Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling?
VorpalRodent writes: I went to a private school for about 6 years, then completed my education at the local public school, going on to get a couple undergraduate degrees and a postgraduate degree. My wife dropped out of high school and got her equivalency many years later. Now, she wants to homeschool our son.
There is a significant body of literature which indicates that homeschoolers outperform their traditionally schooled counterparts academically, regardless of the level of education of the parent, and she certainly cares more now that she's older. I don't like anecdotes, but I certainly haven't seen the research borne out in any of the people that I know who were homeschooled. More importantly, it seems like the only reason my wife wants to homeschool is because she doesn't want to let go.
Our son would be going into Kindergarten this coming year. I'm interested in some rational discussion on this, since it seems like the only viewpoints I've ever seen on the matter are "Better academics" vs. "Social interaction," both of which are gross oversimplifications. It doesn't help that I can't find any statistical information on post-schooling outcomes.
There is a significant body of literature which indicates that homeschoolers outperform their traditionally schooled counterparts academically, regardless of the level of education of the parent, and she certainly cares more now that she's older. I don't like anecdotes, but I certainly haven't seen the research borne out in any of the people that I know who were homeschooled. More importantly, it seems like the only reason my wife wants to homeschool is because she doesn't want to let go.
Our son would be going into Kindergarten this coming year. I'm interested in some rational discussion on this, since it seems like the only viewpoints I've ever seen on the matter are "Better academics" vs. "Social interaction," both of which are gross oversimplifications. It doesn't help that I can't find any statistical information on post-schooling outcomes.
Coddling, though still an individual option, is generally better for the parents than the children.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
We can't really answer the pros and cons without knowing what we're comparing. Do you live in the ghetto with a 95% black public school system, or the nicest rich white neighborhood in the US? The best public schools will beat homeschooling, the worst are a nightmare to be avoided at any cost.
I have two step-children who fled their abusive father to come and live with me. Both of them were home-schooled for a time (about 12 months each). We learned a lot of powerful lessons from the first one, but even then, we faced huge challenges with the second one. /. in the last 6 months.
Some significant points:
1. Mum and/or Dad are not teachers. We're not qualified to be, and re-assurances from the homeschooling organisation are vacuous. Don't kid yourself about this. Being a teacher is a career choice, and there are very specific skillsets involved.
2. Mum and/or Dad don't want a teacher-student relationship with their child. You can't just throw a switch at 3pm and turn back into a parent. The child is not old/mature enough to process that changeover.
3. The child will lose out on a huge amount of 'non-curriculum learning'. Things like 'how to avoid the schoolyard bully', 'how to read a schedule and navigate to classrooms', 'how to meet project deadlines without parental intervention', 'how to negotiate the fickle friendships that happen in life', 'observe adult role models outside the family'. There are dozens of things like this.
4. There is research to support the position that children perform better when parents are 'hands off'. I can't remember the link, but one interesting one was posted to
5. Some children need real parental nurturing to get over a major life crisis. Most children do not. If your child needs that kind of care, be very careful of breaking your relationship with them by spending 6 hours every day with them.
In both cases, after 12 months, the children returned to regular schooling to a) escape mum and/or dad; and b) get a life/friends. The second one needed a little more encouragement than the first.
Good luck with it! Its been a hard road, and its only two-three years after they returned to regular school that their behaviours are starting to normalise.
There's a huge number of environment and personal factors that go into determining how successful homeschooling will be. The biggest two are the motivation and commitment of the parents and children, and available resources. In a lot of ways, homeschooling will have the same potential pitfalls as being self-employed while working from home do. Lots of potential distractions, with the natural human tendency to put things off for another day (and another, and another). Being self-motivated helps control that.
Resources are also important because if you are going to homeschool, you really want to play up on the opportunities homeschooling provides that traditional schools can't; stuff like more frequent field trips and "worldly" engagements. Many can be combined with vacation type stuff, involving travel to foreign countries and whatnot. It's not cheap, however, and you have to have solid finances to make it work.
You also want to invest in some books and curriculum aimed at the equivalent grade level of your child. You don't have to follow it all perfectly, but there's a surprising amount of stuff that people don't think about when it comes to early-child education. Having access to those resources will help make sure you aren't forgetting some major things.
Also, she should see if she can handle the teaching alongside the caregiving. Have her teach them a specific number of hours a day to get a taste of what it's really like. Some people just can't teach, others lose patience when it doesn't go as they thought it would, and when home-schooling, you don't get to say "school's out - I'm going home, having a few drinks, and not thinking about this until Monday."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You would actually ask advice involving your offspring's future on Slashdot?
You only notice the awkward ones. Most are no less social than standard for intelligent, literate people; football isn't the center of their life. As far as socialization, that same argument works well for prison.
decades of teaching experience and tested/proven technique
You mean decades of educational decline due to the overburdening of the staff by an out of touch government??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Slashdot is a rough place to post this. Check out reddit.com/r/homeschooling for a more knowledgeable community, but there are a TON of resources to help you figure this out if it is something you are interested in.
I don't know of anyone doing statistical work on homeschoolers. It would be helpful, but the fact is that homeschoolers tend to integrate very well in society. It's not as if there is a magical 3 percent that stand out all the time for you to notice.
I only know of anecdotal material. I am one of those. I was homeschooled K-12 and am now in medical school (as a nontraditional student, after having worked as a programmer for 10 years). My homeschooling experience was actually very difficult, but it did prepare me for working hard in the world.
I do want to address the point of socialization, however. By and large, homeschoolers are VASTLY better socialized than public schooled children. The reason for this is simple. Unlike public school, where children largely interact with teachers and same-aged peers, homeschooled children interact with a great swath of society from a young age. (There are occasional shut-in familes, but they are rare and you obviously would not be one of them.) Homeschooling is absolutely not a question of academics vs. socialization. Homeschoolers get both.
However, there is a different balance to strike. Your time. Homeschooling is a very serious commitment, particularly in time. This is the part that will get you.
As for your wife letting go, both boys and girls grow up more emotionally mature and resilient if they remain close to their parents until puberty. This translates to better socialization, better mental health, and better emotional capacities through life. So it might not be a bad thing.
I had an awful time at school and am terrified about what my kids school life may be like. But that said this year my eldest goes off to pre-school.
Home schooling sits outside of the norm, so our attitude was that we would keep it as an option for use IF our child struggled or had an experience similar to mine. To homeschool you have to be prepared to take on a burden that is significant. Educating someone is hard and you need to be across a wide selection of material, much of which you haven't touched on or used since you finished school.
Our personal choice was that we would try the school system first. If that didn't work, and if homeschooling addressed some of the reasons why, we would look at it then.
For what it's worth, my marriage was the same situation as yours(and my now ex-wife was just like yours). Not seeing eye to eye on simple things like this caused too many fights. I want my child to have up to date vaccines and be in public school, and I need my wife to have a decent job because of her lifestyle demands, etc.
After a long debate, we made the choice to move into a good school district and send our kid to school. This was a long fight, as she had family in rural Oregon who homeschool all of their kids, and based on the stories of the kids(dumb as bricks, pregnant by 16, etc), I did not want to send my kid down the same road. She also had separation anxiety(it was bad enough that she did not spend a day apart from him until he was 10[sleepovers] or travel without him until he was 13).
I went to private school for elementary and public school for the rest, and I was very satisfied with my experience, and I've made friends I otherwise would not have made. My time in private school prepared me academically and I was able to do extremely well in public school(entered a year ahead in some subjects), which was beneficial because doing well in public school in California gets you a great deal in state aid to state schools as well as guaranteed enrollment in state schools.
I don't think there is a replacement for the social education school brings(and public school was much more educational in that regard than private school), but I don't think that that is the only reason why. I also think that school provides the opportunities to advance just as much as if you were a real teacher homeschooling your kids.
I made management after a couple of years and was afforded more schedule-leeway... bam, right into the public system they went.
Remember, the most difficult thing in the World to do is be hard on your own kids. It's easy with other peoples kids, the little rat bastards, but do your own kids a favor. A bit of strife is quite the character builder.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Homeschooled children have one of the most important factors contributing to a student's academic success: parents who are highly interested in their child getting a good education. As for homeschooling itself, it is a mixed bag. Some parents make good teachers, some don't. Some public schools are especially good, others especially bad. Some children have certain traits that would make them a bad fit with public school, or would benefit from a faster pace. Homeschooled children run the risk of being socially stunted (especially so for those who would most appreciate not having to deal with people). You said you wanted statistics; I think a relevant one is that colleges seem to prefer homeschooled children over public schooled (but see first sentence).
There are materials available to help with homeschooling. These are probably a good idea unless you really really know what you're doing (which you don't). Even if you don't strictly follow them they can act as guidelines for pace/quantity/topics. You mentioned that your wife, a high school dropout, would be the teacher. Are you sure she has the perseverance to homeschool your children? (Amount of perseverance required of her depends on the amount of perseverance of your children.) You should also see if there are any local homeschoolers and see if you can join forces, or at least talk to someone with personal experience.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You have to remember that at some point your kids are going to leave home (you hope) and have to make decisions for themselves about their own education at university
That is *exactly* the most compelling thing about homeschooling. You usually have very little choice about what classes teach, about how far you can customize what you want to learn.
Homeschooling is WAY more like college in that you get to pursue what interest you. Parents should also make sure a foundation is being learned but you can explore topics far deeper than you ever can in public school - exactly the kind of preparation that helps you when you leave home, because you are learning to make educational choices earlier, and learning to study on your own earlier as well. It leads to you feeling a lot better prepared when you get to college than most of the people there...
I know, because I was homeschooled before I went to college.
A further thing to consider is whether the academics really are better for home schooled kids.
Pretty much any external test says yes, in fact it is. You really think that government approved curriculum thought by teachers that cannot be fired is going to be better than a carefully selected set of things thought by people that really care about you?
Don't forget that homeschoolers also have the option sometimes to take classes at the local school anyway, or community college classes for advanced topics well before they go to "real" college.
I'm sure that you can cram facts into their heads
If you are doing that you may as well not homeschool, that's not at all what it's like for any homeschooler I've ever known.
this does not turn out well at university when they are required to understand and apply knowledge rather than just regurgitate it
Because everyone knows all the prepping for standardized tests public school kids have to take has nothing at all to do with regurgitation! Oh wait. In fact that's the whole point of the public school system, is prepared regurgitation when the bell is rung.
Lastly I'd also question whether your wife is really capable of home schooling at all.
Real teaching is about helping kids when they are stuck, but mostly letting them learn. Real teaching is not learning how to force kids to regurgitate facts, which is what public school teachers are by and large trained to do. Real teaching is also about drawing up a good curriculum, but there are MANY resources to help homeschooling parents do just that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All of the critics of home school seem to think that the professional teachers are some how escalated above the common lowly parent. The truth is it is almost impossible to fire a terrible teacher. One year with one of these yucky teachers can really f**k up a student and make them detest school. The school system says the fix for this is really strong stimulant drugs for the kids. Stupid parents not wanting to force controlled substances on their children can't be expected to provide an education for them. Mr. Bureaucrat? Can I please have permission to teach my child?
it is very wrong to say there's any risk of social stunting for homeschoolers. In fact the risk is far less for homeschoolers - because they spend the majority of the day interacting with other adults, learning how to behave like an adult.
I very strongly disagree with this statement. Adolescents should learn how to interact with adults, sure - but far more important to their social development is interacting with non-adults.
How do you deal with your first crush, your first boy/girl friend? How do you deal with your first bully? Who is your best friend, or your worst enemy? What's your first group of friends? All these need to be peers, and there is no substitute for having these experiences (for better or worse) younger rather than older. So many things about adolescence are the greatest thing ever in your life, and so many things about adolescence break your heart in a way you never thought possible. But experiencing these things at the same age that your peers do - in a way that you can only experience by being immersed with your peers - is the only way to be on an equal footing emotionally, socially and romantically with everyone else you will be dealing with in your young adult life.
I have no doubt that homeschooling can provide a better academic experience. I absolutely do not believe that it can provide the tremendous opportunity to do stupid things, make an ass of yourself in front of everyone, have your heart broken, be an asshole, and find yourself - for better or worse - that swimming in the great pool of co-educational age-equivalent fellow idiots called attending public school can. College is where I learned how to be a useful adult, but public high school was where I learned what not to do, which was in its own way just as important.
Also, I was a horny teenage boy and there were horny teenage girls there. Absurdly painful, awkward and embarrassing - but worth it all in the long run. And the best way I can think of for becoming a (more or less) well adjusted adult.
Your mileage, of course, may vary.
"95% of all Slashdot
I very strongly disagree with this statement. Adolescents should learn how to interact with adults, sure - but far more important to their social development is interacting with non-adults.
But the thing is you get a LOT of that anyway when homeschooling, as you spend time with friends when out of school. Or with other homeschoolers.
You get much more interaction with a wider range of ages, which is very useful.
How do you deal with your first crush, your first boy/girl friend? Who is your best friend, or your worst enemy?
A little confused here since that works exactly like it does for public school kids.
You just have more ability to avoid "enemies". Just like in real life. Unlike being in prison you get to choose who you interact with mostly. You learn you have real choice, something you can't really learn at school because in fact you don't have real choice about who is around you mostly.
I absolutely do not believe that it can provide the tremendous opportunity to do stupid things
Well lets see. While I was homeschooling, I used to do things like pretend to rally drive in a Honda civic going around 100MPH on gravel roads. And make my own fireworks.
You are SO SO WRONG on that point. Kids have just as much freedom to do stupid things. More really because you can justify raw materials purchases as part of education to your parents, them being unaware of intent...
Also, I was a horny teenage boy and there were horny teenage girls there.
Really confused why you don't seem to think homeschoolers do anything in groups. They usually in fact do more kind of extra-curricular things than public school kids do... while you were sitting at a desk forcibly stopped from interacting with all other students in your vicinity for hours on end, I was doing things like going to museums with other kids, including other teenage girls...
As I said, homeschooling is a far greater experience in socialization because you get a broader range of opportunity, in frankly much better environments that more closely mirror what you will experience in real life. Would you rather learn how to talk to women in a museum or a prison?
I met my wife taking swing dancing lessons, instead of at a bar... because I was inclined to meet and talk to other people while learning or experiencing, instead of sitting placidly. How is that not an awesome social background to bestow on someone? It's a lot more Dos Equis than Barney Fife.
When I was in grade school before I was homeschooled, I was generally pretty shy. The school environment was just making me more so. Some of my "socialization" Involved being hit in the back of a head with a brick, and being tossed around a bit during recess at times - when I didn't care to fight anyone. How was that healthy? There was no reason for it other than I was wiry and a little smarter than many of the other kids. I can tell you hasn't mattered at all knowing how to take a brick to the head in my adult life. What has mattered is being a lot more confident around other people than I used to be even though I'm still inclined to be an introvert. That was something I learned homeschooling, not from public school.
Again, I am not saying homeschooling is for everyone. But for anyone that can derive good academic value from it, you can have huge socialization benefits that go through college into your adult life.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The reason colleges prefer homeschooled kids is because they score better on standardized tests across the board.
This is true for the homeschooled children that do pursue a collage career. However, those who do fail so bad that they don't even apply for college aren't counted. This skews the numbers pretty badly.
Unless a parent is willing to invest the time it takes to home-school, it's probably not a good idea. It's not something you can do in an hour a day, in-between laundry and watching TV. It requires dedicated effort, and endless long hours. Including time on schooling oneself, to be ready to teach the children.
Some parents manage, and those are the success stories we hear about, with higher than average SAT/ACT scores. But some parents don't have the discipline, dedication or talent, and those kids end up enlisting or staring out the drive through window looking for Mr. Right.
70-80th percentile on achievement tests on average? Many Home Schooled kids may do very well but I'm just a tad bit doubtful of your numbers. First off, neither resource provided meets the criteria of peer reviewed research. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, you will be hard pressed to find a research study that can accurately assess the number of students that are educated outside of our public and private educational systems. Long story short, if you are going to support your argument with "research" then you had best learn the difference between hippie-granola-jesus-crispie-treats and professional research articles.
because well, you could just as well start calling it no-schooling at that point.
Close, it's called Unschooling
And it's exactly what you do in college too. Just like college, homeschooling means certain fundamental requirements. Just like college, homeschooling means you get to pursue interests in depth on top of core learning...
And it works amazingly well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As someone with a math Ph.D. I can honestly say that I know much much better now how to teach some elementary subjects than I did while I was in undergrad. This is not because of having teaching experience, but simply because I much better understand what the actual point of something in a larger setting and what the underlying key idea is. For example, my child gets all As in math, but I still often notice that she didn't actually understand something, although typically she did master the topic well enough to solve the problems thrown at her in school. The problem is often that the actual point is never communicated probably because the teacher doesn't get it either.
Many abstract things can be taught in very concrete ways using simple games or by cutting some sheets of paper and playing with it. The problem is that when you see where someone gets stuck, you have to be able to think on your feet to quickly device a concrete way of clarifying it. This typically requires knowing much more math than what you're technically teaching. I assume the same applies to most subjects. A historian can probably put something into perspective much better than someone else who has just read the same passage from the same textbook and is walking you through it.
An example of what I'm talking about is equation solving. It took a while to explain that the point really is that if two things are equal, then doing equal things to them will result in equal results. Hence, when you assume that two sides of an equation are equal and keep applying the same operation to both sides, both sides still stay equal. In school this was mainly shown through examples, which the kids learned to follow, but driving the actual point home was neglected. After understanding the point, my daughter could by herself reason that steps she was performing were correct.
Have you worked at a corporation? Except for the similarities in age, I'd say every single damn headache you encounter in elementary school, middle school, and high school except maybe having a colleague mess their pants will occur. Specifically:
1. Some people you work with are assholes.
2. Some people you work with will copy other people's work or otherwise take credit for it.
3. Some people you work with will only pretend to participate in group projects while reaping the benefits.
4. Some people you work with will be too busy talking and playing games to get anything done.
5. Some people you work with will have a poor grasp of hygiene, grooming, or both.
6. Some of your assigned tasks will be boring as hell and merely exist to fill some bureaucratic need for paperwork.
7. You will occasionally need to read, research, speak about, write about, or otherwise deal with topics that don't interest you.
8. There will be people you work with that you find attractive, and you'll have to interact with them in a courteous way and collaborate with them on work without acting inappropriately or being too nervous to proceed.
9. There will be micro-tribes and hierarchies. There's always micro-tribes and hierarchies, some are just more pleasant and well organized than others. There's the appropriate and brilliant quote, "People who say they don't play at politics just play at them poorly."
Even a dream job - and I consider software development pretty close to a dream job for me, I love my work - has all of those problems. I despised elementary school and middle school, had an okay time at high school, and loved college. But I'm grateful I went through schooling because of all of the aspects of day to day employment that it was [i]perfect[/i] preparation for.
In the US homeschooling is more popular with the religious right who don't want them "larnin' bout how we's sended from munkehs". In the UK, it's more associated with drippy-hippy Woodcraft-folk types.
This stereotype holds only for those who are unfamiliar with the reality of American public schools. In the US, homeschooling is more popular with parents who understand that typical US public school systems are a collision of bureaucracy, politics and labor unions where education is an afterthought. It is popular amongst parents who understand that No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) obsession with exams leaves behind children with special needs and punishes educational creativity. It is popular amongst parents who believe that being bullied by a drug-soaked mob of feral children and exposed to peer terrorism and gunplay is not a mandatory component of healthy socialization. It is popular amongst parents who believe that by banning Christianity and a handful of religions from public schools while allowing pseudo-scientific dogma, mammon worship, celebrity worship, political party tribalism, sports worship, brand idolatry, gun idolatry, flag idolatry, Apple idolatry and other forms of materialism provides a toxically unbalanced view of reality.
... Seriously? If a cabbage picked its major right, it could get a B.A. at a lot of schools. How do you think all those frat boys that drank their way through college managed to graduate? Communications, English, Art History, Marketing... Most schools are more concerned about your student loan check clearing the bank than they are about quality of education. As long as your money's good, here, have a degree.
I don't know where you are, but where I am, if you're not in the trades and you don't get a four-year degree, your job options are pretty limited to jobs where you have to wear a name tag and/or a paper hat. Bachelors' degrees are so common that HR departments use the lack thereof to cull out resumes from the flood that they receive, and still manage to hire people, so it can't shrink the candidate pool TOO much. The result is that getting a job running Excel and going to useless meetings (which a high school junior is usually qualified for, skills-wise) requires a four-year degree.
Employers like degrees for a couple of reasons: 1) It shows that you can do mindless irrelevant busy work that accomplishes nothing without going insane, and 2) you most likely have a mountain of student loan debt, which makes you more unlikely to quit once they start and find out they're doing three jobs and getting paid for 2/3rds of one. Notice that neither of those reasons is related to the actual education.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
The public school system in America has been under the constant grip of the hard-left since the 60's. If you trend the results against who implements policies you can see on whose door step responsibility for the problem lies.