I'm not saying you were wrong, just that's the way it was explained to me. It was my wife's primary concern going in. What she lacks in knowledge she more than makes up for in caring and trying whatever it takes to get hm educated the best way possible..

We're in still in kindergarten so we'll cross that bridge when it comes but I will definitely take it into consideration when we get there.

most important characteristic right there.  you can't teach 'want to'.  it's something teachers either have or they don't.

Good move OP.  I know some public schools are still pretty good, but home schooling is much better than letting your kids suffer in a bad one.

1. Curriculum - there are several that are good.  I think the best one is BEKA, out of Pensacola FL - it is Christian based, if you don't mind that, but it is top notch.  I would look at the DVD course.  It is great for really smart kids.  When my sister did the high school parts, it was fun for me (in pre med at the time) to sit and watch with her.  Good content.  I don't know any kids that have completed it that have had any trouble with college.  We have lots of kids locally that use it.   Bob Jones University - another Christian one is very good.  I don't think they are as hard core as BEKA but their educational standard is not low.  We had 6 folks out of my med school class that graduated from Bob Jones and none of them failed med school (our class dropped from 86 to 68 over the 4 years but none were the Bob Jones kids).  

2.  Extras - languages can always be taught with Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone or smiliar.  Typing with an online typing tutor.  

3.  Out of School - keep your kids involved in good stuff out of school.  Our church has a lot of good kids that do stuff with our kids.  Field trips are great to education site - like study the Civil War or War for Independence and go see a battlefield to reinforce it for them.   Learn about WWII and go see the Alabama or Yorktown for a fun trip.  

A great part of home schooling is that you can find your kid's strengths and shape the schooling toward that.  Sure, they all need to be able to do the basics like read, write, math, but after that they can start to learn other things that they are good at too.  

Best wishes.

Agree.  You/your wife may have to "re-learn" a few things along with teaching your children, but there is no substitute for love, desire and motivation.  No one has more of that for your kids than you two.  And if you stick with it, it will make a HUGE difference in the quality of your life and your children's' in 15-20 years....

Thank you for exposing so many things that are wrong with these approaches.  You know who was enforcing safety, the firing line, and how our plinking was conducted when I was a wee lad?

There I was, out in the desert, with my physicist/aerospace engineer father, and we know how well theoretical physicists interact with the current space-time continuum. So little 8yr-old LRRP had to man-up and make sure we had some type of control of the firing line, sectors of fire, lanes, cease fire commands, whatever I used for going hot, etc.  I honestly don't know where I learned it, but I remember recognizing a need, and making sure it got done.  I had been an avid reader of American Rifleman and Guns and Ammo since the 1970's, getting my grandpa's back issues every time we had our Sunday visits with grandma and grandpa.  Maybe I picked up a few things from the old curmudgeons who authored articles in those rags, to include shooting accidents?  Who knows.  

The point is, I didn't need to be drilled or directly instructed over and over by some taskmaster in a prison cell.  I figured it out.

I'm also glad you brought up the example of drill sergeants.  This schooling, not teaching method, is exactly what is wrong with basic training, and why units that get the leash taken off after determining they have disciplined and motivated volunteers conduct training in about as opposite a manner as possible compared to drill sergeant modules at basic.

Case in point, and this will sound like BS to some, but I beat one of my Drill Sergeants at disassembly and reassembly of the M16A2 rifle in the 2nd week of Infantry OSUT at Fort Benning in January of 1994, A Co 1-50th Infantry, 2nd Platoon-Terminators.  He had been in the Army as an 11M for at least 11 years in Germany and like almost all the other DS's, was a Gulf War Vet.  I was a new private who read the -10 a lot as a kid, and was basically familiar with the AR15 from shooting it in adolescence.  He had disassembled and reassembled the M16A2 easily hundreds of times more than me at that point.  In a raw competition for time, I beat him by at least 10 seconds in both procedures.

If being instructed and drilled are tenets of all our future learning, we're doomed to rely on someone else to do that instructing, and we'll be beat by the next smart alec to come along.  Learning comes from within, not schooling or drilling from a task master.

The phonics method you reference for teaching a child how to read is one of the worst possible approaches, because it focuses on an abstract system of sounds we have learned to form words with, that kids don't understand.  We retard their growth by teaching phonics, because the attention is now placed on the alphabet, and not reading.  Through hundreds of thousands of case studies dating back to the 1950's, teaching words first has been proven as a meteorically superior approach to learning to read.

All your references show the mentality of a subjugated serf, who has been schooled and drilled into the least possible track of existence, never realizing your true potential.  You need rehabilitation in a bad way.  It's not your fault.  We were all born into this abortion of a suppressive drilling system, and some of us refused to be broken by it, while others were taught to be the guards and wardens.

This is where the co-ops and others with experience - older kids can greatly help you out.



 

When a kid leaves the .gov school, the school loses some money. A good chunk, I believe.
The local principal gets pissed when kids are pulled out of his school. That money probably goes to the GLBT studies department.
I wish the money would revert back to the kid who left.

Actually no. Lower ration lets private schools charge more and other schools brag. There's a very broad range of student to teacher ratios that produce an acceptable level of education.
People have heard "the lower the ratio, the better" for so long, they believe it.

You've got issues that go beyond being home schooled.

Your GOOD teachers are like anyone else. They want to make their jobs seem hard to do.
What degree is easier than teaching? Social Worker?
Spare time is my biggest challenge. At 9 and 11, my kids are pretty independent. They frequently knock out lessons before I'm out of bed.
We test them just as the local .gov schools test and even another test our state doesn't use (Louisiana does not want to look for trouble   ). They test higher than normal.

Not that I support the school approach to dumbing down masses, but Finland has very high student-to-teacher ratios.  They are slipping lately though in PISA, not that this matters one bit to me.

Education and schooling are so far apart from each other, that it just isn't funny anymore.  I feel like over 12 years of my life was stolen from me in many ways, since I would have learned so much more with very minimal tutoring from my parents and other scholars, and plenty of personal time to pursue my interests.

Looking at warden-to-prisoner ratios disguised as teacher-to-student misses the fact that you are supporting a prison system, and not a true education.

You made the comparison that others are claiming their children are so smart and then turned around and basically made that claim for yourself



Then conveniently refused to address my question of what exactly makes you determine that their social skills are lacking.  They very well may be lacking, but depending on your standard I may consider that a good thing.  And on the off chance you are in fact correct.  Who is to say that they would be any smarter if they were in government schools?

My children would very likely be considered unsocialized by a lot on this board.  My children don't fawn over the latest boy bands or popular movies,  But they can actually hold an adult level conversation with more then one word answers.  they don't have the MP3 player stuck in their ears ignoring everyone while they go thru their "depressed" stage.  their conversations do not consists of numerous, "like" "and" "ohmygawd" and any other number of one word conversations children have today.

And you can deny it all you want.  But turning children over to government schools is in fact turning them over for someone else to raise.  Sorry for the painful truth but there it is.  Don't get me wrong.  I get that for some they simply don't have a choice.  but a lot of parents have determined that their toys or their social status takes priority over their children.  How do I know?  in 21 years of marriage my wife has never worked outside the home.  I am far from rich on any scale one would choose to look at.  My truck is 21 years old, my wife's truck is 15 years old.  We don't have the latest gadgets or go to the movies or any number of other things people "have" to do today.

You can tell me to get off my high horse all you want.  but you may want to consider stepping down from yours.