Watchful_Eye
Smash Apprentice
There is a long-term debate in Germany about allowing "Home Schooling" or not - and as far as I know, it is allowed in the USA, so it is interesting for me to read your thoughts about it.
In my opinion, a state should try to give the same possibilites of public education to every child - independent of their parents. The subject of education is the child - and if the state is so "liberal" to allow the parents to teach their children themselves, it actually takes the choice off the children to go to a public school, because the parents are the ones who finally could decide it, not the children themselves (even if they could, the parents are able to influence their opinion towards it in several ways).
The imagination of religious extremists etc. indoctrinating their "image of the world" to their children without any critic from "outside" seems very frightening to me.
Another problem is the educational standard - of course a state can instruct different kinds of tests, but still a test is just able to ask about a specific kind of knowledge - a school often has more possibilites, e.g. to show physical phenomenas with experiments. In addition, it is impossible to test social competences, which are probably lacking because of missing contacts to classmates and different teachers. If a wealthy family should think that the educational quality of the public schools is lower than it would be possible at home, it is still able to send their child to a private school which is approved by the state - so I think that this argument is also not very strong.
Do you think "home schooling" should be allowed?
Do you have some empirical impressions about it?
(I hope, my english is understandable - discussions like this are also a kind of "language training" for me. Feel free to tell me about my profoundly mistakes per PM, and I will correct them if I find the time. Thank You. )
In my opinion, a state should try to give the same possibilites of public education to every child - independent of their parents. The subject of education is the child - and if the state is so "liberal" to allow the parents to teach their children themselves, it actually takes the choice off the children to go to a public school, because the parents are the ones who finally could decide it, not the children themselves (even if they could, the parents are able to influence their opinion towards it in several ways).
The imagination of religious extremists etc. indoctrinating their "image of the world" to their children without any critic from "outside" seems very frightening to me.
Another problem is the educational standard - of course a state can instruct different kinds of tests, but still a test is just able to ask about a specific kind of knowledge - a school often has more possibilites, e.g. to show physical phenomenas with experiments. In addition, it is impossible to test social competences, which are probably lacking because of missing contacts to classmates and different teachers. If a wealthy family should think that the educational quality of the public schools is lower than it would be possible at home, it is still able to send their child to a private school which is approved by the state - so I think that this argument is also not very strong.
Do you think "home schooling" should be allowed?
Do you have some empirical impressions about it?
(I hope, my english is understandable - discussions like this are also a kind of "language training" for me. Feel free to tell me about my profoundly mistakes per PM, and I will correct them if I find the time. Thank You. )