Thanks you guys for all of the intelligent posts. As a formerly homeschooled student, this is an extremely important issue to me. Thanks!
If you just wanted to feel good about yourself at least take solace in knowing that pretty much everyone would have prefered being homeschooled. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I’ll be honest, the United States education system has gotten dumbed down. I’ve ran across a few exams from the late 1800’s and I’ll be honest I could not pass it for the lfie of me. At least not in the time alotted for the test. Bygeneral standards I’ve always been considered a bright person who has no trouble with exams. When I attempted this exam I did poorly. This was an 8th grade exam from 1894. I will say I learned at that point the education system has been dumbed down. I feel it’s getting even worse each day, especially the No Child Left Behind joke. I will be honest I never learned grammar rules throughout my public school career. Thats the main thing that made English classes rough for me in college. What’s even worse in my one college lab for measurement, we’re required to have a calculator for simple mathematics, adding subtracting, and percentages. Yes education has been dumbed down and will continue to be. I am now a clear advocate for when I have kids, they will be home schooled.
I hate to take this off topic, but how did you find those exams? Were they online? I’d certainly like the opportunity to find out where I stand in relation to previous generations. I’d also like to the echo the sentiments of a previous poster. Go pick up a copy of Dumbing Us Down by John Gatto. I’m only about half way through it now, but it’s been great so far. I’d certainly recommend urging you to get your neighbors and local school teachers to read this and other books on the history of public education and private education. The problem, in my mind, is that most people don’t know how we got to where we are. While simply reversing the process probably wouldn’t happen, it’d be good for people to know why we are where we are. At least then they wouldn’t have any right to complain.
Here’s a brief film about the history of Compulsory Schooling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic
I agree, I think almost everone would have. But you will also here various arguments against homeschooling / in favour of state schooling.Here are the usual “rebuttals” one may here:
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The child needs association with other children of his age
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Teachers are experts in their fields
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Without compulsory education, many people would remain uneducated.
But I think they actually mean
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I can’t afford private education of my children
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It’s far more convenient someone else nannies the kids
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I’m scared of social inclusion/political vicitimization
Google is your friend. But this one I know: http://www.barefootsworld.net/1895finalexam.html
Considering the number of Mises.org references on his page, Barefoot Bob might drop in himself. http://www.barefootsworld.net/
Yes this happened to be one of the exams I found. I beleive I found it on freedomdomain or a site similar to that. I also beleive education was controlled less by the government in that time.
I found more on home schooling and critique of the compulsory schooling system:
It is in todays schools.
Reasons of why public and private education is bad:
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It lectures useless subjects, which they would forget later on.
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Some regulations force them to stay in school 8 hours per day, 180 hours a year, 12 years. Do they need that much time to learn?
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You cannot have a job without certifications. The government-regulated standards such as the GPA, SAT, and ACT oligopolies does NOT tell how smart you are. These help promote discrimination.
Homeschooling can be accomplished a lot cheaper than most people think. The Robinson Curriculum is one of the better ones out there, although there are several good ones. Robinson emphasizes that the student must be totally proficient in math prior to introduction of the sciences, a point which is very well taken.
Anyhow. Public schools do to children mentally, what child molesters do to children physically. And that is being about as NICE as I care to be, in regards to public schools.
This doesn’t surprise me as much as it should, I think.
It’s another logical step in the process of treating schools like assembly lines, where children are worked on by teachers. If there’s a problem with a product, either throw it out, try to force a temporary band-aid on it and hope the end user doesn’t notice the problem later on, or send it through the system again.
I don’t fault the teachers so much, as they’re just as much victims of the school system as are the children.
It’s too bad many of these students will associate “school” with “education” and not continue learning after graduation. They’ll just sit and eat up garbage news stories, never realizing that mainstream media is remarkably similar to school.
I was greatly appalled to read of the horrendous conditions prevailing in these conditioning shops known as schools, and illuminated in these fascinating posts. When I attended public schools, over two score ago, conditions were very different. We were placed in an “accelerated” class, and the contact with bright students, plus what I would now regard as generally excellent school teachers (this was in So.Ca.) made the experience mostly felicitous. There were negatives, of course. But I would put a big positive, one the homeschooler will not gain I fear, as being the massive number of people one came in contact with over the course of those 12 to 16 years, and the instinctive and general knowledge one gained from that contact about human nature. This far outweighs knowledge that can be learned from a book, or at home on a computer. And the internet has turned every computer, in effect, into a research library that will soon combine the libraries of Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the NYPublic Library, UCLA and a few others into a super research library. And lectures by vibrant professors can be recorded and watched later. So attending campus just to sit and listen to a professor is a waste of time, with the big exception of the back and forth of question and answer and debate between a professor and students, and the post-lecture postmortems between the students down at the Red Lion friday night over a pitcher of dark.
So the social experience gained will be lost to the homeschooler who only comes in contact with his parents and siblings. This might be remedied by combining for part of the time several homeschooling “pods” (horrible term) who could jointly attend a stimulating lecture perhaps by a peripatetic educator. There might be a place for teachers on a sort of lecture circuit where they could tour parts of the country, giving lectures to a series of homeschoolers. The live contact would trump a mere video in that the students could questions, and therefore possible make a fool of, the professor.
Sounds to me like the solution is private schools, determined by the market place (this school has the best teachers, most aesthetic campus, reputation for well-behaved students, etc, so I’ll pay to send my kids there) or value system (the teachers may not all be Mises Institute or Harvard material, but they’re pretty good, and the main thing is that as a member of a certain ethical value system, this school espouses and conducts itself according to those values, for example, they only serve vegetarian food in there messhall and no junk, they teach Zoroastrian values, they only permit Norwegian to be spoken on campus, etc). I think there is a value too in having the children away from the parents for a certain time, say at a boarding school they liked, so they can gain independence, and a distance from their parents views and prejudices. If the educator isn’t educated (has massive prejudices and distortions) how can he educate the child? And all parents will have some of these prejudices or distortions in thought. Also, there is such a strong psychological impact on a child from his parents, that if they are the sole school educators (excluding the passing on of a profession, like the old father-to-son trades) they will have a too strong influence on their children, which is not counteracted by hearing any dissenting views or critical debate.
However, the chilling descriptions of current education in our Leviathan State I read in these posts, makes me realize that collectivism has proceeded apace for a long time now until it has completely brainwashed countless children into the drivel of collectivism, and a teacher can laugh at a perceptive remark as to how this despicable regimentation, and the fear of rejection for non-compliance, is turning American society into a fascist society that hates individuality. Mr. Grenier’s very informative remarks show us that this collectivist garbage is being spewed in a modern socialist “rich” society like Canada, just as I could have predicted. It almost reads like a caricature, and I would not believe it if Monsieur Grenier had not attested to its veracity. The quality teachers will leave, which is one reason why, as Hayek pointed out, the worst rise to the top in a collectivist society. Proved right again, Master Hayek.
The teachers in those days were far out too. Many of them made class so much fun, you couldn’t wait for lunch to be over. Even in the 5th grade, I recall a teacher bringing in a comedy record for us to listen to on the day before a holiday when there was a festive feeling. It was Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pidgeons in the Park” and the class loved it. Imagine that happening nowadays. The teacher would probably have been shot in Mr. Grenier’s Socialist Quebec for Perverting the Minds of Younsters with Aggression.
First, I will echo Paul’s final comments. What are we really teaching children by using force to lock them up all day in a completely artificial environment, and calling that “normal”? The administrators I dealt with said that, no matter how bad it was for me, if I didn’t come to school they would arrest my mother and put her in jail, then send me to “reform” school. So I’d better just put up and shut up. That is some lesson in “socialization” for a 12 year old. When I hear about a student going nuts and killing people, I remember how it was. If the presently available psychoactive drugs were available when I was in school, I would have been on the short list for them, just like all of the “school shooters”.
This is called the “Socialization Myth”. It is pushed pervasively by those endangered by any threat to the public school tax-funded monopoly.
I recommend a simple Google search for “socialization myth”. It gave me enough articles to fill a bathtub. Just the first should be sufficient, but to quote them all would be crazy. They’re there if you want them.
For my own, I will say simply that while another kid is locked in a room with one tyrant and 20-30 kids only their own age for 6 hours a day, mine is out with me interacting with the community, taking trips, running erands, buying and selling, researching and inquiring. Yes, we study, for a couple solid hours, but the rest of the time is spent socializing.
So are the ever increasing numbers of other homeschoolers.
Not sitting still, drugged and cowed, bullied and bored, being “socialized”.
Of course there are some few way out on the bell curve who do nothing but study the bible in their room all day. There are also individuals way out on the bell curve in the other direction who come out of the public schools with an excellent education. What I don’t try to do is justify either by the extremes.
From http://www.familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,58-17910,00.html
“The homeschoolers I know are out and about every day, enjoying museums, beaches, parks, and shows without the crowds. They travel often. The kids participate in Girl and Boy Scouts, 4-H, and sports. They take art, dance, drama, language, and music classes, to name a few.”
This thread is really scary
You can’t be serious, can you?
CurtHowland - For me personally it wasn’t a socialization myth; it was a fact. Nor would I call it socialization, but acquiring human knowledge. But I think contact with 20-30 other children, say other homeschool cells, in social activities would be adequate to give children some experience of the variety of people.
There’s no doubt there are countless other ways to achieve this socialization in any berg from a small town up to a big city. I fully concur on the damage done by forcing children into such a regimented situation so soon when they are full of ebullient life. Weighing the pros vs. the cons, homeschoolers come out way ahead. And public schools are poison for children’s minds in how they force the children to comply, as is the junk food they are scandalously allowed to serve. Glenn Gould was taught piano by his mother.
You presented it as an opinion, not fact.
The unsupported opinion you posted, that a child who didn’t attend public school would therefore be deprived of important social interaction, is called the “Socialization Myth”. Just because you arrived at it independently doesn’t make it any less a cliche’.
So if I did it your way, I would have your permission to teach my child myself? Hmm, I wonder why you think you have the power to determine for others what is or is not “adequate”, to use your word above.
People learn from everything they do, everything they see, everything they are exposed to.
I am far, far more worried about what is being taught by locking kids up by force for 6 hours a day in a dictatorial day-prison, than I am that they might not be taught “enough” math or “incorrect” history. Math and history can be picked up as people go through life, but the lesson of 12 years of forced labor for the crime of being young is never forgotten.
I am very saddened (really, no sarcasm at all) to say that this is the case.
Hello Mr.Paul, you can call me Yan for short hehe.
I should emphasize that education is a provincial matter and that Quebec is to my knowledge the only province that openly shuns knowledge as being useless and that anything a child has to learn must be useable RIGHT AWAY. This point cannot be stressed enough: teachers are overtly told to make sure that anything that is taught has to be re-useable in another subject or in a “right now” way. It is very difficult to explain and it is not because my first language is French: I can’t properly explain this in French neither.
A couple of facts:
-During my last practicum I was told NOT to wear my trenchcoat because it reminds people of school shootings. It may not be the most delicate piece of clothing to wear there, but as an adult in a “free society”, I should be allowed to wear it and others would then be allowed to not talk to me if they chose to.
-I gave a grade 9 exam for an English as a second language class. Students had to conjugate the verbs “to be” and “to have”. It took the class 40 minutes to do this and 1/3 to 1/2 of the class failed. They began taking English classes in grade 1 btw!!! Too bad their teachers did not have the right to have them learn grammar but could only teach it by having them derive the rules through listenings and interaction with equally “non-native” speakers of the same level.