Homeschooling

[joel]

The people that know I was homeschooled have have been asking me what I think of the recent ruling concerning homeschooling in California. My opinion comes down to this: In the long term, this ruling is meaningless

Comments

[anonymous]

Gonna have to get Catherine to check out that TED talk!

[sethkills]

Oops, that was me, obviously.

[anonymous]

Well, the main problem with homeschooling is that although many parents provide a better education than a public school would, many other parents homeschool their children for the purpose of indoctrinating them in some kind of weird fundamentalism which a public school education would dispel. And in those situations, there is really no guessing how well those kids will be able to cope with college or real life after they are done.

The logical compromise would be to require that homeschool parents affiliate themselves with some kind of homeschool organization, which are quite common. That way, some oversight is achieved.

One argument I have seen is that home school parents can be too indulgent of their children, and not give an education that is rigorous enough. From what I have seen, nothing can be further from the truth.

[joel]

In my experience homeschooled children raised in "weird fundamentalism" rarely continue to believe the things that they were raised to believe.

This argument also goes both ways, the public school system also has a long history of teaching children strange things that aren't necessarily true.