|
... I think it would be fairly difficult for someone to homeschool two kids out on the campaign trail without lots of help.
I would rather see them pay a tutor for Piper and Willow than to see a $150k wardrobe expense -- as I said in another thread, if they have that much money to spare, I'd be happy to let them fix my teeth for 1/8th of the cost.
My mother was a single parent, worked full-time, and homeschooled me for two years -- I completed grades 8, 9, and 10 in those two years. But the reason we were able to do it was that Mom trusted me and I didn't betray that trust. I could wake up or go to sleep whenever I wanted to, watch soap operas, spend time on the computer, etc, but I had to have all of that day's work done by the time she got home. I also usually cooked in the afternoon. She would come home, we'd eat dinner, and then we'd go over the work I'd done and see if there was anything she needed to clear up for me.
For math and science, subjects my mother didn't feel she was expert at, we did correspondence courses through the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and through Duke University. For the cost of the UNL courses they sent all the lab equipment that I needed for physical science and chemistry labs, but I really didn't do a biology lab -- Mom didn't want the smell of formaldehyde in the house.
All in all, we spent about 2 hours each night going over classwork and discussing reading assignments.
I went back to public school, they tested me and they said I could have skipped 11th as well, but they encouraged me to enter as an 11th-grader because of the National Merit competition. Because of homeschooling, I was able to start in AP Chemistry and AP Physics my 11th grade year, and I did AP Biology and Microbiology for my senior year, and was a monitor for the AP Chemistry class.
-------
As for the critics who say that Michelle and Barack shouldn't send their kids to private school.... the reason we homeschooled was that the public schools in my area had major issues. I was one of those geeky teacher's pet kids, with way too high of a vocabulary, so I was picked on mercilessly in public school. When the teacher was a good one, it didn't cross over from the playground and bus stop to the classroom, so I could cope.
But by the time I was almost done with 4th grade, I'd had my glasses broken by other kids innumerable times, been beat up several times, gotten a concussion, and finally a girl shoved me into playground equipment -- I tried to keep from hitting my head again and instead my arm slammed into the railing of a metal slide. The playground aide apparently saw what happened, but when I went to her and asked to go to the nurse's office she said "You aren't bleeding, I'm not letting you out of here." I must have been pretty adrenaline-ized because I smarted off to her for the first time ever and said "I'm going anyway". Two sixth-graders, Boy Scouts, saw the commotion and then saw my very pale face and shaky walk and carried me. Nurse didn't think it was broken but splinted it anyway, and Mom reluctantly picked me up from school.
The x-ray was startling -- the outer bone of my left arm had shattered, there was a two inch gap where you couldn't even see any bone fragments. (The adrenaline/endorphins finally wore off about 30 minutes after Mom got me home and was running to the pharmacy to pick up my pain meds -- I think I howled for about another half-hour until the medicine kicked in.)
Mom then insisted on meeting with the principal at that school, and they refused to do anything about it saying that any fight on the playground had to be two-sided and they wouldn't do anything to the girl unless I took the same punishment. Mom then sent me to a private school for two years, until she couldn't afford it even with the financial aid they offered.
In 7th grade the bullying left the hallway and entered the classroom -- a science teacher was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and all of her classes were rowdy. My books were thrown in the aquarium, glasses broken three times, and a needle from Home Ec jabbed into the back of my neck, all during class.
When Mom went to the principal this time, I was with her, and the guy pulled out a BIBLE (in Public School!) and said that I needed to pray for God to give me the strength to put up with it.
I was withdrawn from school the next day.
Sometimes public schools just aren't the best thing for the individual child. I'm not going to say that all children should be homeschooled, or that homeschooling would even be good for all children. Many kids really love the interaction between their classmates, they're popular or at least not bullied, or they can't be trusted to independently study. My social life was the BBS scene, though -- I met a lot of kids my age that way, and interacted a lot with adults (even if a few of the interactions were a bit creepy.)
|