From:
Sent:Tuesday, 28 February 2017 4:49 PM
To:DET Regulation Review
Subject:Review of Homeschool
To whom it may concern,
I actually have no problem with you putting regulations into homeschooling.
I think this is a positive and warranted step for our state.
My objection is that we will have to comply with state standards of education.
Prior to homeschooling I was aSpeech Pathologist, and it was my job to fix problems in children that were exacerbated by the system you are now saying we (in part)need to emulate.
We have THE WORST literacy and numeracy rates in the ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD. We even have worse literacy than some non-English speaking countries! And now you want to mandate that we follow this system? Our results are in fact deteriorating, not improving in these areas over the past few years......
Have you considered that some of us choose not to use this system because it is grossly inadequate and does not produce the desired results?
And yet you would penalise us for using different programs that have been on record for decades in producing better results than our state or country. Programs that you say are inadequate because on their own they don't do things the way you stipulate. Speech Pathology as a profession has not taught reading, writing, speech or spelling the way you do in schools for 60 years - and yet it continues to produce results. But even this has great potential to be consideredinadequate by your new regulations..... THIS causes us great concern.
PLEASE consider that there is more than 1 route to achieving great results for our kids. Showing positive and forward momentum for children who struggle in certain areas and tailoring a program to enhance their strengths while at the same time improving on their weaknesses will always produce better results in our kids than prescribing exactly what they should learn when. This way of enforcing learning objectives ignores the idiosyncrasies of our children who learn in different intelligence areas (maths, english, music, art etc) at different rates, both in comparison to themselves, but also in comparison to others.
It is thisongoing prescriptiveuse of your standards and criteria, with potential punishment in refusing our requests to homeschool that weobject to.
Especially when schools or individual teachers are in no way penalised if they fail to teach children every single one of these criteria in a single year. If a child fails to learn, the teacher is not treated as though they are at fault. My mother, sister, brother in law and several friends are all teachers, and not one of them says they can get through their entire curriculum in a year. There is no penalty for this, and yet the reading of your new guidelines suggest that our children's education in the homeschool environment may be jeopardised if we in fact do not do whatthe average teacher finds nigh impossible. Thisdouble standardis unacceptable.
Further,I disagree with your focus on technology when it has been shown that children learn up to 30%less when usingdevices. I run an online business, and I learned typing in high school. I got my first computer at university. My children have more interaction with technology than I ever did, and I do not believe it is in their interests to being the onslaught of social media (proven to increase incidences of bulling and depression in teens AND ADULTS) at such a young age. They will have ample opportunity to learn about technology AFTER they learn the important skills of reading, writing, spelling, grammar,arithmetic, science, languages other than english, art, history, music appreciation,physical education, health, cooking and very importantly-critical thought.
Thank you for considering our applications and appeals to your process, and continuing to try to make the education both within our state schools and without, better for our children.
Kind regards,
Homeschoolers.