http://www.nelsonguirado.com/index.php/reviews/2006/12/24/lord_of_the_rings_lite_eragon_review

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/osusports/osusports.php?story=dispatch/2007/01/05/20070105-F1-04.html

I know quite a few people who have been homeschooled, and I think that their spelling is mostly terrible, as well as their uses of apostrophes. I also know quite a few people that have gone to public school who have horrible spelling. Poor spelling appears to be a universal weakness.

I am a teacher, have been teaching for more than 20 years, and I have also known families engaged in home education for about that same period of time.

I have found that home-educating parents are willing to make sacrifices and work hard at providing a quality education for their children, whereas I can only dream to have such parents involved with my students. Unfortunately, those parents tend to be terribly apathetic and disconnected, and a higher income only seems to only exacerbate that tendency.

If you think that only home-educated students exhibit anti-social tendencies and behaviors, you are ignoring a whole body of evidence which has been available to all for quite some time. For example, was the Unabomber educated at home? No. John Wayne Gacy? No. Eric Rudolph? No. You name any serial rapist/killer, and then check the stats on that person.

As for TV and video games: Do you seriously think those cause kids to be well-adjusted? If so, what is your rationale? Are kids who vegetate in front of a TV or a video game interacting with others, be it peers or otherwise, on a meaningful basis which will enable them to become stable adults? If you think this is true, where is your proof?

OTOH, what of kids who don’t spend much time watching TV or playing video games? If they are public-schooled, does that make it all right? Or not? If they are in private school, ditto those questions? If they are being educated at home, what’s the difference?

I look forward to your answers.

Oh, I must add this: You might be surprised to know how many colleagues / teachers make multiple grammar and spelling errors on a regular basis. And it’s only getting worse the younger they are. Our public schools are simply not doing a good job, not even an acceptable job, and the few teachers who truly care about the kids and work hard are usually frustrated with apathetic bureaucrats in the superintendents’ offices who are only there for a paycheck - and those paychecks are commonly exorbitant. My hat’s off to any parent who realizes s/he can do as well, and without spending nearly as much money.

Even if a homeschooler is shy, he will get a better education than a public schooler who has to honestly TRY to fail to get below the F average (or what ever it is) that it takes to pass a grade.

I have been fascinated to learn that homeschoolers always receive better educations that public schoolers. It’s especially enlightening when it comes from someone who is upset about stereotypes, because I KNOW that person would never fall into the trap of assuming that parents, regardless of their level of education and motivations, are always better educators than people with college degrees in education.

Maybe If I cared enough I would write this all out in a Word document and let it catch more of my mistakes.

Firefox 2.0 actually has spellcheck built in to the browser, so any time you are typing a comment on a blog (or anything else in a text field in a form), misspelled words are underlined in red, and if you right-click, it gives you options to correct them. Basically, it works just like Word, but it’s built in to the browser.