Educational Concerns

[Dana]

Homeschooling has concerned me when it comes to education. I have taught at the college level and understand how much training is required to become a teacher. If a parent is willing to go through a teaching certification program and obtain the necessary education and credentials, I am all for home schooling and a big fan of it.

But to be a good teacher, you need to have a lot of training, understand the psychology and process of learning, and you also need practical classroom experience.

This is just my opinion, but I would not send my child to a Dr. that did not have the necessary education and credentials, and I guess I feel the same way about teaching.

[Dana]

I am not at all in support of a socialist government?? I think you misread. I never said the government should take away our constitutional RIGHT to choose what is best for OUR children. In fact, if you read through my posts, I've said several times that I am in favor of home schooling.

And I also agree with you completely that every parent should have the right to choose home schooling or not. My only point is that it takes a lot of training, education, and experience to become a good educator.

I'm sorry if you misinterpreted what I have written. No where did I ever say parents should not have the right to home school.

I do like the way Virginia safe guards the quality of home education. It isn't taking away the choice to home school or not. It is helping to ensure the quality of home education.

[Ian]

Just observing. I firmly believe in Homeschooling. We will be having another boy in the next few weeks, and when he is of age my wife and I will decide if he will be home schooled or attend public/private schools.

My point is this. Home Schooling is the RIGHT of every parent. And I DON'T believe that you should be required to have a teaching certificate to homeschool your children.

Virginia tends to be a bit on the "moderate side" as far as regulations, and other states say Texas have very little regulation.

If you are interested in the state by state regulations you can find them here:

http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp

I can't say either that I always agree with the regulations. While Virginia's are "moderate" they can be a bit vauge. And sometimes as I learned the tough way, the local district may interpret them differently. To me the end result is this. It is a parents job to teach their children right from wrong, and how to be the best they can, and in many cases, they are well prepared to teach them educationally as well.

While it is unfortunate that there are some out there that abuse the system, the majority do the right thing, and do it right. In a study done in 2006 over 85% of all home school parents followed accredited instructional courses. The home school our children got was a combination of a program by K12, and Christian faith edication, which were both accredited programs. Yes there are some bad players that seem to hurt the rest of us.

As far as teachers, I think they are valuable. My sister teaches elementary school. The difference is they take a musch wider apporch on cirriculim, with a much larger group of children than the average Home school parent.

[Pamela]

Cannot disagree with you more. Sorry, but teaching your own child is not at all the same as teaching a classroom of children. I've done both and homeschooling far surpasses the majority of public and private schooling. I don't think I use any of my education degree in teaching my children. May I ask what your experience is with homeschoolers? Have you ever attended a homeschool convention? Listened to the speakers? Read a single homeschooling magazine? I think if you did, your eyes would be opened and you would not judge so harshly using the criteria you've laid out - artificial criteria that really mean nothing in a public school setting, either and which are no more indicative of a teacher's ability to teach in a p.s. setting than in a home school environment.

If formal training is so important, how did so many people in history manage to acquire the knowledge and education they did without any teacher? If formal training is so important, then why do parents even attempt to teach the alphabet and numbers and how to tie shoelaces or to write one's name or a street address or anything else?

See the difference here is you think that education and credentials qualify one to teach and nothing could be further from the truth. I cannot begin to tell you the number of incompetent teachers I had in the public school system or that I knew in my career as a teacher. And I can count on the fingers of one hand those I encountered as a student who were competent. Yet, I managed to learn in spite of their failures.

One fundamental thing to understand is that the process of learning is different for every child. The way I taught my eldest to read was very different from the way my second child learned to read. My youngest daughter is very structured and organized on her own and another daughter needs me to impose structure. Understanding the process of learning as general theory to be applied to a classroom full of children serves the lowest common denominator or the average of the class - many children are left behind or not adequately challenged in that situation. The process of learning at home simply means knowing who your children are and how they best learn. No public school can customize their instruction to meet the needs of each child.

You also propose that classroom experience is necessary in order to be an effective teacher of your own children. Why? Do we need to learn to manage 27 unrelated children of the same age? Do we need to learn to cope with parents who are uninterested in their child's education or the parents who are overly involved and fail to let their child suffer consequences for their actions? Do we need to experience writing on a blackboard, standing in line at the printer, dealing with children who routinely fail to complete their homework or who skip class or who need to be dismissed early or who are having problems at home? Do I need to learn to deal with a system that enrolls students in my French class who don't even have a basic grasp of English and who are emotionally disturbed and continually disrupt the classroom?

My degree was in secondary ed. Was I unqualified to instruct my children in the elementary grades? Now that they are all in high school, am I suddenly more qualified?

I believe you fail to understand what homeschooling is. For a huge number of homeschoolers, it is not "school at home" where children sit in a classroom with mom standing at the front of the room with a blackboard and a globe on her desk. For many families it is something much much different and much much more effective.

Homeschooling is providing an environment in which one's children will thrive and acquire the education necessary to succeed in life, however that family interprets success. It is not teaching to the test and wasting classroom time coaching children how to get a good score on a flawed method of evaluation.

Pamela

[Dana]

All I am saying is it takes a lot of schooling, training, education to become a Doctor, an Accountant, etc.

It also takes schooling, training, and education to become a good teacher.

I am not against home schooling.

I am for home schooling. But I am also for qualified teachers.

I am not judging anything.

If I take my child to a Dr., I want that Dr. to have the necessary education to do his or her job.

I also think teachers should have the necessary education whether it is in a home school setting or a public school setting.

I am sorry that it is upsetting everyone that I think all teachers should have the proper qualifications, as should all Dr.'s, Nurses, Mechanics, Pilots, Computer Programmers, etc.

I do not fail to understand what home schooling is. I have researched the subject. I just think ALL teachers need the necessary education and training no matter what the educational setting is.

If you were going to home school your child, wouldn't you want to get the training/education so you can be the best teacher possible?