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  3. Home schooling appears to be a great success for middle-class and wealthy families when one parent is home most of the time. How

Home schooling appears to be a great success for middle-class and wealthy families when one parent is home most of the time. How

admin2013-01-15  78
问题     Home schooling appears to be a great success for middle-class and wealthy families when one parent is home most of the time. However, home schooling does not work in inner-city neighborhoods because parents either work during the day or actively look for work. Numerous estimates between 1 and 2 million have been made regarding the number of home-schooled children in this country. Home schooling will grow in the future as course materials and tutoring systems vastly improve.
    Not too many years ago, learning at home meant reading a book and doing homework with tutoring from a parent or older sibling. Today, homes have an outstanding tutor available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This tutor never loses its patience,becomes upset, turns critical,or scolds a child for poor performance. In fact, the new tutoring system constantly recognizes good performance and provides praise for progress in learning. This tutor is the multimedia personal computer. For decades, students have been learning via television programs. In recent years, students have learned how to use a personal computer. Now technology is bringing together the Internet, video, slides, CD-ROM, and the interactivity of a computer to create multimedia presentations that students enjoy.
    The cost of this tutoring system is about $ 1,200. It can be used for at least six years, so the annual cost is $ 200. If there are two students in the family, the annual cost drops to $ 100 per student. In many households, the parents also use the computer, which reduces the annual cost even further.
    The tutoring system allows home schoolers to explore subjects without a parent or teacher telling them what to do next. The computer also provides a safe environment for students to take risks. They see and hear immediate, positive reinforcement every time they learn something. Immediate, positive remediation also is available when the student doesn’t fully understand the lesson. The computer is truly a break-through in student learning and in building self-esteem.
    At first, courseware developers thought they had to sell their products to curriculum directors, teacher committees, and school boards. Now, these companies sell courseware directly to parents. For example, instead of buying a leather-bound edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, working parents can purchase a computerized encyclopedia for $ 35 or less.
    Courseware quality and course materials improve annually because parents and students buy only high-quality and motivational courses. With millions of home schoolers and other children using these materials, the price per subject now varies from $ 20 to $ 40. In the early school years, one or two courseware systems are sufficient for the entire school year. The courseware market has become a multi-million-dollar industry in which quality increases and costs decrease constantly.
    Studies have shown that interactive courseware speeds learning by 30 to 50 percent over conventional teaching methods. Lesson retention also improves. Many home schoolers need to study only three or four hours, leaving them more than enough time for extracurricular activities.
    How will courseware impact the public schools? It can either be viewed as a sideshow that has no place in a school system, which would be a mistake, or public schools can study why courseware and home schooling have succeeded,Investing in outstanding course materials,learning systems,and tutoring systems have been home schooling’s keys to success. This is exactly what most public schools do not do, even though they spend more than $ 300 billion in taxpayers’ money. Instead, they claim they have no money for outstanding course materials,learning systems, and tutoring systems.
    It should also be noted that most home-schooling parents are not former teachers. Many of them just have high school diplomas or have studied a year or two in community colleges. This information indicates that certified teachers within inner-city schools could be more successful if their classrooms had outstanding course materials, learning systems, and tutoring systems.
    Home schooling will grow in response to the violence in schools and to the constant drone of massages about poor student performance,but it cannot replace our public school systems because most parents are simply not available to provide home schooling. It is hoped, however, that public schools will begin to adopt the successful aspects of home schooling. In some communities,school districts are working with home-schooling families on special classes and extracurricular activities. This partnership helps solve the problem of overcrowded schools and helps reduce the massive building costs associated with new school buildings.
What is the author’s attitude towards public schools?
选项 A、Optimistic
B、Pessimistic
C、Critical
D、Indifferent
答案C
解析 主旨题。作者用大篇幅的内容介绍了家庭教育随着新技术的发展而取得成功，并对比了它的优势和公立学校的劣势，但也没完全否定公立学校，并希望学校能借鉴家庭教育成功的一面。显然，作者对公立学校只是有些挑剔，而没有乐观和悲观之意。故正确答案为C。
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