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I just happened to have had a relevant conversation last night with my second son (the lawyer, father of my granddaughters). He's moving to Houston later this year and has found a local immersion school that would give his daughter eight hours a day of school instruction using Spanish. My son and his wife are very interested, but not for eight hours a day. More like two. They might be willing to put her in for half-days. They have written to the principal to ask how much flexibility there is. No response yet, but they aren't holding their breath. In my son's words, "If the principal says 'My way or the highway', we'll be taking the highway." They are already looking into other possibilities. This is where my son told me something unexpected, something that made me feel good personally but very bad for homeschooling in general. His basic statement was: You and mamma did homeschooling in a way where we were taught to value learning as an end in itself. You taught us math, and also why it was fun and why it was important. You taught us reading, and also encouraged it a lot. In contrast (says my son), the parents of most of the kids he knew who were homeschooled seemed to not care much about learning or education per se. They were content to do whatever the minimal requirement was. Their view of homeschooling was that they were keeping their children away from harm and evil, while my wife's and my view was that we had the privilege and joy of teaching our children all the cool things in life in our very own home, rather than farming them out to state-sponsored daycare for forty-five hours a week. I don't remember having considered that viewpoint, and it was eye-opening. As I wrote above, it was personally fulfilling but a dim view of the future of homeschooling. When the parents themselves don't much value learning, the children don't get the best experience. My son brought up something else I remember well. When they were little (but not that little, say around ten or twelve), my wife picked up some so-called Christian textbooks on science. I thumbed through them and found them quite awful, but not bad enough that I refused to let the children use them. One was called something like "God's beautiful earth" and featured deep scientific teachings like, "Look at this beautiful world! God created it. The oceans hold much marine life. God created them." It was embarrassing to read. No scientific principles were conveyed, and for that matter no important religious principles, either. In retrospect, it's obvious that the books were targeted toward homeschooling parents who neither knew nor cared much about science, but who were looking for something to provide some science learning of some sort to their children. At that point, you can start making strong arguments that public school is actually better (in that narrow area) than homeschooling. I fear that this might be very widespread, and that my wife and I might be a distinct minority with respect to our feelings on the importance and beauty of education. I hope that things improve going forward.

It's a good and relevant question Gator. We homeschooled our kids up through high school. I met hundreds of homeschooling parents, maybe a thousand. I never met a single one who thought they knew everything necessary. Much effort in finding good curricula, homeschooling clubs and co-ops. I stink at math, my wife said "I can get them through algebra, then we'll need to figure something out." We figured something out. When it came to teaching stuff, we got a curricula. We taught from the book. I would read next day's lesson, and 90% of was new to me. Then I taught it the next day. That's a big part of homeschooling life - staying one lesson ahead of the kiddo. Lots and lots and lots and lots of questions were answered with "I don't have the faintest clue - lets find out together". There were co-ops and homeschool clubs. Someone knew chemistry, someone knew math, someone knew music, anyone can teach history. Now, a truthful answer to your question has to account for the existence of some parents who screw up their kids. Parents who never join any co-ops, who I never met, because they were off in their secluded house with tinfoil over the windows to keep the bad thoughts out. We know parents like this exist. But those parents exist both in homeschooling and public school settings. You might think public school is a way to catch the bad parents, and that's sometimes true, but each state also has homeschooling standards. Colorado has parents either periodically submit standardized test scores, or have their kids evaluated by a "qualified person" at grades 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. We went the 'qualified person' route, and had our kids evaluated by someone with a masters degree in special ed, CO teaching license, 20 years teaching experience, and 7 years experience giving evaluations. You don't turn in your paperwork, the state comes a'knocking. They never showed up at our door, because we exceeded CO homeschooling requirements.

Satan, being a wise strategist, and like everybody else, having limited resources, is likely to make his strongest attacks on organisations and institutions that make the biggest difference. Schools are at or near the top of the list of organisations with the potential to make the biggest difference. That seems like sufficient reason to me to either prepare children, starting at a very young age, to withstand the attacks of Satan, or to get them away from the places where his attacks are mostly likely to be the strongest.

For the record, I am not in favor of doing away with public education. I am in favor of immediate and drastic reforms in public education. Absent that, I am in favor of people voluntarily pulling their children out of the public schooling system.

I don't have the numbers right now, but one of the big pushes for reading science right now is that there is a gap between the kids who very well could pick up reading on their own and those that need the letters and sounds taught. The latter number is concerningly huge. So while it might sound nice to expose kids and hope they're in the former group, it's not trusty. It's impossible to say why those teens can't read, but I feel a parent ought to know when one reading education plan isn't working. On the other end of the spectrum, today zi l has to assure a mother her kid was reading at an age-appropriate skill level, was passing all assessments of such, and no, is not at risk of having to repeat kindergarten.

I've been surprised at how much my daughter learns without us as parents actually teaching her. Granted, she seems to be a little genius in a lot of ways. But it's constantly amazing to me. As an example, years back before we had ever even thought about starting to teach her how to write we came across a drawing she'd done on her own where she'd written the word "CAT" on it. What's my point? Well... I cannot help but wonder about the variables that go into how and why a child learns or does not. My daughter clearly learned to write the word CAT from television and board books. That combined with her intelligence and she just worked it out. I am, in many ways, confident that we, as parents, could never teach her a thing and she'd end up being functionally literate. (Note: we're not going to put that to the test. It's just something I believe.) That being said...we did provide her with resources to learn how to write CAT. She had board books with words in them that we read to her before bed. She watched a lot of TV/Internet shows that were learning based. So from a certain perspective, it WAS our parenting that taught her to write the word CAT. It just wasn't direct. It was moderately intentional though. We read to her because we knew reading to kids was important. We turned on educational type shows intentionally. When I see a story about a 17-year-old who can barely read above a 4th grade level though....there's something else going on besides just "homeschooling". There are other factors at play...some of which may well be intentional restriction, parental apathy, innate intelligence, genetics, etc., etc. The point being.... stupid, lazy, weird parents have stupid, lazy, weird kids. Homeschooled or not. It is interesting to think about, for sure.

I was thinking about my comment to @LDSGator last night and thought I actually needed to clarify it a bit. First, I wanted to state that the idea of the 3 Rs being important and everything else being icing is only theoretically the case for an individual, but it is NOT the case for society at large. If no one ever learned anything but reading, writing and arithmetic that would not be a better state than diversity of knowledge and learning. Second, the comment that everything else is icing isn't meant to imply that icing isn't good. What, after all, is cake without icing? Unappealing. Icing makes the cake. Third, in discussing it with my wife I had stated something along the lines of your point above... The important things to teach are actually 4 fold. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and.........wait for it........ a love of learning. Yep. That's exactly what I said to my wife. Well, it was that and how to learn sort of rolled up into a single concept. Learning to learn. So I appreciate what you've shared here. As it relates to the, which is better homeschooling or public schooling, question.... well I don't think there's an answer to that because the question isn't actually meaningful. It's the variables within either state that make either better or worse. Making the broader argument that one is better than the other is an argument about those variables. It's an argument that the overall variables involved in the public arena have changed or corrupted for the worse, making public schooling overall more dangerous, and that the variables involved in homeschooling have changed and improved, making homeschooling overall safer. That argument can never be applied individually without looking at the specific variables in the specific instance.

One of the homeschooling families at the dojang are fundamentalist Christians. Not an insult, their words. Their kids are polite, deeply religious and can barely read above a 4th grade level. One is 17 the other is 14.

Understand. Glad it worked out for you, and I’m with you in forgetting high school chemistry, but I’m not a functional adult. At all.

Seriously though. I don't recall a thing about high school chemistry. And yet I'm a functioning adult. Reading, writing, arithmetic. That's important. If you can't give your kids that you've got a problem. The rest is icing.

Lol. I want to like home schooling more than I do. I hated high school and I have zero love for teachers unions. Still though, I have concerns.

Thanks, appreciate your response. Like I’ve said before, my only experience for years with home schoolers was awful. The poor girl was, in her own words “in a prison”. It’s more complicated and sadder than that of course. Also, in the dojang we’ve had a few home schoolers come and go. One I wouldn’t trust with a cat-and I hate cats. But most are fairly normal.

Anecdotes, rumors, theories, and vague passive voice opining do not make for a noticeable jump in mysterious deaths. I mean yes, we know quite a bit about excess deaths over and above what used to be a normal run-rate, starting in 2020. The CDC even has stuff on their website about it. A crapton of suicides, homicides, heart disease related things, fatal diseases, as well as domestic abuse and alcoholism and drug abuse, and depression and anxiety. Seems likely a lot of that is due to lockdowns and quarantines, social isolation, and delays in medical care. But hey, maybe vaccines make you drink and beat your wife more. "The theory has been floated", but "it continues to be blown off as a conspiracy theory." See how crazy that sounds? The notion that fatal changes to our human condition are not being studied, is just plain old flateartherish nonsense. People must spend energy to remain willfully blind, refusing to accept information, to keep an opinion like that.

@NeuroTypical-in your view, how many homeschoolers are humble (for lack of a better word) enough to admit what they don’t know? I’m not being funny here, but generally speaking just being a parent doesn't mean you’ve mastered high school chemistry.

A wiser strategist will use the enemy's tool against them. Or he will use something perceived to be good (with a hidden catch) to lure people in to their ultimate demise.

I'll give an example supporting this. I was discussing last week's CFM lesson (covering John 1) with my daughter. I asked if she had wondered what John meant by "the word" in verse 1. She said she had brought it up during companion study when she was on her mission. Her companion responded,"Well, that's what's in the scriptures. Are you saying it's wrong?" "No, I'm just wondering what it is saying." This public schooled companion declared, "It's saying that Jesus is the Word. Duh." She's clearly a deep thinker. I related to my daughter my experience with the "helmet of salvation." She nodded her head and gave a grunt of frustration. So, was this companion better off than an uneducated person? No, she only had the "slave's education." Not the education that liberates and expands the mind.

Indeed... We have to remember that Public Schools did not always exist... They came into existence to try and address issues they had with "Home Schooling" aka parental apathy. We haven't solved that 'root' issue, yet (and maybe not ever in a fallen world). With out that fix no matter what we try, we are simply trying to bail out the water faster then it comes in.

There are a few flaws with this thinking, imo. Firstly, it implies that drastic reform of policy, process, rules, etc., has any chance and actually reforming the issues at hand. It might help...maybe...but it's like any organization -- it's run by people. As long as the people therein are evil, the system will be evil, no matter what reform occurs. The reform needs to be in people's hearts or any system reform will fail. Secondly, and this I think matters as much, even if some level of system reform worked on the education system itself, it wouldn't reform/fix the other major problem I have with putting my kids into public education.......the other students. Even when I was in K-12 school in the 70s and 80s, looking back, the worst part was the other kids. I would not, even now, intentionally subject my children to the things I faced because of other kids. The bullying, the immoral influences, the bad examples, the importance of social hierarchy, etc. etc. Yes, I understand that children actually need to be exposed to these sorts of things. Kids have to face the bad to learn how to, you know...face it. But I believe 5 years old is too young for what they must face, even 40 years back...and much more so now. And what's going on with students now-a-days...I'm honestly not sure 12, 13, 14, etc., is even old enough. Depends on the kid, of course. And having not been totally destroyed at 5, 6, 7, perhaps 12, 13, 14 would be fine. I don't know. It's a huge challenge to consider. I lament that I must raise my children in such a world. And I don't know the answers, beyond the fact that there's no way I'm sending my kids to school at 5. And my motivation is not driven by the teachers' or the system's problems. It's driven by the other kids.

I think my ideal would be to truly place the crux of public education at a community level (I don't know if that would be city or country or what, but I think we have too much overhead). Send whatever funding percentage we decided to decree to that level, maybe set a few must-have-to-be-a-productive-citizen standards at a higher level, and go from there.

This is the key point why homeschoolers and freedom based private schoolers should shun this bill. Any public funds for ANYthing that the private industry can do on its own is a bribe to do the government's bidding. It is NEVER because they're trying to help. That's just a ruse. If homeschoolers want autonomy to teach their values to their children, then they have to do so without government funds or they will soon have their children taken from them -- especially with conditions like we see in public schools today. The purse strings are complicit in what has happened to public schools. If the purse is extended to private and homeschool, it will infect homeschool with the same mind virus. I fear that if the bill passes, too many homeschool families will be unwittingly giving up their rights. But bribes (especially veiled bribes) always have strings attached. And most homeschoolers are just innocent enough to be ignorant of such things.

Heh. Nothing biased, agenda-driven, or context-lacking in your post JohnsonJones. No, not at all. Let's produce a bit of data, and see what phrases like "much more likely to die" and "far more percentage wise" means to you: Yeah, the US, with it's 2nd amendment and private gun-ownership that about doubles all the rest of the 1st world put together, has slightly more per capita police shootings than the other 1st world countries. At least, the reporting ones - please note that Italy, Spain, Barcelona, Russia, Austria, the Chech Republic, Greece, Turkey, China, South Korea, and others don't report data, so we can't be sure. I don't know about you, but when I view this context, it makes your entire post seem fatally and ludicrously biased. Yeah. The US is an absolute bloodbath compared to civilized places like France and Norway. At least, what, three pixels worth of bloodbath more. It must be all the low-IQ poorly educated apathetic scared cops who sit back content to be such a deadly threat to the citizens they're sworn to protect. 🙄 I mean, yeah, you are couching your floated notions by admitting the possibility that none of the reasons you mention might explain why cops shoot citizens in the US. But you totally miss what seems one of the most obvious notions to float: Armed bad guys trying to kill cops. There. I solved the riddle for you. It's a shame you didn't do even basic "I wonder if I'm being lied to" research before making such an obviously false claim. A couple questions for you: 1- If you had to guess, what would you say are the 7 counties in the US with the highest numbers of police killings? Who's democrat run and who is republican run? Anything interesting or unique about them that might stand out as a reason? 2- If you removed the top 7, what impact do you think that have on our overall country numbers? Dude, it's not even an election year. This blurb literally reads like it's straight out of the standard progressive "lie, polarize, and insult" playbook. I'm surprised you didn't also make it about white privilege.

This has been a point of......curiosity...maybe for me. I'm not sure that's the word. It's one of the few semi-critiques I have of the show. It doesn't, necessarily, diminish my enjoyment of the show. It's just one of those, "not how I'd have done it" things. But since we don't really know, we don't really know. There are some examples of this where I sort of just flat out think they're doing it wrong...like having Jesus needing to work out the details and then "practice" the sermon on the mount. Just feels wrong to me. But then there are the moments of Jesus's humor, about which I just don't know how to feel. I actually really love that they did it. I like the character. It's enjoyable and fun. Etc. But....... a lot of humor (including Jesus's in the show) is based on sarcasm. And sarcasm is a lie, ultimately. Everyone understands it's a lie, which is why it's funny. It's that understanding that makes sarcasm work. But when Jesus says something that is plainly false as a joke I struggle a bit with it. Because he's saying something untrue. (for example, Jesus might have a line like, "And we all know Peter never get's into fights with anyone...." and everyone laughs because Peter's known for having gotten into fights in the past.) Like I said, kind of more a curiosity than a complaint. I, personally, wouldn't dare do such a thing. Putting words into Jesus's mouth that aren't truth...nope....I wouldn't do it. But the fact that they did it hasn't really bothered me too much...because they're obviously jokes. But intellectually I'm aware of it and feel unsure.

In addition to the challenge of discerning truth from error is another challenge summarized by Elder Maxwell when he said: "all knowledge is not of equal significance. There is no democracy of facts! They are not of equal importance." I recently started attending a new ward and after a few Sunday School classes it seems that a number of people in the class are taking to the internet each week to further their understanding of the lesson material and appear eager to share what they find. While some of what is shared is truly insightful much of what is shared, while perhaps interesting, seems to lack the spiritually nutritional value that I'm looking for. Fortunately the teacher has done a good job of quickly shifting the focus back to the salvation essential doctrines. This is kind of why I always enjoyed the gospel principles class back when because the lesson was always on those truths that mattered most, even though they were taught in their simplicity.

Sadly, a lot of "homeschooling" material produced by various Protestant groups is not focused on teaching core academics as it is in teaching theology *as* academics. The end result is that children who are taught using these materials are often below-level.

Whoops, was supposed to quote this one instead. apparently my computer skills are not above 4th grade either.

So what? A... who needs high school chemistry? and B... Google and Wikipedia have mastered it. 😀