Category: Homeschool Page 2 of 5

Homeschool program uses “A Patriot’s History of the United States”

On Friday, May 29, 2015

We used A Patriot’s History of the United States as our principle text for the study of U.S. History during homeschool. We had not planned to do that, but needed something after we were sorely disappointed by our experience with Joy Hakim’s politically correct and simplistic A History of the US provided by the Sonlight program. This was the one glaring weakness in what we feel is a stellar homeschool offering. Hakim’s screeds were just a bridge too far in terms of both focus and dumbed down content. Hakim’s highest earned degree is a Masters degree. Her undergraduate degree was in Government and I could not find the area of her Masters degree so who knows whether she has any formal training in History.

Two profoundly more knowledgeable, professional historians wrote the New York Times #1 best selling A Patriot’s History of the United States. Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen are both college History professors with long lists of refereed journal articles in their curriculum vitae. The book was more readable, less agenda-driven and covered U.S. History more deeply and broadly than the Hakim books. I found an article on a talk given by Larry Schweikart about the book. The article featured a photograph of four homeschoolers who used his book as a text for their homeschool study of U.S. History and were impressed enough with the book they wanted to come hear the author speak. It is nice to know we are not the only homeschoolers that used this book. We have hope Sonlight will eventually see the light on this and make the switch, but it has been several years since we raised the issue.

Betty Blonde #332 – 10/23/2009

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It Was Worth It

By Dad

On Tuesday, May 19, 2015

In Education, Homeschool

This post was submitted to Sonlight (the homeschool curricula people) as part of their call for “It Was Worth It” stories. Homeschooling was absolutely worth it, essential even, so this fit us to a tee. If Sonlight accept my entry, I will post a link to it here.

Kelly and Christian NCSU graduation
Mothers are the primary educators in most homeschools in America today by a wide margin. That made our homeschool a little bit out of the norm. I, the father, performed the daily planning, one-on-one teaching, homework correcting, reading aloud, practicing of spelling and everything else that had to do with the academic elements of our family homeschool. Of course Mom did all the hard work–driving to lessons, practices and a million other events in addition to maintaining the household while I worked a day job. Our reality, though was that I am the only member of the family who had no misgivings at any time whatsoever about whether we should homeschool. I had plenty of misgivings about how well we were doing, but that we should homeschool our children was something I never questioned. The whole family is grateful for our decision to stick it out in our homeschooling.

Why and How We Homeschooled

We have two children about eighteen months apart in age. We homeschooled Kelly, our oldest in the first grade just because there was no regulatory reason to put her in school and we wanted to have that extra year with her in the house. It was a great experience. Kelly got way ahead academically. The problem was that we tried to followed a well-known book on Classical Education that called for the parents to cover material following a specific pattern that was excellent in terms of pedagogical methods and content but left daily planning and the finding of materials to the parent. We rapidly found the search for materials and creation of daily plans was sufficiently time consuming that it was hard to do justice to the teaching, too. We think we did well, but we were completely burned out by the end of that first year.

The next year we put Kelly into the local government school because we knew we could not maintain the frenetic pace required to teach the kids well with the methods we used in that first attempt at homeschooling. Our son Christian did not want to be left out, so we put him into kindergarten at the same school as Kelly. That actually did not go badly, but we changed school districts after a couple of years and found ourselves in a situation where neither the moral nor the academic standards of the school aligned with what we wanted for the kids. Worse, we saw their spirits start to harden. So we decided we would try homeschooling again. We knew we would have to find another way. We had the will to homeschool, but we knew we would burn out if we did all the planning, bit-by-bit purchasing and teaching the same way we did it previously.

We looked at a lot of programs, but found what we needed in the Sonlight Core homeschool programs. We were able to replace the bulk of the rewarding, but time consuming day to day planning and purchasing with about a two week summer activity. In one fell swoop, we could buy detailed daily lesson plans and ninety percent of the materials we needed to operate our school for the entire year. It is hard to sufficiently emphasize the importance of this to our homeschool. We loved homeschooling from the very beginning, but there is no way we could have returned to it had we not had these materials and lesson plans. We were now freed up to spend the bulk of our time with the kids, teaching.

Was It Worth It? — Time With the Kids

In looking back, the time we spent with our kids was the single greatest contributor to the success of our homeschool. Within weeks after we returned to the homeschool, the kids became more optimistic and their spirits softened. We read, drew, played, traveled, skied, shopped and did so many other things together that would never have been possible had we not homeschooled. We went to museums, plays, parks and made trips to visit family in Mexico during the school year that would never have been possible had we not homeschooled. Most of all we talked and talked and talked about virtually everything under the sun in a way that was natural and not forced due to lack of time. We do believe in that old adage that, when it comes to children, quality time is quantity time.

Was It Worth It? — Academics

We have no illusions that any of us are particularly gifted intellectually, but the one-on-one time that homeschooling allowed, provided us with a modicum of academic success. When we started, we wanted the kids to get an education at least as good as that provided by a reasonably good traditional school. It became evident fairly soon that there are some fairly amazing academic advantages to homeschool. We generally got started pretty early in the morning, so Kelly and Christian would watch the other neighborhood kids line up for the school bus while they were already doing their daily homeschool work. They would still be at it when the kids got off the school bus in the afternoon. They had more time to complete more material more deeply than the traditional school kids.

There is much that has been written about the ability of homeschools to both tailor the learning for each individual child and provide one-on-one tutoring whenever it is needed. Add to that the enthusiasm a parent uniquely has for the education of their own children and the advantage is multiplied. For our kids these advantages manifested themselves as high levels of performance on nationally normed standardized tests. The kids took the ACT every year as a matter of North Carolina homeschool law. They did well enough on the ACT that we were able to start Kelly in the local community college full time after the tenth grade. She already had over a year of college credit from CLEP tests she had taken previously. Christian did not want to be left at home alone and he did well enough on the ACT, that we were able to start him full time at the community college after the eighth grade.

People ask us whether the kids were ready for college at such a young age–Kelly, with her CLEP credits skipped three and a half years of high school and Christian skipped all of high school. We were a little worried they might not be able to handle the social environment at the community college or at North Carolina State University where they entered two years later as academic Juniors. Our fears were unfounded. The uniquely powerful socialization that occurs in an active and engaged homeschooling family allowed them to fit right in. Kelly graduated Magna Cum Laude at age 20 from NCSU with a Bachelors degree in Statistics. She is now in a fully funded Marketing PhD program at University of Washington. Christian graduated Summa Cum Laude from NCSU at age 18 with an honors degree in Applied Mathematics. He is now a Fellow of the Fulton School of Engineering studying for a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University with funded research from MIT Lincoln Labs.

Homeschool is all about training up a child in the way he should go and it was absolutely worth it.

Betty Blonde #325 – 10/14/2009

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Reflection on a changing scene

By Dad

On Saturday, May 2, 2015

In Family, Homeschool

View from our apartment window (Wilsonville)
It is a beautiful spring day in Oregon. This is the view from the desk in my apartment. It is only a parking lot and it is amazing how much we enjoy the trees, hill and comings and goings we see from our window. Interesting things are happening all around with no certain end. Not only with Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah in their current state of mind and body, but with work, our family in Mexico and with our kids off at college. It is nice to have a quiet place to sit and consider it all quietly. I think my reflective mood was influenced by the fact that my daily bible reading today was Romans 12.

Betty Blonde #312 – 09/27/2009

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Education in Finland: Homeschool is embraced, but government school is not so bad

By Dad

On Saturday, April 25, 2015

In Education, Homeschool

Finland (a Nordic country, but arguably not a Scandinavian one), does a pretty good job at education. I was reminded of that when I found this article that provides a wonderful description of the educational philosophy in Finland. The article explains the Finn’s belief that less is more and how that manifests itself in terms of educational excellence. The whole culture seems to be permeated with the idea that less is more and in some cases I am sure that is true. The article suggests that philosophy is applied to everything. Whether that is good or bad is a point of contention, sometimes more really is more and better such as in faith, grace, love and Texas. Nevertheless, I certainly believe the less is more philosophy really is better when it comes to education–especially when compared to how government and other traditional schools do it here in the United States.

The funny deal is that with far and away the best educational system in the Nordic countries, Finland embraces and facilitates homeschooling while the other countries have much worse educational systems coupled with backward and draconian, bordering on barbaric, homeschool laws. The Asian/Tiger Mom model gets great test results but it has been argued that it drains the creativity out of its students after ten or so years of rote memorization and formulaic learning while the minimalistic, homeschooling Finnish model does not.

In reading this, I like to think, maybe, my Finnish roots animated some of our educational decisions. At least that is going to be my story.

Betty Blonde #307 – 09/21/2009

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You should not just do the hard stuff when you are young

By Dad

On Sunday, March 29, 2015

In Homeschool, Work

I am grateful that, through no fault of my own, I was put into circumstances that required me to learn how to do hard stuff starting in my late twenties. I took an amazingly slacker approach to life starting at about age 18. It lead to a Marketing degree with a fairly lousy GPA and no good job opportunities. Fortunately, my parents helped me get back on the right track, not so much by providing money (although there was a little of that), but moral support. I went back to school and got an associate degree that led to some technical jobs and I was on my way up. I ended up with a Masters degree in Engineering and now have over thirty years experience in a great field. The whole thing was typified by something my father asked me when I told him I was two old to go back for a Masters degree at age 31.

I said, “I will be 33 years old when I finish my Masters degree.”

He said, “How old will you be if you don’t finish your Masters degree.”

I have thought about that quite a lot over the years. On some levels, I am not that old, but am moving out of middle age now and thinking about retirement in a few years. When I look back at my life, I feel the greatest fondness for the times when we signed up for hard stuff then followed through on it. The Masters degree was one example of that, but our best one (other than Christianity) has to be homeschool. It was a ten year effort and we took a path that was far from the easiest in terms of the available homeschooling methods. It also brought us some of our greatest joy.

Now that I am thinking about retirement, I hate the thought of not having something hard to do. I think the idea of retirement is a recent idea. Did anyone ever really retire in the Greek or Roman eras or in Medieval times. I think people must have slowed down a lot in their later years, but retirement seems like somewhat of a luxury. And it sounds boring and a waste, too. I need to consider what I am going to do after I quit my full-time job. Maybe I can consult for while. But then what do I do after that? I need to consider this more. I want to do something hard that is of service.

Maybe I will get hit by a truck and never have to make these kinds of decisions.

Betty Blonde #287 – 08/24/2009

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Reading aloud to kids as they get older

By Dad

On Wednesday, March 18, 2015

In Education, Family, Homeschool

Sarita at the Sonlight blog reported a surprising finding from a survey that shows kids like their parents to read aloud to them long after they are able to read pretty well for themselves. The report says:

Kids wish their parents had continued to read to them after they reached school age. Across all age groups, 83 percent of kids say they loved or “liked a lot” those times when parents read to them aloud at home. Only 24 percent of 6-to-8-year-olds and 17 percent of kids ages 9 to 11 say that someone reads aloud to them at home, and many seem to miss it. Four in ten children in that 6-to-11 age range say they wished their parents had continued reading aloud to them. Kristen Harmeling, a researcher at YouGov, a consulting firm that helped Scholastic to conduct the study said one clear message for parents from this survey is to “start early and stay at it.”

We really never gave a ton of thought to the fact that we continued to read aloud to the kids all the way up to when they went to college at age 14. We all (not just the kids–me, too) derived a ton of benefit from our read alouds. We enjoyed it, but it also gave us time to talk about what we read. That was especially important when it came to things like apologetics, politics, history, ethics, philosophy, origins and just anything that had to do with the logical, scholarly, moral and practical reasons for holding to a Christian world view. I also helped with things like manners and how to act in social situations (How to Win Friends and Influence People, etc.) Enjoyment was reason enough to keep reading aloud to the kids, but there were other, more important reasons for doing it. We wish we could say we did it for all those other reasons, but we mostly just did it because we liked it.

Betty Blonde #281 – 08/14/2009

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Facebook page: Oh, no! I forgot to socialize the kids!

By Dad

On Thursday, March 12, 2015

In Homeschool

I love this image from over on Sonlight’s Facebook page. The comments below the image are pretty typical. The reality is that this is a dead topic amongst people who homeschool or have inkling of understanding about the macro-picture of homeschooling and homeschoolers. The idea that the “Lord of the Flies” environment that generally exists in government schools and the vast bulk of other traditional schools is some how better for a child’s socialization than a nurturing environment where children regularly interact with a broad range of adults and other children in a setting managed by a loving parent is patently absurd. Homeschooling parents and rational people looking on get this.

I am getting less and less willing to even make the caveat that some people do a bad job. No one does that with the government schoolers and should no longer be necessary with the homeschoolers either. We all get that some kids fall through the cracks.

I really appreciated both the graphic and the comments on that Facebook post.

Betty Blonde #275 – 08/07/2009

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Thankful to have homeschooled in North Carolina

By Dad

On Monday, March 2, 2015

In Homeschool

Here is a great little interview article from the Daily Signal on the regulation of homeschool by the government. The interviewee is a professor at a University not too far from where we lived in North Carolina and a homeschooling mother of three. She has positive things to say about the way homeschool is regulated in NC and I have to say we agree with her take on the subject. Some states are not as forward thinking as North Carolina on the way homeschool is regulated, but some are even better. I really think she nailed the source of much of the problem with the government school machine in this question and answer:

Q: What do you think are the primary motivations of those who want more regulations?

A: Homeschooling challenges the public education bureaucracy in America that says children are better off with professional educators. The more it grows the more they believe it threatens public schools, education programs at colleges (which grant teaching certificates), thousands of bureaucrats, millions of paid teachers, and billions in state and federal dollars – especially when it is demonstrated how well homeschool students do academically, on a fraction of the yearly budget per student. THAT, in my opinion, is the real reason behind the ‘concerns’ of most non-homeschoolers on this issue. Public education is an industry in our country.

Betty Blonde #269 – 07/30/2009

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Losing faith in the “experts”

By Dad

On Tuesday, February 24, 2015

In Education, Homeschool

There were a couple of great articles in The American Interest on the continued growth of homeschooling. The first article talks about the many reasons to homeschool. The last paragraph of the first article on the many reasons to homeschool resonated with me:

We’ve noted before that homeschooling is on the rise as Americans lose trust in the experts that run the American school system. For religious people, that distrust stems from their belief that schools don’t respect their values. Silicon Valley entrepreneurial types think they can disrupt education and create better approaches on their own. According to this piece, African Americans increasingly distrust schools as well. It’s not just because of low expectations either—some families quoted in the piece think their kids don’t get as complete an education in African American history in public schools as they should. Distrust in experts, cultural pluralism, dissatisfaction with current institutions, DIY-ism: some of the biggest trends reshaping America are at play in the rise of homeschooling.

The second article on how the American people have lost faith in the “experts” as blue progressivism has taken control in much of institutional America is quite a good article, too.

Betty Blonde #267 – 07/28/2009

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Stunning blog post on math and teacher education

By Dad

On Monday, February 23, 2015

In Education, Homeschool

My buddy, Andrew sent me a link to an incredible (incredible bad, not incredible good) blog post on some events he witnessed in a teacher education class at McGill University in Canada. It turns out he experienced first hand a class where the professor gave a cogent explanation of how to calculate the average of a set of numbers and then watched while these college students try to do it themselves. Why they would even have to address such a topic is beyond me. I do not want to give away too much, but this is right in line with some things I have written on this topic in a previous post. I know there are some great teachers out there and I am very aware they are often saddled with untenable teaching situations. Nevertheless, if the worst students are the ones that enter the field of education and their pre-college preparation and the training they receive while they are at college is as abysmal as what is described in this post, I think everyone should find a way to get their kids away from the government education establishment.

Betty Blonde #265 – 07/24/2009

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Back in Oregon

By Dad

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015

In Homeschool

We have some mixed feelings about our return to Oregon. It is great to see old friend and there really is no other state in the union that is as beautiful. At the same time, it is hard not to despair about the draconian land use laws (we are thinking of buying a house), the state of education in the state (the homeschool students in our old ESD scored at around the 70th percentile while the government schoolers scored WAY lower–why do they let the ESD have ANYTHING to do with this), the taxes, the immoral nature of the drug, abortion and end of life laws in the state, the rain, etc. I went down to Oregon State University last week to work with some of their faculty on a project and it became VERY apparent that the level of education in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina was at a complete different and higher level. Still, I love my new job, I love my friends and family, and am looking forward to being here again for awhile.

Betty Blonde #258 – 07/15/2009

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Question: Why get a math(y) degree?

By Dad

On Sunday, February 1, 2015

In Homeschool

We received a great bunch of questions from a highly educated homeschool mother in Texas who seems to think a lot like we do. I think some of the questions are above my pay grade, but will do the best I can with them. I will start with the last question she sent us because it is on I get asked on a regular basis. I am not sure whether I have the right answer for everyone, but it worked for us.

Question: What is it about a math(y) degree that you think gives college grads an edge over other disciplines? I’m not questioning your statement; I am genuinely asking to learn the reasoning behind it. I had no career counseling and studied a liberal arts degree, and was then awarded a full scholarship and a fellowship for a PhD at Stanford, but ended up not using any of that in my real life. :-/ I am determined to do better by my children.

Response: Part of the reason, we wanted the kids to get a strong math base first was exactly what you articulated. We definitively are not a gifted musical family although both the kids now are competent with their chosen instruments. They certainly were not going to be able to make a living with their music. That being said, it was not even close to being the most important reason. A lot of it had to do with our circumstances and our personal educational goals.

I think the reason so many people go on to higher education these days is because the level of academic rigor at most traditional schools is so low. It is hard to get a decent job with the skills learned in high school so most people go on to at least community college, an apprenticeship or something of that nature. That seems true to the extent that a Bachelors degree has become the new high school diploma. We wanted more than that for the kids, so we wanted them to go on to at least to a Masters degree so they would have a better opportunity to get a good job. The Masters degree seems to have now become the new Bachelors degree in terms of differentiating people in the workplace.

Like your kids, we figured out pretty early on that they would finish high school early and we knew they would go on to graduate school, so we wanted to do the best we could to prepare them to get into decent programs at that level. They were never going to get a Juilliard MFA or entry into the Pasadena Art Center College of Design or Pratt Institute, so they needed a way to differentiate themselves from others competing to get into the graduate programs they wanted.

With Christian, it was easy. He is a math guy and I know that world. So he studied math with lots of engineering electives and was good to go. He studied math because that is what he wanted to do in the workplace.

It was harder with Kelly. She did not want to be an engineer, mathematician or scientist of any kind. She wanted to work in the liberal arts. At any rate, Kelly’s goal was to prepare herself to get into the best graduate program possible in an area like Journalism, Sociology, or Marketing. We talked to a lot of people about this. Virtually all of them said it was possible to get into such programs with a “same field” undergraduate degree, but end up spending the vast bulk of their first two years learning the math based tools (statistics, big data, programming) they need to work in the field.

We were told that if someone were to get a degree in statistics or math, concentrating on learning the technical tools to perform social science research and using all their electives to study their liberal arts field, they would be royalty in whatever liberal arts program they entered. We found that to be true in practice. Kelly got into a great program under one of the top professors of Marketing Strategy in the country at University of Washington specifically because she could hit the ground running on her research as opposed to waiting for two years while she learned the tools.

The funny deal is that we have found out anecdotally that this is true of the Biological sciences, Medicine, Chemistry and other fields. My opinion is that the level of complexity, the intellectual rigor and the focus required to perform well at the higher levels of math is greater than most fields (cavaet–I get that the creativity, crazy amount of work and intellectual intensity to perform in the arts is without par, partly because there are often no “right” answers and there is aesthetic involved. I envy those who can do that–I am not one of them). Kelly is doing well and loving her Marketing Strategy PhD.

The difficulty of her program is the shear volume of work she has to do. There is intellectual rigor, too, but nothat rigor is different than that of a math(y) program. It is interesting to me, though, that the questions she is asking in her research are as interesting and important as those Christian is studying in his work on Information Theory. That surprised me. In addition, the increased need for free creative thinking and the concept that there are many “right” answers as opposed to just one in Math is invigorating but difficult.

Betty Blonde #253 – 07/08/2009

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Upgrades to “Our Homeschool Story”

By Dad

On Monday, December 22, 2014

In Homeschool

You might have noticed yesterday I wrote another chapter in my Our Homeschool Story narrative. This morning, I cleaned up a few thing in the series and added a much better table of contents on the main page and some previous/next links at the beginning and end of each chapter so the story is easier to navigate. Of course, I did this because I am on the first day of Christmas vacation, but got up at my regular time of about 7:00 (when I am at home in Raleigh–it is much earlier when I am out west) because my non-vacation biological clock is still in operation. Everyone else in the house is still sawing logs, so it gave me some time to do some blog work. Hopefully I can use these mornings to do add a few chapters more chapters, too.

BleAx is also on my mind, but I think I will save that for when I am stuck in hotels.

Betty Blonde #224 – 05/26/2009

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Class Dismissed – A film about homeschool

By Dad

On Monday, October 27, 2014

In Education, Homeschool

I cannot believe I only ran into this now. There is what appears to be a good documentary film on homeschool now being shown in a few venues. The name of the documentary is Class Dismissed: A Film About Learning Outside of the Classroom. Here is one of the trailers:

Homeschool is not a monolithic thing

By Dad

On Tuesday, October 21, 2014

In Education, Homeschool

Yesterday, Matt Walsh reposted an article he had written on homeschool at The Blaze. He is very supportive of homeschool, but both the article and the usual acrimonious arguments following the article were pretty depressing. The arguments for and against both homeschool and government school followed the standard pattern. They included the socialization canard, arguments about homeschool versus government school academic performance, anecdotes about über homeschoolers who graduated from college years early and reclusive, uncivilized homeschool acquaintances incapable of functioning in society.

I have been in those kinds of discussions about homeschool. All homeschoolers have engaged in them. They always depress me. There are as many different kinds of homeschool styles as there are homeschool children. When someone argues about the relative merits of homeschool over other methods of schooling, I immediately want to know what kind of homeschool they have in mind when they are arguing. Our homeschool was very academically oriented with a focus on math, science and history. If the measure of a homeschool is academic performance in those areas, than we would probably be judged as having done pretty well.

Some homeschools are more oriented toward the arts or vocational training or any number of other foci. If judged with respect to those areas, we probably would not fare so well. We worked hard at music, art, literature and athletics. I would like to think we did an adequate job in those areas–probably pretty average. We did not work so hard on auto repair, welding, plumbing, construction and sewing. I know some homeschool kids who learned how to do those things extremely well and are gainfully employed as tradesmen who contribute greatly to society, but our kids were probably below average in those areas.

I also know personally of failed homeschools. The kids truly are unsocialized messes. Of course, we all know people in all of the categories I have described from government school, especially the unsocialized messes. I have decided I no longer want to engage in arguments about the kinds of homeschools about which I know very little. I know there are plenty of studies out there that purport to measure how well homeschools do in the areas of socialization and academics. I have bought into those studies in the past, but when I consider what I know about homeschool, I realize that I really only have in-depth knowledge about what we did in our homeschool. I know that worked for us way better than the government schools our kids attended for a couple of years, but that is all I know. I do not know whether what we did would work for anyone else.

On the other hand, I have seen the research that shows the government schools, as a whole, are an abysmal failure. There are very good alternatives, but there is no universal right answer on what is best for any given child. I do believe the one best suited to choose between the available good alternatives is almost always a caring parent. It should never be the government or a government worker who makes the decision except in extreme cases of abuse. Certainly the “professional educator” class (government school teachers and administrators) should not be involved in any of these kinds of decisions. As a whole, they seem to know less than anyone what is in the best educational interest of most children. There might be some cases where government school is best, but the parent should get to decide and I am not willing to second guess them.

Betty Blonde #190 – 04/08/2009

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Luke’s homeschool blog post aggregation site

By Dad

On Thursday, August 7, 2014

In Blogging, Education, Homeschool

As long as I am writing about blog posts I had better mention my favorite aggregation site for stuff that has to do with homeschooling. I do not know whether it is part of his job or not, but for whatever reason, Luke from over at Sonlight Blog has one of the best RSS aggregation sites going. The articles that appear there are completely different from any of the other article aggregations I regularly follow–most of the others tend to all link to the same set of articles on any given day. There are two blog posts I found there that are on my list for possible posts here. I think he must handpick the stuff and he does not necessarily put stuff up there with which he agrees, but what is interesting. I highly recommend it.

Update: I should not have forgotten to say that the Sonlight Blog itself is a great place to visit every day. I do not always agree with them, but I agree a lot of the time and it is always interesting.

Betty Blonde #146 – 02/05/2009

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Matt Walsh: Homeschool socialization

By Dad

On Thursday, May 1, 2014

In Homeschool

Day 981 of 1000

Matt Walsh takes on the government schools and the “socialization” that takes place there. He nails it. You can read it all on his blog here.

‘Socialization’ — in the public school context — means that your child will simply absorb behavioral cues from her peers. She learns to socialize by aping her friends, who are themselves only copying other girls. She learns to repress the parts of her that don’t fit in, and put on an exterior designed to help her fade into the collective. I’m not theorizing here, this IS the social process in public school.

…

There is nothing positive about any of this. Nobody is better for it. Nobody benefits. The psychological damage can be lasting, maybe even permanent. Again, this is not my theory. This is just the way it works.

Betty Blonde #106 – 12/11/2008

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Complaints about homeschooling

By Dad

On Sunday, March 16, 2014

In Education, Homeschool

Day 936 of 1000

We took two shots at homeschooling. We homeschooled Kelly’s first grade year between a year of traditional (Christian) kindergarten and second grade. We put both Kelly and Christian into government school for three years starting with Kelly’s second grade year and Christian’s kindergarten year. When we realized that traditional schools (government and private) were almost universally bad in terms of both education and socialization, we pulled them out to homeschool them again when Christian entered the third grade and Kelly the fifth. We are still grateful for the abysmal quality of the Albany, Oregon public schools for being abysmal enough that we knew we had to do something. I have written about this at length in this blog and have piles of handwritten notes that describe our pain and frustration during these difficult transitions.

We got hammered pretty hard for that decision by family, friends (so called), school administrators, acquaintances, and even a few strangers in the street. I used to think some of them were well meaning in their criticism, but am less inclined to think the vast bulk of the criticism was benevolent in any way now that a few years have passed. We have well adjusted, humble, kind kids who both get along quite well with their college peers and excel academically. There is no way you could know whether the socialization part of that last statement is true without spending a little time with them, but the academic part is fairly well established.

Christian is on schedule to graduate Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Applied Mathematics from a nationally recognized program. Many of you know that he skipped highschool to enter college after the eighth grade. He has received two funded PhD offers to tier one research Universities. He plans to accept the one that offered a prestigious (double) Dean’s Fellowship (not RA/not TA–Fellowship) along with sponsorship by a National Research Lab affiliated with MIT. He will work for the professor who wrote the principle textbook used in his field of research.

Kelly is on schedule to graduate Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Statistics at arguably one of the top 5 Statistics programs in the country. Anyone who has read this blog knows she skipped two years of highschool to enter college after the tenth grade as a Senior. The only reason she stayed two years instead of just one is because she had to finish some sequences that took two years. She, too, received two funded PhD offers from national research universities and has chosen to study under a well-known, highly published professor who succeeded in the military and succeeded (wildly) as an entrepreneur before he returned to academia.

The thing that is interesting is that we have started getting complaints and unsolicited advise about the kids chosen path again. We hear some of the following:

Why are you going there? That is a horrible place to live.
Why would anyone want to get a PhD? It is a waste of time.
People who get PhD’s are all arrogant.
Why would you get a degree in Business?
Why would you get a degree in Electrical Engineering?
Why don’t you go have some fun (as if doing something like this is not fun and rewarding)?

I guess it is a good thing we have been through this once or twice before.

Update: On the plane from Raleigh to Phoenix yesterday, while explaining how his brilliant 18 year old daughter had just gotten accepted to a liberal arts program at UNC Chapel Hill, told me it was bad for Kelly and Christian to have missed out on so much important socialization. His daughter went to the Green Hope High government school in Cary. Here is a story on a teacher from Green Hope High who was indicted for child sex crimes. Here is a story on the drug culture at Green Hope.

Betty Blonde #86 – 11/13/2008

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Answers to homeschool questions Part 3 – An overview of some of our homeschool curricula

By Dad

On Monday, January 20, 2014

In Education, Homeschool

Day 881 of 1000

Answers to Homeschool Questions Series Index

A blog friend, Kendra, has asked a series of questions about how we did our homeschooling with a particular interest in how to use CLEP testing and other tools to skip high school, or at least parts of it. This is the third in the series of questions.

(1) I have the 7th grader (great reader) and 6th grader (hole digger) I would like to have my 7th grader do Algebra in 8th grade. If that’s successful, what would be your suggested schedule for the upper grades? By that I mean, Algebra II, Geometry, etc. What order and what curriculums? We are currently using Saxon math.

One of the things on which we had agreement with our children was that they could do whatever they wanted in graduate school, but because they were still essentially of high school age during at least the first two years of college, they needed to study something hard. That meant there would be a very strong focus on mathematics. As I have mentioned in other places in the blog, Kelly is in the last semester of a degree in Statistics and Christian is in the last semester of a degree in Applied Mathematics. So, with three months left, Kelly’s grades are currently at the level to graduate Magna Cum Laude while Christian is on schedule to graduate Summa Cum Laude with an honors degree. I only said that to say that the way we did Mathematics in our homeschool appear to have been good preparation for Mathematics intensive degrees. I should note that we got great prices at Sonlight, so we bought these programs there. So here is what we did:

Singapore Math – We started with Saxon Math in elementary school. It worked well for us, but it did not create a lot of excitement with the kids, so I did research over the summer and settled on Singapore Math. We absolutely loved it. It seemed to allow the kids to learn the material faster at the same time it was more interesting to them. We did about a year and a half worth of Singapore Math each year and that did not seem to be an onerous work load for the kids. They still loved the program when we finished it at the end of the (Singapore Math) sixth grade year.

Teaching Textbooks – We tried to use the Singapore Math offering when Kelly finished up the last of the Sixth Grade books. After about a month, we gave up and looked for something else, because it was just not working. I did an investigation, found several options that looked OK and decided to take a chance on what was not a completely mature program at the time, Teaching Textbooks. It was nothing short of awesome. The kids both did Pre-Algebra, Geometry, Algebra I, Algebra II with Teaching Textbooks. We purchased the Pre-Calculus program for Kelly when she got to it, but it was very immature at the time. I have heard that it has been dramatically improved and we probably would not have changed if that program had been better at the time.

Thinkwell Math – When we knew we needed to switch from Teaching Textbooks for Pre-Calculus, I went through another investigation phase and received very good reports about Thinkwell Math. It is an online course that is absolutely excellent. Kelly went through their entire Pre-Calculus program in conjunction with the REA Pre-Calculus CLEP preparation book. She easily passed the Pre-Calculus. Christian got through almost exactly half of that course before he had to take the Community College Mathemetics placement test. That half year was enough to place him into Calculus I where he did well.

(2) What is your opinion on an 8th grader attempting biology? We are using Apologia science. We are working through their prescribed 7th grade book now. They offer an 8th grade science which looks like an Earth science type subject. I considered having my 7th grader begin the 8th grade book over summer and try to complete 8th and biology by the end of his 8th grade summer. I do realize that biology would be a grade for a HS transcript.

Like you, we used Apologia starting with Physical Science and going on to Biology both of which appeared on both Kelly’s and Christian’s high school transcripts. That was the last of their homeschool science. Kelly then spent six months going through the REA Biology CLEP preparation book and was able to pass that test with a fairly high score. Neither Christian nor Kelly had any problem with Biology in college. That being said, Christian had to do some pretty serious preparation to be able to handle Chemistry in college, but his strong Mathematics background made Physics pretty straightforward for him. Kelly did not take Chemistry or Physics in college.

(3) History – I like the history we have picked (Mystery of History) in the fact that it’s fun to read. I feel it will not prepare us adequately. What history program would you recommend? I would like something better than just a date-and-name curriculum but want the curriculum that will get the job done.

History was a little bit of a problem for us. Kelly brute forced her way through the REA CLEP preparation books to pass four CLEP history tests (Western Civilization 1 & 2 and US History 1 & 2). Christian took Western Civilization 1 and 2 at the community college and did well in them based on the preparation he got in homeschool. We think the Sonlight programs served our children very, very well in this regard with one exception. We think Sonlight’s high school US History program based on the Joy Hakim books is abysmal. We put a US History program together for ourselves that we absolutely loved. I discuss what we did here, here, here, here and here. All this being said, unless your kids are memorization machines, the CLEP History exams can be pretty rough. Kelly is a pretty gifted/disciplined memorizer, but passing all those tests was a chore and Christian really enjoyed his History at the Community College because he got a great teacher.

(4) My goal would be to try the CLEP tests with English, beginning histories, and some maths. I believe I need to start working towards that goal now.

This does not seem like a bad goal with the cavaet about the History. The REA CLEP preparation books were our friends in passing the tests.

(5) I remember you saying that a passed CLEP test gives college credit as opposed to a grade. How does that affect their college GPA? Do you know if there is an age requirement for taking the CLEPs?

Big State U (in our case North Carolina State University, but I know this to be true about the vast bulk of Univerisities in the country) gives credit but not grades for passed CLEP tests and Community College classes. I know when I started college at Big State U (Oregon State University), I was academically, but not mentally nor social prepared for college, so my grades suffered greatly the first two semesters. I spent my entire Bachelor’s degree trying to make up for those semesters. Our kids did better than me during their first too semesters, but have done dramatically better since then. The upshot is that all one has to do to get the credits for the CLEP test is to get the minimum score accepted by the University. All one has to do to earn credits for the Community College is to get high enough overall grades to get accepted at the University of choice. Anything that is a C or above gets converted to a PASS. The kids get a clean slate GPA-wise when they enter Big State U. That was a very good thing for us.

(6) Our local junior college allows students who are duel enrolled to attend tuition free – a big savings that would be a huge help. HOWEVER – if my boy(s) could pass a CLEP test I don’t see the point in them spending the time to take a class just to utilize “tuition free.”

This is a very good point. If we had this to do over we would have studied for only those CLEP tests the kids did not enjoy, so they did not have to deal with it any more. Because of our errors, we got Kelly into Community College (with a boatload of credits) after her Sophomore year of high school. We would have put her in after her eight grade year with that do-over.

I hope that helps! Loved the questions!

Betty Blonde #47 – 09/19/2008

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Homeschool CLEP answers to some questions Part 2

By Dad

On Monday, January 6, 2014

In Homeschool

Day 868 of 1000
Betty Blonde #34 – 09/02/2008

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Hello Kendra, Thanks again for the second set of great questions. Again, here is my best shot at the answers below.

(1) In answer to my first question you reply: In the case of the History and Biology, Kelly had already been through fairly rigorous, full year programs that covered the material at the Freshman or Sophomore year in high school. Was this one particular brand of curriculum or you the parent going beyond what the curriculum offered? I’ve read the posts describing your happiness with Sonlight. Is Sonlight that rigorous or did you augment the curriculum?

The answer to these questions differ, so I give you a three part answer with what happened with Kelly for Biology, U.S. History, and Western History. I should make a very special side note that the ability to pass these tests had as much to do with memorization skills as it did the understanding of the material.

Biology — As part of the Sonlight program we used Apologia Biology. It took her an entire school year to complete that according to the Sonlight schedule. She almost certainly would have failed if she had only taken the CLEP exam without further preparation. Still, it was a fine introduction to Biology and completely adequate to prepare her to understand the material in the REA CLEP Biology preparation book. This one was a memorization meat grinder.
History (Western Civilization 1 and 2) — The homeschool curriculum Kelly used to prepare to engage with the REA prep books for these two tests. this was, again, a bit of a memorization grind, but not impossible.
History (U.S. History 1 and 2) We loved Sonlight’s programs, but felt their worst program by far was their U.S. History program. I have written about that in some detail. Kelly followed the program, but then we actually re-did U.S. History with something we put together ourselves that we felt was absolutely stellar in preparing her to engage with the REA prep books. One more time, there was a lot of memorization involved.

(2) In Texas, there are no regulations requiring me to test my children. I do plan to have them take the SAT and ACT. Are there other tests you suggest? And do you know if there is an age limit for these tests? Provided a student earns a score high enough for college enrollment, is the college required to allow that student to enroll regardless of their age?

We have very good friends in McKinney, Texas who followed a very similar program as our own with the exception that they took no CLEP tests. During the last two years of what would have been their high school, they enrolled in a community college that was extremely supportive of homeschool students. Unlike us, they did what might be considered a dual-enrollment program. They finished “high school” with two years of college credit. They have just finished their first semester at UT Dallas in Engineering and Pre-medicine. Both of them main 4.0 GPA’s and received quite good scholarships. I think the answer to this test depends both on the community college where you want to enroll them and whether you enroll them full time or under a special program. I think the kids need the ACT or SAT if they want to enroll full time, but probably not if they are in one of the special programs that cater to homeschoolers and public/private school dual enrollment kids. Normally, when kids enter a community college, they are tested for placement into Math and/or English, but that depends on the community college.

I know our friends were tied into the homeschool community in their area and used a homeschool consultant who was a tremendous help. I do not know whether or not they paid the consultant anything, but if they did, I doubt if it was very much. The consultant knew a lot about college requirements at the community and four year college level, how to best get scholarships in these kinds of situations, and stuff particular to Texas. I guess there are some pitfalls in with respect to scholarships in Texas if you do not do things in the right order–there certainly are in North Carolina.

(3) I viewed the Duke TIP website earlier. I do not see how you register your child for this. Will you give advice on that?

The Duke TIP test is either the ACT or the SAT and it is given to qualifying seventh graders in the Southern states including Texas. If you do not have a student in the seventh grade, I do not think I would bother. Here is the link to the sign-up page. Actually, the ONLY thing the Duke TIP thing did for us was get the kids into taking the test every year. Because Christian qualified for the test, we had both the kids take it together and it helped us realize they were ready for college. I think it was a big confidence builder in helping us to decide to go ahead and put them in college.

(4) Question 4 above regarding high school transcripts – you write you created a transcript for Christian after his 8th grade year. I’m thinking of a traditional high school transcript including Geometry, Algebra II, etc. Had he already taken those courses by 8th grade?

Christian had taken math about half way through Precalculus, Biology, Chemistry, and all the stuff that would be required for a high school transcript. When I made up the transcripts, I used material he learned in 7th and 8th grade and even earlier as high school credit. Fortunately, we kept very detailed records of all of our homeschool programs and their results, so this was fairly easy. There are lots of examples of how to do this online. The kids wrote footnoted research papers from the time Christian was in the third grade and Kelly was in fifth grade. I have links to them here. They transcripts were very well received by the community college. I think the kids test scores gave them credibility. I adjusted the transcripts some when they went to NCSU. They were well received there, too.

(5) I’ve read your children had good experiences sharing a college class and meeting new people. Did they ever experience negative attitudes from college teachers or other students?

Christian is fairly quiet and Kelly is very outgoing. The say they were pretty scared when they started community college, but were used to talking to adults when they got there, even though a lot of the people at community college were pretty immature. Almost without exception, the instructors and students treated them very well. They made friends with a wide range of different people from the community college and stay in touch with about seven or eight of them even now that they have been out for over a year and a half. Some of the stand-outs include an Iraq war vet who was 28 years old when he met them, a couple of kids from Venezuela, a lot of people starting at the community college to save money or to start over, etc. They also stay in touch with their Math instructor who was a mentor to them. One thing that worked in their favor is that when the students and teachers found out that they were humble and worked hard, they kind of got adopted. All in all, the vast majority of the people at the school, teachers, students, and administrators, were very, very supportive of the kids. It was a little harder when they got to NCSU because they entered there as Juniors, but still were required to go to Freshman orientation. The incoming Freshmen we dramatically less mature than the kids, mostly engineering, math, and science majors, who were generally paying for their own education at the community college. The administration and professors at NCSU have been very good to our kids and they have prospered socially as well as academically.

(6) Do you have any experience with any nationally recognized homeschool honor society or homeschool co-op?

We did not participate in homeschool co-ops or honor societies. It did not appear to hurt us at all. If we had to do it over, we would find some ways to do more structured volunteer work that would help the kids college applications, but that is about the only thing we might have done differently. We participated extensively in organized sports and music–swimming, gymnastics, soccer, piano, guitar, etc. Our friends in Texas did it a little differently. They participated in organized volunteer activities, job following, peer court (acting as judges and lawyers in a formal court setting), Youth Symphony, and lots of stuff like that. Things like Red Cross certifications (CPR, Life guarding, etc.) were also good. We participated extensively in church activities. I think because of their increased participation in organized community activities they were able to get better scholarships than our kids.

(7) In your experience, did either college want to know if your children did any community service? My area has a few homeschool co-ops. The main purpose seems to be to have someone else teach your children a subject you are not comfortable teaching as well as providing your child a place to earn some community hours. The flip side is you must pay dues and attend meetings to each one of these organizations – extra time and money.

Documented community service would be quite a good thing. I think it is pretty important when it comes to scholarships. We taught all the materials ourselves. Sometimes that was an excuse for me to learn new material myself–it was particularly educational and fund in the area of Art.