Unsure About Homeschooling

[rainy_lilac at yahoo.com]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Ebony" <ebonyink at h...> wrote:
> BUT--others could barely read, write, or compute.  *That* is the 
dark 
> side of unschooling that no one talks about.  And then, parents 
send 
> these kids back to the Horrible Schools to fix their mistakes.  
I've 
> seen this.  I've worked with these poor kids.


I used to teach at an "alternative" high school in Vermont, a 
boarding school which prides itself on havign a great arts program 
and no football team. :-)  It was a wonderful place to work, and I 
loved the community. It was also exactly the kind of school a lot of 
parents who were previously homeschooling their kids approved of. 
Thus, I had many, many home schooled students.

Often these kids were very bright and creative, with many great 
qualities, but I felt that in almost every case they had big, big 
problems which I felt came right out of the homeschooling process. 
Big bald patches in their knowledge, little exposure to different 
ways of life or new ideas, poor social skills.

The big problem that I saw again and again (and had to labor hard to 
fix)was simply a lack of intellectual independence. They were 
accustomed to the constant attention and guidance of their often very 
anxious parents ("Let me show you how to do that Merlin! Here's how 
we hold the brush... And here's the paper...") and were helpless to 
work on their own and figure things out for themselves. 

I thought the parents meant well and had very strong convictions, but 
they effectively did TOO MUCH for their poor kids, and overwhelmed 
them with excessive direction. It took me forever to teach little 
Merlin how to look up a word in the dictionary without me keeping him 
company while he did it. It wasn't his fault-- that's just what his 
mother always did. She guided him through EVERYTHING.

One good thing about going to school is that it gives kids a chnace 
to get away from their parents and slowly learn how to function on 
their own.

My two bits....


Suzanne