02-24-2014, 10:22 AM
I don't doubt that if it was my full-time job to teach my children at home, I could review and master the concepts of a solid K - 12 curriculum sufficiently to teach it, even if I hadn't any teaching experience. Based on what I've read, it seems that's the case with the majority of parents who choose to home school. Whether I could do it as well as a public school teacher would depend on the teacher - wide range of competence and experience levels amongst teachers in the system. It's a huge system, so that's to be expected. Some public school teachers would probably do a better job teaching the concepts in a way that would stick, and some not. I do think that the large ratio of students-to-teachers in most US public school classes is a disadvantage when it comes to individualized student attention and assessment (though that gap can be effectively filled in by parents or other means outside of the public school).
Home schooling isn't something I'd choose for my children or myself for the reasons I listed upthread, but two million parents in the US choose to do it and most of them produce students who score better when tested on content and college entrance exams than kids who attend public school. So, that apparently works for those households where subject mastery is the goal. Good for them.
If parents/guardians are engaged in their children's public education and fill in some of what they view as gaps in content or individualized attention at home, as I did, fine. If they have the money and believe that private school is a higher quality option than public school, fine. If they're committed and qualified to teach K - 12 curriculum content at home and choose to do so, fine. At the end of the day, if parents don't emotionally or physically abuse their children and raise them to be thinking responsible people who can contribute and carry their own weight in society, how they choose to do it isn't a real concern of mine.
Home schooling isn't something I'd choose for my children or myself for the reasons I listed upthread, but two million parents in the US choose to do it and most of them produce students who score better when tested on content and college entrance exams than kids who attend public school. So, that apparently works for those households where subject mastery is the goal. Good for them.
If parents/guardians are engaged in their children's public education and fill in some of what they view as gaps in content or individualized attention at home, as I did, fine. If they have the money and believe that private school is a higher quality option than public school, fine. If they're committed and qualified to teach K - 12 curriculum content at home and choose to do so, fine. At the end of the day, if parents don't emotionally or physically abuse their children and raise them to be thinking responsible people who can contribute and carry their own weight in society, how they choose to do it isn't a real concern of mine.