The following are student response to "Students lose vital skills in home school."
In her article, Leia Cain (a graduate student in education) deplores the apparent lack of standards required in South Carolina for parents to home-school their kids: while public school teachers must have a bachelor’s degree, parents need only have a high school diploma. This may or may not be debilitating in terms of teaching first-graders their ABCs, but the author is entitled to her opinion.
However, six lines from the end of the article, she explicitly calls for a ban on home schooling. To quote her, “…or better yet, let’s get rid of [home schooling] altogether. It’s difficult to standardize something we can’t keep tabs on.” In endorsing the outlawing of home schooling, she provides not one shred of objective evidence, not a single statistic, to show that home-schooled kids who go on to college perform any poorer academically than their publicly-educated peers.
She makes a further unsubstantiated claim: that, due to their allegedly stunted educational experience, home-schooled kids are socially disabled; apparently, they can’t “deal” with their bosses, and haven’t learned “diversity.” We shall have to take her word on that — again, no evidence is provided.
Home schooling provides an alternative for parents who don’t want their kids exposed to influences and/or policies that they find objectionable in some public schools, yet who cannot afford an increasingly expensive private education. It is a major investment of time and effort for at least one parent and is not something done on a whim. Sadly, the sentiments expressed in the author’s column directly contradict her opening words: “Freedom is the central value for many aspects of our lives, seen most clearly in our education system.”
— Michael DuBois, geography graduate student
Ms. Cain, with all due respect, your article paints a much skewed portrait of home schooling. As a student who participated in organized education for 9 years and then chose to home-school through high school, I know first-hand exactly how home schooling works.
First, your idea that home schooling isn’t properly regulated is absurd. If home-schoolers desired to be regulated by the state, then they would attend public school. Instead, they belong to state approved accountability groups. I belonged to the South Carolina Association of Independent Home Schools (SCAIHS) and their guidelines for my education were as strict as any public school in South Carolina. In addition to submitting textbooks, course outlines and syllabi for every course I took, twice a year I had to submit progress reports as well as outside verification of completed work. If I had not done so adequately, then I would not have received credit for the course. I as well as many other home-schoolers in this state have chosen to attend USC and are just as qualified and competitive as the other students in our classrooms here.
Second, home-school students do not lack social skills required of them anymore than students in public school. Organized education does no more to foster the social skills of a student than home schooling does. Home-schoolers have jobs, friends and activities that they participate in just as their public school counterparts.
Finally, you speak of the idea of freedom of education, but then propose the idea of abolishing home schooling. Where is the freedom in that? You simply do not understand the subject about which you wrote. I would encourage you to research the home schooling community and the reality of what is happening instead of choosing to promote stereotypes.
— Caroline McDonald, second year Nursing student