Homeschooling

Great Debates
1

While researching a question on creation-science curricula I visited a number of homeschooling websites and message boards. I had originally focused on Christian homeschooling, but, as I got interested, I branched out. Now I’m left with a few questions. I’m posting this here in GD, because, based on what I’ve seen out there, this is where it’ll end up anyway.

First of all, what is the largest percentage of homeschoolers? I found some folks who were just trying to give their kids the best education possible – many of these people seemed very bright and were doing a great job of educating their kids, so far as I could see. I also saw some folks who, reading between the lines, had removed their kids from school in order to allow them to avoid punishment of some kind, or because the teachers and school administration were “picking on them.” And, I saw the people who removed their kids from school because of a perception that our culture as exemplified in the school system was somehow harmful to children. This last group included a small number of Pagan homeschoolers (who may have a point, an ‘open’ Pagan is gonna have a tough time in a bible belt elementary school), but the vast majority of these were Fundamentalist Christian. My quick take on the topic was that the last group (the Christians) outnumbered the rest. However, I wasn’t able to find any real numbers on this.

Next, how are homeschoolers doing, educationwise? I saw many claims that homeschoolers do better in standardized tests than did children in public schools. However, I saw no actual cites for this. I also heard anecdotal evidence from several school administrators that homeschooled kids returning to public schools were seriously behind their classmates. According to these administrators, the problem was pretty serious. One high school administrator said that, at her school, the largest group of overage freshmen was the formerly homeschooled. They’d come back to public school at age 16 and be so far behind that they’d have to be placed as freshmen. Again, there were no specific cites.

Finally, what sort of accountability standards should there be, or should there be any? According to the school administrators I referenced above, one of the biggest problems was the lack of transcripts and grades for homeschooled kids returning to public school. Lacking a paper trail, the kids had to be tested for grade eligibility – and one of the school administrators said that she had never, in 8 years experience, seen a homeschooled kid test at an age appropriate level. She did not cite actual numbers, or offer any proof of this claim.

So, what about it? My quick and dirty opinion is that Christian homeschoolers (by which I do not mean homeschoolers who are Christian, but rather homeschoolers pushing a Christian curriculum) outnumber the rest. Also that, homeschoolers returning to public schools are ill-prepared to do so, even though some homeschooled kids who complete their entire education in a homeschool environment may test better than some public school kids. Finally, homeschoolers should have some kind of accountability – specifically a requirement for transcripts. However, I realize that all of my opinion on this subject is based only on anecdotal evidence, so I’m willing to be convinced that I am wrong on any particulars.

2

I am considering homeschooling my kid when I have one, but it really depends on how much money my wife is making by the time it’s born. If I’m the primary money-maker then I will have to work and I will try to get the kid in a private school, though I’d rather stay home and teach it myself. My wife probably lacks the patience to teach herself.

I want to homeschool because I think I could do a lot better job than most educational institutions. In my family the kids all knew how to read pretty well before kindergarden, I feel like my education was severely hindered by the public school system. Not only could I give my kids an advantage academically, I want to try to lead them away from a lot of elements of modern culture that are unavoidable at a school. I’m not going to shelter them from the world as prepare them for it ahead of time. I’m also going to give them a nice healthy superiority complex - that is, if I can.

3

Sorry, I can’t find a cite for this so this is from memory.

Recently in Minnesota a proposal was brought up to a house committee (I think its house, and I’m pretty sure it was just a proposal, not a bill) requiring parents who home school their children to hold a high school diploma and report standardized test scores to the state so the state could get some idea on the effectiveness of home schooling (homeschoolers are currently required to give the standardized tests, but do not need to report scores). It didn’t get out of its hearing.

The reporter (I heard this on our NPR station) said we really don’t know how many kids are being homeschooled in the state (we have estimates - I can’t remember the number, so I’m not guessing), and we really don’t know how they are doing.

So, hard and fast data is going to be difficult to come up with - at least for Minnesota you are stuck with ancedotal.

4

Only a couple of minutes, sorry.

I’ve done a couple of stories on homeschooling here in rural Colorado and found a couple of things. The majority of the people around here who are home schooling are fundamentalist Christians, who do not want their children corrupted by the schools that they see as Godless.

Many of these same people are very afraid of the U.S. government too, and feel it might resort to brainwashing their children regarding any number of their beliefs.

With the exception of science (especially biology) the students are very well prepared in comparison to public school educated students.

The one thing I have found that was lacking in these young people was that the homeschooled students seem to lack some social skills. They don’t know how to deal with groups of people their own ages. When groups of the general population of young people virtually all of them don’t “play well with others.” They stand off to the side or stand near an adult or play by themselves.

I was very surprised at this. I thought playing with others was natural. Clearly it is a learned skill.

5

While not everybody thought High School was hell, I think there is a large percentage of us who did. From Eutychus’ pit rant, to the current school shootings, there is an obvious problem in our high schools.

I hope to homeschool my children.

I think that my children will be tought almost all of the mainstream subjects. (including evolution)

The difference that I see, is that they will be able to do it at their own pace, and be able to specialize in subjects they are more interested in. I will also be able to make sure they get an education in areas where I feel the public schooling system let me down.

I think any homeschooler needs to have the resources and willingness to get a tutor for subjects where their child gets ahead of them. (high school age–physics–advanced math, biology, foreign language… etc…) I live in the real world. I don’t use physics and biology in my everyday life. It’s been 10 years since I sat in a classroom. I don’t see the need to be threatened when in 15-20 more years pass, my child has a greater knowledge of science than I do.
I also want to make sure they get the proper exposure to ideas that I never saw in school. Politics was hardly mentioned. Different theories on how to view the world were never explained.

I also want to remove the teaching of things I do not want the school involved in. I would prefer that my wife and I handle the sex education of our children. I want to be the one who explains what is right and wrong when it comes to racism and prejudice. I don’t want the school flipping out if my child draws a picture of a gun.

Most importantly, I want him to grow up learning how to be independent.

As far as the social interaction thing…

There is no promise that sending your child to public school will mean that he will be socially well adjusted. Shoot, I didn’t even START to become socially adjusted until after I LEFT school. You are basically trapped in a building with a 1000 other kids whom you would NEVER associate with in any other circumstance. Check out the thread about school shooters being someone’s hero, there are a lot of people out there with screwed up childhood’s because of public school.

You have to make an effort to get your child involved in group activities. School is not the only game in town as far as social interaction. Where I am, most sports have a “private club” organization for football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse etc… None of these organizations are connected to the school. Karate class is a great place to learn confidence, and kids around me start those at age 5. There are countless volunteer groups around, and there are always kids at those.

And hell…if all else fails he’ll just meet some friends on the internet. (joke…joke…)

I’m not saying it’s easy, but nothing ever is.

Of course, it will all probably backfire and my children will all rebel and become raving socialists:)

I do see where homeschooling is not the best course for every familiy. Regardless of a family situation though, the choice must remain with the family. (barring objective proof of abuse) But part of freedom is having the freedom to fail. You certainly can’t make the case that public schools never fail. I just have this problem with the state mandating that they get control of your children from 8am-4pm every day.

:: post scanned for the inevitable typos that would prove I am unfit to teach my own child::

[sub]Don’t worry— My mother has a Masters Degree in English, I’ll let her teach that subject[/sub] :slight_smile:

6

Are there large-scale studies that not only compare home-schooled kids to their counterparts in formal settings, but control for factors such as family income and two-parent homes?

The home-schooled group should be as demographically similar as possible to the formally educated group for comparisons to be valid.

7

What about so-called “unschooling”, like at unschooling.com
?
Where does that fit in?

8

Whether the parents will make that effort depends on why they are homeschooling. If they are doing it mainly to provide a better education, they might get the children involved in sports ,home-schooling groups, etc. However, the few homeschooling families I’ve known have been motivated at least as much by a desire to keep their children away from other kids as by the desire for a good education.Forget sports, these kids couldn’t join the family church’s youth group.Those kids aren’t likely to learn how to get along with other kids (or really anyone outside their family).

9

Bridging to another GD topic, should Homeschoolers get (some or all of) the money the school system would spend if the child were in school - Homeschool Vouchers?

If so, the children should be subject to the same assessment tests as the in-school kids. A point made in at least a couple of the Voucher threads.

But without the “state’s” money, it would be hard to enforce a provision requiring testing of Homeschool children. About the only leverage might be truancy laws.

How do colleges, especially the “competitive” ones deal with Homeschool Diplomas? I would imagine that Fundamentalist Colleges have no problems with Homeschooled Fundamentalists, but what about real colleges and universities?

Of course the parents doing this because they don’t trust the Godless Government schools are not likely to submit to testing by the Godless Government.

Solutions? I have none. However, there is a body of knowledge that everyone – including those homeschooled – in society should know. This is not just a list of facts, but also includes the thinking processes that come with a thorough education.

[snip]
from Freedom
I think that my children will be** tought*** almost all of the mainstream subjects. (including evolution)
:: post scanned for the inevitable typos that would prove I am unfit to teach my own child:: *
[/snip]
Ahhh, Nobody is perfect.

10

:rolleyes:

I have the misfortune of dealing with quite a few homeschool types as customers. Several of them have been openly disdainful of the fact that we carry so much “secular” material (and they make the word secular sound so dirty) asking how we can live with ourselves selling some of this stuff. I can see where home schooling is a viable option for non mainstream religions where the kids would be harrassed heavily in a public school environment.

However, there should be some kind of basic requirement set up like a “homeschooling credential” issued by a local college. This would just be to make sure that they are introduced to non subject specific basic teaching concepts.

I also disagree with the lack of accountability standardized testing. Maybe a mechanism could be put in place for homeschoolers to take their test in a controlled environment, for example, report to the local school cafeteria twice a year for testing with all the other homeschoolers in the area. Just to make sure they are being given proper basic readin’ 'ritin’and 'rithmetic. If a homeschooler consistently performs poorly on these tests maybe they should be forced to placed in an accreddited school since obviously the parents are not cutting it. If they pass the 12th grade test under that environment, maybe the district could even cut them a legit diploma (for a fee I’m sure)

11

Around here, in Pennsylvania-all you do is go to the school, say you want to home school your kids and that’s it. You pull them out, they give you the material, and nothing else.

Our neighbor was sick of the school calling her about how her kids were never behaving or doing their work. She pulled them out on the premise that she was “homeschooling” them, and that’s it. She had a sixth grade and a ninth grade dropout. She never teaches them anything, and all they do is make trouble.

I think there’s something seriously wrong.

12

As regards getting into college:

I know several college-age homeschool graduates (homeschooled for different reasons) who tell me that different schools have different policies about homeschooling, often between the lines. A guy I met at a summer internship once told me that he’d really wanted to go to Georgia Tech, but they weren’t very welcoming of homeschool diplomas, so he had to go to MIT instead, which evidently has no problem with it. He made it seem like such a sacrifice, too. :slight_smile:

13

I used to be assistant pastor in a residential bible college, and one of my duties was helping homeschool the pastor’s son. I personally am very proud of having survived the British private school system, so I had serious doubts about homeschooling - where were the uniforms, the beatings, the dark sarcasm in the classroom?

Sorry - tangent. Anyway I hafta say I was pretty impressed with the material. It was PACE, I think. Something Accelerated Christian Education. There was nothing wrong with the stuff except that everything was in dollars, and it may be because I work mainly in poor areas, but the boy’s education was streets ahead of most of the kids I meet. He also, and this is my main point, had very well-developed social skills, to the point that I frequently saw him enter a roomful of local kids and begin leading them around within minutes. It surprised me, but it made me rethink some of my ideas of what had caused my own isolation. I’d submit that in some situations a homeschooling is part of a wider responsibility which parents may choose to take for their children’s development as a whole, rather than farming them out to others.

14

A co-worker has a daughter who is home-schooled. She’s a very bright, well-adjusted girl. She has lots of friends to socialize with. The mom took her out of public school because it was in a rough area, and just because it was a crappy school.

The other co-workers just thought this was terrible. They bitched all the time about how this woman was robbing her daughter of all the “fun” of school. These people remembered the bucolic joy of their small little schools in Hooterville, from several decades ago. They still think that school is like that - some precious time for a kid.

I was the only one in our group of workers who supported the home-schooling mom. While the school I attended wasn’t in a bad area, it was pretty large, and rather hellish at times. I said to these other co-workers, “You people have NO idea what Hell school can be! This girl is lucky to not have to deal with that!” But they just wouldn’t accept it. Their heads were stuck back in 1970, with visions of bucolic country schools. They have no clue what it’s like today. (I think perhaps the recent school shootings are giving them a wake-up call, though!)

This homeschooling mom wants her daughter to go to a nice public school, but right now, they are living in a rough part of town, and her only option is this crappy, scary local school. Obviously homeschooling is the far better alternative to that!

15

I think this is a good thing. Most parents should be teaching this even if they send their kids to public or private school.

I think this will be hard to do if your kid is spending most of the day with you. Children learn how to be independent by being on their own.

This I don’t understand. Out of 1000 students, you can’t find ANY to associate with? Part of growing up is to learn to deal with uncomfortable social situations. At some point in everyones life, they need to learn how to deal with bullies, drugs, alchohol, social cliques, etc. The earlier the better. No amount of home schooling can make up for experience.

Good idea except… The danger is that you are setting up all your childs activities. Public school at least gives your child exposure to other kids and other activities you may not have thought of. When I was younger, my dad signed me up for baseball and basketball (sports he was very good at). Neither sport thrilled me that much. I ended up being an ice hockey player in high school. If I didn’t go to public school, I may never have played hockey in HS. I would certainly not have played in college. I would therefore not have met the guys who asked me to join the particular fraternity I joined and would not have made the connection which helped land me a job with a big-5 management consulting firm. And I was kind of a screw up in HS and college. You never can tell how kids will end up if left to their own devices.

And your child will probably thank you. (Probably while you are sleeping :wink: )

The best preparation is experience. You can only teach you kids so much. At some point, they will need to confront the ‘bad elements of moder culture’. That is how children build confidence. Not by having their head pumped up full of superiority nonsense.

High school sucks for just about everyone because it is the time in our life where we are discovering who we are and how we fit into the world. This can be a painful process but it is a necessary one. Keeping your kids sheltered in home school will only rob them of important experiences they can only get from interacting with their peers.

16

In an ideal situation, perhaps this is true. But too often, schools are full of bullies and teachers who look the other way, and many other horrors. My school wasn’t even that bad compared to many, but one of the major lessons I learned in school was that when you are bullied, you are on your own. The teacher can be right there in the classroom, and they’ll just look the other way. (And I’m not just talking about minor petty bullying - I’m talking about physical harm - like falling on your butt because someone pulled your chair out from under you. And then your tailbone hurts so damn bad for DAYS after. No, I’m not bitter! :rolleyes: )

This can start to be a “what hell school is” thread, and I am not intending that. What I am saying is that you gotta make sure that the kid is missing out in something that should not be missed. Being stuck in a Hell where all you learn is that there is no protection from bullies and no justice (a lesson I did learn in school, and which took me a while to overcome) is definitely WORTH missing. Believe me.

17

Home schooling, in my opinion, isn’t a good idea. If he or he does everything at home how can s/he possibly learn to function in an idiotic bureaucracy? Where can the child learn that it’s not what you do that is important but what other people think you are doing. How can a child learn the most valuable skill in the the modern world, the ability to BS your way through anything. Children must learn to do mindlessly inane activities that serve no end other than to prove that they are willing to do mindlessly inane activities that serve no purpose if they are told to, and also to prove to the state that they have not stopped breathing. For instance a homeschooler will never be graded in high school on how they colored a map in despite the fact they no nothing about what the map is shoowing. Or be graded on the quantity of notes they took on a book, rather than if the understood it or not. These skills will allow them to be able to compete in today’s job market, otherwise they will be unsatisfied with their lives and just plain wierd. You may think I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not.

18

:smiley:

Anyway, http://www.nheri.org/ has some overview fact sheets (not that detailed, but a start). Click on the “Research” book on the left and scroll to the bottom.

19

My husband and I would like to homeschool our children, if we ever have any and if it is financially feasible. My main motivation is just that I felt like school was such an incredible waste of my time. I spent 12 years bored to tears as we went over the same material over and over and over. Homeschool kids can learn thier academics 8-12 and spend hte afternoons going on field trips to museums, to parks, to visit interesting people, while thier peers are still in class filling out wordfinds and circling the verb.

The socialization is, of course, the big thing, but I think that there are ways around that–and as homescholing gets more popular, I think that we will see more and more associations of homeschoolers that come together to deal with this problem. Furthermore, I don’t LIKE the way schools socialize children, I don’t think they need alot of that shit. For example, the school system tends to force kids to use age as an important grouping technique–I know so many people that are horribly, horribly uncomfortable when dealing with people 4 years younger or older than themselves becasue they were only socialized with thier grade.

I think that many of the objections that people have to home-schooling come from the myth of a shared cultural experience–the idea that there are things we are “supposed” to be doing at certain ages, and that if we don’t, we are “missing out.” The fact is that in a country as diverse as America there really is no single, over-arching experience that everyone shares. Furthermore, we are all “missing out” on things–everything we chose to do means that there are a hundred other things we chose not to do. No one can really say which experiences are “best” to have in the long run, and looking back most people tend to assume that the ones they actually had were the important ones.

20

My most recent issue of the Libertarian newspaper had an ad in it for Libertarians who want to home school their kids. Obviously, that would fit in with their philosophy that the government certainly should not even be in the business of educating children.

If I am ever fortunate enough to have children and am able to make the sacrifices necessary to stay at home, I would home school. In addition to not feeling that the government should be in the business of educating kids, I am especially uncomfortable with the government providing education about sex and drugs (DARE). That’s the parents’ job. I also don’t want my children to be as limited in the public school system as I was (my high school had a weighted grade system where it was possible to have a grade point average higher than 11 {in this system A was 11, A-10, and so on.} I had a GPA of 11.5 and still my guidance couseler would not allow me to take French 4 and Spanish 1 at the same time my senior year because he thought it would be too much for me. My parents had to intervene).

I had a college professor at Notre Dame who with his wife was home-schooling their 7 children through high school because they didn’t think the Catholic schools were Catholic enough. I talked with the 8-year-old son at one point–he was bilingual in German and English (father is Austrian), he was currently reading “Ivanhoe” for his English class (how many public schools teach that to 8-year-olds?), and he was an accomplished soccer player and swimmer at the YMCA, where he had a large number of publicly schooled friends. Spookily bright, but very well-adjusted and friendly.

Obviously, most parents who home school don’t have doctorates from Thomas Aquinas College. However, I would think that even the fundamentalist Protestant ones generally have a love for the child that a frazzled public school teacher can never have, an understanding of the child’s needs, and time for one-on-one education. What’s more, there can be little doubt that children living 100 years ago got a better education in the basics than children today, and they were largely taught by women with only a high school education or a little bit of teachers’ college. The St. Louis city school system encourages its teachers to hold DOCTORATES, and it’s fighting to keep its accreditation.

Sure, there’s bad parents who homeschool merely to crudely indoctrinate their children into a narrow belief system. However, a loving parent who’s willing to invest the time can provide a better education than the state system (and at a much, much, much lower cost).