Home-school athletics

That does not always happen to home schooled students, but socialization is a big part of the school system. Home school parents have a hard time understanding that.

It also shows why I do not like NX's situation one bit. I hope he finds a better district in the fall.

 

In my area we have a home-school association, with one of the local churches sponsoring it. They play sports, though no football. Last year, a soccer player earned a D-II scholarship, the first scholly for the assoc. That seems like a decent story, and we take the calls when we get them. But not much coverage beyond that.

 

we had a home-school league at my last stop. took their calls and gave 'em two graphs like everybody else. never staffed a game. chuckled when the coach asked to speak to me and attempted to pressure me into covering one during the "playoffs."

 

You're right. I hear home schooling and I think of people like the ones Mikey described. I didn't consider cases where folks have no choice and I apologize to NX for painting everyone with a broad stroke.

 

I would not presume to judge parents' decision to home-school their kids, especially if they have to go to a school as NX described.

But if they make that judgement call that the classrooms in that school are not suitable for their children, then the football field, basketball court, band or yearbook staff should be either.

 

nope, we can't judge 'em, but stereotyping them sure is fun.

 

I was homeschooled until 8th grade. I never had any real socialization problems because I played sports year-round and was involved with a bunch of other kid things. I wouldn't argue that it's The Right thing, necessarily. I ended up going to a regular school because I wanted to play high school sports in a more competitive setting than the homeschool circuit could offer, and I'm glad I went to school because it did help me develop socially. But there's no question I got a better education as a home schooler, something that's basically universal. Homeschooled kids consistently score better on standardized tests.

It doesn't take an expert to teach grade school. You basically just buy the text books and work your way through them. And when you're only teaching one or two kids at a time, you can really make sure they're learning.

Socially, I'd say about half of home schooled kids are weird, which is a high number. But speaking from my own experiences, I don't think those people are are weird because they're home schooled, I think they're home schooled because they're weird.

And, no, I don't think newspapers should cover homeschooled teams. However, I don't see how you can justify coverage of high school softball and justify ignoring boys homeschool basketball. I gotta believe the interest level is about the same.

 

That was probably true 20 years ago, but not in this day and age. The "stand and deliver" teacher is frowned upon in the lower (and upper for the most parts) levels.

I'm glad you had a good homeschooled experience, but would you want an untrained person creating your sports page?

Would you have your mom and dad be your featured columnists?

I know in the odd case, they might be better than what you have now. But in 95 - 99 percent of the cases, I'm guessing they are not the best option.

 

I don't know anything about modern teaching methods, I'm just saying that if your parents know how to read, write and perform math at, say, a 6th grade level, they can teach their kids to do the same, mainly because they're going to be doing it on a one-on-one basis. As I said, statistically, home-schooled kids perform better in standardized tests. I don't know all the reasons for that, but it does suggest that however parents are teaching their kids, they are as effective, if not more so, than the traditional school system.

I don't really see the connection to your journalism analogy. If parents were trying to teach their kids how to be teachers, then I would agree that any non-teacher is not qualified to teach someone to be a teacher. But anybody who knows how to perform long division is qualified to teach long division to someone else.

 

My analogy is the the public school teachers are the professionals. They should be better at their skill than someone opening a book at home.

Sure, some suck, but many are fantastic.

 

Judging from the state of America's public schools -- she is probably not qualified to teach my kids -- or any others for that matter --- either......

And any home schooled kid whose parent pays school taxes should be eligible to play the public school team, period.

Thankfully most states have sensible laws to keep pinhead public school board snobs from excluding (I thought education was supposed to be inclusive as possible, by the way) those who don't drink their brand of kool-aid, otherwise we'd be missing out on the Jason Taylor's of this world....

 

OK. But test scores indicate the professionals are not as successful. I don't want to come off like I think homeschooling is the answer. I probably won't end up homeschooling my kids. But, academically, it has a pretty good track record.