Thinking of home schooling my kids.

[Duelist]

Critical thinking? Judgement? Our Constitution? Let alone the Declaration of Independence. Or history. How to live a life, pay your bills, fill out your taxes. Honor? None of these things are taught and haven't been for many years. And lets not even get into the drugging of our kids ...

I have never personally worked at a school or district that did not address and actively teach each of the topics you state haven’t been taught in years. I personally just assisted in a review of our curriculum and course catalog, and I can tell you that, to quote from the worst Star Wars film, everything you just said is completely wrong.

If there is a school or district not teaching those things, they are failing to deliver what they owe to their students and community, their students are probably failing any standardized tests they take, and getting bad scores on college entrance exams. Those failures have consequences: funding, school report cards, even direct monitoring and control by the state department of education can happen if a school or district doesn’t meet the mandated expectations.

If we are going to have publicly funded education (it’s not going away, so let’s not fuss about that) then we have to have mandated standards and curriculum that meets those expectations. If you don’t like what’s going on in your district and schools, rather than rant about it and shake your fist at the sky, I would encourage you to attend your local school board meetings. Most of them are never attended by more than a handful of people, but that is how you can hold them immediately and directly accountable, and if shenanigans are going on, you can raise your voice about it and get other people in your community involved to increase accountability pressure.

Virginians recently had a large assembly of people at the capitol about the proposed bad gun laws. Today is their educators turn. I just wonder if as many people will show up for it as did last week.

[Zincwarrior]

Mike,

Mmm. Please, I have no desire to put down teachers. Just like many professions I'm sure the vast majority are dedicated, well-intentioned people trying their best in a difficult world. Using cops is a good comparison I think and what I just said applies equally to them. Being either in todays world? Horrific. Both trades are yoked, harnessed & whipped continuously by a management that usually has, at best, no clue. I know teachers are bound to a curriculum and teaching policies that must drive many of them nuts. Much of which come from the Feds. Therein lies much of the problem. Anytime government gets involved with something that they shouldn't it goes badly.

Critical thinking? Judgement? Our Constitution? Let alone the Declaration of Independence. Or history. How to live a life, pay your bills, fill out your taxes. Honor? None of these things are taught and haven't been for many years. And lets not even get into the drugging of our kids.

Actually I truly admire good teachers, of which there are many. The vast majority. How they can function and do a their best under such conditions is very admirable. Nonetheless, I stand by my advice to the OP: Do it. The products our school system is turning out in general is bad. Very bad. It's where most of our progressives come from/are manufactured.


Cat

Can you teach calculus, chemistry II, physics, four years of another language? Can you provide a sports education and a musical instrument? Can you code and teach debate and speech?

If so then you might be qualified to home school. But if not then these are subjects taught in a good public or private school that your children will not get.
I am not trying to denigrate homeschooling, but these are what my kids learned in good schools. If your local public school doesn't teach that, then you need to get them into a place (private, tutored, or home) that does.

[pooty]

But if we get into trash talking someone’s perfectly legit livelihood which they spent years getting educated for and certified in and have further dedicated years of their professional lives to the education of other people’s offspring, all the while being told how much they suck and how to do their jobs better by people with limited to no experience in the field,
.

Well I don't know about the rest of the country, I attended public school in one the wealthier counties in the US and let me tell you, a lot of teachers there were dumbasses. Most of them were the typical government employee looking for an undemanding job that's hard to get fired from while putting in minimal work in teaching the young. This didn't apply to any of the math, physics, compsci or chemistry teachers who were all highly motivated.

I remember the US government teacher going over the bill of rights:

"1st Amendment, freedom of speech and assembly.
2nd... theres that.
3rd, no quartering of soldiers in homes"

Oh yeah and during history, or social studies, we had to write reports on recent news articles. I would do mine from "The Onion" and got A's until one of my classmates dimed me out. Stuff like this: https://www.theonion.com/iraq-declar...law-1819567999 The teacher never even read them!

So if you could homeschool your kid for the other subjects while letting them go to school for science and sports, that'd probably be ideal, since you're paying for it either way.

[Catshooter]

Gentlemen, I'm not interested in arguing about this. My intention was to encourage the OP in homeschooling and to point out that I wasn't trying to attack individual teachers. That's all.


Cat

[Joe in PNG]

Teachers are like any other general section of the population- there's a competence bell curve.

You have the very few who are actually extraordinarily good at their jobs.
You have a bit more who are pretty good.
You have a ton who are average, nothing special.
You have a bit who are low average, just babysitters that assign homework.
You have the very few who are actually extraordinarily bad at their jobs.

This shifts depending on the school, the parents at the school, and so on. I went to the same public high school as the children of various prominent doctors, lawyers, judges, and a member of the school board. If you found yourself in the same classroom as these kids, you got a pretty good education. For the most part- we had an utter dingbat teach American History, and wow. Learned absolutely nothing that year.

A kid's learning style is also important. Some learn well in a classroom/ lecture setting. Others do better with self study (Richard Feynman for instance).

[AKDoug]

Can you teach calculus, chemistry II, physics, four years of another language? Can you provide a sports education and a musical instrument? Can you code and teach debate and speech?

If so then you might be qualified to home school. But if not then these are subjects taught in a good public or private school that your children will not get.
I am not trying to denigrate homeschooling, but these are what my kids learned in good schools. If your local public school doesn't teach that, then you need to get them into a place (private, tutored, or home) that does.

No option where I live to private school my kids. I possessed a far greater understanding of mathematics than my son's third grade teacher did. She was actually hired as a P.E. teacher, but certified as a grade school teacher. She sucked at it and is still ruining students to this day. She's been impossible to get rid of.

The harsh reality is that in the majority of public schools, teachers teaching the classes you mentioned are barely qualified to do so. It's not the teachers fault, it's the fault of systems that don't attract qualified instructors of these high level classes so administrators use the warm bodies they have available to them. It is also the fault of administrators and unions that don't have a metric of evaluating teachers and getting rid of them if they are substandard.

My daughter in-law, bless her heart, is a certified K through 8th grade teacher. She is barely competent at an Algebra 1 level and my wife will run circles around her in grammar and writing. It's not her fault, but the fault of the university system that blessed her with her degree. She is really strong at controlling a classroom and has a nice aptitude at encouraging learning, which puts her in an ideal position to teach kindergarten and 1st grade. Yet, she still could take a job teaching every subject to middle school children.

The system is broken in many localities. There is no denying that.