My wife is a teacher. I'm not against homeschooling. It isn't for everyone, but this woman is implying public school is an educational black hole and they hand out "Presidential Awards" to not even learning times tables.

I get that public education isn't right for all kids but come on. Too busy having babies? cringe.

This guide/article is so full of Mormonism as to make its advocacy of home school more like the teaching of men mingled with a ton of scripture.

No escaping Primary for these kids. They get it all week long.

http://nataliehunsaker.com/BLOG/DarlaIsackson/article13.pdf

I feel sorry for these kids who have D&C flashcards, but won't actually be learning biology, chemistry, physics, or higher maths, like geometry, trig, and calculus. I'd be surprised if this idiot managed to teach her children algebra.

How can you be so busy having babies that you don't even care about the ones you've already had?

Anyway, I can't see how these kids will be able to meet the requirements for any sort of higher education, nor do I think they will have the general skills required to pass a GED. And I certainly don't think these children will grow up to be employable adults.

Don't get me wrong, homeschoolers. One of my best friends was homeschooled and she is bright, articulate, well socialized, and graduated from college. What I have a problem with is religious-based homeschooling. My friend's parents were both certified TEACHERS. My opinion: if you aren't a certified teacher AND you think religion and spirituality are more important than math, science, reading and writing, you are dooming your children to a life of un- or underemployment and you have no business whatsoever homeschooling. I am all for homeschooling, when done properly. I would never hire someone who learned biology from his Quiverfull mom.

"Sometimes I slip on a skirt and top and put on lipstick to help my children take their teacher more seriously!"

WHAT?!!?

LIPSTICK is what makes you take your teacher seriously? No, KNOWLEDGE is what makes you take your teacher seriously.

This woman is an idiot. And, I might add, cites no studies or scientific basis whatsoever to justify taking this approach to her children's eduction. She's parroting what she's heard and read on the internet and not looking at any actual corroborative, verifiable, peer-reviewed journal studies. If her critical thinking skills are this poor, how could she possibly educate her children?

I am outraged.

I always say, home schooling is only as good as the teacher and the curriculum. Some parents do a great job of it. I suspect that many home schooling efforts are mediocre. Parents that shop at teacher's supply stores for home schooling educational materials tend to pick mediocre things that no teacher would touch.

I had a former home schooled student for the fall term. He had decent skills but was somewhat behind most other kids in my class.

"I always say, home schooling is only as good as the teacher and the curriculum."

I agree. There was a family in my ward when I was a kid that home-schooled all their kids. They could barely read by the time they finished high-school, got terrible test scores, etc...

I had a friend in college that was home-schooled and finished high-school at 14, got a near-perfect ACT score, served a mission and still finished his MS before he turned 23. Maybe he was just a genius, but I always assumed that his parents taught him well.

I agree with this. Homeschool programs vary widely, but there are many quality schools that offer some form of home/distance education, especially if you look for a school targeting diplomats' kids. I have seen quite the variety from (as you mention) the well adjusted highschool grad at 14 to the completely socially incompetent 19 college freshman who has never seen anyone outside the family except at church. And everything inbetween. It all depends on the parents and what, if any, program they choose and the work they put into it, and on the diligence of the kid to put forth the work without the added social pressure.

Think of all the good times you had with good friends growing up in the public education system. I'd hate to make my kids miss out on all that. There's plenty of kids who grew up with the worldly evils of public education and still turned out to be faithful little morgbots who went on missions.

Her grandson got an award without knowing his times tables? Shocking - the world is going to hell in a handbasket!

My brother is a retired math teacher.
Parents still bring their kids to him for tutoring, he never charges, his biggest reward is the kids learning and advancing in math.
He says the biggest obstacle is that kids don't know the basics. If he figures thats the problem, he has the parents get a set of flash cards, both add/substract and multply/divide, and work with their kids daily.
After that he works with them and algebra and other math falls into place.

Don't dis the flash cards, they are the best things that you can do for math struggling child.

This story sounds fishy. First off, the academic awards are not "won"; they are earned. Secondly, it seems what you have here are kids who have managed to teach themselves. I don't give the mother credit, but rather the kids who managed to educate themselves. Oh, and following her schedule, how will her kids learn their math facts by only having math one day per week? Really?

There are plenty of problems with public school, but as a former public school teacher know that the vast majority of teachers work hard and do their best to see the students succeed in spite of the systems put in place that ultimately hold them back.

The most consistent factor I've seen in successful kids though is a home life that values education. The school day alone isn't enough to give kids what they need. It has to be reinforced at home. So being too busy having babies to check your kids homework, practice math and reading or run spelling word is definitely a problem.

If a parent didn't care enough about their kids progress when they were in public school, I'd be pretty concerned about their kid's homeschool education. School isn't a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. And church stuff doesn't take the place of math, science, history, etc.

I went to a seventh-day-adventist school as a kid and our science curriculum was sub par for sure. But all the Bible reading did pay off in our reading, writing and grammar skills.

justemilynow Wrote:
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> So being too busy having babies to check your kids
> homework, practice math and reading or run
> spelling word is definitely a problem.

Nail on the head.

Too busy to check their schooling because of babies? What are you a big factory? Octomom???

I find it interesting that this woman went from being too lazy to check her child's schoolwork because she was too busy with her babies to see that her son didn't know his multiplication to being so motivated to homeschool. Homeschooling, if done right, is a lot of work. Much more work than checking your kid's spelling and math. Sounds like an excuse to me. If you want to check out some real homeschool horror stories, visit the Homeschoolers Anonymous blog.

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