Pros and Cons of Homeschooling

Great Debates
21

I expect that any reasonable high school graduate could teach any or all of these subjects. There are lots of curricula available.

It amounts basically to intensive, year-long tutoring by someone extremely familiar with the student, extremely committed to the success of the student, and with an automatic hand on discipline.

On average, home-schooled children do better than those in public education across the board. Shall I dig up some cites?

The socialization thing is nothing. Check any private school in the area. Ours has an extensive program to include any home-schooled student in sports, drama, speech contests, and so on. In some states, public schools are required by law to accept home schooled children into their intra-mural programs. I have heard horror stories of public school administrators who denied this.

One con of home schooling is that the public school system hates it with a passion. You don’t want to know the things I have had said to me by public school administrators who thought my kids were being home schooled.

Regards,
Shodan

22

Being a student who is currently doing homeschool I think my opinion might actually be worthwhile here. My school background: elementary school was a small liberal private school (K-6th Grades), middle school was a public school (7-8th Grades), highschool was public school during 9th and 10th grades, for 11th grade I have been doing homeschool. I started doing homeschool at the tail end of 10th grade do to a broken ankle and the inability to take the metro bus to school. I have two tutors who each grade two of my subjects (math, science, english, and history). My Math work is a Geometry 1 class which I take online at this website. My history is Honors American History which I also take online at webpage for my homeschool. Science class is Honors Biology and is also taken at the homepage for the school. My English class is Honors American Literature and I take it offline (I have a booklet of assignments, a text book, and several books; all were mailed to me).
Now for the good stuff, my opinion on the dang thing. I get all As, if I dont get As on an assigment or test then it is returned to me and I have to redo it. That is my favorite part of homeschooling, instead of letting kids fail and not learn they force you to learn it or do it again. However there isnt that much else I like about it. Most of the schoolwork is really easy and I dont really feel that Im learning anything important (however when at public school I did not feel I was learning anything important either). Homeschool can become very boring, Im at home for about 90% of my time and I have lost contact with many of my freinds. :frowning: To me, losing contact with freinds is the worst part of homeschool, I never realized how important school socializing was to my life (especially since I consider myself antisocial) and things can get quiet depressing at times. Next year I plan on going to Hamilton Music Academy for my senior year and I am actually excited about getting back into a public school.

23

Do you know that an embarrassing number of high school grads do not know that New Mexico is a state or where it is? An equally embarrassing number do not know what decade WWII was fought in.

As erislover so aptly noted:

So now is this our new elitist niche? Now we say “My children were homeschooled”, rather than “My child went to boarding school”?. I am not that sure about the ability of the high school graduate to handle this job, even if he/she is from a high socio-economic group. Are we jumping to homeschooling because of the lousy way public education is educating and yet depending on those that it has educated to do a better job?

autz appears to be perfectly capable, but she is not the only person that is homeschooling. There are examples of horrible things happening with homeschooling. You know my cite.

24

I have a couple of cousins that are home schooling their kids. (nine kids between the two of them, and no, these cousins are not married to each other…) None of them for religious reasons. One is in the military and they moved around alot. The other did not like the educational system where they were at.

All of their kids are doing exceptional. By far the best mannered children I have ever come across. it helps that both mom’s are teachers to begin with. All are not college age as of yet, so we will wait and see.

That aside:

My only beef, and it is a minor one, but it irks me still, is that it seems that homeschooling moms seem to dress their daughters up like they are in Little House On The Prarie. You know, the skirts and pinafores look with a kercheif. I am talking about the hard to dress ages of 9-12. I’ve seen this *alot * Especially at all the yard sales I hit and Joanne’s fabrics. and while I certainly do not want my daughter wearing the slut of the month vamp outfit, this classic over correction of puritanically inforced innocence bothers me.

I am all for homeschooling when you have an excellent support of other families who can smooth over your weak spots. If I had to teach math and science, I would be screwed. When our children were born, Mr. Ujest and I easily divided up the “subjects” that we would be covering (but not limited too):

Mr. Ujest: Sports, All Things Related to Building and Auto Mechanics, Tools and Their Many Uses, German, Learning to BBQ, Ballroom dancing and Rock and Roll.

Me: English, Reading, Writing, Comedic Timing (no really, I’m fighting genetics here with the German side of the Ujest family as in there ain’t no comedic timing) Trivia, Movies, exercize, swimming, speling :slight_smile: , How to Pack for a Trip, Classical Music and Cliche’s.

Our children, I pray, will never be scientists or some other thankless brainstaking job that is rarely rewarded and takes 100 years to pay off the college loans. I pray they are plumbers. Union Plumbers. $100 an hour to unclog your disgusting toilets and no college loans to pay off. :smiley: A mom can dream, can’t she?

25

I do understand your point, Tris, and it is well taken. My only point is that a homeschooling parent may include socialization skills as a part of the curiculum itself, spending time each day, if necessary, in public places where — and here’s the difference — you as a parent may supervise and influence whatever interactions take place. Then you may discuss the day’s activities with your child and help her to contextualize her experiences in the manner that you believe contributes to her social and ethical growth. That seems to me superior to random interactions with God-only-knows-whom, and attempts by you to discuss with your child interactions that you did not witness.

26

Libertarian:
You seem to be saying that the advantage of homeschooling is you can control your childrens’ socialisation. Since when has controlling every aspect of your childrens’ lives been considered a good thing?

I have no strong opinions for or aganst home schooling. It can be great, it can be awful. It simply depends on the particular people involved. However, attempting to control your children completely like that is, in my opinion, a horrible idea, and should be avoided at all costs.

Actually… What I said isn’t entirely true. I have no opinion for or against the idea of home schooling. In practice I think it’s quite hard to get right. A tendency to overcontrol is, as I said, one problem. Another is making sure that your children have a well-rounded education.

Ujest: WHen you say your husband and you would be covering those subjects, do you mean that you will get someone else to help cover other subjects? I know that you said you hope they wouldn’t grow up to be scientists, but shouldn’t that be their choice? Further, even if they don’t grow up to be scientists, do you really think that they shouldn’t have at least some general scientific knowledge? If not, I won’t argue with you about it. It’s your business. On the other hand I do think it’s a terrible idea. Still, YMMV. If everyone agreed with me the world would be a very boring place. :slight_smile:

27

I know a lot of homeschoolers and considered it myself, but my son is so social that I don’t think I can adequately offer enough socialization for him.

What I have seen a LOT of is parents homeschooling for religious reasons, and their kids wind up getting a skewed education because of that. Evolution, sex ed, whatever.

Many areas have homeschool groups and those can be a great place to meet other families who are homeschooling, share resources, and get together and teach subjects that you are talented/interested in.

Most homeschoolers do not have problems getting into college from what I have heard. The high school aged ones I have known got their GED’s and took ACT/SAT tests and were able to get into fairly good schools.

28

I can only comment on the one case of a home-schooled child I know well – my niece, as I mentioned in this thread previously.

Her mother (my sister) has a Ph.D. in molecular biology. Her father is a high school science teacher. They are both very well read, especially my sister.

I don’t think they’d really have a problem teaching any of those subjects, at least through a high school level. And if there’s something my niece wants to learn that they don’t know, they know lots of intelligent, capable people.

Ed

29

Which helps to confirm:

Does not contradict my statement

I personally find it interesting that the father is a high school science teacher. No particular point to be made from it.

30

My understanding is that it’s largely because he IS a public high school teacher that they decided to home school their daughter. He sees what goes on “from the inside”, and has gotten very disillusioned with the politics and bureaucracy involved.

He himself still enjoys teaching, and he is consistently known as one of the best teachers at his school. But he doesn’t like what goes on around him.

Ed

31

Occasionally I do programs for homeschoolers at the museum where I work. The homeschooled kids don’t seem any brighter than the kids from public or private schools. The main difference I’ve noticed is that the homeschooled kids tend to be much quieter. YMMV.

I think homeschooling can be a great option. It seems especially useful for those with special-needs kids. However, I’m really glad I went to public schools and I wouldn’t homeschool my kids. At public school, I interacted with people of all different races, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. I don’t think I would have gotten that if I’d been homeschooled. The social circle seems mostly limited to parents’ friends and other homeschoolers. It was good for me to learn that there was a big wide world out there beyond my family and their associates.

I also learned some valuable lessons in public school. Not fun lessons, but useful ones: Sometimes people are mean for no reason. Sometimes life is unfair. Sometimes you have to suck it up and put up with a classmate/teacher you dislike. You can’t have the teacher’s attention all the time. Your parents don’t know everything and they can’t fix everything. Would I have learned these things eventually? Probably. Did public school give me a thicker skin and a sense of independence from my family that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise? I think so.

Just out of curiousity, autz, what are your husband’s objections to homeschooling?

32

Possibly the biggest con to homeschool is that it is HARD. Its a full time plus job to teach three children at three different levels. Its hard for me to get mine to sit for twenty minutes to listen to the same book! That doesn’t mean it not worthwhile, just that you need to be committed to it and understand the committment up front. If you aren’t, you aren’t getting the pros of homeschooling.

And the pros are pretty good. Very small class sizes (unless your three so far is going to turn into twelve quickly). No one cares about your kids more than you. No one knows your kids better than you. You can teach to their interests and move at their pace.

Personally, I’m sending my kids to public school. I don’t have the emotional resources to be a full time mom and teacher. Not to mention I’d be financially better off sending them to an expensive private school then quitting my job. But I’m planning on supplementing their public school education with some homeschooling. (And saving the salary for college).

33

Well, it all depends on where you live. I wasn’t home schooled.
However, I lived five miles from the nearest person my age, and was in the local gifted program, which hopped school districts every two years or so. It certainly and definately retarded my socialization. No chance of after-school activities, no real being in or out of a clique. It wasn’t until high school that I returned to where I “belonged.” And I really blossomed there.

34

Amen. One reason why I want my kids to go to school here is as a learning experience for ALL the kids. My son came home today saying he hates Japan. When I asked why, he said its because kids call him American. Well, he’s not. He’s Japanese and Australian. But over here, foreign=American. My son is going to learn how to deal with stuff he doesn’t like, and the kids around him are going to have their view of the world broadened somewhat. And I think that is a great thing.

35

Homeschooling parent checking in!
I love homeschooling. So does my daughter.
I took her out of a public school last year, when she was in sixth grade. I have access to the textbooks the local schools use through my job with the Board, so I’m keeping her close to the regular PS schedule, with some accomodations. She has dyscalculia so she is really benefitting from one-on-one teaching. Her TCAP scores in Math have never been higher and I’m really happy to see her finally grasping those basic math concepts.
I don’t keep her hidden from society. She has lots of neighbors that she hangs out with after they get home from school. She takes a Watercolor class with other kids and adults. She is a very active volunteer at a local pet adoption agency. She travels alone to stay with friends in Texas every summer. We do most of the same things public school kids do…library, museum, zoo trips. She doesn’t seem to have much trouble making friends.

Some of the things she is learning she’d never have the opportunity to learn in the public school in our district. She wanted to learn a foreign language-wasn’t offered here in seventh grade. She wanted to take an advanced Art class-wasn’t offered here in PS. She chose to take World History, which isn’t offered until tenth grade. Seventh grade English here pretty much involves a few book reports and lots of grammar. She wanted more so I gave her more. She loves to read and write stories and she’s really good! My brother, a High School History teacher, enjoys helping with History, and I use a great textbook from National Geographic for Geography. It pretty much teaches on it’s own, but we supplement with the 'Net.
As for Math, she’d never have gotten any sort of assistance here, because there is no assistance here for dyscalculia. You either get stuck in a full LD-Dyslexia class or…nothing. She’d have gone on not knowing how to tell time, being told she was lazy, etc. and when she hit Algebra she’d probably sink to rock bottom.
I can’t really give a Con for homeschooling-for us. It’s lots of work for me, but I love it so much it doesn’t really matter. It’s very satisfying work. The biggest Pro would be individualized education. I know what she needs the most help with. I know we can’t say, “Okay, addition of fractions this week, subtraction next week.” because she may not understand addition of fractions in one week. We even make lesson plans together. I trusted her to choose many subjects, books, and projects.

I don’t know what to say. She seems like a perfectly normal kid, maybe a little bit immature to some folks. She’s not into that rebellious stage yet, still plays with Barbies and her beloved horses, doesn’t understand “the deal with make-up and hair”. We argue sometimes, and she certainly knows I’m not perfect. I’m definitely not elitist…they have my name listed as the antonym in M-W, I’m sure of it :slight_smile: Just your friendly neighborhood homeschooling, vision screening tech, animal loving, SDMB addicted redhead mom-chick.

I don’t have a problem with public schools. I work for them and I see kids doing just fine every day. But it didn’t work for us.
This works for us. :slight_smile:

36

I have a few questions/comments about homeschooling myself.

Most of my interaction with homeschoolers came in middle school, when I was winning Geography Bees. Generally, the homeschoolers I met were antisocial, and one of them was one of the most mean-spiritied people I’ve ever met. Of course, this was a small sample size (probably 10 people) and wasn’t a good cross-section of the population. However, this has made me suspicious of how well these kids can socialize. I’d like to see if there’s any study done on how well these kids socialize not just while they’re being homeschooled but in adulthood. I ask this because, even though there’s a big anti-high school sentiment on these boards, it does teach people how to work in social situations. I’d like to see if there are stats on how many are marriead, how happy they are with their social lives, etc.

37

All right, don’t yell at me but I’m about to be very biased and un-PC based on my observations of half a dozen home schooled kids. They tend to be, well, social retards. Two were religious, so there’s that, one had very artsy parents, she was very shy and couldn’t take any kind of criticism, another was a slave to any kind of authority… To me, socializing, good or bad, is what high school is about, and no amount of play dates or museum trips will make up for that. Of course, there are plenty of anti-social kids at school who have a tremendous amount of trouble fitting in. The biggest problem I can see about home schooling is the parent-child relationship. Is the child being given only one point of view on subjects (as opposed to the views of various teachers in each grade)?

38

I work in the Education & Religion department at the local Public Library and I temp in the Children’s department quite a bit, so I get to work with both the homeschoolers and the homeschoolees on a regular basis.

They run the gamut. I’ve been truly impressed by the apparent maturity of some of the kids, and deeply by the utter ignorance displayed by some of the parents. I once got asked for a curriculum guide for Black History Month from the “Aryan perspective.”

39

I’ve been deeply disturbed, that is.

40

It boils down to why would you want to home school, and can you achieve those goals in your particular home better than your particular school would for your particular child?

Many of us, are honest with ourselves like dangerosa, and realize that we would not have the patience with our own kids to be good teachers for them full-time. Many of us have good public school systems that have teachers better prepared to teach than we are. (I may know more science than the elementary school teacher, but that doesn’t mean I can teach it worth a damn.)

Will your child gain anything in home-schooling that your providing supplemental materials, experiences, and tutoring can’t provide? Is there an advantage to the common core experience of public education as a base? Is the motivation one of protecting your child from ideas that you find objectionable? (But you’ve dismissed the religious reasons.)

Some parents (not me) have the patience and dedication to home-school. Some have kids with specific needs that public school will not address. Some live in areas where the public school option is so awful that even my teaching my kid would be a better choice.

What are you wanting to achieve and why?