[HoosierDaddy]

Bubba, on 05 February 2010 - 05:24 AM, said:

H.D., on 05 February 2010 - 05:09 AM, said:

Edit: Let me supplement to make this even more quantifiable: 41% of public school teachers have a Masters Degree, whereas your picture states that the average home schooling parent is a woman with a college degree.

Not my picture.


and I feel you have veered of what you said to begin with.

That last bit quantifies what I said, NOT what you said.

Well, wherever you got it from stated that. And, it was merely a note to say that if we do choose to define better educators by higher degrees, public school teachers are still generally more highly educated.

[bubba]

Terez, on 05 February 2010 - 05:44 AM, said:

Bubba, on 05 February 2010 - 05:43 AM, said:

The parent for the most part are NOT setting the curriculum. Almost all home school children are learning from a coarse system laid out by educators. All the parent is doing is administrating it.

I know that, but curriculum books don't make up for specialized knowledge.

True, but home schooling today is a lot more than just a pile of books. Most have live web classes and instant access to teachers who can answer specialized questions.


....and my beef with public schools is more with the admin side, they where the ones who failed for the most part, not the teachers per say.

[bubba]

H.D., on 05 February 2010 - 05:46 AM, said:

Bubba, on 05 February 2010 - 05:24 AM, said:

H.D., on 05 February 2010 - 05:09 AM, said:

Edit: Let me supplement to make this even more quantifiable: 41% of public school teachers have a Masters Degree, whereas your picture states that the average home schooling parent is a woman with a college degree.

Not my picture.


and I feel you have veered of what you said to begin with.

That last bit quantifies what I said, NOT what you said.

Well, wherever you got it from stated that. And, it was merely a note to say that if we do choose to define better educators by higher degrees, public school teachers are still generally more highly educated.

That is not what your first statement said. It wasn't about parents vs teachers. It was about a higher educated parent vs one with less.

[Terez]

Silencer, on 05 February 2010 - 05:46 AM, said:

I'm sure, Terez, that over the course of your, how many is it? 1500 or so posts on this forum, I could find plenty with grammatical errors, spelling errors, or punctuation that is lacking in quality.

Probably not. But even if it were true, what is your point? His posts were riddled with bad grammar. Granted, I've seen worse, but the point of picking apart his posts (3 of them, not 15) in the first place was to show that nearly every sentence had something wrong with it. It clearly wasn't a matter of making a random mistake here and there. Also, I clearly said in the post that it was not an indication of his type of education at all, so I'm not sure why you bring it up. The knee-jerk reaction to the grammar correction is really sort of amusing, though. Almost as funny as amphibian losing his nuts on Godwin's Law a few weeks ago because I said Google Books was being Nazi-ish.

[bubba]

Terez, on 05 February 2010 - 05:54 AM, said:

Silencer, on 05 February 2010 - 05:46 AM, said:

I'm sure, Terez, that over the course of your, how many is it? 1500 or so posts on this forum, I could find plenty with grammatical errors, spelling errors, or punctuation that is lacking in quality.

Probably not. But even if it were true, what is your point? His posts were riddled with bad grammar. Granted, I've seen worse, but the point of picking apart his posts (3 of them, not 15) in the first place was to show that nearly every sentence had something wrong with it. It clearly wasn't a matter of making a random mistake here and there. Also, I clearly said in the post that it was not an indication of his type of education at all, so I'm not sure why you bring it up. The knee-jerk reaction to the grammar correction is really sort of amusing, though. Almost as funny as amphibian losing his nuts on Godwin's Law a few weeks ago because I said Google Books was being Nazi-ish.

Please explain how this is not a contradiction of why you picked it apart to begin with.

[HoosierDaddy]

Bubba, on 05 February 2010 - 05:52 AM, said:

H.D., on 05 February 2010 - 05:46 AM, said:

Bubba, on 05 February 2010 - 05:24 AM, said:

H.D., on 05 February 2010 - 05:09 AM, said:

Edit: Let me supplement to make this even more quantifiable: 41% of public school teachers have a Masters Degree, whereas your picture states that the average home schooling parent is a woman with a college degree.

Not my picture.


and I feel you have veered of what you said to begin with.

That last bit quantifies what I said, NOT what you said.

Well, wherever you got it from stated that. And, it was merely a note to say that if we do choose to define better educators by higher degrees, public school teachers are still generally more highly educated.

That is not what your first statement said. It wasn't about parents vs teachers. It was about a higher educated parent vs one with less.

My first statement is that educators are better teachers, no matter what the education level of someone in a non-educating field (for the most part, there are always exceptions). However, if education is such a defining factor in the ability of an educator, public school teachers are generally more highly educated than home-school teachers.

At no point would I compare less highly educated parents vs. more highly educated parents doing home-schooling because that's nonsensical. I would assume that the higher educated home-schooling parent would naturally have some advantages over the less educated home-schooling parents. They would probably have some disadvantages as well, as the level of education increases, the narrower the field. For home-schooling, I think a broad view might actually be slightly more valuable. Interesting hypothesis.

If I confused you with the way I switched to a tangent with the second part of that, my bad. But at no time did I ever purposefully try to compare home school v. home school. I was always basing it around home educators and public educators.

This post has been edited by H.D.: 05 February 2010 - 06:04 AM

[Sinisdar Toste]

i think, terez, their reaction had to do with how unnecessary it was to be so in depth about criticizing his grammar. how much easier would it have been to say, "well, that's all fine and dandy, but your posts are riddled with bad grammar, so i find it hard to believe in your high rating of home schooling."? not to mention being much less confrontational with a member who is clearly new-ish to the boards and not used to the calibre of debate that goes on.

[bubba]

Maybe we both missed that one HD.

And for the record, I don't consider the parent the teacher in a home schooling environment. Teachers aid at best. As I said before almost all are Educator based systems that parents use today.

[Anomander]

Oh noes, my apologies, it wasn't 15 posts but rather 15 sections of you picking apart his spelling. Your sole point was that his bad grammar showed that he wasn't any better off than those in the public sector. I think Silencer was pretty spot on in his explination of how crap that observation was.

As for this "knee-jerk reaction to the grammar correction"? That's because the staff likes to defend the members when someone is being a trollish jackass.

[Terez]

Bubba, on 05 February 2010 - 06:00 AM, said:

Please explain how this is not a contradiction of why you picked it apart to begin with.

The reason why I picked it apart to begin with was that he implied that he had 'gotten ahead' by home-schooling, that his education was therefore superior to public schooling, which was clearly not the case. However, just by itself, his grammar issues would not have told me whether he was home-schooled or public-schooled.

sinisdar toste said:

i think, terez, their reaction had to do with how unnecessary it was to be so in depth about criticizing his grammar.

It was necessary to be in-depth to a point, to show that it was not a matter of random typos. Also, I wasn't any more confrontational than previous posters in the thread were.

[bubba]

Any way you justify it, it was unnecessary and an attack.

[amphibian]

Terez, on 05 February 2010 - 06:13 AM, said:

The reason why I picked it apart to begin with was that he implied that he had 'gotten ahead' by home-schooling, that his education was therefore superior to public schooling, which was clearly not the case.

He's reading Erikson. I give him big ups for that. I'd consider him an above average kid, just going off that alone. And hope the books aren't too dark for his family or anything like that. Keep on reading, BB42.

I think the grammarians lose focus sometimes on what language is - a means of communicating thoughts and concepts. Yes, there are ways to do it more effectively, but a ridiculously small percentage of high school-age children are going to have even a solid grasp on what thoughts and concepts they want to communicate them, much less the best way to get them across.

I was mostly kidding. You were mean. And you had no truck calling Google Nazi-ish for the book stuff.

Now, back to the interesting stuff that H.D. and Bubba are getting into. The study doesn't control for education/household income demographics? What general validity does it have then?

[bubba]

What I did was a quick search. Did you(or anyone else) read some of the links?

[amphibian]

Bubba, on 05 February 2010 - 07:13 AM, said:

What I did was a quick search. Did you(or anyone else) read some of the links?

Thanks for prompting me again. I read through them and a couple things stood out.

These studies do indeed show that homeschooled kids do better in tests and stuff than all of the kids who are not homeschooled. I theorize that the overwhelming majority of the kids being homeschooled would be getting good grades in "regular" schools anyways. I'm not convinced that homeschooling is actually making much of a difference, as the kind of family that can afford to do so usually sends out decent to great performing (academically) children to school already. The studies just say "surveyed" several thousand parents. There's no mention of controlling for financial background and other factors like that.

The kind of research I have in mind for analysis is tough to do because you've got several different options at that monetary wherewithal: public school (most common), private school (second most common), and homeschool (still kinda rare). I'd speculate that the private school kinds might get the most boost, but if it's costing 110k per year and the parents have to stretch/run themselves thin to get that dough together? Ugh.

Trying to find some actual objective research on this through Google is like rummaging through an enormous pile of terrible dollar books for a rare gem. I applaud you, Bubba for pulling some workable stuff there. I think I'd need to go to an expert or something to get a few pointers in the right direction for the real info - which I'm not really able to do at the moment. Durn law school.

[Obdigore]

Honestly Terez, my spelling and grammar are just the plus side of horrible, and I am public schooled.

Also, as per Bubba's numbers, it appears that most homeschooled kids' parents are wealthier than most public schooled kids. Do you think that might have a bit to do with those college/masters numbers? I know I slacked off my last two years of high school and so did not qualify for any kind of grant, and my parents made enough to not be able to really help me with college funding, but we were certainly out of any kind of government assistance on that matter.

I chose to forgo college and enter the work force after high school. I can pretty much guarantee that if my parents were able to help me with tuition I would have gone to college. My grades and ACT scores were good enough to get me in anywhere, just not good enough to get me in with a grant from the college.

[Imperial Historian]

A very quick literature search at uni showed very few published papers addressing the issue of homeschooling (though I could well be looking in the wrong place), that said I found no published papers which criticised homeschoolings effects on a childs development.

One guy who seems to have published a lot on the subject of home schooling being beneficial is Ronald Meighan (though he drops out of established journals to a flakier one post 95), but here is an article by him for those interested.

http://www.thuisonde...deducation.html

I think finding the sort of data your looking for would be very difficult to find amph, but as far as I can tell theres no arguement that homeschooling is definitely harmful, but equally I don't think we can conclude that it's necesarily beneficial, with the wealth of parents who homeschool kids possibly skewing the numbers.

Oh and I'll add my official adminy voice to the calls to keep things civil lest the wrath of the most high (hetan) fall upon thee.

[Yellow]

I don't have kids, but I imagine we will have in the next year or so, and I've thought about this quite a bit.

I don't seriously plan to homeschool my kids, because we can't afford for either of us to quit work, but I do worry that (free) schools are absolute shite these days.

Anyway, I've come to the conclusion these days that there are two reasons why I wouldn't homeschool, even if I could:

1) The obvious social aspect
2) When I was in secondary school, I benefited greatly by having multiple takes on the world [i.e. every teacher is different and I learned something useful (though not necessarily good) from each of them]. It would be a shame for my kids to just get the one viewpoint on life.

Maybe another point for discussion - and probably only relevant to the UK forumites - but what's your take on grammar schools vs comprehensives? Is the 11+ a good thing, or elitist crap? I'm from Trafford, where the practice is still going on. Personally, I think that if you passed the 11+, you stood to gain by going to the better school. On the other hand, people who failed the exam were basically left to fend for themselves, academically.

PS - for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, the 11+ plus was an exam you took at age 10/11 (basically just an IQ test, I think), and the top x% passed and could go to the "better" secondary schools, whereas the rest went to the local comprehensive school. I'm not sure whether this bipolar nature actually dragged the overall level of education down or not.

This post has been edited by Yellow: 05 February 2010 - 06:40 PM

[Sindriss]

Don't have many personal experiences with people who were schooled at home since it is a very rare occurence in Denmark. However, in my opinion, I would rather that my kid was a bit worse in standardized tests and somewhat better at socializing. This statement of course takes quite a lot for granted, e.g. the whole idea that homeschooled children are better at tests and worse at socializing.
As a bachelor in Business studies, it would be my claim that social skills are more important for landing a job than receiving better grades. Actually, seen evidence towards this hypothesis, but that is data from Denmark so it is questionable how valid it is for other countries (Not sure what country OP is from, was it the states?).

Also, a bit confused by this statement earlier by Amph:

Quote

In my experience, little kids like social contact a bit more than that and perhaps not structured in the manner baseball is (think of the 5 year old center fielder getting bored about 20 minutes in). I'd suggest gymnastics, jiu-jitsu, handball or something funky like that for little ones. Never karate though. That "martial art" is retarded.

Why on earth do you bash Karate, and why did you put martial art in inverted commas (or is it quotation marks?). Sorry for maybe going a bit offtopic, but I have to strongly disagreed with your assessment of this "martial art".

[Illuyankas]

@Yellow: I took the 12+ to go to a grammar school after spending Year 7 in the nearest comprehensive to my house. I didn't exactly have a lot of fun there, so I'm not sure I can give an unbiased view.

@Sindriss: I've spoken to a lot of fighty dudes, and their general consensus is that karate is far more 'art' than 'martial'.

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 05 February 2010 - 06:57 PM

[Yellow]

The social aspect is always going to count for a lot of the overall opinion. That goes for work as well (a job you enjoy versus the one that does more for your career).

If you could separate the social from the academic, do you think you were better off at the grammar?