The Problems with Home Schooling your children:

In My Humble Opinion
41

Here! We started this fall with our 4th grade daughter and our first grade son.

**

Depends. Here in New Orleans we’ve found that there are lots of folks on either end of the social/political spectrum (conservative Christians and liberal Unitarians/agnostics) with few near the middle, like us. These folks quite often have some ideological axe to grind. Our decision was primarily economic: we have four kids. Public schools are very bad here; my wife didn’t want to go back to work just yet; we cannot afford to put all the kids through private school pre-k - college.

**

For: Our kids have greatly improved their critical thinking skills. In their traditional school, they were taught rote memorization and call:response fact keeping. When we started this fall, our daughter could do arithmetic at grade-level, but if you asked her to apply the math skills in a way that required her to think, she tired very quickly. Both she and her brother now crave problem solving. Also improved are research skills. Part of their grammar lesson is report writing. They have to research a topic and write up a paragraph (first grader) or a page (fourth grader). At first they were intimidated, but now they enjoy the challenge and take pride in being able to hunt down answers to research questions.

Against: It’s been tough to find “normal” homeschool parents in the groups we’ve been seeing. So, by proxy, it’s been hard to find “normal” kids. Parents with religious or political causes purposely shelter their kids from the real world, which, IMHO, is going to cause problems in the future when their little Johnny goes to regular high school or when Janie starts college.

**

Again, this depends on the parents. Some don’t care. Some focus only on groups that support their world view. In our case, our kids do homeschool group field trips, p.e. class, and play group. They (voluntarily!!) also do rec league sports, scouts, choir, and 4H. They schedule play dates with friends pre- and post home school. We have a Spanish tutor come in one day a week and a college-age sitter one afternoon a week.

**

Per the above, the majority of the people we’ve run into don’t want to combat the parent-centered view. In some cases, that’s a good thing as there are good parents out there. OTOH, there are some parents who are really sheltering their kids (no TV, few movies, limited reading list, etc.). For example, some homeschoolers we know wouldn’t let their kids watch “The Gods Must be Crazy” with our kids since there’re a few scenes with bare-breasted Bushwomen in the first 10 minutes of the film.

**

Homeschooling works for us and we’re quite happy with our decision and with our results. We’ve the freedom to do more with our children and they’re freer to explore their own interests at their own pace. It’s a LOT of work, however, and it requires a firm hand and a lot of patience trying different approaches until you find one that works for each child. There are lots of good homeschool resources on the net. Your best bet is to find local groups near you and arrange to talk with some of the people who belong to them.

42

When it was time for my oldest to start Kindergarten, I seriously thought about homeschooling. I bought all the books that advocate for it.

But in the end these books turned me off. All the writers seemed to have a major axe to grind. They all assumed that everybody knows that public schools are evil incarnate.

I attended public schools and had a pretty good experience. Some teachers were good, some weren’t. So the basic presumption of many home-schoolers didn’t match with my experiences.

Now my kids are in public school. To get a good quality education I’ve had to be very active in their education. When my son got assigned to a teacher I thought wasn’t doing a good job, I badgered the principal to have him transfered to another class with a FABULOUS teacher.

I think either way can work. But it’s really up to the parents to MAKE it work.

43

It would seem this is the basis for the argument against homeschooling. There is a stigma due in no small part to those who choose homeschooling for the wrong reasons. i.e. the US education system is going to corrupt their little ones minds, or God steps in and all of a sudden all public school are havens for satan.

I agree that there are certainly two sides to the street. And some parents are doing thier children justice by home schooling, and some are doing their children great injustice.
Zoggie as per being hard on him. I was not hard on him at all. He made his own mind. I tried to tell him what I thought was right, and it did not stick. Plus this was some time ago and I can only hope he did the right thing for him in the end. As a teacher, this is the only thing I could want for him…

44

Lissa, I was about to post the exact same thing! I love working with public and private school kids who come to my museum, but the homeschooled kids are definitely a huge challenge. For the most part, they’re nice kids, but they’re usually a handful. I attribute this to a couple of different things:

  1. Many of them seem to have problems with the concept of raising your hand, standing in line, not interrupting while others are talking, etc. And I can understand why. If you’re nine and you’re not used to doing these things, of course it’s going to be hard.

  2. The kids don’t seem used to having authority figures in their lives who aren’t their parents. When I’m with a school group, I’m the grown-up in charge. The public/private school kids get this, but the homeschoolers often don’t.

  3. It can be hard for a homeschooled kid to realize that I can’t spend the whole time focusing on just him/her. I suspect the problem is particularly acute with kids who don’t have siblings.

Obviously, there are homeschooling parents who do a great job, and I’m not trying to paint all homeschoolers with the same brush. But these are the experiences I’ve had with most homeschooled children.

45

An about to become a homeschooler here. I am in the same state as Primaflora but in a slightly different situation as my kid has been in school since kindergarten. (he is in grade 6 age 10 atm). However his life has become more miserable as each year has passed until I finally changed schools last semester and when this did not work out either, I decided on home schooling.

I will point out that he is another “different” kid, currently grade accelerated and has a diagnosis of mild Asperger’s Syndrome. I have chosen to go the “official path” and am enrolling him in the state distance education system. He will do a good proportion of his work via the net, and will have an individual programme devised for him as he is identified by them as G&T. This has been made easier for me because I have the full support of his previous school, and he has the achievement testing behind him. The other option available here is an “own programme” homeschooling, where the parent devises the childs programme and must register it with the education dept. All homeschoolers in Qld are required to be registered and I am assuming they will check on them to see if they are meeting minimum standards as defined by the dept.

This is going to cause all sorts of problems for unschoolers and the like I imagine. As someone said there are so many options when choosing to homeschool, you cannot lump all kids into the same basket. I am just hoping the path I have chosen is the best one for my kid. Certainly both our stress levels have improved out of sight since the decision was made :slight_smile:

46

Our two youngest children, 11yog & 12yob, were homeschooled for three years. This is their first time in public school since kindergarden and they are both in the 6th grade at a neighborhood middle school which busses children from all over the city in.

This week is they are preparing for their midterms next week and last night I took a good long look at their study guides. They have not covered one topic in any subject this year that they have not already learned while homeschooling. Their math curriculum consists of skills our children learned in 4th and 5th grade.

This partially explains our childrens grades. The youngest is a self proclaimed perfectionist who feels the need get straight A’s in school. She has skipped a grade already and is in advanced 6th grade math and reading classes. Our second child is bored out of his mind, not doing assignments, not turning them in once he finally decides to do them, and has asked about coming home to school numerous times this year.

Neither are a discipline problem and we’ve been complemented many times since they started school on how secure, well mannered, and well adjusted they are. Not an easy feat for black kids adopted into a white family in the deep south!

We made the decision to place them in public school because in Louisiana children who maintain a certain grade point average are eligble for free in state college tuition - a financial bonus to families like ours where Mr. Adoptamom and I have decided that I will stay at home to be available for our children as they get older.

The over achiever is thriving in public school, loves the social interaction, loves her teachers, and is somehow able to maintain the strict moral standards she’s set for herself. The downside is that she says she spends entirely too much time in class without learning anything because of all the other children wasting time by goofing off and misbehaving. She misses being “done” with her school work in 3-4 hours.

Our bored child says he’s already learned all of this stuff, why does he have to prove it to anyone else, and doesn’t care for the social stuff at school because it’s stupid, and longs to come back home where he can learn about anything he’s interested in at his own pace. (What he commonly did after completing his assigned work when we homeschooled)

IMHO, homeschooling is ideal for some children, regular school ideal for others … and the rest of the children just muddle along.

47

I’m still torn on this, which is a huge concession because I started out adamantly opposed to home schooling for lots of reasons, e.g. socialization, limited access to knowledge, etc.
FWIW I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just a microcasm of “traditional” education. The intellectual environment matters but there are no guarantees in any direction. Private and homeschools (i.e.) religious) may be limited in some areas–social and intellectual–but what a student makes of it can vary widely. There are plenty of kids from public schools who feel like isolated misfits. I still remember two fellow college freshmen who commited suicide. Kids–people–are just too variable to predict. Isolation comes in many forms.
Did I ever mention that you ask great questions Phlospher?

48

I had it very easy - the worst “adversity” I faced was when I would go shopping with my mom in the early afternoon and get dirty looks and the occasion comment on how I should be in school from shop workers. Later in high school, a couple teachers complained that I was allowed to skip a grade and later become valedictorian. I think that was mostly because their own children were underachievers who were lucky to graduate at all, though.

My sister has run into more problems since we moved to Missippippi. In Florida, people who found out she was homeschooled were typically interested and polite. Here, the subject often comes up when she goes to the dentist or the doctor and is asked which school she goes to. Her answer is typically met with disapproving “tsks” or inane questions like “Don’t you have any friends?” or “How are you going to get a boyfriend?” She doesn’t let it bother her, but it bothers me that some people are that lacking in tact, especially people who are supposed to be medical professionals.

49

My name is Zeb and Mrs. Walton and I are homeschoolers.
(Crowd: Hi, Zeb!)

We have four kids, ages 12, 10, 9 and 3, and have been homeschooling from the start. They’ve never been in school.

Socialization? We still have neighbors and clubs and church. The kids make friends. They also have cousins and aunts and uncles and grandmas. And I’ve had strangers approach me in public places and tell me how well-behaved our children are.

Why do we homeschool? Quite frankly, because of my own and my wife’s own very bad experiences in schools, mine public, hers private boarding.

I think back to all the hours I spent shuttling to and from class, getting picked on by bullies, getting punished for something because I sat at the wrong table in the lunch room, or stopping in the middle of an exciting lesson because the bell rang. And I think I could have learned a lot more if I hadn’t had school get in the way. We don’t think public schools are the embodiment of evil, just that they’re an outdated learning assembly line in a flex-time, high-tech world. We have no axe to grind against educators or schools, we merely think our way is superior. :wink:

I only ever skipped school once. I skipped a lame Christmas assembly to go to the public library with my best friend to research a paper. And I remember it as one of the best school days of my life; we had FUN.

I’m basically a loner by nature. School didn’t offer me much. I wanted to do my work and be left alone, and I find my children are pretty much the same.

Our kids’ success? Two of them read well beyond the age levels. One is a fantastic artist. Two are writers. And I attribute it to them having the freedom to focus on a task all day if they want. Now that the oldest is in 7th grade, we have her on a more set schedule, but she still has the freedom of independent study. The older children help teach the younger ones.

Will my kids be shy in social situations? Probably. I always was, and I attended public school. Being introverted is not a disease.

It does feel like a bit of an experiment, and we won’t really know the outcome until the kids are grown. But we wouldn’t anyway. We just feel like we have had a huge part in our children’s formative years, and that’s satisfying.

Zeb

50

I must say that your duties as an “academic advisor” are not like any that I have ever heard of or experienced! Certainly the handling of funds in such a manner would be cause for alarm in most states.

It sounds like you did more bailing out for him than his mother did.

As a psychologist you should know that “the real world” doesn’t begin at some specific point in your life. It is all of your life. Each stage has its own demands. I can think of no reason for a sixteen year old to be in college when he doesn’t want to be and when he is so miserable. What could you have been thinking!!

It is your job to guide him in making his own decisions about what is right – not to tell him. Thank God he listened to his own instincts.

The success of home schooling depends on the child and the person doing the teaching. And public schools can vary so much. Some are just horrible. Others can provide very sound educations. All of these factors have to be considered. Some of the most extraordinary and well-rounded young people that I have met were home schooled.

51

I for one, am glad that my daughter received formal schooling as opposed to home schooling. Had I decided to keep her out of the public education system, she would not have received the education she is now receiving. It’s a specially funded education system for a very select few who are considered “gifted” and “talented” within their learning. She is completing her secondary education level at an accelerated pace (skipping ahead not only a complete schooling year, but also being moved up a couple of grades in selected subjects in which she excels.

Home schooling would have held her back, and not kept her stimulated and interested in learning at a higher level than is generally expected of her age.

The reason for that would most probably have been because I never recognised through her primary school years just how far advanced she was, so I would have taught her a “normal” curriculum. It was thanks to her teachers that nominated her to sit the Statewide 3 hour exam when she was 12. Out of 350 students who sat that exam, 32 students only, were accepted.

52

I don’t think that is very fair. There are quite large numbers of gifted and talented kids in Australia who are being homeschooled precisely for the reasons you give for not doing so. If you are in a state that has a Selective School system, and your kid is fortunate enough to do well on the entrance test on the day, and that system suits the child, then you are fine. But there are many more who are not in that situation and homeschooling is a very viable option for them. As I said my son is accelerated and recognised as G&T and Distance Ed is more than willing to offer an individual programme tailored to his academic needs.

53

OK, ** auliya **, point taken. I do realise that there that there are potential merits/reasons for either home-schooling or public schooling, also dependent upon what style of education is readily available to that child. Each child should be considered on their own individual merits and what suits them. I sincerely hope your son enjoys his education and continues to do well. Good luck!

54

Zeb, your children sound wonderful. You’re to be congratulated for a fine job.

My only concern is how they’ll react in the “real world” when confronted by dull, rote tasks, or being forced to work on projects they don’t prefer.

Like it or not, one of the original purposes of school was to prepare children for lives of factory conformity. Those who pushed for a mandatory public school system believed that children needed that discipline in order to be productive adults. In a sense, children’s spirits needed to be “broken” in order to prepare them for the working world of dull, repetative tasks.

Your children sound like very bright and creative people. How will they react to college, when they must sit and listen to a professor drone on and on about tarriffs? When they’re forced to focus on what the class is focussing on, not what interests them, will they have trouble? What about at work, when, perhaps, they’re stuck doing data entry with no end in sight?

55

We also used to sell people into slavery because they looked different and told our children who they would marry so that we could profit monetarily by combining estates.

Maybe it is time to change the way our children are educated to meet the new challenges they will face in 2003+. Certainly there are not a lot of factory jobs left in America at least. And certainly we no longer have to ‘break’ them at 5 or 6 years old! Not that I believe we should ‘break’ them at all.

Maybe Zeb’s kids will do fine in college. Surely at 19 anyone would have a greater capacity to sit still and listen to less than engaging lectures than they did at 7. Or maybe his kids won’t go to college at all. Maybe one will become a published author at 22 and another will play for a major symphony or start a highly successful band. Maybe one will become a talented artist showing his work in galleries around the world. Why deny them the chance to see where their talents take them?

And everyone touts college as a must in the world. Certainly it is wonderful for some people. My husband hated college because none of the majors available when we were 19 taught the curriculum he was searching for. He graduated and works in the field he wanted to but none of what he took classes for apply to what he does every day nor was any of it relevant when it came time to interview for any of the jobs he wanted.

56

Zoe - my school is not very big, I believe I have stated that in the past. My responsibilities as an advisor may be different that those of an advisor at a large university. I did not handle his funds personally, I facilitated his getting them back. He did the majority of his paper work on his own. Regardless of how you feel about me Zoe, my interests always circle those of the students.

57

This just reinforces my conviction that school is mostly about teaching you how to continue going to school.

58

We’re currently homeschooling our daughter. She had a horrible experience in 4th grade (and, from reading previous posts, it seems to be a difficult year for lots of girls). I won’t go into all the wonderful details, but when her teacher called me AT WORK in March to yell at me and accuse me of being an incompetent parent who was ignoring my responsibilities, I became annoyed. I apologized to my boss (it was the 7th time that year I had to leave for a meeting at the school…I have the world’s best boss), went to the school, and removed my daughter.
Samantha has always loved school. She would lie about NOT being sick when she was, just so she could go. She loved to learn, and was excited about sharing whatever took her interest at school. I’d hear something new from her every day. In 4th grade, that all went away. She became jumpy, she developed a nervous stomach, she would BEG me not to make her go. That kind of turnaround was unbelieveable.
She’s enjoying learning again. And, as it turns out, she’s learning ahead of her grade…the same things her brother is learning in history and science. We teach her all year long, and there are projects and field trips. A great one coming up, to NASA AMES space center.
She’s always got along well with other kids. She’s my social butterfly. Still talks to, visits, im’s all her friends from school, and has new friends from ballet and soccer. I’m not too worried about her being able to adjust when we decide to put her back in school, in Jr. High.
My biggest concern is if she’ll be able to go from the flexible schedule we have now, and return to a structured classroom.

59

Yay for Real Genius!

60

Stigma against whom from where? Christian homeschoolers have some of the strongest organization in the country. They are a microsociety all to themselves. Stigma from those outside? Perhaps. But from within, where most of their time is spent? No way.

Hopefully they’re going to rebel against it! The last thing we need in this world are more sheeple who happily slog through boring jobs, awful fits for themselves and their employer, dishing up the T-190 report on a daily basis for no good reason at all. Hopefully they’ll become innovators, entrepreneurs, inventors, do something more meaningful with their than rote tasks and stupid projects.

We don’t need more people whose spirits are broken by assembly line schools. We don’t need more people who are only fit for rote tasks and projects that serve only to enrich others. That’s the last thing we need!