My wife's a 4th grade teacher. She recently had a young girl start "public" school for the first time in her class. She was previously home schooled. The girl wrote and read phonetically. She couldn't do math problems lined up horizontally - only vertically, and even then, she had no concept of multiplication or division. She couldn't spell, had no inkling of the different parts of an English sentence. She couldn't do word problems of any sort, as she hadn't developed any apparent critical thinking ability. She was unable to interact with the other children, and was unable to control her emotions (much of this probably stemmed from simply being overwhelmed in class, however).
It turns out that this girl's parents were plopping her down in front of a computer and expecting a program called "Alpha Omega" to educate their child. The net effect was thatthis girl had fallen very far behind her classmates in very fundamental ways.
My wife views this behavior as akin to child abuse. I tend to agree, in this case. However, for every story you hear like this one, you hear another detailing involved, caring parents. I tend to believe that in this, as in all things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Most parents probably do a so-so job of educating their kids in a home-schooled environment. I don't think there's any "right or wrong" answer here - and I don't think there needs to be one.
I don't think I'd be advertising the fact about how good I am at outsourcing on a "please buy our support" page. It brings about bad visions of not being able to understand the person on the other end of the line.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife's a 4th grade teacher. She recently had a young girl start "public" school for the first time in her class. She was previously home schooled. The girl wrote and read phonetically. She couldn't do math problems lined up horizontally - only vertically, and even then, she had no concept of multiplication or division. She couldn't spell, had no inkling of the different parts of an English sentence. She couldn't do word problems of any sort, as she hadn't developed any apparent critical thinking ability. She was unable to interact with the other children, and was unable to control her emotions (much of this probably stemmed from simply being overwhelmed in class, however).
It turns out that this girl's parents were plopping her down in front of a computer and expecting a program called "Alpha Omega" to educate their child. The net effect was thatthis girl had fallen very far behind her classmates in very fundamental ways.
My wife views this behavior as akin to child abuse. I tend to agree, in this case. However, for every story you hear like this one, you hear another detailing involved, caring parents. I tend to believe that in this, as in all things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Most parents probably do a so-so job of educating their kids in a home-schooled environment. I don't think there's any "right or wrong" answer here - and I don't think there needs to be one.
"HP ranked #1 in outsourcing" ... ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/services/spotlight/info/info_ week.pdf (PDF file)
I don't think I'd be advertising the fact about how good I am at outsourcing on a "please buy our support" page. It brings about bad visions of not being able to understand the person on the other end of the line.
How long do you think it is until we see these idiots get a Darwin Award? I bet it's today, after the box explodes from the Slashdotting.