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I am currently researching HomeSchooling book source in America.
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Question:
I am currently researching HomeSchooling book source in America. I would like to
know what you know and what your feelings are on this issue. Please be
thoughtful and objective in your responses.
Answer:
-Our family has been homeschooling for nearly four years now, and we continue
to be thrilled with it. The first concern people generally have about
homeschooling is the big socialization bugaboo. This often follows from two
misconceptions, the first that homeschoolers generally take their children
out of school to 'protect' them from undesirable or different peers, and that
once out of school they tie them up under the bed, only letting them out to
do math drills >grin<. In fact most homeschoolers remove their children from
school (or often never start them in the first place) because they have
serious concerns about the system, or because their children are very unhappy
there. Most homeschoolers lead very active lives, spending plenty of time in
the company of others. Frequently these others are a far more diverse group
than one would find in any clssroom. After all, childen in school are locked
away, practicing to live in 'the real world' -but the world IS our classroom,
and our children are already leading real lives. Typically homeschooling
children deal well with a broad range of people, of all ages, and both sexes.
(research backs this up.)
The second misconception is that one must spend large amounts of time with
large numbers of children on order to be prepared for adult life. But
children learn to be adults from being around adults, not other children. We
know that children make very poor language models for other children, so why
do we expect them to make good models for socialization? In fact in schools,
children observe one adult, doing one job, and receive very little attention
from that adult. Consequently, any attachments which form must be between
children. As we see this peer attachment occurring earlier and earlier, as
children enter all-day care at earlier and earlier ages, we also see more and
more children who are unconcerned about the expectations of adults, and who
have great difficulty relating to anyone but their own narrow peer group.
Consequently, they become more and more difficult both to parent and to
teach. This rise in peer attachment is one of the very best reasons to
homeschool- many people feel that socialization is the best reason FOR
homeschooling.
Academically, on all studies, homeschoolers excell over their schooled peers
on all standardized testing. The most recent study I've seen was done in
Canada by the HSLDF, and found that homelearners placed on the average on the
75th percentile in all subjects (schooled children placing by definition on
the 50th). These results, interestingly enough, were not related to age or
economic level of parents, preparation of the parents as teachers, degree of
structure in the learning environment, or education level of the mother,
though there was a very weak correlation for the educational level of the
father.
Some people are concerned for the ability of homelearners to succeed as
adults. In fact, homeschoolers who wish to go on to University do so easily,
and do very well once they get there. Why wouldn't they? Self motivated,
people with the typically excellent research skills of a homeschooler ought
to be expected to do well in a university setting- in fact many large
universities, i.e. Harvard, seek them out. Many homelearners start
successful small businesses, often while they are still in their teens, and
some are able to arrange apprenticships, or other nontraditional arrangments.
The son of an acquaintance of mine just graduated with a doctorate in music
after being homeschooled all his life. His only (very minor) difficulty in
adjusting was that he found it annoying to have to move on before he felt he
had mastered presented material. Just getting an excellent mark wasn't
enough.
There is quite a lot of research available on homeschooling, and if you are
looking for really objective information on homeschooling, you should hunt
some of it up. Some interesting books to read would include all the John Holt
books (the graddaddy of the hoemschooling movement), John Taylor Gatto's book
"Dumbing Us Down", David Gutterson's book "Why Homeschooling Makes Sense",
and Grace Llewellyn's book "Real LIves".
-I plan to homeschool my three-year-old son after having met hundreds
of homeschoolers in various parts of the country. My interest in
education policy has prompted an interest in homeschooling that began
well before my son was born. Here are some research resources about
homeschooling.
Here is the first note (last revised 07/01/94) of a three-part list
of books about home schooling. The books are arranged in the
APPROXIMATE order in which someone new to home schooling might wish
to read them. Books by persons with classroom teaching experience are
marked by a plus sign (+); books by home-schooled CHILDREN are marked
by an exclamation point (!). The first note lists books BOTH
recommended by members of on-line services for new home schoolers AND
published after 1987. Your suggestions are welcomed for future
revisions. International Standard Book Numbers are included to help
you request the books from libraries or bookstores. Try libraries to
find these books before buying them all (as I almost have). Books on
home schooling are usually classified 649 in the Dewey decimal system
(sometimes 371 or 372); they are classified LC37 or LC40 in the
Library of Congress system.
+ David & Micki Colfax, Homeschooling for Excellence (1988) (ISBN
0-446-38986-2)
Mary Pride, Schoolproof (1988) (ISBN 0-89107-480-5)
John Whitehead & Alexis Crow, Home Education: Rights and Reasons
(1993) (ISBN 0-89107-655-7)
Christopher J. Klicka, The Right Choice: The Incredible Failure of
Public Education and the Rising Hope of Home Schooling (1992) (ISBN
0-923463-83-6)
Llewellyn B. Davis, Why So Many Christians Are Going Home to School
(1991) (Elijah Co., P.O. Box 12483, Knoxville, TN 37912-0483)
Gayle Graham, How to Home School: A Practical Approach (1992) (ISBN
1-880892-40-5)
The Home School Manual, ed. by Theodore Wade (4th ed. 1991) (ISBN
0-930192-25-7)
+ Grace Llewellyn, The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How
to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education (1991) (ISBN
0-9629591-0-3)
Luanne Shackelford and Susan White, A Survivor's Guide to Home
Schooling (1988) (ISBN 0-89107-503-8)
! Kendall Hailey, The Day I Became an Autodidact: And the Advice,
Adventures, and Acrimonies That Befell Me Thereafter (1988) (ISBN
0-385-29636-0)
Gregg Harris, The Christian Home School (1988) (ISBN 0-943497-06-X)
Howard and Susan Richman, The Three R's at Home (1988) (ISBN
0-929446-00-3)
Ruth Beechick, You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully: Grades 4 to 8
(1988) (ISBN 0-940319-04-7)
+ Grace Llewellyn, Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who Don't Go to School
(1993) (ISBN 0-9629591-3-8)
+ David Guterson, Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense (1992)
(ISBN 0-15-193097-X)
Raymond & Dorothy Moore, Home School Burnout (1988) (ISBN
0-943497-35-3)
! Jenifer Goldman, My Life As a Traveling Homeschooler (1991) (ISBN
O-934623-75-9)
Karl Reed, The Bible, Homeschooling, and the Law (n.p.: Christian Home
Ministries, 1991).
General resource guides on home schooling include Mary Pride's HIGHLY
RECOMMENDED four-volume The Big Book of Home Learning (1990) (ISBN
0-89107-548-8 [vol. 1: Getting Started]); Donn Reed's Home School
Source Book (1991) (ISBN 0-919761-24-0); and Rebecca Rupp's Good
Stuff: Learning Tools for All Ages (1993) (ISBN 0-945097-20-4).
You can find a more extensive bibliography about homeschooling at the
World Wide Web site mentioned in my signature block, below.
Karl M. Bunday bunda...@gold.tc.umn.edu
P.O. Box 337 cfmc...@prodigy.com
Excelsior, MN 55331 74222.1...@compuserve.com
kmbun...@msn.com
http://www.bookport.com/welcome/bunday/wang
"Those who owe their livelihoods to the bureaucratic-educational
complex, whether as teachers or officials, and whose hopes of
personal advancement must rest mainly within that complex, have
perhaps a stronger interest in the educational economy than any
parent. However, that interest, at least directly and necessarily,
must be in the welfare and expansion of the apparatus rather than in
the nature and quality of what the apparatus is actually producing.
Because it is their own children who are receiving the provision, it
is the families from which the pupils come which have the strongest
interest in its nature and quality. In as much as the major interests
of the apparatniks and of the parents are thus not merely different
but bound from time to time to be conflicting, it becomes, for anyone
who for any reason shares that parental interest, a mandate of the
most elementary political prudence to strive to increase the
influence of the parents--to shift the whole balance of power in the
educational economy from the supply side to the demand side."
-- Antony Flew, Power to the Parents: Reversing Educational Decline
(1987), pp. 15-16
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