Home schooling

[DanS]

I used to be against it and dismissed the phenomenon as religious fundamentalists trying to shut their children off from society. Just recently, however, it became clear to me that the phenomenon is exploding across the U.S. and that most parents do home schooling for a noble cause -- that they are not going to allow the mediocre school system (either public, parochial, or private) to mishandle their children's education. Indeed, it seems that the phenomenon often revolves around university communities.

Further, I used to dismiss the education provided by home schooling as uneven. A parent does not know the subject matter nearly as comprehensively as a regular teacher does and so the parent might overstress certain topics to the detriment of the whole. However, it now seems clear that many of these home schooling parents are highly educated in their own right. Often, for a fee, they teach home schooled children from other families on subjects on which they have been educated. Or a mom who wants to stay home and only work a certain amount of time each week might, for a fee, teach a class to a handful of home schoolers on her spare time. In this sense, home schooling can become almost like having a tutored education.

Lastly, I used to worry that home schoolers weren't being "socialized" well enough. Kids have to be exposed to other kids so that they learn how to take care of themselves in a group and to compromise with people of diverse backgrounds. However, my worry is lessened by the possibilities of going to certain classes with a group, as discussed above.

My sister has home schooled her children throughout. My nephew now is equivalent to a junior high schooler. He takes latin from somebody who is educated in Latin. He takes debate from somebody who is educated in debate. He takes biology from somebody who is educated in biology. The fees are reasonable.

What say you? Is home schooling mostly good? Is home schooling a prominent phenomenon in your country?

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's neither inherantly 'good' nor 'bad'. It depends. A system like you described with a bunch of parents getting together and rotating their kids among them based on their area of expertise seems like a very good system. A parent who really doesn't have much knowledge hometutoring their kid only in their home doesn't.

[Krill]

Isn't that just private education without the bureaucracy and teaching qualifications?

[DanS]

It's also much smaller classes. Often as small as a single pupil.

As for bureaucracy, it seems these home schooling parents are at least rather well organized and may pay an organization to keep tabs on their kids and to provide materials, etc.

[joncha]

Homeschooled kids are creepy social rejects. FACT.

[Pekka]

yeah I'd agree with joncha here, much of schooling at early age is to learn to work in a group of other people, it's to learn to share and appreciate others, that's important. It's to be exposed to bunch of other kids and adults too, get friends who aren't from your next door or football team. The earlier years of school is to learn how to live in our society through interraction with peers. Not about collection of some data.

[Shi Huangdi]

It really depends on the quality of the homeschooling being done. I knew one guy who was homeschooled up until High School, and then in High School he was class Valedictorian and scored above 1500 on his SAT. I've also seen news stories of Homeschooled kids winning spelling State Spelling bees...

Of course, it can also go horribly wrong. I know one family that homeschooled their kids, and in spite of the kids being intelligent in my judgement, most of the ones that have turned 18 haven't gone to college.

As far as socialization, that can be taken care of by group classes as DanS mentioned as well as by community events such as sports teams.

[Odin]

If the parent who is teaching is educated enough and has enough time on his/her hands to homeschool, I'm all fine with it. People who think it is all fundies indoctrinating thier children don't know what thier talking about. Where did the "homeschooling = fundie indoctrination" myth originate from, anyway? The teacher's unions?

[mrmitchell]

Indeed, it seems that the phenomenon often revolves around university communities.

Here in Arkansas, home schooling is very popular. I guess that blows your "university communities" theory out of the water.

Most people that homeschool their children do so for three reasons:

* they feel the public school environment is ineffective
* their child has a special need that they feel a public school would not adequately accommadate
* they are religious nutcases

Most home schooled children are home schooled for the first two reasons; basically, the parents think the school system sucks. In reality, with a few exceptions, religious nutcases who go at homeschooling fail because it's hard and they're stupid. Arkansas is home to an abundance of fundamentalist private schools, anyway.

If I understand it all correctly, in Arkansas, the state will provide - for free - "virtual school" to home schooled students. Basically, any homeschooler with an internet connection gets his lesson plans and teaching over the Internet, and sends back completed work, and is graded on it. This is much like the regular system except all correspondance occurs via the internet. If the family wishes, the child is still free to participate in noncore activities at a local school district such as band or athletics. Currently the virtual school program is limited to students in the 8th grade (or equivalent) and younger. Once a home schooled student passes the eigth grade, his parents have to come up with some plan to educate him or else he is booted into high school (which to be fair is a lot more accommodating to advanced students than elementary and junior high schools.)

Presumably, your kid has to be a genius to take advantage of this. If a virtual schooled student is making Fs, I don't know why the state would hesitate a moment to pull the plug and require that the student start attending real school.

The obvious advantage to this program is that children can learn at their own pace, and are not distracted by a classroom which at any given moment is probably in a ruckus.

The obvious disadvantage is that graduates are, for the most part, entirely unprepared for structured learning or any social interaction at all. Joncha accurately sums up the unfortunate vast majority of home school graduates:

Homeschooled kids are creepy social rejects. FACT.

Therefore I would not recommend home schooling to anyone unless their child had a significant disability. Even then, if your child is well enough to motivate himself and learn at home, there is probably a private school in your area that can appropriately handle his special needs. (Private schools often don't have to go through red tape or stupid roadblocks that public schools are stuck with. Usually they're also better funded, which never hurts.)

In addition to virtual school, a parent can truly home school their children if they think they're up to the task. I doubt that many places in the country can support networks of parents helping other parents like DanS mentioned, so if you plan to home school your child, be a super genius about everything, and be prepared. Properly administrated home schooling has the same benefits and drawbacks that I discussed above.

Because it requires lots of expensive teaching tools and lots of free time, home school is largely restricted to wealthy families. You could probably get a better bang for your buck (AND keep your kid from being a creepy social reject!) at any decent private school.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Odin
Where did the "homeschooling = fundie indoctrination" myth originate from, anyway? The teacher's unions?

Life experience. I'd say 85 - 90% of home schoolers that I have met have been home schooled because their parents are Libertarian religious-fundamentalist whack jobs... the rest seem to be the children of left wing whackos.

Maybe my experience with home schoolers has been tainted by an unrepresentative sample, but I've always had a very negative impression of home schooling and those that conduct it.

[mrmitchell]

(This is a distinctly separate half of the topic, and my first post was already long enough.)

Public schools are not the monsters that people (usually home schooling parents, they're the most vocal) make them out to be. My sister went to private schools for all but her senior year of high school, and private schools are almost as strong a bastion of "public schools are evil!" sentiment as home schooling parents. She regularly heard what I can best describe as legends about the horrors of Camden Fairview HS, and had she not left in her senior year, she probably would've graduated thinking there were gang fights between every class change, rapes in the school bathrooms, and teachers proclaiming the glorious Truth of Satan to students in badly lit and furnished rooms dressed to be Wiccan temples.

In my honest opinion, the whole perception is just another myth propogated by certain elements of our society who would wish to see all students either be homeschooled or go to religious schools depending on what they're trying to sell.

The story was different 10, 15, or 20 years ago, but I see public schools today and the clear result of school consolidation and national standards is that the avarage high school in America has significantly improved from decades ago. Schools in almost any respectably sized city are adequately funded and can accommodate students of any range of learning capability.

But of course there are always obvious exceptions, and even I'll give you two of them. If you live in a poor rural dump, then move. The public schools (in addition to private schools and home schooling oppurtunities) there are probably bad. If you live in an urban inner city, do a thorough investigation on your child's school. It's probably great, but if it isn't, then you are definitely within range of an appropriate private school which is well-prepared for teaching.

[mrmitchell]

Originally posted by Odin
If the parent who is teaching is educated enough and has enough time on his/her hands to homeschool, I'm all fine with it. People who think it is all fundies indoctrinating thier children don't know what thier talking about. Where did the "homeschooling = fundie indoctrination" myth originate from, anyway? The teacher's unions?

It's different today as I already outlined in my first post, but the myth originated from the facts. Modern home schooling started as a way for fundamentalist nutjobs to save their children from the public schools that had become instruments of godless Athiesm over the 1970s and 80s, at the very least in Arkansas if not the rest of the nation.

In the attached chart you will see that:

38% of home school parents cite religious reasons for their choice
15%, "to develop character/morality"
12%, "Object to what school teaches" ("I am a nut that opposes school taught evolution but I dont want to look like a nut in this survey")
Which is about 65% - reasons that have nothing to do with existing public schools unless they are of the "THEY ARE TOOLS OF THE DEVIL" type.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Odin
If the parent who is teaching is educated enough and has enough time on his/her hands to homeschool, I'm all fine with it. People who think it is all fundies indoctrinating thier children don't know what thier talking about. Where did the "homeschooling = fundie indoctrination" myth originate from, anyway? The teacher's unions?

Most of the original people who started the home schooling movement and pushed it along were religious fundimentalists. These people were angry at "godless" schools and that things such as biology and evolution were being taught plus many felt that classes should include more religious instruction.

Much of the home schooling movement has expanded out of that niche but that was how it got started. That said I would never home school a child unless the local schools really were utter crap and there were no decent private schools in town. Good parents will still help with their children's educations at home reguardless.

[Jon Miller]

Re: Home schooling

Originally posted by DanS
I used to be against it and dismissed the phenomenon as religious fundamentalists trying to shut their children off from society. Just recently, however, it became clear to me that the phenomenon is exploding across the U.S. and that most parents do home schooling for a noble cause -- that they are not going to allow the mediocre school system (either public, parochial, or private) to mishandle their children's education. Indeed, it seems that the phenomenon often revolves around university communities.

Further, I used to dismiss the education provided by home schooling as uneven. A parent does not know the subject matter nearly as comprehensively as a regular teacher does and so the parent might overstress certain topics to the detriment of the whole. However, it now seems clear that many of these home schooling parents are highly educated in their own right. Often, for a fee, they teach home schooled children from other families on subjects on which they have been educated. Or a mom who wants to stay home and only work a certain amount of time each week might, for a fee, teach a class to a handful of home schoolers on her spare time. In this sense, home schooling can become almost like having a tutored education.

Lastly, I used to worry that home schoolers weren't being "socialized" well enough. Kids have to be exposed to other kids so that they learn how to take care of themselves in a group and to compromise with people of diverse backgrounds. However, my worry is lessened by the possibilities of going to certain classes with a group, as discussed above.

My sister has home schooled her children throughout. My nephew now is equivalent to a junior high schooler. He takes latin from somebody who is educated in Latin. He takes debate from somebody who is educated in debate. He takes biology from somebody who is educated in biology. The fees are reasonable.

What say you? Is home schooling mostly good? Is home schooling a prominent phenomenon in your country?

I have seen it be for bad and for good (I was homeschooled for 3ish years). I started being homeschooled after I was kicked out of first grade, and I returned to private school in 3rd, was homeschooled for 4th, and spent the rest of precollege in public schools (which sucked).

Negative (in my personal experience), I didn't get as much socialisation as I should have.. (but then there might have been other issues.. and I did have lots of siblings).

I know of some who it is terrible for.. I know one family where the children were homeschooled, and the highschool age daughter and mother shared a boyfreind (I think it was the daughter's much older boyfreind initially). And they didn't really do much.

But most homeschooling families I know do so for religious/sucky school systems reasons and want to provide as good as education as possible (generally what I mean by religious is that they are concerned about violence/drugs/other immorality in the schools... not that they want to teach their kids their own brand of science).

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by mrmitchell


It's different today as I already outlined in my first post, but the myth originated from the facts. Modern home schooling started as a way for fundamentalist nutjobs to save their children from the public schools that had become instruments of godless Athiesm over the 1970s and 80s, at the very least in Arkansas if not the rest of the nation.

In the attached chart you will see that:

38% of home school parents cite religious reasons for their choice
15%, "to develop character/morality"
12%, "Object to what school teaches" ("I am a nut that opposes school taught evolution but I dont want to look like a nut in this survey")
Which is about 65% - reasons that have nothing to do with existing public schools unless they are of the "THEY ARE TOOLS OF THE DEVIL" type.

How about those who want to keep their children from being in an environment where pot use is rampant in middle school, sex is rampant in junior high, and less then 50% of students graduate highschool in 4 years?

There are serious 'Christian'/Morality/etc issues without going into the realm of 'wacky' or 'nut'.

I knew someone who should have been in my grade who was a prostitute shooting up heroin at age 14. This isn't some scary inner city school, this was a scary rural school (and a known bad one.. but still).

There are serious reasons why parents can not want their child in a school, and I don't think you are being fair to them.

Jon Miller