Homeschooling
A recent ruling from a California Appeals Court ruled parents that are homeschooling without teachers credentials are illegal under the law.
I don’t disagree.
My problems with homeschooling:
How do kids learn social interaction?
How can a home-school parent/teacher replicate the multiple personalities and experiences that different teachers bring to the table?
How does a home-schooled child ever learn to recognize an adult other than his or her parent as an authority figure; one to be respected and obeyed?
What becomes of band/drama/sports and other extra curricular activities?
Does the child present their special project and related public speech to their family over the dinner table?
School pride? Do you cheer your vinyl sided house?
What happens when the kid hits High School? If you are a true home-schooler that thinks you can do better than any public or private school can do, I would assume that he/she would continue to be home-schooled in those years too. No locker. No backpack. No prom. No sports. No teacher. No principal.
And what happens when that high schooler, like most high schoolers, thinks that their parent is an idiot. How do you teach them then?
Even if you despise structured learning, can you teach your child Spanish, Chinese, & German, let alone Algebra, Chemistry, World History & Literature? How do they learn to cope in society when they’ve been isolated all their life? How do they learn to function in a work place where the day is strictly regimented?
In my opinion, homeschooling is a selfish act by parents thinking they are doing right for their kids. In reality, they are doing nothing but harm by robbing them of vital childhood experiences. They are selfishly, and perhaps egotistically, placing themselves on a pedestal above hard working educators.
You may all crucify me now…
March 8th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Completley agree with you 100%.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I’m glad you didn’t actually take the time to educate yourself on homeschooling before this rant or anything. I mean that would be trying to educate yourself, and we all know that if there isn’t a teacher standing in front of you reading from a book there’s just no way your could learn anything. Thanks for proving that point!
March 8th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
While I think it is possible to home school successfully, I have yet to see a success story. I know a handful of young adults who have been home schooled throughout their and they all are having great difficulties getting on in life. None of them have been successful in college. Their experiences in college have been nearly traumatic. They have never learned to how to learn in a formal structured environment. When confronted with it, they fail.
Do these young adults feel like they missed out? Yes and no. They certainly enjoyed the more focused home life, it touches on powerful emotions. Their frustrations academically and professionally however undermine that experience greatly.
From my observations, those who have home schooled have done it for all the wrong reasons. Religion and religious instruction has been central to their reasoning for taking that path. The damage done has been great with the convictions of those young adults left in doubt.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I too noticed you did not take the time to educate yourself on home schooling.
My high school graduated a young black man several years before me. He could not read until my grandpa, who was not an educator, just a religious person, took the time to home school him in his late teens.. The guy now gives speeches in front of thousands of people.
Me, I still cannot spell even though graduating with a 4.0. Oh yea, also unable to read and comprehend. So some years later teaching myself, a whole new world opened to me.
College was not much better than my High School experience. So early on opting for an external degree, the same arguments were put forth about my education track.
Now as an adjunct educator at a local community college and occasional volunteer educator of some of the home schooled in my area, although a limited perspective, I would put any of the home schooled against any of the worldly wise students at the college.
Even with advanced courses like public speaking, my 14 year olds can speak circles around many adults.
This is not saying home schooling is right or wrong. The reasons many choose it are very legitimate. Looking at it from that larger context and based on the limited outcomes I have seen, it is not bad or great. It is just an option.
As to the social adjustment, well schools have not done much better considering the social and emotional disasters that we hear of in the news.
Realistically both systems have flaws.
March 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Realistically, wouldn’t a combination of both be better? In my family, we went to public school, and yet our parents spent time at home teaching us other fundamentals, and we sat around the dinner table each night discussing what we did that day. We received assistance with our homework when necessary and traveled the US extensively learning outside the classroom. Not saying anyone in my family is perfect, but the combination of public schooling AND home teaching was great, in my opinion. The parents did not just let learning happen in school, but in every aspect out of school as well. What extracurricular was not offered at school, we could take outside of that environment if we chose. I think the problem is when parents either leave it all to schools or none to schools.
March 9th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
GA, I couldn’t agree with you more. Infact, I thought that was the point of parenting. Maybe it doesn’t happen in every household, but formal schooling is only part of the overall education of your child.
Jonathan, thanks for reasonably explaining the other side as you see it. I am interested to hear why people choose to home school and what advantages and disadvantages they have found in doing so.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Grandma has it 100% correct. Any parent who expects schools to educate 100% of students in 100% of every subject 100% of the time will be disappointed. My experience as an educator has demonstrated the many parents expect just that scenario. Parents who send their children to “formal” school shouldn’t expect to abdicate all education to the school. And a very large part of formal education (i.e. in a school setting) is not at all what teachers and parents want it to be but what someone in Springfield or Washington, D.C. says it should be. And, well, I know this is very un p.c., but most of the home schooled kids I’ve met are, socially, poorly adjusted and have large gaps in their learning.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I don’t think you can make a blanket statement about home schooling, saying it’s always good or always bad. I certainly know people who have been home schgooled who are better off and others who really lag behind socially. Just because someone home schools at the beginning doesn’t mean the children have to be home schooled throughout high school.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Long time listener, first time caller. Let me help.
- How do kids learn social interaction?
+ By interacting with other children, their frieinds, people in the community.
- How can a home-school parent/teacher replicate the multiple personalities and experiences that different teachers bring to the table?
+ By visiting libraries, museums, participating in park district activities, and playing with other children in the neighborhood.
- How does a home-schooled child ever learn to recognize an adult other than his or her parent as an authority figure; one to be respected and obeyed?
+ Yes. In fact, they will respect adults far more readily than children going to public schools, where there classmates are taught to think ill of teachers and do what you can to get around the rules. (If you think that public school children have some sort of reverence for their teachers, you should talk to more of them).
- What becomes of band/drama/sports and other extra curricular activities?
+ Luckily there is a Peoria Park District that offers many of those opportunities. There are other homeschoolers who like sports as well.
- Does the child present their special project and related public speech to their family over the dinner table?
+ They can and often do. My wife was homeschooled (I was not) and as an example had to recite a poem that she memorized every week.
- School pride? Do you cheer your vinyl sided house?
+ What priority to you give school pride? Do you still get a great sense of accomplishment when your grade school wins a tournament? Is it greater than the feeling you get when Peoria Chiefs win a game?
- What happens when the kid hits High School? If you are a true home-schooler that thinks you can do better than any public or private school can do, I would assume that he/she would continue to be home-schooled in those years too. No locker. No backpack. No prom. No sports. No teacher. No principal.
+ If create a false dichotomy. The parents only want the freedom to teach in the manner that is best for their kids. I have known parents who choose homeschooling for some but not all of their children.
- And what happens when that high schooler, like most high schoolers, thinks that their parent is an idiot. How do you teach them then?
+ Do you think the child would think their high school teachers are brilliant and noble individuals worthy of their undying affection. Will they learn if they don’t?
- Even if you despise structured learning, can you teach your child Spanish, Chinese, & German, let alone Algebra, Chemistry, World History & Literature?
+ Not all homeschoolers despise structured learning. Some love it enough to make sure that they actually focus on the learning part. As far as learning Spanish, Chinese, and German (their teaching this at Manual now?) Algebra, Chemistry, Literature and History – there are many books on these subjects not owned by district 150.
- How do they learn to cope in society when they’ve been isolated all their life?
+ How many school shootings do their need to be before people realize that many school children are already isolated. But again, there are places to meet people besides school – nursing homes, charities, park district events, neighborhoods. They might even get to know people who aren’t the same age.
- How do they learn to function in a work place where the day is strictly regimented?
+ Is this the most difficult skill to learn? Where are they going to work – prison labor camp?
Peoria Illinois, I answered your questions because I think you have a very skewed idea of what life could be like for a child without school. But if you return to the California issue, the question is are parents responsible for their kids education. I think that it is quite plain that parents have the right and duty to make sure their children are educated – not the state. The state of California is saying now that if we don’t approve of what your kids are learning, we will make sure they are removed from your place until they educated as we see fit. Is this a free society?
March 9th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
PI —
First of all, parents have the right and responsibility to raise and educate their children as they see fit, without interference from the state. (There are compulsory school attendance laws, but the point of them is to ensure that parents make sure their children are educated, not to prescribe the method of education.) There’s certainly no compelling state interest in ensuring that children experience school pride or attend a school prom.
As for socialization, school is not the only point of socialization for children. Children socialize in any number of ways — through play dates, church attendance, parks, playgrounds, neighborhood get-togethers, scouting, family get-togethers, etc., etc.
Children also recognize other adults as authority figures whenever they stay with a babysitter, grandparent, daycare provider, piano teacher, Sunday School teacher, the parent of one of their friends when playing at their house, etc., etc.
Furthermore, many homeschoolers network and collaborate with each other to provide sports and music activities, field trips, etc. (In Peoria, one such organization with a religious affiliation is called APACHE, short for Asociation of Peoria Area Christian Home Educators.) Specialized training can provided by private tutor, or by arrangement with other homeschoolers (a parent with expertise in math can teach algebra and more advanced topics to his/her own child and another homeschooled child, and the parent of the other child can teach another subject in which he or she has expertise, like English or foreign language). Or, children may be homeschooled in lower grades, then sent to a public or private school for upper grades. There are all kinds of options available, and they are done, because I know several families who homeschool.
Are there examples of homeschooled children who didn’t get such a hot education? Yep. Are there examples of children who attended public school who didn’t get such a hot education? Beyond any doubt. You’ve looked at the potential pitfalls of home education, but turned a blind eye to the pitfalls of public education. Why not apply the same standard of scrutiny to both forms of schooling?
For example, public schooling is not without its socialization failures. One needn’t look any further than Columbine or other school shootings in recent years. Also, not all socialization is good — especially when kids socialize by joining gangs, taking drugs, abusing alcohol, bullying others, and/or other dangerous behaviors. Should we thus discard public schooling completely because it isn’t perfect, the way you’ve done with homeschooling?
No education system is perfect. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and they can all be good or bad depending on the people who are administering them and the choices of the students themselves. But castigating home schooling because of a few examples of kids who, in your estimation, didn’t turn out so well (or a hypothesis that they won’t turn out as well as they would in public or parochial schools), is not justification for calling all homeschooling parents selfish, egotistical, and harmful to their children.
March 10th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I obviously don’t have kids, so take my thoughts for what they’re worth, but I did go to a Tier-1 college with plenty of successful home schooled or partially home-schooled students.
–How do kids learn social interaction?
As others have noted, by socially interacting! You’re assuming that social interaction in school is a privileged form of social interaction for children; I’m not sure that’s true, or that it should be true. For millennia children’s primary form of interaction was in a multigenerational community and family; I actually find it rather ODD for children’s social interaction to be almost entirely limited to their age cohort, and I see a lot of children who interact very well with adults and older children, and with younger children, struggle socially in single-age cohort. They’re labeled awkward, socially slow, etc.., but are we maybe just limiting their interaction to an artificial community that fails to provide many of the benefits that a more natural community can provide?
On the flip side, I think home schooling is clearly inappropriate for parents who are unable to provide adequate socialization opportunities for their child (and I know a few like this).
–What becomes of band/drama/sports and other extra curricular activities?
Many home schooling families seek these through community groups, churches, 4H, or even public school districts, which may make their extracurrics available to homeschoolers. There are also (as others noted) homeschooling groups.
–School pride? Do you cheer your vinyl sided house?
What purpose does school pride serve? You’re assuming that it is in some way valuable or important; is it? It’s not as common in other countries, and they don’t seem to suffer for it.
–What happens when the kid hits High School? … And what happens when that high schooler, like most high schoolers, thinks that their parent is an idiot. How do you teach them then?
Some parents send their kids to school at high school age (for a variety of reasons). But observationally, home schooled kids often go through less of the “teenaged rebellion” stage, possibly because they’re not set into an artificial environment where individuality may be supressed — or one where rebellion commands peer respect.
–Even if you despise structured learning, can you teach your child Spanish, Chinese, & German, let alone Algebra, Chemistry, World History & Literature?
Not all home-schoolers “despise” structured learning (besides, you can always go Montessori if you despise structured learning but want to use a traditional school — do you have the same problem with Montessori?).
–How do they learn to function in a work place where the day is strictly regimented?
Why SHOULD they learn to function in a workplace where the day is strictly regimented? The strict regimentation of the school day is partly a product of training children for blue-collar jobs where punctuality, attendance, and ability to follow orders are paramount virtues. But if a child is going to function in a professional job with a lot of self-direction, it would seem that (if children must be regimented to learn regimentation) traditional school regimentation is entirely the wrong kind of training for that sort of work and would result in an inability to adequately self-manage or self-direct.
–They are selfishly, and perhaps egotistically, placing themselves on a pedestal above hard working educators.
I think what most of these parents are doing is trying to provide the best possible education for their child, and many children suffer in the traditional school system. I know more and more parents who are home schooling gifted children because their districts can’t (or won’t) provide adequate education for their children’s needs. My aunt homeschools my autistic cousin because her district won’t provide for HIS special needs education. I know one child being home schooled whose parents were told that he was too boisterous, and if they didn’t start him on Adderall, they would put him with the emotionally troubled children. He was just an energetic 5-year-old, and his doctor advised against medicating a normal child, so they pulled him out.
I AM a hard-working educator.
March 11th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
PS — PI, I knew a homeschooler who said that the only parents who sent their children to school were selfish, egotistical parents who put their own needs ahead of their children and who chose to have children as lifestyle accessories and weren’t prepared to commit to loving and caring for their children. She was crazy and all (like, REALLY crazy), but there’s definitely a full-as-strong opposite opinion out there.
March 11th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
“there’s definitely a full-as-strong opposite opinion out there.” Yes, I can see that! I’m thinking I might have been a teensie bit too harsh in my comments.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:13 am
The downfall of homeschooling will be, as in everything else in this country, the wholesale abuse of the system. It is not the many genuine hardworking concerned parents that will eliminate this option, it is the few bad examples that will cause the laws to change and make it very difficult to continue this form of education. Oh, and I almost forgot the infinite greed of the teachers unions and the public school system, every empty head in a seat is money in the bank. We can see how the ISAT tests have made fools of both our students and teachers when the money became intertwined with the test results. If you think it isn’t greed that will drive the move to get the kids out of the home and into the public school system, just try and make a move to get the soda machines removed from a public school and watch the fireworks, damn their health look at the money it generates. Education is not about the kids its about the money, home schooling costs the local districts money so it will be attacked. Home schooling is as people are, some good, some bad.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
reply to posters:
I have 5 boys that have been educated at private/parochial schools– (Concordia Lutheran and Christ Lutheran on the south side of Peoria) and 4 of whom have graduated from Peoria Cental. I have one son who is a junior at PHS now. He cannot wait to get out and will graduate a semester early because of the behavior issues at PHS, which he has been subjected to even though he is in all enriched classes. If I had it to do over again I would have sent him somewhere else. When we lived in Da;llas, TX, we considered home-schooling our kids b/c the school system was so bad. It’s NOT always for religious reasons!! I am qualified 6=12 grade and would have done the same here (home school) if I had known how fast the distruct would deteriorate. There are many social/interest/activity groups available in this area for people who want to utilize them.
We live in the Uplands and are proud to do so but the D-150 schools above primary are are a HUGE problem. There is NO respect for teachers or staff and the kids KNOW IT; they get by with swearing at us, shoving and pushing us and other behaviors that NO educator should have to tolerate. WE ARE TIRED OF DEALING WITH THIS!!! When the Board starts taking seriously the Dean referrals that are sent for things like calling your teacher a m)(#U$ F#*%Uingk b38957
March 13th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
PI, you’ve probably mostly be exposed to CRAZY homeschoolers, and God knows they’re out there. I knew one (in California, and I would frankly not be shocked if she personally were the target of the laws) who basically objected to mainstream society in all forms and had some psycho-social problems. So she was busy “unschooling” her children and telling them all kinds of crazy about the evils of, well, everything. But part of her motivation was that she was too scared of interaction to leave the house pretty much ever, and didn’t want her kids to. She also didn’t/couldn’t clean her house. She’s been playing givsie-takesies with the state and her kids for years now because she can’t provide a safe and adequate home — not for monetary reasons, just because she either can’t get her shit together or won’t get treatment she needs.
On the flip side, there are several Junior Leaguers who home school, for various reasons, whom I’m sure you’re acquainted with, and I know you’ve met at least some of the kids and they’re lovely. I also get home schoolers when I teach Park District community rec classes, and they’re perfectly respectful and sociable.
I do agree with CJ, though — this is an inappropriate infringement by the government. Parents have the right to raise their children in any fashion they choose, no matter how insane, as long as it’s not actively abusive.
March 13th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I am aware of one member of the Junior League who home schools. I figured there were others, and yes, there is a person I know who home schooled for a time who had absolutely no business doing so. As someone said there are good and bad examples of anything.
As far as government infringement, I’m ok with them taking reasonable steps to ensure all children are educated and to protect them from idiotic parents.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Absolutely, we need more home-schooling. We don’t have enough social misfits, oddballs, or potential mass murderers in our society.
March 15th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
what drives a parent to home school? schools that try to fit a square kid into a round hole no matter the cost. my firstborn was one of those square kids. i seriously considered homeschooling because his teachers kept trying to tell me he was ADHD–he wasn’t and never has been. i didn’t end up doing it but i was grateful that a large network of other home schooling parents was there had i decided to go that route–and this was in california, btw.
condaleeza rice was home schooled, as was FDR. so are a great majority of national spelling bee participants. for every maladjusted kid you can point out, i can point out two who are not.
truth is, schools are getting worse and worse as the years go by. learning is continuously interrupted by bomb threats and lock downs–my teen had one or two of those at state testing time EVERY SINGLE time. i feel the kids learn less now than we did 20-30 years ago. this is just one of the many frustrations that drives parents to home school. can you blame them?
just fyi, if you want to see what other famous person was home schooled, check out this site: http://sharebradenton.homestead.com/Famous.html
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:39 am
check this out…
this is mine…