Anyone interested in a bit of history - here it is - a book that compiles research done for over 15 years on over 300 preschool homelearners who went to enter mainstream educational institutions. Did preschool home learning really have any effect on the children’s classrooms performance, social life or behavior?
There’s an easy way to homeschool, which means that the exact curriculum in your area is covered, so if ever you sent them to school, they’d be up to speed (even though well past that). In Victoria, australia, it’s called Distance Education, and it covers what the State public system learn. It’s cheap, and most cost is the fortnightly posting work in. Keeps the government happy as you meet the guidelines, yet you can teach your own stuff on top of it.
I agree with daddude. It is sad that by the time that our children reach college, they will have to specialize in one or two particular subjects. I think that it is the Japanese who prefer a broader education. I don’t know which is better -to know a lot about one thing or to have a small knowledge of a lot of different things.
For me, it was hard to pick just one thing to study. I love many different subjects and envisioned myself becoming a teacher so that I could teach the subjects that I enjoyed. At the same time, I didn’t want to be limited to just teaching. I wanted to be an astrophysicist, a bioloist, and even a doctor (stupid ER).
I think that is why I am 26 and just now finishing another nursing degree. I have spent the last 8-9 years in college studying a range of subjects from astronomy to women’s literature. Every class that I take makes me view the world in a different light. However, at the same time, I am getting older and feel the need for a more advanced degree. Who wants to do bedside nursing for the rest of their life? My education so far does not count for anything because it is not in one subject even though I can converse about business or anthropology if I needed to. That being said, it is time for me to focus on one thing.
I wish that I could have had my “season” of general knowledge learning earlier in my education, however, because subjects like philosophy and economics usually aren’t taught at the secondary level I would not learn have learned them until college. Once I got to college, there were not enough of general education requirements needed to satisfy my hunger for knowledge. I believe that this is where homeschooling comes in to play with my children. I will teach them everything I can about the subjects that I have learned in college before and during their high school years. One of the goals in this mission will be to prepare them to decide what they want to spend the rest of their lives doing. This, in my mind, can only be accomplished if they are exposed to the greatest variety of subjects as possible.
What will happen when my children reach college age? They might not even choose to attend college, and this is okay with me along as they are happy and can support themselves. If they do choose to go to college will they be ahead of their peers? Of course they will because they will have already been taught the general subjects usually taught for the first two or so years of college. Maybe at this time they can work on being emotionally more mature, or maybe they will be fortunate enought to attend a college specifically designed to challenge advanced students.
I know at my community college they do allow home schoolers to take classes. This would be most ideal if my children want to take more classes, in say, chemistry since I will probably be unable to create an entire chemistry lab in my garage or basement. This will give further opportunity for them to see what the real world is like and allow them to know what working with people of different ages is like. It will also be interesting to see what role that the internet plays in education during the upcoming years. Education as we know it probably will not be the same.
First, Gloria, let me say that this book does at least give some reason to believe that many children who go through the Doman program will be doing just fine in school when they are the ages of the kids in the study. So, I’ll grant you that.
Gloria, I hate to be negative, but I got a copy of the Harvey book and, while I’m not done reading it, I don’t find it particularly persuasive. At least, the study he reports on isn’t. The study design seems substandard. First, there is no control group. This is extremely important, because one of the blindingly obvious explanations of good performance among Doman learners is that the parents of Doman kids have higher IQ or academic preparation than average. So the results really have to be compared to a similar group of families, families with exactly the same range of intelligence, well-education, and above all, motivation to teach their children. Because, after all, it’s the method that’s being tested here, it isn’t the wonderful effects of having motivated parents. Surely nobody will doubt much or will be very surprised that having motivated parents will lead to smarter kids. So, compare parents who aren’t using Doman methods, who are still very concerned about their children’s education, with those who are.
Second, the study is based on a survey in which there is an obvious potential for self-selection bias: who is going to write in to an Institutes researcher to say that their Doman-trained children are doing poorly? A lot smaller percentage, anyway, than those who write in to brag.
Third, the survey questions are incredibly vague. “How is your child doing socially? Specifically, how are relations with peers, teachers, other adults?” Choices: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor. Then: “How is your child doing intellectually? (a) In reading? In math?” Same choices.
I am very sure that many parents who go to the trouble of going through the Doman program may also be unusually inclined to boost their estimate of their children’s abilities. It’s the Lake Woebegon effect–you know, in Lake Woebegon, all the children are above average.
Quite frankly, I am very suspicious of a group that goes out of its way to portray itself to the general public as a scientific institution (The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential?), and has not, in its 40+ years of existence, published ONE SINGLE peer-reviewed study of the effectiveness of their methods. This is not to impugn the methods themselves, but it is to impugn the scientific pretentions of the Institutes.
I don’t know, but it’s my impression that there are free distance education programs in at least many states in the U.S. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_schools Some homeschoolers are a little annoyed with them because they are directly competing with homeschooling…which doesn’t quite make sense to me. They’re competing with homeschooling curriculum providers, yes (these schools provide the curriculum for free).
I’m pretty sure we won’t be using these services, though. We might. I’m sure we’ll look carefully at them when the time comes, but having to do a lot of public school busywork, even if it is via the Internet, doesn’t sound like fun. Obviously, it depends on the quality of the curriculum/materials, but U.S. public school systems in general aren’t too good at choosing materials, IMHO. I’m sure it doesn’t matter if the materials will be delivered online or not. The same curriculum specialists will be making the choices, I’m sure. On the other hand, maybe the fact that these virtual schools are having to compete with homeschooling methods will force them to make better methods available.
Obviously, things could be different in Australia. Who knows, maybe we’ll be able to “telecommute” for our education to the Aussie schools! Outsourcing, yeah! I’m sure the NEA would love that!
For us, I’m sure we won’t be following any very strict curriculum, as I explained earlier.
