Homeschooling Badly: Forest or Trees?

I think I'd like Amy over at Raising Arrows if we ever met in person.  Of all of the CP/QF bloggers, she started early, has kept up a reasonable online presence and has the fewest crazy ideas of the lot.

Having said that, I do feel sorry for her at times.   Like most homeschooling CP/QF moms, she's got tons, lashings and heaps of ideas about what to do with homeschooling the littlest ones in the family while completely giving up on teaching the high schoolers in her family. Obviously, this makes me sad because I have tons, lashings and heaps of things that I've seen high schoolers do well with some support from teachers.   I wish I was exaggerating her point of view but here's her own words:

By the time your children are high school aged, there should be very few teacher-led subjects, and other than checking in periodically with your child, they should be capable of going through their schoolwork alone.

My first thought is that any parent who is using this 'method' of homeschooling is lying if they describe themselves as teaching high school.    The parent is telling the kid which subjects need to be done, providing the materials to do the subject, and hoping for the best.    With that level of absentee-teaching, providing specific help is a crap-shoot.  My first teaching job involved helping students who had dropped out of high school catch up in twelve separate independent study science courses.  Now, since I have a college degree in Biology and Chemistry, I could figure out what the main idea of the lesson a student was struggling on quickly and adapt as needed.   I question if most CP/QF homeschooling moms are as conversant in science or math to help their high schooled kids in a pinch.

My second thought is that some homeschooling parents have recreated the read - and - regurgitate method of teaching for high schoolers that the parents claim destroyed their love of education while they were in public schools.   That method is antiquated in public schools now thanks to widespread access to computers and interest in project-based-learning, but apparently it's gained new life in some corners of homeschooling.  I guess that proves that all educational theories are cyclic....yay?

In the rest of this post, I worry that Amy is missing the forest of college readiness for the trees of bashing public schoolers.  Take this gem:

One of the biggest things my son noticed during the early months of his Freshman year in college was that most of his classmates needed to be told how to do everything. They couldn’t choose what color of pen to use, where to sit, how to do an assignment, or how to find the answers for the test. They wanted EVERYTHING lined out for them, rather than trying anything on their own.

Well, yes.  Unlike Amy's son, students from traditional schools (and most home schools) are aware that each teacher or professor does things a little differently.

•  Lots of professors will only take assignments in blue or black ink.  
• Assigned seats are pretty common in lower-level lab classes in middle or large universities because different classes need different glassware and lab equipment so instructors save time by setting up the drawers ahead of time for a certain student.  
• In my biology labs at college, I tell the students that I make up the tests and quizzes from the lab manual and the notes from my lectures; I never use the textbook because it varies between lecture instructors.
• I'd also far rather have a student ask a question about what I expect from an assignment than spend hours on a project that I think should take 45 minutes to an hour - or worse, toss it off in 5 minutes and get a bad grade.

I guess CP/QF homeschooled graduates could flail their way through and figure these things out by trial and error - but why not just ask questions?

In the next topic, Amy shares having her daughter work through her fear of dissecting:

Some parts of life are just hard and you just have to walk through that hard part. School is the same. (ahem…Algebra) My daughter begged and pleaded with me to let her skip dissecting. But, I knew she needed to overcome this obstacle. She sat at the table FOREVER trying to psyche herself up to even remove the fish from the bag it was in! But, I wasn’t giving in. I wasn’t going to make her path easy just for the sake of making it easy. And so, we sat there…for way longer than it should have taken anyone to dissect a fish! But when she was finished, she was proud of what she had accomplished! And so was I!

At the risk of undermining a great life lesson,  why was dissecting a hill to die on? 

I graduated in 2000 and dissecting in general high school biology classes was rapidly becoming passe then.   Many students have realistic concerns about the treatment of dissection specimens prior to and when killed.  I have concerns about exposing science teachers to the harmful chemicals used in preserving specimens.  The cost of obtaining specimens is high.  The cost of doing computer versions has become lower and lower - and is now generally included in most HS biology textbook online resources.

The current consensus is that computer-based dissections are the best option for general high school classes.  For highly interested students, some schools use the saved money to fund a zoology or comparative anatomy class so that students who want to dissect can do so.

I mean, we've all gotta do things that suck sometimes - but I think this is an example of how home school families can get locked into doing whatever worked for the first kid to go through the curriculum.  Apologia Biology costs about $400 to buy a textbook, online resources, DVD lessons, lab notebook, lab supplies and the tests/answer keys.  Having a second student use the resources costs about $50.00 for a new set of tests and lab supplies compared to $400+ dollars to purchase a different option for science.

The link Amy includes on determining graduation requirements tells parents that it's rare for students to take physics in high school because physics requires pre-calculus.  I suppose the implication is that most high school students don't take pre-calculus - but that's not true by any stretch of the imagination for kids who are interested in STEM careers.  Also, it is completely possible to learn physics with a solid understanding of algebra rather than calculus.

The next theme is the common lament among homeschool parents that all colleges care about in admissions is the ACT or SAT scores.  That is much more true for home school students than it is for students from traditional schools.   Traditional schools send newly minted seniors off to colleges each year.  Based on how those incoming freshmen do at a college, the admission department develops a feel for how well each program prepares students.  Additionally, each student from that school are ranked within their class which provides a second data point.    There's really no work around for homeschooling families other than the ACT or SAT since taking a standardized test essentially gives the colleges the same data that a traditional high school would include.

The last suggestion is that homeschooled kids ask for help when they need it.  I find that ironic since Amy mocks public school kids for asking too many questions a few paragraphs earlier - but whatever.  The odd bit, though, is that the example she uses.  Her son had gotten all 'A's' in a class prior to the final and received a B overall in the class.   Her son went to talk to the professor and learned some undefined lesson.   There are two ways I can think of for this to happen.  First, the college kid forgot a sizeable assignment or project somewhere along the line. (Happens to the best of us).  Second, the kid got a C on a weighted final.

That made me wonder: how many homeschooled kids have experience with weighted grading prior to graduating?  There are all sorts of rationales for and against weighted grading, but nearly all colleges and universities allow professors to count tests and exams as worth more towards the final grade in the class than the other assignments.  For my biology courses, the classes were graded essentially from four tests each worth ~25% of the final grade.  All the other assignments counted for <10% of the final grade.   My chemistry classes, on the other hand, gave labs 25% of the final grade, divided 50% of the final grade across three tests, and had the final worth 25% of the final grade. 

Look, re-creating pre-K through 12th grade education should be scary - but there's better ways to do it than hefting it off onto the teenager.   Join a co-op.   Have the kid take the GED and dual-enroll at a community college.   Befriend a local college admission officer or high school guidance counselor.   Read up the information at the College Board. 

Just make sure the information you are getting is based in reality...where quite a few high school students take physics and pre-calculus.