Re: Informal Renegotiation of the Law

On Sun, 15 Sep 1996 17:54:49 -0500 (CDT), snow wrote:

>> For example, you will not read anywhere that compulsory education laws have
>> been repealed -- but they have.  When the home schooling movement started in
>> the late 1970s, there were occasional harassment and prosecution of parents.
>> The home schoolers won some and lost some.  As time went on, the authorities
>> came to accept home schoolers so that at this point, legal problems are
>> rare.  Compulsory education has been effectively repealed by the actions of
>> refusenicks in both the subject population and the enforcement population.  

>     Their children are still getting educated. Not thoroughly enough in 
>some cases, but educated in the basics. 

It has always seemed somewhat amusing that we will have a) a widespread opinion
that homeschooling is of lesser value and b) numerous studies, surveys,
testimonials, reports, etc, that show what a rotten job public education is
doing*.   This raises the question of how anyone even remotely concerned with
their children's welfare could do worse. . .    Yet another unexplained mass
insanity.

* - I can add to the testimonial side of things here. I'm one of those rare
teenagers who went straight to the professional workplace (bypassing college),
but it's in spite of the best effort of our educational system, especially the
so-called GATE programs (Gifted & Talented Education - more like stultification
from my experience in 3 widely separate districts) or honors classes.  They're
real big on the "touchy-feely" but actual academic performance lags.  My
physics teacher was actually expected to teach AP level physics to a bunch of
students who hadn't even had Algebra 2. (I never took Calculus, but that didn't
prevent me from understanding a derivative or integral)  I won't even rant
about the English classes where a 400 page book (about 1.5 hours for me) is a
semester's reading...

# Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp
# cadams@acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894
"I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to play games on
a computer in any case when the whole system is a game.  Word processing,
spreadsheets, telecoms -- it's all a game.  And they pay you to play it."
	-- Duncan Frissell

Mr. Adams wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Sep 1996 17:54:49 -0500 (CDT), snow wrote:
>>> For example, you will not read anywhere that compulsory education laws have
>>> rare.  Compulsory education has been effectively repealed by the actions of
>>> refusenicks in both the subject population and the enforcement population.  
>>     Their children are still getting educated. Not thoroughly enough in 
>>some cases, but educated in the basics. 
>It has always seemed somewhat amusing that we will have a) a widespread opinion
>that homeschooling is of lesser value and b) numerous studies, surveys,
>testimonials, reports, etc, that show what a rotten job public education is
>doing*.   This raises the question of how anyone even remotely concerned with
>their children's welfare could do worse. . .    Yet another unexplained mass
>insanity.

     I would agree that parents can do as good or better at _most_ subjects 
thru about the 3rd or 4th grade, and I do agree that most of todays schools 
are shit, however there is one area--social skills--that homeschooling 
simply can't compete. Children need to learn how to interact with one another
in groups larger than a family unit. I don't think that homeschooling can
accomplish this nearly as well as the public (or private) schools could. 

     I also don't think this is as important as, say Math, Science, or
English. 

Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@smoke.suba.com

On Sun, 22 Sep 1996, snow wrote:
>      I would agree that parents can do as good or better at _most_ subjects 
> thru about the 3rd or 4th grade, and I do agree that most of todays schools 
> are shit, however there is one area--social skills--that homeschooling 
> simply can't compete. Children need to learn how to interact with one another
> in groups larger than a family unit. I don't think that homeschooling can
> accomplish this nearly as well as the public (or private) schools could. 

I understand that many parents that homeschool belong to organizations
that provide for meetings twice a week in which the children so educated
in a certain area get together.  Homeschooling does not have to stand in
the way of a normal socialization process. 

--Lucky