RA: Home Schooling and the Question of Socialization

For tonight I read “Home Schooling and the Question of Socialization” by Richard G. Medlin. Very importantly, his audience is a scholarly one, meaning that his specific style is very different from that which might be written for a public one. I personally found the article was very boring, but informative which is perfect for his audience. There are no from mothers who are beaming about their home taught children as I have seen in other papers. This is much research driven, focusing on a lot of different research and pointing out the various problems and conclusions that each researcher makes. This is effective with Medlin’s audience because that is probably the only way to make a good argument—through fact and research. Medline lists out the arguments of those against home schooling and those in favor of it (mostly parents).
His stance isn’t really too obvious, but he does side with those in favor of home schooling giving a variety of reasons why. However, he is not fully committed to this side as he points out the inherit flaws in the manner of collecting such data and how limited the research actually is. The effect of this on his audience is to slightly persuade them of the benefits of home schooling, but no real big push is made. I believe it is his main purpose to be informative rather than persuasive. He does argue well though, that more research is needed before any real sort of conclusion can be reached.