Homeschooling gets a bad rap in general because of parents who shouldn't be doing it or are doing it for the wrong reasons (kid doesn't get along with other kids, developmental issues, etc). I'm talking about the parents who buy a curriculum on tape and shove it in the TV and hope it will all work out. I was mostly unschooled K-10 by my stay-at-home Mom. She tended to my development very closely and instilled a desire to discover and learn. Of course I learned how to read and do math with a curriculum in the early years, but after the basics-- I found school everywhere. I was ebaying things in middle school, and I actually went out and figured out how to calculate percentages out of my own desire. Hands on projects like building a shed with my Dad desired me to work on knowing my measurement units-- algebra was sneaked in. Mom would inspire me to analyze plots in movies and tv shows to study writing. I had an interest in HTML and was blogging before it got mainstream, and that pretty much taught me how to write. Luckily I had an interest in discovery and history channel-- so I had my bases covered there. I went into high school junior year and that was rough. But I was there-- I hadn't been with any structured curriculum for years and I was virtually up to spec. All it really did was polish what I already knew.
There are definitely some flaws though. I really hate the pace of the world- I can do it sometimes, but dammit that's too fast for me. And then I am intelligent, but sometimes not so knowledgeable. That gap is decreasing every day.
And you know, most of my fellow homeschoolers didn't go this way. They were given a tape to watch and a worksheet to do. Pretty much all of them are scared of college (and life for some) because they're not used to it. Hell, sometimes I just want to forget college and just settle down with a job, but that passion to learn is still going strong and will be with me until I die.
Slashdot Mirror
Homeschooling gets a bad rap in general because of parents who shouldn't be doing it or are doing it for the wrong reasons (kid doesn't get along with other kids, developmental issues, etc). I'm talking about the parents who buy a curriculum on tape and shove it in the TV and hope it will all work out. I was mostly unschooled K-10 by my stay-at-home Mom. She tended to my development very closely and instilled a desire to discover and learn. Of course I learned how to read and do math with a curriculum in the early years, but after the basics-- I found school everywhere. I was ebaying things in middle school, and I actually went out and figured out how to calculate percentages out of my own desire. Hands on projects like building a shed with my Dad desired me to work on knowing my measurement units-- algebra was sneaked in. Mom would inspire me to analyze plots in movies and tv shows to study writing. I had an interest in HTML and was blogging before it got mainstream, and that pretty much taught me how to write. Luckily I had an interest in discovery and history channel-- so I had my bases covered there. I went into high school junior year and that was rough. But I was there-- I hadn't been with any structured curriculum for years and I was virtually up to spec. All it really did was polish what I already knew.
There are definitely some flaws though. I really hate the pace of the world- I can do it sometimes, but dammit that's too fast for me. And then I am intelligent, but sometimes not so knowledgeable. That gap is decreasing every day.
And you know, most of my fellow homeschoolers didn't go this way. They were given a tape to watch and a worksheet to do. Pretty much all of them are scared of college (and life for some) because they're not used to it. Hell, sometimes I just want to forget college and just settle down with a job, but that passion to learn is still going strong and will be with me until I die.