It’s true that quite a few homeschoolers like a better-late-than-early approach. Montessori methods are not uncommon.
OTOH, it’s also the case that there’s a little confirmation bias with anecdotes from teachers about homeschooled kids. Homeschooled kids who end up in public school are often there because the parents felt they weren’t succeeding with the homeschooling and decided to go for a different approach.
I have just as many anecdotes about parents who finally got tired of educational neglect and pulled their 8yo’s out of school in order to teach them to read. My neighbor pulled her daughter–who has slight dyslexia–out after second grade, and within 6 months took her from unable to read to grade level proficiency. The girl didn’t go back until high school, and is now doing very well indeed.
Likewise, my friend J. got tired of 3 successive teachers putting her meek and quiet daughter next to the rowdiest boys in class to keep them under control. This worked great for the teachers, but not so well for the girl, who was very stressed and couldn’t concentrate. A year of homeschooling got her up to grade level in everything, where before she was learning nothing at all. Now she’s in the GATE program, with a teacher who understands her needs, and is much happier.
People are very likely to blame homeschooling for things that also exist in public schools–there’s a lot of confirmation bias there. If you see a homeschooled kid and a publicly schooled kid, both of whom are slightly odd, does the second kid’s education get the blame? But everybody knows that homeschooled kids are weird, as if there aren’t plenty of weird kids in every school in the world.
So, why did you cite that paper? If you dismiss the conclusion of the authors, and you call them “a couple of researche[r]s that would love to get grants to study homeschooling” what were you hoping that cite would add to the discussion? Shodan had linked to the original cites, which include the source material on their methodology and assumptions. If those studies are suspect, then why not address them directly instead of bringing this literature review, which you now seem to be dismissing, into the conversation?
The default is a nasty, brutish, and short life. Beyond that there isn’t a default. Individuals, and to a lesser extent societies, create their own learning environments and every singe learner’s experience, and needs, are different. Education is far too complex to reasonably pigeonhole into one form. Modern public education, descended from the Prussian educational system, wasn’t even the norm in the US until the last century.
Great, they can take those many resources, spend thousands of hours in a classroom, and then end up at the bottom of the pile among their other developed nation peers. That’s acceptable to some people, but there are others who think maybe the default is at fault and something new should be tried. Given the failures of public education in the US, I believe it would be folly to erect huge barriers to educational innovation.
The US legal system requires laws to show a rational basis. If you want to favor public school over home school, you have to show that favoritism is based on a rational analysis. According to the review of educational research you yourself cited, homeschooling seems to be a net benefit to society. There hasn’t been a single citation of homeschooling having a detrimental effect, only vague comments about what may be happening that the research hasn’t been able to control for. Quantify the dangers poor homeschools have inflicted on society and we’ll rationally analyze them along with the data which shows benefits for society, and then we’ll have what we need to make an informed opinion.
Of course. We don’t know what we don’t know is an underlying axiom of pretty much every conversation. What I’m saying is that what we don’t know shouldn’t outweigh what we do know. That way lies madness. There might be a giant space goat about to eat our entire galaxy, so let’s throw out all of math, physics, and everything we think we know and spend the remainder of our days in drunken debauchery.
Well, it was worth a shot.
In any case, we can only judge on what we have. What we have seems to show a net positive. If you believe there is a large unknown reservoir of homeschoolers who are raising sociopaths who will wreak havoc on society, well, find them and let’s re-evaluate the situation. As of now I agree with the authors of the paper AlienVessels cited. The data we have, which is incomplete, seems to show homeschooling as a net benefit to society. So I’m fine with going ahead with it and even expanding it, along with more, careful, privacy-respecting, research.
The OP asks what’s wrong with home schooling, and we’ve had a few posts that allude to the magical abilities imparted on teachers during their training. While I certainly hope that our system for educating educators is not a complete waste, I have to ask what evidence we have that this training has a significant impact on teaching ability, especially when so many issues that are unique to schools are removed. There are a few things to keep in mind, some of which have already been pointed out.
[ol]
[li]Teachers at private schools are not required to have education degrees or state certification, yet their students do fine. True, private schools don’t have to teach the kids who are most challenging to teach, but neither do homeschooling families.[/li][li]University professors and 1st-year grad student TAs have not been trained as educators, yet their students still seem to learn.[/li][li]I’m not sure how to put this politely, but on average, education majors are not known for their academic prowess when compared to other college students. While true that raw smarts do not allow one to immediately pick up a new skill, they help with learning it on the fly.[/li][li]Students taught by inexperienced and minimally trained teachers through programs like Teach for America do just as well, if not better, than those taught by regular teachers.[/li][li]While a highly-experienced teacher *might *be the best teacher, not all public-school teachers have been on the job very long. Over 40% of teachers have nine or fewer years of experience.[/li][/ol]
*Note that even if the average college graduate is smarter than the average teacher, many homeschooling parents never went to college. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid, it just means we’re dealing with a different pool.
YMMV, but it has been my experience that private schools still tend to hire degreed and certified teachers whether there is a legal requirement or not.
I mostly agree with your point of view, but I don’t agree with this point. I’m sure you had your share of professors who were incredibly bad teachers and whose students didn’t learn anything; I sure did. Also, the couple of times I experienced a grad student trying to teach a class of grade schoolers (back when I was a summer program TA for geek math), it was… not pretty, unless the grad student had had previous experience teaching grade schoolers, in which case he was often excellent.
That being said, one-on-one is totally different, as you’ve said before in this thread. The one (multiperson) class I taught, it took me at least a year to figure out how to reach the entire class, probably more. When dealing with one student, I can adapt every time to that student’s learning skills specifically, and even over the course of a single session try several different methods if one isn’t working.
Apparently, it is not such an axiom. Because people make generalizations such as “homeschooling has a positive effect on society” when we don’t know that. Or " homeschoolers outperform those who attend traditional schools" when we don’t know that either. We could say that "The study shows that homeschoolers who choose to take the _____ exam outperform those attending traditional schools who who choose to ( or are required to ) take the exam " and be completely accurate. But the results never get reported that way. Until and unless there is a way to compare the universe of homeschoolers to the universe of those who attend traditional schools on at least a district-wide basis , we will not be able to make such comparisons. That is unlikely to happen - it would require that both groups be required to undergo the same assessments. Not that certain homeschooling parents decide to have their children undergo the assessments, while others avoid it for whatever reason they have. And of course, if the assessments are required, those who avoid them are not complying with the requirements of homeschooling. Which means we could draw conclusions about homeschoolers who are in compliance with the regulations while still knowing nothing about those who claim to be homeschooling who are not in compliance.
But I think you are mistaking my issues with the generalizations being drawn without a basis for a disagreement with the idea of homeschooling. I don’t have a problem with the idea of homeschooling and I don’t think the lack of research is a reason to prohibit it. I sometimes wonder why certain homeschoolers seem very invested in drawing generalizations from this research. I mean, I made decisions for my kids based on what I thought was best for my particular kids. There could have been multiple studies including every single child in the United States ( even those locked in a closet 10 hours a day ) saying that homeschoolers do better both academically and socially - and I still wouldn’t have homeschooled my kids. Because it wouldn’t have been the best choice for my kids. I assume you would have homeschooled yours no matter what the research said because it was the best choice for** them**.
I think this really is the critical point. Parents should be allowed to decide what the best choice is for their children, and then make that choice accordingly. I don’t think homeschooling will be correct for my son who is only one year old, so I plan to send him to school at the appropriate age. My sister did home school her daughter, now 16 years old, and it seems to have worked out well for them.
Because both of the previous cites were from suspect sources and a literature review is going to spread a wider net. I’m willing to consider the fact that I’m wrong and do a bit of leg work to get better data, if available.
The conclusion of the review was that the research was inadequate. Until it gets replicated in a reasonably contemporary way, all that research represents is a rudimentary toe in the water.
Again, you confuse the opinion of the authors with what their review of the literature shows.
If you read the full article, you’ll see the warnings of the authors about what is being measured and why that might be misleading. A ton of the results could simply be attributed to more parental involvement and higher parental expectations applied on a daily basis.
What we have pretty much shows that the children of involved parents perform better in a variety of ways.
Given the flaws in the research and that unsurprising result, I say allow people that can demonstrate the resources to homeschool and start reasonably rigorous investigation into the cost/benefit of ALL cases to society.
I’m sorry, I can’t quite understand what this sentence means. Do you mean that there should be test-case homeschoolers who would document everything they do?
I’m taking the girls on an all-day history re-enactment (which will have large groups of children in a non-public school setting) so I won’t be here to see the answer for quite a while.
The below quote from your post completely invalidates ‘positive’ studies on homeschooling as a comparison with mandatory testing from the much larger pool of public schools. A bigger concern is that parents are doing the testing. Also, studies done by proponents of homeschooling is questionable in my opinion.
More from wikipedia:
Considering how ignorant our populace is in the math and sciences, there is no way that home schooling is superior to schooling from professionals unless the home schoolers are highly educated themselves. So people saying that they know home schoolers who are engineers are probably right that those kids are getting a better education than a public school (as long as they have the time). However, if it is true that the trend in the US is that people are homeschooling for fundamentalist religious reasons, then this is just breeding more ignorance. It’s bad enough that polls are showing more ignorance in science and increases in woo. I attribute this to religious fundamentalists getting onto school boards and into our media. Increases in homeschooling by fundamentalists is a disturbing trend.
edited to add: The collaborative homeschooling systems are probably great if the goal is to provide for superior education and some of the homeschoolers in the system have training in math and/or sciences.
Thanks for the post. Again, this negates any assertions that there are proper studies out there that can make a generalized claim that homeschooling is better than other schools.
One would think there would be useful data from states (or even other countries) that require testing. But we don’t really need to make the claim that homeschooling is better than real school. The lack of evidence that it’s detrimental is enough to answer the OP.
What’s wrong with Home Schooling? Nothing, as far as we know.
Personally, I think the burden of proof is weighted towards the homeschoolers to show that their kids are getting a proper education in high school math and science if they are not trained in these (or related fields).
I’ll start with the preface that the majority of Americans are not competent to teach their kids high school math and science. I don’t think this is an unreasonable assumption. If it’s true that some states do not even require homeschoolers to report their kids’ progress, I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that many kids in those states are not even being exposed to proper math and science principles. Furthermore, if many of these kids are from fundamentalist families, they are being actively being misinformed which is even worse than general ignorance.
I’ll add that most states require their high school math and science teachers to have a certain level of training in these fields. Therefore, even if some are not the greatest teachers, at least they had some training. Also, they will have some oversight. It’s alarming to see with a quick google search that some states like Texas have little or no regulations on homeschooling.
My 2 cents… I’m not sure I’ll be able to homeschool my children, but if circumstances favor it then I will do it up to 8th grade level or so.
Reasons:
Socialization 1: Children are selfish assholes until they are socialized. Therefore, we should learn socialization AS children, not necessarily FROM children. Public schools are not a place to learn socialization, at least up until high school level.
Socialization 2: Exposure to different people. OK, it’s good for kids to meet people from all walks. I can dig that. But some kids, especially at the lower income levels, bring exposure to pathological and possibly even criminal behaviors (bullying, drugs, sexual abuse, etc). I’ll take them to a soup kitchen to see what deprivation looks like. There’s no need to expose them to its consequences day in and day out.
Socialization 3: Exposure to differing points of view. I could care less about my children picking up points of view from other children, because other children are unqualified to have viewpoints on anything. Teachers MAY be qualified, but because they’re in positions of authority, I don’t want them peddling their points of view either. The history textbooks are worst of all, as anyone knows who ever read “Lies My Teacher Told Me.” Public school is not the place to go for points of view.
Cultural awareness: I could care less if my kids ever know anything about pop culture. Most of it is ephemeral garbage of no long-term significance. All they need to know is that in 10 years, the phrase “Justin Bieber” will be the punchline of a joke, and they should smirk appropriately when they hear it.
Finally, I do admire teachers, but to me, my child is my child. To them, my child is their job, and we all have a bias toward making our own jobs easier.
This would be alarming if there were evidence that this were producing problems (at a rate higher than the alternative). IOW, regulation should be applied where & when needed (and shown to be effective) - not because it’s a good thing of itself.
My experience with home education - - seven years, four of my own children, two states, interactions with lots of families of all races, creeds, religions - - is that the parents know their limitations. They accomodate that through the purchase and implementation of accredited home study curricula that guide the student through subjects the parents find difficult.
A lot of y’all who are suspicious of home education and who are strong advocates of greater state regulation appear to me to be working under the assumption that there exists a sizable percentage of home educators who don’t give a flip if their kids learn anything. Again, in my experience, that’s not the case. It takes a great deal of time, energy, and commitment to educate your children in your home. Those who go to the trouble of doing so are doing what they think is in the best interests of their children.
That does not mean that there’s not some small percentage out there who are purposfully sheltering their children, but, even if strict regulation was economically viable, I don’t think that states should be diverting funds away from already underfunded public schools to find those people. Even if their kids were forced into public or private schools, if parents are intent on ignorance state-mandated education won’t overcome that kind of ideology.
And again I’m going to ask you for citations to specific passages because I transcribed virtually the entire summary and conclusion of the review and I respectfully disagree with your characterizations.
Why the higher burden of proof on the homeschools than on public schools? Public schools are falling apart.
Public schools aren’t providing a proper education in pretty much anything in many of the largest cities. So why hold homeschools to a standard the public schools, with professional teachers, administrators, and far more funds can’t reach? Using the assumptions in this thread, that more teachers and more opportunities for socialization create better results, the the large schools in the large cities should be the best. But it seems the smaller cities and towns, where the teachers often have to double up on subjects which they may not have degrees in themselves, are doing better.
I would also like to disagree with those in this thread who believe what the studies don’t show, whatever that is, is more important than what they do show. The perfect is often the enemy of the good enough and to leave American education to continue falling apart while simultaneously restricting parents ability to take their children’s futures into their own hands is a recipe for disaster. The bar for homeschools seems to be that they be better than some idealized version of public school, which clearly doesn’t exist. Being better than the reality of many public school is pathetically easy, much to our society’s shame.
But what do you want to do about this? I believe in civil liberties, so I believe the government should not interfere in personal matters like this unless it can be definitely shown that there is a problem. Nobody can show that there is problem, so the government should butt out.
How can you get evidence of a problem in a place like Texas does not require any testing or oversight?
Right now, homeschooling is rare enough that you probably wouldn’t see a problem in the general population. However, problems could be observed if the trend continues.
We already lag behind other countries in math and sciences and the explanation for this is that many of our middle school teachers don’t have degrees or at least minors in these subjects. High school teachers usually do but the kids are already behind at that point. If homeschooling trends continue, this will get even worse and it’s already bad. Looking at polls regarding general science, it seems that Americans are not only lagging behind other countries, we are regressing from our previous levels.
So I’m going to continue to be alarmed unless it’s shown that homeschooling trends are not increasing or that homeschooling is increasing but only for grades K-6.
And again, the majority of Americans don’t do very well at math and science even at the level of middle school. A home study guide will not overcome the lack of abilities in many of these parents.
The problem is (and studies show this) that people simply don’t know the level of their ignorance. Like the old saying, “the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.”
So no matter how dedicated a parent is, there is a point in which they do not have the knowledge or the talent to give their child a proper education in the hard subjects. At that point, the benefits of homeschooling, such as personal attention, will be lost.
I tried googling for some studies and it’s quite strange to find page after page of stuff from home school proponents only. I think the problem is, as someone already mentioned, it’s very hard to do proper studies because there is no oversight in some states. No oversight, no way to collect data.