A panel discussion on the pros and cons of homeschooling

[MillCreek]

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/06/209512313/parents-on-the-pros-and-cons-of-homeschooling

Some very interesting comments regarding home schooling.

[Tallpine]

The biggest problem our girls had was after two years of public school they were bored to tears and tired of doing what they came to realize was college level work in HS. 

[Neemi]

Biggest problem I'm noticing with public schools in my area is that they're consistently getting rated as C's or less by the state. The local high school got an F. Again, I believe.

My kids aren't old enough for school yet and I'm already cringing. I'll have to read that article more in depth when the kids are down for a nap.

[geronimotwo]

my oldest wants to go back to public school this year.  my biggest problem is that our school is rated 430 out of 470 in our state.

[Levant]

The biggest problem our girls had was after two years of public school they were bored to tears and tired of doing what they came to realize was college level work in HS. 

Your girls were doing college level work in a public high school?


On the topic at hand, I'm all for homeschooling.  I think every child should be homeschooled or block schooled or friend schooled.  There should be no city, county, state, or federal school buildings in America.

[lee n. field]

Our youngest thanked us the other day for not homeschooling her.

She works with a young lady who was homeschooled.  To hear our daughter tell it, Mummy and Daddy keep her on a pretty short leash still, and she's frightfully naive.

[Jamisjockey]

My son needed it.  He's still catching up with his reading and spelling.  The school just kept trucking nevermind his spelling wasn't up to snuff.

[TechMan]

Biggest problem I'm noticing with public schools in my area is that they're consistently getting rated as C's or less by the state. The local high school got an F. Again, I believe.

My kids aren't old enough for school yet and I'm already cringing. I'll have to read that article more in depth when the kids are down for a nap.

Well here in Ohio, they changed how the schools get graded.  Some schools that were rated "A" are now rated "D" or "F" in just one year, I think not.  Something is not passing the smell test.

[BlueStarLizzard]

Our youngest thanked us the other day for not homeschooling her.

She works with a young lady who was homeschooled.  To hear our daughter tell it, Mummy and Daddy keep her on a pretty short leash still, and she's frightfully naive.

I ran into similal examples. One in particular was involved in 4H and I later met him at community college. His education was great, but he spent most of his early adulthood having to check himself and learn social skills that most everyone else learns in school. When I knew him as a preteen he was a horrid little monster and, though he had improved greatly by the time I ran into him again, it was due to his own realization that he had no people skills and had been a spoiled rotten brat that made him tolerbal. Well, that and he was actually trying to turn it around. He had reached the point of being able to have one on one discussions, but was still pretty befuddled by group converstions and tended to pontificate for a bit before realizing he was being an ass and then he'd shut down.

Although, I think a lot of the home schooling related issues are caused by parents who isolate, control and/or spoil the hell out of their precious little spawns then the homeschool itself. Parents who refrain from such can minimize the damage.

I seriously think it was his attendance in 4H activitys that was his saving grace. It's hard to retain the "I'm the precious little angle and everyone loves me and I can do whatever I want" attitude when everyone hates you and you can't make friends.

[T.O.M.]

There are three kinds of homeschooling, in my experience....
1.  Those who do a good job of actually educating the kids, academically and socially.
2.  Those who want to isolate their kids from all the badness in the world, so they don't let them out of the house, and create social misfits along the way.
3.  Those who "homschool" to keep themselves out of court for truancy issues, and don't give a damn about the kid, so long as the kid doesn't take up any of their time.

I fully support the first one.  I fully oppose the third, which I often seenfalling back on "virtual schools" as well, because the kid is a discipline issue at school.  The second, I just feel sorry for those kids...

[zahc]

People always say "public schools work great when the parents are actively involved and committed and invest in their child's education. Well, if you have to be that involved and committed, you might as well homeschool. Based on what I hear my coworkers spend on school supplies, you have to spend hundreds of dollars on books, supplies, clothes, and let's not forget lunch and extracurriculars. You might as well homeschool.

It worked out ok for me. Not sure what I will do when thing 1 is school-age.

[lee n. field]

learn social skills that most everyone else learns in school.

Cringing, submission, toadying....

School is not a benign place.

[BlueStarLizzard]

People always say "public schools work great when the parents are actively involved and committed and invest in their child's education. Well, if you have to be that involved and committed, you might as well homeschool. Based on what I hear my coworkers spend on school supplies, you have to spend hundreds of dollars on books, supplies, clothes, and let's not forget lunch and extracurriculars. You might as well homeschool.

It worked out ok for me. Not sure what I will do when thing 1 is school-age.

Yeah, but homeschool means someone has to *be* home. Having your kid attend school (public or private) means you at least get a chunk of time daily to go to work.
:/

I ended up doing a mostly unsupervised version of home schooling, part time, for the last two years of high school (most of my classes where the long distance by-mail high school coursed provided by some university)
It was the wrong thing to do, but public HS wasn't working for me either. It probably would have worked better if a parental unit had been home to yell at me to get it done.
Of course the public school wouldn't have worked, regardless of parental influance, so...

(yes, I was one of those truancy displine problems kids)

[BlueStarLizzard]

Cringing, submission, toadying....

School is not a benign place.

Well, being a spoiled rotten blowhard who bullies other kids and crys foul everytime he doesn't get his way isn't really benigh either.

Yes, interacting with other people (including peers AND superiors) is a useful skill set, even when it isn't the most fun. And some kids really need the figuretive boot up their butts (or a real one, but you're not allowed to do that)

[Gowen]

The school my girls would have gone to was in a heavy mexican area.  The mexican kids in the area severely picked on the few white kids.  The last year that we lived in that house, one of the students who was watching a retarded kid, both boys, raped the retarded kid.  We chose to home school.  Did I say it had some of the lowest marks in the state?

[Northwoods]

The degree to which home school kids are socialized is up to their parents.  That some do a poor job is no more a legit knock on homeschooling than the bad kids being an influence on previously good kids is a legit knock on public schools.

There are pros and cons going both ways.  The utterly horrifically bad curricula at my local public schools made home school an easy decision for us, esp. since private school is not financially viable.  We just have to make sure the kids have plenty of healthy opportunities to socialize. 

But even if they wound up complete social retards I think they'd still be better off.

[Northwoods]

Our youngest thanked us the other day for not homeschooling her.

She works with a young lady who was homeschooled.  To hear our daughter tell it, Mummy and Daddy keep her on a pretty short leash still, and she's frightfully naive.

Then I might as well thank my parents for not making me smoke crack.

I mean, really.

[Balog]

BSL points out the true advantage of public schools, albeit unintentionally. It's free babysitting so both parents can work, or for single parents.

I also lol pretty hard when people talk about social awkwardness like it's an exclusively homeschool thing. Cause no one ever graduated from a public school without highly developed social skills...

[Balog]

Also, current public schools are products of the industrial revolution designed to produce good little worker drones who know how to sit down, shut up, and respond to a bell like one of Pavlov's dogs. Great if you want to destroy your kids spirit and prepare them for a life on an assembly line. Or for being good little servants of the state, you can thank that damned communist John Dewey for that. The fact that it isn't more effective is just a testimony to the incompetence of the system than any reflection of the purpose and design.

[Jocassee]

I was homeschooled. I turned out OK but it took a while.

[HankB]

Some colleagues homeschool their kids - the academic stuff is at home, but the kids are involved in other activites (little league baseball & other sports for the boys, dance classes for the girls) so they interact with other children their own age.

From what I've seen of them, they should turn out O.K.

[Tallpine]

Your girls were doing college level work in a public high school?

Yes, that is what several of their teachers told us, at least in regards to research papers, etc where they went way above and beyond the expectations for the class.

As far as socialization, our girls were socialized with people of all ages from adults to younger kids.  In HS they were mentoring some younger kids with developmental issues (K-12 was all in the same building).  Between junior and senior years, they had summer jobs 50 miles away and were driving themselves to and from.  Then in the senior year, the school required everyone to participate in a school-to-work program. 

Not to say there were never any problems, but it wasn't caused by home schooling.  All their teachers said that they were way above grade level, except for PE.  They had always been very active but not in team sports.

[Jamisjockey]

BSL points out the true advantage of public schools, albeit unintentionally. It's free babysitting so both parents can work, or for single parents.

I also lol pretty hard when people talk about social awkwardness like it's an exclusively homeschool thing. Cause no one ever graduated from a public school without highly developed social skills...

Or even overdeveloped social skills. 

Some colleagues homeschool their kids - the academic stuff is at home, but the kids are involved in other activites (little league baseball & other sports for the boys, dance classes for the girls) so they interact with other children their own age.

From what I've seen of them, they should turn out O.K.

That's where our kids are. They see other kids a lot.

[roo_ster]

BSL points out the true advantage of public schools, albeit unintentionally. It's free babysitting so both parents can work, or for single parents.

We have a winnah...

To modify Milton Friedman, "There is no such thing as free babysitting."  Public schools cost a metric an imperial buttload of cash to operate.  All taken from Joe Taxpayer. 

I also lol pretty hard when people talk about social awkwardness like it's an exclusively homeschool thing. Cause no one ever graduated from a public school without highly developed social skills...

This.  Introverts usually come out of the womb that way.  Yes, they can be influenced by more/less helpful/harmful socialization, but there is  HUGE inherited component at play.

Cringing, submission, toadying....

School is not a benign place.

Yes, some public schools end up looking like Lord of the Flies as produced by a troupe of rogue Gestapo playwrights.

[MillCreek]

a troupe of rogue Gestapo playwrights.

I hope this line appears in the future.  It somehow resonates in a variety of situations.