HS FAQ 2

NOTE: This message was originally in conference “Home Education [FIDO]”

and was copied here by Ron Bowden.

NOTE: This message was originally in conference “Home Education [RIME]”

and was copied here by Ron Bowden.

Salutations from Ron Bowden:

Home Education – Frequently Asked Questions Page 2

7. What about “socialization?”

Sandra Petit <Sandra_Petit@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US> mentions: “I also usually mention that the socialization I think my child would get at school is not the kind I would choose for her myself. I don’t mean that there are not any good children at public school. Of course that’s not true. However, if your child is home then you can better control the outside influences on that child, particularly as a very young person-before their values can withstand peer pressure.”

Alan Moses <alan@edstar.gse.ucsb.edu> remembers:

“I attended the Northern California Homeschool Association conference this past weekend in Sacramento, and David Colfax commented that the media has pretty much stopped asking him the “socialization” question, since it’s becoming obvious that homeschoolers are the best socialized kids in the country. This matches my perception of our kids and their friends – in small groups, on camping trips, and in large groups like the conference, it is a pleasure to see kids of mixed ages and interests interacting with consideration for each other and a minimum of hassles. One friend of mine takes a pre-emptive approach to “the socialization question” (which seems to be the first or second thing we all get asked by non-homeschoolers) and the “workbooks at the kitchen table” image some non-homeschoolers seem to have. She begins talking about homeschooling by saying, “Two of the things I like best about homeschooling are all the positive social contacts the kids have, and that they get to spend so much time learning in the community.” Other ideas include: Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts outside classes (gym, dance, choir, piano, art etc.) neighborhood children church groups

Dale Parsons <dale@mhcnet.att.com> forwards the following quote from Seymour Papert (one of the principle developers of the Logo programming language and Lego Professor of Education Research at MIT): Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. I think that the examples I have given of learning in a computational environment provide a glimpse of a context for learning in which socialization would be based on a potentiation of the individual, an empowering sense of one’s own ability to learn anything one wants to know, conditioned by deep understanding of how these abilities are amplified by belonging to cultures and communities. Seymour Papert “Tomorrow’s classrooms,” **New Horizons in Educational Computing** from a 1982 interview

8. Do public schools have to help us in any way? Lousiana–Sandra Petit <Sandra_Petit@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US>:

“As I understand it, homeschoolers in our area will be allowed to use new textbooks [from the public schools] if they are available, but they must leave a deposit–50%?–of what the books are worth. I don’t know how this will work with workbooks.”

Massachusetts–Rowan Hawthorne <rowan@praxsys.com>

“The superintendant of each school district is responsible for overseeing the education of children, whether in school or at home. In some towns (such as Brookline), this means that the superintendant will make many school services available to parents educating their own children. It could conceivably mean that some superintendants could give you trouble, though I haven’t heard of any cases.”

9. How will I know what my child is expected to accomplish for any

given grade?

Alan Moses <alan@edstar.gse.ucsb.edu> opines:

“Whose expectations are we talking about here? One of my strongest motivations for homeschooling is to avoid the imposition of artificial external constraints on what my children should be learning at any given time. There is ample literature out there supporting a wide range of individual differences when it comes to what a child should be able to do at a certain calendar age. Having grade based expectations is only an issue if you are trying to manage a class of 30 different children as if they were all the same. And if for legal or administrative reasons you find yourself faced with having to take some sort of norm-based achievement test, homeschooled kids seems to do just fine compared to their schooled peers, so this is no reason to structure your learning approach to these artificial measures.

“To whatever extent possible, evaluation should come from the learner rather than being imposed on the learner. If your child is frustrated because she wanted to understand something and has been unable to overcome some stumbling block, this will be obvious to you as a parent, and you can offer help as indicated. Likewise, the recognition of accomplishment should also emanate from the child – they needn’t be dependent on us to validate what they’ve done.”