Oh RCR, I don't have any experience, as you perfectly well know (no kids). Didn't claim to. I do have experience attending schools in other places though. Vast experience. Way, way more experience than any decent person should have. We should get together some time, maybe we can talk about that, or about something more pleasant.
My statement remains that everywhere I go, the people believe gov't schools are bad and failing. That's the consensus across political/social/all lines. Everywhere I go, the same people believe the schools in their particular area to be an exception, that they really aren't that bad, in fact are pretty good, test scores are above average, etc. (unless their family has had specific very bad experiences with the school that turned them against it).
We definetly should John, I think about that everytime I drive by that big yellow fronted buliding (about 10 times a day)
I don't have a huge amount of public school experience, other than a short stint in Wisconson, my kids were raised in WY, but other than a couple notable situations it's not been a bad experience. I'm sure it's different in other places, I've heard the horror stories. Thats a mute point though I simply wouldn't live in those places, period.
We have good friends that home school, (my daughter and wifes circle of friends for the most part) so I have spent a lot of time around those kids and thier parents, they are good folks. They have the same problems as everyone else, two of the teenage girls in thier home schooling 'group' came up pregnent this year (yep, the usual way
) and a few nights ago my daughter called me to pick her up from the 'home schooler' prom (christian rock band, heavily supervised et' all) early when her friends date broke out the pot. ('home schooled with the home grown'
I thought it was funny, wife did not
). I didn't ask why she wanted to leave on the phone, simply went to town and picked up her and her friend up and we laughed about it over a milk shake on the way home.
Home schooling does not cure all. I'm sure that there are families out there who have 9 year olds doing calculous and pre-med bioliogy between reciting the Declaration of Independence from memory for sport, but that isn't the average 'home schooled' kid any more than the average public educated kid is a brain dead robot of the state with various mental issues. My daughter goes to college this year with a fist full of merit based scholarships from private organizations and the WY state mineral based scholarship program. Her best friend couldn't score high enough to qualify. It was a little sad, but not altogether unexpected (by me anyway
), my daughter works her butt off pulling a 4.0 in very difficult classes (last 4 years) and her friend gets up at 9 or 10 'works at her own pace' and can't hold a job because it just 'doesn't work out' . Many evenings our phone has rang with her friend wanting to go riding (horses) and my daughter was either on the way out to work (she interns at a vet clinic) or was buried in homework. She's finding out now that the hard work pays off.
Kids are kids, nothing is going to change that. I think there's a lot of kids out thier that are home schooled more for the parents sake than than the kids sake.
RCR
