Home Schooling (this deserves its own thread)

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The schools I went to had:
Elementary ESC/K to 6
Jr. High 7-9
High School 10-12

There were some middle schools around, they were 5-8 or 6-8. Not sure where those kids when for 9, as I'm not aware of any high schools that started under 10.

Here, the schools tend to be K-9 and 10-12. They still split up the grades as elementary K-6 and Jr. high 7-9 though, even though it's all one school.

There's no JK.
 
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In NB when I went to school it was: no kindergarten; elementary (1-6), junior high (7-9), and high school (10-12)

By the time my granddaughter was in school it was: primary (k-2), elementary (3-5), middle school (6-8), high school (9-12) . Often the primary and elementary were in the same school and were simply called 'elementary'. Sometimes middle school was also in the same building.
In rural areas the same school building might house K to Grade 12.
 
Here in London, we have public/elementary which are normally JK-8 then high school for 9-12.

When I was growing up in Kitchener, it was public/elementary K-6 (our board did not have JK at that time) then senior public for 7-8, then high for 9-13. They still have the same school levels but grade 13 has gone and JK has been added.
 
The majority of home-schooled children around here belong to fairly rigid Christian churches. It is quite easy to spot them around town as the girls always wear dresses and the boys dress more formally than the norm (no T shirts with funny slogans, for example) The parents fear the influence of secular folk, and those with different Christian viewpoints. They tend to share many social activities. When they take swimming lessons they do it with another home-schooled child at the same level. Some parents seem better equipped for teaching the curriculum (they use a US based Christian one) that leans heavily on 'read this and answer the multiple choice questions'. The children I have spoken with tend to look to their parent before saying anything and don't show much evidence of actual thinking. One child could quote from a book she read for 'school' but was totally bewildered when I asked her what she thought about the decisions made by one of the characters. Apparently that wasn't the type of question she was used to!

One family that home-schooled their children (who are now well in their 30's) live in a rural area. One child left home and moved in with other relatives after completing Grade 12. Another started working at seasonal jobs at age 20 after gaining a drivers licence. The other two still live, and are supported by, the parents. They do some of the farm chores and are housed and fed in exchange - clothing appears to be 'hand me downs'. I try not to think about what the future holds for them - the father is the only person who drives and they are quite a distance from any town of a size to have medical services.

I haven't heard of any of the home-school kids playing in sports like baseball or hockey, nor do they take dance lessons or gymnastics. On the other hand some of them are quite advanced musically.

Personally, I'd like to see the public school system offering better services for all the children attending them. Music and art should be happening, along with enrichment for brighter kids, and extra help for those who need it. Mainstreaming children with major physical and intellectual challenges needs to include extra help for the teachers. One told me that he had classes that included students performing at university level and students who were basically illiterate along with others who were non-verbal. He claimed that ALL the students were receiving a poorer education than they should be, despite the effort that he used to provide excellent opportunities for each student.
 
Back on topic for a minute. I do, in some regards, see the point of some home schooling. Little M is a math wiz and almost none of his teachers, including his Grade 9 math teacher, have done as good a job of teaching it to him and keeping him interested in it as his mother has. She could probably have him doing math at a university level by now if she had time to home school him. The problem is, what about other subjects. I could do English and History for sure, and science up to a certain level so I guess we would have the core curriculum fairly well covered but, still, that would mean both of us taking time away from work to teach him. Which seems like a waste to me since I'm paying for a public school system that is supposed to do that job.

Now, he certainly gets his values from us rather than from school but that's really more about life than formal education. Without a church (he won't go), home is the place he gets into the "big questions" and, to my mind, that is as it should be.
 
Mendalla wrote:
"... I guess we would have the core curriculum fairly well covered but, still, that would mean both of us taking time away from work to teach him.
Which seems like a waste to me since I'm paying for a public school system that is supposed to do that job."

Home schooling and public schooling doesn't have to be "either this one or that one."

It's not as if children only learn between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.

As a public school teacher, I can certainly tell you that there are problems and inefficiencies in the system. It's not perfect, and there will always
be areas that are lacking. Arts education (visual art, music, drama, dance) is the one getting short-shrifted and neglected right now. (In ON, anyway.) Business education is another neglected area of the curriculum right now.

So I encourage parents to supplement their child's education where they feel it is lacking. For arts, for example:
-listen to different music together at family dinner (Mozart, opera, folk music, various music from different cultures)
-watch a play or an opera together
-take your child to a concert, or Powwow, or play (and many amateur productions don't charge a lot for tickets)
-go to a museum or gallery together
-(there's always private lessons, but that tends to be cost-prohibitive for a lot of people.)

But definitely, home is the place where they will get into the "big questions."
 
I know many homeschoolers. None for religious reasons.
One family because the dad worked rotating shifts-this way allowed more time together-this family of 4 kept the kids home until junior high and then did high school. Youngest is now in high school. Oldest has graduated university and is employed. Next is still in university. Next is taking a gap year. They did many things with the home schooling group, and community activiteis.
Very thoughtful program-often children were enroolled in different school divisons to best suit them. The money they received was to be used for school related expenses-it was not payment for teaching. So money could be spent on swimming lessons, piano lessons etc.

Another family homeschooled 3 girls until high school. Mom actually ran a "science" class for homeschoolers as well. All 3 are well adjusted young women.
 
I home schooled my two youngest.

The school district got $3,000 for each child enrolled at a local school. To home school the district required you to register with them and to show evidence that you had a curriculum. I did this for the first few years. This meant that Saint John the Baptist School in my neighbourhood got an extra $6,000 per year for their overall budget. Home schooling parents don't see any of this although they can, theoretically, work with their local assigned school to allow their kids to attend field trips and borrow text books and the like. We weren't able to do this for the same reason that I had to take my kids out of the classroom. After the first couple of years the only reason that I registered my kids with the district at the yearly August meeting was because I knew the local school needed every penny it could get and this was something I could do to contribute to the community.

My kids were inveterate truants. By the time she was in grade one my daughter was running away from school on a constant basis. She would slip off the playground and take off through the streets and arrive outside our front door six blocks away. I used to simply walk her back to school again. Usually we would be on our way back before the school had even missed her. But I realised that since the teachers couldn't keep a constant eye on her, and since she was starting to figure out that coming home only meant getting taken back to school she was on the edge of running away but not coming home.

Her brother, in grade three observed her truancy and started to mimic it. He was visually impaired, legally blind and his teacher had put him in the back row of the class and forbidden him to leave his seat in direct violation of his Action Plan. She also had me on the defensive, calling me in for conferences at the school where she demanded that since she couldn't make him compliant and attentive in class that I should make him do so, somehow by putting pressure on him at home.

It was bad enough to have my six year old running through traffic but her brother couldn't even see the cars he was crossing in front of.

I don't feel that our homeschooling was a success. I was able to sustain it until the kids were almost old enough for High School but then they wouldn't do it anymore. Their transition back into the school system was unsuccessful. Neither has a high school diploma. How much of this is because of their own special needs and how much is because I was not a good disciplinarian I can't say. I did my best to get them involved in activities where they could learn social skills but they were pretty much invariably expelled from any activity I put them into because of the running away. I tried to work with a local home schooling group that was Christian based but they asked us to leave, partially because they felt that my kids were a bad influence on theirs but also partially because my husband said that when it came to the home schooling, I was the boss, and they felt that the husband should be head of the household under all circumstances.

I think one thing you need to keep in mind when discussing home schooling parents is the financial constraints that most parents are working under. Someone above seemed to imply that rural parents should move to the city to get the advantages of a larger school system and not have to homeschool. But I live in Saint John and our school district did not have the resources to handle my kids. The best they could offer was to put them in one classroom that had a single educational assistant to help out with the needs of thirty special needs kids each one of whom required a full time assistant. Moving to a city does not necessarily result in a whole lot more resources.

Many Christian homeschoolers have a single breadwinner, the husband, and they have to live where he has work, and they have cover all their academic expenses from the one salary. Putting the kids into a Christian Alternative School is likely to be way more than they can afford. Many of them make do on curriculums and materials that are passed on from one family to the next.

Both my husband and I had to work full time to support our family through the homeschooling years. He worked days. I worked from midnight to eight A.M. The logistics of homeschooling are subject to a lot of these difficulties. Yet over all I think it is often a much better choice than simply sending the kids to school because they provide day care and hoping that they don't flounder.
 
Nice account @Church Secretary. I'm not sure everyone who home schools goes in with both eyes open and hearing from experiences like yours will hopefully help others learn the ins and outs, both of home and public schooling.
 
Aquaintances lived about 20 miles out of town. There was no direct bus service, but they could drive the children about 8 of the miles to connect with the school bus, which would take them to the local school. They chose to home school, with the mom responsible for it, and doing the teaching. Up until now (children around 9 and 12) they have continued. And from any talks I had with her, so far it has been the most positive experience. The children did well, both at learning and doing assignments, as well as being successful with advancing each year. The family experienced the benefit of learning much out of the classroom observing nature and other experiences. They benefited from being able to take vacations throughout the year other than Christmas and spring break. They benefited from being able to start the school year and stop the school year according to their lives. A government approved curriculum was used. The children were involved in a variety of social groups and team sports. They plan on continuing as long as it works for their family and the children. Time will tell. For this family it was a very positive experience to date. To me the children are well adjusted, intelligent, and don't lack and social graces.

For myself, I don't think I could have home schooled my children. I spent many, many hours a day supplementing my one child's school work and advancement due to her disabilities to help her get through, and I don't think I could have done more than that.
 
This past week we took our Grandson on a trip with us. He is ten. I showed him a map and traced out our route for the first day. He kept the map with him in the back seat and occasionally asked questions like, "Have we passed Boistown yet?" or "what is the name of that river?" The next day I folded another map and showed him our continued route. When we changed time-zones and turned our watches back an hour we talked about time zones. On the beaches we talked about tides, and erosion, and looked for sea glass (polished by the waves and the sand), and drift wood. We struggled to make ourselves understood in French, and showed appreciation when people tried to communicate with us in English even when it was difficult for them. We pointed out different kinds of birds, and the ones diving for fish. And we saw two different species of whales. He read menus and picked some of his meals. And occasionally I asked him about math, trying to remember his four times table. 'What's 4 x 8?" or "8 x 4?"

Home schooling? No. This was summer vacation. But I think he probably learned more in these four days with us than in a couple of weeks at school.

Unfortunately, I don't think I could keep up the pace.
 
Seeler, your post above is an excellent example of of what I meant in my post about how we can supplement childrens' education all the time.

Learning isn't just a 9:00 am - 3:00 pm thing, where the child is either in a school building or a home school.
 
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