Salon: Home-schooled and illiterate - for some kids it means isolation with little education

[d_r]

11. quality of the teacher

When we think about formal schools - either private or public - I don't think that we have any problem with understanding that they range in quality in facilities, resources, administrators and teachers. And I don't think we have any problem understanding that schools with lower quality resources and teachers do a poorer job of educating children than do schools with better resources and high quality teachers. I know that for my children I want them to have good teachers; I believe that the quality of the teacher's performance is related to my children's success.

I would think that home schooling is the same sort of thing. There are certainly homes with adequate resources and parents who are doing a high quality job as teachers. It doesn't surprise me that some home-schooled children do very well on standardized tests and in college. I would also think - as the anecdotes in the linked essay document - that there are home settings that are sub-par in resources and parents who are very poor teachers. In fact, just my opinion, but I would think that the lack of training in education that many home-schooling parents have would exacerbate this. It would seem logical to me that there is a wide variety of quality in the teaching skills of parents who home-school, and there is no oversight to this.

I thought this was a well thought out essay. The point isn't that home schooling per se is inadequate - and it may well be excellent in some cases - but that there is little over sight and documentation. We would not accept that children in public schools be held to no standards or documentation. We wouldn't.

Parents are certainly the primary socializers of their children and hold primary responsibility for their children's well-being and values, and they should have every right to. But the end idea = that children have a right to quality education is true also, and the rights of the children should be protected.