What Makes People Think They Are Qualified To Teach Their Own Kids?

[Igel]

86. You're making it simpler than possible.

It's okay to simplify as long as you and your listeners know the complexity masked by simple statements.
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Some parents can homeschool. 4th graders. Some can't. Odds are most parents could manage the 4th grade curriculum, stripped of trendy buzzwords and reduced to the actual core content. This I say as a parent who focuses on the role schools have to play in imparting knowledge. (Some teachers, esp. in elementary school, really believe that kids won't learn how to make friends or work together unless they're taught this for 12 years in public schools. If you only look at the "proper" kinds of socialization then, no, no parent can homeschool because you really need to be trained in the right way to raise kids, and the kids need to be in groups of 20 or more.)

Some parents can homeschool high school juniors and seniors in AP English and physics. I could do AP physical science, calculus, Russian, and Spanish, and level history, geography; my wife could handle AP English and AP life sciences and level history. I might have trouble with some lab equipment, but we'd manage. We could even manage basic music and art (or perhaps a bit more than basic.) Just don't ask us to teach our kid sports. You do dribble the football across home plate to score a touchdown, don't you? Or is that Australian-rules frisbee?

The point being that some parents are more than qualified. If not, they can often buy and procure knowledge elsewhere. I've known more than a few parents who homeschooled and knew they couldn't do it themselves past a certain grade level. I know one ex-math teacher who has a homeschooling group--a few times a week homeschooling parents bring their kids over for algebra or geometry lessons. Others buy pre-packaged curricula with online support. "Mom, I don't understand the difference between molarity and molality!" "That's okay, just login and ask the online tutor." No different from hiring a violin teacher or logging in for online support in troubleshooting software.


Some parents need to homeschool because when there are 180 kids being seen in the course of a day by 7 teachers some kids can't be managed well. Okay, you make them sit in class and be quiet. They cross their arms and do nothing. Or they write random answers because they don't care. You can't force a kid to learn--and they're the quieter ones. But between parents and teachers, often parents have more leverage. If they're home. Nothing makes these parents think they can homeschool. They just have no better option. They certainly won't do worse. Better to get a D in level history being taught by parents unqualified to teach level history than get an F in level history when taught by a person with a PhD in history. Behavior comes before knowledge. Teachers can manage some bad behavior; but ultimately it has to be the parents' responsibility.

How well the homeschooled kid does depends on the parents' education level, competence, diligence, self-discipline. It depends on the child's learning abilities, discipline, and compliance with parental structure. Often it's not the amount of knowledge the parent has that matters it's the ability to provide structure--structure that is lacking in a lot of classrooms, esp. with the increased class size. (Most teachers are at least competent in their content knowledge.)


A lot of homeschooled parents do it for cultural reasons. Some do it for religious reasons. Everything that I've said still applies. Fundie Xians aren't all idiots. Many have out of control kids. I've known UU homeschoolers and fundie Xian ones, Episcopal and Methodist. And Muslim. And Buddhist. There's a skew to the stats, but there's still no 100% accurate generalization for them.

About 1/2 of homeschoolers (as of the late '90s) weren't doing it for religious reasons. In fact, conservatives are late-comers to homeschooling. Used to be more folks far left of center, but that's when I was a kid, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

A few years ago there was a bit of an Afrocentric homeschooling trend.

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Usually when you find a failing student you find failing parents. Not always. And the word "failing" can have a bunch of different meanings.

Some kids just go bad because of peers or some horrendous event. By 9th grade you can predict with reasonable certainty a student's final GPA and likelihood of dropping out. In elementary school mid/high SES kids gain months of education over the summer. Leave 2nd grade on-level at 2.0 and return in August at 2.2. Low SES kids that leave 2nd grade on-level at 2.0 return in August at 1.8 or thereabouts. On average. No teachers in July. Sorry, this is pretty much all parent. Uneducated parents can't fill in details that are the basis for later formal education, and they spend many summers not filling in the details. Result? Their kids are behind. Such parents use to be rich in wisdom and manual skills.

Now we have not only uneducated parents but parents who can't do anything--they've not taught their kids to sew or cook, repair engines or build a treehouse. The kids socialize, listen to music, and have virtual experiences that they can ignore because, well, they're virtual. The parents' lives are roughly the same: work, tv, premade dinners (or ethnic cuisines that the kids don't learn to prepare), social networking.

A lot of the attention given kids is also screwed up. One girl in my class is allowed to sleep in. Class starts a bit after 9. She often gets out of bed after 9. Oh, well. "But she's so tired when she gets home, it's hard for her to get out of bed in time for school." Gee. Royalty. I was told about one kid a few years ago who would go to his room at 11 PM and stay up all night playing video games. Parent's solution? Drugs. In the morning they gave him a drug prescribed to keep him alert--hyper, even--all day; it lasted about 9 hours. When he got home it would wear off and he'd crash. Can't keep your kid disciplined and his life structured? Drug him. Woo-hoo. I missed that one in the parenting manuals.

Then there's the opposite. One parent turned to her child in conference and called her names I won't repeat, utterly humiliating her. The kid's expression said it all: "I hear you, bitch, and I'm looking down so you think I'm being obedient but really you can't see my usual smirk. I really don't give a f**k what you have to say, asshole." The kid is still out of control and has utter contempt for everybody but her friends. Good going, mom.

The kids in jr high and high school that are troublemakers or tuned out often have troubled home lives. Often they haven't been taught school culture and how to act in school. Or they don't see enough of a downside to acting out. Their parents don't have them do homework, so the kids figure it doesn't matter. In some cases the parents have actually told their kids that because they're black/Latino/etc. it doesn't matter, society's so stacked against them they'll never get into college or get a job. (It's a nice cop-out for their parents.)

Often the parents don't notice when the kid's in in-school suspension until he's in out-of-school suspension and the parent has to come in for a conference. Hell, I've seen kids in different classes all act out on the same day so they all get suspended and can hang out together. The parents long ago abdicated responsibility.

Low SES is just correlated with this kind of behavior. Some high SES families are just as troubled. Many low SES households have no trouble rearing decent kids. It's just that when high SES parents offer excuses we dismiss them; when low SES parents offer excuses, we gush with sympathy and say, "Yes, little dears, you can't help it. Let us assume responsibility for your life, we know so much better than you."