cleveland, ohio is a place that looks the same in black and white and color photographs; it is a city of sharp contrasts and shades of grey; a single city that was once two, forevermore divided along east and west; where the Sun doesnt shine at all for half the year, and yet is one of the sunniest places in the USA for the other half; the birthplace of Superman and home to many an average joe; a place of tremendous creativity... home of many artists, musicans, actors and inventors -- and an otherwise hard-knuckle, provincial midwestern city; a place where people are friendly, helpful and generous... just don't get on their bad side; a place of hope and despair, where the light of Jesus shines in many an otherwise dark heart....

Dads! Join the Alliance! Get your own HSB blog today!

• An Open Letter to HSLDA

• Our Angelfish Tank

• Signs & Seasons Animation

• fromcleveland wins the Rockin' Girl Award

• Baby Florence Doing Cute Stuff

• Common Cliche's of Homeschooling

• The Last Foxtrot Daily

• SERBIA - KOSOVO AND METOHIJA: PRECARIOUS SITUATION

• Cold Snap in Cleveland

• An Open Letter to Todd Wilson - From Cleveland

---

There was a question at Yahoo from someone who was questioning the homeschool movement.  I posted this as a comment.  His questions are interspersed throughout.  Sorry for not saving the link to the original page, but this standard stuff that we homeschoolers deal with all the time, and this is just my take on these common questions. 

You need to educate yourself about the homeschool movement and perhaps even get to know some homeschool families. Your comments are typical cliches of the sock-puppet caricature of homeschooling and we answer them all the time.

1. Teaching is a difficult skill that takes years to learn. Who's to say that the homeschool teacher (usually mom) knows what she's doing?

Perhaps classroom teaching is a skill, but classroom teaching does not occur in the homeschool. Mom does not lecture at a blackboard as in a class, she administers self-guided assignments and grades work with an answer key.

The goal of homeschooling is teach students to become autodidacts (i.e. self-learners.) The highly skilled teachers in the public schools fail miserably in this regard. My son is 13 and is taking Algebra 2 (an 11th grade subject). He will soon be in Calculus. Such stories are ubiquitous.

2. Isn't it vitally important in a child's development to learn how to socialize with other children? I believe that alot of kids who are home schooled are isolated by their parents, usualy for the reason that they don't want their kid exposed to certain ideas (ie evolution).

We are teaching our kids the Bible in the homeschool, thereby allaying the ACLU's concerns about such things being taught in the public schools. As for the old old socialization worry, I was told by my teachers in public school that "you're not here to socialize!" Our kids do schoolwork all day and spend most every evening visiting with friends. They are involved in scouts and are popular with other kids, including the school kids in our neighborhood. They are avoiding the "socialization" of my own public school years -- peer pressure for "sex and drugs and rock-n-roll."

Typical homeschool kids have a reputation for being polite and mature, good conversationalists with adults. They are kind and helpful with younger kids and do not see minor age differences as social boundaries as do school kids. It's the public school kids who are rude and who mumble and cannot maintain eye contact that are the social oddballs in my opinion.

3. Doesn't a school setting protect the child by having another set of eyes on them? How many times do you read that a teacher was the one who alerted authorities to abuse?

You are presupposing that homeschool kids are abused. You need to cite some statistics for this baseless allegation. We love our kids and are looking out for their best interests. If you find a random incident where homeschoolers are abused, I'd submit that such stories are less common than the stories of "teachers gone wild" that we read of every day in the news.

4. Isn't it important to know how a child is performing as compared to others?

Maybe so, in view of the paradigm of social darwinism of the schools. Since public education "teaches to the test," our homeschool kids are definitely not as well prepared for standardized testing. But in adult life, performance will be measured by success, and we're preparing our homeschool kids to succeed where their public-schooled contemporaries are failing. We know too many public school kids who can't find the USA on a world map, while homeschoolers are winning the geography bee.

ADDITIONAL
Of course, you would need someone qualified to do the teaching. (Some of you really don't give teachers nearly enough credit).

Oh yes, but of course! Your unqualified a priori assertion is simply a given, isn't it? My wife and I are both college graduates but that doesnt prove anything one way or other. The teaching profession and it's requirements have been artificially inflated over the years to justify higher salaries for teachers. Notwithstanding, there might be some skill required to manage a classroom of kids versus the one-on-one tutoring style of homeschooling. I have yet to hear one solid example from your side as to what skills and training teachers possess that are so lacking in homeschoolers.

As for giving teachers enough credit, I know many public school teachers and quite a number whose families homeschool. These people are surely dedicated and have hearts in the right place. But any public school teacher will acknowledge that the best students are from families where the parents are involved and hold the kids to a high standard. The teachers are always washing their hands of the kids whose parents don't care and are lagging behind. So if the parents are such a determinant of academic success, what small role do the teachers play anyway?

Years ago, before we homeschooled, there was this bumper sticker that said, "If you can read this, thank a teacher." I found this outrageous. My mom taught me to read before I even started school. Meanwhile, my public school was promoting experimental alternative alphabets that created more harm than good. I had some great, inspiring teachers back in school, to whom I'm still indebted, but I hardly owe them for my own hard work or my family's involvement.

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---