In one of our prior homeschooling threads I shared my experience, both as someone who was very nearly homeschooled and the one group (two siblings) of previously home-schooled kids I associated with, so I’ll just copy/paste:
Addition from a later post about the young lady.
Most humans do not have the breadth of knowledge required to effectively teach every single subject, especially past elementary school. Effective teaching is also a gestalt of learned skills and emotional intelligences that you don’t inherit when you become a parent.
I homeschooled my daughter for a while, through third grade. So I can speak about my own experience at least. In my county, and possibly the whole state of California, home schooling is an option within the context of the public school system. A school district assigns a homeschooling coordinator who works with all the families both individually and together. In my county, if a district didn’t have a coordinator you could ‘move’ to a district that did.
The coordinator for our district came out of a Waldorf School set of beliefs (which, in my opinion, work very well for the lower grades, but then you get into real problems in various directions – subject of a different thread) which meant that she encouraged such things as nature studies, arts and crafts, etc. Each student kept a journal or multiple journals in their various subjects, and some basic things like spelling and math were required, although your choice of how to teach them was your own.
There were hippie families, conservative Christian families, and university professionals much like us. Everyone seemed to get along okay. Everyone went on the field trips together, and most kids would show up at least some of the time for the weekly drop in sessions where games were played, kids had show and tell, and stuff like that. One quite nice thing was that there was no segregation as to age or gender, all the kids played with each other.
We stopped doing it because my daughter was having problems learning from me. We had no idea she had ADHD – girls present very differently from boys and at that time girls with it almost never got a diagnosis. Plus she was far brighter than average and enormously creative, and those attributes masked her symptoms too.
However, my experience was quite positive, and the slight structure and oversight of the public school system (and of course they got the head count money) was in my case, a big plus.
She’s now a marriage and family therapist.
Just like parents determine:
It would actually we weird if education were excluded from that list.
I will say this-At least “There is too much liberal/heathen claptrap going on in school, so I am going to teach them myself!” is better than “There is too much liberal/heathen claptrap going on in school, so lets take over the school boards and/or get laws passed that “protects” all children from it!”
Mid-dau homeschooled her very rambunctious boys throughout COVID crisis and kept on because of the distance the school is from here.
They are now in public school. It was a BIG adjustment. They got their lessons done quickly here at home. Homework was not a thing. Bedtime was adjustable.
As far as academic progress they were above the grade levels when they started public school. And may yet be a little bored with the classroom work.
The homework is a joke. And a pita to enforce on them. How many addition/subtraction worksheets are necessary for a second grader to do to become proficient at it? I swear we counted 17 one week. I know they were repeats.
I still think they’ll be better off in public school, for now.
As far as resources to walk a parent through any academic subject they struggle with - I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that but I have to assume you are talking about the parent staying “one chapter ahead” of the child? Which probably works for a parent trying to refresh their memory of a subject they learned previously - but if it’s a subject the parent never mastered, it probably gives the same educational experience as I had in college with a professor whose lectures paraphrased the textbook. Or at least the two I attended did. No info that wasn’t in the book, no discussion. It was like having the book read to us. I went to those two classes , took the midterm and the final and got an A. Would have learned exactly as much just buying the book - and that’s what’s going to happen if I try to homeschool a kid in high school physics.
I understand some homeschoolers try to eliminate this problem by having parents teach the subjects they know best to a small group of kids so that maybe 5 parents are teaching 10 kids - but I’m not clear on how exactly that’s different from a tiny school.
No gubmint oversight forcing your kids to hear about things like evolution or whatever else you dislike.
Like I said, that’s demonstrably not true.
That’s pretty vague. Paying somebody to be a teacher doesn’t make them magically better at the job.
That is one way. But that’s usually just 1-2 days a week for specific subjects.
There are full curriculums you can purchase. They might have video lectures, online coursework, answer keys, etc. That’s more like “remote school” than “parent taught” at that point though, so there are all kinds of options short of that. Subject-specific curriculums, co-ops, extracurriculars through the local school, etc.
Also, no shortage of experienced parents ready to share their wisdom.
Cool. It’s pretty clear you have a fundamental lack of respect for educators, which means you’re unlikely to believe anything I have to say. No point beating my head against a wall.
Then demonstrate it…and giving examples of households with both parents having degrees and the time to stay home to homeschool does not show us that most households just aren’t like that.
It isn’t magic, it is common sense. Teachers aren’t just taught about the subject matter. They are also taught how to teach.
I think the truth is usually that parents of limited education tend to produce children of limited education. Just like in public school. Both nature and nurture are in play here
There’s a reason that stories about people who overcame their upbringing and became rocket scientists are so compelling: they’re rare. The best guarantee of a good education, whether private, homeschooled, or public, is parents who have a good education.
I will say that my sister is extremely progressive and one of the reasons she homeschooled my niece is because they thought the local school district was too conservative.
That’s true. In all the cases I know where homeschooling was successful, the parents are highly educated.
Income plays a part, too. If the parent/parents cannot afford a quality homeschool program, the child suffers. There is also the problem of parents not knowing how to teach which, as I mentioned before, is something most public school teachers have to learn before they ever see the inside a classroom.
I was private schooled, but played piano and was involved with several formal music competitions, camps, and other activities. Within our group were several homeschooled children who also played various instruments, and we were often carpooled with one of the parents in a station wagon or van. To pass the time, the kids in the back would play games like 20 questions, generally guessing either a historical figure or an animal with yes or no questions. The homeschooled kids did fine with historical figures, but I found it endlessly frustrating when they would choose an animal – inevitably they would not know the difference between vertebrate and invertebrate, or reptile and amphibian, or other very basic zoological distinctions, that made it impossible to correctly guess their creature. My 12-year-old self could hardly believe kids my own age didn’t know these very basic scientific distinctions.
Just an anecdote, but I get the impression that many homeschool families do so because they are opposed to many of the basics of science, most commonly evolution. And that’s just terribly sad for these kids.
And this is part of the problem. The OP acknowledges this, in that the reasons for homeschooling are so incredibly varied that it’s hard to judge except on a case by case basis. Thus the prior thread I quoted, which was a response to a generalization that home-schooling often seemed to be a big issue with Religious/Conservative groups. Which, well, yeah, there are plenty of groups who do that, and for the exact reasons @iiandyiiii mentions. But there’s plenty (in this thread, in the other thread, and out there in the wild) who do it for other reasons.
So lots of “many,” “most,” “some,” but certainly a metric ton of fudge factor.
As a child of two elementary school teachers (both private and public), a product of both private and public schools, and someone who currently works for a public school, I just want to say that one of the things I resent about this debate over homeschooling vs traditional schooling is the level of disrespect for dedicated educators that devote their entire lives to helping children and families that are not their own. This idea that anyone can be a good teacher by just using the internet is incredibly offensive. I’m sure some parents do a great job homeschooling, but no, not anyone can just be a good teacher by using Google. As was just mentioned, we have a lot of broad brushing all over this topic, so I’m not trying to add more of that, but some of the homeschooling advocates I’ve heard from tend to have this sort of smugness or arrogance about the subject just because their kids seem to be doing well in their circumstances. That does not make one an expert on all areas of education. Nor does it make homeschooling the best choice for every family or student. It is wonderful to be happy with ones choices, it is less so to be condescending about everyone else’s choices.
I have never, ever, met anybody who said, “All parents in all circumstances should homeschool”. Many students move from homeschooling to classroom learning and back. It’s not at all unusual for one child to be in a school and another child to be home.