So, in your opinion, one of the advantages of public education is that those with minority views can be bullied into silence. That’s an interesting take on the situation.
You got that? I got “one of the advantages of a public education is one learns manners - how to talk about a topic without being argumentative, how to discover that your opinions should be be kept to yourself in this place and time to keep from offending others.”
Recently I did some work for a nonprofit in which many of the leaders and volunteers were homeschooling moms. Homeschooling isn’t the point of the nonprofit, but a lot of the women involved with it see homeschooling as tied to their mission.
Reading some of what the homeschooling moms said about what they did and how their kids were advancing was a real eye-opener. I expected them to be positive about their experiences, and some were, but it was clear that a lot of them had either subconsciously or openly given up on trying to teach their kids, even though they were nominally homeschooling. One mom said that her son didn’t want to learn anything, so he spent most of the day playing video games. Others said they used to do activities like field trips and days out with their kids, “but it got to be a hassle” so they didn’t any more. There was a lot of “let the kid go at their own pace” which really meant “let the kid watch TV as much as they want, so long as they’re out of my hair.” A lot of the moms admitted that their kids were way behind in core skills like reading, math, and science–years behind. Again, this wasn’t all of the moms by a long shot. But it was a disturbing number of them, especially considering all of them still felt homeschooling was “better for their kid.”
My wife knows a large number of homeschooling moms (she almost felt that she was the odd one out in her social group by sending her kids to school). She felt that the homeschoolers she knew fell into four categories:
[ul][li]Moms of very sick kids. One of my stepson’s friends is in this category; she can only leave her house to go to the hospital, really.[/li][li]Moms who feel that their local school system isn’t very good. Actually this was her smallest category.[/li][li]Moms who are very, very religious. About half of the moms she knows. A lot of them homeschool because “schools teach evolution” and “Jesus is not a part of the school system.”[/li][li]Moms who can’t bear to be away from their kids. A lot of my wife’s friends are into “attachment parenting” and some literally don’t go to the bathroom without their kids. A couple of them once had their kids at school, but to quote one from her list, “I cried the entire day, every day they were gone.” One mom my wife knew who sent her kid to the same school as my stepson attended would sit outside her kid’s classroom the entire day “in case my son needs me.” Of course her son never did need her but that never deterred mom one bit. The next year she was homeschooling.[/ul][/li]
These last two groups were generally the moms whose kids grew up to be behind in subjects and watched TV or played video games all day. Sure it might be fun for a mom to be around her kid all the time when they’re crawling around and cooing but ten years on it gets a bit tiring, especially when you’ve now done nothing but “be mom” for ten years. So they give up mentally, but they’ve invested too much into their own identity to admit they’ve made a mistake (also many of them know that their kid is behind and won’t be able to keep up with their own age group in school), and the kid stays home doing nothing. The religious group is often a little better, and some of the religious homeschoolers are serious about teaching their kids. But a lot of those teach their kids (especially the daughters) some pretty defeating stuff.
Again, there are good homeschoolers. But from what I’ve seen you need to answer two questions: first, who are you really doing this for: you or the kid? We’ve met far too many moms who’ve even admitted that “my kid wants to go to school, but I think it’s better if they’re homeschooled.” (One even said that her daughter “cried” when she was told she couldn’t go to school.) Second, are you ready to do this for eighteen years? Think of what you were doing eighteen months ago. Think of all the different experiences you’ve had in that time. Now think of spending the next eighteen years of your life being a mom. The one commonality of homeschooling moms, good or bad, is that they are the ones who give up their social lives for their kids. Forget about your kid getting socially acclimated for a second. How about you?
Since the actual phrase was “if they are conservative, know enough to keep their mouths shut in company”, no, it was not learning how to discuss things - it was learning to keep your mouth shut.
And the public schools don’t seem to have done a very good job teaching liberals in LA how to discuss things, either. If, as you say, simply expressing a minority opinion is enough to offend them.
I’ll say what I always do in these kinds of discussions: I was homeschooled and it did me more harm than good, but I guess i t really depends on individual families. Mine didn’t have much money for activities, and from a very young age, I was always praised for being quiet and keeping to myself with a book, so the combination made my already terrible shyness worse. My mother tried joining organizations, but they were all Christian and we weren’t. I guess skeptical of religion is the best term. She’s also very shy and not social, so I never had a chance to become anything different.
I think that, when deciding whether or not to homeschool, parents should consider how sociable or shy they are. This will be incredibly important to how well-adjusted the children are.
I’ve grown into an adult whose conversations with strangers are marginally better than, “Hey, you have a pie! I like pie! Pie is good! Mmmmm, pie! Do you like pie?” 
For a couple of years, I drank far too much because it was the only way I could stomach human contact.
I’ve done well in college, but I’m about to graduate with a degree that will be useless to me because of how socially stunted I am (journalism). I’ve been to therapy, but it’s not like a therapist can follow me around all day and critique every interaction with others. I never learned to stand up for myself. I live with my fiance (and our cat)and I have a couple of friends, but I am deeply lonely and that can never be fixed.
But, hey, I write better papers than my classmates.
Homeschooling is not at all the same as teaching in a classroom. (Teachers who decide to homeschool generally have to unlearn a lot, in fact.) That isn’t to say that homeschooling is easy–it absolutely isn’t–but it has almost nothing to do with the skills needed to run a classroom effectively. It’s still not for the majority of families, but for quite a few families it’s the best choice.
Every family needs to put careful thought into the best way to educate their children. Public school, private school, homeschooling, whatever–put the same amount of care and thought into the decision regardless of what it is. Don’t just use public school as the default; think about it and make sure it’s right for your family, just like you should carefully consider homeschooling and make sure it’s right for your family. Be willing to make a change if it’s not working.
I suppose that can be tricky, but I think that most homeschooling parents learn to do it pretty quickly. If you’re doing it every single day, you learn fast. If subjectivity is a possible disadvantage, there’s the balancing factor that a parent has far more opportunity to observe and figure out what works for the child without having to push him into a one-size-fits-all classroom. The parent is more invested in helping the child master the skills he needs, and has the flexibility to slow down to help that, or speed up satisfy a child who has no trouble with the material. (For example, we put almost no time into spelling, because my 8yo is a natural speller who doesn’t have to try. But she does have to work hard on learning multiplication facts, and I make extra time for her to do that.)
Even social butterflies can homeschool happily–don’t assume that your child will hate homeschooling because of that factor. A social butterfly may be able to concentrate without distraction on academic studies until noon, and then spend the entire afternoon socializing every day.
I’m not trying to say that everyone should homeschool by any means, but there are a lot of misperceptions and wrong assumptions about it, especially where social stuff is concerned. Don’t let misperceptions get in the way of really thinking and figuring out whether it’s for you or not; operate in reality.
Politics and religion are not polite topics of conversation - unless you know you are in a like minded set. If you exist always in a like minded set (i.e. are homeschooled, hang with a group of people who always share your values, only talk to other hippies on the commune) you don’t learn how to modulate your conversation for a variety of audiences.
No one should think of it that way. Just because you decide to homeschool in kindergarten doesn’t mean you’re committed through high school; take it one year at a time and evaluate every year. There’s no reason you can’t put your kids in school at any time in the process; many people switch back and forth according to their children’s needs. I have no idea whether I will be doing this in two years, let alone high school. The majority of homeschoolers only do it in elementary school or through 8th grade.
What the kid wants to do isn’t always the most important thing. Their feelings should be considered, but the kid isn’t the final decision maker. If as the parent, someone decides it best for their child to not be in public school then that is the final choice.
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Second, are you ready to do this for eighteen years? Think of what you were doing eighteen months ago. Think of all the different experiences you’ve had in that time. Now think of spending the next eighteen years of your life being a mom. The one commonality of homeschooling moms, good or bad, is that they are the ones who give up their social lives for their kids. Forget about your kid getting socially acclimated for a second. How about you?
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Heh, 18 years. By the time my baby brother graduates, my mom will have been a home teacher for about 30 years.
That’s still between twelve to fourteen years of “being a mom”, more (as in Antinor01’s mom’s case) if there are multiple children being homeschooled, and most homeschooling moms we’ve known had more than one kid. That’s still a massive time commitment from the outset.
What I’m saying is that the potential homeschooling mom needs to understand exactly why they’re making that choice. “I think it will help my kid emotionally and academically” = good choice. “I can’t bear to be away from my kid” = bad choice.
The mom I was talking about “let” her daughter make the decision whether or not to attend school. When her daughter decided to go to school, the mom was in tears about it and asked her friends what she’d done wrong to let her kid make the “wrong decision.” A few days later the daughter was being homeschooled again. Was this a good decision?
If she had an actual agreement with her daughter to let her choose and then went back on that agreement when the choice wasn’t what she wanted then no it was not. You should always keep your word. At the same time though, I would say a decision like that shouldn’t be left up to the child anyway.
My point is that no one is making you sign a contract saying you’ll homeschool for the next X number of years. Evaluate year by year (which is the common wisdom among homeschoolers, even those who really want to go all the way through), and decide what’s best for your family on a yearly basis. That might mean you do it for a year, or three, or fourteen; the important thing is that you’re not trapped into any one course. No one can say what the future holds and it’s not a good idea to say that you’re going to homeschool for the next 10 years or whatever.
On homeschooling message boards, you’ll see a constant trickle of threads that say “I’m really sad, because we are putting our kids into school, and I know it’s best and it’s time and they’ll be happy, but I can vent here and waaaaaaah!” (Because homeschooling is fun and it’s hard to stop.)
There isn’t one way to homeschool. That’s the point. Everyone does it the way they feel works best for their family. That might mean that two kids are home and one is in public school, or that it only happens for a couple of years, or whatever. You look at your situation and you make your choices depending on what’s going on now, not what happened 3 years ago.
I’ve seen both the good and the bad in homeschooling. The good can be pretty damn good – the editor of my law journal was graduating law school at 23 and was also an all around great guy.
The bad is when parents are emotionally investing in manufacturing a mini-me. There are some kids that would really benefit from getting away from their parents 5 hours of every day, because then maybe some thought or information that wasn’t parentally pre-approved might enter their head. Unfortunately, this is the majority of older-teen homeschoolers I have met. (NB - the majority of older-teen homeschooled kids were also fundamentalist Christian homeschooled, whereas of younger homeschooled kids there was a variety).
[hijack]Brunhilda!!!–Please email me. I can’t see your email and the thingie won’t let me send a message to you. If you can’t see my email, please let me know. Thanks.
Nay. I would not homeschool.
I have a degree and am of at least average intelligence, but do not feel qualified to homeschool my kids, especially since I have excellent and qualified people three blocks away from my home that I feel can do the job better than I.
The only homeschoolers in my neighborhood are religious and strange- of the “Harry Potter is evil” variety, which does not impress me favorably.
Both of my kids get special services at school that I wouln’t really know how to provide. I ahve one kid on each end of the special ed spectrum.
One kid is in the GT program that had enrichments in elementary, and now takes advanced classes and a series 3 to nine week mini courses in a GT middle school. In her case, I suppose I could find these extra things for her, but having the school put it all together so well and for little to no extra cost is a big advantage to me.
The other kid speech, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and social skills training. Our district has a very agressive Autism Spectrum Disorders Team that has helped this child greatly. This kid requires a very large amount of home support to be academically successful, and we have a home-made autism thing we do, too, but I could not imagine doing this all on our own.
I don’t think I could have done as good a job as our school district has done with both kids.
Ivygirl is being homeschooled, but we’re not homeschooling her.
She’s taking online courses here, a school that’s been around since the 70s (as a correspondence school back then.)
This is her first year. Previously we had her in private schoool, but her grades did not justify the continued cost, plus we had some health issues come up that made us have to reevaluate our financial priorities.
She likes it, I think, although there is some residual resentment at us for pulling her out of school. She knows why we did it, she’s just not happy about it. But she did say she likes learning at her own pace, with no teachers to confuse her.
She’s also involved in judo, and recently went to a Halloween Party with some friends she made at summer theater camp. She also has time for a part-time job, so I think she’s busier now than when she was in private school!
I know people who homeschool well, but boy, I sure couldn’t do it.
My twins are 4.5 and they’d rather bicker with me than anything; it’s their passion, their life’s calling. They’re adorable and often good-tempered and I love them to bits, but this verbal thing is waaaay over-rated.
That’s the thing - at 10 months, your kid hasn’t had a chance to really drive you batshit yet. By the time your oldest is ready for school, you may be ready to send him there.
And you never know, your child’s needs might be quite different from what yours were. It’s natural to try to repair our own childhoods through our children, and it generally doesn’t work. 
The majority of older teen homeschoolers I know are punk goths. YMMV. (I am not a punk goth, nor are my kids, so does that mean we hang out with a diverse crowd?)
It may be that the experience of homeschooling in Northern California, and rural central Virginia, somewhat differs. I did note in my post that these were nearly universally homeschooled fundamentalist Christian teens. I doubt that is the case where you are.