Who does home schooling?

Only home-schooled person I've ever known is my cousin, who was kept out of public schools so she wouldn't get corrupted. Mother had been a drug addict, father was a former Hungarian black-marketeer and, I think, occasional street criminal; both were paranoid about similar such people in the outside world. Neither was well-read or well-educated, and my cousin (who does possess a fierce native intelligence) managed to learn enough on her own to barely keep up with state standards. Now in her 20s, she's going to college and is just starting to get socialized at the level of a 13- or 14-year-old. She's possessed of a remarkable naivete and defenselessness that she tries to cover up from removing herself from most social situations.

I'm personally of the opinion that school's primary function is to socialize the child. Knowledge can be picked up later, but delayed development can have devastating consequences on a person's psyche.

Just one observation and one opinion...

I was homeschooled. I think it's a very bad option for children over 10.

For us the decision to potentially home school is all about the quality of education. Anyone who refuses to teach evolution is condemning their child to a life of denial.

The first person I ever knew who was homeschooled was a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base and a chief aeronautical engineer. He dated a friend of mine back in the sixties. This seems clearly a case of the parents thinking the schools weren't parcelling out adequate information in a timely manner. He was a bit of a loner.. but then so are many other people.


I'm all for adding to a child's schooling with additional knowledge but worry, as Patiodog does, about the loss for the homeschooled child of socialization in a larger group. I know homeschoolers often try to compensate for the gap. What gap? The gap in kinds of people. I think it is useful for a child to deal with many kinds of people, gradually, and that even with attempts to have homeschooled children meet others, those others might tend to be in some comfortably acceptable range re behavior or beliefs or depth of education. The child then becomes - in this scenario - something of a hothouse flower.

I was a semihothouse flower, in that I went to a parochial high school for about 350 girls. When I went to the university later, it was like a crash course in life. Not that I am complaining re my own situation, but that I can abstract from that experience that it could be immensely difficult for a homeschooled adolescent to adjust to the larger world.

This is generalizing; I know there are instances where even I could be convinced homeschooling is a good idea.

To respond to POM's question about how homeschoolers coalesce and work things out, I have no idea, but would assume people of similar views would associate.

It would be interesting to hear from Montana, I think she is (or was) homeschooling her son.

My cousin has 4 children and 3 of them are school age (11 to 3). She home-schools them, but the oldest is now going to regular public school. I think in the younger years it is a good idea if you live in a bad school district, but after that education becomes 50% socialization. If a child has good basics then they should be able to get the most out of junior high education and beyond. Poor social and coping skills are the #1 issue with exclusively home schooled children.

The state tests the children and my cousin has to meet standards that the state sets - what they need to learn and by what time frame. You could teach them whatever, but if the child doesn't meet the state standard then s/he must be put into the public system. I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but it is that way in MA and GA.

Craven-I dunno. If you are the product of home schooling, that's a boost for home schooling. I have not known anyone of your age who is so knowledgable in so many different areas.

POM- Why don't you check with Montana. She home schools her son.

I was just going to PM Montana, who I know has gone to great lengths to home school well; POM uses a library computer, I think, and checks in when she can.

Edit to say I did PM Montana.

The importance of socialization starts early. There is an article on the wall of a class my daughter attends with a headline that is something like, "Social Skills, not ABC's, Predictor of School Success." It is an article about various studies that show how important social skills are upon entering kindergarten.

When social workers were investigating the homeschooling I had I was the one always marked for examination, the other teens who couldn't count (slight exagerration, many of them could count but not multiply numbers) were sent for a walk or hidden in a bomb shelter. No joke.

Little of what I know is the product of homeschooling. I was home schooled to a 6th grade level and none of it was to the credit of the schooling. I was simply handed "Beka Books" and the "super workbook" and that's it. I was about 8 at the time and after that I never learned anything from homeschooling.

My qualms with homeschooling older children are the same that patiodog and Sugar mentioned. The socialization is important and I think most homeschooling tends to foster a hermetical enviroment.

Other than that I think few people are qualified to teach all high school subjects. But the social aspect is what's big for me.

I did attend almost 3 years of formal education and it was rough for me in the beginning. I had been so sheltered that I was not prepared to hear people saying the things they said. On my first day in school I got in several fights after people made comments about my mother.

My adaptation was a lot easier than that of others I know (I've known a few hundred children who went through the same process).

I caution very strongly against the overprotective instinct that some parents feel. I think it's one of the worst things a parent could do.

Re: Who does home schooling?


lol Would you be equeally surprised to learn that people from the religious left homeschool for the same reason?

I doubt that very many that home school their kids avoid talking about evolution one way or the other. I've known several and they were all more interested in adding the religious aspect to the learning than removing evolution from it.

I know of over 10,000 people who home school specifically to avoid the evolution teaching fishin'.

It's a lot more common than you seem to think.

I led off with an example of a very successful homeschooled person, but I agreed with Patiodog, Craven, Sugar, and Sozobe too.

Osso- You are probably right, but I read somewhere that in some cities, parents of homeschooled kids have formed groups where the children might socialize with one another.

In general, I think that Craven has a point. The thing is, that there are many kids who fall through the cracks in public school. For those children, home schooling may just make the difference between succeeding and failing. I do think thought, that with adolescence, the young people need to learn to work together.

I know there are some truly bad schools, but for the many in-between ones, homeschooling annoys me. For one thing, the concepts behind homeschooling don't necessarily need to be either/ or -- I plan to keep right on teaching my daughter in any number of ways during the afternoons, evenings and weekends she's not in school.

For another, the parents who would do this fall into one of two general categories -- parents who don't want their kids to learn what is being taught in school (evolution, sex education, whatever), and parents who are highly intelligent and motivated and think they could do a a better job. I think it is damaging for the children of the former type of parents to be removed from an environment in which they would learn these things, and I think it is damaging for the schools, and the other students, to remove the children of the latter type.

I wonder if people would consider home schooling as a supplement to formal education. Edit: Just saw that soz considered it while I was posting.

There are some really shining examples of home schooling. Heck, just look at the spelling bee winners. Home schoolers are inordinately represented there.

I do have a qualm with home schooling that is designed to promote ideology, this is an additional bane I see to home schooling.

Many children are home schooled for ideological purposes. Monger commented on it in another thread. We were consistently taught absolutely absurd things simply because of religious reasons.

His example was a good one. We were taught that the universe is only a little over 6,000 lightyears in radius because the Bible dates the age of the universe at a bit over 6,000 years.

We were taught that overpopulation is a lie and that carbon dating is a scam (one excuse used was that supposedly during Noah's flood a layer of water in the "firmament" fell and that carbon levels prior to that would be vastly different).

Because of this background I've followed homeschooling closely. And am very disappointed with it, in general.

Well, according to the National Center for Education Research there were approx 850,000 children being home schooled in the US in 1999 and less than 13% of those were because of parents objections to what was being taught in the public school system (and that's total objections - not just evolution).

If you happen to know 10,000 of 'em then I'd ask where exactly it is that you hang out that you know that many people with that sort of mindset. Are all the anti-evolutionists packed into SoCal nowadays?

No, that was just the most conservative number of the cult I grew up in. This was primarily outside of the US as they think the US is "babylon the whore" from the Bible.

These types don't tend to report to any agency. So I doubt they are in the statistics you cite.

None of the thousands of children I grew up with were ever reported as home schoolers. In fact many of them had as little documentation for their existence as was possible.

They are the people from the paranoid Christian right that keep themselves under the radar. You won't find them in those stats at all.

K12 you can learn a lot here