by wisewoman » April 24th, 2006, 5:26 pm
I agree that homeschooling experiences can vary widely. The same, of course, holds true for any other kind of education.
My mother wasn't very strong on math either, but it wasn't a problem until algebra came along to give us all nightmares :( . My dad took over then and we managed, but it wasn't much better than "managing." College Algebra was my only B in college. I suppose it could have been worse.
Others may say you don't have the opportunities to learn with homeschooling that you do with public school. That is a broad, broad generalization that is disproved in my particular case. We played soccer and basketball with other homeschoolers in our area. We led full social lives through our church youth group. We participated in Fine Arts competitions also through our church. We were part of several homeschool co-ops that taught a variety of subjects (science (complete with experiements), art, gym, biology (complete with dissections), field trips to museums, acting, Spanish, composition, etc., etc.). We learned things from teaching them to younger siblings (I've helped teach several of mine to read).
I don't believe all school administrators are pushing a secular-materialist agenda, but many are. Having recently graduated from a very liberal university, I see the bent that higher education took at my school. Many people with college degrees seem to catch the pride bug that is injected into every subject. "We are educated people, we can figure out all the world's problems, we are brainiacs and we love to drop big words into our conversations with lesser mortals" (i.e., non-college grads). All of this leaves very little room for anything remotely resembling a Christian worldview.
As far as government standards, I think the laws vary from state to state here in the U.S. We took the routine Stanford and IOWA achievement tests yearly, but I do not believe the government had any control whatsoever over our textbooks. If they did, what would be the point of home education?
rusmeister, you make some excellent points. Most kids in the public school system don't learn what they're supposed to anyways, so why do people make the same complaint about home education?
And I wholeheartedly agree about teaching yourself. I am the oldest of five kids and often my mother would be busy with the younger ones, so I often figured things out on my own. I found that I was lightyears ahead of my public-schooled peers when I got to college—I could actually make myself do the work without being babysat. I had the self-discipline so essential to college (and learning in general) already, while almost everyone else I knew struggled.
She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet. ~ Jane Austen, Persuasion