I stumbled across a curious little story out of Colorado. From the summary in my email box, I thought I knew what it was about.
Board member Becky Johnson raised a question concerning the state required number of hours required for home-schooling — four hours a day — and that required of public schools — six or seven hours a day. Trail Gazette
I am obviously well-trained by stories like the one in Arkansas where a lawmaker is seeking to restrict when a parent can withdraw their children in order to homeschool them. When government officials begin comparing homeschool requirements and public school requirements, I assume they are thinking about ways to change the homeschool laws.
But that wasn’t what Ms. Johnson, the Vice President of the Estes Park School Board was getting at.
Johnson said there’s a huge disparity between the requirements of public school and home-school.
“Are we really spending our time effectively or on seat time to meet calendars?” she asked. Ibid.
Now that is an interesting question to discuss come calendar time for public schools. Are we truly educating children, or just mandating they sit in a seat so many hours per academic year?
Ms. Richardson’s point to the contrary is valid…and also manages to be completely respectful of homeschooling.
Board member Marie Richardson said home schooling might require less time, because there are only one or two students, versus 20 in the classroom, at different levels. Ibid.
And yet…
Johnson said kids, if they’re adequately prepared, shouldn’t have to sit in class for an entire year, just to meet a seat time schedule. Ibid.
I like it. Those are the kinds of discussions I would like to see more of in the field of education. Ways to make the system more flexible to more adequately meet the needs of all students.
Roscommon Acres is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Turn your children out on the pasture, pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation!
Thursday, 5. February 2009
lol! My kids point out this disparity all the time…as soon as ps is out for the day, they’re racing to thhe phone to invite their friends to play only to be told, “I can’t; I have homework.” Then they complain to me that “they’re in school for *6 hours a day*. Can’t they get done with the third grade in 6 hours a day?!”
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
I think there is a larger social ill/issue that comes from the “seat time” mentality (which is totally a reality in the school system): Jobs.
I know many people who see their job as requiring little more than to look busy for a precisely defined amount of time. …I even catch myself thinking this.
Homeschooling relates school time to learning and mastering subjects, not a defined period of time that you must endure. And jobs should consist of more questions like: What can I accomplish today?
~Luke
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
Very interesting discussion. I often need to remind myself that schools were once established to train kids to become factory workers, assembly line employees and waiting for instructions on what to do next. A couple hundred years later, nothing has changed.
There’s not much difference between seating on a school chair seven hours a day and seating in an office cubicle for the same amount of time, except perhaps a paycheck pass on to you instead of the school district.
In our household we are done with our legal homeschool requirements by noon, after that is when real homeschooling begins. It has been some fun and enriching eight years.
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
Great read! It’s nice to read something on a positive note when it comes to homeschooling vs. public school.
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
Rebecca, my daughter is the same way. She doesn’t want to go to school because she can’t figure how they waste that much time.
Luke, that is an interesting thought. But you are right, there are a lot of people out there who are more worried about the time they’ve spent on the clock than the work they’ve accomplished in that time. It is human nature to a degree, but it would be interesting to know how much of that is promoted by the way we educate our children.
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
Lymari, I don’t like the calendar requirements. They make me feel like we should be sitting and staring at books that whole time, even though I know that the hours the kids spend “homeschooling” far exceed the calendar requirements and even that public schools do not spend that much time on-task.
And it is definitely nice to read something positive about homeschooling coming from education official type people.
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
Whew! I feel blessed to live in Texas and not have to keep track of hours or days. So much of my kids learning takes place during activities that the gov. would likely not consider “school hours”. For example, the post office is a great place to discuss making monetary choices based on different variables. Can this box be sent media mail? Do we care that it will take two weeks to get there? Its only 50 cents more to send it parcel post. Is it worth 50 cents for faster delivery? You get the idea. Teachable moments are all around us.
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
Ok, but the opposite can be true, too. We just spent 45 minutes on ONE math problem. Aargh. I guess in public school you skip it and move on and figure most of the kids “got it.” Because what else can you do?
AND wouldn’t that be so frustrating to teach there, if parents took their kids out during instruction time… and then the kid’s behind… or some kids get sick at different times than others and how do you catch them all up?
How does that work?
Mystery.
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
It’s a fact when leading groups of kids that it takes longer. There is no way around it. I struggle to lead Cub Scout meetings as the whole dynamic changes when there are three or more kids of the same age trying to do one thing. It is hard to explain unless you’ve witnessed it or tried doing that after having homeschooled one or two kids doing the same task. It’s apples and oranges.
I’m glad too that in my state (CT) we don’t need to count up hours of instruction. It just would be a pain to document *everything*.
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Thursday, 5. February 2009
Yes, it definitely does take longer. Normally, the school boards, legislators and unions seem to be on the other side of this, ie., note “disparities” between hours required of the schools and of us and want to increase the number of hours we need to document.
But it just doesn’t take as long…we can breeze through the things our children grasp quickly, spend more time on the things they don’t and you don’t have all the time spent waiting for attention or organizing 25 children.
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Friday, 6. February 2009
I don’t mean any disrespect to ChristineMM, but I have to disagree with her statement that it takes longer time to lead groups of kids. I think that it takes longer time to lead SOME of the kids in a group, not all. So some of the kids are left sitting for unnecessary time while others are catching up.
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Thursday, 12. February 2009
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Saturday, 14. February 2009
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Tuesday, 24. February 2009
I wish I had the opportunity to be homeschooled. I’m 16 and graduate next year at 17, but I find that most of the hours in school I spend listening to teachers rant, never really learning as much as I could be. I plan on being a freelance artist / writer / web designer, and have a web designing certificate from my freshman year in high school, but I haven’t learned anything new yet to help me with writing or art. What I do learn is out of school, from friends and art groups and internet. I’m learning Sign Language (year 2) and French (year 1) from out of school classes, and I’m hoping despite money problems I can pursue helping those who need it by http://www.abroaderview.org. However, my required attendance at school and such is really getting in the way of my goals. It just gets on my nerves! I could be changing the world, but instead I’m sitting in a metal desk listening to calculus teachers whine about their pay and English teachers complain about student’s papers having ruffles on the edges. Once I have a child someday, I think I would like to home school them; though I’m not sure if I would know how, so public school might be the only affordable choice. =/ Nice discussion, anyways.
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Tuesday, 24. February 2009
Luke Holzmann made a very good point about the larger social issue. It isn’t just the belief of the employees at many corporations, but it is too often the mindset of management as well. Perhaps they picked up their beliefs while sitting at a desk for 6-8 hours a day at public schools.
I’ve long wondered why (when I worked in that environment) I had to sit around at my workbench for about 4-5 more hours after all of my work was complete. My job for several companies has been to perform maintenance on machinery. Granted some of the maintenance is unscheduled and someone has to be there if a machine breaks, but it seems like a serious waste of resources to have a dozen maintenance people milling about trying to look busy after they’ve all completed their scheduled maintenance.
And that’s really what it boils down to in the case of both the schools and the corporations–misallocation of resources. As I’m sure we would all agree, hours of childhood are a very precious resource too often wasted in the institutional setting of a classroom.
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Wednesday, 25. February 2009
I know many people who see their job as requiring little more than to look busy for a precisely defined amount of time. …I even catch myself thinking this.
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Thursday, 26. February 2009
To #14 Michelle,
Read The Teenage Liberation Handbook, if you haven’t already. It sounds as though you’re doing a fine job of educating yourself in spite of public school. As for homeschooling your kids, it will come as naturally to you as it did to educate yourself. We are natural learners when given the room to grow. Best wishes.
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Tuesday, 7. April 2009
I always tell anyone who asks if they have to spend 8 hours a day homeschooling their child that, no. They can spend less time and accomplish more than the public schools. Children that get one on one every day learn more then chidren in a classroom setting.
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