In a Dec. 6 article titled "Home schooling fails important tests" Carolyn C. Gelder, a teacher and parent, enumerates what she considers the educational shortcomings of home schooling vs. the advantages of traditional classroom-style schooling.
She expresses some valid concerns. But when she states that "parents who embrace home school do so because they are misled by a number of common fallacies," I find that I am not satisfied with her attempts to refute the "fallacies" she describes:"Fallacy 1. You can teach your child as well as anyone can." Gelder explains that simply because a parent knows something, he or she isn't necessarily capable of teaching it as well as a trained and experienced teacher. However, isn't it the child's own desire to learn, his own natural capacity to learn, which determines success more so than the skill or experience of the teacher?
"Fallacy 2. You can provide more field trips, more hands-on experiences and a better overall education for your child." Gelder here rather contradicts herself by effectively confirming this "fallacy" to be more likely a fact.
"Fallacy 3. Home school will help us become closer as a family." Gelder describes her own experience as a home schooled student. "My (bedroom) desk became a mandatory setting for daily schoolwork. Sitting with my family at the dining room table no longer provided physical and emotional refreshment but a continuation of school struggles and strife."
These words describe perfectly the condition of my public-schooled children who came home from a full day of schoolwork each afternoon burdened with armloads of homework which, if attended to as the teachers expected, supplanted my children's chances to pursue their natural after-school lives.
"Fallacy 4. The classrooms are too crowded. We don't want our children to become just a number." While Gelder acknowledges overcrowding to be a real problem, she states, "The only way children can learn social skills is by being around other children." I suggest that children can learn very adequate, and even superior, social skills from being around well-adjusted adults, not just from schoolmates.
"Fallacy 5. We don't want to expose our children to the immorality and dangers that are rampant in the schools." Is Gelder suggesting that we do want to expose our children to these things? "Think twice before pulling a child out of school in the name of protection," she advises, warning that children sheltered at home may not learn how to deal with the "real world."
May I ask how well our public school students are dealing with the "real world" these days? Are they stronger, more capable, more resilient and resourceful for the pressures they constantly face? Are home-schooled children weakened by their less perilous existence?
Until some proof is available that home schooling produces more inadequate individuals than public schooling does, we might be wise to withhold the criticism and perhaps extend some encouragement to all children to learn all they can from whatever source is available to them.
Margaret J. Peters
West Valley City