Re: homeschooling-public school teachers are scapegoats

I am a homeschooling Dad and I never slam P.S. teachers.
You folk do too much for too little pay. Please read , as
soon as the moderator approves it, my posting on why my wife
and I chose to homeschool.

Guy

On 7/13/05, carr wrote:
> Having worked several years in a large public high
> school(though not as a teacher), my impression of the
> problems of public education is that they have little to do
> with teachers. Most teachers I met were gifted, creative
> individuals and I would have loved to have been in their
> classes years ago when I was a teenager. They are doing
> their best to teach a population that has many
distractions.
> Also, in today's litigious society, teachers are relatively
> powerless to combat disruptions in their classrooms and
> personal accountability for student behavior is an
> increasingly rare thing. Rather, the teachers become the
> scapegoat for anything and everything negative that happens
> in their classrooms. They often have little administrative
> or parental back-up for decisions that would benefit their
> teaching environment. This must be very disheartening for
> teachers and burnout and poor morale seems to be on the
> rise, probably much worse in some schools than others.
> That said, I have chosen to homeschool my children for
at
> least part of their education.(And I am one of those people
> who used to think homeschooling was a very wierd thing
> before I had my own kids). This has been an agonizing
> decision that required months of thought, prayer and
> research. Am I nervous that I am not a teacher? Yes, I
> certainly am. However, though I may not have a teaching
> certificate and all that it requires, I do feel confident
> that I know my what makes my child tick, what her passions
> are, what scares and intimidates her, what motivates her
> etc. better than any other person out there. I feel this
> knowledge plus a desperate love for my child and the fact
> that there is a one on one ratio of teaching will help us
> succeed.
> I think that when homeschooling fails, it is because this
> decision was taken too lightly or perhaps as a defensive,
> reactionary move and as a way of "punishing" the school
> system. Homeschooling is a huge committment that requires
> lots of planning and forethought and should never be done
on
> impulse.
> I don't really understand all the hostility on these
> posts. I am sure there are homeschoolers out there who are
> not doing a stellar job of educating their kids, just as
> there are kids in a less than satisfactory public school
> environment. There is no perfect teaching environment and
> there are pluses and minuses to every way of teaching. To
> choose an educational environment for one's child is a very
> personal decision that considers many factors. There are as
> many children thriving in public schools as there are
> exemplary homeschoolers.