Interesting article at Alternet about homeschooling. [View all]

[greatlaurel]

Have any of you had experiences with home schooled kids? I volunteer with a youth organization and my experiences with home schooled kids are making me very disturbed about the quality of education these kids are getting. I have a lot of sympathy for people who decide to home school, but my experiences are not encouraging.

http://www.alternet.org/education/barely-literate-how-christian-fundamentalist-homeschooling-hurts-kids?page=0%2C6&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

The article tells the stories of several families who were home schooling in the Christian Fundamentalist tradition, but due to the lack of follow up children are being neglected educationally. I have seen quite a bit of that sort of neglect. Teaching is very hard work and takes a lot of discipline. Too many folks just do not have that kind of commitment day in and day out.

I have met some families whose kids seem well educated, but the kids are being educated using the curriculum from Bob Jones University, so it concerns me what sort of facts these kids are being taught. By not having the kids in public school some problems are not getting caught early. One family I have met has a number of children and the oldest child has a very distinct speech problem. I noticed it partly because one of my kids had a similar issue. My kid spent a year meeting with the speech pathologist a couple of times a week at her school and the problem was solved. I noticed that all the other kids in that family have the exact same speech problem as the oldest sibling.