Homeschooling

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There have been fairly recent topics where some have advocated their preference for homeschooling, and I've wanted to start this topic for a while. I seem to remember the rationalle being that they didn't trust or respect the public education system, but it's been a while.

Anyway: For or against, pros and cons, statistical data to back up assertions appreciated.

Begin.

 

No statistics handy, but some philosophical ideas and some personal experiences (which I know will be attacked for being what they are, but bear in mind I am not presenting them as a study from MIT).

Public school is an introductory microcosm for the real world. We meet all different sorts of people and must deal with them as best as we can. There are rules -- some that we agree with and some that we don't. In the course of a day, some parts of the job are interesting, others are not. We learn that different authority figures deal with issues in different ways, and we develop preferences. For these reasons, I support public schools and am not keen on home schools.

The other issue is the quality of teaching. Many people hate teachers for sundry reasons, but the fact is that they are trained professionals tho go through a rigorous program to get where they are. Like all professionals, there are good ones and bad ones. Particularily at the higher grades, no one person can deliver the content as well as a group of focused, trained teachers. At lower grades, though, it is possible for a parent to do a good job of delivering the content.

I knew a guy who had been home schooled. he said "public schools are hindered by the fact that the material is dumbed down and the class is paced for the dumbest kid in the class." Based on my 8 years as a high school teacher, i can tell you that is utter horse puckey. The arrogance and elitism inherent in this guys attitude is also astounding. I'll let you in on a little secret -- EVERY parent thinks that his child is a genius, far and away ahead of the other kids, but the truth is these parents are just kidding themselves. Some kids excel in some things, but really, we're all tending toward the average, and the public system does not hold back the bright ones to any great degree. I should also mention that the guy I knew was the most arrogant son of a spaniel that I ever met, and he had the social skills of a stone.

Finally, though, I think that in some cases home schooling is the best option. If your teen is a drug dealer (I've known several), an alcoholic (I know a few of them too), a disrespectful, arrogant little twerp with no interest in bettering himself who does nothing but detract from the learning of decent children, please, for the love of all that's holy, home school him yourself and keep him out of my classroom instead of inflicting him on the decent people of the world who are just going to have to support his criminal butt in jail anyway. If you do send him to school, don't you DARE try to blame the teacher for either your pathetic attempts at parenting or the bad genetic combination that you have inadvertently passed on to him. (As an aside, one of the worst kids I ever knew, doing 10-15 years for murder as I type, came from the nicest parents you could ever meet -- the staff at the school figured that it'd just been a bad combination of recessive genes that turned him into the dirtbag that he was. We didn't blame the parents for how he turned out, but we sure as heck didn't want him in our class because we cared about the safety of the decent kids.)

 

A firm no from me to homeschooling. I'm not completely sure but I think it's banned around here and even if it ain't I think it should be. LKD pretty well summed up the bad things with homeschooling. It lack's the interaction with other children and therefore developing your social skills and in addition most parents are not nearly enough qualified to educate their children as efficently as the schools do.

To be honest I can't find a single good thing about homeschooling.

 

Con: having brats around the house the whole day.
That's all that really needs to be considered, IMO.

 

Pros:
- can tailor learning directly to needs of child
- save on commuting costs if schools are far away
- can control exposure to 'bad influences'
- quality time with the fruits of your loins

Cons:
- all home school kids I have ever met are socially inept geeks
- parents might not have the right skills
- kids don't learn how to get along with other kids, with all the conflict and drama that goes along with real life
- too much quality time with the fruits of your loins

 

Children needs to go to school, they need to be socialized into the society they live in and not the society their parents might want them to live in. Allowing nutcases to raise their children to an adult age without exposing said children to the real world is not acceptable. It is not allowed in Sweden.

In addition to the above reason the state owes its children an equal and decent education and with homeschooling there are no guarantees that a child will receive that.

 

As long as home-schooled kids are required to have some oversight of their progress, I'm fine with it. All too often, though, I find that parents who home-school do so because they don't want their kids exposed to crazy ideas about the earth being more than 10,000 years old or species, you know, evolving over time.

 

Having been home schooled until seventh grade, I think it can work out quite well. Academically I have had no problems, but then again my father has a doctorate and my mother a masters degree. The best aspect of home schooling in my opinion was that I was able to learn things I was interested in at my own pace. I never appreciated this until I began my proper schooling, which mostly consisted of me being bored.

Social adaptation seems to be the biggest concern regarding home schooling, but schools are not the only place to meet and interact with people. I met people and made friends without going to a school, and was able to hold my own when I did. I have always been an introverted person, but my sister, who was also home schooled for a long time, is an extremely sociable person.

Ensuring that home schooled children have the needed skills is an important concern. However, (Not meaning to take a dig at teachers) based on some of the statistics that I have seen it seems that even bad home schooling cannot be much worse than bad public schooling.

My general view on education is that the most important part is that children are learning something and in effect learning how to learn and how to think about things. Actual subject matter often does not matter, or as a friend of mine said in our graduation speech "Most of my time in high school was completely wasted."

 

The academical argument is secondary to me, a child needs to be exposed to the common values of a society and not only to those of their parents. For every homeschooled like you Leppi there is teh child of a fundamentalist of whatever religion who is never exposed to silly ideas like tolerance, science and just other ideas in general.

 

My wife is a teacher, and over the years she has met with parents who have home schooled their children, who are now considering sending them to a public school. Almost without exception, she says that the children who were home schooled seem not too well adjusted socially. From that point of view alone, I am against home schooling, as I feel like a lot of others do - that not everything you learn at school is contained between the covers of a book.

I also agree with LKD's point - that once you start getting into the high school courses, it is unlikely that you will find two parents capable of teaching a lot of those subjects. Heck, my wife is a teacher - someone who is more qualified than most in educating children - and I do not think we have the necessary skills to educate our kid (who should be arriving any day now) in the wide array of subjects we would need to.

Most parents should be able to teach their kids how to read. Most parents should be able to teach their kids how to add and subract. However, very few parents have either the time or ability to teach their kids calculus or organic chemistry.

 

If youre a parent and you dont educate your child before they go to school then youre a lousy parent. I could read and write at 3 and I could do simple mathematics, and I started school at 4. Theres no reason why you cant educate your child prior to school in basic reading and writing, and numeracy. My parents didnt homeschool me, but they took the time to show me the basics, and when school came I could write my own name without needing the teachers help every time, and I also self-educated myself regularly out of school with encyclopaedias starting at about age 6.

Early education doesnt necessarily mean you will be a good academic student, as I wasnt usually, mostly because I knew more than the teachers in nearly every subject aside from mathematics, and I got lazy and have yet to finish high school even though Im 26. Ive officially only got the highschool education equivalent of a 15 year old, but Im at university getting good grades in philosophy, so I dunno...

 

I don't think ill of homeschooling, but it's not something that works in our family dynamic. Considering the personalities involved, it's definitely better that the kids go off to school for 6+ hours a day! Besides, having seen the kind of prep that his teachers do, and the continuing ed they do, and talking with them at conferences... it makes me realize how much I don't know. Sure, I could relay the FACTS, but school's about much more than that. No one has time in life to be an expert in every aspect of life that crops up. If we're willing to hire contractors to fix the roof because we don't have the skills to do it, why not hire someone who's more skilled in the latest techniques of education to tend our children?

Velcro and I considered the quality of the public schools long and hard when we were looking for a house. Even though we chose an excellent district, there will still be plenty of parental involvement in and monitoring of schoolwork and homework - and we'll be happy to follow the lead of our selected professional education-providers.

 

I think either can work if it is done correctly. I've been to two different public school systems and one private, as well as unoficially 'homeschooled'. One public school was great, as was the private, but the other was terrible. While classes may not be dumbed down to the lowest student, the were dumbed down, a lot. It probably had to do with money or politics more than students, but it happened. Private schools are more likely to avoid this while still providing the social involvement of school, but they cost money, and some of them are REALLY bad. Home schooling provided the best material for me, but that's no guarantee for you, the same with social interaction.

 

Though I think it's a safe general observation that home-school kids are indeed lacking in skills developed through normal social interations, the biggest problem I have with homeschooling is oversight.

In a public or private school, if a parent finds out that their child is being taught something they don't approve of - whether it's a minor mistake like the War of 1912 or a total nonsense like creationism as science - the parent then has some recourse to approach the school board and demand the change. If enough parents agree with the arguement then action can be taken - whether it's something as simple as admonishing / firing the bad teacher or revising the curricullum altogether.

With homeschooling, obviously there's no such recourse. The parent IS the schoolboard. While I realize that most homeschool parents do follow state-approved curricullum at least as a quideline, there's no oversight that makes them stick to it, or prevents them from leaving out or adding in whatever they want.

In my experience, there are exceptions. This is anecdotal of course - but I've met a few dozen homeschooled kids in my life. With one notable exception, they were all oddballs socially and lacked an astonishing amount of common knowledge. I'm not talking about pop culture - I mean basic American history. Some of these same kids, when introduced into public school, had a great deal of trouble fitting in or even coping with the new public school environment.

The one notable exception I referred to was a girl I went to highschool with. She and her sisters were homeschooled up until the 10th grade, at which point she enrolled and quickly became the most popular girl in school. She and her sisters were wicked smart, highly socially adept and far more streetwise and adventurous than most in our agegroup. While this exception is evidence to me that homeschooling CAN work if done correctly, it's far from a common occurance.

 

I agree with that, but I don't think anyone was arguing against that either. For example, I think if you read to your child, then your child more likely than not will learn to read before going to school at the state-mandated age of 6.

What I and others were arguing aginst was that most parents don't have the knowledge base to teach higher level courses to their kids. I don't think I would make a very good calculus teacher for example. I took calculus in high school, and high-end calculus in college, but I don't think I remember enough of it now - never mind in another 15 years or so when my child could actually comprehend it - in order to teach it.

 

Around here most home schooling is done by religious fundamentalists who fear that their children might be exposed to scientific knowledge they don't want them to know. I don't support that kind of home schooling.

However, I have known a number of homeschooled kids over the years who were extraordinarily bright, with extraordinarily bright and committed parents, who received superb educations at home, were socialized well, and went on to excel in higher education and careers - like Death Rabbit's exception. They were homeschooled not for ideological reasons but for - gasp! - educational ones. Their parents wanted them to learn more than they could in the public schools (in all the cases I'm thinking of the public schools weren't very good). And their parents were equipped, academically, socially and emotionally, to accomplish that goal.

I grew to despise the public schools I attended and bailed out early to go to college. Homeschooling wasn't a realistic option with my family, and my parents wouldn't have done it even if it had been, because they felt I needed the socialization, problem-solving, and leadership experiences in public school. But I eventually couldn't stand the lack of meaningful content and so I left early. Unlike some who drop out, I dropped out of high school and into college and it all ended well.

On the whole, despite those amazingly bright kids I've known who did well with it, homeschooling seems to me to be a bad idea. It's almost always ideologically based and therefore highly selective in what it teaches. We already have a society where too many people can't follow statistical reasoning and think that evolution teaches we are descended from monkeys (instead of what it actually does teach) and I see no benefit in adding to that number.

 

[Deleted]

 

But therein lies the problem: it's often the people who insist on homeschooling to provide their kids with what they consider a better education who have plenty of scary beliefs of their own.

 

Homeschooling worked really well for my wife. She finished her associates degree before her friends even graduated. Homeschooling can work just fine.