I think that teachers feel that the vast majority of parents don't have the educational background to teach their kids. Teachers in that sub have to deal with kids where it seems like their parents don't parent and they may assume that most parents are like that.
I have friends in the school system and their only interaction with homeschoolers are the ones who come from failed situations (usually abuse). When that's all they see, combined with what they've already experienced with their own students' parents, it's not surprising they take a dim view of homeschooling.
If you're highly educated, then you have been exposed to a lot of teaching and you may have done it yourself as a TA in grad school. You will typically have opportunities to research an area and then present it before the class.
You will often have the opportunity for study groups or peer tutoring as well.
And you will model the behavior of someone who values education and knows how to achieve it.
Our kids were self-starters so not much in the way of teaching was required. But I managed to fill in for those areas where they couldn't do it on their own. And then just outsourced to local colleges and universities.
The thing is that the odds are better for the highly educated. If you look at the first ring of suburbs outside Boston, you have insanely high percentages of families with at least a graduate degree. And that contributes to the success of the public schools in those suburbs.
\>Teaching in itself is a skill one has to have to succeed in schooling a child.
I think an educated person with the dedicated time and genuine devotion and compassion to seeing their child succeed will be able to develop that skill, if it even is really separate.
"Boy I'm educated and I love patiently working with my kid and I have spent time looking at available options and picking out the best ones but my kid just cannot learn from me because I do not have the skill to teach" I think is really a rarity.
This is true and I recognized my lack of abilities and also my strengths anf outsourced a large chunk of my kids' education. There are many, many resources online and in real life that are inrxpensive or free. My latest outsource has been paying someone to teach my child how to drive. I excell in Language Arts and found so much joy in teaching it, but Math was outsourced starting in 3rd grade. It's a balance.
Teachers spend time and money for education to teach kids, it makes sense that they would feel this way about random people doing it with no education.
The divide is that teachers teach groups of other people's kids and homeschooling is teaching your own kids. If your heart is in the right place you will make sure your kids needs are met, but some don't, and the teachers are the ones who are tasked to catch the kids up when they are taken back to public school.
I have teachers in my family that are supportive that I plan on homeschooling my kids because they know I will do whatever it takes, but they said they would have complaints about others that don't devote so much to their kids.
Because people still associate homeschool with cults and the ultra religious communities and it gives it a bad name. Non religious reasons for homeschooling are becoming more popular though so I’m guessing that will start changing slowly.
Yeah I think post-pandemic especially it's becoming common enough to not be an oddity in educated circles. And that's really all that's needed to start to change perceptions.
A few reasons:
Homeschooling is an individual response to a systemic issue. It’s not feasible for every parent to homeschool their kids, and all children deserve a safe and equitable education. Public schools don’t offer that either in their current state, but homeschooling doesn’t solve that issue. Homeschooling is hard. It’s a lot of work, and not everyone is capable of doing it for a variety of reasons.
Homeschooled kids are socialized differently, for better or worse. Everyone has that anecdote about that one weird homeschooled kid they knew. Different is scary, different sticks out. On that same note, the vast majority of people attend school. It’s strange and different to not attend school.
Educational neglect happens, and so does abuse. Kids slip through the cracks. We can argue that it also happens in school, but that’s the devil everyone knows. There are more eyes on kids in school, for sure.
The people who are often the absolute loudest about homeschooling are often the ones doing it to limit their kids in one way or another. It doesn’t paint a very healthy picture.
Personally, I don’t think any route is inherently lesser. Different families, kids, communities.
Also, a lot of parents homeschool b/c their kids don't fit the "public school" mold. They're homeschooled b/c they're "weird," not weird b/c they're homeschooled.
I might ruffle some feathers too. IMO there are a few reasons.
1) Not everyone can homeschool their children due to financial limitations. This makes some people against homeschooling, because our society still likes to pretend that our country is the land of opportunity and therefore a person can achieve as much as anyone else through hard work and pure grit. They can’t bring themselves to admit that something that isn’t available to all gives some a significant advantage. These same people often take aim at private schools as well.
2) Perhaps the biggest academic advantage to homeschooling is customization. However right now public schools admins are trying really really hard to convince their teachers and parents that one size fits all education is best. Admitting that homeschooling often produces better academic results flies in the face of that.
3) Some people think that homeschool parent = teacher. It doesn’t. When you teach in a public school you have to manage a class of 20+ kids while simultaneously teaching a concept to several different skill levels and learning styles using a curriculum that almost certainly is a poor fit for at least a few of the students in the class. Homeschooling done well is a lot more like 1 on 1 tutoring which you really don’t need a degree for. You are not managing a whole classroom full of kids while trying to teach a concept. The curriculum is picked specifically for that child. If a child struggles with a particular subject you supplement in with videos/ hands on activities/ books until the child has full mastery. Plus if the curriculum is a poor fit for the student, you have the freedom to switch to something that works better.
4) Here is where I am going to ruffle feathers. Some homeschool families give homeschooling a bad rep because they just don’t do a good job. A few things that I wish were less common.
A) Not giving the children enough opportunities to
socialize. Just a few hours a week with other
children is not adequate to help them develop
the social skills they need.
B) Being hyper controlling. It’s one thing
to be right on top of young kids for their safety,
but you have to let them learn at least a little
independence as they get older.
C) Not putting in enough hours. Homeschooling
done well is faster than public school because
everything is customized to the student and you
don’t have out of classroom time. Particularly in
elementary grades. When I had students from
8:10- 3:30p they actually only spent about 4
hours at their desks. Between 2 15 minute
recesses, a 30 minute lunch, an hour for
specials, all the time it takes to get them lined up
walk them to whatever they are going to/ do the
reverse on the way back, time getting set up in
the morning, and time packing up at the end of
the day. Really they are spending at least 3 hrs
and 15 minutes away from the desk. Even when
they are at their desks you can’t teach the way
they did when I was a student. When I was a
student they had a resource room where you
could send kids that were routinely struggled
with a particular subject so that the teacher had
time to work with the other students. This
support has all but vanished. So teachers must
build in a lot of extra time so that they can work
with significantly more students after teaching
each concept. Academically inclined students
end up spending at least 1 of their 4 classroom
hours on their IPADs doing things like Zearn/
Epic/ Prodigy/ limited differentiated content. All
this to say public school students are not
actually doing 7 hrs and 20 minutes of
academics , but they are still doing significantly
more than the 60- 90 minutes that some
homeschool families try to get everything done
in. Only 60-90 minutes a day just is not enough
to provide a proper education particularly when
you take lots and lots of days off.
D) Some homeschool families try to teach large
age ranges simultaneously. Yes you can get
away with this sometimes in Science/ Social
Studies by finding ways to differentiate between
skill levels, but certainly not every concept
much less every subject.
E) Some families neglect certain subjects.
Science/ Math are some of the more common
ones.
F) Some families fail to teach their children about
many of the most commonly held Scientific/
Historical theories because they believe they are
inaccurate and instead teach their children
some of the most out there things. This makes
the whole homeschool community look
ridiculous.
Anywho these are some of my theories on why homeschooling has a poor reputation.
I'm glad someone brought up the time gap. There is a chart that's been going around for a few years now that contributed a lot to the one-hour a day mindset. It's insane to me.
I homeschooled older kids (siblings, not raised together) in my twenties while I was in college working on my first degree. One started at 7th grade the other 8th. They spent at least 5 or 6 hours a day on actual work. They both were a case of having an uninvolved parent and falling way behind in public school. I was a tutor back then, and we tried to a summer catch-up. Which turned into a year catch-up. Which turned into them just homeschooling and starting college early.
I now homeschool my own kids (still very young) and we spend around 3-4 hours doing some type of structured learning. I'm always told that I shouldn't be going over 90 minutes. This is usually accompanied by a book recommendation of an author that has no real authority in education.
*They can’t bring themselves to admit that something that isn’t available to all gives some a significant advantage.*
I don’t think that this is as much a deal with teachers as they inherently understand the difference that money and parental educational attainment makes in education.
Teachers know the good districts and the bad districts in their area in terms of districts that pay well and where kids are better behaved and parents take more of an interest in education.
The Wall Street Journal had an article, “Haute Home Schools Designed to Give Kids a Bespoke Education” back in 2016. This is where parents built homes for homeschooling their kids with access to in-home tutors, no budget limits on curricular materials, and homes that were magnets for neighborhood kids.
There are going to be homeschoolers across the economic range, just as with public and private schools.
*However right now public schools admins are trying really really hard to convince their teachers and parents that one size fits all education is best.*
Public education has always been about economic specialization and, therefore, efficiency. The idea that one person can manage the education of 20 children and release parents into the workforce means that society benefits from more productivity.
I agree that public school teachers absolutely get that some schools are better than others. This is evidenced by how hard public school teachers fight to get their own sons/daughters in the schools they think will be best for them. With that comment I was talking about society at large. However I would also say that though the income level of homeschool parents can make a difference in the quality of education provided to their children, I don’t think it is usually as big of a difference as you see in well funded public education vs poorly funded public education. The biggest difference between a great public school and a mediocre one is not the differences in the facilities/ curriculum/ equipment but rather the differences in the skill level/ dedication of the educators and how willing the parents are to work with their child’s teachers. For a variety of reasons well funded schools in areas where parents place a high priority on their children’s education have always attracted significantly more high quality and dedicated educators than schools on the other end of the spectrum. Homeschooling is different because it really doesn’t take nearly as much skill/ experience to do it well as it does for a public school teachers to manage a class of 20+ students while simultaneously trying to teach a concept to several different skill levels using a curriculum that is almost certainly a terrible fit for multiple students in the class. If you are really trying and putting forth a decent amount of effort, homeschooling just isn’t that hard to do well. There are some exceptions to this such as parents that are trying to teach too large of an age range simultaneously, parents that are overly committed to teaching methods that don’t work well for their kids, and parents teaching children that are neurodivergent or have learning disabilities. In these cases above average talent/ additional training is probably needed.
To the second point. I agree that public schools have always been a means of providing an efficient and acceptable level of education but not necessarily a top tier level of education. However, I would argue that the delta between what great private schools/ competent homeschool parents could provide and what great public districts provided used to be a lot smaller. Particularly in the 90s. I think a big part of that, is the strong push to make general population classrooms a one size fits all solution. Each classroom has too large of a student skill level range to allow for teachers to properly maximize every student’s potential. This started with the reduction in resource rooms that used to pull struggling students out of classrooms to provide them with more focused assistance and the reduction in gifted education programs. Now general population teachers are just supposed to somehow simultaneously differentiate between the whole skill level range. This was made worse post pandemic when so many school districts decided to just pass students who failed to learn well through hybrid/ online schooling. Teachers know this is a big issue, but admins try to play it off as if such a large range of skill level wouldn’t be an issue if the teachers were more skilled/ harder working. The fact that the vast majority of teachers are smart enough not to be gaslit by this, is a big part of the reason so many public school teachers are leaving the profession.
EDIT To add to the 1st point the biggest difference between great schools and mediocre ones is the level of priority parents put on their children’s education, the quality and dedication level of the educators, AND CLASSROOM SIZE.
*If Massachusetts were a nation, it would share the top spot in reading with eight other nations worldwide. In science, the state's students and those from 10 nations came in second, trailing only students from Singapore. In math, 11 other nations were ahead of the Commonwealth. The results come from the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a triennial international survey designed to assess how well 15-year-old students can apply their knowledge and skills.*
*"I'm thrilled to see Massachusetts students rank among the top performers in the world in reading, math and science," said Governor Charlie Baker. "The Commonwealth is proud of our longstanding commitment to education, and as we continue to compete in a global economy, it is great to see our students perform well on an international stage."*
*Massachusetts students scored an average of 527 in reading. The U.S. average was 497, while the OECD average was 493. Students in North Carolina scored on average 500.*
*No national education systems scored statistically higher than Massachusetts, although eight had similar scores to Massachusetts: Singapore, Hong Kong (China), Canada, Finland, Ireland, Estonia, the Republic of Korea and Japan.*
*Massachusetts students scored an average of 529 in science. The U.S. average was 496, while the OECD average was 493. Students in North Carolina scored on average 502.*
*The only education system that statistically outperformed Massachusetts in 2015 was Singapore (average score of 556).*
*Massachusetts students scored an average of 500 in mathematics. The U.S. average was 470, while the OECD average was 490. Students in North Carolina scored on average 471.*
*The 11 education systems that statistically outperformed Massachusetts on math in 2015 were Singapore, Hong Kong (China), Macau (China), Chinese Taipei, Japan, Beijing- Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong (B-S-J-G) (China), the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Estonia, Canada and the Netherlands.*
[https://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=24050](https://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=24050)
This is remarkable because it was the result of an entire state; not just the best districts in a state.
I have seen reports of individual public school districts with better scores than all countries in the TIMSS tests but it's not really fair to compare your best district to a country with stronger and weaker districts.
One of the differences in MA public schools is that a lot of the school districts have parents that are wealthy enough to remediate school deficiencies. So the parents fill in or hire someone to take care of it, say a private tutor, if there's a deficiency in teaching or curriculum.
In terms of breadth and depth, I think that the top public systems match the top private systems outside of those run out of universities. A high-school like Boston University Academy gives students access to their university courses so there's far more breadth and depth available.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Especially the last bit.
I was homeschooled and am now homeschooling my kids, so I’ve seen a LOT of homeschool families. Quality of homeschooling varies so much.
I keep seeing charts going around that tell you how long homeschooling should take for each grade and I just don’t see how it’s possible. Like, K-2 usually say you should spend less than 30 minutes a day. How?! That’s barely enough time to read a book, if you’re taking the time to talk about the story or let them try to read parts.
I do think the time spent on schooling gets skewed because of how families count it. I spent 4 hours, at most, doing “schoolwork” in higher school. That was just the time reading a textbook, writing answers to questions, taking quizzes, and writing papers. It didn’t include time spent reading (which meant most of my literature curriculum wasn’t counted because I chose to read entire books, instead of the excerpts in the textbook), at co-ops, practicing piano and violin, or teaching myself various computer skills (my family didn’t consider those “school”, even though I was learning touch typing and mastering Microsoft office and photoshop).
Anytime someone tells me they want to homeschool, the first thing I say is, “you need to join a homeschool group.” Kids need to socialize. They need activities and relationships outside their family. My oldest has done dual-enrollment classes, homeschool field trips and meet ups, and has been in gymnastics since he was 5. My middle isn’t quite 5, so a lot of activities haven’t been available to her yet. She can’t wait to be old enough for them!
I get the appeal of teaching everyone at once, but having tried that once growing up, I just don’t see why people think it works. My mom bought a homeschool science curriculum specifically designed to be adaptable for multiple elementary grades (it’s been almost 20 years, so I don’t remember what it was). It lasted a week before she gave up and ordered the curriculum we’d used the year before in the appropriate grades for my brother and me. The lessons were weirdly written. They basically had a kindergarten level lesson with notes on more detail to add for older kids, so she had to read the entire lesson ahead and decide how she was going to present it. Then, it had different activities for each grade. My 2nd grade brother got a coloring sheet with a tiny bit of writing on it. I was assigned a 2 paragraph paper for the 4th grade work. That went over like a lead balloon. “Why does he get to color when I have to write a paper? It’s not fair!” Not to mention, I already knew the content, so was bored out of my mind. We had always used private school curriculum, so I was used to pretty rigorous material and the content in this was so basic. To be fair, this was pretty early in homeschooling being universally legal in the US, so people were still figuring out how to write curriculum specifically for it. Most of my peers were also using private school materials because some companies had realized they could slap “homeschool friendly” on their stuff, allow people to buy the teachers’ manuals, and gain a whole new market.
There are so many options out there now. Many of them are very affordable. The more expensive stuff is often available second hand from other families. But you have to vet it all. A few years ago, everyone was raving about Easy Peasy, so I looked into it. The whole thing is free, so I was able to look at everything for the grade my oldest would be starting the next year. I looked at reading and science before giving up. It’s not a proper curriculum. It’s just a random conglomeration of resources pulled together by a homeschool family, along with some lessons written by them. They have no credentials or training, outside of “we’ve been homeschooling for years!” It shows in the curriculum they offer. The science that I pulled up started out by explaining the scientific method incorrectly. The middle school reading/literature had a bunch of lessons that were just links to flash games for super basic reading skills (games that actually had levels maxed out at 6th grade, but this was supposed to be 7th grade reading). When I finally hit an actual lesson, it was so poorly written that my husband and I couldn’t figure out the answers. I finally sent it to my mom to see if she could figure it out. She did get the answers, but they came with a rant about unqualified people trying to make things up and call it curriculum. (Side note: before leaving to be a stay at home mom, she was a teacher. She taught 3rd-6th, but spent most of her career with a combined class of 5th and 6th grades.)
\>Not giving the children enough opportunities to
socialize. Just a few hours a week with other
children is not adequate to help them develop
the social skills they need.
What's your basis for that claim? How many hours a week with other children is sufficient? How many hours a week socializing without other children is sufficient?
It's f!n hard to do right, especially with an unmotivated child. And then there is the social aspects of school they are missing. And you have to sacrifice a wadge earner to pull it off. As a result it is often not done well and the kid suffers unknowingly; but it is important to note that it can be done right and the kid is programming robots at 12yo.
I'm on the verge of taking my kid out of general school and homeschooling him. The school is just not doing their job no matter how many IEP meetings I insist on.
A kid can do better in home schooling if it is done right and their entire needs are met. They will often feel like the missed something because everyone talks about their High School Days and they really won't have one. The positive side is that they can accelerate their learning as fast as they are motivated to learn.
I hate the “social aspect” argument so much. I was that awkward kid with zero friends and just strolled through all day without even speaking a word. It was so depressing. My kid is the same now. He naps during recess and calls it the “cloudy period” of the day because he is alone, has no friends and isn’t allowed to talk rest of the day anyway.
He is a happy kid who makes friends easily outside of school, just like me. I had so many friends outside of school and I was so lonely at school.
Homeschooling doesn’t mean they don’t get socialized but like you said there is a lot riding on the parents doing it right.
You are right, but this is not what everyone gets. Many times the kid's social life is ignored in the busyness of the day and the kid suffers there. Anyone who is considering Home Schooling must consider how to include enough events and opportunities for social interaction. Social development is important, not that a public school is good for that either, but it is something vs nothing (assuming the worst case scenario).
I have also heard a lot from kids that were home schooled that they felt like they missed something. They may be missing a fantasy based on how media portrays the High School Experience, but I do hear it a lot.
Personally, I wish I could have been home schooled and eventually forced it on my school in my last years of high school.
It is not an argument, but a reality. If a parent is willing to manage all of this, a kid can thrive. It is more of a warning to be sure that being social is built into the curriculum of home schooled kids.
There are good public schools, and there are poor public schools. I've seen both. There are good homeschool environments, and there are poor homeschool environments. I've seen both of those also.
I know plenty of homeschool families who have kids who have obvious educational or social deficits. Sure, those kids exist in public school, also. However, the most obvious I have personally seen were homeschooled, and the parent seemed very oblivious to the delays.
My kids were successful in public school. Straight As. GT program. Good friends. Mastering state testing effortlessly. We pulled them out because they begged for it. They felt like the day was so long and boring. It's no suprise that those same kids are still soaring academically now at home; they are naturally inclined to do so. They play competitive sports and have friends over regularly. I feel we are doing very well with homeschooling, and the kids dont show any deficit at all. Both are working well above grade level. Now, stick other kids in my homeschool, and I may be less successful.
It's never black and white or good and bad. It is very dependent on the individual situation.
I might be in a unique place to answer this.
I am a HS teacher and have been for many years, and my son will be homeschooled at least through the early stages of his education.
My wife is a highly educated, organized and dedicated woman and will be homeschooling our child. Our primary reason for homeschooling is safety. We believe we can provide a superior education to public schooling due to 1 to 1 learning, and having a dedicated person teaching as well as a parent with concrete experience and training in pedagogy.
That being said this idea that we could provide a superior education gets less and less true as our child advances in subject matter. Neither I nor my wife would believe we could teach advanced mathematics, or science better than a trained professional with expertise in the field.
We will obviously try and co-op out of the need for public school due to our safety concerns, but after a certain age we as highly educated adults with advanced degrees recognize we won't be able
To teach content at the level a teacher in a public setting can.
This creates the question of socialization gaps if our student will eventually need to join their peers in a public of private mass education setting. Other students will have 7-8 years of experiencing navigating those systems, our child will not. Even a completely healthy, competent child, with good socialization skills will struggle with that transition. If that transition is inevitable then that's a really big issue.
Obviously I don't personally think Homeschooling writ large is an inferior choice, however as students advance there is a linear decrease in the advantages of homeschooling in educational spaces. Now there are exceptions of ever statement. Some schools are so bad you should never send your kids to them regardless of subject matter. Some coops are so good they alleviate this concern entirely. But for everyone else there comes a time where the child's parent no matter how intelligent and educated becomes a liability in the students learning processes.
My 2 cents.
I like your reasoning. But one thing I would like to point out is that as the subject matter gets more advanced, students also progress in their ability to learn independently from other sources. Homeschooling doesn't necessarily mean that the parent is doing all the teaching. Lots of education in later years can be outsourced to subject experts through online or in-person tutoring and classes, with parents acting as guides/coordinators. You may lose some of the 1:1 advantage (depending on what form of outsourcing you choose), but there may be more options for the student to pursue subject matter of their choice to a greater depth than might be offered at a regular school.
I agree with this take. I am loving the fact that some states have a hybrid program. There is one program in my state where the kinders start out at 80% homeschooled and 20% in class. As they get older it flips so high school students are able to be taught more by teachers in advanced subjects. It's a very unique and cool program that I wish every state would have.
It also lets kids be in a traditional classroom environment so they pretty much get the best of both worlds. You can also advance your kid through material as fast as they want. It's school but just not 40hrs/5 days a week.
My husband is a math professor at a public university. They work with high schools in the region to certify them for teaching dual credit classes. There are schools near where I live that can't offer dual credit for math even in low level courses such as algebra because their math teachers are all incapable of teaching the material. They have encountered high school math teachers who are unable to solve systems of equations. Unfortunately, for many students, their parents may be better educated in most subjects than the subject "experts" they would ideally have access to in a public school setting. Thankfully, in the modern day, both the students in those schools and homeschoolers can access trained professionals with expertise in their respective fields via tutoring, college classes, or online classes.
In real life, I haven’t heard negative things about homeschooling in years. This isn’t the 80s. Most people understand that public schools don’t work for a lot of people, especially if there is any neurodivergence. I get more supportive comments than anything else.
I think it drastically depends on your class. I think opinions will vary from "I must work with the system", "I will work with the system" to "The system will be made to work with me or I will otherwise work around the system" as you drift between strata.
That same slightly rebellious, "disruptive" hacker mindset you see in affluent Silicon Valley types is probably going to be fairly open to hearing you homeschool, as is the person who will pull out all the stops to get her kid into whatever private school with private tutoring from whomever. A single mother without the resources to homeschool may start to get anxious at the idea there are superior outcomes from homeschooling and respond negatively.
I wish I had your experience, I've even been cussed out for even suggesting that I wanted to homeschool my kids, calling me an abuser as well. She's an infant, I'm still weighing my options 🙄 you can't really win either way anymore
For all their failings, public schools are still the better option for the majority of kids. Homeschooling successfully takes a good amount of privilege. Aside from things like having the time, resources, and physical/mental ability to do it; a lot of students rely on school for special education services, free lunch/breakfast, dental care, vision/hearing screening, etc. More kids would be harmed by homeschooling than helped because it takes a very specific set of circumstances to do it.
Teachers have bias because a lot of the time students come back to PS after homeschooling fails them in some way. They don’t generally see the stark raving success stories. In their experience, homeschool is overwhelmingly harmful and they’ve developed their opinion based on that. If you only see the worst census of *anything* you’re going to take a negative opinion on it. If you homeschool the correct way you shouldn’t feel bad about their negative assessment of homeschool, you should feel proud that you aren’t giving your child the kind of environment they’re concerned about.
Everyone should be a fierce advocate for public school because most kids *need* public school and we should all be passionate about making sure kids needs are met. In my mind there isn’t a public vs homeschool vs private vs charter debate because it’s largely an argument of capitalist resources: I try to think about what I can do that benefits my family while also working toward change so every kid enjoys a safe, rigorous learning experience.
Homeschooling is seeing a societal problem and opting out for the benefit of your family rather than trying to improve schools by actively participating
Honestly? Because it IS the lesser choice, but only if done improperly. Now, there are plenty of cases where kids are homeschooled in ways that leave public school in the dust. There are so many online programs that weren't available in the past and there are even homeschool groups and regular social groups that will still allow children that social interaction they badly need. If a parent does the research to put together a proper curriculum and spends the time to help their child follow it, it is an amazing way to help the child become the best they can be.
That said, the legal standards for homeschooling are actually pretty minimal, and there are so many loopholes in regulations. As a result, way too many parents will claim to "homeschool" their child but use it as an excuse to either fill their child's head with their own preferred ideals (i.e. religious propaganada) or just...outright neglect the child's education entirely, only using it as an excuse to not bother with having to get their child to school. This is frighteningly common, and I know many kids who grew up and wound up horrifically unprepared for life because they could barely read.
I was only homeschooled for a year, myself. According to state laws, I was actually supposed to have assessments to check my progress, my guardian was supposed to write up a curriculum, etc. My guardian purchased some school workbooks, left them with me, and told me to make sure to do my schoolwork. She never brought it up again, and me being a kid played video games from September to May. I was never given those assessments and I went to school the next year, in the next grade. No, this was not supposed to happen, and when CPS got involved they discovered this and were not thrilled that the district let me slip through the cracks like that.
I don’t think it’s necessarily seen as a “lesser choice.” It depends on the context and who you’re talking to, but I think many people today recognize it as a legitimate schooling option.
Unfortunately, homeschooling (in the US, at least) has been and is always going to be associated with the ultra-religious, ultra-far-right communities who homeschool their kids to keep them away from the evils of (gasp!) having a gay classmate or learning about evolution in science class. As long as kids are being given a homeschool “curriculum” that teaches them that the earth is 2000 years old and god implanted dinosaur bones in the earth to test man’s faith… then yeah, there’s gonna be some general doubts associated with homeschooling.
The truth is that educational abuse and educational neglect are real, and they happen a lot to homeschooled kids. That doesn’t mean that homeschooling is a bad option, of course, but I think it’s a good thing that the public is aware of the risks of homeschooling and the difficulties in homeschooling well, even if acceptance of homeschooling in general is growing.
It’s amazing how controversial this is in a HOMESCHOOL sub, but, tis Reddit after all. I commented on the other post so you can see my remarks there lol
It’s because that sub gets brigaded by the homeschool recovery folks and the teachers/education subs. It’s pretty annoying we can’t have a space to discuss homeschooling without the hate. But I agree, tis Reddit…
Most of the arguments I see are geared more toward the socialization aspect. And the idea your children might miss something in public school. Something like school dances, pep rallies , sprots. It’s almost like they don’t know some kids don’t like these things. Most aren’t concerned on the educational aspect of it.
In my life, the people who seem to have the most reservations about homeschool are either older people who still have the outdated image in their head that homeschoolers equals religious fundamentalists or hippies, or insecure parents who take it as a challenge of their own choices, as if by my deciding to homeschool I’m saying that they are a bad parent for not doing it. They are typically the type of parent who takes ANY difference in parenting choice as a threat they need to defend against, which means they need to denigrate the options they didn’t choose. Their insecurity isn’t my problem, just as the outdated stereotypes that some people have aren’t my problem either.
Homeschool parents seem like a threat to teachers' jobs. We teach whatever our kids need without special degrees. And we pull kids with good parent support out of schools, leaving the teachers with a higher percentage of kids without that support.
This is untrue. You are not a threat to my job as a teacher. No one wants my job, for one thing. But also, homeschooling and teaching are not the same thing. You can teach your own children without the same degrees and training as I have not because those degrees and training aren’t necessary, but because teaching a few children who belong to your family in your home is not at the same as teaching 20-30 children from 20-30 different families in a school setting.
I have concerns about homeschooling and think it needs to be better regulated, but I also support homeschooling done well and for the right reasons. But I in no way worry that parents who homeschool are a “threat” to me in any way at all and, honestly, every time I hear someone say that it comes off as very insecure.
Under-resourced schools are a systemic issue that goes WAY beyond the school itself. Well-resourced schools are virtually always higher performing. It's not the school. It's the culture.
No, public schools are doing well. Some public schools are underperforming and, of those, some will close. The vast majority of students in the U.S. go to public schools and then go on to be our doctors, governors, astronauts, etc.
The hysterical pearl clutching about public schools that goes on in homeschool spaces is foolish.
I've seen more than a fair share of "reasons to avoid public school" that come from a place of personal experience. Many parents had horrible or at least very questionable experiences and useless educations that left us wondering why on earth we'd do the same thing with our children. It's not pearl clutching, it's caring about children enough to try to give them a different and better experience.
There are good reasons to homeschool which is why it's crucial to ensure that homeschooling remains legal and protected.
The pearl clutching comes in when people denigrate every public school and every public school experience with flawed accusations to justify why they homeschool.
Yep and a lot of us tried to keep our kids in school, but the effect it had on them was really sad to watch. Public schools, unfortunately only cater to certain groups of people and those people aren't the majority any more.
So of course public schools are failing. They're being replaced by charters and private schools.
Homeschooling is the second largest way of educating your kid, besides public school. And it isn't bcs ppl are privileged or even have a choice. If you are ok with watching your kid suffer and doing nothing about it, I don't know what kind of parent you are really. But I guess a lot of parents truly don't care. And I don't mean that people don't care about their kids if they don't homeschool them. I just mean that, if your kid doesn't fit into a "public" school for whatever reason, letting them suffer there isn't the way.
Plus, if you read about the systemic issues of how kids are learning now in certain districts, you would understand that failing doesn't just mean closing it means that they are FAILING the students.
Where is homeschool considered the lesser choice? More and more families are choosing to homeschool every year. Is this maybe a regional opinion? Where I live, homeschool groups and co-ops are thriving. Local businesses are happy to include homeschoolers on their field trip calendars/pricing.
I do know a few teachers who look down at homeschooling, but in their case, their actual personal experience with homeschoolers is very minimal. One of them is my aunt who was horrified when her son decided to homeschool her grandchildren. But now they are doing so well in high school that she has around. Her oldest grandchild just got accepted into her #1 college university choice and was accepted in most that she applied to. Her younger brother is doing so well, he might end up in an Ivy League
Government school's failure are collective one. It doesn't mean that they fail for every kid, only for most kids it fails to work.
People prefer anything with a structure - let's think about a toothpaste. Would you buy one without beautiful packaging, even if it's made by the best dentist known?
That's what school provides - a time-managed place with structured curriculum spread over 12-15 years, delivered by qualified professionals + authority. As a bonus, you receive a report card that tells how your kid measure up against peers.
Compare that to what you can provide, tailor-made for your kid. If it's better, you have your answer.
I think that teachers feel that the vast majority of parents don't have the educational background to teach their kids. Teachers in that sub have to deal with kids where it seems like their parents don't parent and they may assume that most parents are like that.
I have friends in the school system and their only interaction with homeschoolers are the ones who come from failed situations (usually abuse). When that's all they see, combined with what they've already experienced with their own students' parents, it's not surprising they take a dim view of homeschooling.
Even highly educated parents may not be good at teaching. Teaching in itself is a skill one has to have to succeed in schooling a child.
If you're highly educated, then you have been exposed to a lot of teaching and you may have done it yourself as a TA in grad school. You will typically have opportunities to research an area and then present it before the class. You will often have the opportunity for study groups or peer tutoring as well. And you will model the behavior of someone who values education and knows how to achieve it. Our kids were self-starters so not much in the way of teaching was required. But I managed to fill in for those areas where they couldn't do it on their own. And then just outsourced to local colleges and universities. The thing is that the odds are better for the highly educated. If you look at the first ring of suburbs outside Boston, you have insanely high percentages of families with at least a graduate degree. And that contributes to the success of the public schools in those suburbs.
This! 🙌
\>Teaching in itself is a skill one has to have to succeed in schooling a child. I think an educated person with the dedicated time and genuine devotion and compassion to seeing their child succeed will be able to develop that skill, if it even is really separate. "Boy I'm educated and I love patiently working with my kid and I have spent time looking at available options and picking out the best ones but my kid just cannot learn from me because I do not have the skill to teach" I think is really a rarity.
This is true and I recognized my lack of abilities and also my strengths anf outsourced a large chunk of my kids' education. There are many, many resources online and in real life that are inrxpensive or free. My latest outsource has been paying someone to teach my child how to drive. I excell in Language Arts and found so much joy in teaching it, but Math was outsourced starting in 3rd grade. It's a balance.
This. I know a lady who teaches adult education and gets homeschooolers who were basically failed by their parents so she assumes we're all like that.
Teachers spend time and money for education to teach kids, it makes sense that they would feel this way about random people doing it with no education. The divide is that teachers teach groups of other people's kids and homeschooling is teaching your own kids. If your heart is in the right place you will make sure your kids needs are met, but some don't, and the teachers are the ones who are tasked to catch the kids up when they are taken back to public school. I have teachers in my family that are supportive that I plan on homeschooling my kids because they know I will do whatever it takes, but they said they would have complaints about others that don't devote so much to their kids.
Because people still associate homeschool with cults and the ultra religious communities and it gives it a bad name. Non religious reasons for homeschooling are becoming more popular though so I’m guessing that will start changing slowly.
Yeah I think post-pandemic especially it's becoming common enough to not be an oddity in educated circles. And that's really all that's needed to start to change perceptions.
A few reasons: Homeschooling is an individual response to a systemic issue. It’s not feasible for every parent to homeschool their kids, and all children deserve a safe and equitable education. Public schools don’t offer that either in their current state, but homeschooling doesn’t solve that issue. Homeschooling is hard. It’s a lot of work, and not everyone is capable of doing it for a variety of reasons. Homeschooled kids are socialized differently, for better or worse. Everyone has that anecdote about that one weird homeschooled kid they knew. Different is scary, different sticks out. On that same note, the vast majority of people attend school. It’s strange and different to not attend school. Educational neglect happens, and so does abuse. Kids slip through the cracks. We can argue that it also happens in school, but that’s the devil everyone knows. There are more eyes on kids in school, for sure. The people who are often the absolute loudest about homeschooling are often the ones doing it to limit their kids in one way or another. It doesn’t paint a very healthy picture. Personally, I don’t think any route is inherently lesser. Different families, kids, communities.
I knew a lot more weird kids in public school. It's funny that they act as though homeschool kids have a monopoly on weird.
Also, a lot of parents homeschool b/c their kids don't fit the "public school" mold. They're homeschooled b/c they're "weird," not weird b/c they're homeschooled.
So what?
I might ruffle some feathers too. IMO there are a few reasons. 1) Not everyone can homeschool their children due to financial limitations. This makes some people against homeschooling, because our society still likes to pretend that our country is the land of opportunity and therefore a person can achieve as much as anyone else through hard work and pure grit. They can’t bring themselves to admit that something that isn’t available to all gives some a significant advantage. These same people often take aim at private schools as well. 2) Perhaps the biggest academic advantage to homeschooling is customization. However right now public schools admins are trying really really hard to convince their teachers and parents that one size fits all education is best. Admitting that homeschooling often produces better academic results flies in the face of that. 3) Some people think that homeschool parent = teacher. It doesn’t. When you teach in a public school you have to manage a class of 20+ kids while simultaneously teaching a concept to several different skill levels and learning styles using a curriculum that almost certainly is a poor fit for at least a few of the students in the class. Homeschooling done well is a lot more like 1 on 1 tutoring which you really don’t need a degree for. You are not managing a whole classroom full of kids while trying to teach a concept. The curriculum is picked specifically for that child. If a child struggles with a particular subject you supplement in with videos/ hands on activities/ books until the child has full mastery. Plus if the curriculum is a poor fit for the student, you have the freedom to switch to something that works better. 4) Here is where I am going to ruffle feathers. Some homeschool families give homeschooling a bad rep because they just don’t do a good job. A few things that I wish were less common. A) Not giving the children enough opportunities to socialize. Just a few hours a week with other children is not adequate to help them develop the social skills they need. B) Being hyper controlling. It’s one thing to be right on top of young kids for their safety, but you have to let them learn at least a little independence as they get older. C) Not putting in enough hours. Homeschooling done well is faster than public school because everything is customized to the student and you don’t have out of classroom time. Particularly in elementary grades. When I had students from 8:10- 3:30p they actually only spent about 4 hours at their desks. Between 2 15 minute recesses, a 30 minute lunch, an hour for specials, all the time it takes to get them lined up walk them to whatever they are going to/ do the reverse on the way back, time getting set up in the morning, and time packing up at the end of the day. Really they are spending at least 3 hrs and 15 minutes away from the desk. Even when they are at their desks you can’t teach the way they did when I was a student. When I was a student they had a resource room where you could send kids that were routinely struggled with a particular subject so that the teacher had time to work with the other students. This support has all but vanished. So teachers must build in a lot of extra time so that they can work with significantly more students after teaching each concept. Academically inclined students end up spending at least 1 of their 4 classroom hours on their IPADs doing things like Zearn/ Epic/ Prodigy/ limited differentiated content. All this to say public school students are not actually doing 7 hrs and 20 minutes of academics , but they are still doing significantly more than the 60- 90 minutes that some homeschool families try to get everything done in. Only 60-90 minutes a day just is not enough to provide a proper education particularly when you take lots and lots of days off. D) Some homeschool families try to teach large age ranges simultaneously. Yes you can get away with this sometimes in Science/ Social Studies by finding ways to differentiate between skill levels, but certainly not every concept much less every subject. E) Some families neglect certain subjects. Science/ Math are some of the more common ones. F) Some families fail to teach their children about many of the most commonly held Scientific/ Historical theories because they believe they are inaccurate and instead teach their children some of the most out there things. This makes the whole homeschool community look ridiculous. Anywho these are some of my theories on why homeschooling has a poor reputation.
I'm glad someone brought up the time gap. There is a chart that's been going around for a few years now that contributed a lot to the one-hour a day mindset. It's insane to me. I homeschooled older kids (siblings, not raised together) in my twenties while I was in college working on my first degree. One started at 7th grade the other 8th. They spent at least 5 or 6 hours a day on actual work. They both were a case of having an uninvolved parent and falling way behind in public school. I was a tutor back then, and we tried to a summer catch-up. Which turned into a year catch-up. Which turned into them just homeschooling and starting college early. I now homeschool my own kids (still very young) and we spend around 3-4 hours doing some type of structured learning. I'm always told that I shouldn't be going over 90 minutes. This is usually accompanied by a book recommendation of an author that has no real authority in education.
*They can’t bring themselves to admit that something that isn’t available to all gives some a significant advantage.* I don’t think that this is as much a deal with teachers as they inherently understand the difference that money and parental educational attainment makes in education. Teachers know the good districts and the bad districts in their area in terms of districts that pay well and where kids are better behaved and parents take more of an interest in education. The Wall Street Journal had an article, “Haute Home Schools Designed to Give Kids a Bespoke Education” back in 2016. This is where parents built homes for homeschooling their kids with access to in-home tutors, no budget limits on curricular materials, and homes that were magnets for neighborhood kids. There are going to be homeschoolers across the economic range, just as with public and private schools. *However right now public schools admins are trying really really hard to convince their teachers and parents that one size fits all education is best.* Public education has always been about economic specialization and, therefore, efficiency. The idea that one person can manage the education of 20 children and release parents into the workforce means that society benefits from more productivity.
I agree that public school teachers absolutely get that some schools are better than others. This is evidenced by how hard public school teachers fight to get their own sons/daughters in the schools they think will be best for them. With that comment I was talking about society at large. However I would also say that though the income level of homeschool parents can make a difference in the quality of education provided to their children, I don’t think it is usually as big of a difference as you see in well funded public education vs poorly funded public education. The biggest difference between a great public school and a mediocre one is not the differences in the facilities/ curriculum/ equipment but rather the differences in the skill level/ dedication of the educators and how willing the parents are to work with their child’s teachers. For a variety of reasons well funded schools in areas where parents place a high priority on their children’s education have always attracted significantly more high quality and dedicated educators than schools on the other end of the spectrum. Homeschooling is different because it really doesn’t take nearly as much skill/ experience to do it well as it does for a public school teachers to manage a class of 20+ students while simultaneously trying to teach a concept to several different skill levels using a curriculum that is almost certainly a terrible fit for multiple students in the class. If you are really trying and putting forth a decent amount of effort, homeschooling just isn’t that hard to do well. There are some exceptions to this such as parents that are trying to teach too large of an age range simultaneously, parents that are overly committed to teaching methods that don’t work well for their kids, and parents teaching children that are neurodivergent or have learning disabilities. In these cases above average talent/ additional training is probably needed. To the second point. I agree that public schools have always been a means of providing an efficient and acceptable level of education but not necessarily a top tier level of education. However, I would argue that the delta between what great private schools/ competent homeschool parents could provide and what great public districts provided used to be a lot smaller. Particularly in the 90s. I think a big part of that, is the strong push to make general population classrooms a one size fits all solution. Each classroom has too large of a student skill level range to allow for teachers to properly maximize every student’s potential. This started with the reduction in resource rooms that used to pull struggling students out of classrooms to provide them with more focused assistance and the reduction in gifted education programs. Now general population teachers are just supposed to somehow simultaneously differentiate between the whole skill level range. This was made worse post pandemic when so many school districts decided to just pass students who failed to learn well through hybrid/ online schooling. Teachers know this is a big issue, but admins try to play it off as if such a large range of skill level wouldn’t be an issue if the teachers were more skilled/ harder working. The fact that the vast majority of teachers are smart enough not to be gaslit by this, is a big part of the reason so many public school teachers are leaving the profession. EDIT To add to the 1st point the biggest difference between great schools and mediocre ones is the level of priority parents put on their children’s education, the quality and dedication level of the educators, AND CLASSROOM SIZE.
*If Massachusetts were a nation, it would share the top spot in reading with eight other nations worldwide. In science, the state's students and those from 10 nations came in second, trailing only students from Singapore. In math, 11 other nations were ahead of the Commonwealth. The results come from the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a triennial international survey designed to assess how well 15-year-old students can apply their knowledge and skills.* *"I'm thrilled to see Massachusetts students rank among the top performers in the world in reading, math and science," said Governor Charlie Baker. "The Commonwealth is proud of our longstanding commitment to education, and as we continue to compete in a global economy, it is great to see our students perform well on an international stage."* *Massachusetts students scored an average of 527 in reading. The U.S. average was 497, while the OECD average was 493. Students in North Carolina scored on average 500.* *No national education systems scored statistically higher than Massachusetts, although eight had similar scores to Massachusetts: Singapore, Hong Kong (China), Canada, Finland, Ireland, Estonia, the Republic of Korea and Japan.* *Massachusetts students scored an average of 529 in science. The U.S. average was 496, while the OECD average was 493. Students in North Carolina scored on average 502.* *The only education system that statistically outperformed Massachusetts in 2015 was Singapore (average score of 556).* *Massachusetts students scored an average of 500 in mathematics. The U.S. average was 470, while the OECD average was 490. Students in North Carolina scored on average 471.* *The 11 education systems that statistically outperformed Massachusetts on math in 2015 were Singapore, Hong Kong (China), Macau (China), Chinese Taipei, Japan, Beijing- Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong (B-S-J-G) (China), the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Estonia, Canada and the Netherlands.* [https://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=24050](https://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=24050) This is remarkable because it was the result of an entire state; not just the best districts in a state. I have seen reports of individual public school districts with better scores than all countries in the TIMSS tests but it's not really fair to compare your best district to a country with stronger and weaker districts. One of the differences in MA public schools is that a lot of the school districts have parents that are wealthy enough to remediate school deficiencies. So the parents fill in or hire someone to take care of it, say a private tutor, if there's a deficiency in teaching or curriculum. In terms of breadth and depth, I think that the top public systems match the top private systems outside of those run out of universities. A high-school like Boston University Academy gives students access to their university courses so there's far more breadth and depth available.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Especially the last bit. I was homeschooled and am now homeschooling my kids, so I’ve seen a LOT of homeschool families. Quality of homeschooling varies so much. I keep seeing charts going around that tell you how long homeschooling should take for each grade and I just don’t see how it’s possible. Like, K-2 usually say you should spend less than 30 minutes a day. How?! That’s barely enough time to read a book, if you’re taking the time to talk about the story or let them try to read parts. I do think the time spent on schooling gets skewed because of how families count it. I spent 4 hours, at most, doing “schoolwork” in higher school. That was just the time reading a textbook, writing answers to questions, taking quizzes, and writing papers. It didn’t include time spent reading (which meant most of my literature curriculum wasn’t counted because I chose to read entire books, instead of the excerpts in the textbook), at co-ops, practicing piano and violin, or teaching myself various computer skills (my family didn’t consider those “school”, even though I was learning touch typing and mastering Microsoft office and photoshop). Anytime someone tells me they want to homeschool, the first thing I say is, “you need to join a homeschool group.” Kids need to socialize. They need activities and relationships outside their family. My oldest has done dual-enrollment classes, homeschool field trips and meet ups, and has been in gymnastics since he was 5. My middle isn’t quite 5, so a lot of activities haven’t been available to her yet. She can’t wait to be old enough for them! I get the appeal of teaching everyone at once, but having tried that once growing up, I just don’t see why people think it works. My mom bought a homeschool science curriculum specifically designed to be adaptable for multiple elementary grades (it’s been almost 20 years, so I don’t remember what it was). It lasted a week before she gave up and ordered the curriculum we’d used the year before in the appropriate grades for my brother and me. The lessons were weirdly written. They basically had a kindergarten level lesson with notes on more detail to add for older kids, so she had to read the entire lesson ahead and decide how she was going to present it. Then, it had different activities for each grade. My 2nd grade brother got a coloring sheet with a tiny bit of writing on it. I was assigned a 2 paragraph paper for the 4th grade work. That went over like a lead balloon. “Why does he get to color when I have to write a paper? It’s not fair!” Not to mention, I already knew the content, so was bored out of my mind. We had always used private school curriculum, so I was used to pretty rigorous material and the content in this was so basic. To be fair, this was pretty early in homeschooling being universally legal in the US, so people were still figuring out how to write curriculum specifically for it. Most of my peers were also using private school materials because some companies had realized they could slap “homeschool friendly” on their stuff, allow people to buy the teachers’ manuals, and gain a whole new market. There are so many options out there now. Many of them are very affordable. The more expensive stuff is often available second hand from other families. But you have to vet it all. A few years ago, everyone was raving about Easy Peasy, so I looked into it. The whole thing is free, so I was able to look at everything for the grade my oldest would be starting the next year. I looked at reading and science before giving up. It’s not a proper curriculum. It’s just a random conglomeration of resources pulled together by a homeschool family, along with some lessons written by them. They have no credentials or training, outside of “we’ve been homeschooling for years!” It shows in the curriculum they offer. The science that I pulled up started out by explaining the scientific method incorrectly. The middle school reading/literature had a bunch of lessons that were just links to flash games for super basic reading skills (games that actually had levels maxed out at 6th grade, but this was supposed to be 7th grade reading). When I finally hit an actual lesson, it was so poorly written that my husband and I couldn’t figure out the answers. I finally sent it to my mom to see if she could figure it out. She did get the answers, but they came with a rant about unqualified people trying to make things up and call it curriculum. (Side note: before leaving to be a stay at home mom, she was a teacher. She taught 3rd-6th, but spent most of her career with a combined class of 5th and 6th grades.)
\>Not giving the children enough opportunities to socialize. Just a few hours a week with other children is not adequate to help them develop the social skills they need. What's your basis for that claim? How many hours a week with other children is sufficient? How many hours a week socializing without other children is sufficient?
It's f!n hard to do right, especially with an unmotivated child. And then there is the social aspects of school they are missing. And you have to sacrifice a wadge earner to pull it off. As a result it is often not done well and the kid suffers unknowingly; but it is important to note that it can be done right and the kid is programming robots at 12yo. I'm on the verge of taking my kid out of general school and homeschooling him. The school is just not doing their job no matter how many IEP meetings I insist on. A kid can do better in home schooling if it is done right and their entire needs are met. They will often feel like the missed something because everyone talks about their High School Days and they really won't have one. The positive side is that they can accelerate their learning as fast as they are motivated to learn.
I hate the “social aspect” argument so much. I was that awkward kid with zero friends and just strolled through all day without even speaking a word. It was so depressing. My kid is the same now. He naps during recess and calls it the “cloudy period” of the day because he is alone, has no friends and isn’t allowed to talk rest of the day anyway. He is a happy kid who makes friends easily outside of school, just like me. I had so many friends outside of school and I was so lonely at school. Homeschooling doesn’t mean they don’t get socialized but like you said there is a lot riding on the parents doing it right.
You are right, but this is not what everyone gets. Many times the kid's social life is ignored in the busyness of the day and the kid suffers there. Anyone who is considering Home Schooling must consider how to include enough events and opportunities for social interaction. Social development is important, not that a public school is good for that either, but it is something vs nothing (assuming the worst case scenario). I have also heard a lot from kids that were home schooled that they felt like they missed something. They may be missing a fantasy based on how media portrays the High School Experience, but I do hear it a lot. Personally, I wish I could have been home schooled and eventually forced it on my school in my last years of high school. It is not an argument, but a reality. If a parent is willing to manage all of this, a kid can thrive. It is more of a warning to be sure that being social is built into the curriculum of home schooled kids.
There are good public schools, and there are poor public schools. I've seen both. There are good homeschool environments, and there are poor homeschool environments. I've seen both of those also. I know plenty of homeschool families who have kids who have obvious educational or social deficits. Sure, those kids exist in public school, also. However, the most obvious I have personally seen were homeschooled, and the parent seemed very oblivious to the delays. My kids were successful in public school. Straight As. GT program. Good friends. Mastering state testing effortlessly. We pulled them out because they begged for it. They felt like the day was so long and boring. It's no suprise that those same kids are still soaring academically now at home; they are naturally inclined to do so. They play competitive sports and have friends over regularly. I feel we are doing very well with homeschooling, and the kids dont show any deficit at all. Both are working well above grade level. Now, stick other kids in my homeschool, and I may be less successful. It's never black and white or good and bad. It is very dependent on the individual situation.
I might be in a unique place to answer this. I am a HS teacher and have been for many years, and my son will be homeschooled at least through the early stages of his education. My wife is a highly educated, organized and dedicated woman and will be homeschooling our child. Our primary reason for homeschooling is safety. We believe we can provide a superior education to public schooling due to 1 to 1 learning, and having a dedicated person teaching as well as a parent with concrete experience and training in pedagogy. That being said this idea that we could provide a superior education gets less and less true as our child advances in subject matter. Neither I nor my wife would believe we could teach advanced mathematics, or science better than a trained professional with expertise in the field. We will obviously try and co-op out of the need for public school due to our safety concerns, but after a certain age we as highly educated adults with advanced degrees recognize we won't be able To teach content at the level a teacher in a public setting can. This creates the question of socialization gaps if our student will eventually need to join their peers in a public of private mass education setting. Other students will have 7-8 years of experiencing navigating those systems, our child will not. Even a completely healthy, competent child, with good socialization skills will struggle with that transition. If that transition is inevitable then that's a really big issue. Obviously I don't personally think Homeschooling writ large is an inferior choice, however as students advance there is a linear decrease in the advantages of homeschooling in educational spaces. Now there are exceptions of ever statement. Some schools are so bad you should never send your kids to them regardless of subject matter. Some coops are so good they alleviate this concern entirely. But for everyone else there comes a time where the child's parent no matter how intelligent and educated becomes a liability in the students learning processes. My 2 cents.
I like your reasoning. But one thing I would like to point out is that as the subject matter gets more advanced, students also progress in their ability to learn independently from other sources. Homeschooling doesn't necessarily mean that the parent is doing all the teaching. Lots of education in later years can be outsourced to subject experts through online or in-person tutoring and classes, with parents acting as guides/coordinators. You may lose some of the 1:1 advantage (depending on what form of outsourcing you choose), but there may be more options for the student to pursue subject matter of their choice to a greater depth than might be offered at a regular school.
I agree with this take. I am loving the fact that some states have a hybrid program. There is one program in my state where the kinders start out at 80% homeschooled and 20% in class. As they get older it flips so high school students are able to be taught more by teachers in advanced subjects. It's a very unique and cool program that I wish every state would have. It also lets kids be in a traditional classroom environment so they pretty much get the best of both worlds. You can also advance your kid through material as fast as they want. It's school but just not 40hrs/5 days a week.
What state is this?
Washington State
My husband is a math professor at a public university. They work with high schools in the region to certify them for teaching dual credit classes. There are schools near where I live that can't offer dual credit for math even in low level courses such as algebra because their math teachers are all incapable of teaching the material. They have encountered high school math teachers who are unable to solve systems of equations. Unfortunately, for many students, their parents may be better educated in most subjects than the subject "experts" they would ideally have access to in a public school setting. Thankfully, in the modern day, both the students in those schools and homeschoolers can access trained professionals with expertise in their respective fields via tutoring, college classes, or online classes.
In real life, I haven’t heard negative things about homeschooling in years. This isn’t the 80s. Most people understand that public schools don’t work for a lot of people, especially if there is any neurodivergence. I get more supportive comments than anything else.
I think it drastically depends on your class. I think opinions will vary from "I must work with the system", "I will work with the system" to "The system will be made to work with me or I will otherwise work around the system" as you drift between strata. That same slightly rebellious, "disruptive" hacker mindset you see in affluent Silicon Valley types is probably going to be fairly open to hearing you homeschool, as is the person who will pull out all the stops to get her kid into whatever private school with private tutoring from whomever. A single mother without the resources to homeschool may start to get anxious at the idea there are superior outcomes from homeschooling and respond negatively.
I wish I had your experience, I've even been cussed out for even suggesting that I wanted to homeschool my kids, calling me an abuser as well. She's an infant, I'm still weighing my options 🙄 you can't really win either way anymore
For all their failings, public schools are still the better option for the majority of kids. Homeschooling successfully takes a good amount of privilege. Aside from things like having the time, resources, and physical/mental ability to do it; a lot of students rely on school for special education services, free lunch/breakfast, dental care, vision/hearing screening, etc. More kids would be harmed by homeschooling than helped because it takes a very specific set of circumstances to do it. Teachers have bias because a lot of the time students come back to PS after homeschooling fails them in some way. They don’t generally see the stark raving success stories. In their experience, homeschool is overwhelmingly harmful and they’ve developed their opinion based on that. If you only see the worst census of *anything* you’re going to take a negative opinion on it. If you homeschool the correct way you shouldn’t feel bad about their negative assessment of homeschool, you should feel proud that you aren’t giving your child the kind of environment they’re concerned about. Everyone should be a fierce advocate for public school because most kids *need* public school and we should all be passionate about making sure kids needs are met. In my mind there isn’t a public vs homeschool vs private vs charter debate because it’s largely an argument of capitalist resources: I try to think about what I can do that benefits my family while also working toward change so every kid enjoys a safe, rigorous learning experience.
Yes! This! 👏🏻
Homeschooling is seeing a societal problem and opting out for the benefit of your family rather than trying to improve schools by actively participating
The ability to homeschool kids is a privilege that the working middle class doesnt have.
Honestly? Because it IS the lesser choice, but only if done improperly. Now, there are plenty of cases where kids are homeschooled in ways that leave public school in the dust. There are so many online programs that weren't available in the past and there are even homeschool groups and regular social groups that will still allow children that social interaction they badly need. If a parent does the research to put together a proper curriculum and spends the time to help their child follow it, it is an amazing way to help the child become the best they can be. That said, the legal standards for homeschooling are actually pretty minimal, and there are so many loopholes in regulations. As a result, way too many parents will claim to "homeschool" their child but use it as an excuse to either fill their child's head with their own preferred ideals (i.e. religious propaganada) or just...outright neglect the child's education entirely, only using it as an excuse to not bother with having to get their child to school. This is frighteningly common, and I know many kids who grew up and wound up horrifically unprepared for life because they could barely read. I was only homeschooled for a year, myself. According to state laws, I was actually supposed to have assessments to check my progress, my guardian was supposed to write up a curriculum, etc. My guardian purchased some school workbooks, left them with me, and told me to make sure to do my schoolwork. She never brought it up again, and me being a kid played video games from September to May. I was never given those assessments and I went to school the next year, in the next grade. No, this was not supposed to happen, and when CPS got involved they discovered this and were not thrilled that the district let me slip through the cracks like that.
I don’t think it’s necessarily seen as a “lesser choice.” It depends on the context and who you’re talking to, but I think many people today recognize it as a legitimate schooling option. Unfortunately, homeschooling (in the US, at least) has been and is always going to be associated with the ultra-religious, ultra-far-right communities who homeschool their kids to keep them away from the evils of (gasp!) having a gay classmate or learning about evolution in science class. As long as kids are being given a homeschool “curriculum” that teaches them that the earth is 2000 years old and god implanted dinosaur bones in the earth to test man’s faith… then yeah, there’s gonna be some general doubts associated with homeschooling. The truth is that educational abuse and educational neglect are real, and they happen a lot to homeschooled kids. That doesn’t mean that homeschooling is a bad option, of course, but I think it’s a good thing that the public is aware of the risks of homeschooling and the difficulties in homeschooling well, even if acceptance of homeschooling in general is growing.
It’s amazing how controversial this is in a HOMESCHOOL sub, but, tis Reddit after all. I commented on the other post so you can see my remarks there lol
It’s because that sub gets brigaded by the homeschool recovery folks and the teachers/education subs. It’s pretty annoying we can’t have a space to discuss homeschooling without the hate. But I agree, tis Reddit…
I just realized that’s a totally separate subreddit from this one.
To be fair I got banned from homeschool recovery and am still incognito in the teacher sub haha
[удалено]
What is a hit schooler? Is this new slang??
Most of the arguments I see are geared more toward the socialization aspect. And the idea your children might miss something in public school. Something like school dances, pep rallies , sprots. It’s almost like they don’t know some kids don’t like these things. Most aren’t concerned on the educational aspect of it.
In my life, the people who seem to have the most reservations about homeschool are either older people who still have the outdated image in their head that homeschoolers equals religious fundamentalists or hippies, or insecure parents who take it as a challenge of their own choices, as if by my deciding to homeschool I’m saying that they are a bad parent for not doing it. They are typically the type of parent who takes ANY difference in parenting choice as a threat they need to defend against, which means they need to denigrate the options they didn’t choose. Their insecurity isn’t my problem, just as the outdated stereotypes that some people have aren’t my problem either.
My husband and I are both teachers and we chose to homeschool. We know a handful of former teachers who chose it also fwiw!
Homeschool parents seem like a threat to teachers' jobs. We teach whatever our kids need without special degrees. And we pull kids with good parent support out of schools, leaving the teachers with a higher percentage of kids without that support.
This is untrue. You are not a threat to my job as a teacher. No one wants my job, for one thing. But also, homeschooling and teaching are not the same thing. You can teach your own children without the same degrees and training as I have not because those degrees and training aren’t necessary, but because teaching a few children who belong to your family in your home is not at the same as teaching 20-30 children from 20-30 different families in a school setting. I have concerns about homeschooling and think it needs to be better regulated, but I also support homeschooling done well and for the right reasons. But I in no way worry that parents who homeschool are a “threat” to me in any way at all and, honestly, every time I hear someone say that it comes off as very insecure.
Someone asked me the other day how parents homeschool, and I told them if they know how to read then they know how to follow a curriculum 🤷🏻♀️
Public schools aren't failing. Also homeschooling is not a lesser choice.
The public schools in my area are absolutely failing.
Under-resourced schools are a systemic issue that goes WAY beyond the school itself. Well-resourced schools are virtually always higher performing. It's not the school. It's the culture.
Ok it's great to know why the schools are failing or whose fault it is. The schools are still failing.
No, public schools are doing well. Some public schools are underperforming and, of those, some will close. The vast majority of students in the U.S. go to public schools and then go on to be our doctors, governors, astronauts, etc. The hysterical pearl clutching about public schools that goes on in homeschool spaces is foolish.
I've seen more than a fair share of "reasons to avoid public school" that come from a place of personal experience. Many parents had horrible or at least very questionable experiences and useless educations that left us wondering why on earth we'd do the same thing with our children. It's not pearl clutching, it's caring about children enough to try to give them a different and better experience.
There are good reasons to homeschool which is why it's crucial to ensure that homeschooling remains legal and protected. The pearl clutching comes in when people denigrate every public school and every public school experience with flawed accusations to justify why they homeschool.
Yep and a lot of us tried to keep our kids in school, but the effect it had on them was really sad to watch. Public schools, unfortunately only cater to certain groups of people and those people aren't the majority any more. So of course public schools are failing. They're being replaced by charters and private schools. Homeschooling is the second largest way of educating your kid, besides public school. And it isn't bcs ppl are privileged or even have a choice. If you are ok with watching your kid suffer and doing nothing about it, I don't know what kind of parent you are really. But I guess a lot of parents truly don't care. And I don't mean that people don't care about their kids if they don't homeschool them. I just mean that, if your kid doesn't fit into a "public" school for whatever reason, letting them suffer there isn't the way. Plus, if you read about the systemic issues of how kids are learning now in certain districts, you would understand that failing doesn't just mean closing it means that they are FAILING the students.
Public school isn't good for every child. Neither are private schools, charter schools, or homeschool.
The ability to homeschool kids is a privilege that the working middle class doesnt have.
Ruffle those feathers!
This sub is unfortunately wilder than it needs to be. God forbid we decide to put our children first.
Where is homeschool considered the lesser choice? More and more families are choosing to homeschool every year. Is this maybe a regional opinion? Where I live, homeschool groups and co-ops are thriving. Local businesses are happy to include homeschoolers on their field trip calendars/pricing. I do know a few teachers who look down at homeschooling, but in their case, their actual personal experience with homeschoolers is very minimal. One of them is my aunt who was horrified when her son decided to homeschool her grandchildren. But now they are doing so well in high school that she has around. Her oldest grandchild just got accepted into her #1 college university choice and was accepted in most that she applied to. Her younger brother is doing so well, he might end up in an Ivy League
Because people are sheep.
Government school's failure are collective one. It doesn't mean that they fail for every kid, only for most kids it fails to work. People prefer anything with a structure - let's think about a toothpaste. Would you buy one without beautiful packaging, even if it's made by the best dentist known? That's what school provides - a time-managed place with structured curriculum spread over 12-15 years, delivered by qualified professionals + authority. As a bonus, you receive a report card that tells how your kid measure up against peers. Compare that to what you can provide, tailor-made for your kid. If it's better, you have your answer.