I started off sending my oldest to public school for kindergarten. They told me she had learning problems and wouldn't pass her, blah, blah, blah. etc. I had some good Godly women influence me to try homeschooling. She was reading in like a month. She had no learning problems but maybe needed a little more help. Then, my son came along and I home schooled him as well. My daughter was homeschooled til 5th grade and my son until 1st. There was a big age difference in my kids. I quit due to me having to work, etc. Anyway, they went to Christian school until my divorce and then finished in public. Neither of my kids have social skill problems. They are both well adjusted. I haven't had a positive experience with the public school system with Kate when she was in kindergarten or later in high school years. I don't personally regret sending homeschooling at all. It's very time-consuming for a parent though but I think it is worth it. They dd seem to be ahead of what they were learning when they did go to school. It's up to each individual but public school is my personal last choice.
Arch said: "I would recommend Homeschooling to anyone that felt that they were qualified to undertake such an endeavor. As I said there are many organizations throughout the United States that would be able to guide you with Homeschooling and they can be found on the internet."
He has a point there...you really do need to feel that you are qualified to homeschool. No, you don't need to be a genius at the upper level classes. If you can't teach those courses, there are video and internet resources that will teach it for you.
Also keep in mind that some states within the USA make it difficult to homeschool your children. THEY try to make sure that you are qualified to teach your own children. You have to jump through all sorts of hoops which may include being under an "umbrella organization", having a teaching degree, having any 4-year degree, reporting grades to the local school district, allowing school officials to come into your home and evaluate your "school", etc.
Before deciding to homeschool, you would need to look at what all is required by the government. Here in GA it is really easy. All a parent has to do is fill out and send in a "declaration of intent" to the school board, keep attendance records which are submitted quarterly and must equal 180 days of attendance by the end of the term, and the parent has to give each child an achievement test every three years (the test usually has to be administered by someone with a bachelor's degree or higher, but there are always plenty of other homeschool parents who are willing to do testing for no-degree parents' children.)
For the record, I am a public school teacher and will therefore have some bias.
That being said, the public school in your community is often what the community demands. At times, the school may go in a different direction from community wishes, but usually only for a limited time, or the community is simply not involved and so the school is able to go in whatever direction the leadership desires. Some communities place more emphasis on athletics than academics. Amazingly, the students from these schools are better prepared to play games than to learn in the classroom after graduation. Why that is a surprise to people is the question. When the emphasis has been on sports their entire lives, why would the student suddenly become a stellar academic simply because he won an athletic scholarship to college?
Some communities support a solid education. In these schools, academics come first. Athletics and games are simply another activity, rather than the focus. Students from these schools can be extremely well-prepared.
The mention was made concerning the number of students who attend college being twice as high from private schools. While I have not seen this figure, it is not worth debating. One of the strongest indicators of student success is the family and parents. It would also make sense that the majority of the parents paying for private school value an education. If the parents have invested heavily in education for the life of the student, the student has a pretty good chance of valuing education.
Conversely, public schools are required to take all students. Some come with parents who value education. Some come without parents, and some have parents who are more of a detriment to the students' development than a help. In spite of this, some schools continue to reach high levels of achievement.
When comparing US schools with schools around the world, it behooves a person to look at who is being compared. The US reports ALL students. This includes the child who will never talk or feed himself, much less write an essay. Many other countries only educate the "top" students. Children may receive a basic education through early elementary, but then be sent off to work. This leaves reports comparing apples and oranges.
Do the US public schools have room for improvement? Most definitely. Is there a place for private schools? But of course. The two working in tandem provide a better opportunity for optimal choices.
With home schooling, I have serious doubts. After 20 years in my field, each year still brings students who send me back to the research libraries looking for new solutions to these new students. I can creative a viable and effective curriculum in my field, and am also certified in other areas. With work and research, success could occur there as well. However, I cannot effectively create a curriculum for science or math above elementary level. Few teachers I have worked with are so well trained that they can cross levels and disciplines, thus covering the educational needs of a student from beginning to end. You will notice the word was few. There are a few teachers with the talent, training, and experience.
Even with the online classes I facilitate, students still experience difficulties that results in a need for direct teaching. For a person to say, well, I was successful in school so I can be a successful teacher is the same as saying, well, I have attended a doctor and can thus provide medical care.
Each tax-paying citizen in the US commits to providing all students with an education. The public deserves accolades. Few other countries invest the care or resources that the US does.
If I could have one wish granted concerning public schools, it is that the parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles of regular education students would stand up and demand a high-quality education for their children. Schools are required to provide this for special education students because their parents demanded it. Students with special needs, including the brightest and the neediest, have parents who have done just this. Now, it is time for the regular parents to stand up and demand the same for their children. Government and legal interference can impede the quality of education for these regular students. Standardized testing is eroding instructional time. The school is not powerful enough to change these detrimental intrusions. Parents and tax-payers, however, do have the power to elect officials sympathetic to education and to demand our kids receive an education equal or better than that of the top students in other countries.
Elissa, you're right about it being difficult to teach in all areas. I think one of the reasons I'm able to up to about 6th or 7th grade, is because of a private learning center that I worked with, were I was required to teach all subjects. However, I was trained in one subject and became quite comfortable in it, before I was trained in another. But even then, there are some subjects I'm less comfortable with, such as beginning reading, where if I were to home-school, I would want additional support. And yes, you're right that the curriculum would be something that would have to be considered.
My feelings are this, if you can, home school, if you can't then send to a public school. Each person knows how comfortable they are and what their strengths and weaknesses are. If you choose to home school, then you should start to do research at a very early age and get involved with a home school organization.
You make several pertinent points. Starting early is a definite must. The planning ahead is vital, no matter what type of education you ultimately choose.
Some private schools have very long waiting lists. You mentioned the need for planning with homeschooling. Also, with public school, planning is important.
People buy, or rent, houses without first investigating the school. One of my rules of thumb is that I will not work for a district where I do not want my child educated. This is causing me a problem because at the moment, if I had children, I would be driving them to a school nearly an hour away and be happy to do that every day. My current district has some major problems. I am staying because in addition to teaching, I am in a position to fix some of the problems. We have multiple elementaries.
What amazes me is the number of complaints from people because their children must attend the elementary school in their district. Why did these people not check out districts before moving? If there were no housing in certain price ranges in the various districts, that would make sense. However, there is housing in all price ranges in all the districts. There are also available units in all.
My brother lives back east and the schools in his area are deplorable. I would live in a cardboard box to afford private school or figure out how to homeschool if I lived there. However, just across the river from him is a great district. He and his wife chose a house based simply on price and product. With 4 children, they did not even bother to tour the schools in the district before buying. He should know better than that. However, most of the complainers here that I talk to never toured their local school either.
As you said, plan ahead. Making an informed decision is difficult enough. Making a decision without being informed is simply a recipe for disaster.
I would definitely prefer homeschooling if I had kids...public schools scare me. I think it's just the lack of control parents have over what their children are being taught/indoctrinated with. I was home schooled, and it does have some problems, but this public school thing is a recent invention and I don't like it...children need time to develop into their own person and it's hard(not impossible) to do that when you're being pummeled by...everything. Small schools/home-schooled/home-school groups would be my preference.
I have experienced all three types of schooling (public, private, and homeschooling) at one time or another and there are pros and cons to each.
I went to a private Christian school for elementary school, I was homeschooled in middle school, and I went to a public high school.
I have two younger sisters so at one point we were all enrolled at a private school, but the cost eventually came to be too much for my parents to afford. My parents chose to homeschool us at that time because they wanted to do everything possible to avoid sending us to a public school. I suppose that I was a bit of an abnormal child at that age, because I was very self-motivated and essentially taught myself out of the textbooks that my parents had bought. My parents spent very little time teaching me, but instead worked mostly with my youngest sister who was kindergarten age at the time. They had a lot of trouble teaching my youngest sister due to time constraints so they ended up sending her back to a private school after a short while (one is much more affordable than three!).
Once I reached high school age, my parents decided to send me to a public high school. We had just moved to a new city and we lived in a decent school district. My dad worked full time and my mom worried that she would not be able to help me with some of the subjects she had struggled with in high school. The public school gave me an opportunity to get teacher recommendations for college applications and to take a number of AP classes so that when I started college I already had some college credits. I have friends who were homeschooled and still took some classes for college credit, but I still think that the public high school was the right option for me because it brought me out of my sheltered little world into the real world. I lived a very sheltered life as a child and it was good for me to gain some understanding of what was out there. By the time I reached high school age I was very grounded in my faith and beliefs so that exposure was not going to change me.
My sisters, however, had different experiences. When my parents sent me to a public high school they also put both of my sisters in public schools. They were in middle school and elementary school at the time. I know that my middle sister had a really difficult transition from being homeschooled to going to a public school. She is in college now and she tells me that she hates that she was ever homeschooled. She thinks that it caused her to be maladjusted during her middle school and high school years and she says that she would never put her children through that. My youngest sister did not have very good teachers in the public school system so my parents ended up sending her back to a private school until she finished eighth grade. Now she goes to a public high school and seems to be handling that pretty well.
As for me, I probably will not homeschool my future children simply because I don't think that I will have enough time in my occupation. My hope is that I will be able to afford to send them to a private Christian school for at least the first several years of their education. Personally, I am very grateful for the varied experiences that I had with regard to education. I feel that these have helped to shape me into the person I am today, quiet and shy though I may be.
