Before I came across the Steiner School near us I had always considered homeschooling. Being a qualified teacher I had many occasions to see the down side of schools and as a consequence homeschooling became more and more an option for our kids.
The problem for me is weather I personally would be doing our children a service or dis-service! Even though we love the school we have chosen as it comes as close a possible to how I would educate them I still think of homeschooling. Here is an interesting piece from good old Wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling for whole article).
Numerous studies have found that home schooled students on average outperform their peers on standardized tests.[23] Homeschooling Achievement, a study conducted by National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), a homeschooling advocacy group, supported the academic integrity of homeschooling. Among the home schooled students who took the tests, the average home schooled student outperformed his public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. The study also indicates that public school performance gaps between minorities and genders were virtually non-existent among the home schooled students who took the tests.[24]
In the 1970s Raymond S. and Dorothy N. Moore conducted four federally funded analyses of more than 8,000 early childhood studies, from which they published their original findings in Better Late Than Early, 1975. This was followed by School Can Wait, a repackaging of these same findings designed specifically for educational professionals.[25] Their analysis concluded that, "where possible, children should be withheld from formal schooling until at least ages eight to ten."
Their reason was that children, "are not mature enough for formal school programs until their senses, coordination, neurological development and cognition are ready." They concluded that the outcome of forcing children into formal schooling is a sequence of "1) uncertainty as the child leaves the family nest early for a less secure environment, 2) puzzlement at the new pressures and restrictions of the classroom, 3) frustration because unready learning tools – senses, cognition, brain hemispheres, coordination – cannot handle the regimentation of formal lessons and the pressures they bring, 4) hyperactivity growing out of nerves and jitter, from frustration, 5) failure which quite naturally flows from the four experiences above, and 6) delinquency which is failure's twin and apparently for the same reason."[26] According to the Moores, "early formal schooling is burning out our children.
Teachers who attempt to cope with these youngsters also are burning out."[26] Aside from academic performance, they think early formal schooling also destroys "positive sociability", encourages peer dependence, and discourages self worth, optimism, respect for parents, and trust in peers. They believe this situation is particularly acute for boys because of their delay in maturity. The Moores cited a Smithsonian Report on the development of genius, indicating a requirement for "1) much time spent with warm, responsive parents and other adults, 2) very little time spent with peers, and 3) a great deal of free exploration under parental guidance."[26] Their analysis suggested that children need "more of home and less of formal school" "more free exploration with... parents, and fewer limits of classroom and books," and "more old fashioned chores – children working with parents – and less attention to rivalry sports and amusements."[26]
John Taylor later found, using the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale, "while half of the conventionally schooled children scored at or below the 50th percentile (in self-concept), only 10.3% of the home-schooling children did so."[27] He further stated that "the self-concept of home-schooling children is significantly higher (and very much so statistically) than that of children attending the conventional school. This has implications in the areas of academic achievement and socialization, to mention only two. These areas have been found to parallel self-concept. Regarding socialization, Taylor's results would mean that very few home-schooling children are socially deprived. He states that critics who speak out against homeschooling on the basis of social deprivation are actually addressing an area which favors homeschoolers.[27]
In 2003, the National Home Education Research Institute conducted a survey of 7,300 U.S. adults who had been home schooled (5,000 for more than seven years). Their findings included:
- Home school graduates are active and involved in their communities. 71% participate in an ongoing community service activity, like coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association, compared with 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages from a traditional education background.
- Home school graduates are more involved in civic affairs and vote in much higher percentages than their peers. 76% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 voted within the last five years, compared with only 29% of the corresponding U.S. populace. The numbers are even greater in older age groups, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared with a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace.
- 58.9% report that they are "very happy" with life, compared with 27.6% for the general U.S. population. 73.2% find life "exciting", compared with 47.3%.[28]
25. Better Late Than Early, Raymond S. Moore, Dorothy N. Moore, Seventh Printing, 1993, addendum
26. Raymond S. Moore, Dorothy Moore. When Education Becomes Abuse: A Different Look at the Mental Health of Children
27. Self-Concept in home-schooling children, John Wesley Taylor V, Ph.D., Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI
No comments:
Post a Comment