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ouinon
chemical reaction
Joined: Jul 11, 2007
Posts: 3148
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lotusblossom
Deinonychus
Joined: Jan 14, 2008
Posts: 376
Location: UK
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 Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:30 am Post subject: |
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Totally agree with you!
John Holt is such a great man- I wish more of his stuff was easier available to more people.
I too wish I had been home schooled myself- I think school is such a bad place for people on the spectrum, esp if your clever. Everything I know Ive taught myelf. I left school with out any GCSEs but through the Open university I have gained a Bsc and now Im doing a Msc and I think school really let me down.
I think learning is for life and I like the fact that John Holt learned the cello (?) at an older age and its never to late to learn things- learnings great! (They dont teach you that in school- more like learning sucks) |
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rachel46
Pileated woodpecker
Joined: May 07, 2007
Posts: 178
Location: Midwest US
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:37 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn't have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, "They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world."
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Thanks for the links. This quote took my breath away and truly reflects some of what is going on in the schools today. Kids don't all have ADD, ADHD, ODD- they're BORED! Very sad. |
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ouinon
chemical reaction
Joined: Jul 11, 2007
Posts: 3148
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:57 am Post subject: |
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Yes, very. 
Here is a link to a poem written by a "high school senior" a few weeks before committing suicide:
"He was Square Inside and Brown" :
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue5.htm 
with, on the same page, a mother's account of her child whose ADD, hives, tears, and depression, vanished within weeks of beginning homeschooling.
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"Life is pain; anyone who says different is selling something" |
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RedRevolver
Butterfly
Joined: Aug 09, 2007
Age: 16
Posts: 17
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:47 am Post subject: |
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I agree...sort of.
I'm currently in Year 11 (just coming up to my GCSEs D=) and I'm only just about to be assessed for Asperger's.
However, I used to be removed from my class for at least an hour a week because of my lack of social skills, which lead me to be more, or assumed more, badly behaved that others when they reintergrated me realising I wasn't actually stupid.
I went through primary school being bullied and teased for being odd and weird. I lacked understanding why I was being teased too which lead to depression.
I then went to secondary school which I left at around the beginning of Year 9, and (apparently) my head of year had already suggested to my mother that I may have Asperger's.
BUT whilst that might've happened, I've got friends who I would not have had if I'd been homeschooled.
Yes, I think current state schools need to be revamped and have a fairer system for those who need more help either socially or educationally, but home-schooling (which I was for the year) is not the answer, at least in Asperger's. |
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ouinon
chemical reaction
Joined: Jul 11, 2007
Posts: 3148
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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| RedRevolver wrote: | | I think state schools need to be revamped and have a fairer system, but home-schooling is not the answer, at least in Asperger's. |
I don't see in what way your post is supportive ( this is a Homeschool Support Thread ), if it is at all, but I am wondering how you "know" that homeschooling is not the answer for someone with aspergers, apart from yourself that is.
Do you have any evidence for this?
If you had read the links I posted in the OP, esp Holt, but also Gatto, you would see that in fact homeschooling is in fact very effective, helpful and even therapeutic for many people with difficulties/differences; diagnosed ADD, AS/Aspergers, depression, anxiety, "gifted"/highly intelligent, highly sensitive, etc, for many of whom regular/state schooling is like a straitjacket, or worse, ( footbinding for example), in fact that their differences are only difficulties within the school system.
And that's without even counting all the people turned into compulsive consumers by schooling's enforced passivity and dependency on others for guidance.
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lotusblossom
Deinonychus
Joined: Jan 14, 2008
Posts: 376
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| OMG I just dont understand peoples attitude about home schoolers not being socialised. Near me there are 5 homeschool groups that all meet at least 3 times a week each. As far as I know in school you get told off for chatting and so only socialise for a few minutes at break and lunch really, where as in home school you play and chat for hours and hours with your friends and see them as much as you like. Our home school friends meet up to play in each others houses and soft play centres, swimming, drama, science, nature walks, craft and loads of other things. Home school does not mean you never leave the home- most homeschoolers I know are hardly at home at all! |
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kit000003
Deinonychus
Joined: Feb 04, 2008
Age: 23
Posts: 395
Location: Pensacola, FL
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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Homeschooling may be therapuetic, as in it allows the child to relax, destress, and they may make better grades. It is not, however, the best manner of schooling for a longterm successful Aspergian, in my point of view.
Unless there are mitigating circumstances, as in the school you have available offers absolutley no support and the child is regressing to violent or uncommunicative behavior, or they are being bullied, or a number of other mitigating factors.
I will back my point:
1. Aspergians have trouble with social issues. Some of us can get over this by forming "databases" in our brains of specific social situations and figuring out what the best way to respond is. This cannot just be taught, this must be lived. If you take us out of situations where we will be exposed to new social situations, we will never learn. The safest way to learn is at school. We then use this database for future situations in our lives, such as work, or dating.
If we can't learn the situations in a safe place. Then later in life we will learn them in an unsafe place. (As in how to figure out if someone is lying to you, if you can't tell a lie from the truth, you can't figure out when someone is cheating on you, who is really a friend, and who is fleecing you for money)
2. Desensitization, on a day-to-day scale. When homeschooling, you take an Aspergian child, who already has sensory issues, then cut them of from new smells, tastes, colors, looks, people, and sounds. What do you think happens? They become even more sensitive. Now I know someone is going to say, but we will make the child leave the house. Will you, really? You are already homeschooling them so they don't have stress. They might not have the normal school friends to pull them out of the house and they are usually socially inept enough not to go make their own, in person.
I know if I didn't have to work, If I could get my food without leaving my house, I might stay in here, simply not to chance running in to something bad. But I also know that that is no way to live. So I go out. I wear my really itchy sweater. (it looks really cool i can't help it, i have to have long sleeves on under it) I refuse to allow my sensory difficulties to run my life. (My father calls me stubborn)
This becomes an issue really when it becomes time to go to college. The child, now teenager, won't have the sensory capabilities to be able to cope in a dorm, if they are in one. (loud noisy things freshman dorms are). If they are in a large school, tests will be hell, almost quiet room ruffling papers and no music to drown them out.
3. Boredom. Stimulation of the intellect is crucial to an Aspergian. School does this in the upper levels at least, and I know you are going "but i will be schooling my child, homeschool." But I've had a couple of cool school teachers do some awesome stuff that I don't think the standard homeschool curriculum would cover. I happen to know that when they received the news that Washington DC was burning, the president was eating roast beef, and I hated history, but I remember that from 7 years ago. Parents usually don't have history degrees, they don't have science degrees, they can't answer the really in depth questions that once an aspergian takes an interest in, they will want to know the answer to.
4. Getting into College. The school system is one of the best resources to use to get into college. They have guidance counselors that, for the last year of school, their only job, just about, is getting everyone sorted out to where they are going. College fairs, Job fairs, help filling out paperwork, help finding the right degree.
Oh and by the way I was Dx'd with Gen Anxiety Disorder, I've just figured out the Asperger's, I have OCD issues, and I was in Gifted programming from grades 3 through 8 when Advanced Placement/Honors took over. So, If the school has no programs for special education, no programs for gifted, or the child doesn't fit into them, i can see where homeschooling would be the best option. |
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ouinon
chemical reaction
Joined: Jul 11, 2007
Posts: 3148
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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This is a support thread for homeschoolers. Your post is the opposite. In addition it is so full of errors of fact and interpretation that there is almost nothing which is not immediately and completely refutable.
I am actually wondering whether it is even worth doing so; your prejudice and willingness to spout/relay misinformation with such abandon is so flagrant.
Have you read my reply to your post on Smelena's thread re formal school complaints yet? Please do so, and maybe I will crawl through your mass of uninformed pronouncements of staggering inaccuracy .
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"Life is pain; anyone who says different is selling something"
Last edited by ouinon on Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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kit000003
Deinonychus
Joined: Feb 04, 2008
Age: 23
Posts: 395
Location: Pensacola, FL
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject: |
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| lotusblossom wrote: | | OMG I just dont understand peoples attitude about home schoolers not being socialised. Near me there are 5 homeschool groups that all meet at least 3 times a week each. As far as I know in school you get told off for chatting and so only socialise for a few minutes at break and lunch really, where as in home school you play and chat for hours and hours with your friends and see them as much as you like. Our home school friends meet up to play in each others houses and soft play centres, swimming, drama, science, nature walks, craft and loads of other things. Home school does not mean you never leave the home- most homeschoolers I know are hardly at home at all! |
For an aspergian?
This would be hell. Schedule, please?
Stay out of my room, please?
Don't touch my stuff, please?
All sentences that I wouldn't be able to say, because my mother would label them rude.
The socialising I am talking about isn't even about talking, it isn't about friendships. It is about networking, a valid, needed for life/work skill. I am talking about being able to deal with people you neither like nor care for. Being able to understand that not everyone will like you, and being able to deal with it.
Teachers in school put people in group projects that hate each other. I think it is because they are sadistic. They think it is because it helps work out problems. When at work you will have to deal with the same thing. When I am asking you, does this ever happens in a homeschool situation?
And I am sorry about hijacking the board, I just had the piece to say.
Last edited by kit000003 on Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:13 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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kit000003
Deinonychus
Joined: Feb 04, 2008
Age: 23
Posts: 395
Location: Pensacola, FL
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:10 pm Post subject: i am taking this off the board |
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| opps |
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DW_a_mom
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 1043
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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I beleive that homeschooling is a wonderful option for the right family. Incredible things have been done by homeschooled children. The right parents doing it for the right reasons will do an excellent job.
There are no one-size-fits-answers to how best school an Aspie child. It is going to vary a lot by the needs of the child, the needs of the parents, and what is available in the local school system. I don't think it is fair for those sticking with public schools to claim their way is always the best way, or for those choosing homeschooling to claim all out-of-the-home school systems are bad. Neither statement is true. This is a very personal and individual decision.
All of us on this board are parents facing difficult decisions every day. We should ALL be supporting each other, pointing out the positives of all the options, and not claiming that our decisions are the only right ones. I see far too much of that on both sides whenever a discussion like this starts up. It isn't fair to the parents who we all know have struggled to make difficult decisions that will work for their own unique family.
Generally, I enjoy reading what homeschoolers are up to. It keeps me informed on the option, and gives me ideas on things my son might do when he is not in formal school. While I have posted in the other thread why our family has not chosen that option, it remains something I fully support.
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ouinon
chemical reaction
Joined: Jul 11, 2007
Posts: 3148
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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| DW_a_mom wrote: | | I believe that homeschooling is a wonderful option for the right family. Incredible things have been done by homeschooled children. The right parents doing it for the right reasons will do an excellent job. |
Yes, the results do show increasingly conclusively that children who are homeschooled have higher self esteem, greater confidence and skill in relating to all ages/kinds of people, aswell as skills and talents and academic records to be envied by most of the population. 
| DW_a_mom wrote: | | There are no one-size-fits-all answers to how best to school an Aspie child. |
That is what is so wonderful about homeschooling. It is never ever the same size!! As you say | DW_a_mom wrote: | | It is going to vary a lot by the needs of the child, the needs of the parents, and what is available |
locally.  | DW_a_mom wrote: | | I don't think it is fair for those choosing homeschooling to claim all out-of-the-home school systems are bad. |
And I don't claim that. Just that the state controlled education system is. That the pleasant experiences had by some are the privileges which have always resulted from iniquitous systems and institutions in which power is in the hands of a small group and most/all of the subjects have almost no say in its running. | DW_a_mom wrote: | | This is a very personal and individual decision. |
Homeschooling is the most individual and personal kind of all educations.
| DW_a_mom wrote: | | We should ALL be supporting each other, pointing out the positives of all the options, and not claiming that our decisions are the only right ones. |
and from your post on Smelena's thread; | Quote: | | We should support ALL choices. |
I don't agree. Are you seriously suggesting that , or just pouring oil, because it doesn't seem very feasible or even very believable as a stance/position. I can not see myself supporting everybody's choices just because they are all on wp .
Although I do understand and support parents who really have no choice using the state education system, it is only as a last resort, as the very last option of all, in the absence of anything else.
And that is not only because my own and other's experience in/of the system has been so fundamentally/profoundly destructive, but also because I believe that the institution as a whole, in its entirety, is responsible for some of the gravest ills of our society.
| DW_a_mom wrote: | | Generally, I enjoy reading what homeschoolers are up to. It keeps me informed on the option, and gives me ideas on things my son might do when he is not in formal school. While I have posted in the other thread why our family has not chosen that option, it remains something I fully support. |
Homeschooling is not about supplementing the failures of the state system, it is about removing oneself from that system, because it is not in what it lacks that school is so lethal to the emotional and intellectual growth/development of children, but in what it is full of.
Homeschooling as "an extra" is just a cruel joke, another version of homework.
While you are in the state system you do not support homeschooling. In fact even I, by choosing a Correspondence course to avoid often hostile visits by the Academic Inspection, am only partially "supporting" homeschooling.
The real supporters are out there defenceless in the face of the visits and tests, with no timetables or textbooks, standing up for their faith and trust in childrens capacities, which they believe, as I do, need no courses, curriculums, or set books, ( and only a minimum of special materials in particular situations).
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lotusblossom
Deinonychus
Joined: Jan 14, 2008
Posts: 376
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:15 pm Post subject: |
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| I dont think it is worth having a home school SUPPORT thread as people just want to condem and attack and now I feel bad. I think its so mean for people to put down a minority group who needs support and AS people should know better than that. |
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ouinon
chemical reaction
Joined: Jul 11, 2007
Posts: 3148
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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| lotusblossom wrote: | | I dont think it is worth having a home school SUPPORT thread as people just want to condem and attack. I think its so mean for people to put down a minority group who needs support . |
Ah, you mean we don't need support? It's just people with children in the state system who do? There is something in that! 
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Hello! This is a support thread for all those who homeschool, ( parents and children), and/or are unhappy about modern state-controlled education systems.
at:
Is there anyone else I should know about on the subject of debunking/demystifying/excoriating/analysing and exposing modern mass state education systems?
