Nunquam writes:
An interesting statistic though: in spite of the parents' lack of teaching credentials, homeschoolers fair better on standardized tests than their public school counterparts do. I'm not exactly sure why.
Give me a break. Public schools in the US tend to do not as well compared to homeschooled kids is because public schools have to take in ALL kinds of kids, everything from geniuses to stupids to the downright retards.
I remember about 20 years ago there was a real public hype about how US students didn't do as well with test scores as their foreign counterparts. It puzzled me for a long time and then when I went to college the answer literally stared at me in the face. Foreign students only studied one subject and they get tested in just that subject while American students have to study everything from science to math to history to literature. The foreign students at my college told me they were surprised that they had to take all the electives like English and History even though they majored in science.
In other words, the test scores are biased. The samples aren't comparable at all.
I have a friend who immigrated to the states when he was about 12. He said that back then he couldn't speak a word of English but had to take these standardized tests. You know what he did? He filled in random bubbles. Of course his test scores brought down the overall average of the public schools.
quote:
Regarding the lack of socialization, I think that the children are learning to be closed-minded by not being surrounded by differing opinions and worldviews. An example can be found in that article you posted:
I've talked to homeschooled people before. While I cannot say this is so to all cases out there, I can say that all the cases I talked to showed a remarkable lack of interest in current events. They all seem to be clueless when it comes to terminologies like scientology and world cup. You should talk to them sometime. You will very quickly become frustrated of explaining to them even the most commonly known things out there. I know I was frustrated after a while.
Added by edit.
I vaguely remember someone telling me about a homeschool teacher on here who almost drove everyone to madness by her ignorance and lack of grammar skills. Anyone know who I'm talking about?
Edited by Taz, : No reason given.
Edited by Taz, : No reason given.