Homeschooling?

Great Debates
1

Anyone homeschooled? Know someone well who was homeschooled or was a homeschooler?

Think I would have missed the interaction of my peers, no matter how raunchy or ‘godless’ they were. I cannot imagine a situation more claustrophobic or more confining than homeschooling.

This is a complete generalization: the few people I have met who homeschool their children are hopelessly inadequate in the job market, let alone as teachers. On the other hand, there are some young brothers north of me (Northern California) who have been admitted to Harvard while learning from devoted parents on the farm. Then again, there’s the woman in Idaho whose children were removed from her home after a standoff (created by the children) who also homeschooled - obviously, this wasn’t working.

Homeschoolers have lots of resources, from the internet to play and study groups. Am sure that some of them are successful, but it seems that most who homeschool do so because of religious differences. They do win spelling bees, but do they really learn history, social science, chemistry, algebra, geometry?

Where is the measure of progress? How do state standards differ? Do other Western countries homeschool?

2

Wow.

Way to go with the generalisation and stereotypes! Sure there’s some crappy homeschooling goes on and there’s some crappy schooling at school that happens as well. Did you learn your social skills at school by any chance? :wink: How to ask questions gracefully and tactfully?

OK snarking over. I’ll try and answer some of your questions. There’s people homeschooling for many different reasons. Some do it for religious reasons - I run a homeschooling list and we’ve got religious hs’ers there who seem like just ordinary people.

Yikes I just reread the charming comment that homeschoolers you know tend to be hopeless in the job market. I know lots of people who are hopeless in the job market and who put their kids in school. I didn’t homeschool because I couldn’t get a job.

Standards vary from state to state and from country to country. I’ve homeschooled in NZ where I could choose to use a PAT to assess progress and I’ve homeschooled illegally in Australia because the hoops I had to jump through were just too silly to bother with. I homeschooled because I have a child with learning disabilities who needed one on one teaching until he managed to figure reading. Last November he was assessed as hopelessly dyslexic. In June his reading level was assessed as grade 6 or above. So all by my homeschooling self without any professionals, I managed to get him reading. I’m kinda defensive of what can be accomplished in a homeschooling situation.

Socially it was tough. My kid’s chosen to return to school and it is still tough for him socially. I found the early years Grade 1 to about Grade 7 not to be all that difficult to teach. I was concerned about high school and beginning to try to figure ways to get access to physics labs and so on.

Most homeschoolers I know are very committed to teaching their kids a full courseload of subjects. We actually covered a wider array of stuff at home than my kid is getting in the classroom.

3

I was homeschooled 4th and 5th grade. So were some neighbors. We also belonged to a homeschoolers group, so we went to some classes taught by other parents with more expertise in that area. We also went on a lot of fun “field trips” to nature areas and things like that.

My mom decided to home school, because she hated some teachers at the elementary school. Atleast I think thats why.

I thought not going to school was the coolest thing ever. When I went back to school in 6th grade I was at the same level as everyone else. I know I did miss out on some stuff, but not too much.

My mom had to show some official our work to get a passing grade for the year or something like that.

4

Well said, Prima. Yo, StrayKat, you might take your snotty OP and go do a little research for yourself. Try “homeschool children social” and things like that.

http://www.google.com

I’m not a particular supporter of homeschooling, but if ya wanna debate homeschooling, which is what your OP sounds like, we’ve got the Great Debates forum. If ya just wanna flame the homeschoolers, we’ve got the Pit for that, okay?

As for “do they really learn history, social science, chemistry, algebra, geometry?”, look at this:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,53959,00.html

There was also a study that came out last fall, which of course I can’t find on the Web, that said this, quoted in the Time article:

Please tell me how people who scored 81 points higher on their SAT tests than everybody else are going to be “hopeless in the job market”.

Do you need me to tell you that Joann McGurkin (the Idaho mom) is hardly representative of the homeschooling movement? Pointing at that particular family meltdown and saying, “There, see, homeschooling creates dysfunctional families” is like pointing at Dubya’s family and saying, “There, see, living in Texas creates dysfunctional families”. Looking at JoAnn McGurkin and saying, “Obviously, homeschooling wasn’t working” is completely wrong. Those folks had serious problems way before they started homeschooling their kids (and I might point out that the precipitating factor in the whole crisis was the death of the father, changing the family dynamic.)

5

My son is 6 and is homeschooled. He reads at about a 5th grade level, his math is about 3-4th grade, all other skill is above average. He spends alot of time with the neighborhood kids… all of which are noticably less educated than he is. However, if you’re going to homeschool, you have to make certain that a child is spending time around his peers. My son loves the kids in the neighborhood and he loves his friends at church that he sees on the weekends. We haven’t had any noticable problems with homeschooling as of yet. Of course, this is due in large part to the fact that my mom doesnt work so she’s able to home school him most of the time.

6

straykat23, I think the point has been well-made already that home-schooled children are usually getting a superior education.

My point is that religion is often a reason for it, but in my estimation (I know quite a few home school parents), it’s not the major reason. My wife and I will likely home school our four-year-old, and I’m an atheist!

7

I don’t know if this is a recent trend but I have been hearing of group home schooling lately.

I though of home schooling as the parents teaching their child (which would be that closed enviroment that was pointed out in the OP). But it looks like a lot of home schooling is done in groups so there is interaction with peers and parents. This sounds (in theory) like a great idea - much better then dropping off your child with someone who commutes 45 minutes from another town to teach your child (and who gets your child to write your town rep and urge them to spend your tax money to put handicap ramps on corners in an area where there are plenty of driveways and are not needed or some other local issue that the teacher wants to take your money to pay for it).

8

I think there’s a law in Michigan that says if you’re going to homeschool, you can’t let another homeschooling parent do the teaching–I suppose this is to keep people from starting their own “unofficial” schools without oversight on the excuse that all the kids are being “homeschooled”. I dunno. But it nixes the idea of having someone else do it.

A good friend of mine homeschools. Not for religious reasons. She didn’t like the local schools, didn’t like the fact that racial tensions were already starting at the grade school level. There are two homeschooling support networks in her town (they swap supplies, and go on field trips together, discuss curriculum, stuff like that) and both of them are primarily religion-based. She affiliates with the one that is least like her own beliefs because she happens to like their educational philosophy better.

I think she stopped doing it when her husband was transferred and she was happier with the schools, but she’d do it again.

I couldn’t do it–not because I think there’s anything wrong with it (frankly, I don’t LIKE the social lessons I learned in school–there’s nothing to recommend ostracizing people for their clothes or neighbohood, or because they’re in the “slow” reading group) but because I know I’m not patient enough.

9

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I didn’t mean to come off snotty or self-righteous or stupid – I merely wanted to ask how home schooling worked for others.

I gave the best-case scenario I’d heard of (the farm kids going to Harvard) and the worst-case (the Idaho mom). The only home schoolers I know are those in between: people I work with, their families and our mutual acquaintances, so my personal knowledge is anecdotal. I meant to be honest, not snotty; however, there isn’t one of them that I would trust to teach my children, and yes, I do realize there are bad teachers within the traditional educational system. We all know that because we’ve all been there.

I pointed out that I would not have liked it as a child, and in my case, it’s true. I loved my little school friends, usually enjoyed school, and the thought of spending additional hours with my younger brother is a grim one.

My anecdotal information ranges from one woman who doesn’t take a newspaper, doesn’t watch or listen to the news (“too depressing”) and I wonder how she teaches civics, history and current events, to another who brags that she no longer has to wait until the weekend to do her laundry. There are shades in between.

As some have pointed out, there are many methods of successful home schooling, such as pooling resources (I can teach the kids algebra and Mr. Jones can teach them history) and forming study groups, etc. The people I’m referring to are not that well structured and other than organized sports for their children, do not have them in any other format than mom teaching the kids at home. I do believe these people are well-meaning and no one is deliberately doing anything to harm their kids.

It’s the lack of consistency that bothers me. I assume that those of you posting on the SDMB are more intelligent than average. Some of the explanations given for nearly incomprehensible theories are made plain on these boards and I stand in awe. But back to consistency. I understand that there are only a few states that require a college degree for home schoolers; that most states do not require a high school degree. I know that an argument can be made for education vs. common sense, but most posters seem to have those diplomas. And in my particular place of employment? Sorry, but it wasn’t the graduates who quit to teach their kids nor have there been any who quit to address a particular problem such as dyslexia, social immaturity, disability, etc. Their reasons are standard: lack of discipline, too much bureaucracy, teaching evolution, sex education, poor teaching overall, wasted time.

Sorry if I sounded like I was ranting; I didn’t mean to do so. I didn’t realize the statistics were out there. I simply have never met anyone who does home school that I would want teaching my child.

10

Okay. :slight_smile:

11

Ok, I’ve seen other homeschooling threads on this board before. So this time, I think I’ll take a slightly diferent stance.
If I understand correctly, homeschool means the parents teach their own kids at home. Is this correct?

So my question is, if anyone apparently has the qualifications to teach their own kids, is being a teacher a really easy job?

What I mean is, unless you happen to be an electrician, plumber or carpenter, you generally wouldn’t want to wire your own home, install your own plumbing, or build your own deck. So why can any shmoe suddenly become a teacher and educate their own kids as opposed to leaving it up to the professionals?

12

ok i was home schooled from 4th grade through 8th grade. It was the best thing that my mom could have done for me. she homeschooled my older brothers and they are very sucsesfull in their jobs. I just finished 9th grade at the local public high school and they put me in all the advanced classes and all of them (but french) are too easy for me. if you are worried about your child not going to succsed in life then you have been contaminated by the public school administarors (they loose money if you homeschool). trust me home schooling is much better then public school and private schools (I have been to them too).

13

Anyone certainly can wire their own home, install their own plumbing, or build their own deck, just as they can teach their own children. None of them are easy, but the home improvement projects certainly require less long-term commitment. Doing any of these jobs well involves a lot of preparation, careful and deliberate effort, and commitment.

A lot of the “professional” education teachers receive is directed toward challenges that homeschooling parents may not have to deal with: managing a classroom of twenty-five kids, developing lesson plans to satisfy your principal/curriculum specialist/school board, coping effectively with a wide range of learning styles, dealing with various types of learning disabilities. A homeschooling parent may have to learn some of these things, but only in response to specific needs of their kids.

That’s perhaps the thing that balances the scales and allows homeschooling parents to surpass what a trained teacher could do for their child – in most cases, they know and understand their child in ways that a teacher simply can’t. They can tailor the curriculum to appropriately challenge and reinforce the child’s strengths and weaknesses. Certainly, there are homeschooling parents who make a botch of it, just as there are weekend handymen who flood the house in an attempt to perform some minor plumbing task. But my impression is that the majority are doing no worse than the schools that would be the alternative.

I should point out that I don’t (yet) have a personal stake in this issue. My kids aren’t yet of school age, and we’re still discussing how to deal with educating them. My wife was an elementary school teacher for nearly ten years before our kids were born, and both of us are products of public school systems that, however mediocre at times, did us no lasting harm. We’d prefer to send our kids to a public school, but our neighborhood school is just shy of being downright dangerous. My wife has been home with our kids since the first one was born, and she’s obviously well qualified to teach them. We have a year or so before we have to make that call, and I still have no idea what we’ll pick.

14

Completely untrue.

Why don’t you explain to me how to safely wire an ENTIRE home from scratch. What gauge wire should I use? How far aparts do the outlets have to be? How do you ground the system? (Please don’t actually explain this to me. I’m beinbg rhetorical). Yes, it’s not rocket science but it takes some knowledge of electrical systems and building codes.

My point is it is the same with teaching. If someone gave me a kid and said “teach him how to read, write, speak, do algebra, calculus, fractions, etc” I would have no idea where to begin. Maybe it isn’t hard, but someone would have to show me how to do it.

What kind of standards are in place to make sure home school kids are getting a proper education?

15

Obviously no one could give you a complete description on how to wire your house in this thread. Nor could anyone tell you how to homeschool your kid in a few short paragraphs. But there may be a big building in your town, or a town near yours. This building is full of books on almost any subject you can think of, including how to wire your home and how to homeschool your kids. The will, believe it or not, let you read all those books you want for free as long as you return them in a timely manner. If they don’t have the books you need, you can get them from other sources. I hear tell of some new-fangled dot-com that will actually send books to your house.

I have a friend who read up on wiring, including the building codes for his area. He had to take an exam from the city to get a license which permitted him to do any wiring to his house that he wanted to, and he did some major renovations. He didn’t wire his house from scratch, but he was qualified to it.

Now, he did this while holding down a 40 hour/wk job. Most homeschoolers are home with their kids full-time. It’s not a hobby, it’s an occupation.

You don’t sit down at an empty kitchen table and try to teach your kids algebra off the top of your head. You get appropriate curriculum materials and work through them. In addition, many areas have organizations of parents who homeschool, and they share ideas and experiences. I hold schoolteachers in the highest esteem because they do a thankless job and don’t get paid enough, but they don’t do anything that any other person could do if they were willing to invest the time–particularly if they have a class of less than ten consisting of their own offspring.

16

I was homeschooled by teachers from the school, they came to my house ,each teacher, once a week for about 3 hours. It was the greatest but after a year I got sent to a special ed school with smaller classes. I got put on home teaching because I refused to go to school and I guess my district is very lenient(sp?).I couldn’t stand any of the other students or teachers. I went for a year with very limited social contact, just my friends and people in public places, but now I’m a very well adjusted individual(I think).

17

Gee. I bought a curriculum. I read some books. I used the library. I listened to the psychologists and teachers who recommended homeschooling for my kid. Do a websearch on homeschooling if you want someone to show you how to ‘do it’. There’s entire lesson plans, worksheets and stuff out there for free. Organising homeschooling resources and ideas is not hard.

A lot of the teacher’s time is taken up in classroom management. At home, you don’t need to worry about the dynamics of teaching 25 kids, you’re working with a much smaller number.

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What kind of standards are in place to make sure home school kids are getting a proper education?
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that very much depends on where you are. It varies from no follow up to very close follow up. I don’t know if anyone has looked at who has the best outcomes but then I suspect in the places with close supervision there’s more illegal homeschoolers.

18

Short answer for the U.S.: Yes, the government is watching to be sure homeschooled kids are getting an adequate education. There are standardized annual tests they have to pass, which vary from state to state, and if they don’t pass, they have to go to regular school.

You are not allowed to simply pull your children out of regular school and announce, “I am now homeschooling my kids” and then teach them whatever you want. You have to fill out forms, which go on file with your local school district. You are given a standard curriculum by the state school superintendent, and you go by the book. It’s broken down for you, day by day, week by week, in words of one syllable, “cover this”, “now cover this”.

19

I was homeschooled. I got meself aa edumacation, I gradutated. :slight_smile: I am a very well adjusted person now, I am not stupid. I started in the middle of 5th grade. Overall I skipped two grades over the past couple of years. Unfortunately I went through American Homeschool course for high school. The work wasn’t very challenging. But what made it so bad is that the stupid people on the other end lost over 6 months of school work I did. This happened to 4 or 5 other people I know! So I would have graduated like a normal person, but no… I was part of the GED class of 2000. But I have a very steady job as a camera salesman which makes me between 7.00 to 13.00 dollars a hour. It’s not the best pay I know, but it’s what I love. So I guess what I am getting at is Homeschooling works.

20

Early 95’ my family moved in with my great-grandmother who had altzhimers. My mom has had a varied career, having spent time both teaching and nursing, and since she was going to be caring for my great-grandmother, she knew she’d be home, so she decided to homeschool my brother for the remainder of his 5th grade year. The middle school he was attending was one she found rough adjusting (being beat up etc, it was/is a horrible city) to herself after starting mid-year, so she wanted to protect him from that.

He absolutely hated it, since there were no kids to play with in the neighborhood. However, he started 7th grade in the fall, not 6th, once he went to the middle school. In the long run, he seems to be happier that he did it, as much as he disliked it during.