Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Journal #8

Contrary to the belief that home education is detrimental to children, in most cases homeschooling better prepares students for college. This is shown in countless studies and through my own personal experience. Studies from Dr. Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. , founder of the National Home Education Research Institute, claims that the amount of individual learning in a home school environment nurtures traits that benefit that students need to succeed in college, such as, self-motivation, work ethic, and industrious minds. More and more home educated students are getting into top universities, like Harvard. The atmosphere of home education tends to be very similar to college, especially since it allows kids to base their studies around their interests, passions, and goals. Isn’t this exactly what we do in college? Picking a major, and having the rest of our studies build to that. Also, I have seen many of my home schooled friends take classes at community colleges during high school instead of taking a high school class to prepare for a college class. Why not take gen-ed college classes to help prepare for their future in college? One of my friends, a former home schooler, would not have been considered the smartest student, but she decided to take college classes her junior and senior year. She will be graduating from high school in may, and she will also have her Associate’s Degree in Fine Arts. It cannot be denied that the flexibility and personalization of studies in home education closely resemble college, therefore helping home schooled students to fare better once in college.
-Jocelyn Deckard

6 comments:

  1. Throughout highschool I really never came in counter with anyone that was homeschooled. I could definitly see the positive and negitive effects of being homeschooled. You have to be driven and dedicated toward your goals to achieve what you want in life. If I was homeschooled, I would probably slack off and not do as well. A negitive aspect of going into homeschooling would be that you wouldn't have the social skills and self-confidence that students have to deal with in public school. A positive effect would be that you could get taught one on one with your mentor. Overall I believe homeschooling is a choice; and can have positive and negitive effects on learning depending on the mentality of the pupil.

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  2. Garrett--but whose choice is homeschooling? The student's or the parent's?
    Jocelyn--are there guidelines that a parent must meet/agree to in order to be qualified to teach at home?

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  3. I am going to have to disagree with Garrett on this because i know a family that home schooled their children and they still had a social life. They were two girls, one was my age and the other was a year younger and they still went to prom with us, came to all the athletic events and came to all of our "get togethers." Although these girls joined in on all of this stuff there are still other little things that they missed out on such as giving speeches in front of a group, and just simply having more than one teacher. I believe that having a different variety of teacher would be a big help when going to college. Jocelyn, you make very good points that i have never thought about even knowing these two girls. For example, when you are home schooled, the atmosphere is closely related to that of college. The student gets to decide what they want to work with instead of having to follow along with everyone else just to pass the tests and like you said, you can take college classes. You can take college classes in public school as well i dont believe that you can take enough to graduate high school with an associates degree in college.

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  4. I believe Jocelyn is very persuading and informative. i was never really informed about home scholing and just thought they were kind of socially akward because they were never in the public/private school environment. I have come to realize that is not true, one of my best friends in home schooled and she is very well educated and knows what she wants in life. I feel i messed around more in high school and didnt take it seriously. i believe homeschooling does prepare you more for college.

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  5. I think it depends on the individual. I was forced to be home schooled once and it did not work out too well. I did much better in a public school environment. However, I have friends that did very well being home schooled.

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  6. I thing high school gives you a broader knowledge base. When you are home schooled, all you learn is what textbooks have in them, and maybe a little of what knowledge your parents have. throughout school i learned from countless teachers, and usually learned a little bit of general knowledge from each one of them. My knowledge base is a lot broader from going to public school for 13 years. I didn't just learn what was in textbooks, i learned different ways of learning from having so many different teachers.

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