Disclaimer: I was homeschooled. For 4 years, from 4th-8th grade.
I think it was great.
For one, I skipped a year of school. There's actually five years in "4th-8th", but I was able to complete in 4, and was a year ahead of the curriculum offered at the public school when I enrolled. I graduated at 16, and went immediately to college.
Was/am I socially awkward? Yes and no. I'm very confident, independent, and make friends easily. But I also don't play the social bs games well; I could if I wanted to, but I see them as beneath me. When I went into high school, I was not a popular kid; I didn't play the sycophantic games of caring so much about other people's approval. So many kids were self conscious, scared, felt peer pressure. Some even killed themselves because they were so stressed out, others just cried or lashed out with violence and anger. I thought the whole scene was very immature. But up to that point, I had been spending time with a lot of adults and with my nose in books, so my contemporaries were great authors and emotionally mature people. Jimmy and Sally the prom royalty didn't compare. I spent a fair amount of my time chatting with my friend's parents, as well as my friends. I'm definitely a little bit of a "weirdo". Was that bc I was homeschooled? Maybe, but I see it as a good thing to have the opportunity to embrace my individuality and have confidence in myself as an autonomous unit.
I don't think homeschool is for everyone. It's a huge burden on the parents, and they might not do the best job. I was lucky in that my mother's mother was an educator, and my mother was very passionate about parenting as well as being an excellent role model. She took me to the library multiple times a month, and engaged me in learning activities. I was also very into reading as I mentioned, and she allowed me to read as I liked, which was constantly (probably averaging about 5-6 hours every day).
The comparison to public school makes me think of an argument for trade from economics. It makes more sense to consolidate education and have everyone together in public schools. For everyone to homeschool, would be similar to signing up the "buy local" fallacy (the economic downfalls discussed in the linked article). If that interests you, there is also a "benefits to trade" article here. But I also think that public schools are not the best learning environment. Same as homeschool, the quality is going to vary greatly depending on the individual situation (teacher, resources, culture, tactics, etc).
The photo you chose is great. It shows how homeschooling can "fail" a person by closing their mind to information rather than opening it. But public school can do that, too. I'm not saying one way or the other one is good and the other bad. I do think it would be impossible for everyone to be homeschooled, but I feel lucky and grateful that I was able to. It also was a great blessing for having a close relationship with my mother.
Disclaimer: Outliers exist. We have all heard of crazy people in weird cults. They are very rare and should not be considered when designing policies. They already break laws regarding the welfare of children (and other victims) within their care. They should be stopped from abusing children. They should not be considered failure of home education anymore than parents who abuse children whom they send to public schools should be considered failure of public education.
Public schools indoctrinate children every day. Parents reinforce their own culture and beliefs. That is not the same. Plus, home educated children have a much better student:teacher ratio than public schools can provide. Parents who are willing to take the time to educate their own almost always care more about the children in their care than professional teachers are able to care about each student in their care. Parents can give the best tailored education to their unique children than government regulated curriculum can.
If a parent wants to go to a fire department or to meet their elected officials they can just call to arrange it. They do not need to ask taxpayers to pay to bus an entire school. It is a lot easier to be sure that one to four (or maybe even more for ambitious parents) children see everything on a field trip than an entire classroom full.
OK... OK... I was SO upset when I saw this that I jumped on here and RANTED for I don't know how many paragraphs! Got done and hit "SEND IT!" and was told my opinion was too long or too short. I assure you, anyone on here who knows me knows my opinion was NOT "too short."
I'm struggling to not just totally go off on this. I am home-schooled. I am NOT socially deficient. I would argue that I'm more able to talk with strangers, particularly adults, than government-schooled people my age precisely BECAUSE I am home-schooled and have as much interaction with adults online and in person as I do with people my age. I would argue that's one huge advantage of being home-schooled. I'm confident in my beliefs and not afraid to speak my mind.
My teachers (primarily Mom and my aunt) not only allow me, but encourage me to read everything I can get my hands on.
Any government-schooled person out there - I strongly, STRONGLY encourage you to seek out OTHER sources of history that what you've been allowed to see. Get to a library or an old book store (I LOVE those). If everything you've been told about American history is true, you'll see that in older history books. You'll see it in texts written by our Founding Fathers. But, you might find that some of the things you're being told may not be accurate.
My last note (and I HOPE this goes through) is that I don't see news stories from EITHER side about all the people from all parts of the world clustering around the borders of Venezuela demanding entry. Why? Why do we see that HERE and not THERE?
a few problems with home schooling:
1. it prevents children from developing very crucial social skills they need to function in the real world. because in the real world, you will need to learn to fit in to whatever environment you're thrown into. You need to learn to deal with difficult people. You need to know how to interact with people in all types of situations.
2. kids do better academically when there is competition. Getting a passing score of 75 sure is upsetting when you have other kids around you scoring 90s. if you were homeschooled, a 75 doesn't seem so bad because nobody else can get a better score.
3. Having classmates in lectures can bring up a vast variety of different perspectives. Teaching should be more than just a teacher regurgitating textbook paragraphs or reinforcing their own perspectives on everything. You learn better when you have a large range of classmates where everyone pitches in their own ideas and perspectives. It's certainly less boring and you learn how to think in more variety of perspectives. It also makes you more open minded.
Opinion
39Opinion
Public schools as we know them have only been around for a few hundred years yet you're telling me children need them for socialization? Why are we pretending like it's such a natural environment for them? And when did parents become so lazy as to dump their child's entire development on strangers? Well, we see the results of it in our society. More and more people nowadays are socially awkward and all of them that I know went through public school education.
Being shy or socially awkward is not the home schooling problem but poor socialization and personality. I had friends at school but I spend most time with my neighbours. Home schooled children also participate in non school related activities like sports, art, dance lessons etc I definitely wouldn't miss out on social interaction if I were home schooled. In fact, I found school stressful and became more shy because of it. I also remember a lot of children in school who were very shy or even recluse.
School is also indoctrinating children into a specific way of thinking... the difference is in the reason why they do it. It takes a village to raise a child so neither school nor home schooling is ideal. In a perfect world children would get exposure to a lot of different people who all contribute to their development... doing home schooling right is difficult but if someone can then it's definitely a better option at least for some children. And in any case the bar hasn't been set very high.
Let me tell you something my man public schools these days are a joke. Its ridiculous how much pandering these schools do children and thier parents... and its all at the cost of tge quality of the education.
Not private schools these days are not much better unless your all into religion over the quality of tge education. Most these private schools put more effort into their ethical standards, and thier none profit for profit fund raising, then into the quality of the education.
Home schooling... well it all depends honestly. My ex homeschooled my youngest, but honestly it was just a means for her to be an unemployed stay home mother, and exerct control and influence over my daughter.
Some of the smartest people you meet were homeschooled.
To be honest I'm considering it myself when I have a child at least until secondary education age.
Jesus is our Saviour.
Taxation is often theft from the working and middle classes.
Schools are babysitting services rather than educational institutions these days.
Vaccines are the reason you didn't dies from cholera and all that other stuff that wiped out the native Americans b4 the pilgrims landed in New England.
There are only two biological genders the rest are social constructs
Trump probably did win I dont care, not American.
u For about 8 years, I was heavily involved in our local teen court program, and many (about a third) of those kids were homeschooled. They were the most social and mature of all the kids in the program. Of course here is a lunatic fringe, but most parents who home school are extremely aware that they need to give their kids social experiences and they find opportunity though church, programs such as teen court, other extrecurricular interest groupsm and cooperative opportunities with other home schooled kids.
Some parents indoctrinate their kids at home because they know it will happen when they attend public schools. I think parents have more of a right to indoctrinate their children than government employees. Public school needs to change far more that does home schooling.
You, nor the Government, have controlling interest, on how a child is raised by their Parents. I DO NOT WANT MY KIDS INDOCTRINATED by CRITICAL RACE THEORY. HOMESCHOOLING is ONLY OPTION.‼️‼️‼️
Your reasoning is Hitlerian in its nature as it implies parents can’t raise their kids well. “Parent, you feed and cloth them, I’ll educate them.” Adolf Hitler.
Look at the kids coming out of schools today graduating with 7th grade reading levels.
—Parents or Private Schools can function independently.
—And, BTW-I can introduce you to a Home-Schooled Ivy League University graduate and he is NOT awkward.
—That socially awkwardness 💩 is a figment of yours and media’s mind 🧠 . And, the network of Teachers are better educated than CRT Public Schools Communists.
I was against it for a long time. But if I lived in the US and had kids, I would homeschool them because of school shootings, LGBT indoctrination, stupid teachers (those who post absolute garbage on tiktok, they should not be allowed to be near kids), I just saw a post on banned books in school libraries, like the Lord of Flies, or 1984 or Fahrenheit 451.
I would want my kid to develop critical thinking skills too and it seems like it wouldn't happen in that country.
Luckily I live in Europe.
Yes, agree with the socializing side, although that could be resolved, unless that family lives in a farm far away from everything
Given the degree of indoctrination being pushed at public schools, it's hard to condemn homeschoolers for wanting to avoid it, even if it IS only to replace it with something else. The logical alternative would be to teach kids to think critically, but few do- few desire to, and they're mostly homeschoolers.
Society doesn't WANT people questioning its rules and traditions. It never has- look at Socrates. It didn't go over well when I was a kid in school, and that was before the rampant politicization of the modern day. You'd need to do a serious overhaul to fix all the problems in the system, and no one who's able is willing to; letting people pull their kids out and do it themselves is the best interim option.
And it's not like you can just tell them ANYTHING; different states have different standards, but you do generally have to stick to a curriculum.
I think SCHOOLS should change and start teaching our kids what the fuck they're SUPPOSED to be teaching and a few other things kids will need in life that they DON''T already teach!! Then, we wouldn't HAVE to home school them!! How stupid is that, you pay school taxes and then you have to teach them yourself!!
That's like paying someone to go shopping for you and they either come back with nothing at all or all the wrong shit you didn't want!
There's a reason your history teacher doesn't teach physics, he knows nothing about it. So why do parents, who probably have no qualifications think they're qualified to teach every subject.
I say the kids should be evaluated on a regular basis and if they're not at an acceptable level the parents prosecuted.
Well of course children will be indoctrinated. That isn't avoidable during socialization either way. But do you think that we should raise a bunch of zombies who all think the same by means of the standardized education system or do you think it's better to have a more variety and more individualism.
Yeah depending on what family you grow up in, home schooling may be suboptimal. But in other families, public schooling is actually suboptimal. And i don't think anyone should have the right to make this judgement call. Cause after all evolution will eventually do it's work anyway and every time humans interfered with this, some fucked up shit happened.
Yep, that whiteboard pretty much sums it up, people wanting to maintain outdated and easily disproven methods of thinking because they don't like the idea that their kids might have an original thought that goes against their personally held beliefs.
There was a guy who went to military school on our street. He never played with anyone on the street because he never got to know them in public school. Home schooled kids don't get that social aspect of public socialization in a home school. A lot of them go to public high school though and they are usually the shy and quiet ones who have no friends.
I ended up finishing school at home (last three years) because I was shy and awkward already, and it kept getting me bullied and I wasn’t learning anything. I don’t know if I was “indoctrinated” or not, I’ve become an adult who refuses to align with one political group because I prefer to think for myself.
On the other hand, my best friend and his siblings were also homeschooled and they’re all very outgoing people, three of whom are small-business owners.
School is about indoctrinating kids also. A lot of teachers today are complete weirdos.
Many teachers are terrible, and the education system has been dumbed down. Homeschool kids get better grades.
As for socialisation, that depends on what the parents do. Some idiots might keep their kids indoors all day with little interaction, but that's not what home-schooling is. Many of them will meet other home-ed families regularly so that their kids have friends, as well as take them to do other activities.
Many of my nephews and nieces were homeschooled.
Socially awkward is bs. It just is.
We homeschooled for a few years because my kid had a congenital condition that made school difficult.
Kids are smarter on average.
Are more socially skilled and confident.
Educated is what parents give them.
Government mandates in schools is the poison of indoctrination.
They've all been to college (graduates) paid for by themselves. Not one has a student loan.
My oldest graduated highschool early and in college now at 16.
Not attacking you. I just think you're regurgitating propaganda written by enemies of parents trying to give their kids their best shot.
Homeschooling smokes public education every day of the week.
Dude the same could be said for public schools pushing a leftist agenda.. It's the same thing. Personally I think politics of any kind should not be permitted in schools. Oh and not all home schooling is like your image, which is a troll image anyway. Home schooling still has to follow some kind of state approved curriculum.. Your image in the question and the question it's self is "how to tell me you don't know shit about home schooling without telling me you don't know shit about home schooling.
First, it's going to vary a lot and depend on the parents. Similar to how a lot of inner-city schools, only a fraction of the kids graduate with an acceptable literacy, or how other schools might have a great literacy rate, and how that will be drastically different from a private school. After all, even the Obamas didn't send their kids to a public school.
Second, the social skills of the kids will also vary based a lot based on the parents. The kids might be completely fine with adults and awkward around kids their own age who have a very different culture or manner of behavior. Or the kids might have other social outlets that socialized them fine. By definition, the awkward homeschool kids you meet will stick out drastically by nature, same as "well that kid went to a bad school in inner city Atlanta and can barely read" would make you think public schools cannot teach reading and writing.
If you are so for human rights like you say you are you would respect the culture/structure of others. People raise their kids according to their respective culture, if you so much support human rights you would respect the rights of people who chooses to parent their in D's as theyseem fit. It is their in D's not yours
Sadly the average parent isn't able to teach their kid. I work as a tutor and see first hand how much of for example basic middleschool math parents can't even help their own children with. And they're expected to teach all subjects? Clearly not going to work.
I was homeschooled until my Sr year of high school, I think that parents should have the choice to do it but I think that it should be more regulated, and that parents who do decide to homeschool should have to become certified to do so.
Most Helpful Opinions