Public Education

Hermit76

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The thesis for my degree was about mass shootings being inherent to the design of public schools. The environment of the schools, somewhat intentionally, create the mass murderers - which is only an extreme example of an outcome from the common damage or twisting done to the students.
I'd like to read that
 
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rusmeister

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Our colleges often prefer homeschooled children for their academic proficiency and their maturity.
The ease of homeschooling laws vary from state to state. My state is very friendly and respects our rights. However some states make it very difficult from state to state.


No, it doesn't. Usually homeschoolers significantly outperform both publicly and privately educated students in college entry examinations - they tend to have an easier time getting into better colleges.

I mostly agree with you folks, but these two points are debatable. My own experience is with NY and CA. It is certain that they both make bureaucratic obstacles for would-be homeschoolers, and that ETS testing and previous college credit make much more of a difference than any claim to homeschooling. When I applied to the State University, they looked at my GED, and my Christian high school diploma, and threw the latter in the trash, so to speak. It was the ETS tests (+ SATs, + CLEP) that got me in, as well as prior credit from the Univ of Maryland overseas courtesy of my Navy service and study.

The veiled threats toward homeschooling in CA led me, a public school teacher, to get membership in the HSLDA while we homeschooled our oldest there. That’s part of the story I wrote here in trying to tell people why what most of you know, as individuals, is not enough to understand the true big picture.

American Education Redux II Links are now broken, but a little diligent research should uncover most of the linked stuff. And it’s vital to understand that people object to the thesis, because they have vested financial interest, either as employees, or as parents looking for a babysitter so they can go off to work and not deal with their responsibility toward their children.
 
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Hermit76

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I mostly agree with you folks, but these two points are debatable. My own experience is with NY and CA. It is certain that they both make bureaucratic obstacles for would-be homeschoolers, and that ETS testing and previous college credit make much more of a difference than any claim to homeschooling. When I applied to the State University, they looked at my GED, and my Christian high school diploma, and threw the latter in the trash, so to speak. It was the ETS tests (+ SATs, + CLEP) that got me in, as well as prior credit from the Univ of Maryland overseas courtesy of my Navy service and study.

The veiled threats toward homeschooling in CA led me, a public school teacher, to get membership in the HSLDA while we homeschooled our oldest there. That’s part of the story I wrote here in trying to tell people why what most of you know, as individuals, is not enough to understand the true big picture.

American Education Redux II Links are now broken, but a little diligent research should uncover most of the linked stuff. And it’s vital to understand that people object to the thesis, because they have vested financial interest, either as employees, or as parents looking for a babysitter so they can go off to work and not deal with their responsibility toward their children.

I should be clear... Most of my experience with colleges is in the Bible Belt South. We have a saturation of moderate-conservative Colleges.
 
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LizaMarie

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As an outsider (I'm european...) I wonder about the possible consequences of homeschooling children in the US. How does it work? Does it prevent them from being admitted to college and universities as they grow older? Are there public tests and exams during the semester to measure the quality of the education they receive? Does it have a otherwise negative impact on their future?

I'm sorry if my questions are dumb, but I'm just curious to know :)
Yes, as Hermit 76 said Homeschooling is legal here in the US but each state has various laws. My state has moderate regulation, with mandatory testing, notification, etc. My two children went to our Lutheran school during their elementary years but the school closed down and so we sent them to the public middle school and high school here in our town. We live in a small town in a rural area, and the public school here is excellent. I didn't feel that homeschooling was for me or my children but several of our friends from the parochial school, (who were not all Lutherans) elected to homeschool after the Christian school closed. They did well and their kids got into to college no problem that I know of.
My oldest son's girlfriend was home schooled all her young years( K-12) and is now a senior at a University. My kids both graduated high school a number of years ago but when they attended that school many on the school board were Christians(this is a fairly small town) so there wasn't a lot of crazy stuff in the public school. Things may have changed now, though.
My niece and nephew live in a larger city a few hours away and my brother sent both to Christian school K-12. He said public school there wasn't an option.
As for socialization I don't know, since my own kids were not homeschooled. My son's girlfriend seems very well adjusted and has fit into college life. Her family are devout Christians. She was homeschooled along with her siblings. I'm not so sure homeschooling would have worked for my kids. They were very involved in athletics, which we possibly could have still done at the public school, if they had been homeschooled. The small Christian school they attended did not have a sports program so I would have had to try to get them into the public school sports program anyway but the issue did not come up as the school closed anyway. I felt that they were better off being under someone else's authority, as they never listened to me, and the Christian school was perfect at first. Good Education with Christian values.
 
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ArmyMatt

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I am slightly puzzled that the alternatives seem to be mostly discussed as public schools or home schooling. What about church schools? Is that not such a big thing in Orthodoxy?

we do have them, but they are not common. there are folks who do want to get more going.
 
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Hermit76

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I am slightly puzzled that the alternatives seem to be mostly discussed as public schools or home schooling. What about church schools? Is that not such a big thing in Orthodoxy?
We drive 1.5 hours to get to church. A church school would not be feasible.

I'm curious... Do you think homeschooling to be a negative approach?
 
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rusmeister

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I am slightly puzzled that the alternatives seem to be mostly discussed as public schools or home schooling. What about church schools? Is that not such a big thing in Orthodoxy?
One problem off the bat would be that most schools would mirror the design of the Prussian model that dominates worldwide. The consolation prize there is that a school controlled directly by the parents evades the most evil fruit of that system, that of twisting the kids’ views away from those of the parents to those of the controllers. Still Dorothy Sayers “Lost Tools of Learning” is a must for anyone thinking of organizing a school.
 
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Paidiske

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We drive 1.5 hours to get to church. A church school would not be feasible.

I'm curious... Do you think homeschooling to be a negative approach?

I think each approach has benefits and drawbacks, and that different children (and different households) have different needs. For my child, for example, who has autism, school is a critical part of helping her develop her communication and social skills in a way that we simply cannot at home, because there just isn't that level of diverse interaction. For a neurotypical child, the considerations would be different.

I was at one point very enamoured of the idea of home schooling, but if learning from home for half a year during the pandemic has shown me anything, it's that the reality doesn't always match the ideal! (Although I concede that pandemic restrictions haven't allowed a "normal" home schooling experience, either).

But in choosing schools, I have a clear bias for church-run schools, and am grateful that we have access to a school run by my denomination, near home at an affordable cost. I very much want my daughter to be in an environment where faith and prayer are part of the shared fabric of daily life, where being part of church community isn't seen as weird or abnormal, and so on. Not that I want to hothouse her away from diversity, but that I want our faith and praxis to be seen as a valid part of that diverse landscape. If that makes sense?
 
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Hermit76

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I think each approach has benefits and drawbacks, and that different children (and different households) have different needs. For my child, for example, who has autism, school is a critical part of helping her develop her communication and social skills in a way that we simply cannot at home, because there just isn't that level of diverse interaction. For a neurotypical child, the considerations would be different.

I was at one point very enamoured of the idea of home schooling, but if learning from home for half a year during the pandemic has shown me anything, it's that the reality doesn't always match the ideal! (Although I concede that pandemic restrictions haven't allowed a "normal" home schooling experience, either).

But in choosing schools, I have a clear bias for church-run schools, and am grateful that we have access to a school run by my denomination, near home at an affordable cost. I very much want my daughter to be in an environment where faith and prayer are part of the shared fabric of daily life, where being part of church community isn't seen as weird or abnormal, and so on. Not that I want to hothouse her away from diversity, but that I want our faith and praxis to be seen as a valid part of that diverse landscape. If that makes sense?

This is a well articulated response. Just so you know, reality never meets the ideal in public schools either.

I also agree that church school is a much better option than public.
 
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rusmeister

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This is a pretty good video on the topic from a philosophy channel.
This video is entirely right about what is wrong, but not about what is right. Holding rejection of authority above all, it runs against the grain of Orthodox culture and is steeped in Western individualism, a thing which dismisses the vital necessity of family and community.
But the speaker is absolutely right about the Prussian origins and aims of schooling, though he goes into far too little detail.
 
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I think one thundershock is that our approach of subject-based education is very wrong. GKC would affirm that it accomplishes the fragmentation of what otherwise could be complete thinking, the ability to connect ideas and thoughts across disciplines, the very reason we ever had a “PhD”, and the converse is the tendency of the modern university to eliminate those and offer “Doctor of Arts/Sciences” in its place (I remember when I got my MA and was applying to PhD programs, and was shocked that the State University (NY), which had accepted me, told me it would be a “DA”, not PhD program. I turned them down, even not knowing what I know now.).

Getting that education ought to teach us HOW to think in a complete manner, and become able to ask and answer the chief philosophical questions, “What is the nature of man?” and “What is his purpose in life?” enables us to see that the Math, English, Social Studies, etc classes that we focus on now goes about that in a wholly wrong manner, one that divides and fragments the disciplines and pretty much guarantees that the true objectives of education will not be accomplished.

Anyway, here is Sayers’ fantastic and essential article:
The Lost Tools of Learning
 
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rusmeister

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Once you begin to understand that education itself has gone totally wrong, you can see why the educated class should not be trusted or assumed to be truly educated. You begin to see how bad ideas like macroevolution, “postmodernism”, in short, how the sciences and philosophies all go wrong, how they can consistently and uniformly come to wrong conclusions when they have been trained to do so. (How can a million scientists be wrong?)

You begin to see why the educated class has completely and totally fumbled the panicdemic they have fostered and promoted, thrilled that their imagined “educations” make them insiders who “see what is going on” -much like Mark Studdock at Belbury, for those who have read CS Lewis’s space trilogy. It began in our schools, which never really gave us a genuine education. All we can do now is go out there and try to get it on our own, and give what we can of THAT to our children. (I still plug for Lewis and Chesterton as first-rate teachers in how to think.)
 
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LizaMarie

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I think each approach has benefits and drawbacks, and that different children (and different households) have different needs. For my child, for example, who has autism, school is a critical part of helping her develop her communication and social skills in a way that we simply cannot at home, because there just isn't that level of diverse interaction. For a neurotypical child, the considerations would be different.

I was at one point very enamoured of the idea of home schooling, but if learning from home for half a year during the pandemic has shown me anything, it's that the reality doesn't always match the ideal! (Although I concede that pandemic restrictions haven't allowed a "normal" home schooling experience, either).

But in choosing schools, I have a clear bias for church-run schools, and am grateful that we have access to a school run by my denomination, near home at an affordable cost. I very much want my daughter to be in an environment where faith and prayer are part of the shared fabric of daily life, where being part of church community isn't seen as weird or abnormal, and so on. Not that I want to hothouse her away from diversity, but that I want our faith and praxis to be seen as a valid part of that diverse landscape. If that makes sense?
Makes sense, that is exactly how I felt with my two children, we had a K-8 school affiliated with our church and I've never regretted a minute of sending them there. The Lutheran school was excellent, and faith and prayer were a daily part of their life as you mentioned in your post. They had Word of God every hour first thing in the morning, and the older kids had catechism class. Unfortunately the school closed down as we live in a small town and there was lack of enrollment but they got a good start, and then we made the decision to send them on to the public school which wasn't too bad here in the small town. At least back then.
 
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Hermit76

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Once you begin to understand that education itself has gone totally wrong, you can see why the educated class should not be trusted or assumed to be truly educated. You begin to see how bad ideas like macroevolution, “postmodernism”, in short, how the sciences and philosophies all go wrong, how they can consistently and uniformly come to wrong conclusions when they have been trained to do so. (How can a million scientists be wrong?)

You begin to see why the educated class has completely and totally fumbled the panicdemic they have fostered and promoted, thrilled that their imagined “educations” make them insiders who “see what is going on” -much like Mark Studdock at Belbury, for those who have read CS Lewis’s space trilogy. It began in our schools, which never really gave us a genuine education. All we can do now is go out there and try to get it on our own, and give what we can of THAT to our children. (I still plug for Lewis and Chesterton as first-rate teachers in how to think.)

Fragmented thinking destroys man's ability to see God. Religion is felt as just another subject to be learned. I've felt that all my life but didn't understand it until I started reading Orthodox texts.
 
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