Well, most of the thread seems to be concerned with Alec's points, and gone off on a tangent, but there was this:Rosemary Roberts wrote:By all means!Julie T wrote:Any objections, Alec and Rosemary, to my putting your queries (nameless) on a Home Ed forum?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OLD CHESTNUT NUMBER 1 - Brainwashing
One group levels the charge of brainwashing at another group. Each group
considers that only it has the access to Truth. So the secularists accuse the
religious of unscientific brainwashing, and the religious accuse secularists
amoral humanist brainwashing. Which group is in the right?
Well, as a Muslim vegetarian who believes in evolution, and attends Quaker
meetings, I know what the right answer is...
but that is between me and my God.
Now do I brainwash my children to abstain from pork, or all meat? Or do I let my
Christian wife brainwash them to eat anything they like, including, dare I say,
the flesh of the swine?
OLD CHESTNUT NUMBER 2 (Slightly less frivolous than the above chestnut) - Should
parents pursue a teacher training course before they can HE their children?
1 - A teaching qualification is no guarantee of teaching ability. I have had
plenty of teachers who although qualified, left me bored uninspired, and
learning little.
2 - HE operates in a different paradigm to schooling. What applies in one
context will not apply to another.
3 - Managing a class of 30 children is a very different proposition to
one-to-one personalized instruction.
4 - To paraphrase John Taylor Gatto: teaching is a function; education is an
intrinsic process that cannot be forced extrinsically.
5 - 1000's of SAT results in the US have shown that there is no significant
difference in the academic performance of HE children whose parents do not have
a teaching qualification to the performance of HE children whose parents do have
a teaching qualification. Thus the idea that a teaching qualification is
essential to HE is nothing more than a myth.
6 - US courts have examined this issue and determined that whether parents have
a teaching qualification or not, has no bearing on the attainment of their HEd
children.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------