On 4/6/2010 8:58 AM, John wrote:
On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:40:51 -0500, cavelamb""cavelamb\"@ X
earthlink.net" wrote:

On 4/5/2010 10:36 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:

In other words, home-schooling may be the stupidest economic move anyone
ever made in education.



Is that all that matters, Ed?

The economics of it?

If so, what they get for their money may be things you overlooked.

Safe environment.
no knives, guns, rape, beatings, disease.

Individual instruction.
self paced - not having to wait for the slow learners.

More satisfactory control of the subject matter.
and more responsive to the student's interests and aptitude.

Not a clock driven day.
Work on it until it's done.


Better selection (in parent's opinion) of subject matter.


Things like that


Richard, I think you are looking at home schooling with rose tinted
glasses and for elementary schooling you are probably mostly right but
what about Higher School? I took elementary calculus in high school,
admittedly an introductory course but are the average Mom& Dad
qualified to teach that? Geometry? Chemistry - got the Lab right down
the hall there? Physics? It is quite handy to have a "lab" of sorts
there too, at the very least a weight and a lever and a fulcrum.

In addition, I might comment, the high school I attended, in a little
pokey town in up-state New England, had a fully equipped woodworking
and machine shop and the "Industrial Arts" students learned pattern
making and machine shop theory and practice. They actually
manufactured, in a small way, band saws, wood plainers and jointers
and bench grinders, which were sold through local hardware shops. Not
everyone has a home workshop or is a skilled pattern maker to say
nothing of a master-machinist.

I suggest that rather then the all encompassing term "Home Schooling"
a bit more detailed description is probably needed. Home schooling
through 8th grade? Probably as satisfactory as Public school. Home
Schooling through Secondary School graduation? I would say, rather
doubtful. Home Schooling through Under-graduate degree? Home schooling
through Advanced degree?

Cheers,

John D.
(jdslocombatgmail)

Hi Johm,

I've known several families who home schooled.

As you said, through high school.

Moms learn as they teach. So did Dads.
And yes, that included calculus, chemistry, physics.
All those kids are at or going to go to college.

No, most don't have that kind of infrastructure (labs and shops) at home.
For that there are dedicated teachers who specialize and do have better
set ups.

It's not that home schooled is so great, folks.

It's just that public education in this country sucks hard,



--

Richard Lamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb/

On Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:58:38 +0700, John wrote:

In addition, I might comment, the high school I attended, in a little
pokey town in up-state New England, had a fully equipped woodworking
and machine shop and the "Industrial Arts" students learned pattern
making and machine shop theory and practice. They actually
manufactured, in a small way, band saws, wood plainers and jointers
and bench grinders, which were sold through local hardware shops. Not
everyone has a home workshop or is a skilled pattern maker to say
nothing of a master-machinist.


And those days are long long gone virtually everywhere in the US.

Even the very high quality schools in my area..funded with oil company
money..have no shop classes anymore.

Gunner


"First Law of Leftist Debate
The more you present a leftist with factual evidence
that is counter to his preconceived world view and the
more difficult it becomes for him to refute it without
losing face the chance of him calling you a racist, bigot,
homophobe approaches infinity.

This is despite the thread you are in having not mentioned
race or sexual preference in any way that is relevant to
the subject." Grey Ghost

wrote in message
...
On Apr 5, 10:03 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

If you know of an exception, I'd love to hear it.

--
Ed Huntress


Well, I'm glad you pointed that out, Dan, since my statement was about
typical parents. g


How stupid can you be. Exceptions are always not typical.

Oh, gosh, Dan, you just keep knocking my feet out from under me. d8-)


That's great. Now, which of those college graduates is staying home to
fulfill the roll of maybe 1/10 of a high-quality, highly-paid private
school
teacher?


And how is that relavant?

It would be good to know if a PhD. in biochemistry is spending his or her
time teaching 5-year-olds how to add and subtract, which is certainly a wise
use of the resources employed to educate the parent, or if it's a BA in art
history trying to teach AP calculus to high schoolers.

'Just curious.

And how old are your grandneices?



See above.

Dan
--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Apr 5, 10:03 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

If you know of an exception, I'd love to hear it.
--
Ed Huntress

Well, I'm glad you pointed that out, Dan, since my statement was about
typical parents. g


How stupid can you be. Exceptions are always not typical.

Oh, gosh, Dan, you just keep knocking my feet out from under me. d8-)

That's great. Now, which of those college graduates is staying home to
fulfill the roll of maybe 1/10 of a high-quality, highly-paid private
school
teacher?


And how is that relavant?

It would be good to know if a PhD. in biochemistry is spending his or her
time teaching 5-year-olds how to add and subtract, which is certainly a wise
use of the resources employed to educate the parent, or if it's a BA in art
history trying to teach AP calculus to high schoolers.

Gosh Ed, if you consider all the people in the U.S. who are employed
beneath their education levels....
There's a large number, some by choice, some not.
In a society that values freedom to make your own choices, this is not a
negative.
Society is far from efficient.

On Sat, 3 Apr 2010 15:09:03 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
On Apr 3, 5:28*pm, Frnak McKenney
wrote:


If you're curious as to why coming from a family with an above-average
education gives a kid a "leg up", the best explanation I've read so
far is described in E.D. Hirsch's writings; "The Knowledge Deficit"
is a good introduction.

Frank McKenney

Thanks for the book recommendation. I will see what the library
system here has of his writings. To me it is obvious to the most
casual observer why coming from a family of above average
education gives kids a leg up.

Some parents do things like encouraging their kids to read.
During the summer after I was in about the third or fourth grade,
my parents decided that they would read " A tail of Two Cities "
to my sister and me. After a day or so, it became obvious that
reading aloud was too slow, so my sister and I each read it by
ourselves. But without my parents influence, I would not gotten
interested in reading that book.

Dan

What you describe is important, and my brothers and sister and I
were fortunate to have parents and a grandmother who enjoyed reading
to us. I also think that the "too slow" part of it -- the
experience of wanting to "suck in" the story faster than someone
could read it to me -- was a useful incentive for learning how to
read for myself.

I know that I spent some hours working with my little sister putting
up magnet-backed plastic letters on a metal "board" and helping her
"sound out" words: "kkk" "aaa" "tuh" and so on. I wouldn't claim I
"taught her how to read" based on that, but I hope I helped a bit
with what Hirsch would consider, if I'm reading him properly, the
"decoding" part of reading: the ability to see certain shapes, to
extract the relevant features, to properly "chunk" them into words
and sentences, and to understand how they "fit" together... and to
be able to detect "bad combinations" even when we don't understand
their meanings.

This is the alphabet, phonics, spelling, syntax, grammar, and
punctuation part of reading, but those are just the names we use
once we've learned about such things; we first learn "what sounds
right" and "what sounds wrong". If, for example, we hear someone
say "All brillig were the slithy toves", we don't need a Lewis
Carrol Edition of the O.E.D. at hand to feel secure in assuming that
"brillig" and slithy" describe some sort of qualities possessed by
something called "toves".

But Hirsch points out that this "decoding", while necessary, is far
from sufficient for the "comprehension" portion of reading; we need
to know those pesky meanings as well in order to understand what
someone has written -- or spoken, for that matter. We need to have
what Hirsch describes as a pool of knowledge that we share with
those who we speak to or exchange words with: the understanding
that "kkk-aaa-tuh" sounded, or "cat" written, describes a small
furry quadruped that feels warm and likes to be petted (and can
inflict painful scratches if we fail to handle it respectfully
grin).

Further, when we write or speak, we need not only to have this
knowledge, but two more things as well: the understanding that our
own kowledge may not exactly match what is known to our "audience",
and the ability to expand or contract what we write accordingly,
based on the context of our conversation and who we are writing to
or speaking with. This simple posting is taking me an hour to
compose, not because I lack the words or because I have trouble
using more than two fingets on the same keyboard, but because I need
to constantly adjust what I am writing by selecting from multiple
alternative words and phrases those which "seem likely to" (no
guarantees in this business) convey to you what it is I have in my
own mind. It's tough, it takes a _lot_ of practice, and at best I
can only hope to do... "better"... each time.

Without this sense of "appropriate level" it's easy to assume our
audience (which may only be one person) knows everything we do, with
the result that we assume that sentences like the following will
actually make sense to someone:

"I forgot to call them about the thing... and he didn't remind me,
so when I went there it wasn't ready"

We can also make the mistake assuming that we share too little
knowledge with our audience, and wind up telling a hardware store
clerk about the metal content of, manufacturing methods for, and
assorted ways of packaging stainless steel 6-32 machine screws
before adding "and we need three of them" (one hopes he is still
listening at that point grin!).

We gain this knowledge, as children, at an incredible rate through
all of our senses. Once we know that this warm fuzzy critter is a
"kkk-aaa-tuh" our eyes tell us about its coloring -- even if we
don't yet have names for the colors -- and we can distinguish one
"kkk-aaa-tuh" from another once we've seen two of them. We infer
amazingly from those contexts we are exposed to, and we learn
further as we expose our assumptions to others and are corrected.

But this "exposure" and "correction" is essential if we are to gain
this knowledge. If we never meet people from ourside our family, or
from beyond our neighborhood, life will be simpler and we can get
away with communication via "pointing and pronouns"; it is only as
we come into contact with people and places further afield, or learn
about them through verbal or written descriptions, that we being to
realize the need for assuming some things and explaining others.

I will get, for example, e-mail messages from my two nephews that
consist of one or two declarative sentences. They aren't being
deliberately obscure (at least, I assume not grin!), they simply
assume that the words they have written are sufficient to convey
exactly to me the entire thought-cluster which inspired them. And
if I _were_ exactly like them, and if I thought the same way they
did, and if I had had exactly the same experiences they have had
growing up, and if I were this moment surrounded by the same
environment they were when they wrote me, then I suspect that their
sentence _would_ be clear to me. But I'm _not_ them, and the result
is that their attempt to convey their thought has failed.

Hirsch describes much of today's K-12 education as being focussed on
"methods" and "skills" to the point of minimizing or ignoring
specific content on the assumption that those skills can be used
with equal effectiveness across all contexts. This, Hirsch argues,
is a mistake, because without facts to apply them to, to "ground"
them, "skills" and "methods" alone are as useless as software with
no data to operate on. Worse, this shared pool of knowledge cannot
be absorbed all at once; it is accumulated slowly, building up over
long periods of time, faster in infancy, rapidly during shildhood,
and much more slowly as one reaches adulthood.

A child growing up in an environment where he/she/it is constantly
exposed to this knowledge, where parents discuss (e.g.) mysterious
things like "interest rates" and "democracy" and "radio waves" won't
instantly acquire the lore behind these, but they will be aware --
in a "slithy tove" sort of way -- that there is _something_ out
there to be learned, and they will pick up other references to these
in other contexts. Not only will such a child have more abnswers,
he will also -- and perhaps more importantly -- be aware of more
_questions_.

And any child who is taught that all there is to writing is putting
words that "feel right" down on paper with no thought for an
audience wider than themselves or a small circle of friends will be
at a severe disadvantage when they attempt to communicate with
people beyond that small circle; when a stranger attempts to make
sense of our words, poor spelling and grammar make poorly-worded
ideas that much harder to interpret.

I'd better stop here. I will add a caveat that what you've read is
my own interpretation of what I thought Hirsch was saying, and it
may not be possible for me to distinguish who contributed what at
this point. grin!

I have read four of Hirsch's books so far; all share many ideas, but
if I had to give a one-line synopsis of each it would look like
this:

Cultural Literacy; "We have a problem in K-12 education, and it
seems to be the result of.."

The Schools We Need: An exploration of the problem and specific
research supporting Hirsch's position.

The Knowledge Deficit: A summary, with many fewer footnotes.

The Making of Americans: Why a shared pool of knowledge matters to
society as well as to the individual.


Hm. Time for lunch...


Frank McKenney
--
If teachers now lack the knowledge they need to teach reading and
other subjects well, it is not because they are innately
incompetent but because they have been trained under faulty
romantic ideas about the nature of reading and the worthlessness
of "mere iformation". -- E.D. Hirsch, Jr./The Knowledge Deficit
--
Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney ayut mined spring dawt cahm (y'all)

On Apr 6, 9:58*am, John wrote:


I suggest that rather then the all encompassing term "Home Schooling"
a bit more detailed description is probably needed. Home schooling
through 8th grade? Probably as satisfactory as Public school. Home
Schooling through Secondary School graduation? I would say, rather
doubtful. Home Schooling through Under-graduate degree? Home schooling
through Advanced degree?

Cheers,

John D.
(jdslocombatgmail)

You brought up some good points. My thoughts are that home schooling
through the fifth grade is probably much better than public school.
And those grades are probably very important is laying the foundation
for learning.

From 6th grade through high school, I would use a system which is a
combination of large class lectures and small class with interaction
between teacher and students. So for something like high school
physics, you would have one teacher give a lecture to all the students
taking physics. Then you would have small classes with labs and
interaction between the students and teacher. As it is now each
physics teacher gets to give the same lecture four or five times. I
do not know how teachers can stand to repeat the same lecture that
many times. ( Do not expect this to ever happen. It would be fought
by the education unions ).

This could work in conjunction with home schooling in several ways.
One way would be to have the students come to school to hear the
lectures. Or they could be video taped, and the home schooler and the
home schoolee could watch together.

College level is where home schooling is not so good. For one thing I
think students should not live at home when they are taking college
level courses.
Living in a dorm you learn a lot from your fellow students. And the
courses ought to be at a level where it would be difficult for parents
to have the necessary knowledge. Maybe if say you are taking
chemistry, and one of your parents is a chemist. But not so good if
you are taking organic chemistry, and your parents are a mathematician
and an economist.

For graduate work you generally have very little interaction with the
professors, except for some talking with your adviser about your
thesis. And the same for post doc. At that level you should be doing
original work, so there really isn't anyone that can teach you. Same
applies when one is working. By that time you should have learned how
to learn, and you do it on your own.

Dan

On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 06:28:14 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

Huh? So money doesn't count after $100,000? If you feel that way, and if =
you
have any to spare, it counts a hell of a lot to me, and would be much
appreciated. d8-)

It is not that money does not count after $100,000. It is that it
does not count as much. Well known economic theory. Sort of like the
first bite of ice cream is good, but by the time one has eaten a pint,
the desire for ice cream is greatly diminished.

Technical name for this is "marginal utility." This is
operational in the "logical economic man" on which so much of the
economic analysis depends. The problem is that there are some
people that money becomes an end in itself such that marginal
utility is not a factor/consideration in their personality. This
is not limited to the acquisition of money. One example is "sex
addiction" ala Tiger Woods.
For one example of a money compulsion (and the bad effects of
society) see Massey Energy [Don Blankenship] and mountaintop
mining (25 fatalities this week in one mine explosion)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...1&hpid=topnews
snip
Massey has frequently been cited for safety violations, including
about 50 citations at the Upper Big Branch mine in March alone.
Many of those 50 citations were for poor ventilation of dust and
methane, failure to maintain proper escape ways, and the
accumulation of combustible materials.

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration cited the mine for
1,342 safety violations from 2005 through Monday for a total of
$1.89 million in proposed fines, according to federal records.
The company has contested 422 of those violations, totaling
$742,830 in proposed penalties, according to federal officials.
snip
He has also thrown his weight around West Virginia, shelling out
more than $3 million of his own money for ads to help defeat a
West Virginia state Supreme Court justice. Blankenship expected
the justice to rule against Massey in an appeal of a $50 million
award for a small coal company owner, who convinced a jury that
Massey had driven his company into bankruptcy. The new judge cast
the deciding vote against the $50 million award. The U.S. Supreme
Court later ruled that the new judge should have recused himself.
snip

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/west-v...ry?id=10293691
Records Show Upper Big Branch Mine Amassed Scores of Safety
Citations, Thousands in Fines
snip
The West Virginia coal mine where an explosion killed 25 workers
and left another four unaccounted for in the worst mining
disaster since 1984 had amassed scores of citations from mining
safety officials, including 57 infractions just last month for
violations that included repeatedly failing to develop and follow
a ventilation plan.
snip
The nation's sixth biggest mining company by production, Massey
Energy took in $24 million in net income in the fourth quarter of
2009. The company paid what was then the largest financial
settlement in the history of the coal industry for the 2006 fire
at the Aracoma mine, also in West Virginia. The fire trapped 12
miners. Two suffocated as they looked for a way to escape.
==Aracoma later admitted in a plea agreement that two permanent
ventilation controls had been removed in 2005 and not replaced,
according to published reports.== {emphasis added}
snip


And also we have a progressive taxation system. So earning $200,000
does not leave you with twice as much money to spend as earning
$100,000.

In terms of disposable income, after the basic necessities of
life [food, shelter and clothing] are covered, they may well have
*MORE*. It is well know that people at the bottom end of the
economy must spend every cent they earn on the necessities of
life with nothing left over.


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).