tl;dr Given the research, what would you recommend as a societal approach to homeschooling? Should it be legal? Regulated? Would you consider home schooling your own children, if you could? If you were home schooled, what was your experience?
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I was home schooled all the way until college. I had a formal curriculum for the first half and somewhere in my teenage years my parents transitioned to a more un-schooling approach, so I ended up teaching myself everything.
It worked out really well for me since I did really well in college and I’ve been successful since then. I’ve always had a really positive attitude towards home schooling because I felt that it prepared me well for college, even though I was frustrated that my parents had such a hands-off approach.
Looking back on it though, my siblings had a really bad time. None of them have been successful academically like I have. There were four of us, so numerically I don’t think a 1 out of 4 success rate is very good.
Approaching it from a more quantitative perspective, research seems to show that home schooled students have higher than average test scores: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15582159.2017.1395638. I’m always worried by these, however, because home schooling parents tend to be 1. wealthier than average and 2. more likely to be involved in their children’s education (not automatic, since un-schooling is a thing). Since socio-economic level and parental involvement are the strongest indicators of children’s academic success, would these children do just as well in a public school?
Since I never went to school, I don’t know how bad bullying is. But two of my siblings ended up in public school for some time and they were bullied horribly, including by teachers (my sister was verbally abused by a teacher during detention). I would be willing to accept a worse education to avoid what comes down to abuse — and if bullying is as bad nationwide as it appears to be, then it looks like most children are suffering abuse.
From a societal perspective, abuse can be a problem within home schooled households as well. The more isolated a household is, the more likely family abuse is. Should home schooling be banned or regulated to avoid this in some way? How does the abuse compare to what students experience from teachers and students at school?
I personally believe home schooling is bad for your kids because they don’t learn valuable people skills.
I think it depends on how parents home school their kids. I had friend who was home schooled, but his parents allowed him to do anything with other friends. But another girl-friend of mine was home school and was pretty much kept away from many things and she came out little crazy when she moved out.
It all comes down to how crazily the parents shelter their child. Kind of like if you have a dog and you don’t properly socialize it at the park with other dogs or even people at an early age. That dog becomes an asshole.
The same applies to humans except instead of being an asshole, the person could be nice — just so incredibly awkward that they come off as an asshole.
My mom homeschooled my youngest siblings and they have made more, better, longer-lasting friendships than i ever did in public school. There were active homeschool co-ops where the parents in the group would split lessons and all the kids would get together regularly. It was a much more open-to-being-your-weird-self type of environment, without stigma to fit into narrow stereotypes to be accepted by peers. There are also lots of clubs and extra-curriculars they joined.
But of course there are extrene families where homeschooling is an excuse to never let your kids meet anyone or leave the house. (Mostly seen as very strict and extreme religious types in my area.)
My sisters got a more widely varied education than me but i think are probably a bit weaker on math & science, though that could happen in any education system.
My brother, through a home schooling program, teaches his children that: evolution is a lie; climate change is a lie; humans cohabiteted with dinosaurs; America is a Christian theocracy; homosexuality and abortion access are destroying America; and non-Christian scientists and musicians are tools of Satan.
His children do not interact with peers outside his church and similar fundamentalist churches. His girls, who seem naturally intelligent and curious, are discouraged from pursuing careers. They are in a brainwashing echo chamber and it saddens me.
So yeah, I have issues with the academic rigors in some homeschooling curriculums.
I would never have my kids do home schooling, simply because we could use the break while they’re away at public school.
Homeschoolers tend to be either privileged or rigidly ideological, and as a result I’m generally pretty suspicious of it, but I certainly don’t think it should be illegal. I think there should definitely be some regulation of it to insure that curricular standards are being met and the kids aren’t being abused. Mostly I feel like homeschooled kids are missing out on a lot of what childhood has to offer, both the good and the bad. I would send my own kids to school.
My bestfriend is currently homeschooled, I am not, but this is my perspective on it.
In order for homeschooling to be effective it takes a particular kind of child and a particular kind of parent. If the child is an average teenager who has a decent social life, does okay in school and is not super motivated then it is not (usually) a good fit. My reasoning is that the student will not have the learning environment that a school offers to push them to succeed.
Also, when you are homeschooled you must supplement it with some sort of sport or club or whatever will provide the student with social interactions with other kids around their age. When the only person a child sees 24/7 is his mom, dad and brother the kid will naturally have a very sheltered childhood that will harm them once they move out.
I said it also has to be a good for for the parent. That is because some people are simply not good teachers. I don’t care if it is your kid, if you cannot effectively explain or find a way to explain logarithms to the student there is an issue. Some parents also will have a bias in what they teach. For instance, a super religious catholic who doesn’t believe in evolution. Or a conspiracy theorist who thinks the holocaust never happened. Or someone who thinks the civil war is boring, so doesn’t teach it to their child.
Sometimes homeschooling does work out, and when it does that’s great. The student can graduate early and turn out better well rounded and more committed than a peer that attended a conventional school.
Another thing- it will not end well if the student is forced into it. If your friends kids are like in middle school or something and their parents are considering the switch now, I think that it is a good idea for them to be presented with the pros and cons of both homeschooling and going to a public (or private or charter or whatever) school.
I know two girls who were home schooled that by the time they were 16 could speak Spanish and Chinese and when they took the ACT at the same time juniors in highschool took it they both scored above 30. They also did many social things with other homeschooled children. So there are circumstances where it works much better than any public or private school….
However I’ve also worked in a facility that did truancy and I’ve seen parents who didn’t want to go to jail because they didn’t ever make their kid go to school and their kids were just left on their own during the day for the most part. These parents would “home school” but I wouldn’t say anything was actually taught.