Christ Centered Gamer

ArchAngel wrote: But I would not homeschool my children. I'm still dealing with issues from it today. Yes, in more academic fields, I excelled past my schooled counter parts, but there was much that was delayed and pushed back, leading to various inexperiences and anxieties.
I honestly didn't notice it much until later in life. The fact of the matter is, I grew up in a bubble of my parent's design. An artificial environment. It's really hard to try rewriting yourself but if I want to survive or succeed, I need to undo what was done by homeschooling.
I'm not saying homeschooling is across the board disastrous, but it gives an inordinate amount of power to the parents and my parents spent most of their energy raising a child and not a man.


I don't know. This must be the umpteenth time editing this post. I didn't realize opening this subject up would let out so much emotion and anxiety. I feel it crushing me. I feel like breaking down. What's the deal with me?
Sometimes, I just can't even; I'm just odd.
What a terrible pun.

Sorry.

Whatever.

Aww, do you want a hug? Ahem... a manly hug, of course.

Seriously, though, if you want someone to talk to about your feelings, you know you've got friends here. Send me a PM if you're not comfortable talking in a public forum. I'm not sure what advice I can offer, but I can at least be there to listen.

But interestingly enough, your experiences with homeschooling - and others that have chimed in (thanks for your input too, guys!) - mirrors the reasons why my wife and I do want to homeschool our children. Both of us attended and graduated from public schools, and after having to deal with the cliques, bullying, ostracization, peer pressures and other abuses - not just at the hands of students but even from teachers - we don't want to subject our children to such a hellacious (am I allowed to use that word?) experience. We both feel that it's not conducive to actually getting an education, and learning the skills that it will take to get ahead in the world.

But we are straying quite a bit off topic, aren't we? So, how about them Brits, wot wot?

I'd be up for discussing homeschooling and its benefits/setbacks, if anyone else wants to. To answer your question, I was, as Arch said, homeschooled. My dad has excellent grammar and is a huge history buff, and my mom is good at math through algebra and also health (she's a nurse). What are neither of them particularly good at? Chemistry, physics, and other sciences. Well, my mom was at one point, but the fundamental physics and such have since been lost to her because, well, it had been some 20 years since she graduated college.

Guess what? I was really good at writing and analyzing grammar, history, and decent enough at Algebra. Precalc and beyond was a lost cause, and I scraped by (and I mean scraped by) in physics. I was lucky enough to find a math tutor for Precalc, but I had to settle with not understanding physics.

I... really don't know many couples or single parents who are equipped to adequately teach their kids every subject.

But yes, I had tremendous setbacks later on in life that I couldn't have foreseen.

Arch and Bruce: maybe the three of us should do an AMA?

ChickenSoup wrote:I'd be up for discussing homeschooling and its benefits/setbacks, if anyone else wants to. To answer your question, I was, as Arch said, homeschooled. My dad has excellent grammar and is a huge history buff, and my mom is good at math through algebra and also health (she's a nurse). What are neither of them particularly good at? Chemistry, physics, and other sciences. Well, my mom was at one point, but the fundamental physics and such have since been lost to her because, well, it had been some 20 years since she graduated college.

Guess what? I was really good at writing and analyzing grammar, history, and decent enough at Algebra. Precalc and beyond was a lost cause, and I scraped by (and I mean scraped by) in physics. I was lucky enough to find a math tutor for Precalc, but I had to settle with not understanding physics.

I... really don't know many couples or single parents who are equipped to adequately teach their kids every subject.

But yes, I had tremendous setbacks later on in life that I couldn't have foreseen.

Arch and Bruce: maybe the three of us should do an AMA?

I was public schooled and I still don't understand physics. Barely scraped a "D" in college, and that's only because the final exam was open-book, take home and I had an engineer friend help explain where I got every single answer wrong. So I'd be inclined to say that public schools were inadequately equipped to teach me in physics... but truth be told, it's because I stink at math. As I've often said, I became an English major for a reason. (And, fortunately, there are plenty of jobs which require little or no physics education.)

What I'm trying to say is that homeschooled, public schooled or private schooled, it all comes down to the teachers and the student. What works well for one person may not work so well for another. It would be best to take things on a case-by-case basis, rather than generalize.

ArchAngel wrote:Both C$ and I used to be homeschoolers. Am I right, C$? Well, anyhow, I was. And I spent more than enough time defending it.

But I would not homeschool my children. I'm still dealing with issues from it today. Yes, in more academic fields, I excelled past my schooled counter parts, but there was much that was delayed and pushed back, leading to various inexperiences and anxieties.
I honestly didn't notice it much until later in life. The fact of the matter is, I grew up in a bubble of my parent's design. An artificial environment. It's really hard to try rewriting yourself but if I want to survive or succeed, I need to undo what was done by homeschooling.
I'm not saying homeschooling is across the board disastrous, but it gives an inordinate amount of power to the parents and my parents spent most of their energy raising a child and not a man.

Also homeschooled, can confirm: Upbringing was not good for the real world.

Sstavix wrote: But we are straying quite a bit off topic, aren't we? So, how about them Brits, wot wot?

I feel like the topic got derailed pretty much from the fourth post onward.

Sstavix wrote:

ChickenSoup wrote:I'd be up for discussing homeschooling and its benefits/setbacks, if anyone else wants to. To answer your question, I was, as Arch said, homeschooled. My dad has excellent grammar and is a huge history buff, and my mom is good at math through algebra and also health (she's a nurse). What are neither of them particularly good at? Chemistry, physics, and other sciences. Well, my mom was at one point, but the fundamental physics and such have since been lost to her because, well, it had been some 20 years since she graduated college.

Guess what? I was really good at writing and analyzing grammar, history, and decent enough at Algebra. Precalc and beyond was a lost cause, and I scraped by (and I mean scraped by) in physics. I was lucky enough to find a math tutor for Precalc, but I had to settle with not understanding physics.

I... really don't know many couples or single parents who are equipped to adequately teach their kids every subject.

But yes, I had tremendous setbacks later on in life that I couldn't have foreseen.

Arch and Bruce: maybe the three of us should do an AMA?

I was public schooled and I still don't understand physics. Barely scraped a "D" in college, and that's only because the final exam was open-book, take home and I had an engineer friend help explain where I got every single answer wrong. So I'd be inclined to say that public schools were inadequately equipped to teach me in physics... but truth be told, it's because I stink at math. As I've often said, I became an English major for a reason. (And, fortunately, there are plenty of jobs which require little or no physics education.)

What I'm trying to say is that homeschooled, public schooled or private schooled, it all comes down to the teachers and the student. What works well for one person may not work so well for another. It would be best to take things on a case-by-case basis, rather than generalize.

Haha, ohhhhh physics. Amazing and complex to the point of pain But I did have an incredible physics professor in college, and I did fairly well (B one semester, AB the next--which is like a 3.5, or exactly between B+ and A-. Darn my college's weird system).

Anyway, yes, I do believe that case-by-case can be a good approach. It's just the family of 6-10 kids all homeschooled that concerns me. I don't generalize, but I do know of families like this near where I live. They're... pretty obviously dooming their kids to be uneducated, or at least misinformed.

I don't know what the system should be for making sure society doesn't churn out uneducated people, but there needs to be one. We can 'Murica all we want, but at what point should it be regulated? That is, at what point does an intervention take place? At what point does someone say "No, you're doing your kids a disservice, and this is wrong?"

I don't know the answer to that question.

Also: High five to Deep for solidarity

Sstavix wrote:Aww, do you want a hug? Ahem... a manly hug, of course.

Haha, therapy maybe.
Thanks for offering a friendly ear. I can't grasp what was going on with me, it's something I'll need to mull around with, all I know is it went pretty deep.

Sstavix wrote:But interestingly enough, your experiences with homeschooling - and others that have chimed in (thanks for your input too, guys!) - mirrors the reasons why my wife and I do want to homeschool our children. Both of us attended and graduated from public schools, and after having to deal with the cliques, bullying, ostracization, peer pressures and other abuses - not just at the hands of students but even from teachers - we don't want to subject our children to such a hellacious (am I allowed to use that word?) experience. We both feel that it's not conducive to actually getting an education, and learning the skills that it will take to get ahead in the world.

That was my dad's reason for homeschooling us, or, well, at least one of his stated reasons. Ironically, it led to a far deeper ostracization. The only person who can really be a friend with a homeschooler is another homeschooler. We're lesser to everyone else. Why do you think there are so many homeschoolers here online? There are exceptions, but I can't recall in any in my life.
I'm still dealing with the inferiority complex it left me. I remember the world-shaking shock I got when I started college and realized some people actually would like to meet me and talk with me. If I went to school, I might at least be able to find some nerd sub-group, but I was a homeschooler, so I was the nerd to the nerd.

There is, however, a certain satisfaction when this social subjugation sublimates into anger.
Dark side, baby.

Sstavix wrote:But we are straying quite a bit off topic, aren't we? So, how about them Brits, wot wot?

Tuddely Pip.

I think Creationism should be an elective offered and referenced in the Science classroom. If you are not interested, then don't take it. If you want your belief to have a class, then get enough people to believe it and support it, and put it in there as an elective. Why not?

Because it's not science, not in any form. It's like teaching sci-fi literature as history. Just fundamentally different and it'd be destructive to break the concepts of the core study.

Spinning the idea around, how comfortable you are about requiring churches to reference evolution and hold classes teaching about "an alternative to genesis." I mean, why not? You don't have to attend those seminars.

There's a massive hypocrisy here. It's a breach of religious freedom if that happened (and it would be), but push the reverse, it's apparently still a breach of religious freedom with these people to not have their beliefs taught in a science classroom.
The difference between me and someone like Kent Hovind, is that I would be fervently against the notion that churches would be required to teach evolutionary theories.

It always strikes me as funny how relativistic creationists get when it comes to "teaching the controversy." It's all absolute truth until they feel they can wedge in their influence by pretending they're all about differing opinions and just having everybody's ideas heard. Faith and dogma is apparently grounded and absolute truth, but as soon it's about verifiable and testable science, it's all just opinions.

I assume everyone here would also be against mentioning the theory that some people believe that the world is carried on the back of a giant turtle?

You're all wrong. Again. We live on the body of a dead giant.

Crazy modern theories....

Just because science doesn't say the world is created via the body of Ymir doesn't mean it's not true.

ChickenSoup wrote:I assume everyone here would also be against mentioning the theory that some people believe that the world is carried on the back of a giant turtle?

UM EXCUSE ME.... I think you mean the world is on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle, swimming through space towards.... something.

Towards the doorway marked "exit" perhaps?

I always get nervous when any point of view is banned outright regardless of the reason. Truth should always be considered strong enough to stand up to scrutiny and competition. Whatever side you believe in, if your approach to education is to silence dissent, you're wrong.

I started watching the new Cosmos the other day and in the first episode was an animated sequence showing someone being punished for speaking against the established view of things. How ironic that the very people who made that show would probably be completely comfortable with being on the other side of that coin.

It's not banned, but it should neither be taught as science. It's not science. There is no research, no hypothesis, not even a functionally defining theory. It's a religious belief people want pushed into a science classroom simply on the grounds that they believe it. The science classroom isn't a public floor of opinions, it's a place of education concerning the scientific method and the body of knowledge accumulated via this process.

Belief in creationism isn't against the law. This isn't censorship. There is a vast difference than having an idea outright banned than not having it taught in science classrooms.
This is understanding what is or isn't science. Creationism has failed just about every test science has thrown at it, to the degree that it doesn't even know out how to fill out the scantron.

If it's still so very difficult for people to understand the difference between science and religion, how about this. Do any of you think it's appropriate for science teachers to dedicate a segment of the course, or an "elective," to teaching that there is no God?