Friday, August 27, 2004

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Ed Dept: 1.1M Students Home-Schooled

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Ed Dept: 1.1M Students Home-Schooled: "Home schooling presents several questions that must be considered, he said. Among them: Do parents with no formal training as teachers know how to handle a variety of subjects or to tailor instruction for children of different ages? Do students get the same materials they would have at schools, from books to science labs? Are families with two working parents prepared to go to a single income so that one parent can teach at home? Also, Feinberg said, parents must consider whether their children will emerge from home schooling with limited exposure to other children and various cultures. More federal research is needed to help resolve such questions about home schooling, he said. 'At some point, children are going to have to interact with the rest of the world,' he said. 'If they haven't had the opportunity to build their emotional muscles so they have that capacity to interact, how effective are they going to be outside their cloistered environment?'"

Sad to see that some myths about homeschooling persist in centers of supposed higher education. Sad, but not surprising. I especially like the part about needing more federal research, which, of course, will steer money to the same institutions to study the problems they have 'discovered'.

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