Re: "done right" is not always the case - Edit 1
Before modification by LadyLorraine at 03/03/2010 06:45:11 AM
anything "done right" is lovely. An in-school education "done right" is perfectly sufficient for the needs of most students.
Well, we're hung up on semantics, here. I'm really thinking more of the averages. When I say "done right" I mean "not the sort of homeschool parents the news channels love to show."
After all, as you said, most student don't really have the drive to learn more than necessary. Do you think putting them in an at-home individual setting will suddenly make them want to learn geometry? or make history more interesting to a kid who only wants to dig worms out of the soil? Yes, you do have more ability to focus on what the student is good at, but you still have to teach the "boring stuff".
No, you really don't. Or at least, homeschool can minimize boring stuff in a way that public school cannot. Like I said in another thread, I never took any formal spelling or grammar instruction. I had VERY little history. You really don't have to teach "the boring stuff." Consequently, homeschool students absolutely can be more motivated than traditional students. Most that I've known are. It's not just the subject choice, either. Parents are naturally good at motivating their kids. They know them best, after all. They know that asking the kid to write a five page report won't be as effective as having them watch an animated lecture online (or whatever).
That is based on your personal experiences. I've seen home schooling go very differently. I've seen a kid throw math books around a living room because she didn't want to do homework, and her mother not do a whit about it. So my personal experiences paint a very different picture for me. On the other hand, during the summers I was "home schooled" to a degree by my mother and I found that at least interesting, even if I hated those danged math books
(PS the child in the aforementioned throwing was not me 
)Parents can motivate children by tailoring subjects, AND by tailoring their teaching style to methods that the student responds well to.
Unless the parent is an idiot or can't teach worth a hoot. Obviously, your parents were neither, but you assume that all parents can accomplish these tasks. Parents can sometimes hardly managed to motivate their children to wake up in the morning. You really think that same parent will manage to motivate a child to practice their multiplication tables?
A teacher can't either. As for the school's resources, it's basically a library, and some teachers. The teachers rarely know much more than their subject matter requires, and develop lesson plans by reading the textbook, and coming up with an outline. Parents can do the same thing. They can pick textbooks based on solid peer reviews and awards, too, rather than just going with whatever the school can pick up cheap. Up to a point, parents already know the majority of what they're teaching their kid, too. That point is usually high school, and most home-schooling parents do "outsource" a lot of the schooling. In high school, I took some community college courses, and some courses at a local co-op group, which brought in parents from their field to teach, to supplement what I did at home. At the high school level, you do lose some of the benefit of having a parent teach you, but you still have all the flexibility to tailor towards what interests you, and to learn in the manner you see fit, whether that be community college classes, job shadowing, whatever.
A single teacher cannot answer every child's question, no. But there is always more than one teacher just a few foot steps away. The library is only a few more steps than that. My point is that all these resources are within easy access to a student willing to access them, or a teacher willing to do a bit extra for a student. And I don't know how much you know about teaching (honestly, I'm not trying to egg at you), but I can assure you that plenty of teachers do more than formulate an outline from a textbook for their curriculum. Trust me, I've seen more lesson plan books than anyone outside a college of education should. I've had more of that since entering college than anywhere else.
A quality home school education require a parent to give a quality education. This is far from impossible, but there are enough parents out there that are total idiots both with knowledge and their children that I would quake in fear if home schooling was made the predominant system of education over in-school teaching.