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November 24, 2006, 6:54 pm PST
Advanced young children due to home schooling? Not necessarily.
Quote From: ronke123I'm homeschooling my 5.5 year old daughter. Since she was four years old, she's known how to read, count to 100, recognize colors like TAUPE, shapes (beyond triangle and square) and the list goes on. I take her to a home school co-op where she takes Spanish (her teacher is Chilean), Math, Book Club, Story of The World and Sign Language. I teach a World Cultures class a this same co-op. These are classes that wouldn't even be remotely accessible to my daughter were she in our public school system. She tests at a high 2nd grade level which tells me that the requirements for 2nd grade in our public schools are ridiculously low because I think that her knowledge is what any 5-6 year old should know.
The experience you detail in your highschool experience is fabulous. For you. That doesn't mean that everyone in your high school is equally as pleased. Check out the list that has been posted of famous home schooled American Citizens who have made their marks in science, math, civics, literature, government and more. Consider these people as well as those those we don't know, before labeling one who is home schooled as uneducated and useless. One thing I hope you learn as you continue your education is that not everything is black & white. There will be many things in life that you don't understand but that doesn't mean that these things are wrong or merit-less. Respect for others opinions, even if you disagree, is a huge part of a successful education and I hope you will take that with you to Emory. I think it's fabulous that your daughter is so advanced for her age. However, I don't believe that can be attributed to home schooling. Sometimes kids are just born with a natural ability to learn faster and at an earlier age.
While both of my daughters were always advanced (from preschool onward), I can use my younger daughter's younger years to more closely compare with your daughter.
My daughter surprised the heck out of us when she could pick up the Wall Street Journal two days after her 2nd birthday, and begin telling us the names of each letter (upper and lower case), followed by the sounds they made. It blew us away because we hadn't done anything special to teach her this other than giving her the typical toys.
Shortly after that she began reading small words. Right at the time of her 3rd birthday, I drove by a new area when my daughter exclaimed "visitor's parking". I was shocked when I realized she had just read a new sign that had been put up. This was far beyond dog, cat and hat.
By 5, she was reading so well and loved reading so much that while waiting for her sister's gymnastics class to end, she would run out of words to read so she would start reading the ingredients in the candy or chips package she had. Many parents around us were absolutely shocked and always asked me how old was she. She could actually read those huge words!
Count to 100? By 5, she was doing more than just counting. She had figured out math. Addition and subtraction was extremely easy, with multiplication and division being pretty strong, as well. We attributed this to her watching her sister (3 years older) doing her homework. We know no one was teaching her this stuff.
I also started asking around for her to start piano lessons when she turned 6, but the best teacher I found wanted to start her at 5. In less than a year, she was playing songs at the high school level. A year later, she was playing college level songs. She was amazing to watch! But she didn't like to practice as much anymore so she quit.
During this time she also took gymnastics, and was placed on the team at a very young age. Then she was the "star" of expositions because she could do multiple flips and higher level skills while so tiny and so young. I finally pulled her out after several years because it's too much to have a child practice 6 days a week for 4 hours each day.
The news of what she could do really sank home as she got into public schools and began the normal series of tests kids take. The first was the test to see if she should be in the GT (Gifted/Talented) classes. She overwhelmingly qualified in all subjects.
I'm not sure where her 1st grade Iowa test results are (I'm not even sure if kids in the 1st grade took those tests?), but I found some of her other ones.
In the 3rd grade, she was working at the following levels:
Note: A number like 5.4 indicates working at the level of the average child in their 4th month of their 5th grade school year. 7.3 would mean the 3rd month of the 7th grade.
3rd Grade:
Vocabulary: 5.4
Rdg Comprehension: 5.8
Reading Total: 5.7
Spelling: 3.7
Capitalization: 3.0
Punctuation: 4.6
Usage & Expression: 5.0
Language Total: 4.1
Math Concepts/Estim: 5.7
Math Prob/Data Interp: 8.8
Math Total: 7.3
Core Total: 5.6 (this was in the 96% of national ranking)
Social Studies: 4.1
Science: 5.3
Okay, two years later, in the 5th grade, she then scored as listed below. Keep in mind that we did not do anything at home to teach her, and at that age, the teachers were restricted to assigning no more than 30 minutes of homework a night (when they did assign homework wish was pretty rare). Her primary method of learning was public schooling. The test was taken at 5.2 (2nd month of her 5th grade).
5th Grade:
Vocabulary: 8.7
Rdg Comprehension: 7.2
Reading Total: 7.9
Spelling: 7.0
Capitalization: 13+ (COLLAGE level)
Punctuation: 13+ (COLLAGE level)
Usage & Expression: 13+ (COLLAGE level)
Language Total: 11.8 (almost a high school graduate)
Math Concepts/Estim: 9.7
Math Prob/Data Interp: 9.6
Computation: 7.0
Math Total: 8.7
Core Total: 9.3 (this was in the 98% of national ranking)
Social Studies: 7.8
Science: 13+ (COLLAGE level)
I don't know where her 7th grade Iowa test scores are, but I remember that she had even more college level scores. I think it was her math that had moved into the college level, as well.
Also, when she was in the 7th grade, we found out she had ADHD (I never believed in any of that which is why it was caught so late, but there were undeniable signs that were causing her distress so we had it checked out). At that time, we had a full battery of tests conducted, and she came out with a 99% overall.
Many people have suggested that I move her up a year or two, but I have always refused, and now that she's in the 8th grade, I am very glad I did. While her intellect can pick up the academics very quickly, she is equal with other 8th graders in terms of her socialization, organizational skills, behavioral development, crushes, etc. And she is being challenged each day. She loves school!
I was badly abused in all my years of being in school, but this is due to the way my parents raised me, not because I attended public schools. I was not a wanted child and from birth on, anytime I needed something (like food), I was punished for bothering my mother. I spent most of my time alone in my room. I had no idea how to socialize with any kids and so I ended up getting picked on horribly. I never told my parents or asked for any adult's help because I believed I was defective, and if my parents found out that the kids were rejecting me, I would somehow be thrown away for sure. If I wasn't good enough for the other kids, then I most certainly wasn't good enough for my parents, and I would somehow cease to exist. My coping skill was to learn how to hide. If they can't see me, they can't hurt me. -- another thing my parents had taught me (if they saw me, they would hurt me).
I am in therapy -- have been going to a wonderful psychiatrist for hourly sessions twice a week. I'm about to hit my 2nd year of therapy and have made good progress and am now mostly needing support for some of the changes that my changing has caused (for example, my permanent separation from my parents as they continue to abuse me with things like blaming me for my father molesting me for 8+ years (I was kicked out immediately when I told on him)). After years of blaming myself and thinking something was inherently wrong with me, I have learned that the only thing wrong with me was that I was abused which caused me to react in ways that shut people out of my life, which I then used (not understanding) as "proof" of how people didn't want me because I was defective. So, yeah, I was kicked, tripped, had things thrown on me, called horrible names, and so much more each and every day to the point I learned to do nothing more than hide and fake things.
So was the problem I had at school simply because of the school? No. It's just a building. It is the PEOPLE in the child's life that make or break it. Fortunately, I was extremely vigilant in picking a good school system for my kids, and have been very pleased with the way they handle things (especially the high school).
Each person's experience at a school will be different, depending on the PEOPLE who parent the kids and who run the school. Public school -- in and of itself -- is not bad. It can be very good. But only if the PEOPLE -- parents and school admins -- take the time and trouble to make it good.
And the point of all the grades I posted is two-fold.
First, it's clear that some public schools definitely teach a child "at their own pace" even to the point of keeping them interested and involved when they're well above the grade level's expectations.
Second, having a child excel in certain areas is not necessarily a matter of how they were educated. Sometimes it's simply a matter of a child being naturally precocious. Just as children experience learning disabilities, other children experience the opposite and learn very quickly and easily, and all the gray areas in-between. ALL kids are different and cannot be measured by a report card, a test, or by how old they can tie their shoe laces.
I think what truly counts is whether they are prepared for life in every way possible -- socially, academically, facing challenges, dealing with problems, dealing with having to do things they don't want to do, kindness to others, respect for others (including the hierarchy of authority) and most importantly, loving their own selves for their own individual uniqueness (the good and the bad and all in-between) and being able to laugh at their own selves while just dancing in life as if no one's watching. THAT is so much more important to whether a child is able to achieve any milestone early or not. Because in the end, no one cares whether a person learned to read at 2 or 5 or 10. All that matters is if they are happy and well adjusted adults, happy to be alive and happy to be living their own special lives.
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Parents want the best for their children, but what’s the best way to educate them? Dr. Phil’s guests face off in a debate about whether to school, homeschool or unschool. Dana and her husband, Joe, call themselves radical unschoolers. They say education happens as a side effect of life, and they don’t believe in tests, curriculums or grades. Are their three kids learning what they need to know? Then, RaeAnn says public schools are death traps and wants to homeschool her children. Her husband, Steve, says their kids are safer at school than they are at home. Can this couple reach a compromise? Plus, Nicole feels like an outcast at 26. She says she hated being homeschooled, and couldn’t relate to other kids. Share your thoughts here.
