend of mine told me how he was going to smoke weed on his drive home to visit his girlfriend, and they're probably sleeping together based on some of his word choice.
That's the real world, and I'm just now beginning to understand it.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2014, 01:25:48 PM by Westy »

TheMarti

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Re: Home School
« Reply #32 on: March 06, 2014, 02:15:53 PM »
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Gentlemen, please be gentle and don't correct errors. It comes off as very arrogant and rude, and some of the people on the boards may be dyslexic or younger teenagers - please remember this.

That being said, your story is exactly why I'm more against homeschooling than I am for it.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2014, 02:17:58 PM by The Marti »

Offline jbeers285

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Re: Home School
« Reply #33 on: March 06, 2014, 02:28:01 PM »
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Gentlemen, please be gentle and don't correct errors. It comes off as very arrogant and rude, and some of the people on the boards may be dyslexic or younger teenagers - please remember this.

That being said, your story is exactly why I'm more against homeschooling than I am for it.

Marti I am with you however when some is making statements like "homeschooling is the best" and stating how it can benefit your education and they have punctuation errors as well as spelling errors it seems reasonable to comment on it. I personally considered it a couple of times but refrained. Mostly I chose to refrain because I do a lot of posting via my phone and that tends to create a lot of errors in my own posts.
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Offline EmJayBee83

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Re: Home School
« Reply #34 on: March 06, 2014, 02:32:08 PM »
+5
Homeschooling can also seriously inhibit social interactions. I'm sure I wouldn't be as introverted as I am if I wasn't homeschooled. Being an introvert isn't a bad thing, but not knowing how to handle yourself is social situations is. I'm certainly not the worst homeschooler at it, but I do feel out of place in many social settings. Sometimes I wish I had the desire to go to college events, but I would simply prefer to stay in my room, watch movies that you probably wouldn't, and play Pokemon. I've never been on a real date, and at this point I really don't know how to get one.
From experience, Westy, you can attend a public school your whole life, be on sports teams, play in the orchestra, etc. and still always feel out of place at any social event.

I'm not saying; I just saying.

Warrior_Monk

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Re: Home School
« Reply #35 on: March 06, 2014, 03:19:39 PM »
+3
Homeschooling can also seriously inhibit social interactions. I'm sure I wouldn't be as introverted as I am if I wasn't homeschooled. Being an introvert isn't a bad thing, but not knowing how to handle yourself is social situations is. I'm certainly not the worst homeschooler at it, but I do feel out of place in many social settings. Sometimes I wish I had the desire to go to college events, but I would simply prefer to stay in my room, watch movies that you probably wouldn't, and play Pokemon. I've never been on a real date, and at this point I really don't know how to get one.
From experience, Westy, you can attend a public school your whole life, be on sports teams, play in the orchestra, etc. and still always feel out of place at any social event.

I'm not saying; I just saying.
Fair enough. I was among the more social homeschoolers in our little group, but I want something to blame.

Gentlemen, please be gentle and don't correct errors. It comes off as very arrogant and rude...
Then my point is made, even if it includes myself.

Chris

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Re: Home School
« Reply #36 on: March 06, 2014, 03:45:19 PM »
+1
Homeschooling can also seriously inhibit social interactions. I'm sure I wouldn't be as introverted as I am if I wasn't homeschooled. Being an introvert isn't a bad thing, but not knowing how to handle yourself is social situations is. I'm certainly not the worst homeschooler at it, but I do feel out of place in many social settings. Sometimes I wish I had the desire to go to college events, but I would simply prefer to stay in my room, watch movies that you probably wouldn't, and play Pokemon. I've never been on a real date, and at this point I really don't know how to get one.
From experience, Westy, you can attend a public school your whole life, be on sports teams, play in the orchestra, etc. and still always feel out of place at any social event.

I'm not saying; I just saying.

Very true, but many (not all) homeschoolers end up lacking the socialization that public school provides, and end up being "the weird kid" who always feels out of place and hated. I can confirm; I was that kid, and I hated it, and myself, for years.

browarod

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Re: Home School
« Reply #37 on: March 06, 2014, 04:01:57 PM »
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I went to Christian school and I feel like that kid still to this day.

I'm not saying this to advocate throwing your children headlong into the real world right away, but I feel like public school provides a better dynamic for comparison than Christian schooling or homeschooling do. They go to school, they see people doing this or that, they come home and you can explain to them what it is, why they're doing it, and whether or not it's something they should be doing, too. Whereas when you home school them or send them to Christian school, they might have some exposure to that but it's warped or shielded from the way it should be displayed so they are likely to not recognize the same thing when they see it out in the real world and be unprepared for facing it.

There are, of course, exceptions from each schooling environment, but I feel from my personal experience as well as the experiences of people I've dealt with in my adult life, that generally the ones more prepared for adulthood and the challenges, and temptations, it brings and who are more likely to stay strong in their faith are people that were educated with those things around them and whose parents taught them the differences between what they see and what the Bible teaches as right.

Offline TechnoEthicist

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Re: Home School
« Reply #38 on: March 06, 2014, 04:46:48 PM »
+1
I would be highly surprised if we all didn't feel similar to Westy in some shape or form socially. After all, we are on this board that we all were drawn to because of a card game. In many areas, that kind of activity is frowned upon socially, but it gives those of us who are considered awkward a home to communicate ideas with, as we are doing here, without concern about how we will be looked at (at least in theory). However, I want to also echo MJB's comment. I was one of those in public school that was more intelligent than most of my peers (according to the state and my teachers), couldn't throw a football long distance (not for lack of trying, thank you three years of flag football), or catch a flyball if hit my face (and broke my glasses several times). To say that I was not accepted by my peers at my public school was an understatement. I didn't have the right clothes, the right shoes, enough money, etc. In short, many of my junior high years were filled with painful memories, as I'm willing to wager is a similar story for most on these boards, if not society in general. I begged and pleaded with my parents to let me go to the private Christian school, thinking that would be my sanctuary from all of that was happening to me. But, it never happened. I continued on into public school, made it into high school, and became leader of just about everything because no one else wanted to, and I wanted to be accepted. Now, some can argue that because I went to a rural high school that my faith wasn't really challenged (we had a fellowship of Christian Athletes, and I knew which churches most of my teachers went to, although there were a few agnostic). I even had a science teacher pull me aside one day before class because he was going to talk about evolution, which my church had taught me to be completely against (it was the 90s after all).

But I say all of that to say this, we are generally creatures of habit, and we go and do things that are comfortable to us. When I got to college, I didn't seek the leadership positions as much, I wanted to game with friends and have fun. And even now in my adult life, I look at what Gretel and I do for fun: watch movies, invite couples over for dinner and games, Renaissance Faires, etc., and I realized that when I got old enough that I didn't care what others thought of me anymore. I have a great wife, friends who have been with me through many of life's challenges, and a promising career. So I wouldn't say that your "lack" of social skills is due to less exposure Westy, I would instead argue that you are doing what you feel comfortable doing, and that's okay. I am first-generation college graduate from a family of Appalachian-German farmers who became blue collar factory-workers, who was never taught proper social skills for many situations I now face. Instead I do my best to minimize any damage I do cause, and try to learn from the experience. It's DEFINITELY not just those who are in private school or homeschooled who feel awkward :).

Offline YourMathTeacher

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Re: Home School
« Reply #39 on: March 06, 2014, 05:12:10 PM »
+5
I went to public schools, and they were the worst years of my life. I was physically and emotionally abused (even by a couple of teachers) from elementary school all the way through graduation from high school. I was quite frankly suicidal, but thankfully God had different plans for me, albeit not until I was in my 20's.

This thread can continue with all the stories of which type of schooling worked (or didn't work) for us individually. But what is best for any individual child is solely the discretion of the parent. I would never send my kids to public school, not only because of my own personal experiences, but because I've been teaching in public schools for over 10 years so I know that the "social" aspects of public school do not outweigh the rest of the educational experience. The other key factor, of course, is the quality of the schools that children would be zoned for. So another parent's choice to put their kids in public school may be the best option for them, where they are.

My son may need to learn some social skills that he is not getting from homeschooling, but his strengths in other areas will make up the difference in the long term. He scored in the 90th percentile on the PSAT, so I think he will be just fine. My biggest problem has actually been trying to keep the college-aged girls at our church from asking my son out on dates. I told him that 15-year-olds should probably start dating other 15-year-olds to start with. It just doesn't help that he looks like he is 18 already.  ;)
My wife is a hottie.

Warrior_Monk

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Re: Home School
« Reply #40 on: March 06, 2014, 05:22:02 PM »
+3
I think the main point is that no one way is perfect. Each system has its pros and cons.

Also that high school is the worst.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2014, 08:22:20 PM by Westy »

TheMarti

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Re: Home School
« Reply #41 on: March 06, 2014, 05:47:57 PM »
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I think the main point is that no one way is perfect. Each system has its pros and cons.

Also that high school stinks.

Amen, and Amen. Middle and high school are hard, no matter where you come from and what you're doing. :)

 


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