>Jerry,
>
>>>Mike,
>>>
>>>>>My wife Karol is a 2nd grade teacher and you wouldn't believe the garbage the federal government is forcing on the local schools. Privatize! <g>
>>>>
>>>>Or home school. Thats a pretty good idea...
>>>
>>>I'm not at all against home schooling. However, this can be a tricky issue. Karol is an experienced teacher. However, her certification only covers K-3 so she'd be out of her area of expertise in the higher grades and would probably not be able to meet the needs of the children.
>>>
>>>The issue I'm getting at is quality and neither the home, private or public school is guaranteed to be a high quality approach simply because they are home, private or public.
>>
>>True, but on average home/private schooling results in students who are one to three grades above their peers in public schools. I've had schooled kids come into my ninth grade class and test out at the first year college level. I don't think it is that home schools are so good as much as public schools are so bad. The SAT and other standardized tests have "lowered their hoop" so much that home schooled kids are, for the most part, shooting down to make a basket, which is an easy shot for them. I've also noticed a trend: parents of problem students are enrolling them in private schools to 'reform' them, which almost always never works. During my college teaching days, at a private college, I would estimate that 5-10% of the students were remedial enrollments. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.
>
>Indeed. I'm quite content for the record to speak for itself. I've noticed a huge chagrin eminating from a whole lot of sources after the annual spelling bees where home-schooled children generally trounce their unfortunate publicly-schooled competitors.
>
>The problem here is that stupid people generally do not know they are so and we've done a pretty good job culturally in the last 50 years of dumbing-down our populace. I suppose if I could have one wish granted by the proverbial genie it would be the eradication of television.

Interesting that you should say that. It brought to mind an international science and math contest a couple of years. ago. The American kids were asked, before the results were announced, how well they thought they did. They all demonstrated large amounts of self-esteem and modestly put themselves in the top 10% of all students. When the results were released it showed that most of the American students were in the BOTTOM 10%. Just today or yesterday an NSF study on Americans and their general knowledge of science revealed that 78% of all American have NO valid knowledge of true science or the scientific process of inquiery. Most did believe in and confuse psychics and astrology with science.