http://latterdaylearning.org/

When I think about some of the dim bulb LDS parents I know, the thought of kids being educated by their parents sort of scares me.

My cousin & her crazy husband homeschool their kids, & the detriment to the kids is so tremendous that it's a clear cut case of child abuse. The kids are woefully backwards, uneducated, & actually very stupid because of what their parents are putting them through.

However, there are other parents that homeschool their kids responsibly with the help of programs & such.

I sure are!

I think home schooling is an awsome option. The only problem I have now is that there has been some changes that make home schoolers less accountable. I still think that they need to pass standardized tests to show they are keeping up at least with national standards. But otherwise I think it is a wonderful option that can have great potential.

There is so much oversight of public schools and so little of homeschoolers. The basic requirement for teaching public school is a BA plus certification plus passing exams, with regular observance by state officials in classrooms.

The basic requirement for homeschooling is having sex. You give birth and suddenly you are qualified to teach? My brother is a teacher and he took 4 grad courses just on teaching reading and writing. How many epistemology courses do parents take?

I have 2 grad degrees and am a librarian. I do not consider myself fit to teach math or science.

What really scares me is that many homeschoolers do it to keep their kids in ignorance. Look at the curriculum on the website. It is basically Sunday School with a diploma at the end. These kids will be unfit to live in society, let alone get jobs.

I'm sure there are a few conscientious parents who feel they can do a better job than professional educators, but those are few and far between. Many are religious nuts who don't want Satanic teachings like Evolution and black civil rights entering their children's impressionable brains.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2013 01:29PM by axeldc.

I watch my TBM sisters (edited to add this, I dont have kids) kids who have been homeschooled 100%, and the sheer homogeneity of the ideas they are presented with scares me. Homeschooling can be done right, but my sister is isolating these kids from all media influences except for 2 or 3 pre screened kids shows, and all church allowed material.

Homeschooling can be done right, as long as the kid still gets exposure to a diversity of thought, but I find most TBMs tend to isolate their kids in order to more fully indoctrinate them. Poor kids will have 0 social skills, and 0 knowledge of the outside world. Totally unprepared for college or even a mission.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2013 12:19PM by newatthis.

Its not fair to make that a stereotype. We may not agree with the way your sister does it but it would not be fair or right to force people to put their kids in public school where it is sooo easy for kids to be overlooked. The stereotype that homeschooled kids dont have social skills or real world experience is false....kids who are homeschooled are part of a community that is very active socially. They go on field trips with other homeschoolers, they are on sports teams, they are just as involed as public school kids. My son is super smart and if I didn't have the option to homeschool him he would be stuck in a class where he was bored to death and everything was dumbed down for him. It offends me when people make comments about how backwards homeschooled kids are.

Right On! When we homeschooled you could take your pick of social activities and not get overwhelmed with stupid public school fundraising projects.

Where did I make a stereotype or generalized assumption about homeschooled kids? I made one about TBMs homeschooling, but not about the system in general.

In fact, Tristan made the comment of "backwards" but that was with respect to a single instance, and she acknowledged that others do it right. Maybe you should read these comments more carefully before freaking out?

I didnt " freak out". I was just sharing my opinion. This whole thread sets up the assumption of how dumb it is and comments like "I sure are", feed the stereotype. I know that stereotype is out there, and I dont think its accurate. My experience with the homeschooling program is one where the kids excel, and are socially competent. So I want to share my opinion, and experience. Yay homeschooling!

I have seen both sides, like jonathantech. And I totally agree with you. Homeschooling can be a fantastic way to help your kids excel when the public schools hold them back. I went to public school until 7th grade, I skipped 8th, and started immediately into a self taught homeschool program, where I finished highschool early, this put me about 4 years ahead of my peers, and let me get my bachelors way early too. All through my mission and college I had people comment "wow, you don't seem like you were homeschooled, not like other kids I know."

And you know what, in some ways they have a point. I have seen the ugly side of homeschooling as well. Personally, I made sure to get the social exposure that I needed to develop normally, my parents weren't involved at all. Sadly, a different sister of mine was pulled out of highschool to be hometaught, because she was "too wild" (she wasn't). My mom fully intended on teaching her, but instead just threw a textbook at her and said "study", she had no direction, and ended up a decade behind her peers in the end.

There are great people who go the extra mile to ensure a quality education for their kids. More power to them, this is the power of homeschooling. Sadly, there are also many who don't send their kids to school, don't provide a decent education, and isolate them. There IS a bad side to homeschooling, even if you are doing it right. I have met many kids who were maladjusted because of homeschooling (obviously their parents did it for the wrong reasons or in the wrong way), and I have met kids who got opportunities they would never have had otherwise because of homeschooling. I belong to the latter and am grateful for it. Not everyone is so lucky, though.

I've seen both sides. Parents that do it right do a great service to their children. One of the smartest people I know was homeschooled. He graduated with his BS at 18, went on a mission, and was done with his masters by 23. On the other hand, I have friends that were homeschooled that can barely read.

I will take you at your word that your children are Rhodes scholars, but how many homeschooled kids are not? How many of them are growing up in ignorance, taught falsehoods to protect them from secular society? How many just dump their kids at the public library and ironically expect librarians to teach their kids for them?

Even if you are amazing teachers, what diversity are they getting? How can they learn to get along with people different from their siblings? Do you know what academic incest is? Your biases will become the only opinions that they encounter growing up. Even Socrates had his limitations as a teacher.

The homeschooled kids I knew growing up were smart but socially dysfunctional. Their sense of style and grooming was out of the Waltons. They were all bright kids, but no one at church could stand them. If they can't get along with other Mormons, what about non-Mormons? They were also allowed to pursue their own interests, giving them deep understanding in some subjects and leaving them illiterate in others.

I just remember when I was a (public school) student that the kids who were home schooled, even though many were well ahead academically, really lacked social skills as a general rule.

I saw both sides growing up. I was homeschooled until 4th grade, went into public, went back out for 5th, went back to public for 6th and back out again after half of 7th, then back in again after skipping a grade as a sophomore in high school.

I had problems with the other kids because I was shy and small and non-confrontational, but I still had friends. When I started public school I was way ahead in mathematics and easily grasped every subject, but I don't know if that was because of my homeschooling or because everything to do with learning has always been easy for me. The only place I have ever struggled has been with spelling and other languages, and that's because I hate them.

The reason I left for 5th grade was because I was bullied by a teacher and the students. The teacher picked on myself and my mother because I was homeschooled. I jumped into 6th grade without any issues as far as I can remember, but left 7th because I was uncomfortable again and I think I was bored. I did high-school through the mail and skipped a grade and only went back to public school because I would rather have shot myself then to do the english courses through a book (I really needed a teacher for that one, and more time. The book was so boring, it had 20-30 pages of paragraphs explaining all the grammar rules of english @_@ ).

High school was big enough that I could disappear in and I was left alone, plus I finally got some size to me and people left me alone.

If I were that suspicious of my public schools, I would send kids to a private school. Professional educators are always better than parents at teaching. Parents have plenty of opportunities to teach their kids. Children need a diverse education to function in the world.

Even a good Catholic school would be preferable to homeschooling.

So great that you have all the answers.

LOL!

I don't pretend to have all the answers. It's the homeschoolers who think they are fit to teach every subject to their children.

I'm only a librarian. I only know how to look up everything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2013 02:05PM by axeldc.

While I am undecided on homeschooling myself, I would point out that some people fix their own sinks rather than call a plumber, change their own oil instead of calling a mechanic, etc.

While a professional is often "better" at something, with proper materials a DIY is often sufficient. Just like I fix my car with a Haynes manual, I'd expect most homeschoolers make full use of available resources.

A child is not sink. If you mess up his/her mind, you will not be able to replace it with a new model.

Children are your responsibility, but not your property. The irony of it all is that when the child turns 18, he/she has to live with the consequences of the education you allowed him/her. You don't.

I gave them a balanced education and had to teach them to read and write again after "whole language"
What was really funny is when the returned to normal school they had a big black mark on their records and were put in all the dumb classes .
Within 1 month all the dumb class teachers demanded they be put in the advanced classes because they made the dumb kids feel bad. In fact my oldest won academic awards for the school in an outside contest at the local college.

I agree it has to do with the parents running the show. My sibling does a good job exploring well-rounded programs. But her organization skills are lacking. Add a newborn to the list of kids needing mom, and homeschooling has been less effective this year than their first year. In my sister's case, her own social anxiety keeps her from enrolling her kids in sports. They briefly belonged to a homeschooling group and did a few field trips. Then my sis felt like her kids were singled out as too disruptive and were discriminated against because they were lds. So they went back to their bunker where the only other interaction the kids have is church. It's kind of tough to watch. The only positive impact has been on the oldest kid. He seems much happier in this program. But he certainly doesn't seem like a 12 year old.

I homeschooled my son from gr. 6-12. I thot he'd go back to high school but he asked to be home schooled! He is smart in math so the Saxon math texts I bought were pretty self explanatory for him (thank goodness). We studied world history, 3 languages, economics (we read The WEalth of Nations ) and science where after gr. 10 it was cosmology from a book called The Matter Myth, written by a scientist for lay people. It was difficult to understand but we plowed away at it and learned lots. Gym was whatever was going on at church scouts (nothing often) and he did weights and racquetball ( we build a room out of wood for doing racquetball in the basement). He is rather introverted but can talk to both adults and kids when he chooses.

he was accepted at Waterloo University where he got his bsc in math and economics. He is now going back for his masters.

When he was in gr. 10 I got pregnant and sick, so he was on his own for a few months. He did what he could do ( math, reading, Rosetta stone computer German Class) until I got better and then we caught up with English, history and the like. It was tough with a baby in the house, and I ended up with a bad case of OCD after her birth, so if he were in primary grades i'd have had to send him back to school.

I wanted to home school. We tried it for a year, liked it and kept going. It gave him a chance to excel in math (he skipped gr. 6 math) and to see his dad, who worked at night at the time.

My daughter is going into gr. 2. We live in the country now, and she needs school for social purposes. I don't feel ready to home school her and she does NOT want to be taught by me. I don't see how you can homeschool if the child refuses to accept the parent as a teacher. She may change her mind, I might get completely frustrated with the school system again, so who knows what's going to happen in the future.

I agree about my kid needing other adults besides me as a teacher. He is less likely to balk and whine when its not me trying to get him to try, or do something.

I had a French teacher who taught the only French II course in the school. Her daughter was in the class and it was awful. The daughter was totally disrespectful and spent the class doing her nails. It undermined the teacher's authority with the rest of the class.

I once overheard the teacher say to her daughter, "Why do you act like this in my class, but not others? Every other teacher loves you and you are so difficult with me!" It was obviously a case of a 13 yo girl showing her mother up.

Kids need outside authority figures and teachers from parents. Everyone is limited in their own way, so children need to get away from their parents and learn outside the nest.

This validates my fears of homeschoolers. They are often religious nuts who want to indoctrinate their kids and skew their worldview for life.

Here is a letter introducing History I. I got a BA in history from BYU and we NEVER injected religion into the courses:

"This course is designed to give children a Christ-centered view of history. They will see the Lord’s hand in the
history of the world and will see how following His principles helps individuals and nations “prosper in the
land” (Alma 36:1). They will see the influence of people who follow Christ and those who do not. They will
understand the difference one person can make in the hands of the Lord. Using the principles of the restored
Gospel of Jesus Christ, children will come to know not only the chronology of history but also the character
of the Lord as He works with His people. Their understanding will be reinforced by principles of truth found
in the scriptures and in the words of latter-day prophets."

Scary!!!!

Great.
Those poor kids are studying from the Book of Mormon which has been disproved by DNA.

There may be exceptions, but many homeschooling parents do so with the goal of keeping total control over their children.

A backwoods world view will be a severe detriment to those children earning a decent living later in life.
Not to mention all the mental/emotional problems that usually go hand in hand with such an environment.

"This year you will be studying the history of
the world from the pre-mortal council in heaven through the establishment of great ancient civilizations."

Um...the pre-mortal council in heaven didn't take place on this world, remember?

Congratulations, LatterDayLearning, you couldn't make it two sentences into your history course before screwing it up.

Here is the Table of Contents. The entire first week is teaching Genesis as history. Lesson 8 is the first actual history lesson, and they use "righteous" in the title!

This is not a history class, but a theology class. The Tower of Babel is an unfounded myth. Moses has never been authenticated nor has Joseph. Daniel is another fable. No public school or even religious private school could teach the Old Testament and call it "History I".

Is History II the history of the Nephites?

The Dispensations of Adam, Enoch, and Noah
Lesson 1 The Council in Heaven and the Plan of Salvation
Lesson 2 The Fall
Lesson 3 Adam and Eve’s Record
Lesson 4 Apostasy and Restoration
Lesson 5 Enoch’s Vision of the History of the World
Lesson 6 Noah: Father of all Nations
The Dispensation of Abraham and Egypt
Lesson 7 Nimrod and the Tower of Babel
Lesson 8 Egypt’s Righteous Foundations (2200 B.C.)
Lesson 9 Egypt’s Heritage of Knowledge
Lesson 10 Egypt’s Government Was Based on Virtuous Laws
Lesson 11 Abraham’s Faith and Obedience
Lesson 12 Joseph’s Unique Mission
Lesson 13 Egypt Turnsto Idolatry
Lesson 14 Egypt’s Mythology
Lesson 15 Egyptian Belief in an Afterlife
Lesson 16 Pyramids to Honor the Dead
The Dispensation of Moses
Lesson 17 Moses Providential Preparation (1600 B.C.)
Lesson 18 God Delivers Israel from Slavery
Lesson 19 The Children of Israel in the Wilderness
Lesson 20 The Ten Commandments
Ancient Civilizations
Lesson 21 Sargon the Great and the Akkadian Empire
Lesson 22 Shamsi-Adad and Hammurabi—Kings of Assyria and Babylon
Lesson 23 The Ten Tribes Taken Captive; Sennacherib Tries to Defeat the Jews
Lesson 24 Nebuchadnezzar—King of Babylon
Lesson 25 Daniel in Babylon
Lesson 26 Cyrus the Great, King of Persia
Greece
Lesson 27: The Greeks and their GodsLesson 28 The Beginning of Greece: the Minoans (3000-1450 B.C.), the Mycenaeans
(1450-1200 B.C.) and the Dark Ages (1200-700 B.C.)
Lesson 29 Homer: The Great Storyteller—The Trojan Horse (800 B.C.)
Lesson 30 Greek City States: Sparta (700 B.C.)
Lesson 31 Greek City-States: Athens—Democracy, Education, and Olympics (600-
400 B.C.)
Lesson 32 Aesop: The Teller of Fables
Lesson 33 Socrates: The Athenian Philosopher (469 B.C.)
Lesson 34 The Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars
Lesson 35 Phillip, Alexander the Great, and the Fall of Greece



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2013 01:45PM by axeldc.

I used one of the Saxon math homeschool books this summer with my 11yo DD. It was fun for both of us.

But I would not want to homeschool her year-round. I think the kids need the socialization. I only wish class sizes were about 1/2 what they are now.

Parents have plenty of opportunity to educate their kids. The school day ends by 4 pm, leaving you 6 hours with your kids. You have all day Saturday and Sunday with them, especially if you don't spend all day at church. You have a week at Thanksgiving, two at Christmas, Spring Break and assorted holidays around Easter, etc. You have 3 months off in the summer.

You also had 5 years before school to teach them. My SIL, a kindergarten teacher, can tell you how uneven the education of children is Pre-K. Some can read and write basic sentences, others are babies that are not fully potty trained.

If parents don't use all this time for education, it's because they don't want to. My parents basically let me self-educate, and I spent a lot of my free time in my room reading library books. Of course, I only read what interested me or was forced on me as homework, so a self-guided education would have been skewed to my own desires and not well rounded at all.

We still homeschool our kids, even after leaving the church. The church had nothing to do with our decision. We use a curriculum that follows what they would learn in regular schools, plus we take cool field trips all the time. The kids also attend a school 2 days a week that is designed for home schooled kids where they have a class of about a dozen kids with a regular teacher. That way they still get the social interaction they need. They have also involved in sports like karate & soccer. It's working really well for us, and our kids are up to par if not more than the standard teaching in public schools. Plus we won't have to bother with the controversial new common core program.