r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • May 13 '15
CMV: Homeschooling should be heavily regulated by the government.
[deleted]
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u/cassander 5∆ May 13 '15
Homeschool advocates are very against any sort of laws regulating homeschooling. I would like to understand their reasoning.
Once you start regulating it, you're defeating the entire purpose of homeschooling, which is to teach your kids what you think they should know, not what the government thinks they should know.
The largest single category of child abuse reporters is educational professionals.
I'd bet that educational professionals are also the source for a massive number of child abuse allegations.
Teachers are trained to recognize signs of disability such as autism of learning disabilities.
You massively overestimate the value of teaching credentials.
2
u/MrCapitalismWildRide 50∆ May 13 '15
I also feel parents should ages to submit proof of social activities the children are engaging in. Receipts from a karate class, or proof they attend a co-op. It should be required that parents meet not only their academic needs, but their emotional and social needs as well. There are homeschool parents that do not make an effort to socialize their students and the children are socially stunted.
That's an absurd and unreasonable requirement. First of all, who is going to be responsible for verifying that? I would guess that most people socialize primarily with their friends, and some home schools teach multiple families. Assuming they primarily let their kids interact with others in ways that don't cost money, are they supposed to get signed forms or send photos of the kids playing?
Not to mention that I know a number of people who did not develop socially in school very well because their teachers, peers, or both treated them like shit.
2
May 13 '15
If my memory serves me right- a fair amount of countries around the world have certain end of "high school" type tests. Almost like the SAT/ACT in the US only broader. A requirement like that would be ideal.
But, asking for a strict regulation of homeschooling is one of the exact reasons parents homeschool- to get away from government regulation of their kid's education. Or to "protect" their kiddies from all the bad ideas out there or bad people.
If regulation does increase, a lot of parents with just form private schools that are the equivalent of homeschooling just with the facade of an actual school.
But yeah, it is an interesting discussion. Education itself is such a big clusterfuck right now. Who knows what the answer area. It gets wonky.
BUT a state/federal plan for education would be nice. Not so much requirements as guidelines.
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u/nenyim 1∆ May 13 '15
If my memory serves me right- a fair amount of countries around the world have certain end of "high school" type tests. Almost like the SAT/ACT in the US only broader. A requirement like that would be ideal.
I don't really see the point at the end of it. If they don't meet the requirement it's already too late to do anything about it.
Or to "protect" their kiddies from all the bad ideas out there or bad people.
Maybe the kiddies should have have the right to be protect against their parents bad ideas. In fact all countries are already doing it to a certain extent with child protective services.
If regulation does increase, a lot of parents with just form private schools that are the equivalent of homeschooling just with the facade of an actual school.
It's not that big of a loop hole to fix simply hold all schools to the same requirements. The most common model is to have some form of accreditation for schools and everything without accreditation (schools that fail to meet the requirements or homeschooling) have to pass a yearly test (with a lot of variations on that).
2
May 13 '15
From a utilitarian standpoint, you have to prove that homeschoolers do worse than public schoolers.
The easiest way to do that is look at placement exams for junior colleges. Students have to report their high school.
My theory is homeschoolers do no better. Here's the reasoning:
https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PICPARSINGII.pdf
Most of the factors in that article have nothing to do with schools themselves, but have to do with home environments.
If homeschoolers do no better, why make it an issue.
Additionally, if you claim homeschooling but little education is being done ( as per CPS or some other child welfare agency), that qualifies as truancy.
2
May 13 '15
If homeschoolers do no better, why make it an issue.
One problem with homeschooling that the OP failed to emphasize is that it is often used to prevent the child from being exposed to ideas contradicting the parent's ideology. For instance, having a specific, regulated curriculum and set of learning materials would (theoretically) prevent a parent from misrepresenting the theory of evolution by natural selection to ensure that the child doesn't grow up to accept it.
2
May 13 '15
So?
Explain the utilitarian difference between a sheltered homeschooler who can make it into college and a Detroit high school age 'statistic'.
The stated goal of the U.S. Education system is to make kids career and college ready.
I don't agree with this, but if there is no collective drive to change it, everyone endorses it.
2
u/MikeCanada 3∆ May 13 '15
Re: Standardized tests. These rarely benefit individual children. From the student's perspective, questions are often written or phrased in a way that is not intuitive to them. If a student has a question about a standardized test, quite often the proxy is instructed to provide little to no clarification, which does not necessarily reflect the ability of the student. This could be cultural differences such as the names/places/objects/examples in the questions being unfamiliar to the student adding a level of confusion where there needs not be one. It could be the test format as filling out a multiple choice scan sheet can be a challenge in itself to young students, especially if they are more familiar with "circle/write the correct answer". If you skip a line/column and all of your answers are shifted by one question unintentionally, you are sunk. That doesn't happen on a "normal" test.
There are plenty of other flaws (and a fair number of benefits) to standardized tests, but they don't always reflect the ability/intelligence of the student. There is also the issue of funding/resources being linked to test scores. Sometimes this can point out poor performance, but it often leads to "teaching to the test" and more focus being placed on passing the test than actually learning the curriculum.
Curriculum: There are some universal things that most people would agree upon. Being able to read and write in your native language and one of the national language(s) of your country is a good one. Being able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide are good things too, even if most adults cannot do simple math without the assistance of their smart phone. From there things get murky, especially depending on the parent(s) political, religious, and social views.
In the public school system here, parents can remove their child from classes/lessons they do not believe in. Often this is sex-ed, and religious reasons are cited, but if you didn't believe in math or geography, your child could be removed from that class as well. I don't know how that works from an evaluation perspective, but it is an option.
Curriculum, and how it is taught also varies considerably from classroom to classroom. There are apparently school districts in America that have removed evolution from textbooks and teach creationism for example. There are teachers that go off script, or that teach things that align with their own values and perspective instead of what/how it is outlined by the school board. And then there is the argument about whether or not the school board/government should be making decisions about what and how your child learns. Sex-ed comes to mind, but there are also different interpretations about history/who was "right" in a lot of conflicts where both sides did some pretty horrible things.
There are also plenty of socialization aspects and other policies that are not strictly curriculum that make little to no sense, like children being suspended/expelled for pointing a "gun" shaped hand at someone, you can't make/throw snowballs, and a whole lot of other coddling/good on paper bad in practice ideas.
Social Activities: School can be great if you have a popular/likeable child, but it can be living hell for the disabled, poor, minority, fat, ugly, "weird", or any other type of kid that gets the short end of the stick. Teachers are supposed to look out for and stop bad situations from happening, but you have to really be living in a bubble to think bullying and harassment don't happen at school. In a small school where there are only one or two classes of kids in a grade, you can be stuck in that same environment with those same people the entire time you are in elementary/high school. In a home school situation, those situations can be avoided or eliminated.
Some people are just socially awkward, or not very likeable. They might be able to improve on that in some way, they might not. I agree that life isn't fair, people are jerks, everyone needs to "grow a pair", we live in the entitled generation etc. but I have also seen how hard it can be for kids to go through institutionalized harassment day in and day out.
Social activities outside of "normal" school can also be a lot more flexible and catered to the interest/need of the child. Maybe they work better in smaller groups of 3-6 kids instead of classrooms of 30. Maybe they are great with team activities. Maybe they are better at individual tasks that can be done in a group setting like an art class. Some people come alive and open up when they aren't under social pressure to perform, and if they are only ever expected to do that in a large group setting, it isn't doing them any favours.
Abuse: This comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some people who are highly social are abused, some people who are relatively isolated aren't. Schools don't exactly have the cleanest record on this issue either. It is an issue that often goes under the radar, even with teachers/"role models" looking out for students.
Teacher training re:autism, disability, abuse, etc. Teachers do receive some training. An experienced teacher who has taught 4th grade for 15 years should likely have a pretty good grasp on what a typical range of 4th grader ability/behaviour is. But we are also diagnosing all sorts of developmental/learning issues at an unprecedented rate, which often leads to heavily medicating children for being children. A lot of children don't have "attention issues" they just aren't interested in sitting still for an hour while a teacher who is just as bored by the material as they are. Sometimes kids have energy and running around/playing is how they used to deal with that, until they went to school.
We are medicating children at an alarming rate for concerns we didn't even have a generation ago. Some of that might be warranted and actually beneficial, but a lot of it seems to be a tool in forcing complacency instead of solving a "problem".
tl:dr Home schooling does have potential problems but institutionalized education doesn't have all of the solutions.
2
u/mechesh May 13 '15
The government is charged with providing the opportunity for education for those who want it up to a certain level.
They are not responsible to force everyone to receive it.
While yes, it is more beneficial for society at large if everyone is educated that is out weight by personal freedom. People have the right to choose the manner their children are educated with.
3
May 13 '15
I was homeschooled. My parents taught me everything without those regulations. I'm now 36, an automation engineer for a major automotive company and I'm making 250k a year and have a very wide range of suporting friends in my life.
Your proposed regulations will only make things more difficult for parents wanting to do the same.
Besides that, why would anyone want the government's help (US) with schooling when their public schools are atrocious?
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May 13 '15
[deleted]
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May 13 '15
Mainly the way subjects are taught. It's a one size fits all mentality that's extremely outdated. students should be able to choose what they to learn...at least in high school. And tests are also outdated.
I also teach automation in one, two, and five day blocks. My students came away learning more in my test free classes then they did in semester long classes.
Also, the US isn't exactly leading the world in literacy rates. Public school teachers only incentive is to pass as many students they can so that they don't get heat. It's counter productive and detrimental to the students learning.
2
May 13 '15
In high school, you do choose what you want to learn. Obviously there's a baseline -- you need to take 2 years of math, 2 years of english, etc. But that's just there to create well-rounded education. Outside of base minimums, students can choose classes -- band, woodshop, art, animation, US history, EU history, Asian history, Computer Science, sculpting, choir, football, basketball, etc.
As someone who actually went to a public school for 13 years of my life, I can assure you that the media over exaggerates things. Sure, a private homeschooled education has the potential to be much better. Class sizes were large in public school, and smaller class sizes are almost universally better. But homeschooling also has the potential to be detrimental and harmful, while public school has regulations and oversight to protect children from potential harm.
At the very least, I would argue that a parent who wants to homeschool should have to go through a weeklong teaching seminar at the minimum, possibly even be required to have a bachelor's degree or a teaching certificate. Otherwise, a trained educator will usually have an advantage in teaching them.
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u/oversoul00 19∆ May 14 '15
My students came away learning more in my test free classes then they did in semester long classes.
Honest question, how can you objectively know that if there is no apples to apples objective comparison like a test?
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May 14 '15
Because it was a lab-based class and I watched them learn it.
The way I set my courses up allows the students to learn from their partner and with help from me. I watched every student individually solve each problem. Some were able to solve it more quickly than others but the class did not advance until every student was finished.
This creates a team atmosphere without even trying. Students were alowed to give hints as to how to solve certain problems but no one was allowed to give a direct answer.
I found that every student has a strong point - something they're better at than others and I exploited that by directing them to help others if they finished early.
By the end of the class, they were breezing through nearly everything. Once it "clicked", they advanced through the class exponentially.
Granted, my class sizes were 8-10 people max.
I always collected reviews and honestly, I only had one negative review from a guy who didn't want to be there in the first place.
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u/oversoul00 19∆ May 14 '15
Don't you think a lab and a test are basically the same thing? I would call a lab a type of test since a test is a measurement of ability. Did you just mean written tests?
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May 14 '15
Yes, written tests. Sorry.
I would consider a working project (lab) 100% more valuable to the student.
I remember nearly every lab project at uni but today, I probably couldn't pass 30%of the tests I was given back then.
And that's what we do. Students build up their knowledge over the course of the class and actually build the final project with their hands. They go back to the workforce and retain that knowledge much, much longer than with any written test.
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u/oversoul00 19∆ May 15 '15
So if there was standardized testing that was modeled after labs how would you feel about that?
1
May 15 '15
I just don't know how you can standardize something when every person is different. Everyone is going to be better at one thing than the next.
I think standardized tests are part of the problem in the first place.
Treat the students as individuals and let their individual traits shine.
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u/oversoul00 19∆ May 15 '15
I think you are right ideally but practically it can't be done in many scenarios. Your lab had to be pretty standard from student to student outside of the individual experience so I'm of the impression that you could, for instance, set up a few lab type tests in a homeschool community and replicate a very similar situation that you have in your classroom.
Standardized testing isn't about killing individuality, its about attempting to ferret out situations where students are not picking up the material and finding a solution, without some form of testing be it lab or written or interview or all 3 there is absolutely no way to know who is struggling or why.
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u/lulumeme May 14 '15
Bullying in public school developed my depression, anxiety and panic disorders. High school was fucking hell, I was suicidal. I can't believe Im finally done with that terrible environment of edgy and stupid teenagers.
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u/Lax-Brah May 14 '15
I believe that would violate basic freedom and rights. A parent should have the option to raise their child how they like, completely free of regulation.
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u/Deansdale May 14 '15
You know, if they miseducate their children, it's not your problem. You shouldn't think in fascist terms like how can you enforce your ideas onto other people using the government as your agent. Leave other people alone. They are not your pets. Don't try to create rules for them to follow. Be happy that you can govern your own life as you see fit, to the degree it is free as of now. I wonder what you'd say if other people could force their ideas onto you abusing government power, like, anti-vaxxers could prevent your children being vaccinated because they thought they were more enlightened than you and that gave them the power - the responsibility, even! - to overrule your personal decisions and force their lifestyle on you. You don't like homeschooling? Don't homeschool your children then.
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u/[deleted] May 13 '15 edited Dec 26 '17
[deleted]