Re: [seul-edu] Home schooling question: parents better than

[Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:41, Downes, Stephen wrote:
> It was on this basis that I suggested that the probable implicit
> conclusion - that home schooling is superior - is incorrect, on the
> grounds that if these other factors were not considered, then it
> followed that parents are better teachers than teachers, which is
> implausible.

The conclusion is probably still correct, since I can't see any of the 
selection factors making enough of a difference to cover the relatively 
large delta in scores. The absolute numbers are large enough that the 
imbalance strikes most people as not being so significant - at least, 
until you push those scores under a bell curve and turn them into 
percentiles.

The second problem is, "what is a teacher?" If you define a teacher in 
the narrow sense of their measurable performance as a skilled classroom 
technician according to relatively abstract parameters, then the 
premise is clearly untenable.

If instead you define a teacher in the more pragmatic sense of being an 
individual capable of imparting information to another individual or 
groups of same, then your implied axiom that college training improves 
the results comes into question. Voice training or a drama course may 
be more effective, hour for hour, than teacher training.

A concrete eg of this is studies on criminal recidivism (discussed here: 
http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/articles/forgotten_factor_crimedebate.html) 
discovering that counsellors weren't as effective in preventing the 
recurrence of crime as was nutrition training. Not a result you'd 
expect.

Certainly, the axiom is well open to question in a home schooling 
environment, and I wonder when I see no evidence of anyone following 
that question back to the classroom environment in search of tunable 
parameters with which to make teacher training more effective.

The third problem lies in what is being taught. What makes you sure that 
the curriculum areas so far identified and formalised are so strongly 
related to the impartation and measurement of skills which will be 
effective in real life - even if "real life" is a laboratory somewhere?

It could well be that the application of parenting skills are more 
effective in leading scholars to study and adopt their materials than 
the best formal study technology applied without "adoption" by the 
scholar.

In short, I still think your approach was (for a researcher) very much 
on the subjective side and I strongly disagree with your conclusion 
that the metric used does not strongly apply. I recommend, albeit 
without the qualifications to back my recommendation, that you 
reconsider your axiom that parents cannot be, on average, better 
teachers than teachers.

If any of the other educators here are feeling brave, perhaps you'd like 
to comment on how many of your parenting skills are involved when you 
are doing your most rewarding and effective work?

Cheers; Leon