# To Those who Make Facebook Posts Extolling Home Schooling **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [August 1, 2025, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607 "2025-08-01T23:29:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2025, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/1 "2025-08-01T23:29:07Z")
Whenever I scroll through Facebook, I always come across these video posts promoting how great home schooling is. They always show a couple of kids wading in creeks or chasing butterflies or running around gardens. Standard home movie stuff. The text on these posts goes on about how home schooled kids are doing just fine in everything, and are getting the most out of their childhood away from all the regimentation of public schooling. I’m not going to criticize home schooling in itself. I think I could’ve benefitted from home schooling because I certainly considered public school hell on earth, and I’m not referring to that in a religious sense. I was absolutely miserable there with the relentless bullying and sexual harassment. I think I would’ve suffered far less trauma growing up as a home schooled child. However, my parents would’ve had to have hired a private tutor because they would’ve been disastrous as teachers. My family could never have afforded that, so public school it was. But really, if you’re going to make videos about how home schooling is the answer to educational problems, might I suggest you film children actually sitting down and studying. Show them reading, writing, and doing math problems. Because all the videos of kids running around playing and petting animals and whatnot just reaffirms the stereotype that home schooled kids are just fooling around all day and not learning anything. That’s the impression I get watching this stuff. I get that you want your videos to be cute and appealing, but you aren’t doing the home schooling cause any favors. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2025, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/2 "2025-08-01T23:39:40Z")
My parents could have done it back in the 60’s. It would be magnitudes easier today with on-line programs designed for teaching. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/3 "2025-08-02T00:34:33Z")
The people I’ve known _personally_ who were home schooled/home schooled their kids participated in consortia with some shared parental instruction, some institutional-but-not-schools groups, volunteers, online learning, and for the older kids, maybe a partial day at a high school, voc tech, or community college. None of the people I’ve known were taught solely by their parent(s). None of the curricula were a front for religiously-based programming that only superficially met state educational benchmarks. Those frolicking kids might well also be looking at water under a microscope, learning wilderness survival skills, playing with other kids to build community and socialize everybody, or identifying cloud types, for example. I imagine that the frolic photos are probably intended to signify freedom from being stuck at a desk or staring at a screen all day. As a high school and higher ed instructor and therapist, I never had a home school kid wish for anything to have been different except, for some, more acclimation experiences when they were going into high school or college. ETA: Some wished they’d had a prom. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/4 "2025-08-02T00:54:28Z")
There’s a subset of homeschoolers who feel the need to not only sell the process, but to sell the superiority of the process. They’re annoying as fuck, in the same way other big advocates who are invested in a thing can be (Tesla, FIRE, whatever). The reality is that like any big decision, it’s good for some, not good for others. Source: we homeschooled three kids from end to end, two well past graduation and employed, one in her last year of college. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/5 "2025-08-02T12:03:58Z")
One of my daughter’s friends “homeschools” her kids. The eldest was 8 or 9 before she could read because mom let the child set her own pace. Maybe the kids will do OK - they’re still under high school age. On the other hand, my husband has a cousin who homeschooled all 3 daughters and they all did extremely well in college and subsequent careers. I’m pretty sure she adhered to a curriculum and didn’t let her girls alter it. I couldn’t have done it with my daughter, even if I hadn’t had to work. That whole self-discipline thing would have gotten in the way. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/6 "2025-08-02T18:09:35Z")
I have never known any home-schooling families. Though the impression I get is that it is most common among religious sects who want to avoid their children from being exposed to conflicting views? There have been some rather similar experiments in private schools, such as Summerhill: > **[Summerhill School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School)** > > Summerhill School is an independent (i.e. fee-charging) day and boarding school in Leiston, Suffolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around. It is run as a democratic community and is considered a democratic school; the running of the school is conducted in the school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings... I don’t know what to make of it. It does seem that some skills are best learned young. Languages for example. Other skills too and ‘drill’ is a way to do that. For example, I wish I’d had formal piano lessons when I was a kid. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/7 "2025-08-02T18:54:54Z")
My middle Daughter home schooled her boys when they first moved here. 2 years. The thing is they did have lots of down time to screw around because with an individual teacher the work was quickly got through. They both went into public school well ahead of their classmates. They do very well there now. It was purely decided to homeschool awhile, because of logistics. The public school is a long ride from home. No bus comes all the way out here. Funny, after she got a bunch of educational material from some company she immediately started getting religious spamming. She spent weeks deleting them. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/8 "2025-08-02T21:34:20Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > I have never known any home-schooling families. Though the impression I get is that it is most common among religious sects who want to avoid their children from being exposed to conflicting views? That’s the stereotype but there are plenty of counter examples. My niece was homeschooled and her parents (my sister and brother-in-law) are extremely liberal atheists. She turned out great, by the way. She’s an adult now with a Ph.D. in math, she’s married and she recently had a baby boy. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/9 "2025-08-02T22:01:02Z")
Some parents homeschool for good reasons, some do it with good intentions but just aren’t very good at it, and some homeschool for bad reasons, or very bad reasons. Unfortunately, with the way the system is set up now, it’s almost impossible to tell which are which, until too late. There needs to be a lot more oversight of homeschooling. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2025, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-those-who-make-facebook-posts-extolling-home-schooling/1021607/10 "2025-08-02T22:25:40Z")
Unfortunately, there aren’t many serious efforts to _increase_ oversight. It usually goes the other way.