Interesting visit with my SIL, a former school principal/administrator, re: CC and home school
Last edited Mon Apr 14, 2014, 05:35 PM - Edit history (1)
A couple of interesting things to point out; Southern Baptist. Raised her three kids super-religious, although hubby was a NASA scientist who created rocket fuels. Very active in their church. She admitted to us -- "Shh, don't ever tell the kids" (no problem, 100% certain they're not reading DU) that now that the kids are all grown and moved out they actually enjoy a nice bottle of wine with dinner every now and then. This was a big deal to her. When we used to visit for Thanksgiving or Christmas, it was lemonade and iced tea. Alcohol was never allowed in the house. Every radio station was pre-programmed to a Christian station (lots of them in Florida). Every piece of artwork in the house had a bible verse on it.
Anyway, she started as an elementary school teacher, worked her way up to a middle school principal, then eventually into an administrative position with the school department (whatever they call it in Florida). Shortly after Rick Scott got into office she chose to retire early. She said the atmosphere in Florida schools (hi, Jeb!) had become so toxic that she no longer felt she was helping to educate students, just working the system.
We got into a discussion about Common Core and home schooling. Wow! She HATES Common Core (hi, Jeb!). And one of her daughters took the religious ball and ran with it, and is home-schooling all five of her children (includes a set of twins). Drives my SIL nuts. She obviously loves her daughter, but daughter went to college to become a music teacher. She plays violin, never did all that well in math or science. But because of the church -- they hate the horrible liberal stuff being taught in public schools, even though it's Florida -- they are home schooling kids ranging in age from first graders to middle schoolers. She recognized the lunacy of a violin teacher trying to educate five kids by herself. She was quite distraught about it but has the Mom "What can I do?" attitude. Have to let them live their lives. It is pretty amazing watching my niece at holidays trying to deal with the five kids. She basically doesn't. She's alone with them 24/7, and at family gatherings she just tunes them out.
Her mom has a right to be worried. I know many DUers like to home school their children, and I suppose in some ways it's better than Common Core...but at least with Common Core they're able to see if a kid learned anything. As my SIL pointed out, she doesn't feel the five kids are really learning much. Lots of play dates and church time. But how is a violin teacher teaching them math and science?
Oh well. No real point in this other than that it was a fascinating visit and I thought I'd share my perspective.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm college educated, but I would never pretend to know enough to teach my kids beyond elementary school or at least 6th grade for all subjects. I can write circles around people, but I hated math with a passion and only took business college math courses. My daughter had 2 yrs of chemistry in high school and has had 3 yrs in college. There is no way I could have prepared her for that or the advanced math she took in HS. My son is in 8th grade and doing trigonometry already. Again, no way could I do that without sitting through all of his classes with him. He'll be moving into Calculus next year. Can't help him there either. We have struck up a long term relationship with the math tutor 
to have his questions answered.
I have a bunch of fundy friends who cry "Not everyone needs a college education." And that's true, but my goal is to have smarter generations going forward, not dumbed down generations. I'm sure some homeschoolers do well and I know there are resources out there for them. I have friends who are homeschooling -- one seems to be doing fine so far (trained in education, has daughter enrolled in outside group activities as well as what she does at home). Then there are the ones who don't -- my other friend has a high school diploma. Said God will show her the way to teach her 5 kids.
It was very organized but we did have some leeway on how the subjects were studied. Often we would do a whole quarter of math in a week and get it out of the way and then do a quarter of science. It seemed to be easier than doing an hour of english, then an hour of math, and then an hour of science, etc. We just couldn't stay organized doing it that way. We would do an entire section of math, send it off to be graded and then do English or ??? It worked best for us that way anyway..
