Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Cohousing / Homeschooling

[Rob Sandelin (Floriferous]

My family homeschools, along with one other at Sharingwood. There are families 
who do not. It makes an interesting control study of  education in that the 
neighborhood interactions are the same for both home schooled and state 
schooled kids. Since we are homeschooling I tend to look for differences in my 
daughters and their state schooled peers.  

 The basic skill level seems to be about the same, given individual variation. 
My daughter in kindergarten is reading a little ahead of the state schooled 
peer in the same level. But that's within variation.

What is very different I notice is values. Since my kids are home, they get 
much less exposure to "TV values", and thus don't seem to be influenced by 
them. There is a consumerist competitive culture that permeates the state 
sponsered schools. It's not delibrate, its not a plot, it just happens, 
because that is the dominate value set of the rest of the kids, who are raised 
on TV without questioning.  

Its hard for me to explain this clearly so I'll leave it for another day. 

Rob Sandelin