Home-schooling

[Kendo_Bunny]

I started and finished in home school. Elementary school was private, late middle and early high school was public, so I've done all of the big three. Home school worked the best for me.

The most important part of home schooling is having parents who are involved. When my parents started us in home school, we had a certain amount of time set aside for study, a home school co-op, a church group, and our parents gave us a choice of any one activity we wanted to sign up for (I chose dance, my sister chose soccer). We had a baby sitter who ran a charm school for her day job, so we got a charm school crash course on Saturdays. We also would visit our elderly aunt once a week, and be taken to a local place of historical interest at least once a month. Because our parents were so involved, we got a lot of compliments. Our socialization was much broader than the average kindergartner/preschooler, as we were interacting with people who were a variety of ages, rather than spending all our time with just people who were within a year of our own age. Our education was also on the fast track, because between our parents there were one PhD and three Masters degrees.

[mbbored]

Any parent can teach their child better than a school teacher.

I find this statement to be shockingly condescending and very offensive to those who have chosen to dedicate their lives to teaching.  One wouldn't say this about their children's paediatrician or spiritual leader in such a blanket, flat-out statement of fact; why do teachers earn this disrespect?

edited to fix quote

I'm a trained teacher and have many teacher friends.  I support teachers 100%.  I didn't mean to disrespect teachers but more to give confidence to parents.  Parents are their children's first teachers.  And yes, I do think parents are the best teachers for their children.  As such, parents can also recognize when they need to go outside the home for instruction.  (ie: piano lessons for my son)

I would agree that parents are in the best position to be teachers for their children and most are the best teacher they come across, but not all parents can recognize their own limitations. My cousin at 20 can barely read a menu because her parents failed to recognize their inability to teach her.

[CakeBeret]

I know a family who homeschools for religious reasons. Their son used to attend a religious school, but there were some religious and political issues and they decided to homeschool instead. I was highly skeptical--this is a high-energy, very social boy, and I was afraid that he would not do well in relative isolation--seeing other kids once or twice a week versus nearly every day. To my surprise, he is fairly thriving. His family owns some land, and he raises chickens, helps with livestock, and learns about sustainable gardening in addition to traditional subjects. He is involved with extracurriculars, and his parents guide what subjects and philosophies he learns.

Many children struggle in school because they are expected to sit still, be quiet, and work for several hours of the day, then come home to sit still, be quiet, and work some more. Even in elementary school, kids are at school for 7-8 hours a day and may come home with another 2-3 hours of work. Additionally, some kids just need a different pace, teaching style, or educational philosophy.

I think that a homeschooling environment can be either highly enriching, or truly poor, depending on how it is structured and administered. I think that, when used properly, it is a tool that can enhance your child's learning experience and put them on the pathway to success.

I personally would probably never homeschool my child. I have neither the patience nor the temperament for it. However, I will seek a school for my son that has small classes (5-10 students) and uses focused learning in smaller doses interspersed with physical exercise, reading time, free play, and so on. As the child progresses, their focused learning blocks gradually increase, but they still get time for reading and exercise. I think that kids need plenty of physical activity and that a lot of misbehavior results from too much pent-up energy with no outlet.

[Piratelvr1121]

I wasn't home schooled at all but when it came to having to study and do homework in subjects I struggled in, it was a nightmare. My hardest subjects were my father's best (science and math) and because he was so good at them he decided that I didn't need any tutors in that area. 

Problem was he was one of those people who is very bright but because he gets it and it's so easy to him, it should be easy for everyone else and he constantly accused me of being lazy or stubbornly not trying to understand it.  And he got greatly offended when anyone suggested me seeing a tutor because dang it, he was enough to teach me and if he couldn't get me to understand it, no one could!! 

I think it's for that very reason I just have no desire to take on the task of home schooling. I know my limits and honestly feel my children would learn some subjects better from someone else than from me.  Even the subjects I am good at, I'm not terribly good at explaining things to others so I think someone trained to teach children certain concepts are better equipped to 'splain it to them than I am.

[Roe]

Any parent can teach their child better than a school teacher.

I find this statement to be shockingly condescending and very offensive to those who have chosen to dedicate their lives to teaching.  One wouldn't say this about their children's paediatrician or spiritual leader in such a blanket, flat-out statement of fact; why do teachers earn this disrespect?

edited to fix quote

I'm a trained teacher and have many teacher friends.  I support teachers 100%.  I didn't mean to disrespect teachers but more to give confidence to parents.  Parents are their children's first teachers.  And yes, I do think parents are the best teachers for their children.  As such, parents can also recognize when they need to go outside the home for instruction.  (ie: piano lessons for my son)

I would agree that parents are in the best position to be teachers for their children and most are the best teacher they come across, but not all parents can recognize their own limitations. My cousin at 20 can barely read a menu because her parents failed to recognize their inability to teach her.

Yes, I suppose there are parents like that out there.  So instead of saying all parents are the best teachers, I'll say 'most' parents are the best teachers for their children. 

I've never met a lazy, uneducated homeschooling parent but I'm sure they do exist.  It's been my experience that those types of parents aren't the norm.  (not by a long shot!) 

Plus, on the other side of the coin, my DH is a very brillant individual but he has a brother and sister who can barely read and they all attended the same schools.  Go figure. 

I think it's a parental judgement call.  Plus, I have one child in homeschool and another one in public school so I see both sides of the issue. (my middleson truly enjoys his school and I know he's getting a first rate education)  I also know that a public school environment would not be the best place for my youngest. 

As far as knowing your limits, that's very important. 

I have a great support system of other moms in the area and it really helps discussing certain issues with them.  I know myself enough to realize that once my kiddo gets to a certain point in math, I will need to bring in a tutor.  It's not about the concepts, it's about trying to explain those concepts.  Knowing something is quite different than teaching the subject. 

Plus, if a parent is struggling day in and day out, they will look for other avenues to "fix" the issue and usually that involves tutoring.  Homeschooling parents are the most resourceful parents I've ever met.

[mmswm]

I wasn't home schooled at all but when it came to having to study and do homework in subjects I struggled in, it was a nightmare. My hardest subjects were my father's best (science and math) and because he was so good at them he decided that I didn't need any tutors in that area. 

Problem was he was one of those people who is very bright but because he gets it and it's so easy to him, it should be easy for everyone else and he constantly accused me of being lazy or stubbornly not trying to understand it.  And he got greatly offended when anyone suggested me seeing a tutor because dang it, he was enough to teach me and if he couldn't get me to understand it, no one could!! 

I think it's for that very reason I just have no desire to take on the task of home schooling. I know my limits and honestly feel my children would learn some subjects better from someone else than from me.  Even the subjects I am good at, I'm not terribly good at explaining things to others so I think someone trained to teach children certain concepts are better equipped to 'splain it to them than I am.

I think that's so sad.  My father is sort of like your father, except that he recognizes that he's not a very good teacher for students who struggle.  Give him a student who's talented in his areas of expertise, and he's a great teacher, but give him a student who struggles and he knows he can't handle it, so he doesn't.  I can't tell you how many hours we spent on the phone when I lived in ND and he needed help working with my little brother and sister, who both struggle with math.

On the other hand (and pardon my bragging), I'm a dingdangity good teacher.  I taught in an inner city school for 10 years and had an amount of success that none of my colleagues could even touch.  I have a gift for breaking down math (and many science) topics in a way that just make sense.  I'm reasonable with English and History, but I lose my patience quickly when students start having trouble.  I know that it's not an insult to me for me to give those students to somebody else.  My father showed me, through his own actions, that it's okay to not be perfect at everything, or even most things, and to get help when it's needed.

[Roe]

I wasn't home schooled at all but when it came to having to study and do homework in subjects I struggled in, it was a nightmare. My hardest subjects were my father's best (science and math) and because he was so good at them he decided that I didn't need any tutors in that area. 

Problem was he was one of those people who is very bright but because he gets it and it's so easy to him, it should be easy for everyone else and he constantly accused me of being lazy or stubbornly not trying to understand it.  And he got greatly offended when anyone suggested me seeing a tutor because dang it, he was enough to teach me and if he couldn't get me to understand it, no one could!! 

I think it's for that very reason I just have no desire to take on the task of home schooling. I know my limits and honestly feel my children would learn some subjects better from someone else than from me.  Even the subjects I am good at, I'm not terribly good at explaining things to others so I think someone trained to teach children certain concepts are better equipped to 'splain it to them than I am.

It's too bad you got such a horrible image of h'schooling based on your experience.  However, I doubt that most h'schooling parents would never act the way you describe your dad.  (btw, my dad was very similar!)  That's not to say that homeschooling parents don't get upset or yell.

If anything, hschooling parents realize that yelling and being impatient isn't going to get you anywhere and if that's the way you run a h'school, your kiddo will beg for regular school every day!  I know I would. 

[Piratelvr1121]

I wasn't home schooled, that was just my experiences with homework and studying after school, and I'm not knocking homeschooling, I'm just saying I don't think it would be a good fit for our family is all.   There have been times I considered it, but decided they'd be better off in a school setting. 

As it is, when it comes to homework, I help them as much as I can with it and where math and science is concerned, if I'm stumped on a concept or can't remember how it worked, I tell them to ask their father when he gets home.  DH is one who is good at both those subjects but he's also patient and good at explaining tough concepts. 

I think the crucial part is if the parent, whether they're homeschooling or sending their child to school, is able to put their own ego aside and get help for their child from an outside source.  Ie getting a tutor for the child because sometimes a fresh approach or different teaching method might make it "click".  Or for a homeschooling parent, asking a friend or relative who is proficient at a subject teach it when they have the time. 

[MommyPenguin]

One of the things that was also important to me, as a homeschool teacher, was that we could do year-round school.  I've read a number of things about how much kids lose from taking summers off, and I didn't want that for my kids.  I don't know of any year-round schools, though.  We do miss school here and there and take days off when we need to get the house clean, or when we move and need to pack/unpack.  But those tend to be for short periods, and we often do *partial* schooling during that time (we might get some math, handwriting, reading, science, and geography done, but skip Chinese, spelling, and our extra math).  And since we don't usually take off for holidays like President's Day, we end up getting a lot more days in the school year, which I think helps the kids with consistency.  They don't forget as much, and they also maintain good habits about being able to sit and get work done when they need to, even work they don't like (my oldest is not a math fan, but as long as she's doing math every day without fail, she mostly accepts it without whining too much--which is good, because math is our top priority now that she's a solid reader).

I can't even imagine how bored my oldest, particularly, would be at school.  She'd be in the second half of kindergarten and learning the basics of reading those basic little first reader books.  It turns out that reading is her greatest strength, and she's reading on a solid third grade level.  She finished the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the other day.  And yet she needs a bit of extra help working through math problems and understanding the reasoning behind them.  I don't think she's exactly behind in math, but I could easily see her falling behind if she was being taught along with 20 other kids.

[mmswm]

I also do what we call "all day school".  If a teachable moment happens, I don't pass up on it just because it's 8pm, or a Saturday or some other non-traditional school time.

[LilacGirl1983]

I think home schooling is one of those things that works for some not for others...Some parents would do great at it some not so much..Its a parenting decision. I personally would not homeschool. I know I don't have the patience..and you can give a lot of info to the kids and have them learn a lot afters school with things that tie in what they learn so if they need more challenge you can work on what the school is teaching and giv them harder stuff...and a lot of schools now a days have gifted or advance classes for those who need the challenge. A lot of schools also let students go to college early and help pay for it! For more challenge...as for the sitting aspect if you look at a lot of jobs you are required to sit still for long periods of time..and at home you can let your chld go outside and play for 1/2 hour before doing homework or doing it after supper..so they can get their wiggles out

[Lynn2000]

Fascinating thread. I know two girls about my age who were homeschooled (I went to traditional public school; many of my relatives are teachers). One, it was done for religious reasons. The other, her mom was not religious but thought the public school wasn't good enough for her children. It wasn't unsafe or anything, but it was a small school in a small town, no AP classes or anything like that. Both girls ended up attending the mainstream high school because their parents couldn't teach them properly at that level--I specifically remember something about not being able to fulfill the science lab requirements at home (this was 15 years ago or so, there are probably a lot more resources available now).

For both of them it was a difficult transition to high school. I don't think either one had been socialized well, especially not with kids who were different than they were. The secular one in particular was quite bright and consequently was sent to high school early and was several years younger than her classmates, which didn't help. We became good friends and she told me that her mother never kept her and her younger sister on a schedule, they just did whatever they wanted all day long, so she had to teach herself study habits, discipline, etc..

I haven't heard from the religious one in a while. I know she had a lot of trouble in college and went to at least three different universities, trying to find a place where she fit in. She ended up living in a state hundreds of miles away from her parents and rarely contacted them; she even got married secretly and didn't tell them for a while. The secular one and I were roommates in college and once she got adjusted to school you wouldn't have known she started out differently, except for being quite a bit younger than her peers. But she had a rough adjustment.

The other homeschooling family I know of is my cousin, who has chosen to homeschool her two elementary-age kids. I'm not really sure why; they are religious but they were attending a religious private school for a while, where their mother also worked as a teacher. At any rate, I have confidence in them because their mother has experience teaching, and they go on all kinds of field trips, get together with other kids for baking and crafts, etc.. They are probably the most well-mannered children I know.

My mother was a social worker for 30+ years and has a dislike of homeschooling because it was used as an isolation technique by many of the abusive parents she encountered. Obviously she was getting a biased sample there!

I have always been fascinated by schooling and curriculums and "playing school" and so forth, which is probably why I'm interested in homeschooling approaches and resources. I doubt I'd have the patience and discipline to teach a child myself, though. I think my parents did a good job of encouraging me to learn and excel, and I feel I've done well despite coming from a small school with few resources. So I think it really depends on the child's personality and needs, and whether the parent is willing to put the right kind of work and attitude into it.

[hobish]

To partially quoe myself...

My sister was in home school for a while. It was so awful she went behind my parents back and took her GED at 16, then enrolled right in college. The program was terrible. There was so much misinformation it was near unbelievable. Her science book may as well have been one sentence, "...because God made it that way." History was a complete rewrite.

I wish i knew what the program was. It was a situation where once or twice a month they would meet up with other kids in the area for field trips or fun activities. I met a bunch of them and it was like something from South Park. Not only were they ill-educated they really had no idea how to behave -- more than one of them had no problem telling you that you would be going to hell if you didn't strictly follow/believe the way they did  - and their parents were fine with that. I never met a bunch of creepier kids.

I know this is going to be an unpopular sentiment; but it is my personal experience. I am sure there are normal homeschooled kids out there who grow up to be perfectly capable well rounded adults, there has to be; i just haven't met any of them.

[Jones]

Hobish , I have to hope that your sister and I were in the same area . I met a group like that and hate to think there might be more than one.
ETA  I'm not talking about my "home" group from previous posts but a very zealous group located about 3 hours away that I dealt with a few times in an attempt to expand my horizons.

[heronlady]

For my schooling, I did a combination of homeschooling, unschooling, and public schooling during Kindergarten-12th grade.

Kindergarten - Homeschooled (taught to read and do basic mathematics)
1st-4th - Public schooling (3 different schools, we moved around a lot due to divorce and my mom not getting any support from my father).
5th grade - Unschooled/home schooled - My mom had set goals we needed to accomplish but it was up to us on how to get there. There were some required reading and math things but I learned most of my vocabulary and reading skills from books and video games.
6th grade - Half public school, pulled out due to bullying and finished the rest doing a combination of home schooling and unschooling.
7th grade - Unschooled, with set goals again. Certain math learning requirements, and I was reading at a college level at this point so all of my reading/writing requirements were dropped. Learned most of vocabulary and social interaction skills from online video games.
8th grade - public schooled for half, got pulled out due to depression hitting an all time low, finished through a school-appointed tutor. At this point I was attending a youth group and volunteering with kindergarten students so I suppose that's where I learned more social interaction skills. Still played online video games.
9th grade - Unschooled for half, second half I was public schooled, depression became an issue again and I missed maybe 1/2 of my classes. Aced all my final exams that year, online video games provided a lot of my physics and math and logic education.
10th grade - Public schooling, but missed 3/4 of classes due to depression issues. They made a deal with me that if I passed all my exams for that year I'd be exempt for the rest of my classes. I aced them all, except for the environmental science portion of my biology class, so I finished that up with a small essay.
1 month of 11th grade - Public school, same as 10th grade, got pulled out real quickly.
11th-12th grade - charter school. At this point I had almost all the required classes I needed to graduate, I just had to fill in credit requirements so I took some economics and history classes and language classes. I had math and science completed in 11th grade, 12th grade I failed because I didn't do any of the work because it was boring. I retook and passed.

I am in my 2nd year of university now, and am pretty much one of the only ones in my year that is writing and reasoning at an above average level. My social interaction levels are also above average. My school is a pass/fail system with emphasis on learning and core abilities - there are 4 levels and you need to pass them twice in order to graduate (along with passing all of your required courses for your major) and I have half of them done already, so I would say that homeschooling and unschooling have had no negative effect on my education.

I didn't actually learn all that much in public high school, I didn't go more than half of the time and I passed the final tests with As easily (I never studied. Such a good, disciplined student ). I think maybe I am abnormal, though.

I always learned better through self-learning and exploration. I refused to learn the times table in 4th grade because I thought it was dumb (stubbornness runs in the family!).

I think it helped that my mom actively engaged us (I have siblings, though not all of them followed the same path as I did) in our learnings and welcomed deep, philosophical conversations all throughout my education. She also taught all of us to read before 1st grade and I picked up on the basic mathematics really easily in kindergarten.

Her required reading and mathematics competency were higher than what was required of people in my same age group, so I feel like that is why I was so bored in high school. The online games I played really helped too. I learned most of what I know about economics, advanced mathematics, logic, physics, reading and writing, etc. from online video games (Everquest and World of Warcraft) and I also had a lot of social interaction on those games, from people of all age groups and all over the world. Some of my best friends today are people I've met online, and I've visited one of them (I was 18, I don't think my mom would've let me go if I wasn't already an adult).

I don't think I would recommend this for anyone, but it really worked for me. I really appreciate my mom's flexibility in allowing me to learn the way I learn best but she also imposed some requirements (like reading the Federalist Papers, and doing religious education, and math ability requirements, and science reasoning and logic).

The only thing I regret is spending so much time in public school in high school, because it really damaged me emotionally at the time. At the same time, I liked being in public school for the foreign language learning aspect. It's difficult to self-study. The charter school in 11th-12th grade allowed me to do 3rd year French, 2 years of Japanese, and 2 years of German, though, so that was nice.

Conversely, my brother (who has Asperger's) benefitted from public high school in many ways and in many ways it was more damaging to him than it was to me. The bullying was worse for him (I wasn't bullied past 6th grade, really) but he was able to be part of the football team which gave him a sense of camaraderie and belonging, and he worked with a speech therapist that helped him with social interaction (not speech, he was fine with that) who ended up being a huge advocate for him in school when the higher ups tried to get around the accommodations required in the IEP.

My sister would have benefitted from more homeschooling/unschooling - she was bullied heavily throughout school. She is an amazing and productive woman today, but that is mostly due to therapy, my mom's opennness, and attending the university I am attending (small, welcoming, accommodating, friendly. It's a call-professors-by-their-first-name type of atmosphere).

Um, so, I guess the point of this is that public school is perfect for some kids, but detrimental to others, and it's a shame that there aren't more options out there because kids really do all learn differently and need different things from their education. The charter school I went to in 11th-12th grade nearly lost funding because of some teacher's union thing. The atmosphere was definitely unfriendly in regards to homeschooling and charter schools.