Ron Paul Launches Homeschool Curriculum

[Lindagerr]

Homeschooling is a wonderful thing for some children, but not for all. Public school is great for some children but not for all. The main importance lies with the child , the parents and the school district. All need to be involved and communicate.

I was lucky in NJ school districts can be small and mine had only about 500 students in K-8 my son who is learning disabled in many forms had many very caring teachers. All of the teachers in the school knew my son and knew me. My other son who is advanced was not served well in this system. When teachers have anywhere from 15-30 students in the class they can not teach each student in the best way, they have to teach to the middle of the road student and hopefully include enough variation that everyone can learn at least some of it. When a child is in special education classes the student to teacher ratio is much lower, usually 5:1 is a maximum (at least in my part of NJ) so the teacher has morew time to individualize learning to each students strengths. I was very involved with my sons IEP and even got weekly updates on his work. Parents of children with learning problems have to decide what is best for their child. I would have loved to home-school my younger son so I could keep him stimulated and interested in learning. I knew I would never be able to home-school my older son because I did not have the knowledge or the technology, plus I had less patients with my own son. I also felt it would not be fair to either child to home-school one and send the other off to public school.

I also agree that those statistics are skewed because the kind of parent that would home-school is an involved parent whereas the public school statistics have to cover a great many parents who don't give a $hit about school. At one point I was working one on one with a 7th grade student because if she was put in a regular class she refused to come to school. The day before the big state test when her mother came to pick her up I reminded her that her child should have a good breakfast the next morning to help her with the test. The Mother's response was "I don't do breakfast". That is what makes for school drop outs, lower standardized test grades and children's poor attitude.

I know some states do not teach a well rounded cultural program that is when a parent needs to add that information through discussion and activities with the family.

Sorry about the rant I just get frustrated when people generalize about schools and teachers, we are not all there just for the great pay and summers off.