Comment by DoreenMichele
7 years ago
Well, yes, a high school drop-out single mom may be able to do a fine job of homeschooling. Or may not. And that will depend on a lot of factors beyond their formal education.
I am not comfortable with the suggestion here that a parent needs advanced education to successfully homeschool. There are support systems for homeschoolers. I was involved with that at one time.
If you homeschool gifted kids, even if you have a lot of formal education, you can find yourself really challenged. You can find yourself dealing with a child who knows more about a subject than you do, even though you have had college classes in the subject.
One way to handle that is to become a resource person for the child. Instead of instructing them, you participate on email lists and what not, learn what books and other materials have a good reputation and make sure the child has access to such materials. There is no reason a high school drop-out cannot take a similar approach.
A bigger problem in my mind is that when women go to college and have difficulty with a subject, they are often actively steered towards early childhood education. One outcome of this fact is that a high percentage of elementary school teachers are not only bad at math, they are math phobic. They pass this math phobia on to impressionable young children and may not be really qualified to teach math.
My oldest son likely has dyscalculia. By the time I pulled him out of school, he feared and loathed math. When he asked questions in school, his teachers often read him the explanation in the book. He read well above grade level. If the book explanation were going to help, he didn't need the teacher for that. It never helped him.
Fortunately, I had more college level math by the time I graduated high school than most people with non STEM bachelor's degrees have. I also have a background tutoring it and I can find novel ways to explain it. I was eventually able to get my son over his fear of math and give him a solid grounding in the subject.
When men struggle with subjects like math in college, they are not encouraged to give up and "go do something easier, like teach small kids." My ex is not good at math. I tutored him when he took college math classes. No one suggested he give up. They expected him to man up and do what it took to meet the standard to complete his goals.
This is very much a gendered difference in student outcomes and it has all kinds of negative consequences for not only both genders -- because men don't get support for making other choices if they genuinely can't do something -- but for the entire fabric of society.
Thank you for your feedback; it was quite interesting.
One thought:
I am not comfortable with the suggestion here that a parent needs advanced education to successfully homeschool.
I did not mean to make that suggestion, either. I deliberately chose the language of my comment to leave open the possibility of pedagogical experience or aptitude without the corresponding formal education. Perhaps it is my mistake that this did not come across as emphatically as I had meant it.
However, I still harbour a great deal of scepticism about the capacity of many parents I've seen take up home-schooling, simply on the basis that they don't seem particularly knowledgeable, curious, or educated themselves — whether formally or informally.
Well, unfortunately, I think that is sometimes due in part to people in authoritative positions having no respect for their "lessers," whether that is children, women, people of color, poor people, underlings at work or some other category. So a lot of things that get framed as "instruction" or "education" is really about enforcing an unhealthy pecking order that is actively harmful to whomever is framed as "lesser."
There are no easy solutions for that situation. But I think it starts with having a high degree of respect for individuals and their right to choose, even under circumstances where it is challenging to feel real respect for them. Or, perhaps, especially at such times.
For what it's worth, I'm a university drop-out so I have no personal dog in any credentialing fight. :-)
But despite what I'd like to believe is a generously well-rounded upbringing in a university family, I have serious doubts about my ability to home-school my son to anywhere near the same effect as an average public school—and that's bearing in mind the variation in quality among them. I wouldn't dare try.
Then there's the sheer effort and energy involved in juggling multiple subjects. My knowledge on certain subjects doubtless exceeds that of most public school teachers, but certainly not all the core subjects! And knowledge alone doesn't translate into effective teaching ability or experience with presenting information in effective and compelling ways to kids.
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