Raised Quiverfull: Homeschooling

[AmyP]

Eh? That hasn't been my experience. Most of the homeschoolers I know spell well. Hell, most of the homeschoolers on FJ spell well. In the absence of actual data, I don't see the point in this or any of the other anecdote-derived generalizations on this thread.

As to all the "homeschoolers I met/heard of/taught were like X" anecdotes—really? For one thing, do those of you making these claims have any basis for thinking you even know precisely which people you've met were homeschooled? Most of the people who've met me in my adult life haven't a clue I was homeschooled, because the topic doesn't come up often and I don't go out of my way to make an issue of it. Nor do many of my formerly homeschooled friends. Many of us would rather get on with the project at hand than get sidetracked fighting stereotypes.

I tutor homeschooled kids. So the kids I'm talking about are, in fact, homeschooled. A large percentage of them seem to be awful spellers. I have a few theories as to why the population I am speaking of could be enriched for poor spellers, but I also know a great deal of homeschool moms who have opted out of teaching their kids to spell because it didn't seem to be working. This is, in my opinion, a total cop out, although I have heard that many public schools are dropping spelling after third grade. I do not know if this is true, however.

[CynicMom]

My understanding is that many schools are de-emphasizing spelling in favor of increasing overall writing. The idea is that kids feel inhibited from writing a lot when they're concerned about their spelling. The number one way to get kids to improve their spelling is to get them to write prodigiously so schools overall are encouraging kids to spell phonetically to just get stuff on paper. I see a lot of this in, for example, the founding father's writing. Their spelling was horrible!

[Loveday]

I tutor homeschooled kids. So the kids I'm talking about are, in fact, homeschooled. A large percentage of them seem to be awful spellers. I have a few theories as to why the population I am speaking of could be enriched for poor spellers, but I also know a great deal of homeschool moms who have opted out of teaching their kids to spell because it didn't seem to be working. This is, in my opinion, a total cop out, although I have heard that many public schools are dropping spelling after third grade. I do not know if this is true, however.

Not sure where the grade cut-off actually is, but sadly, this is true in many districts. In my own district, teachers are frequently told to ignore poor spelling as long as the student turns something in that's at the very least slightly readable. My husband, who teaches seventh grade science, ignores that request and includes spelling quizzes for each unit studied. :mrgreen:

[gardenvarietycitizen]

At some point surely spelling is dropped as an actual subject to teach, and left to the students to handle on their own? That would make sense to me, people should know how to learn their own new spelling words after some point, and still be held accountable for spelling (in final drafts - I do think that correcting spelling in rough drafts should be advisory only, meaning definitely correct it but don't grade on it).

In Japanese school, learning characters is a task that gets a lot of time in elementary school. You're required to hand in sheets of handwritten characters, write each one fifty times or whatever, there are worksheets on it. Lots of time is spent explaining how characters work, how they're put together, how to use a dictionary. There is a lot of emphasis on handwriting.

But starting in junior high school, while you're still learning new characters, and will be tested on them as part of normal Japanese-language tests, and you will lose points in any assignment if you miswrite a character, you're expected to be able to learn new characters on your own, on your own time. Any new ones are listed at the end of a story in your reader but you can look them up in a dictionary yourself. As an adult, it's trivial to learn new ones after seeing them one time (with pronunciation given) in some news article or whatever because you know how the whole system works. "It's like this other character but with this part instead of that part" or whatever, and the reason for the part swap makes sense based on some meaning rules.

So, I would not find it odd if a kid in US schools stopped having spelling as a subject after a few years, but I do think they should be graded on it (in final drafts, tests - anything handed in as a finished product).

In science, I think teaching spelling from the point of view of learning all the various latin and greek roots would be a GREAT thing. People like to talk about how English is supposedly so easy to read because it's phonetic, but to be a good reader of technical topics in English (or be able to guess the meaning of words you've never seen before in ANY area, really) you need to learn a lot of meaning bits too, particularly in science. You can get some of that just by reading a lot of science and figuring it out, but having a teacher take a bit of time to actually explain those roots would be great. In Japanese, that comes automatically with the characters, but it in English they're sort of separate.

My neighbor has a little dictionary of these roots in his bathroom, it's good educational reading :) Plus it's handy if you like to do crosswords or think you might want to take the SAT...

[AuntCloud]

Of course, this has resulted in a generation of doctors and engineers who can't write an English sentence, or politicians and journalists who don't know peer-reviewed science from a note by Jenny McCarthy scribbled on a cocktail napkin.

Not in AU, but reminded me of a student of mine who huffed "but this is not an ENGLISH class! why are you making us DOOO this?!" when I gave them a little research assignment that included (a) some extracurricular material and (b) a requirement for proper grammar, spelling, structure, punctuation and citation format.

Also reminds me of a private tutoring student who was homeschooled until grade 9 or 10, then decided she needs to get into highschool if she wants to become a veterinarian. When I first talked to her father he asked me not to be offended if one session is all I get, because "Samantha needs to really connect to a teacher". Apparently I was connectable and she was a delightful student, albeit with some lacking study habits. She complained about not having the time management skills her schooled peers have. "I can barely keep up with school work, and other people play sports, are in a band and also volunteer and have a part-time job". I met her a few years later, working at a fabric store - a job she got through her mom. She was well over 18, still working on completing her diploma exams.

[TXDuck]

This is, in my opinion, a total cop out, although I have heard that many public schools are dropping spelling after third grade. I do not know if this is true, however.

I don't know how other districts are. But this is technically true at our district in that the 3rd grade is the last grade Spelling is its own course. After that, social studies, reading, etc. have their own vocabulary lists that students are expected to learn. While my kindergartener doesn't get graded on his spelling, my 4th grader certainly does.

[emmiedahl]

fwiw, my children in 2nd and 4th grade both have weekly spelling/vocab combination tests. The word lists get sent home and they are expected to know both the spelling and the meaning by Friday.

[freejoytoo]

I didn't know exponents were the same thing as indices/powers! I feel less dumb now :D

[AuntCloud]

Our (public) school is *very* adamant about proper spelling and grammar. English is not my first language so I'd never dream of teaching my kids something I'm not completely comfortable with. My kids' teachers have an amazing toolbox of tricks to help kids of very different learning styles learn, while I can only teach things the way *I* understand them. Funnily enough, I have no problem teaching and tutoring high-school and college students, but I'm completely baffled when teaching fractions to my third grader.

[Austin]

I grew up studying under a structured curriculum in public and private schools. Honestly, I can't imagine an educational curriculum where I'm learning whatever catches my fancy. The closet I got to that was when picking electives in college. I enjoyed picking "fun" classes and some of them were highlights of my college career.

That said, I also feel had my parents allowed me to learn what I wanted, when I wanted, I would have missed out on so much things. Worse, many careers would have been closed to me. I would have skipped fractions and trigonometry, physics and chemistry lab, I would never open up a language arts book, and most definitely have avoided any mention of Chinese.

My mom was quite insistent I learn Chinese, forcing me to spend hours writing the characters, even making me speak it at home despite my natural inclination to answer back in English. To this day, I remain fluent enough to pass for a "native" in China and could write letters in Chinese.

As others pointed out, there is merit to "making" kids learn things they don't enjoy. Children are not mature enough to understand why they must do unpleasant things. While many are intrinsically curious, they are also naturally lazy. Given a choice of fraction problems and Final Fantasy, I think we know what most kids would choose. It is up to the parents to make sure children are given opportunities to thrive and learn and that may include "forcing" them to sit and do math problems. If a homeschooling parent is unable to do this, they should seek outside resources. Ignorance is not an excuse to deprive children of a good education.

Looking back, I think being "forced" to learn things I detested had two positive outcomes. Firstly, it made me understand hard work and adversity. Secondly, it opened up doors in future careers that would otherwise be closed. I learned that while I hated practicing my violin, doing so made me improve and I could produce beautiful music for all to enjoy. I also realized by taking hated classes, it opened me up to future careers that I was interested in. It laid the foundation for me to enter engineering school, and later medical school.

So....as much as I detested chemistry and all its derivative classes (get it? haha), a basic knowledge of it is quite useful as a physician. As much as I hated physics, aspects of it were moderately useful in my physiology classes. And as much as I hated trigonometry.....well, it was required for calculus which was required for engineering school. Lastly, as much as I hated studying Chinese (and I hated it with a passion), it means I can speak to my aging grandmothers to this day.

Some people may think what was done to me probably beat out any enjoyment of learning. I would argue, on the contrary, I learned the value of education because I now realize the price of not learning those topics would have been.

I totally agree.

In my view, a parent's job with regard to their children's education is to make sure their children have choices, each according to his/her own potential. When you graduated from high school, you presumably had many choices because you had done the requisite work of learning. When our children asked us at different times, in frustration, "Why do you push me so hard?*", I always said the same thing: "I want you to have choices when you graduate". Many kids don't understand that until they're about to graduate, but if my experience is any indication, they are very glad to have different options when they graduate, even if they didn't act like it at the time the work was required.

My view is that it is a very regrettable thing to not have choices. clibbyjo's kids have choices, my sons have choices, and if you're educating your child to have many doors through which he/she can walk, that's the most important thing.

*"so hard" is a relative term here. I was no "tiger mom". I had a pretty good idea of what each son's potential was and respected that.

[maybeizfundie]

In science, I think teaching spelling from the point of view of learning all the various latin and greek roots would be a GREAT thing

Yes! Just a very basic foundation in Latin and Greek roots (nothing formal) from my dad gave me a huuuuge leap ahead not just in spelling but in reading and comprehension. I think it's a sadly neglected opportunity to improve language skills that most schools don't take advantage of.

Been finding this thread interesting overall. We are kind of ecclectic. The first 5 years or so, my kids do pretty much "unschool". I present them with opportunities to learn, and look for ways to pique their interests, but pretty much let them meander along at their own pace, according to their own interests. It is *so* not hard to prep them for Kindergarten and first grade--they are ready and eager to learn. And sometimes it does seem to be by osmosis. :D After that we do a public cyberschool as the foundation of their education to make sure they're meeting milestones and that we're covering all the bases. And then we do whatever fun and enriching educational things we can. And of course reading and more reading and even more reading. I have one excellent speller, and one dreadful speller, though they have the same core program and the same teacher and the same oversight and the same school-provided enrichment.

I think what homeschoolers may have some difficulty with is that many of us have observed wretched spelling, incredibly poor social skills, etc in those who went to brick and mortar schools. Most of the homeschooling parents I know went through the traditional school system and found their educational experience seriously lacking (although, I should say, we aren't in VF or ATI, so that may be why we aren't aquainted with many second-generation, anti-education homeschoolers) My husband, for instance, had to take a very basic English writing course when he went to a local community college. English is his 4th language (2 tribal languages, his national language, and *then* English), yet he did better than the majority of his classmates, and he was horrified by that. How could native speakers have such a poor grasp of their own language, even basic spelling and grammar? This was one of the reasons he was even willing to consider homeschooling. He'd met a few weird missionaries and associated homeschooling with them, but he wasn't altogether impressed by what the local public and Catholic schools were producing once he came to the States.

Given plenty of anecdotal "evidence" going both ways, it seems like there has to be a whole lot more to the story than just whether a person is homeschooled or goes to public school.

[Rosa]

I think that's true, but there's a HUGE push to reform/fix/improve public schools. And we're still at the basics with a lot of homeschoolers, the "there should be SOME regulation of homeschooling in all states" level. If we were still arguing over whether or not there should be licensing for public school teachers, that would be a similar level of criticism between the two.

[DifferentGurl]

What some of the Quiverfall people are doing is not homeschooling...it's home indoctrination. With school, you are given at least some chances to gain a differing perspective on things. With this Quiverfall "homeschooling", the kids don't have a chance of learning different viewpoints. They will only learn their parents' viewpoints.

As for exponents and the distributive property, I had to look back at an old Algebra textbook ( I was homeschooled and I indeed learned about exponents and the distributive property ) because I sometimes forget stuff when it comes to math. Depending on the subject, it takes me several times before I can remember something.

[freejoytoo]

I studied Latin at school and a lot of people have asked them what the point was. I told them how it helps learning linguists, grammar, studying the sciences...the list goes on!

[roddma]

I don't know what an exponent or a distributive property is either. I was homeschooled.

Distributive property is (a+b)+c=ab+ac

Commutative porperty is a+b=b+a

Associative property is (a+b)+c=a+(b+c)

I always get associative and distibutive mixed up-had ot make sure it was right lol

Exponents is a superscript to the right of a number

[desertvixen]

Some people may think what was done to me probably beat out any enjoyment of learning. I would argue, on the contrary, I learned the value of education because I now realize the price of not learning those topics would have been.

That, and you might realize while studying something you didn't initially want to study that you enjoy it, or get exposed to something else you will enjoy.