saxon math : Why Home Schools Are Superior to Private Schools
have been part of the Christian school movement ever since 1962, when I read R. J. Rushdoony's 1961 book, Intellectual Schizophrenia. His 1963 book, The Messianic Character of American Education, only reaffirmed what I already believed.
I came into contact with Robert and Rosemary Thoburn, the creators of the profit-seeking Fairfax Christian School, sometime around 1969. Mrs. Thoburn taught a generation of Christian school entrepreneurs how to teach children how to read through phonics. The founders of the A Beka program were taught by her.
Over the years, I have watched the parallel development of Christian home schooling and Christian day schooling. I have come to the conclusion that home schools are superior on average.
There are reasons for this. Here are a few of them.
MOTIVATION
Parents are more interested in their children's performance than salaried teachers are. Teachers must concern themselves with a room full of other people's children. A mother concerns herself with a room full of her children. It is a smaller room.
Let me cut short a mistake. Beyond the second or third grade, parents should cease worrying about individual instruction, unless the child has a learning disability. The concern over student/teacher ratios is a concern of the teacher unions. It should not be a concern of parents. The older the child is, the more true the statement is.
I feel sorry for the high school students of parents – meaning almost all parents – who wail, "I want my child to have a low student/teacher ratio." That child is being set up for a crisis on the day he or she walks into a college class of 1,000 students. The mega-class is a cash cow for colleges. Faculties assign their lower-level non-tenured assistant professors to teach them. These classes are graded by graduate students.
Some 17-year-old who has learned how to learn in a tiny class is now thrown to the lions. "Good luck!"
This is even more true of home-schooled college freshmen. Momma is back home. Momma can't help. Momma set up her child for an expensive lesson in the only education that matters in the long run: self-education.
There is only one curriculum that is geared entirely to self-education: Dr. Arthur Robinson's. He wants parents to get out of the way of their children's education as early as possible.
Because his K-12 CD-ROM-based curriculum sells for $200, once per family, it is the best bargain in the history of education. But it is not for parents of Momma's boys and girls.
The best thing about the Robinson Curriculum is that it ends forever the seeming legitimacy of the complaint, "We just can't afford private education." A family can buy this curriculum for $200 – the cost of a pair of running shoes – plus the cost of a set of the Saxon math books. After that, it only costs paper and toner.
Because Christian parents are generally more concerned with protecting their children socially than with training up intellectual warriors, Robinson's approach to education is not widely accepted in Christian circles. The fact that a student who gets through this curriculum can quiz out of his first year of college, and possibly two years, does not impress such parents. This is because so few of them ever mastered the skills of self-education.
Despite Christian parents' desire to provide social environment rather than intellectual tools of combat, I still think conventional home schooling beats private day schooling. Parental concern is very great. Parents have not only pulled a child out of the humanists' established church – the public school system – the mother has also decided to skip entry into the wage-earning work force for the sake of her children's education. This degree of commitment, even when accompanied by the well-meant but ill-conceived pedagogy of showing children how to solve problems with mother's help rather than by themselves, overcomes the low common denominator problem of the k-12 classroom.
by Gary North
I came into contact with Robert and Rosemary Thoburn, the creators of the profit-seeking Fairfax Christian School, sometime around 1969. Mrs. Thoburn taught a generation of Christian school entrepreneurs how to teach children how to read through phonics. The founders of the A Beka program were taught by her.
Over the years, I have watched the parallel development of Christian home schooling and Christian day schooling. I have come to the conclusion that home schools are superior on average.
There are reasons for this. Here are a few of them.
MOTIVATION
Parents are more interested in their children's performance than salaried teachers are. Teachers must concern themselves with a room full of other people's children. A mother concerns herself with a room full of her children. It is a smaller room.
Let me cut short a mistake. Beyond the second or third grade, parents should cease worrying about individual instruction, unless the child has a learning disability. The concern over student/teacher ratios is a concern of the teacher unions. It should not be a concern of parents. The older the child is, the more true the statement is.
I feel sorry for the high school students of parents – meaning almost all parents – who wail, "I want my child to have a low student/teacher ratio." That child is being set up for a crisis on the day he or she walks into a college class of 1,000 students. The mega-class is a cash cow for colleges. Faculties assign their lower-level non-tenured assistant professors to teach them. These classes are graded by graduate students.
Some 17-year-old who has learned how to learn in a tiny class is now thrown to the lions. "Good luck!"
This is even more true of home-schooled college freshmen. Momma is back home. Momma can't help. Momma set up her child for an expensive lesson in the only education that matters in the long run: self-education.
There is only one curriculum that is geared entirely to self-education: Dr. Arthur Robinson's. He wants parents to get out of the way of their children's education as early as possible.
Because his K-12 CD-ROM-based curriculum sells for $200, once per family, it is the best bargain in the history of education. But it is not for parents of Momma's boys and girls.
The best thing about the Robinson Curriculum is that it ends forever the seeming legitimacy of the complaint, "We just can't afford private education." A family can buy this curriculum for $200 – the cost of a pair of running shoes – plus the cost of a set of the Saxon math books. After that, it only costs paper and toner.
Because Christian parents are generally more concerned with protecting their children socially than with training up intellectual warriors, Robinson's approach to education is not widely accepted in Christian circles. The fact that a student who gets through this curriculum can quiz out of his first year of college, and possibly two years, does not impress such parents. This is because so few of them ever mastered the skills of self-education.
Despite Christian parents' desire to provide social environment rather than intellectual tools of combat, I still think conventional home schooling beats private day schooling. Parental concern is very great. Parents have not only pulled a child out of the humanists' established church – the public school system – the mother has also decided to skip entry into the wage-earning work force for the sake of her children's education. This degree of commitment, even when accompanied by the well-meant but ill-conceived pedagogy of showing children how to solve problems with mother's help rather than by themselves, overcomes the low common denominator problem of the k-12 classroom.
by Gary North
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