Brilliant reasoning. Wonderful logic. No bias here.

Maybe you’d like to read Rookie Teaching for Dummies? Or maybe The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Teaching College or The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Success as a Teacher is more your speed?

Maybe you should check out Teaching Kids to Spell for Dummies or English Grammar for Dummies, though, considering your use of the word “bias’s”.

“Parents justify themselves by reciting isolated incidents to help build their case for home schooling.” You say this in a condescending manner, as if we spend all our time searching out random acts of violence to “justify” our decisions to not place our children in school, yet you immediately turn and do the same yourself, citing tragic and RARE cases where a homeschooling parent takes the wrong path and makes a horrific decision.

Not all homeschooling families are religious fanatics who would rather kill their children than allow them to interact with the public. Indeed, often we are the opposite of that image. We are people who are involved in our communities. We have play dates and play groups, sports, choirs, science leagues, and more. We interact with the public, and in general, homeschoolers are cited as getting along better with a wider range of people than their public school counterparts.

Violence in the schools is one, and only ONE, of the reasons people choose to homeschool. There are many more, including: the ability to offer a personally tailored education; the fact that we enjoy spending time with our own children; the (lack of) quality education offered in today’s public schools; and more.

I understand that this is your opinion, and I can respect that. I am just suggesting that next time you might want to take a less contentious approach. Oh, and by the way, it seems a little ironic that such an article should appear on a pro-Beatrix Potter website, as she was homeschooled herself.

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality. ”
(cite: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/beatrix_potter.htm)

Dearest Author,
It seems that, while being an advocate for Beatrix Potter and her wonderful world, you’ve completely missed the point of Ms. Potter’s writings. Had she gone to school, as evidenced by the quote above, she would never have given us the beauty that is her writings and her art. It also seems, as evidenced by your “research”, that you did not research this well enough because you’ve come to the same illogical conclusions many have arrived at, for the same illogical reasons.

You cite cases of abuse as your reasoning for not supporting homeschooling (again, weirdly incidental considering Ms. Potter was herself homeschooled, or the equivalent of the time: tutored at home); yet the cases you cite have already been deemed, determined, and ruled as NOT being about homeschooling. If fact, you wrongly cite the Andrea Yates case, when in fact, while Andrea Yates may have homeschooled them, she was not currently doing so when she killed them. Also, she suffered from PPD, something that is not to be taken as an excuse, but as a more than likely reason for her murdering the children.

You also, wrongly again, cite the ever popular “socialization” issue as being one of major concern. I can assure you, my children (one now graduated, with honors–test scores to validate that) are and were more fully socialized than I ever was in a public institution. The fact that Ms. Potter was tutored at home -by a tutor that likely, history shows, had little more education than Ms. Potter’s parents-should have made you more aware, more keen even, on what really happens in a homeschool setting. Ms. Potter likely would have spent many hours studying the subjects of the day–likely a foreign language, reading, writing, and math–and then would have been “released” into the world of her time to socialize with others of her age and status in life.

I’ve responded to many of these blog postings over the years and I can assure you that your “research” is not as well researched as you claim. You state the very same thing every single other blogger states when trying to show the masses how horrible we homeschoolers really are. Honestly, it gets old. Spend a little bit of time in my “classroom” or anyone else’s for that matter and you would see just how wrong you are. That we choose to homeschool for religious reasons, safety reasons, or my reason–the school system is a failure–should not ever give anyone the right to blather about falsehoods about something they know little of. Oh and the bit about the prom and sports? It’s a good thing my kids “never” get to see or be part of a prom, what with their own mother being prom coordinator for several years now and having a prom every year which sees no less than 250 kids every time. It’s also a good thing this mom doesn’t run a sanctioned bowling league for homeschoolers, where some of her best bowlers are top scorers within the YABA system. It’s also an even better thing homeschoolers “never” gets sports considering there is not a fully sanctioned, state wide, homeschool run, Sporting program set up for homeschoolers to compete with just about any school that wishes to compete with us.

Wow, we are so missing out.

I love Beatrix Potter’s work. She was an amazing writer, artist, and story teller and I thank all things I can that she was allowed to “never go to school” and lose “her originality”.

Oh and lastly, there is a reason for the name. Those who will be visiting your blog will recognize it. You need not understand the moniker other than to know it’s one I sign with all over. As you can see, I am neither religious nor under/un-educated. I just wish, if I could have one, that all of this us vs them would stop.

Toni
aka GothicGyrl

You obviously don’t have a clue what you are talking about and should learn to edit and spell check before posting such insightful information. Maybe if you were homeschooled you would have known better.

Wow! Could you grammar get any worse? I bet you learned your sentence structure in public school.

WOW …….. I am almost speechless.

Not only is the most misconstrued horribly researched piece of I don’t know what that I have ever read but wow someone ought to take their blinders off. First of all to over-generalized home schoolers and homeschooling would be like me saying that all public school parents are un-involved selfish idiots that want their children cranked out by assembly line like schools.

Being a completely secular person who is homeschooling due to the horrible state of education in our country today, I am truly appalled by the statements in this article. Not all of us are religious fanatics and I would wager to say that there are less home schoolers that are abusive then public school parents. I challenge you to do your research and to see the exact numbers of factual statistics. You cannot take one case and make it be the norm for a whole population.

In all honesty if you look at the statistics you will quickly find out that home schooled children excel more, graduate earlier and are generally better educated then even the brightest of public schooled children. Right now united states education is on the decline. The number of gifted children is sinking, the number of children falling through the cracks is steadily increasing and the level of education a child has received by graduation from public school is sickening.

The socialization issue is so misunderstood it is ridiculous. School is not for socialization, it is to learn. Socialization can happen outside of a school environment. There are homeschool co-ops, karate classes, various extracurricular sports and so many more activities and opportunities for socialization. The type of socialization in schools right now is not something that is healthy for children in my humble opinion. Right now the youth of America is so over-sexualized, over-connected and way to immature to handle all of the garbage they are allowed to be exposed to. You have all of the facebook, texting and other drama that is causing so many horrific troubles to kids. Then there is the fact that sex is happening younger and younger to the point where they are talking about handing out condoms in elementary schools.

I cannot believe that someone could be so close minded and blind to the truth and the facts that they could write up something so disgusting.

Ms. Criss,

I am interested to know why you are recycling an old article you wrote back in 2006, via copy and paste and with no new information (bad form for a reporter or blogger of any kind)?
(cite: http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/homeschooling-researched-17219.html)

Firstly, please forgive the off-the-hip reactions of some of my fellow homeschoolers. I’d like to think they are not paying attention to what they are writing, while lambasting you for yours, simply because they are just as tired of it all as I am. I might be giving them too much, however.

Secondly, all that aside, I would like to know why you are recycling this article you wrote, especially without any new information at all to validate your claims. The least you could have done, especially since you run a blog based on a world renowned writer (who was homeschooled, as has been pointed out several times), is to have corrected some of your misguided notions and updated your “research”.

Please join in this discussion and explain your motive.

Toni

Talk about using a “few isolated incidences!” You picked out a few horror stories and used those for a very WEAK case against homeschooling. Have you looked into the thousands of cases where parents have killed or abused their children and their children were in public school?? Have you looked at cases where abused children are sent to public school and no one notices any signs of abuse because they are in clases with 20+ other kids? There is absolutely no reasoning or facts behind your post.

How many children are isolated at public school? thousands! Just because you are stuck in a class of 20 children your same age, does not mean you will be properly socialzed. Children can be cruel and there are many cases of students returning to their puble school and shooting up the place due to trama recieved in school.Just because a child is schooled at home does mean they are not allowed to leave the house and speak to others.
Most well rounded homeschoolers are part of co-ops, churches, and many other organizations. They play sports, join scouts, take classes, etc.
Have you looked at a list of famous homeschoolers? Presidents, generals, artists, entertainers, and inventors are amoung the list. If you want to take a few horror stories and build your case against homeschooling, maybe you should look at a list of many successes.

My response is here: http://eclectic-homeschool.blogspot.com/2010/07/arguments-against-homeschooling.html

My dear, abusers will adopt any means they deem necessary in order to perpetuate their abuse. Self-styling themselves as “homeschoolers” merely as an excuse for why they’re keeping their children at home does not make them a part of that community. If they thought it might help them get away with their crime, they might style themselves as followers of your blog!

You act as if no abuse of children occurs within public or private schools. I daresay if you’ll do just a one year search of the nation you’ll find many times the abuse rate within institutionalized schools as you will within the true homeschooling community.

It has not been true that homeschoolers are represented in the majority by the religious right for many years now, so you need to update your so-called research in that regard, too. You’re more likely today to find type-A business women homeschooling because they couldn’t stomach the ridiculous wastage prevalent within their local school systems. In particular, the devastation afforded boys within our pitiful excuse of a system is something that many mothers of boys just won’t tolerate.

And insofar as the tired old sing-song about “socialization” goes, you simply don’t have any idea what you’re talking about – as with most folks who spout such nonsense. What on earth do you MEAN?

Would you really like to make an argument that the best way to teach a child to live in the real world is to send them to school specifically so that they can get used to being bullied as this will prepare them to deal with a bully of a boss? That’s preposterous!

Or perhaps you’d like to contend that being holed up with 30 other kids the same age, all herded around by one older person all day is the way to help them become accustomed to mixing and mingling in real life? Really? Where else in life will they EVER be warehoused with a huge same-age group all day long?

On the contrary, many homeschooled kids attend multiple weekly functions where they “socialize” with kids of all ages as well as adults of various ages. Which is precisely what socialization is. Really. Look it up. So, in fact, if you’d done your research, you’d find that homeschoolers are some of the ONLY children in the United States who truly ARE being socialized.

How do I know? Well, I’m working on my calendar for the upcoming school year. On Mondays, my child will have a small group algebra class with a gifted math teacher; this will be followed by an hour long piano lesson with a teacher he adores. On Tuesdays, he has a group chemistry class where they will perform experiments every week. On Wednesdays, he will have a small group art class with an area artist who is very gifted at working with children. On Thursdays, he will have a small group class with an outstanding literature/writing instructor. And on Fridays, we will do lots of field trips (both with groups of friends and on our own), as we always have.

What’s on the agenda for those? Well right now we have a trip to Williamsburg and another to Boston scheduled (we’re studying colonial America most of the year). We’re going to a homeschool day at an area museum that drew from four states last year. They’re a history museum and have up a special exhibit about pirates right now which they will highlight for this day’s events (we’ll be studying a great deal about pirates during the colonial period, so this will be pertinent). We’re studying chemistry all year and he will be meeting in the evenings about once a week with an organic chem professor to do some mad science with him and his child (and perhaps one or two others). I’m trying to schedule a chemistry lab at an area science museum that has done outstanding labs for us in past. And I’m working on about three dozen other field trips right now, too…..

(And these things are all in addition to a full day of all the standard subjects plus many not even attempted by most middle schools, such as multiple languages, logic studies, meaningful history and science studies, and a rigorous language arts curriculum.)

Not everyone does as much out of the house as we do, but most people find meaningful weekly group activities for their children. The reason we’re home and not out earning extra income for our families is that we want the best educational experience for our children.

I’ve done this all before with an older son who heads off to a prestigious college this fall. He decided he wanted the high school experience and wasted the last three years at a private school here (his characterization; not mine). We’ll see how he does after three years of down time from meaningful work. Hopefully, the dual credits he completed before heading back to that waste-time institution will be remembered and help get him through….

In deciding to write about a topic about which you know nothing, you really would benefit by doing better research next time….

The blog author is intelligent, and she can write. Her researching skills are lacking, but she is persuasive. So there has to be a reason for her bias. I suspect that it begins with a nanny, and that the idea of actually enjoying your children and being willing to do whatever it takes to become the best teacher possible for your child is a foreign concept.
Please let yourself off the hook. Home schooling isn’t for everyone. There isn’t anything to feel guilty about if you choose to send your children to school. We all do what we know and when we know better we do better.

This author’s writing skills make the case for homeschooling, don’t you think?

I apologize that I could not get past the capitalization (”Parents, Students”), punctuation (comma after “ears”) and inconsistent capitalization of “Home schooling” errors to read further than the first paragraph.

One of the primary reasons I am homeschooling is to reduce the likelihood that my children will write like this blogger.

To defend homeschooling, I could write an article like yours, just listing all the cases of neglect the school system has shown its students and point out how often the teachers or administrators involved were also insane fanatics or incompetent at what they were doing, but wait… that would be as pointless as this article and it would take forever. With all due respect, I think you would benefit from making friends with a set homeschooling parents you think you can respect. Try very hard to understand what they do and why they do it and then write another article with the humility, grace and experience this one lacks.

I will try to say this as gently as possibly. Homeschooling is very hard work for the many parents who are doing it properly. It does not make it any easier when they are belittled and attacked by people with very negative opinions. Have you done research on test scores of homeschooled children compared to their public school counterparts? You might be surprised to find that homeschoolers receive higher scores on average. Have you looked at stats to find out teenage suicides? The vast majority of teenage suicides are committed by bullied kids in the public school system. Sex in school bathrooms, basements, locker rooms etc. is happening at younger and younger ages. There was a 13 year-old at our local school who contracted AIDS from one of their partners. Zero-tolerance policies are good, in theory. Ask the parents of the student recently killed at Discovery Middle School in Huntsville, Alabama if they feel a zero-tolerance policy is enough to protect students. Ask other parents who have had problems with their children getting in trouble about toy guns if zero tolerance is a good idea.
Also, one more thing: just because a couple prays for their children and gives them Biblical names does NOT mean they are over-religious nuts who abuse their children. My sons have Biblical names. They are not abused, isolated, neglected or mistreated in any way. They are out and about in the world much more now as homeschoolers than they were while attending a school with a low graduation rate, few resources and yes, much violence.