Splintering our Education System based on FAITH

I'm not down on home schooling but these articles you linked to are sort of comparing apples and oranges as they are comparing home schooled to public schooled when a more correct (in my view) comparison would be to compare the home schooled only to public schooled students with highly involved parents. I'm of the opinion that parents that home school there children are more involved in their children's education then the average public schooled child's parents are. I think having parents highly involved in their childrens education, makes more of a difference than whether the student was public or home schooled.

qsYour ignorance of the success of homeschoolers is remarkable considering that it is well known. There may be better articles than the following on the subject, I don't know. I did only a cursory search.[/qs]Thanks for the info.I read the links, Ned has arady pointed out the anecdotel nature of the first one, and the next two are studies done by home schooling associations.

The link was given in my post to holmes above, #5, but here it is again. The Lost Tools of LearningThe whole essay was intended to give a view of education that is completely different from whatever holmes is imagining, a picture of rigor in academic disciplines. The medieval curriculum of the Trivium and the Quadrivium is what she proposes, the Trivium being designed to give young children the tools for thinking and solving problems and communicating well, such as Latin, foreign languages, Logic, Grammar, Debate, upon which the Quadrivium later builds, which is particular subject matter. She covers a great deal of territory rather briefly, and the whole thing is relevant, I believe, to the subject of education in general, and it's a fun essay to read anyway.

Thanks for that point, I was going to make it, but was too slow.To restate, these studies are comparing a self-selected group to the average group, bound to be some difference, esp. when one of the factors of the self-selection was concern for the children.

I'm sure you're right that parental involvement is a very large factor, but the point was to answer the idea Holmes seems to have that Christian schooling, including homeschooling, can only lead children in an anti-intellectual direction, and the fact is that it does not. They are more likely to go to college and do well there.

My reading of the third one was that the study was done independantly.Certainly one would want a separate review of such work but for now I think it has to be taken at face value.However, there are, as noted, still someissues to resolve. As Faith and others say about some of the sciences: "Time will tell". An experiment is being conducted. I do not predict a continuation of such results.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the views in the Sayers essay, there is an excerpt that seems very to the point: I doubt an education based solely on the ideas of medieval scholasticism is sufficient for the 21st century. But the tendency of some posters here to fling "medieval" as a pejorative bespeaks a lack of wanting to engage some of the merits of at least incorporating some features of it. After all , the Enlightenment natural law tradition does owe something to Aquinas. While recognizing the merits of other venerable cultures such as China and India, there is no real value in seeing the Western cultural heritage as solely something to trash.Remember, the postmodernists see science as something socially constructed and lacking real epistemic value.On the other hand, as someone who accepts evolution, I think the fortress mentality of those who don't, and who see nothing in modern society except things to be dismayed about, seems to lead to overromanticizing an imagined "better time" that never really was.
I see the deisre to homeschool as a retreat from serious engagement with a complex and sometimes intimidating world. But hsitorically, such obscurantism only results in further marginalization.

Damm! I wish I could have written the point that concisely!

Why don't christians establish universitys along these lines, then when their sucess became obvious, students would flock to them, money would flow, and all the great profs would want to teach there?

Well I don't believe that home schooling inveritibly leads children in an anti-intellectual direction, the science content of some of these home schooling programs definitely is definitely anti-science. Hopefully, since they are more likely to be college bound, they will quickly learn that science is not an enemy to their faith and they can contribute to it, even in geology and evolution.

Thank you!It's only my ego that keeps my diamond afloat, so any boost is appreciated.LOL

I taught students one year in high school sciences (before podiatry school) and noticed a "wholesome" appearance and behavior of about 10-15 children who had been home-schooled (about 75%-80% of these that is). I personally envied their most excellent personalities.Methinks their Christian faith & love was (in general) a beautiful and welcome addition to my classes.Philip

Again, I'm not pursuing the topic of homeschooling as such. I only brought it up to answer Holmes' suspicion that all forms of Christian schooling would put children at odds with the mainstream. He is wrong. They are taught the same subjects, only so far a better job is being done with them -- for whatever reason. The important thing is that they are WELL fitted educationally by the best standards of education, and Holmes' fears can be put to rest.In any event, the movement among Christians now seems to be away from homeschooling to establishing more Christian schools, where I hope they will more and more incorporate the methods and objectives sketched out in the essay by Dorothy Sayers
The Lost Tools of Learning
because I believe it will equip children to be excellent thinkers, quite the opposite of what Holmes seems to be imagining, some kind of backwater teaching of nothing but idiosyncratic superstitions? EVERYTHING I posted to him was to show him that his idea of Christian education is wrong, that in all its forms it tends toward excellent education, period.

Splintering is the perfect word to use since the CREOs are using the Wedge Stratagy.It goes farther than education, it is just the point of the wedge. Making America into a faith-based nation is the true agenda. Education is only the point of the real wedge. (no need for reply if deemed derail)

Can you give evidence of such anti-science homeschooling curricula? That is VERY VERY far from my observation of what is taught in Christian homeschooling. Science is very well taught.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-31-2005 02:58 PM