4 ms·

The "reasons for homeschooling" are too vague to be considered meaningful. The primary reason cited is boils down to "there is something about the school I don'

The "reasons for homeschooling" are too vague to be considered meaningful. The primary reason cited is boils down to "there is something about the school I don't like." Well, duh. What don't you like? The second most popular reason was religious/moral reasons. That needs to be broken down into much more detail. Are the parents looking for creationism? Polygomy? No sex ed? A geographical breakdown of the data would probably be extremely helpful. I have a feeling there are isolated communities that make up a huge portion of home-schoolers.

wyclif 18y ago
So you demand hard stats to back up the article, but when it comes to sweeping, unsupported statements, you have a feeling about it? I'm left wondering why exactly you would conclude that a "huge portion" of homeschoolers live in isolated communities.
- dkokelley 18y ago
  A geographical breakdown of the data would probably be extremely helpful. I have a feeling there are isolated communities that make up a huge portion of home-schoolers. You have to read the entire paragraph. He has a hypothesis about the geographical spread of homeschoolers (the feeling you mentioned), and he would have liked some data to test that. That's not the same as making a sweeping, unsupported statement on a feeling.
  - wyclif 18y ago
    I did read the entire paragraph, thanks very much, but that's not what he said at all. If he had a reasoned prediction of a causal correlation, I might agree with you.
    - briansmith 18y ago
      From another publication (Google it): "Using a division of the country according to migration patterns developed by Frey (2000), home schoolers are seen to be located in rural and suburban areas of the West..." That was all I could find before posting my comment. I did search at length for a map and I couldn't find one. Anyway, common sense says that the fewer the number of schools near you, the less likely you are to pick any of them--especially when there are no schools near you.
cubicle67 18y ago
As someone who's seriously looking at homeschooling my kids, I'll give you my reasons (briefly, because obviously it's a complex issue) I see a lot of similarity between the school system and having a regular, steady job. The risk is known, and the outcome is, with a high likelihood, going to fit between a fairly narrow band. It's safe, it's socially acceptable and everyone else is doing it. Homeschooling is like leaving that regular 9-5 job (something I did 9 months ago now). It's higher risk, it's not socially acceptable (not amongst my friends anyway) and only nut-cases do it. But... there's the potential for much higher reward. My kids have nice teachers, but they're not the sharpest tools in the shed and have almost no intellectual curiosity. I want my kids to develop a love of learning, of discovering new things and of understanding. I want them to know that I don't know everything, that no one does. I want them to be curious, to question and to explore. I most certainly do not want them to spent the next 12 years of their life sitting at a desk. A quick anecdote from only last week. One of my daughters is 8 and learning about the Solar System. She's loving it and reading everything she can find. They had an in-class test and one of the questions was "How many planets are there?" She answered 8-13, unsure if the teacher was after dwarf planets, and was marked wrong; the 'correct' answer was 9. When she tried to explain that there were 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets, the teacher didn't want to know.
- tremendo 18y ago
  Also considered home-schooling and remember having many doubts as to whether in the end my kids would fare better or not. I feel we've been able to nurture their natural love of learning mostly by unschooling. My fear of the school system was that it would effectively kill this love of learning, and in fact, we did give up on public school after 6 months of what really only seemed like crowd control. My son would sit quietly at school not really doing or learning that much, and then let out all his energy and frustrations at home. Fortunately changing school to one that follows Montessori method has worked really well for him and my daughter. They get much more personalized attention, they satisfy their curiosities and make tangible progress in different areas. For our particular case I don't believe we could have done better with home schooling. BTW my son was for several months an astronomy freak and would have given the same answer as your daughter. I hope you had a talk with the teacher, and explained to your daughter that she's in the right.

wyclif 18y ago

So you demand hard stats to back up the article, but when it comes to sweeping, unsupported statements, you have a feeling about it? I'm left wondering why exactly you would conclude that a "huge portion" of homeschoolers live in isolated communities.

dkokelley 18y ago
A geographical breakdown of the data would probably be extremely helpful. I have a feeling there are isolated communities that make up a huge portion of home-schoolers. You have to read the entire paragraph. He has a hypothesis about the geographical spread of homeschoolers (the feeling you mentioned), and he would have liked some data to test that. That's not the same as making a sweeping, unsupported statement on a feeling.
- wyclif 18y ago
  I did read the entire paragraph, thanks very much, but that's not what he said at all. If he had a reasoned prediction of a causal correlation, I might agree with you.
  - briansmith 18y ago
    From another publication (Google it): "Using a division of the country according to migration patterns developed by Frey (2000), home schoolers are seen to be located in rural and suburban areas of the West..." That was all I could find before posting my comment. I did search at length for a map and I couldn't find one. Anyway, common sense says that the fewer the number of schools near you, the less likely you are to pick any of them--especially when there are no schools near you.

cubicle67 18y ago

As someone who's seriously looking at homeschooling my kids, I'll give you my reasons (briefly, because obviously it's a complex issue) I see a lot of similarity between the school system and having a regular, steady job. The risk is known, and the outcome is, with a high likelihood, going to fit between a fairly narrow band. It's safe, it's socially acceptable and everyone else is doing it. Homeschooling is like leaving that regular 9-5 job (something I did 9 months ago now). It's higher risk, it's not socially acceptable (not amongst my friends anyway) and only nut-cases do it. But... there's the potential for much higher reward. My kids have nice teachers, but they're not the sharpest tools in the shed and have almost no intellectual curiosity. I want my kids to develop a love of learning, of discovering new things and of understanding. I want them to know that I don't know everything, that no one does. I want them to be curious, to question and to explore. I most certainly do not want them to spent the next 12 years of their life sitting at a desk. A quick anecdote from only last week. One of my daughters is 8 and learning about the Solar System. She's loving it and reading everything she can find. They had an in-class test and one of the questions was "How many planets are there?" She answered 8-13, unsure if the teacher was after dwarf planets, and was marked wrong; the 'correct' answer was 9. When she tried to explain that there were 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets, the teacher didn't want to know.

tremendo 18y ago
Also considered home-schooling and remember having many doubts as to whether in the end my kids would fare better or not. I feel we've been able to nurture their natural love of learning mostly by unschooling. My fear of the school system was that it would effectively kill this love of learning, and in fact, we did give up on public school after 6 months of what really only seemed like crowd control. My son would sit quietly at school not really doing or learning that much, and then let out all his energy and frustrations at home. Fortunately changing school to one that follows Montessori method has worked really well for him and my daughter. They get much more personalized attention, they satisfy their curiosities and make tangible progress in different areas. For our particular case I don't believe we could have done better with home schooling. BTW my son was for several months an astronomy freak and would have given the same answer as your daughter. I hope you had a talk with the teacher, and explained to your daughter that she's in the right.