Why do Republicans cripple their children with homeschooling?

[depotoo]

You do realize they don’t limit the instructing by just themselves, correct? They have access to qualified instruction through others online, as well as in person, depending on where they live. If you had ever cared to research it, you would know there are groups that pool their knowledge. Teachers that have retired or chosen to homeschool themselves, etc.

If you feel people cannot get an education from home, then you must feel that colleges, as well as public schools, that have online classes, are also not real education.

There is a lot of time in the school day devoted to things other than learning. Homeschooling teachers don't have 30 kids to wrangle and can focus their entire attention on a very small number, so the actual learning gets done a lot faster. Think of how long the average kid sits bored in class waiting for slower kids to catch up and the class clown to shut up long enough for the teacher to teach. Then add in the time between classes.

Clearly your classroom experience differs from mine and all the kids of whose I'm aware. Additionally, three hours is about the bare minimum of studying I and my kids did after the formal classroom instruction period ended.

I'm sure that there are efficiencies to be gained from homeschooling; however, I'm equally sure that there are efficiency declines as well. How the gains and losses net, I cannot say. What I can do is apply some basic assumptions and "guess-timate" how much time an extremely efficient home instruction process would take at a minimum.

Assumptions and premises:

• Assumption on Quantity of Classes per day (student and teacher workload): Going off the "old school" model (schedule) under which I was taught -- I'm using that because the more "matrixed" approach some schools today use is just harder to "add up" -- I'll assume a student takes 7 classes each day, each lasting 50 minutes for a total of 5.8 hours of formal instruction (I realize that one could teach one subject all day each day, or use some other scheduling approach, but the pedagogical sagacity of doing so with young children is dubious at best):
  • Math (up to precalculus)
  • Science (biology, chemistry and physics)
  • History (American and Western Civilization)
  • English (composition and literature)
  • Foreign language (modern; grammar and literature)
  • Theology/comparative religion alternated with P.E.
  • Some other class: classical language, computer science, art, music, shop, economics, second math, second science, second history, etc.
• Premise -- Instruction: College classes are conducted such that nearly the entirety of the lecture is used for formal instruction that, for the most part, happens without interruption by students asking questions.
  • Assumption: For now, I'll assume a home instructor is able to achieve a "collegiate" degree of efficiency.
    • Constraint: I realize the likelihood of doing that with a young child, to say nothing of doing it in a home setting with the interruptions attendant to it and expecting one can cover content at that pace and expect a child to master it, is somewhere between slim and none, and "slim's train has left the platform," but let's just go with it anyway, at least for now.
  • Assumption: Because of the one-on-one setting, the instructor will be able to assign readings and problems targeted not only around what the student must learn, but s/he will be able to do so with greater efficiency whereby what s/he assigns is targeted at the areas where the student is weak and assign no or nearly no work that covers elements with which the student is strong.
    • Constraint: For this assumption to hold true, the instructor must, among other things:
      • Be prescient about the student's general and specific strengths and weaknesses (the child may not consistently make clear that they don't understand things, but for now I'll assume the kid does)
      • Be aware of the specific learning objectives/achievement their state requires.
      • For technical subject like math, science, computer science, economics, etc., know both the chosen textbooks and the subject matter to know what specific skill and techniques any given homework problem addresses.
• Premise -- Instruction: The objectives of home schooling is to provide the same degree of preparation as is conventional schooling:
  • Prepare a child for college or a vocation.
  • Teach a child so they master (i.e., get As) the content in a given course. (That a child legitimately earn anything other than As in a one-on-one teaching setting shouldn't even be possible, but for completeness sake, I've mentioned it.)
  • Teach a child so the master the non-explicit "content"/learning objectives for a given course.
    
    For example, math, along with teaching math operations also teaches structured logical thought processes (deductive reasoning and abductive solutioning). History teaches about wars, kings and queens, but it also builds a student's adroitness for analyzing events and forming strong arguments about cause and effect (inductive and abductive reasoning), along with supplementing writing skills.
    • Develop sound critical thinking thinking skills with regard to linear (basic) dilemma analysis and solving. (K through junior high)
    • Develop sound critical thinking skills with regard to non-linear (complex) dilemma analysis and solving. (high school)
    • Develop collaboration skills.
    • Develop leadership and "being led" skills.
• Premise -- Student workload: Home schooled students must read the chapters in their textbooks just as must any student.
  • Assumption -- Student workload Homeschooled students have homework amounting to an average of at least 30 minutes per class per day, thus about 3.5 hours minimum per day. By the time they get to high school, that increases to something around 45 minutes to hour per class per day. That could be reading chapters in their texts, performing research for projects/papers, rehearsing a piece of music, solving assigned problems, reading supplemental materials/content, etc. (I'll grant that this level of workload doesn't come about until junior high. For younger students, I'd put it at about two hours every other day, or six hours per week.)
    
    From my own experience, the 3.5 to 7 hours of daily outside-of-class studying, for a total of somewhere between about 18 hours and 35 hours per week, will be spread out over seven days. Regardless of how one apportions the workload, the work still must be done.

Though the above is but a very high-level take on what has to be accomplished, I think it's absurd to think homeschooling will produce enough efficiency for a school day to be done in two or three hours. Even teaching with the extreme efficiency, for a child, of a college course, one's going to need 3.5 hours to perform the formal instruction. The student's school day isn't, however, done after the explicit instruction is done.

Heck, their school day is done in 2 or 3 hours.

Even not considering your assertion with the structure I have above, anyone can tell you that one cannot teach a chapter of "whatever" in 25 minutes. Think about how much time it takes to teach a young child long division or to teach a junior high schooler a simple algebraic theorem. Some concepts don't need much discussion; few kids need more than a single mention of, say, the commutative property of addition and multiplication. Nevermind that part of teaching involves imbuing the child with the skill to know when to apply a given concept/tool and when not to, in other words, teaching the importance and application of context. That is what takes time, more than 25 minutes. (Judging by how often people I observe here, as well as among the general public, completely disregard context, I'd say some people need sixty-plus years to master the importance, role and application of context.)

You don't have to teach every subject every day. You can make Tuesday, for example, math day and focus on that. You can make a lot of progress when you have that kind of time and flexibility.

First, even taking that approach does not obviate the need to invest the same basic quantity of time. That approach merely addresses how the time is used on any given day.

I anticipated your saying that. It's why I included the following parenthetical remark:

I realize that one could teach one subject all day each day, or use some other scheduling approach, but the pedagogical sagacity of doing so with young children is dubious at best

So, now that you have made the remark, I bid you to soundly address how you can be sure to overcome the pedagogical shortcomings of a disjointed approach to teaching a continuous topic to young learners. Conventional schools could use the "one subject per day" approach, but they don't because young students need the consistency and continuity of there not being long gaps between their encounters with a given subject. The bigger the temporal gap, the more they forget, thus the more, or more in depth, the teacher must review at the start of the class. Having to do that reduces the efficiency gains that you are specifically trying to argue exist in a homeschool setting.

Forgetting details and whatnot is not unique to children. Surely you've been part of a group or panel, or even worked on something on your own, whereby you observed that a bit of refreshing is needed after a week long gap in seeing the material? For adults, the refresher can be pretty quick, perhaps five or ten minutes, because an adult's retention capabilities are different, bolstered as they are by voluminous amounts of prior experience children have yet to acquire, but for a student the same is not so. Moreover, along with learning content, students, particularly (ideally?) those below the tenth grade, are learning how to learn, learning how they specifically learn best. (Having raised four kids, I can say too that they way one's child learns best may or may not be the way the parent learned best.) Thus, not only is forgetting not unique to kids, it's a more profound phenomenon. One think of it thus: it's a hell of a lot easier to forget that which one has only barely, if at all, mastered/learned.

In addition to the retention challenge, one must also overcome the fact that people generally don't have attention spans that run for 3.5 hours. I'm not saying one must teach a given topic "straight through" for 3.5 hours, but whether one does or doesn't, with a child, one's going to have to remind them of stuff from the beginning of the instruction session, thus cutting into that "maximum efficiency" goal. Moreover, if one breaks it up into several sessions over the course of a day, well, so much for your two to three hour school day. Remember, you're the one, not I, who's asserted that a homeschooling environment is markedly more efficient and less time consuming than is conventional school setting.

I'm saying that home schooling parents have found that they do not need to invest the same amounts of time that traditional schools, especially in the younger grades. As the students mature, of course they spend more time studying. It has been the experience, however, of many home schoolers, that, on average, they need far less time "in school". Of course their learning doesn't stop just because they put the books away.

I'm saying that home schooling parents have found that they do not need to invest the same amounts of time that traditional schools, especially in the younger grades.

Let me be clear. I don't have a negative view of homeschooling. I'm merely aware of the challenges of doing it well. To be sure, it can be done well. Some two million parents homeschool their kids, but there are some 250 million parents in the country. It's thus not surprising that some subset of the two million who homeschool their kids do a fine job of it. That it can be done well -- with or without the temporal efficiencies you cite -- isn't really the or an issue. The issue is that if one does homeschool one's kids, if one does not do so with outstanding effect, the child is the loser. If one is committed to homeschooling, it's not as though one can change the school one's child attends so as to secure a more effective scholastic environment.

Yes, homeschooling from about kindergarten to middle (perhaps junior high) school is somewhat more time efficient than often is public schooling. It's a wholly different matter when one gets to the high school level.


I reached out to an educator acquaintance some time back to request some sample test questions from one of his American history classes. (I merely passed them on to a friend who was looking for such.) Here are some taken from various portions of the educator's class.

Answer the following questions by referring to the late-nineteenth-century photograph below by journalist Jacob Riis.
​

Conditions like those shown in the image contributed most directly to which of the following?
(A) The passage of laws restricting immigration to the United States
(B) An increase in Progressive reform activity
(C) A decline in efforts to Americanize immigrants
(D) The weakening of labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor

Advocates for individuals such as those shown in the image would have most likely agreed with which of the following perspectives?
(A) The Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was justified.
(B) Capitalism, free of government regulation, would improve social conditions.
(C) Both wealth and poverty are the products of natural selection.
(D) Government should act to eliminate the worst abuses of industrial society.

The conditions shown in the image depict which of the following trends in the late nineteenth century?
(A) The growing gap between wealthy people and people living in poverty
(B) The rise of the settlement house and Populist movements
(C) The increased corruption in urban politics
(D) The migration of African Americans to the North

Essay questions:

• Evaluate the extent to which trans-Atlantic interactions fostered change in labor systems in the British North American colonies from 1600 to 1763.
• Evaluate the extent to which new technology fostered change in United States industry from 1865 to 1900.
• Evaluate the extent to which globalization fostered change in the United States economy from 1945 to 2000.

It may be that I grossly misunderstand/underestimate the average home school instructor, but I find it hard to construe that whatever time savings may accrue to the student and teacher in the K to junior school years do so sufficiently to counteract the vastly more involved lectures and study needed come the high school period of the home schooling process. Based, however, on the pervasive insipidity of much public discourse I hear -- both here on USMB and in the news and among public figures -- I don't think so.

I have no doubt that parents can learn and become apt instructors of content (explicit and "knock on") such as American history or anything else, and, obviously, some parents already have most or all the subject matter and contextual knowledge and skills needed to so. That said, among the folks I know well enough to presume they have the skills and knowledge to homeschool their kids, I can assure you that not one of them would do so. They wouldn't because doing so would force them to take a serious hit to their household income. For myself (I became a single parent many years ago when my wife passed), my capability and will to homeschool my kids would have had nothing to do with whether I did or didn't do so. My need to provide for them vastly outweighed any potential considerations of homeschooling them; I had to work.

 

[Nia88]

A thread based on lies. Public, common core education is pure liberal progressive socialist brainwashing. Common Core, nothing in thus world has been invented or built by a student of common core. That is a fact.

So teaching children multiple ways of solving a math problem is liberal? Reading standards is a liberal agenda?

Yes, Common Core is a Liberal/Democrat idea. As of yet, we can not show one great advancement in technology that was a result of a Common Core education. Nothing. But Liberals think they know best. Sad, really.

Common core is based on international standards. The same standards countries like Finland and Japan have. It's the implementation that is the problem. Not common core.

 

[elektra]

Common core is based on international standards. The same standards countries like Finland and Japan have. It's the implementation that is the problem. Not common core.

If, Common Core is in fact based on International standards, that is the best reason to get rid of Common Core.

Common Core was and is fully implimented. That is not the problem nor what us parents are comolaining about.

It is the revisionist history that is now taught.

It is the insane experiment of math ideas being taught.

It is the elimination of classic literature that is replaced with liberal stories of bullying.

It is that the scam of man made global warming being taught as science.

It is the propaganda that solar and power is the greatest source of energy.

Technically, Common Core is political, it is the Liberal religion, liberal, progressive, dogma.

 

[Unkotare]

What revised history?

 

[Nia88]

Common core is based on international standards. The same standards countries like Finland and Japan have. It's the implementation that is the problem. Not common core.

If, Common Core is in fact based on International standards, that is the best reason to get rid of Common Core.

Common Core was and is fully implimented. That is not the problem nor what us parents are comolaining about.

It is the revisionist history that is now taught.

It is the insane experiment of math ideas being taught.

It is the elimination of classic literature that is replaced with liberal stories of bullying.

It is that the scam of man made global warming being taught as science.

It is the propaganda that solar and power is the greatest source of energy.

Technically, Common Core is political, it is the Liberal religion, liberal, progressive, dogma.

Revisionist history?

Climate change is based in scientific facts so it should be taught in science. What should kids be learning in Science ?

Insane experiment of math? Mathematic strategies taught in common core have been used in other countries for years. They’ve been tried and tested. Hardly experimental.

Classic literature is still taught.

You don’t know shit what’s being taught in schools. You’re getting your information from infowars and brietbart.

 

[elektra]

Common core is based on international standards. The same standards countries like Finland and Japan have. It's the implementation that is the problem. Not common core.

If, Common Core is in fact based on International standards, that is the best reason to get rid of Common Core.

Common Core was and is fully implimented. That is not the problem nor what us parents are comolaining about.

It is the revisionist history that is now taught.

It is the insane experiment of math ideas being taught.

It is the elimination of classic literature that is replaced with liberal stories of bullying.

It is that the scam of man made global warming being taught as science.

It is the propaganda that solar and power is the greatest source of energy.

Technically, Common Core is political, it is the Liberal religion, liberal, progressive, dogma.

Revisionist history?

Climate change is based in scientific facts so it should be taught in science. What should kids be learning in Science ?

Insane experiment of math? Mathematic strategies taught in common core have been used in other countries for years. They’ve been tried and tested. Hardly experimental.

Classic literature is still taught.

You don’t know shit what’s being taught in schools. You’re getting your information from infowars and brietbart.

Strategies taught by common core matg have been taught for years in other countries? I doubt that very much. Maybe one or two, but I would like to see that. Either way, The USA need nit emulate or copy other countries. What we have built is the best, and nothing out thete is built by common core math students. Not learning the multiplication problems is best?

AGW does not exist, not science at all. CO2 is not pollution nor does it trap heat.

And yes, we do not need revisionist history.

 

[Nia88]

Common core is based on international standards. The same standards countries like Finland and Japan have. It's the implementation that is the problem. Not common core.

If, Common Core is in fact based on International standards, that is the best reason to get rid of Common Core.

Common Core was and is fully implimented. That is not the problem nor what us parents are comolaining about.

It is the revisionist history that is now taught.

It is the insane experiment of math ideas being taught.

It is the elimination of classic literature that is replaced with liberal stories of bullying.

It is that the scam of man made global warming being taught as science.

It is the propaganda that solar and power is the greatest source of energy.

Technically, Common Core is political, it is the Liberal religion, liberal, progressive, dogma.

Revisionist history?

Climate change is based in scientific facts so it should be taught in science. What should kids be learning in Science ?

Insane experiment of math? Mathematic strategies taught in common core have been used in other countries for years. They’ve been tried and tested. Hardly experimental.

Classic literature is still taught.

You don’t know shit what’s being taught in schools. You’re getting your information from infowars and brietbart.

Strategies taught by common core matg have been taught for years in other countries? I doubt that very much. Maybe one or two, but I would like to see that. Either way, The USA need nit emulate or copy other countries. What we have built is the best, and nothing out thete is built by common core math students. Not learning the multiplication problems is best?

AGW does not exist, not science at all. CO2 is not pollution nor does it trap heat.

And yes, we do not need revisionist history.

What history is being revised? Examples please? The only history revision going on is in red states like Texas where they are sugar coating slavery and native American history.

You doubt that? You have no basis for your doubts other than you don't like it. But it is a fact that common core math strategies have been taught in other countries for years.

Methods like addition partitioning and open number line addition and subtraction has been taught in Europe and Asia for some time. US is actually late implementing.

US does need to start emulating because other countries are way ahead of us in mathematical skills.

 

[Unkotare]

Common core is based on international standards. The same standards countries like Finland and Japan have. It's the implementation that is the problem. Not common core.

If, Common Core is in fact based on International standards, that is the best reason to get rid of Common Core.

Common Core was and is fully implimented. That is not the problem nor what us parents are comolaining about.

It is the revisionist history that is now taught.

It is the insane experiment of math ideas being taught.

It is the elimination of classic literature that is replaced with liberal stories of bullying.

It is that the scam of man made global warming being taught as science.

It is the propaganda that solar and power is the greatest source of energy.

Technically, Common Core is political, it is the Liberal religion, liberal, progressive, dogma.

Revisionist history?

Climate change is based in scientific facts so it should be taught in science. What should kids be learning in Science ?

Insane experiment of math? Mathematic strategies taught in common core have been used in other countries for years. They’ve been tried and tested. Hardly experimental.

Classic literature is still taught.

You don’t know shit what’s being taught in schools. You’re getting your information from infowars and brietbart.

Strategies taught by common core matg have been taught for years in other countries? I doubt that very much. Maybe one or two, but I would like to see that. Either way, The USA need nit emulate or copy other countries. What we have built is the best, and nothing out thete is built by common core math students. Not learning the multiplication problems is best?

AGW does not exist, not science at all. CO2 is not pollution nor does it trap heat.

And yes, we do not need revisionist history.

What revisionist history?

 

[Skull Pilot]

That is utter bullshitResearch shows that home-schooled students are certainly capable of adjusting to the college curriculum academically – home-schooled students generally score slightly above the national average on both the SAT and the ACT and often enter college with more college credits.

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Your source proved nothing. Did you even read it? It's just a USA Today article listing four different sources (links) that offer their opinions.

And you show no proof for your opinion.

The fact is home schooled kids do better on the SAT and ACT tests than the average public school student

So refute that if you can

Reference please.

Homeschool SAT Scores for 2014 Higher Than National Average | NHERI News | Research

 

[Windparadox]

Homeschool SAT Scores for 2014 Higher Than National Average | NHERI News | Research

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"Facts" provided by National Home Education Research Institute. No bias there.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Homeschool SAT Scores for 2014 Higher Than National Average | NHERI News | Research

`
`
"Facts" provided by National Home Education Research Institute. No bias there.

So prove it wrong.

The scores are the scores

 

[Skull Pilot]

Homeschool SAT Scores for 2014 Higher Than National Average | NHERI News | Research

`
`
"Facts" provided by National Home Education Research Institute. No bias there.

HOME-SCHOOLING: Outstanding results on national tests

 

[Wild Flower]

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Homeschooling is mainly done by the religious right who incorporate the bible in all facets of education; science, math, history, etc. You will not find these people in college, unless they have had remedial classes and even then, they don't last.

You are wrong. Many non-religious people I know home school their children. They have post graduate degrees and lots of other letters behind their names. They home school because little Tia/Johnny can't read or write for shit by first grade.

 

[Wild Flower]

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR, was home-educated.

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One person. Woopie ding. I can google up names of people who say they were home-schooled and went to college but that's not my point.

I c

And you show no proof for your opinion.The fact is home schooled kids do better on the SAT and ACT tests than the average public school student. So refute that if you can

`
What's the difference between an opinion and a fact?
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Check out NYC's Education Department statistics. They will tell you that the home schooling kids do better but it is very hard to find because they try to hide it. It'll take you a few hours to figure it out. The numbers are there but they make it so hard to piece together.

 

[Wild Flower]

Maybe home schooled kids were worst off 30 years ago but not now.

 

[longknife]

 

[BS Filter]

The pubic indoctrination system is deplorable. Clean up your act, liberals. Kids today are dumber than an empty box of fruit loops.

 

[Unkotare]

The pubic indoctrination system is deplorable. Clean up your act, liberals. Kids today are dumber than an empty box of fruit loops.

Don’t paint all kids with the same brush.

 

[BULLDOG]

The pubic indoctrination system is deplorable. Clean up your act, liberals. Kids today are dumber than an empty box of fruit loops.

Don’t paint all kids with the same brush.

Why would anyone want to paint a kid? You know they would just roll around on the ground and wear it off.