Home-Schooling and "Open Source" Materials?

Deagol asks: "After we registered our daughter for second grade yesterday at public school, I began to ponder (yet again) the question of homeschooling. There's certainly not a lack of sites out there about the topic, but I was surprised at the lack of public domain materials out there. I would think there'd more collections of public domain 'courses' since the K-12 core knowledge base is so stable and well understood. Sure, there are tons of places that will sell you kits of course materials, and quite a few home-schoolers who made their own courses (but only offer them for a fee). I assume there's more than a few homeschoolers out there on Slashdot. Are there any good sources of free home-schooling materials (including software) out there?"

Comments

Re:The curriculum is NOT that set...

[ProlificSage]

The curriculum is not as set as the question makes it sound -- there are constant changes in elementary education

This is part of the problem. Too many people theorizing and not enough reliance on proven methods. Phonics is how to teach reading. Period. Whole language is a failure.

Do you know why grammar school is called that? Because they used to teach grammar in those grades. Not just English, Greek and Latin as well. How many elementary school teachers were even required to learn a second language, let alone teach it?

Show me an average (American) public school teacher and I'll show you someone who's got degrees in Education which emphasize methods and inclusion and other crap, not degrees in his/her subject matter. Granted, there are some people with plenty of knowledge that can't teach to save their lives (tenured college profs come to mind), but that doesn't excuse the fact that many of our teachers have much less knowledge of subject matter than the typical baccalaureate.

I strongly suggest that any opponents of home-schooling, especially teachers, go out and get a copy of Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools This book shows how public eduaction emphasizes individualization and "feeling good about yourself" over subject matter. Is it any wonder we're nowhere near the top 10 in math and science world-wide?

Before I get flamed, just let me say that I had the opportunity to work in the same school system in which I grew up. I got to see how the curriculum is watered down, the special needs kids are catered to, and the gifted are generally ignored. When the gifted aren't ignored, they usually end up with more work, not more challengin, just more, because their teachers don't know what to do with them.

I've also gone to both public and private schools and definitely got more out of the private school where the teachers' hands weren't tied by unions and administration. I've seen teachers who knew the teaching methods they were required to use were ineffective, but could do nothing about it because the current methods were "policy." Every kid is different, or so we like to tell them, so teachers ought to be able to adapt their methods to individual needs.

Take a good look around the tech sector. There are plenty of H1B visa workers where there used to be Americans. Why? Because the education in other countries is focused on the facts, not how the kids "feel" about their performance. The American public school system hardly prepares children for the reality of corporate America, where many of them will likely end up working.