Home Schooling

[ShieldWife]

I'm not even just talking entertainment - I have little doubt that most industries have questionable morality and beliefs and also engage in some questionable practices.

True, though I mention entertainment because it has the potential to influence people in the same way that pornography can.

I guess I look at that and come to the opposite conclusion, which is that sex ed should cover those social and psychological aspects as well. Kind of like my gun safety courses, incidentally. I'd also make it so there is more than one class, spread out over a number of years, with subject matter appropriate to the age group.

I don’t trust schools to teach sexual morality. In fact, if they taught it, they would probably be teaching out of some book designed in a university sociology department and who knows what crazy stuff that may include.

And this is where parents need to step up to the plate and reassert themselves. Too many of them view school as a form of day care and don't much care what goes on there (until it's too late). Hell, recently there was some congress critter who pushed the idea of making the school day longer so as to be more convenient for parents working the typical 9-5 job (I think they were suggesting 8-6). On the one hand, I am very egalitarian and am not in favor of traditional gender roles being enforced, but on the other, I think people need to take a good hard look at themselves and do what is best for the children when they start having them, because the alternative is that you're a lot more dependent on the schools, and thus the state.

Absolutely, parents need to step up and not rely on the schools or media to teach their kids important values. Which is one reason why I wouldn’t count on a sex-ed class to counter any potentially negative effects of watching pornography.

Then again, I am a hard core supporter of home schooling, I home school my own kids, and I advocate for others todo the same - so I wouldn’t suggest any dependence on public schools for anything.

 

[Deleted member]

Then again, I am a hard core supporter of home schooling, I home school my own kids, and I advocate for others todo the same - so I wouldn’t suggest any dependence on public schools for anything.

I think that because of the lack of a solid network of nonsectarian private schools like in the UK that homeschooling is best as well. Socialisation is important so I can understand an argument for elementary schooling in government schools. I was homeschooled my entire childhood and I am certainly better off for it. Though personally I think that sex-segregated boarding schools are probably the best option for teenagers. I am a great supporter of the British “Public” school system as the very finest pedagogical system in the world.

 

[ShieldWife]

I think that because of the lack of a solid network of nonsectarian private schools like in the UK that homeschooling is best as well. Socialisation is important so I can understand an argument for elementary schooling in government schools. I was homeschooled my entire childhood and I am certainly better off for it. Though personally I think that sex-segregated boarding schools are probably the best option for teenagers. I am a great supporter of the British “Public” school system as the very finest pedagogical system in the world.

There could potentially exist some far more ideal society which had strong healthy values, whose beliefs aligned closely with my own, who weren’t dominated by the corrupt and venal, who values community, tradition, family, friendship, and truth above all of the degenerate beliefs and practices that we uphold now.

In such a place as that, I might be far more amenable to the idea of putting my kids into a school. We are so far from that, I can safely say that in my lifetime things won’t change enough for my preference for homeschooling to change.

As it is now, what ever disadvantages there are associated with home schooling are minor compared to the benefits.

While I do think that having good social interactions is good for children, I am always wary about appeals to “socialization” because I all too often see it as a way for home schooling opponents to attack home schooling, yet it is a nebulous concept which is ill defined and the supposed benefits are unquantifiable. Is socialization into a completely degenerate society a good thing? I would say no.

Though on a more fundamental level, I will say that I define success differently than how the typical modern parent is supposed to. We’re supposed to want our kids to get good grades and good social skills to get into a good college and get a good job so they can have have lots of stuff and afford to send their kids to a good college so they can get a good job and so on. In defining success differently, the arguments for a mainstream education lose a lot of their power.

 

[Deleted member]

@ShieldWife If I may, what is the objective of your educational plan for your children? I would be curious to learn this. I am not sure my mother ever had a particular plan, though my father intended for me to have a liberal arts education in the classical 18th - 19th century meaning of the term, and arguably succeeded because I was capable of reading very sophisticated works at very young ages. My woeful inadequacies in maths and science I quickly remedied in a community college, so it seems to have worked out all right--I'm certainly substantially better off than most Americans of my age group and more capable of higher intellectual thought than most of my peers.

 

[Edgeplay_cgo]

I think that because of the lack of a solid network of nonsectarian private schools like in the UK that homeschooling is best as well. Socialisation is important so I can understand an argument for elementary schooling in government schools. I was homeschooled my entire childhood and I am certainly better off for it. Though personally I think that sex-segregated boarding schools are probably the best option for teenagers. I am a great supporter of the British “Public” school system as the very finest pedagogical system in the world.

Agree on the importance of socialization. in the young. My granddaughter was homeschooled by her mother. Actually she was Unschooled, a regime where the education is blended in with normal life. They have these informal social networks, organized on line, where they would have play parties in the park, pizza get togethers, stuff like that. It didn't work very well, The girl appears smart enough but socially retarded. Her step brother is much the same, but he's got a better chance. He's apprenticing as a blacksmith. Or perhaps I should say "was." He's probably a journeyman by now. He's not very sociable either, but it probably won't hurt him much.

We do have an equivalent to the English Public Schools. There is a network of high end private schools, prep schools. They are mostly intellectually liberal, but of high academic rigor. And the liberal bias of the teachers never cured me or my buddies of our conservatism. The problem with prep schools, is that they are bloody expensive. The lower cost solution is the array of religious schools. the Protestant and Baptist schools appear to be pretty Biblically based, but the Catholic schools, these days, are not very religious. A f(r)iend used to teach at one. His chemistry class was completely free of religion and, by his testimony were the others he knew about. I believe religion class was optional. Catholic schools tend to be pretty liberal. I believe the Protestant and Baptist schools tend toward politically conservative.