For this week, I found the speech buddy videos really caught my attention since it is an issue that I am familiar with. I have been homeschooled almost all of my life, so naturally I wanted to start on the video about the pros of homeschooling. One of the things that I probably would have changed about this speech was to add some statistics about the success rates of homeschoolers or to include a small narrative from someone that was homeschooled. I did like how she included a couple of quotes in her speech (this would qualify as the logos type of appeal). The second type of appeal that the speaker used would have been ethos, as she stated in the very beginning of her speech that she had studied the topic thus helping her credibility.
Listening to her speech, I completely agree with all of her points. I and my siblings spent less hours on school material than most schooled students and we did a lot better than most California students on the end of the year star testing. One of my brothers was constantly being picked on and even had his tooth punched out in the first grade in public school; homeschooling solved this problem for him. Also, the flexibility of homeschooling was incredible! We had our school curriculum program on our laptops, and this allowed us to be able to bring our school with us when we visited family or went on a trip. It also allowed my younger brother to complete two years of school in one.
Now looking at the speech with the cons of homeschooling, I feel that the speaker did not research homeschooling too well. His first point addressed parents being the teachers, and he made a statement about how the parents could never be as qualified, if not more qualified, than a teacher. First off, the parent knows the child better than a teacher ever could. The parent knows the child's strengths and weaknesses, they know the learning techniques that help the child learn better, and they also know what motivates their child to learn. Almost all of the charter schools that I have been to have offered classes to their students that include all of the classes from math and english, to digital photography, cosmetology classes, and web design and golf classes. All of these classes are taught by certified teachers, so if a parent has trouble in a certain subject, they can sign their child up for that class, for free (as long as you stay in the budget per child amount which could be from $1000 - $2000 a year. You can also use this money for curriculum or other school supplies). And as I mentioned before, me and my homeschooled siblings were scoring advanced on almost every subject area in the star testing, so clearly my parents were doing as good, if not better, than most teachers. Yes, there is the occasional parent that doesn't take their child's education very seriously, but there are teachers in schools that feel the same way about their students. I know because my brother had a teacher like that in public school. One of the last points that the speaker makes is the need for parental involvement for the student success, I totally agree with that point since the main reason that my parents homeschooled me was to be more involved in my education and my life.
You made a good point about the speaker’s use of statistics in the speech. I thought if the speaker had added some more statistics it would have better supported the inferences made. You make an interesting point when you said, parent knows the child better than a teacher ever could. The parent knows the child's strengths and weaknesses, they know the learning techniques that help the child learn better, and they also know what motivates their child to learn. All very true, however, the skills involved in teaching go far beyond understanding your child’s strengths and weaknesses. Take for example the subject mathematics; comparing the teaching quality of a math teacher against that of a parent is obvious who is more qualified to present the subject matter. I’m sure I could spend lots of hours figuring out how to change the headers in my tuck, however, I would rather take it to a professional and have them do it in a quarter of the time.
ReplyDeleteUnderstanding the child's strengths and weaknesses are actually a very big part of teaching and is something that is hard to catch, especially in a large classroom of 20 kids. I was a supplemental instructor for a while, and the big thing that was emphasized was looking for the areas where the class was struggling (their weaknesses) and also recognizing that students have different learning styles so that we could come up with the appropriate activity to use in our study sessions. When I was struggling with math in highschool my mom had the liberty to do several things that a normal teacher couldn't do, which included allowing me to switch my math curriculum in the middle of the semester to a math book that I was able to understand better, and my scores improved to "A" grades. Just because someone has a teaching degree doesn't automatically make that person a good teacher (believe me, I have had a couple of teachers that didn't know what they were doing). And as I mentined before, the charter school that I was in offered math classes that would be payed for by the budget that they gave us. But you are right in that if there is a real quality teacher that actually understands how kids learn and is able to make the learning process fun, that children will be better off with them. I am not saying that teachers can't do a good job, I was just challenging the point that the second speaker made saying that parents could never do as good of a job as the teacher. :)
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