Tuesday, May 4, 2010
My wife and I are 99% sure we will homeschool our children. The two main reasons are 1) we want to fully provide our children their religious and moral instruction and 2) we don't want our children immersed in the peer culture with its attitudes, language, conversation subject matter, view of sexuality; its overall cynical material worldliness.
When I mention that we plan to homeschool the number one response I get from people , by far, is how will your kids learn socialization...or something of that sort. I really think they mean socializing, not socialization. Look at the definition of socialization.SOCIALIZATION - Merriam - Webster defines socialization as, "the process by which a human being acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status."
Socialization is a different creature all together. I am not talking about having time to hang out after class and talk about your latest crush or ball game. This is about training my children to function in a given way and instilling habits and beliefs. I can hear you saying, "You can't keep your children in a bubble! They should be able to hear differing views! They should be taught how to function as part of society!" I agree. I can not keep my children in a bubble and I don't want to. I do, however, believe that it is my duty to be the primary educator for my children. They will experience things and have questions about those experiences. My wife and I will filter those experiences through our belief systems and values. We interpret the world based on our "filter". Our job as a father and mother and as teachers is to help them develop a healthy filter with a Catholic perspective. One that will rely on Catholic truth and honesty and integrity to make decisions and judgments. While I do not have any problems with them hearing views and beliefs that are different from mine, I do have a problem with them being told the views that our family holds (e.g. our beliefs about the Catholic Church, objective truth, a Creator, or sexuality) are not "politically correct", especially by teachers.
Below is transcript of Dr. Ray Guarendi's radio show called The Doctor is In. He typically begins his show with a monologue. This is a transcript of him giving details on a study on homeschooling with his usual comments.
I don't know where this number comes from, it says "Homeschooling goes BOOM! In America 74% increase in families teaching their own children since...oh since 1999. "Homeschooling movement is sweeping the nation" this is from World Net Daily; "supposed estimate one and half million children learning at home". That's about if I am recalling correctly, - the children who are in school-school age kids is around fifty five sixty million; so one and a half million is what 2 to 3%. "Dept of Education has reported that homeschooling has risen by 36% in just the last five years. National centre for educational statistics statistician Gail Mulligan told USA Today 'There is no reason to believe it would not keep going up".
Now I am not so sure whether I agree with that, because it can only go as far as the ceiling of stay at home mums. I think the number of stay at home mums, out of mums in total is 20%, 25% somewhere near. "2007 survey asked parents why they chose to homeschool. Here's the most popular reasons:
Concern about the school environment, including reasons such as safety, drugs, negative peer pressure 88%."
I am sure that many of you would speculate well the number one reason would be for moral or religious. The way the questions are phrased, negative peer pressure might come underneath that moral or religious rubric.
"The second most common reason is a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. 83%."
So there, that is for most folks right up there in their motives for homeschooling.
"A dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools 73%" of the parents cited that as a reason.
"Non traditional approach to children's education or unschoolers who consider typical curriculums and standardized testing as counterproductive to quality education 65%.
Other reasons; family time, finances, travel distance 32%.
Child has special needs 21%.
Physical or mental health problem 11%.
Parents who said that they homeschooled to provide religious or moral instruction increased from 2003 to 2007."
What that basically means is that more people are homeschooling because they feel that they can provide the kind of moral religious education, not working so hard against the peer culture and the school culture. Used to be just the peer culture but unfortunately a lot of what is going on in the schools under the auspices of the schools is antithetical to the kind of moral world view that many parents want their children to have.
"Above all other responses, parents cited providing religious and moral instruction as the most important factor in the decision to teach their children at home 36% said that's the most important factor. Second most important, concern about the school environment".
I've got to believe there's overlap there. If you're concerned about the school environment, you're not necessarily just concerned about drugs or violence. Much more commonly, is "Third reason dissatisfaction with academic instruction 17%.
Research has shown the positive affects of homeschooling through the years. Brain Ray president of the National Homeschool Research Institute reveals that homeschooled children fair as well or better than private and public school students in terms of social, emotional and psychological development" - that is true. The next time somebody says to you 'What about their socialization?' you can have twenty different answers to that. But if you want to make it quick you just look and say 'Well, the research says they're better socialized.'
'WHAT?'
'Argue with the research'. And that's true, the research does say that; they say that homeschoolers are more active civically. They tend to have umm more involvement in their communities. They tend to obviously score better academically, but we're not talking about that right now. They tend to have better self images; yeah that's right even the homeschoolers have better self images. How could they do that without all those self image courses? You know they gotta have those self image courses. You homeschooling mums you better incorporate some self image courses in your curriculum. Homeschoolers earn higher marks than peers who attend public schools.
"The home educated in grades K to 12 have scored on average on the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the US and Canada compared to the public school average of 50th percentile."
How could that be? How could these untrained mothers; these non professional educators, actually teach their children, so that they outperform their peers. It's not possible!
Apparently it is. There are three studies, which demonstrate that demographics, income and education level of homeschooling parents are generally irrelevant with regard to quality of education. On average, homeschoolers in low income families with less formal education STILL score higher than state school averages.
Yes there has been a wonderful study done where they compared mums who are certified teachers versus mums who are college graduates versus mums with some college verses mums high school graduates versus mums with not a high school graduate; Do you know what they found? NO DIFFERENCE in the kid's achievement scores. The only place where there seemed to be a little bit of a blip was in mathematics taught by non high school graduate mums. But you could understand that. How could they keep up with that level of mathematics especially at the secondary level? But other than that the component seems to be not the mother's academic level but the mother's motives, the mother's heart, the mother's commitment, the mother's sacrifice. Don't dat just beat ALL?
Relationship -who'da thought it?
