While considering different topics to write about I came across a topic that immediately caught my attention. It was posted in the May 28th edition of the USA TODAY newspaper entitled More higher-income families are home schooling their children. The article talks about how home schooling has nearly doubled in the past decade and the majority of the people who are choosing to home school their children come from white, wealthy, and well-educated families. Also the number of girls compared to boys has also increased. What are the reasons that parents are now deciding to home school their children? The U.S. Department of Education was questioning that same topic and they found that, “36% of parents said their most important reason for home schooling was to provide “religious or moral instruction”; 21% cited concerns about school environment, and 17% cited “dissatisfaction with academic instruction.” The article also commented that ten years ago the majority of home school children came from families that earned an average of less than $50,000 a year. Today the trend has reversed stating that the majority are from families who earn more than $50,000 a year.
Personally, I get a little defensive when I hear that people home school their children. As a teacher I take pride in giving children a quality education and when someone does not feel satisfied with our environment or academic instruction it upsets me. I consider myself a Christian and I do attend a church but I don’t feel the need to keep certain children away from other children because they do not come a Christian background. I don’t feel like you can shelter a child their whole life and expect that they are going to have the perfect childhood. I don’t want the perfect childhood for my kids. I want them to be prepared for things that will happen in the “real world” and if that means having your juice box stolen at lunch then so be it. My main point in why I feel this way is because I don’t feel like the child has the opportunity to make lots of new friends and interact with them in an environment that is outside of the home where the child can feel a little independent. Rarely, have I seen a child that has been home schooled be brought into the school system and they are just willing to talk and be a part of school sports and academic teams and just really caught on to the social scene. They are the kids that get good grades but never speak up because they are afraid of what others might think of them. Some home school environments work well and parents have their children involved in many outside activities to help socialize them. I just hope that if a child says to their parents that they want to attend a regular or private school they would allow them to.
Toppo, G. (May 28th, 2009). More higher-income families are home schooling their children. USA TODAY. Retrieved June 4, 2009, from http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-05-28-homeschooling-report_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
Greta Delparte
Why do HS students drop out?
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The Baltimore Sun reported that hundreds of educators in Maryland met in
late June to focus on three questions - what drives students out of school
- what ...
14 years ago
I appreciate your views and as a teacher I understand them. I love teaching. I love my school and the kids in it, and am proud of my profession. However, I am also a parent and I understand why the number of home schooled kids is increasing.
ReplyDeleteThe statistics you site are very, very telling because they go directly to the real issue. Only 17% said academic issue were the reason they homeschooled their kids. So it isn't necessarily a case of parents believing their children suffer academically in public schools (although the fact home school kids have placed first or second in the vast majority of the national Bees - spelling, geography, etc - makes one wonder). The majority - and it is by a rather large margin - site moral, behavior and safety issues. Plain and simple they believe the concept of values and proper civil behavior have been removed from public schools and they want those things to be part of their childrens education. Enrollment at private religious schools is going up too for the very same reasons.
They see little in terms of teaching right and wrong. They see classrooms that border on being out of control. They see a lack of civil behavior and common courtesy. They see well intentioned teachers who have lost the ability to control their classrooms and with it, they have lost the respect of many students. Despite being a teacher, I see many of these things myself and based on discussions with parents and a good number of other teachers I am far from alone.
Don't get me wrong - I love teaching. I wouldn't give it up for anything and I am a strong supporter of the public school system, but one is not being a traitor to the profession by being honest about our problems. Parents are homeschooling more and the reason why lies with public schools, not with the families doing the homeschooling. I think we should consider these numbers as an invitation to re-examine what we are doing and look for ways to improve a system that could do better.
Homeschooling does seem to be utilized more today than ever. Just recently, there was a news story about a child who was killed by other children. The child had problems with the other students previously, so the mother had him transferred to another school. This did not help and the other students found him and killed him right in his own neighborhood. This just proves that switching schools or homeschooling does not solve everything. I feel that homeschooling shelters kids too much. They do not get to be in a normal school setting with other peers. They can miss out on school experiences such as field trips, birthday parties with classmates, sports teams, and musical opportunities. I personally would not want to shelter my child that way unless they had some type of disability that made public or private school not possible.
ReplyDeleteHome schooling to me is not very good to children as they lack that interaction with other children. These children do not socialize with other children for fear of there corrupting them, Children need to interact with other children, make mistakes and learn from them. Sheltering a student is not good for the Childs growth and learning. I believe, as parents we need to bring our children to interact with other children. There are many Christian privates’ schools that those students can attend. The disadvantages of home schooling to me are more than the advantages. The state and the federal government need to do something about it to make sure that those children are learning what they need to learn (education, socialization e.t.c)
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I think homeschooled children are not only missing out on some of the most important social lessons that are taught in life, but are sometimes ostracized by students who attend a regular school day. I don’t like it when a homeschooled child comes into a school and play a sport or participate in an activity. There was a homeschooled student on one of our teams who was very talented, the most talented on the team. Everything was ok when he was on the court, but afterwards, parents, teachers; you name it, talked really bad about this person. I think you can send your child to a public school and still get any teaching in that you may desire afterschool, during breaks, and during summer.
ReplyDeleteI also feel home schooled children are lacking in social development. We are dealt with a freshman this year that was in his first year of not being home schooled. He would come in at 7:00am and want to hang out with some of his teachers. He'd also eat lunch as quick as possible then go try to hang out in a teacher's classroom. Teachers in the building felt this behavior was directly related to him not being around other kids his own age during the school day. He felt more comfortable being around and visiting with adults. His understanding of social cues were also very limited. He would constantly interrupt other teacher/student interactions. He is by no means alone, we have plenty of students like this, adults too. It was just very obvious he was lacking in the social skill department. It was also clear his home school did not offer time for PE. He had little to no understanding of basic rules for games kids play starting in the 2nd grade.
ReplyDeleteI feel home school teachers should have to pass rigorous tests in content area such as the Praxis exams. Take the kid with cancer that was on the lam a few weeks ago. He was home schooled and couldn't even read! We have to prove we are somewhat competent in our area before we are issued a license and parents should have to prove the same before they can home school their kids.
Homeschooling is so tough to talk about it in a lot of ways. The increase of the utilization of homeschooling is a statistic we cannot ignore. However, there are a lot of factors that led to this. I agree that one of these factors is the school violence. It must be hard as a parent to have a child who is afraid to go to school and to make them attend when they do not have to. There are also a lot of parents who are afraid for their children as well. Another factor is the feeling that public education is right on the line of being a little out of control. Public education is much more liberal than it used to be and some people are not comfortable with that. Another factor which may need to be taken into account is the increased number of people who are not employed out of the home for economic hardships; some of these people may take this as an indicator to home school their children. An example may be a parent who was a teacher but whose position was cut and then them feeling as though they would like to keep their children home and teach them there.
ReplyDeleteI used to believe that it was completely silly to home school children when I am a teacher. But now, my feelings have changed a little. I feel that I really could see a time when I would want to keep my children home to teach them myself. But I totally agree that there are some major social differences between students who are homeschooled and those who attended formal education. However, there are things which can be done to remedy this as well. Either way we look at it, it is an interesting debacle.