View Full Version : Homeschooling Chit Chat
I wonder if we can talk about homeschooling. I don't even have kids, but interested in the topic because I am a teacher. I wonder why people leave the public school system. I can think of a few reasons why they would: individualized, flexible instruction, going with the kids' rhythms, I'm sure so much more. But do people see drawbacks? Social issues? What about getting into upper grades or college? How do kids transition into the more formal system with homework, etc.? Do people worry that if they do not have training as a teacher they might have trouble if they run up against learning problems, or that they might miss out an important concept or idea that builds up to harder things? I actually don't have an opinion on a lot of these questions. I have an at-first-blush idea, I guess, but no real solid, well-founded opinions. So they are open questions.
I pose it here on these forums because since Stella has started homeschooling and mentioning it often on the daily frugals thread I find that I keep noticing tasks, scenarios, etc. that would be a great fit for homeschooling but not a good fit for a whole classroom of kids (from a cost standpoint, or management, etc.).
Ideas? Responses? More questions?
I am not homeschooling but I'll list a few concerns I have about DD's situation in public school:
- large class sizes. 2nd grade, 30 kids.
- kids who aren't special needs or gifted seem to get short shrift - larger group sizes, less attention, fewer resources.
- many hours in school but still homework at this young age. Difficult to fit in play time on the average school day. Seems like homeschooling would be more time-efficient.
- Lunch is a rush time - 20 minutes to eat in the middle of that long day! If the school wants focused kids, why not give them proper time to eat a good meal?
On the other hand, positives:
- DD is very social and loves being in a classroom full of peers.
- The school has fabulous art and music programs. I can do crafts but she will learn a lot more from the art teacher; private lessons for those many things would be very costly, and difficult to arrange for her young age.
- She is meeting more and more people from our community through school and school-based activities; likewise, I am as well, as I am highly involved as a volunteer.
- For our personalities, I think school simply works better than homeschooling, at least at her current age. When a teacher points out room for improvement in her work, she sincerely wants to fix the problem... when I gingerly do the same, she gets very upset.
I'm homeschooling my son (6th) grade for just this semester until he can start a new public middle school for the arts next year. There were several reasons we decided to pull him out of public school this year. First, he had some behavior problems at the beginning of the school year because his ADHD meds quit working and he got the reputation of being a weirdo, so he was being ostracized and picked on. Middle school kids can be such jerks! Some of his teachers liked him, but others constantly scolded him for talking out of turn, even though they knew he had ADHD and couldn't always help it. He was miserable at school and we gave him the choice to homeschool, so he decided to do it.
I'm glad it's just for this semester, because I don't like it. Because he's always been in a regular school, he doesn't show me the same respect that he would for a real teacher. Sometimes he's mellow and nice and does all his work just fine, and other times he's uncooperative and complains about everything. Some things work better with homeschool. He can blow through a math worksheet and show me that he knows how to do it, and I'm not going to make him do twenty more similar worksheets like he would have to do at school. I'm reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court aloud and we stop to discuss politics, history, economics, religion, unfamiliar words, etc. whenever want, and he's learning a lot from that. What he misses from regular school are the activities, like making a Mayan doohicky out of clay in social studies, which he hears about from his friend down the street.
I've found out that he has become dependent on learning things from worksheets and small information bites at school. He has a hard time with trying to figure out something for himself or just experimenting to see what works, and that's a skill I'd like to teach him.
Among home-schooling parents I have known, bullying issues, inadequate or dumbed-down public school curricula, giftedness, and schedule flexibility influenced the decision to home-school. One gifted child was home-schooled during part of her grade- and middle-school years, attended a TAG magnet school, started high school and was so bored--even in a TAG environment--that she enrolled in a program where she can go directly to community college for much of her classwork--at fifteen.
It's been my impression that a number of parents homeschool for religious reasons - they don't want their kids exposed to various non-biblical scientific explanations such as evolution, as well as more permissive sexual exposure, drugs and drinking, even certain political viewpoints.
If I had young kids, I'd consider home schooling, but not for that reason.
winterberry
4-6-11, 12:20am
I shouldn't even start, because I can really get going on the whole school thing. I think it was Woody Allen who said, "I hated and regret every minute I spent in school," and that's pretty much how I feel, too. I liked three of my high school teachers, and second grade was OK. Otherwise, I feel that my best learning years were wasted.
My children were unschooled off and on. When I became a single mother going to school full time and working on the weekends, they all went to school. My youngest son attended an alternative high school. They did wonderful things like going on a bus trip to the Southwest. There were a number of Japanese exchange students there which led to his ongoing interest in Japanese language and culture.
Children absorb information like sponges. Look at how much they learn in their early years without going to school! Why do people think that children won't learn anything unless they go to school or have a structured learning experience? What they need are resources, including knowledgable adults who are willing to share what they know. The learning can be structured if that's what the learner wants, but most learning doesn't happen in a structured environment. Most learning happens when people -- children or adults -- are curious about something and pursue their interests in whatever way works best for them.
What was the last thing you learned? How did you learn it?
I learn a lot from this forum.
Recently I read several books of historical fiction and learned a lot about the California gold rush, the McCarthy era, the French Revolution and colonial America. I didn't learn everything there is to know about them, but what I did learn is more relevant than dry facts, and it will stay with me.
I learn from my experiences, especially from my mistakes.
I don't understand why people think competition is conducive to learning. What it really does is discourage anyone who thinks they can't make the grade. In fact, I would say that grading children is an act of violence. Why do we do this to children? Why do we ever tell a child that they aren't good enough?! People find out soon enough what their strengths and weaknesses are. They don't need report cards. Report cards don't say much about strengths and weaknesses anyway. They say a lot about how compliant children are, or not.
And what's with the mania about sports and the association of sports with schooling? What ever happened to just playing?
Here's the thing: the real purpose of schools is not to teach people things. It's to sort out the winners from the losers. It's to maintain a class structure. What would happen if somehow they actually figured out how to make every child equally successful in school? There would be an outcry among all the parents who want their child to be more successful than the others. How would we decide who would do what? Who would be the janitors and who would be the doctors? The irony is that a lot of people would think it wasn't fair to let everybody win. We want winners and losers. It's the American way. Competition. Free markets. Capitalism. You win or you lose. The winner takes all.
John Taylor Gatto, who was once Teacher of the Year for New York State, went on to write books about what schools do to children: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992); The Exhausted School (1993); A Different Kind of Teacher (2000); The Underground History Of American Education (2001) and Weapons of Mass Instruction (2008).
I am not at all opposed to having places where structured or unstructured learning takes place. They could be community centers where people of all ages come together to share what they know in a thousand different ways. We could even call them schools. But this is a topic for another thread.
My daughter is 14. From K->8, she was homeschooled or went to a small private school my wife and I helped start and run, except for some short-lived experiments with our quite decent public school system here.
The reasons for homeschooling have been varied, but generally related to teachers being unable to appropriately instruct her. Often time efficiency was another issue - my daughter has a wide range of things she is interested in, and the slow pace of group instruction ate up a lot of her day, whereas when we were homeschooling, we could cover the same amount of material in short order.
At the age of 12, she took the SATs and placed in the top percentile of college-bound *seniors* in the USA. Read that again - at the age of 12.... Those scores would qualify her to walk into the high school and be handed her GED in this state. The Johns Hopkins talented youth program tapped her for on-campus summer enrichment classes, and online supplement classes throughout the year, which she's been enjoying.
She plays several different musical instruments in several local musical groups, actual groups that perform on stage for real audiences. The local community band, which is mostly adults, is trying to recruit her.
In addition to English, she has some proficiency with Spanish, Latin, Greek, and several ancient Egyptian writing systems. She wants to be an anthropologist, like my wife's parents.
She participates actively in 4H, raising, showing, and marketing multiple varieties of critters, small-to-large, and consistently displays leadership skills within her 4H club and at the county and state fairs. A good portion of the meat we eat comes from the efforts of her and her 4H friends.
She made it to the state semi-finals in the National Geography Bee last year, her first year in the program.
She can navigate an ocean-going powerboat in a fairly complex region, plotting courses and standing watch. She operated our boat recently for about an hour while the Coast Guard was boarding and inspecting us, as I was occupied with them, and they didn't complain once. She can rig a small racing sailboat solo, and take it out in the sound, and run the course. The coaches of the sailing team trust her enough to put her on the group of mostly-high-school-seniors who sail our racing fleet over to other regatta locations.
She has several paying jobs, most of which involve interacting with real adults in real social situations. I gave up on paying her an allowance some time ago, as she realized I didn't pay enough compared to what she could earn on her own. :-)
She recently organized a 4H riflery program, including recruiting kids from the local high school, and negotiating access to our local range. She routinely cleans up at our local club's turkey shoots, bringing home mountains of steaks and turkeys that we awards as prizes. I wish I could find the picture I took of her nearly-buried in prize meat the first time she started winning, when she was about 10. She also fences saber and knife with me most every day, and has been working on various hand-to-hand fighting skills since about the age of 6. It's the whole Indiana-Jones-archeologist thing.
She plays on the soccer team in-season.
She manages her own investment portfolio with her college fund, with some advice from me. She steals my Forbes and Economist magazines out of the mailbox before I get a chance to even see them, and lets me know which articles are good.
She does quite a bit of volunteer work cooking and serving at the local senior center, and caring for critters at the animal shelter. She reviews grant proposals for the local community foundation to aid my wife. She also participates in our own family giving process each year, helping set priorities and review grant requests.
She can cook a multiple-course dinner for guests from scratch, sew, do laundry, administer first aid, start a fire without matches, saddle a horse, build a shelter from found materials, fish, collect shellfish, forage food from the local woods, beaches, and meadows, and so on. I've recently begun introducing her to the mysteries of auto repair, in anticipation of the whole teenage-driving issue.
She doesn't have a cellphone, doesn't watch TV (except Dr. Who over Netflix), doesn't hang out at the mall, isn't pregnant, and doesn't do drugs. She uses the Internet to look up information, but doesn't "social network".
She's trying her freshman year out at the local high school, which isn't going nearly as well as she hoped. Not for social reasons, but with the large classes, and significant number of kids who are unmotivated or unsupported by their families, it is definitely a step down from what she was doing on her own, and there seems to be endless amounts of busy work meant to keep the herd in line.
She wants to go to Oxford/Cambridge, which I suspect comes partly from her affection for British accents she's observed on Dr. Who. I don't think this is a lark on her part, she's been researching what is involved for an American to sneak into those institutions.
Most of her interests and accomplishments have been self-motivated, we've merely been supportive and provided the opportunities. We are fortunate in that both my wife and I can easily re-arrange our schedules to provide instruction and assistance, and have the academic and professional skills to pull this off.
There are a handful of kids here in my daughter's age range with this level of skill and ability, my observation is that almost all of them have been homeschooled for some part of their school years.
(On reading this, I realize I'm going to have to hire an assistant when my daughter goes away to college.)
We homeschool for so many reasons, so many. But the main reason is as a parent, I am more in tune with what each of my children need. Extra sleep in the morning. An extra chore to burn off energy. Extra time go over long division. Less time going over numerators. Another approach to denominators. Put away the math book on a stormy day and just read in front of the fire. Put away the book and pick up branches from the neighbors yard that the storm blew all over. An extra cookie, just because. Write, "I will not tease my brother about onions," 10 times, but the last time write it upside down, just for fun. Help me make dinner, using the measuring cup to further explore denominators. Send them off to bed with their book. Another day of living and learning.
bae,
The Burke Museum at the UW has several programs your daughter might be interested in, including summer archaeology camps and a "shadow the archaeologist" program. The UW used to have a field school in the San Juans, but I think that site wound down several years ago. They currently have a field school in Alaska, which might be open to high schoolers. Here is a link to some of their programs:
http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/collections/archaeology/faqs_qa.php#archaeologist
Just in case she wants a deeper look into the field before she heads to college.
You might also consider introducing her to the United World Colleges. I did the IB program at Atlantic College in Wales, and it was a great precursor to my studies in anthropology. I think it might be a bit easier to get admission to Oxbridge coming out of a UK based school, too, though that is just a perception and may not be accurate. In any event, Atlantic College offers a very rigorous academic and social service program and is a great way to get a taste of academic and everyday life in the UK. YOu have to apply through the UWC committee in the US and there is no guarantee you get into your preferred school, but she sounds like she would be a great candidate.
lhamo
We homeschooled up until 7th grade.
Mostly our reasons for homeschooling were pure selfishness. We wanted our kids with us and to allow them to experience a different way of life. Traveling to 32 retail art shows plus 2 wholesale shows a year gave them a lot of opportunities to see and experience a lot of the USA.....plus they sure learned a lot of patience and were exposed to lots of adults and kids.
The boys are 11 1/2 mts apart and so I schooled them on the same grade level and their birthdays fall right in that short span of time where the older one could of gone up or down one grade, for him because he struggles with math we decided to go down one grade when he asked to try public school. We put them both in 7th grade, they are now in 8th grade. They are both great students and the teachers all say what a joy it is to teach them because they are interested in learning.
It seems to me that with the 'no student left behind' changes that there really isn't much homework and what homework they have brought home has only been if they wanted to try to retake a test to get a higher score. I know when I was in JR/SR high there were no 'retakes', that does bother me so I push them to study and have outside interests. One is in a writer's club and has rec'd state and national writing awards. The other is fast-tracking his biology and may end up in a college program that allows the student to finish their Jr/Sr high school and earn an associates degree while living on the college campus. Thats about 5 hours away from us. Its a program that is state funded and then they are allowed to enter any of our state colleges to finish their college education.
We just went to High School orientation Monday night, for a small district there is quite a bit of money (thanks to tourism), and the High School graduates over 97% of students which is very good.
Our whole lifestyle had to change when they boys entered school, I couldn't travel with my husband as much and the boys could rarely travel. They miss all the trips and the road-learning but they have adjusted to school very well.
When we entered them in school the district did a placement test and both boys scored high on it except the older one on math (what we expected). The district asked for a record of our homeschooling hours and some sample work from each year. That was all easy to provide.
There are a lot of homeschoolers in our area, and there are 2 or 3 different homeschooling co-ops but we never got involved in those due to our travel needs.
I've known a lot of teachers who chose to leave their teaching jobs to homeschool their own children. To me that says quite a bit about the education system.
@winterberry, I think you'd like Ira Socol's blog: http://speedchange.blogspot.com/
So interesting! Everyone has so many different, yet similar, reasons. Some people like doing homeschooling and some do not. Some do it proactively and some do it reactively.
I thought of another question now. Do most homeschoolers try to emulate the typical school environment at home (schedules, worksheets, homework, etc.) or do they go with the more organic, informal learning that several people referred to? Why one or the other?
[QUOTE=fidgiegirl;18272I thought of another question now. Do most homeschoolers try to emulate the typical school environment at home ?[/QUOTE]
We had a school room and a schedule for when we were home. Our state requires so many hours - 1000 per year with so many dedicated to math, science, history, grammar/language arts, p.e., etc. Each year was different as far as what curriculum we used but we did workbooks and projects. Workbooks were handy when we were on the road. We'd also let them research the city we were headed to next and they'd do 'reports' on that city's history, important people, geography, etc as well as plan what we'd do for learning activities in that city (museums, factory tours, etc). As they got older and did more independent studies they used the computer room more than the school room. Sometimes things just wouldn't work and we'd switch gears or curriculum mid-year to find what was right for each boy and his learning style. Homeschool is certainly flexible and keeps you from fitting a square peg child into a round hole 'one book fits all' type of learning style that is used in public schools. I think I know of only one homeschooling family that stayed with one brand of purchased curriculum all the way thru school.
Its a huge commitment on the parent's part. Every homeschooler I've know who homeschooled all they way thru has gone on to college except one. That kid was 'unschooled to the extreme' (I almost hate to call what he did, unschooled, because I do know of unschoolers who succeed) and all he ever read was fiction and was very anti-social.
jennipurrr
4-6-11, 11:28am
I don't have any children (yet) but I was recently talking in two seperate conversations with two really good local teachers who taught a variety of subjects/grade levels. It seems that the high stakes testing has changed the entire landscape of schooling here. All the teachers I know are so demoralized. Even the "good" school system now has brought in consultants for test scores and in second grade in reading and math, the teachers are no longer allowed to make their own lesson plans or do any differentiation...they must teach to the lowest level, and the other kids have to sit there bored, no special work, nothing. I was a bright kid who was bored throughout school, and in my experience there was at least some extra assignments for the higher level kids...I can't imagine the special hell of sitting through an entire year of math and reading covering remedial work, plus the missed opportunities for learning. The state of my local school system has been in freefall for the past 10 years or so and I can't imagine sending my kids there...which makes me really sad to say. I am not sure if we will homeschool or look into private options, but something for sure.
Fidgie, I know families who gather at the kitchen table for their studies and families that have a devoted room and desks for each child. We do a mixture. In the morning, they do their book work, which focuses on the 3 Rs. We do have tables they can work on but they can also do their work anywhere, especially the reading. In the summer, they're often outside on the deck, in the winter, often gathered around the wood stove. This only takes a few hours, they are done well before lunch. After lunch they have their chores or community service. Then they are free to do what they choose, whether that is play, board games, sports, read, explore. We have over 4000 books in our house plus lots of activities, science kits, projects. Plus more and more opportunities open up within our community (learning wood working from a retired neighbor, learning about livestock from the neighbor's farm). Then have all the regular activities if we so choose: ballet, swimming, martial arts, sports, etc.
I can't imagine waking my kids before dawn to shove them off on the bus only to see them come home late in the afternoon. It just seems like me & my husband, and our little town, can provide them with all they need to grow into healthy and well-adjusted adults.
Fun topic! Fidgie you have probably already heard my story about starting homeschool. Basically, I've always considered it a strong option having been homeschooled some myself, but started the kids in public school anyway. We live in a great district, but this year Cheyenne's teacher was a dud. She pretty much told me that kids who don't learn well from sitting quietly and doing worksheets unaided all day long were S.O.L. because she wasn't going to do anything differently. She told me that I'd have to teach Cheyenne everything she needed to learn after school. Well, I could do that but if I have to teach her everything she needs to know I figured I'd take back the school day. We love homeschool and intend to stay wit it at least for a while. I'm open to changes though.
I'll fully admit the social part of homeschool has been hard this last two months while I've been on bedrest and/or just plain old hugely pregnant, but the first week post-partum has already seen a big turn-around on that front, so I don't think it's going to be that hard in the future. Cheyenne has faith formation on Wednesday nights and karate on Monday nights so at least she's had that regular interaction. She's got a lot of neighborhood friends too, so that helps. The thing about homeschooling is that her social interaction is with people of all ages. I like that. One day she plays with other kids her age, the next she's baking cookies with our 40-something next-door neighbors and the next she's playing with my friend's one year old DD.
You are right that a lot of what we do in homeschool probably isn't practical in a regular school setting. We're probably in between as far as structure. I try to hit reading, writing and math pretty much every day, but the rest of it is less structured.
I try to listen to what the kids are interested in and go with that when it's possible. Right now we're on an art kick. We went to Franconia sculpture park today and roamed around exploring all the sculptures. Then we came home and she is doing a series of sculptures of eggs. One is made of a two liter bottle, one is paper mache, one is string and glue and one is going to be made of cake. :) We watched the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. Several people in that movie, including Banksy and Shepard Fairey, are people the kids' aunt knows and has worked with, which makes it a little more interesting for us. This afternoon Cheyenne spent some time playing around with Garage Band on the iPad making songs. This coming year we'll put more focus on music. I'm also going to see if we can go watch a friend of mine who's a poured metal sculptor the next time she does a pour. Next week we are going to do some fun photography. We're going to make props and backgrounds like a car and a forest scene, or an airplane and a sky scene to make fun photos. We'll also go for nature walks and do some nature photography.
For writing this month we're keeping a journal of Travis' first month complete with pictures. In addition to being good writing practice it's going to be absolute gold for his scrapbook. "Dear Travis, I love you so so so so so much. I love you 125. That is more than I love squirrels." Yes. Scrapbook gold. :)
I forgot to answer why we are more informal with our learning. The main reason is that I have four kids seven and under. :) Flexibility is King here. Aside from that, though, I like the relaxed tone it sets. The kids are so fascinated by life, it's fun to see them so engaged and interested in what they are learning. When learning is imposed on them from on high it's usually less interesting to them. Aside from reading, writing and math, which they need to be able to do to learn all the other cool and interesting things there are to learn, I see my main goal as encouraging a sense of wonder and exploration and providing opportunities for them to learn.
All the teachers I know are so demoralized.
Well I can attest to the fact that I am, too. But that's another thread :)
No, seriously, I find the whole topic very interesting. I think as technology becomes more prevalent and budgets tighten, we will see more flexible/independent learning options, particularly in high school ages. I'm talking hybrid (combo classroom + online classes), or proving that you know material rather than depending on seat time (credits) as a measurement of learning, etc.
Adults I know who were homeschooled make me think it's important if the parents have a deep working knowledge of normal child development, a lack of denial abaout the ways in which they are not good for their kids, personality-wise, in concentrated doses and are good at helping their kids geta diversity of experiences with other kids where they have to learn to understand and adapt to various other kids' needs. One friend in particular, in her 80's now, is highly social as an adult but so naive that she constantly oversimplifies other people's situations. She's highly successful in her field--you probably know her name--but has paid a very high price, as has her brother, for their lack of all the infinitesimal things one learns from constant jostling throughout the day with other kids and adults.
If she's highly successful in her field, she probably has experienced all the jostling she wants. Maybe she and her brother are naturally solitary people who find the rock tumbler life exhausting. At any rate, "paid a very high price" sounds like a value judgment to me, unless I misinterpreted your post. I wouldn't be surprised if introverts were more likely to thrive in a home schooling environment than their extroverted peers.
It seems like a gigantic leap to me to attribute your friends oversimplification of other people's lives to her homeschool upbringing, presumably 60-70 years ago. I know all kinds of people with all kinds of quirks and issues that graduated from public school. I have a grandma in her 80s, for example, who was highly successful, but is rigid and controlling. Maybe her public school experience played into that somewhat, but it seems likely to be a combination of personality and 80+ years of various life experiences. I'd wager the same is true of your friend.
I'm not sure what "over-simplification of other people's lives" means, either. I've met people who see the world in a more black and white, either/or way than I do--which seems like over-simplification to me--but also makes for easier decision making, and has its advantages.
As far as public schooling goes, I ostensibly did fine in it while daydreaming my brains out. One of my relatives did fine once they transferred to a less-structured experimental school (that came and went like a comet), and another checked out--mentally and physically--before bailing out permanently (picking up later in college). All of us would have done better with something like unschooling. Not surprisingly, all of us are introverts to one degree or another.
Gardenarian
4-13-11, 5:52pm
Here are some things I think schoolers need to know:
Children do not need to be institutionalized.
Schools do not exist to educate children; that is not their primary purpose.
The amount of information that is "taught" in schools can be learned in a very short time. (Taught is in "" because you can not really teach someone something they do not want, or are not ready, to learn.)
It is not healthy for a child to spend most of their days away from home, trapped inside, with a group of other children who are all the same age.
Socialization is not the same as socializing. Socialization is the process of turning children into widgets. Socializing is making friends - and I can attest that homeschoolers are very good at this.
Artificial milestones (reading by age 6, multiplication by age 8, etc.) hurt all children - both those who develop more quickly and those who are on the other end of the curve.
I have never met a homeschooler who had a problem with ADHD. As far as I can tell, ADHD is an entirely school-generated disorder. This is true for many other "learning differences" and "developmental disorders."
Peers do not make good role models for children.
Children's physical needs (sleep, personal hygeine, eating) can be far better met at home than at school. Just think how much more relaxed you feel on the week-ends.
Homeschooling is not difficult; just provide plenty of books, get your kid outdoors a lot of the time, enroll in some activities where your child can engage with other kids. That is all it takes to get started. Oh, and lots of love!
Homeschooling gives kids a chance to find out what their passion is early in life, so they won't be like the majority of adults, stumbling about trying to "follow their bliss" and not really knowing what their bliss is.
ApatheticNoMore
4-14-11, 1:44am
I'm introverted and never liked school. OTOH my family was wildly dysfunctional and occasionally abusive, so who is to say homesteading would really be an improvement in such situations?
loosechickens
4-14-11, 2:28am
I never homeschooled any children, but some of our friends homeschooled in the 80s back when we lived a landed, kind of a "Mother Earth News back to the land, somewhat counterculture" lifestyle.
Here's what I observed over the years (and now that all those kids are adults, and we've had a chance to see how they turned out). The sample observed was a bit more than half a dozen families, about half in each "group" below.
The kids who were homeschooled because their families were interested in stimulating their love of learning, widening their opportunities and freeing them from the constraints of a "one size fits all" public school system, which were about half of them, all have turned out well. Most went on to college, have passionate interests, and turned out to be what I would call well educated, and it was a success. Several are working in other parts of the world, one is a college professor, all seem to have well rounded, successful lives.
However, we had several friends who homeschooled for religious reasons. They did not want their children in the public school for fear of the ideas they would be exposed to, immorality, etc. Rather than providing a wide ranging education, they used fundamentalist Christian curriculum materials, taught creationism, were careful to limit their exposure to "the world" and "worldly things". Only one of these kids ended up going to college, and that was to a Bible college. Not one of them was what I would term well educated, and were mostly unaware of outlooks or ideas other than the narrow range of what they were taught. The girls married early, stayed in that small, local area of PA, and it felt like (to me), that their horizons had been artificially narrowed to the point where, although they DID stay true to their parents desires that they not be exposed to worldliness, I can't say that I think they were well served, or even well educated.
SO.......what I take from this is if the impetus to homeschool is to WIDEN a child's ability to learn, be exposed to more than they could get in school, and to inculcate a love of learning, passionate curiosity about the world, etc., it's great. If the intent is to make sure that no ideas that the parents disagree with are discovered, or allowed to take root, and the wish is to limit learning to a preconceived, religious dogma, with anything that does not agree with that belief to be guarded against the child being exposed, probably home schooling is NOT a good thing for the long term wellbeing of that child.
Because I've noticed with these now adult children from this situation, that they are not well prepared for life in the open world. There are huge holes in their knowledge base, their critical thinking skills have never developed to any degree, and while they reliably believe as their parents intended for them to believe, and they are very nice people, of good morals, etc., I see them as handicapped for success in the outside world. They seem happy, but their goals and ambitions seem very limited, focused on that local area, and it almost seems to me as though they have been stunted in some important way, although in others they are fine. It feels to me as though in the efforts to make sure no "bad ideas" got in, much was lost.
Part of the problem about homeschooling, to me, is that if it's good, it's very, very good, but if it isn't, the parents are such a huge influence on the kids, and so little other information is allowed to come through from other sources, that it can be very bad.
That's just my opinion, from observation of well over a dozen children that we knew from babyhood, and continue to know and stay connected with now that they are adults, and several have children of their own.
I also find myself concerned sometimes that if a family is abusive, or if there are other dysfunctions (not the case in any of the families we knew), children who are homeschooled can be scarily isolated to the point where no one on the outside would be aware of any difficulties. Some states have stringent rules about homeschooling, and kids have to be regularly evaluated by certified teachers, certain levels of study have to be maintained, etc., but other states kind of leave it up to the parents, and sadly, some of those parents are woefully inadequate to be able to competently teach their children. I do think that if homeschooling is happening, somehow there should be some oversight, so that if parents are doing a poor job of it, or if the isolation of the children is covering up some other serious problems, something can be done for the kids before it is too late.
I'm introverted and never liked school. OTOH my family was wildly dysfunctional and occasionally abusive, so who is to say homesteading would really be an improvement in such situations?
Ah, the fly in the ointment. I romanticize home schooling, but it wouldn't have worked with my family dynamics either. Talk about oil and water...
Gardenarian
4-20-11, 6:46pm
Loosechickens - I do worry about those homeschooling families that I don't see - the ones who don't have their kids in classes or scouting or come to park days. There is really no oversight at all in California. The families I know are doing great with homeschooling, but it is pretty scary to think of what might be going on.
Although I don't homeschool for religious reasons, I am thankful to all those Christians who fought for the right to teach their children. Without them, I probably wouldn't be allowed to homeschool today.
And, sad as it seems that those kids you knew didn't reach their full potential, they were brought up the way their parents wanted them - which I feel is their right. Public schools, of course, also severely limit learning to a preconceived (non-religious) dogma - with about the same results.
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