Homeschooling -- Recommended?

[kyuuei]

My sisters and I have been brainstorming ideas for their children's education.. I suggested homeschooling as there are some great programs out there and public education is such a mess now-a-days. I feel strongly on education.. But they think homeschooling is too difficult and they won't be able to properly teach their kids. They are also worried about the lack of social interaction.. Which I think could be fixed by enrolling them into sports, independent art schools, etc.

If you homeschooled, did you find it intimidating? Did you warm up to it quickly? And most of all, would you recommend it?

If you were homeschooled, can you detail if you liked it or not? Did it benefit your education overall? If you went to college, did it help or hinder you getting in? Did you feel you were educated just as well as your peers?

 

[Ivy]

I was homeschooled for high school and it was a total mixed bag. My mom didn't really believe in traditional school so she didn't do a program of any kind, unless buying a set of Brittanica Great Books and setting me loose with them counts (and I guess it kind of does). I also audited some college classes. I was a pretty self-motivated student and it was nice to be able to have a say in my own education. But I feel like I have some pretty huge gaps now, stuff that most people learned in high school. And socially, it was really isolating. I don't think sports/music/art classes offer the continuous exposure to a consistent group of peers to be comparable to school. My younger siblings were also homeschooled but they were much less academically oriented to begin with, so it was kind of a disaster for them.

For the most part, I don't really recommend it unless the specific schools in your area are just untenable AND you are very, very motivated/committed. My children go to a small charter school which we love. Best of both worlds, IMO.

 

[Thalassa]

I think young kids are okay homeschooled, not so much older students, who may suffer socially. My SP friend who I always talk about was kept home for like two years in high school because of danger, and because his mother wasn't really well-equipped to home school him well...well...eventually he went back to regular high school, but was older than some of the seniors, ended up dropping out, and essentially seems overprotected in some ways, and immature in others. Of course, could be his personality and the fact that his mother wasn't the best to homeschool him as an adolescent.

I've encountered some people who were homeschooled who also seem kind of socially awkward as adults, I don't just mean social anxiety, I mean really, they weren't really socialized with people their age (or if they were, it was only people of their religious group).

I think it's a great idea probably to educate very young children at home, and maybe to pull an older student out...if they are introverted and studious, anyway, and the parent is equipped to homeschool them properly.

I have mixed opinions for it, but really *if* I have children (not saying I will) I would want them to go to school. But maybe montessori school or magnet school or private schools, with some *limited* homeschooling.

 

[Rasofy]

I know I'd have spent more time playing video game or some mmorpg than studying, that's a given.

 

[CzeCze]

True story: I once played co-op at 3:30 am their time with another player who turned out to be 15. On a school night. I asked him if he needed to go to bed for school "or something" and he said no. I asked him if he was on summer break and he said "no I'm home schooled". I asked him when he usually started his classes . He said "whenever".

Gosh, he was really good at that game. But, probably not the goal of most home schooling parents.

There are lots of great alternative schools (free) and magnet schools (free). Programs associated with universities. Some free schools and programs you test or qualify into, others are elective. Some focus on fields of study, trades, religion, progressive ideals, behavioral modification, life skills, or high academics, etc. There's a wide range.

The only woman I went to college with who was home schooled that I knew of was terribly awkward. That was the way she was introduced to me. "You'll meet XXXX. She's horribly awkward. Her parents homeschooled her". She may have been smart compared to a national average of highschoolers, but I don't think her homeschooling gave her an academic or intellectual edge by the time she got to college. Because the bar keeps jumping and the field gets more competitive. I met several students who went to alternative high schools and I was SOOOOOO jealous. You would not guess by interacting with them that they had anything other than a 'typical' highschool experience (whether public or private). I also think it depends on the temperment and interests of the kid. The beauty of independent schools is that they are tailored for different kind of kids. Each student I knew who went to an alternative highschool found a good fit and seemed very happy and also were prepared for a competitive college environment.

If it's about the best fit for your nieces/nephews do some research about schools in commuting distance or when older, boarding schools if you think that would be work for them.

Alternatively, your sister can start working now for a private school until she is vested and the school pays for all her kids' tuition. This will also get them a special in with teachers. Trust me, that could be a gold mine when it comes to college application time.

I also have a friend who travels frequently with her hs aged daughter and wanted to send her to school in Paris for a year for an international experience. They travel a lot so her daughter has had a very unique experience and I think she's very lucky, she's also very mature for her age. She goes to a more progressive/experimental public school. My friend is not wealthy by any means so all things are possible if you hunt around.

I went to public schools in the states and then private high school overseas. I think more than the quality of the education I received (I did a lot of studying and reading on my own, I was a nerdy kid) my biggest 'take-away' from those years was about the people and the environments that I was in. I had a very multicultural environment in my formative years and you really can't teach that anywhere.

The plus of sending your nephews/nieces to an alternative school that fits them is that they will be surrounded by an ideal mix of kids that are on a similar curve as them.

 

[Lark]

I think if you're going to any sort of school you are going to have to be home schooled too or should be, I dont know what the culture with "home work" is anymore and I know a lot of busy parents with two jobs in the UK are against the idea but it was about making the point that teachers in the school can not usually achieve as much as teachers and parents in unison.

The only real reason I would completely homeschool any kids would be if there were real bullying issues and the school was proving inert about doing anything about it, and I experienced some bad things with hindsight at school but my parents never thought about taking me out of school.

 

[Orangey]

I knew this kid who was home schooled - his name was William, and he didn't allow us to call him anything else but William...not Will, or Bill - and he was a real mess socially. He was awkward and over-sensitive...cried and threw fits at the slightest provocation. He was known throughout the neighborhood as that "strange home schooled kid."

To be fair, he was also an only child and his parents were over-protective, coddling, rabid Catholics (to the point where other parents in this rather conservative-leaning town thought they were strange, including my parents who have been on and off evangelical fundies.) Also, public school was a bitch, to the point that I almost ended up opting to go to one of those fancy pants private schools. Luckily I lost interest in that and didn't end up taking the placement exams. Some of my middle school friends did, though, and they turned out pretty fucking stupid anyway (not to mention the environment in those schools seemed even more repressive than the public schools.)

Basically, I'd only home school if I were prepared to do it as a full time job and I wasn't a nutbag cultist. Otherwise, public school all the way. It'll give your kids a very special brand of grit and cynicism that I don't think you can get anywhere else.

 

[Lark]

True story: I once played co-op at 3:30 am their time with another player who turned out to be 15. On a school night. I asked him if he needed to go to bed for school "or something" and he said no. I asked him if he was on summer break and he said "no I'm home schooled". I asked him when he usually started his classes . He said "whenever".

Gosh, he was really good at that game. But, probably not the goal of most home schooling parents.

There are lots of great alternative schools (free) and magnet schools (free). Programs associated with universities. Some free schools and programs you test or qualify into, others are elective. Some focus on fields of study, trades, religion, progressive ideals, behavioral modification, life skills, or high academics, etc. There's a wide range.

The only woman I went to college with who was home schooled that I knew of was terribly awkward. That was the way she was introduced to me. "You'll meet XXXX. She's horribly awkward. Her parents homeschooled her". She may have been smart compared to a national average of highschoolers, but I don't think her homeschooling gave her an academic or intellectual edge by the time she got to college. Because the bar keeps jumping and the field gets more competitive. I met several students who went to alternative high schools and I was SOOOOOO jealous. You would not guess by interacting with them that they had anything other than a 'typical' highschool experience (whether public or private). I also think it depends on the temperment and interests of the kid. The beauty of independent schools is that they are tailored for different kind of kids. Each student I knew who went to an alternative highschool found a good fit and seemed very happy and also were prepared for a competitive college environment.

If it's about the best fit for your nieces/nephews do some research about schools in commuting distance or when older, boarding schools if you think that would be work for them.

Alternatively, your sister can start working now for a private school until she is vested and the school pays for all her kids' tuition. This will also get them a special in with teachers. Trust me, that could be a gold mine when it comes to college application time.

I also have a friend who travels frequently with her hs aged daughter and wanted to send her to school in Paris for a year for an international experience. They travel a lot so her daughter has had a very unique experience and I think she's very lucky, she's also very mature for her age. She goes to a more progressive/experimental public school. My friend is not wealthy by any means so all things are possible if you hunt around.

I went to public schools in the states and then private high school overseas. I think more than the quality of the education I received (I did a lot of studying and reading on my own, I was a nerdy kid) my biggest 'take-away' from those years was about the people and the environments that I was in. I had a very multicultural environment in my formative years and you really can't teach that anywhere.

The plus of sending your nephews/nieces to an alternative school that fits them is that they will be surrounded by an ideal mix of kids that are on a similar curve as them.

Yeah, I think if homeschooling was to work there'd need to be some kind of strictness about routines, especially since the basic ones about getting up and going some place which is the school other than home is abscent.

I knew a kid at technical college (17 - 18) who was from an independent school run by Ian Paisley's supporters, the free presbytarians, those are a sort of protestant fundamentalist, so he'd experienced corporal punishment being meeted out to others who misbehaved when he'd reported it, he came to the tech everyday, which had an ultra casual dress code, in trousers with creases and a shirt, I suspect he left home with a bow tie also but put it in his bag. He was immediately marked out as a target because of his style of dress, his social attitudes likewise were very odd, he couldnt interact especially with girls very well and the other males slagged him off for his lack of knowledge of things of a sexual nature, I remember telling him to go away once when he seriously enquired with me what masterbation was. I dont mean like he'd asked me "in the know" attempting to display a "positive ignorance", ie I'm not like these others, I dont know these things, I mean they'd been teasing him and he really did not know. Some of them had got very small water pistols one day and brought them to the class, they did little more than provide a nuisance value because you couldnt fire a lot of water with them but he brought a super soaker pistol in his bag the next day! I was like seriously man, you bring that out and someone will just kick your ass.

The thing about this all, which I found funny but shouldnt have been a surprise, is that while I did the guy a lot of favours because no one would spend any time in his company or speak to him, he was shunned, and I gave him a lot of steers and social etiquette or even competence, the minute we went to a neighbouring university and he had others from his former school to accompany him he actually shunned me. Although he was back in the bow ties and looked like something from the fifties by then so I really did not mind.

 

[Lark]

I knew this kid who was home schooled - his name was William, and he didn't allow us to call him anything else but William...not Will, or Bill - and he was a real mess socially. He was awkward and over-sensitive...cried and threw fits at the slightest provocation. He was known throughout the neighborhood as that "strange home schooled kid."

To be fair, he was also an only child and his parents were over-protective, coddling, rabid Catholics (to the point where other parents in this rather conservative-leaning town thought they were strange, including my parents who have been on and off evangelical fundies.) Also, public school was a bitch, to the point that I almost ended up opting to go to one of those fancy pants private schools. Luckily I lost interest in that and didn't end up taking the placement exams. Some of my middle school friends did, though, and they turned out pretty fucking stupid anyway (not to mention the environment in those schools seemed even more repressive than the public schools.)

Basically, I'd only home school if I were prepared to do it as a full time job and I wasn't a nutbag cultist. Otherwise, public school all the way. It'll give your kids a very special brand of grit and cynicism that I don't think you can get anywhere else.

There are catholic schools, its odd to hear about a homeschooled catholic, although I know about homeschooling being congruent with victims of abuse or fostered kids because there's little option, they refuse to attend.

 

[Orangey]

There are catholic schools, its odd to hear about a homeschooled catholic, although I know about homeschooling being congruent with victims of abuse or fostered kids because there's little option, they refuse to attend.

Yeah, to be honest I never knew any of the details of his situation. All I knew was that his parents were (rather notoriously) Catholic, they only allowed him to wear "proper" clothes (which looked like church clothes, "Sunday best" and all that), and they yelled at other kids whenever he'd run home crying. So maybe he had some issue that I didn't know about. Who knows.

I did know a girl in elementary school who ended up having to be home schooled because she was violent and had explosive emotional outbursts on a regular basis. She was an orphan from Russia who was adopted, and the other kids would whisper that she was crazy and shouldn't be trifled with because she was a "Russian hate child." She ended up running away from the school grounds one day and we never saw her again. The teacher eventually told us that she was going to be home schooled from now on.

 

[CzeCze]

BTW, [MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION]i there used to be a lot of parents who home school on the forum, but I think they may have stopped posting.

There is a really robust thread on the topic with personal anecdotes and specific info from like..2007...or 2008...if that helps (did you read it at the time?) you can dig it up.

Also [MENTION=10714]Qlip[/MENTION] 's kids are home schooled.

 

[Thalassa]

I did know a girl in elementary school who ended up having to be home schooled because she was violent and had explosive emotional outbursts on a regular basis. She was an orphan from Russia who was adopted, and the other kids would whisper that she was crazy and shouldn't be trifled with because she was a "Russian hate child." She ended up running away from the school grounds one day and we never saw her again. The teacher eventually told us that she was going to be home schooled from now on.

I want to adopt a Russian hate child.

You know, someday, when I'm mature enough to handle it and past my own childbearing years pretty much anyway.

Is that odd?

 

[kyuuei]

BTW, there used to be a lot of parents who home school on the forum, but I think they may have stopped posting.

There is a really robust thread on the topic with personal anecdotes and specific info from like..2007...or 2008...if that helps (did you read it at the time?) you can dig it up.

Also Qlip's kids are home schooled.

Ah, I may have to dig it up, it may have been slightly before my time here.

The charter school idea is a good one.. But isn't it extremely difficult to get into many of those? Lotteries and what not?

 

[CzeCze]

Ah, I may have to dig it up, it may have been slightly before my time here.

The charter school idea is a good one.. But isn't it extremely difficult to get into many of those? Lotteries and what not?

If one of your sis' kids get in, the rest have a much better chance of as well. Charter schools prefer to keep siblings together.

I worked at a charter school briefly and interacted with potential parents of students, it's best to spread your bets and apply as many schools as possible as well as sign up for public school. At some schools you go up in priority if you tried in a previous year. It also depends on the area.

The only warning is that charter schools are not necessarily better than public schools. So do homework.

 

[Ivy]

If one of your sis' kids get in, the rest have a much better chance of as well. Charter schools prefer to keep siblings together.

I worked at a charter school briefly and interacted with potential parents of students, it's best to spread your bets and apply as many schools as possible as well as sign up for public school. At some schools you go up in priority if you tried in a previous year. It also depends on the area.

The only warning is that charter schools are not necessarily better than public schools. So do homework.

Truth. The quality of charters varies wildly. (Much like regular public schools.) I love the one our kids go to, and Thing 1 went to a different charter before this that I loved even more. But I've seen dozens of charters pop up and fail, and some that haven't failed are notoriously bad but succeed for what I consider to be shitty reasons (they focus almost entirely on cranking out good test scores).

 

[Laurie]

I taught a kid Sunday school who hadn't learned to read because her mom "didn't have time" to teach her. They were second graders

I Seriously considered it but decided to just move into a good school system.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I never attended school before college, so I'm as home-schooled as you're going to get.

I suppose a match a lot of the notions here about having social difficulties, but mainly just that I'm shy and nervous.

My performance intellectually does not appear to have been hurt by it at all. If I were the measure compared against public-schooled kids, I would in fact imply home schooling is better, because I got great grades in college and on three occasions the professor exempted me from the finals because it was basically statistically pointless. Of course, it's not just about getting good grades. There's no way to say this without it sounding like a dig against everyone who was public schooled, but I really feel that my ability to perform divergent and critical thinking was seriously aided by how I was educated. It struck me as interesting that my English professor said she'd had a few home schooled students and they were all very high performers, not just in terms of grades, but in terms of their ability to actually think about the material and discuss it.

Generally, public school also looks fairly miserable. It's debatable how much it would have made me a different person as opposed to how much it would just punished me for being the person I happen to be. I guess that's a question of temperament vs. culture.

That being said, there is no standard for home schooling. I can only reflect on how I was raised, which was by atheist parents who were very anti-agenda and generally lived in the-middle-of-no-where rural PA. I've certainly seen home schooled kids who fared much worse than me.

I would not recommend that anyone school their kids at home because I frankly have no idea what you'll be like as a parent or where you live.

It'll give your kids a very special brand of grit and cynicism that I don't think you can get anywhere else.

Oh?

 

[JAVO]

I agree with your perspective on public education and homeschooling, kyuuei. I wish I had been homeschooled myself. So much time is wasted at a public school. We homeschool, and currently the two kids will be starting 1st and 3rd grades. We go through a program which is actually a public school, and we don't have to pay for anything like the curriculum or books. A teacher advises, tutors, and administers tests, including standardized state tests. The kids visit with her about once every 2-4 weeks, and they enjoy the visits. There's also a separate homeschool co-op group we're part of which allows for additional learning, extracurricular things like field trips, picnics, and social interaction.

We tried one program when the oldest started kindergarten, but the curriculum (K12) was way too intense, especially for just kindergarten. It was also just silly that they had nearly every assignment involving using a computer in some way. (And, my career is software development. ) Homeschooling takes a year or two of adapting. It's important to consider the implications on the work and social aspects of the one doing the teaching too. It's best if there is a specific room or area of the house which can be used mostly for school.

I would recommend that anyone who has carefully considered everything homeschooling will involve, and who thinks it might work well for them and their kids to give it a try for a year.

 

[kyuuei]

I agree with your perspective on public education and homeschooling, kyuuei. I wish I had been homeschooled myself. So much time is wasted at a public school. We homeschool, and currently the two kids will be starting 1st and 3rd grades. We go through a program which is actually a public school, and we don't have to pay for anything like the curriculum or books. A teacher advises, tutors, and administers tests, including standardized state tests. The kids visit with her about once every 2-4 weeks, and they enjoy the visits. There's also a separate homeschool co-op group we're part of which allows for additional learning, extracurricular things like field trips, picnics, and social interaction.

We tried one program when the oldest started kindergarten, but the curriculum (K12) was way too intense, especially for just kindergarten. It was also just silly that they had nearly every assignment involving using a computer in some way. (And, my career is software development. ) Homeschooling takes a year or two of adapting. It's important to consider the implications on the work and social aspects of the one doing the teaching too. It's best if there is a specific room or area of the house which can be used mostly for school.

I would recommend that anyone who has carefully considered everything homeschooling will involve, and who thinks it might work well for them and their kids to give it a try for a year.

What is the program called that your children use? Maybe I can find a similar one in the Houston area.. Homeschooling was just brought up as a possibility, we're trying to brainstorm all of the options out there.

Private school is out of the question--I don't see how people afford it. $20,000 a year? @_@ It's insane. And thats base price!!

 

[kyuuei]

Oh?

Thanks for posting. I really am just concerned on the basis of "Which will the kids get a better education out of?" I don't mind taking rotations and helping out my sisters if homeschooling meant they'd get a better education.. We also considered public school with cram-schooling afterwards, but that costs money as well.