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

["Downes, Stephen" <Stephen.Downes@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>]

Hiya,

This will be my last post on this topic, in order to allow this list to
return to its original mandate.

Leon writes, "A concrete eg of this is studies on criminal recidivism
discovering that counsellors weren't as effective in preventing the
recurrence of crime as was nutrition training. Not a result you'd
expect."

On the contrary, this is exactly what I would expect, and the basis for
my remarks. For example, according to a report released by UNICEF 
comparing education in OCED countries lagging in reading and 
mathematics, the best predictor of whether a teen will lag is the 
economic status of the parent.  Thus we see that marginal improvements 
in a child's early education - such as the provision of good nutrition - 
have a noticible effect in high school.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/26/education.rankings.reut/index.html

Home schooling is possible only is the parents have the means. In many
families, both parents must work in order to make ends meet. 
Single-parent families, especially, cannot afford home schooling. 
Moreoever, in order to home school, a certain level of education is 
presupposed on the part of the parent. These factors suggest that the 
sample of students home-schooled is from, on average, a socio-economic 
group higher than the overall average.

In other words: if you have the means to home-school, you probably also
have the means to provide good nutrition for your kids, and that 
(especially in a nation with widespread poverty) is what may well 
explain higher SAT scores, not some inherent superiority of home-schooling.

Feeding your kids properly does not make you a better teacher, but it 
will result in improved educational achievement. It also, as a 
happenstance, make some parents *think* they are better teachers, but 
only those not themselves schooled in statistics and probability.

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Stephen Downes ~ Senior Researcher ~ National Research Council
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
<http://www.downes.ca/> stephen@downes.ca
stephen.downes@nrc.ca <http://www.iit.nrc.ca/e-learning.html>
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