Homeschool parents: Kids not sheltered

Sunday, October 22, 206
By MICHELLE PITTMAN
The Express-Times
One of the most common concerns critics express about home-schooled students is they will have a hard time later in life getting along with others.

Not interacting with peers when they are young robs home-schooled students of basic social skills, critics claim.It is a concern, because it's tied up with what how sheltered do you want your child to be," said Saul Grossman, a professor at Temple University's Department of Education Leadership and Policy Studies. "A lot of home-schooled kids are pretty sheltered, and you have to ask if that's best for the child."

But many home-schooling parents insist it's simply not true.

"Many people assume the only way a child can learn to play with others is to be in a classroom of 20 other kids the same calendar age, sitting at desks six hours a day," said Jill Drake, one of the founders of The Kids Homeschool Network. "How does spending your entire day with age-grouped peers prepare you to socialize in the diverse real world? Other than 13 years in public school, when do you spend the majority of your day with people within two years of your age?

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CRASH COURSE

CRASH COURSE
IN CLASSROOM COLLECTIVISM

By: Frederick Meekin

from EtherZone October 09, 2006

Each year as the school year gets underway, I write a column about the mandatory communalism that takes place in numerous schools across the country where unsuspecting students and parents are forced to surrender their supplies to educational authorities, deemed by the state to be of superior enlightenment than those actually acquiring the school supplies, for redistribution as these demagogic pedagogues see fit. While satisfying to write as there are few topics as visceral as one’s school experiences and the attachment one has to one’s possessions, somehow these most debated of my epistles somehow felt incomplete as they primarily dealt with a symptom rather than the underlying disease. For the socialistic communitarians that have infiltrated the public school system and taken it over for the most part do not primarily want your paper and pencils; the thing the really lust over are the hearts and minds of your children.

Usually, those concerned about the state of the public school system are told that if they don’t like how things are run, they are perfectly free to withdraw their children and pursue private or home-based alternatives to their liking. Overall, better advice could not be given; however, in the years and decades ahead such wisdom will prove to be charmingly naive and old fashioned.

For if things continue along their current path, there will probably be a day when it will be against the law to educate one’s offspring in anything but a state-run school. Already devotees of secularism and radicalism are laying down the perceptual framework necessary to bring about the paradigm shift as to whom has the ultimate authority over the minds of the young.

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Colleges and Universities go on Homeschool Recruiting Spree
by Josh Montez

With an estimated 2-million homeschoolers in the U.S., news reports say homeschooled kids are in demand because of their considerable academic skills.

Gloria Mohler went to a Baptist college in Iowa and pursued artwork on the side. She says her college didn’t turn her away because she graduated from home school.

“I was warmly welcomed; there were many other homeschoolers that went to this school that I attended and it was quite evident that, sometimes, the homeschoolers did study more and they felt more personal responsibility.”

That’s exactly what colleges look for. Barmak Nassirian with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers says it has taken homeschoolers and colleges about 10 years to get to know each other a little better.

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Homeschooling Makes the Grade

BY SHARLONDA L. WATERHOUSE Post-Tribune

The number of Hoosier families relying on homeschooling has risen by 400 percent in the last five years.

Locally, much of that growth is coming from children who previously attended the region's lowest-performing schools.

In the 2005-06 school year, at least 23,455 Indiana families obtained private school numbers from the state -- a voluntary step -- to pull students from schools to try another approach.

No ISTEP tests. Often no desks.

Sometimes no textbooks.

While local districts have seen dramatic increases in the number of children homeschooled, the total is still small: Just 2 percent of students statewide are homeschooled.

Locally, families are using parent-designed education to further educational beliefs, pursue religious training or avoid the pitfalls of public and charter schools.

Ethnic families embrace it

Local trends track national ones, showing a stronger embrace of the homeschool option among ethnic groups, particularly black families.

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School Violence Putting a Focus on Homeschooling

While parents do it for various reasons, some may start looking at recent violence in schools as a viable reason to homeschool thier children.
October 4th, 2006 @ 7:59am
KSL Newsradio's Chelsea Hedquist reporting


It's been a horrible couple of weeks for public schools, with fatal shootings in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Wisconsin. We've also heard stories of teachers sexually abusing their students. It's all got parents questioning the safety of public schools, and taking a closer look at homeschooling.

Six-year-old Jack Blackburn sits at his kitchen playing with his blocks. This is just another part of his school day. He and his brother, Marcus, are homeschooled by their mother, Nikki Blackburn.

"We've been toying with physics lately," said Blackburn. "We've built mouse trap cars, we have been talking about simple machines and how they work."

This learning environment is far removed from the violence we've seen this past week in schools. But Blackburn says her choice to homeschool was about being committed to her children's education, not about safety.

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A new chapter in education: unschooling

Note: They are just now learning about unschooling??? Hmmmm.
To read entire article from MSNBC please click on the title.

Controversial home-taught approach lets kids take the lead in learning

By Victoria Clayton

MSNBC contributor

Updated: 12:22 a.m. ET Oct 2, 2006

It’s a Monday afternoon in Mar Vista, Calif., and while other 9-year-olds might be fidgeting at their desks, Isobel Dowdee has played all morning and is now joining her mother and two sisters on a big blanket in their front yard.

Mom, Heather Cushman-Dowdee, keeps the younger girls, Fiona, 5, and Gwyneth, 2, busy drawing pictures. For Isobel, she’s made a large grid with numbers down the side and across the top so her daughter can fill in the multiplication answers. Not that Cushman-Dowdee cares if Isobel does the chart. It’s just that the girl actually wants to do it. Occasionally they play math games or sing counting songs.

For the past three weeks this has been the ritual — Math Mondays they’ve taken to calling it. Yet Cushman-Dowdee bristles at the idea that this is any kind of mathematics class. That’s absolutely against what she and her husband, Kevin Dowdee, believe in.

“The kids love it so far, but I am open to them changing their mind. We adapt and alter what we are doing all of the time,” says Cushman-Dowdee, an artist and cartoonist.

The Dowdees’ ultra-relaxed learning is called “unschooling.” It’s a fast-growing subset of homeschooling that turns traditional education on its ear.

A new chapter in education: unschooling

Note: They are just now learning about unschooling??? Hmmmm.
To read entire article from MSNBC please click on the title.

Controversial home-taught approach lets kids take the lead in learning

By Victoria Clayton

MSNBC contributor

Updated: 12:22 a.m. ET Oct 2, 2006

It’s a Monday afternoon in Mar Vista, Calif., and while other 9-year-olds might be fidgeting at their desks, Isobel Dowdee has played all morning and is now joining her mother and two sisters on a big blanket in their front yard.

Mom, Heather Cushman-Dowdee, keeps the younger girls, Fiona, 5, and Gwyneth, 2, busy drawing pictures. For Isobel, she’s made a large grid with numbers down the side and across the top so her daughter can fill in the multiplication answers. Not that Cushman-Dowdee cares if Isobel does the chart. It’s just that the girl actually wants to do it. Occasionally they play math games or sing counting songs.

For the past three weeks this has been the ritual — Math Mondays they’ve taken to calling it. Yet Cushman-Dowdee bristles at the idea that this is any kind of mathematics class. That’s absolutely against what she and her husband, Kevin Dowdee, believe in.

“The kids love it so far, but I am open to them changing their mind. We adapt and alter what we are doing all of the time,” says Cushman-Dowdee, an artist and cartoonist.

The Dowdees’ ultra-relaxed learning is called “unschooling.” It’s a fast-growing subset of homeschooling that turns traditional education on its ear.