Re: The option of home schooling


"tiny dancer" <tinydancer357@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Y7gck.19002$LL4.14575@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Since we've had discussions on this topic in the past, I thought this
article might be interesting to some.
The option of home schooling

By CAROLYN CASEY
Rocky Mount Telegram

Posted: Today at 10:18 a.m.
Updated: Today at 11:34 a.m.

Rocky Mount, N.C. - Like any typical weekday afternoon Kay Bindrim
gathered three of her children around the kitchen table. As the center of
the household, the eight-seat table used for family meals and down time
also serves as a classroom.

While helping her 5-year-old write the letter "M," Bindrim kept an ear on
her daughter using the laptop for a math session on the other side of the
table. An hour later, Bindrim was at the table teaching her two oldest
daughters grammar lessons while they sat beside her.

The Rocky Mount Telegram reported that Kay and Tommy Bindrim chose home
schooling for their children for a long list of reasons, including more
family time and flexibility. Reasons that have more and more parents
picking the option to home school.

While still a relatively low number of families in North Carolina home
school (4 percent) compared to enrolling in public school (90 percent) or
private school (6 percent), the amount of parents picking the
nontraditional path is increasing. The Christian Homeschool Association of
Rocky Mount, the largest local support group, has more than doubled in
size in the last three to four years to 140 families.

Home-schooled student statistics for the 2007-08 school year will be
released Aug. 1 and the numbers are expected to rise. The N.C. Division of
Non-Public Education does not track why more people are home schooling,
but said odds are it has to do with the growth of the state as a whole.

"The population is rising throughout the state, so I think it's a general
expectation it will go up," said Jill Lucas, public information officer
for the N.C. Department of Administration.

Families said the success rate with home schooling has attracted more
families over the years.

"I believe that people are seeing home schooling as a viable educational
alternative," said Kay Bindrim, who serves with her husband as president
of CHARM. "There's a lot of statistics and results that prove that it
works, and I think people are seeing that."

Gayle Fatheree, who home schools her three sons, said more people are
realizing parents who home school don't need education degrees to graduate
well-rounded and educated children.

"I think people are frustrated on a number of different levels with the
schools I'm not saying their frustration is founded necessarily," Fatheree
said. "They're seeing successfully home-schooled kids. They're seeing that
it can be done."

Melissa Hartsell opted not to send her three children, the oldest of whom
will be a senior, to public or private school in order to pick curriculum
she thinks best suits them.

"We can teach them according to their learning styles," Hartsell said.

She is not alone in her decision. Curriculum and one-on-one interaction
have become main incentives for parents educating their children at home.

Designing a curriculum allows children more input, Tommy Bindrim said. If
there's a subject a child is interested in, more time can be devoted to
exploring that topic.

The older Bindrim children Anna Joy, 13, and Sarah Grace, 11, play
instruments during their daily subject rotation. Thomas, 5, spends more
time on writing and reading his weaker subjects than on math. That's
something his parents said might not be monitored without their daily
assessment.

A study released a decade ago by the National Home Education Research
Institute found home-schooled children performed 30 percent higher than
their public school peers across all subjects and there's rarely a gender
or race gap when it comes to home-schooled students.

Statistics that back up the claims that home schooling is working,
multiple parents said.

"You teach to their strengths and work on their weaknesses," Fatheree said
about the constant assessment of her children's education.

Home schooling has allowed learning to be a constant conversation in the
Fatheree household because both the parents and the children are involved
in the education process.

Education shouldn't happen for six hours a day with three hours of
homework at night, she said. The average family juggles school, work,
after-school activities and homework.

"There's not a lot of time to grow and be a family," she said.

Home schooling also means a more flexible schedule.

The Fatherees will start their school year in about a month in order to
finish the first nine weeks in time to hit the beach when it's still warm
in September but once the crowds have subsided. Two weeks worth of
vacation will get them back on track to finish the school year's mid-way
point and take a month off for Christmas.

The Bindrim children just finished the second week of their school year,
which runs from June to March so the family can enjoy its favorite season,
spring.

Parents that home school find the method to be a more family centered and
individually focused education. But by and large, parents said, when
talking to non-home-schoolers the topic comes back to whether or not
children are learning the proper social skills.

"It's not an issue because there are so many things to do," Kay Bindrim
said. "More of the issue is what are we not going to participate in."

While children spend most days learning along side their siblings, one of
the main functions of CHARM is to link home-schoolers through
extracurricular activities. More than 26 CHARM committees coordinate
everything from spelling bees to a yearbook and from Bible study to
writing co-ops.

"They have the opportunity to interact with a large group of ages," Tommy
Bindrim said. "It's not that they're in a classroom with peers per se."

Fatheree's feelings lean the same way. School is the only place in society
where people are segregated by age. That idea, Fatheree said, is not
designed for people to learn and grow together as a community.

Her decision to home school also came after spending a year teaching and
enrolling her children in public school, where she was floored by the
"worldly views" of her third-graders.

"(Socialization is) the so-called biggest argument against home
schooling," Fatheree said. "To me its one of the strongest reasons to home
school.

"I want my children learning their social graces from me and not their
peers."



http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/3159135/

Thx for this article. What I think is the biggest problem with home
schooling is that it allows children at risk to fall thru the cracks in
terms of general welfare. We read time and again on this ng of abusive
and/or neglectful parents who claim to home school their kids, but of course
do nothing of the sort. Public schools, in their capacity of public
babysitting, do seem to spot abused children sometimes, and facilitate
intervention. As more and more kids aren't in public school, the ones
needing help will be invisible to a large extent. That's a societal ill
rather than a schooling issue. Home schooling by good parents is a very good
thing, IMHO, as is illustrated by the stats. Interesting too is the
"Christian" affiliation of the phenomena. I don't know that it's my cup of
tea, and I find it off-putting. That's just my bias. It's no different, I
suppose, from so many private schools in Australia, for example, which are
known to be either Catholic or Prebyterian or Jewish, or I suppose Muslim.
Education and religion have been affiliated throughout history, despite
supposed separation of church and state in the U.S. It's often impossible to
separate "religion" from "culture." Anyway, whatever parents can do to
reverse the trend of gargantuan and unmanageable high schools in which the
young, ignorant and dangerous are allowed to cohese into powerful influences
which flourish so unhealthily in an environment which then traps all of our
children, it is a very good thing indeed. People who can manage to take back
responsibility for their children will go a long way toward making this
world a better place. Not that everyone can or should home school, but local
learning environments, cooperatives, that sort of thing, where everyone
knows what's going on with the children...

End of rant.

jc


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