Are our home schooled children confused and lacking knowledge?
Time magazine is reporting this week that California is looking to outright ban homeschooling unless the parent can prove having a teacher certification. I think that would involve a certification for both elementary and secondary school teaching. That would then involve getting a certificate and/or endorsement in every single subject to be taught to the children in the home. Now who could do that? No one.
I am happy for this pending legislation. I have always believed that homeschooling is a big mistake for our children, and I worry that they miss out on interacting with others. Children need to learn to make friends, learn to recognize those who are truly not friends, learn to deal with difficult circumstances and people.
What makes a parent believe they can provide absolutely everything for their child? I certainly am not capable of that. I need others to help my children learn to work (because they don’t always do all the cleaning around here); they need a boss they can respect and learn many skills from.
I also need others to teach my children how to play their instruments, how to run track, how to play chess better, how to read and write better, how to effectively do math (some of which I still struggle with even though I am a doctoral student), history and social sciences, how to do homemaking skills, etc. My kids teachers are wonderful and we could not do without them.
I have watched certified teachers continually work to earn endorsements so they can stay aware of better teaching methods, better classroom methods, better understanding of their students, how to distribute learning in their classrooms so all students benefit in class, and they work really hard to learn more and more about the specialty subject they teach. They know that they could not teach everything, and they are educated. How can someone not educated in learning sciences think they can successfully teach their children? I just don’t get it at all.
This strong opinion of mine is getting deeper and stronger the more I learning about learning and cognition. It also increases the more I talk to my students who are school teachers. You wouldn’t believe how hard they work to teach this sometimes difficult and lazy generation. Some of my graduate students report that many of their elementary and secondary students what everything handed to them. These young students just don’t want to work to learn. Now if I can’t get my kids to listen to all I say, how can a parent successfully get their child to follow through on difficult learning tasks? It won’t happen.
What do you think? Is home schooling good for our children?
