Anecdotally, most current or former homeschooled kids I meet seem pretty socially awkward. I wonder if It’s because the miss-out on the opportunity to learn how to socialize properly as children. But maybe I’m being too critical, idk.
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My toddler is thriving in pre-school. We can’t teach her how to be independent and socialise with other kids at home.
I can see a life situation where we would homeschool for a limited time. I’d expect both teaching parent and kid to do standardised testing to make sure the education is up to the national curriculum.
Home schooling should be be an excuse to not school, which it seems to be in some parts of the world.
Every homeschooled person I’ve met has lacked all tact but YMMV. I haven’t met anyone that was homschooled after leaving university so no clue if that improves over time.
I think it’s a big mistake, but don’t think ‘the law’ should get involved, either.
Include meals, that’s a good incentive and will help a lot of kids that are fed total garbage at home.
if we can’t feed children what are we even doing?
Big part of school is training on how to be socialized into society. Interact with people who are different than you. Homeschooling provides none of that.
Actually not too bad. I wasn’t fully homeschooled, however, my old man augmented what school was teaching me. Basically he taught me mathematics, reading and writing. It kept me well ahead of my class. I had a good handle on fractions and so on at about grade two.
Then again, my old man was a physicist with a PhD.
The majority that defend homeschooling do so on pure ideological grounds. They accuse schools of indoctrinating kids, but they want to personally ensure their kids are indoctrinated the way they (the parents) deem correct. “Sex is evil! Women should submit to men! <Ethnicity> is pure evil! Never question me!” - these parents should NEVER homeschool their kids.
There are very few situations where homeschooling would be better for the kid over traditional schooling, and those situations are usually remedied with the school getting its shit together and being at least decent.
The school can’t always get better though and can even be harmful to kids, due to bad teachers, bad staff, bad classmates or general precarious conditions, especially if the kid has any sort of special need (autism, down’s syndrome, etc). Changing schools isn’t always an option, whether due to distance or cost of moving back and forth every day, and that’s usually when homeschooling should be done.
I was homeschooled for pretty much the exact opposite ideological reasons, and am so grateful to have had the chance to explore and develop without institutional constraints. Some great years traveling in a bus and seeing how a wide variety of people lived. To me homeschooling is an ideal of time commitment to a child that most people are unable to achieve, and offloading that opportunity to a centralized authority while you pursue a paycheck is a tragic compromise
School is more than just what you learn. It’s crucial for development to socialize with children your age, and close to your age. There’s a reason the stereotype that homeschoolers are socially awkward exists
There’s plenty of opportunity to socialize as a homeschooler. The stereotype exists because many (most?) homeschooled kids are so because the isolation and rejection of social norms is the point. But there’s also a demographic of them that exist because they live in bad school districts and don’t have the money for private school.
Neighborhood kids form bonds with other neighborhood kids regardless of the school they go to. Homeschool kids are more often than not allowed to join their local school sports teams as well. I think you’d be surprised how many people you’ve met who were homeschooled that you’d never guess.
…when someone seems normal you aren’t looking to explain their differences. The chance to socialize in the real world as opposed to a classroom environment is one of the things I value most about that period. We clearly have very different perspectives, in my community yours might be socially awkward. And that’s ok, it is in no way “crucial” for you to think feel or act the way I do :)
I was “homeschooled”, along with my many siblings, by Southern Baptist parents. I couldn’t really read until I was 9, and my younger siblings until even later. My older siblings had it marginally better, but not by much.
I was horrendously under-socialiazed, and I still struggle with debilitating social anxiety to this day. Although I should emphasize that a couple of my siblings are very socially competent and relatively well-adjusted, so I’m not sure how much of my issues in that domain are nature vs. nurture.
It always made me feel awful and dumb to hear peers at church talking about school-related things and what subjects they were learning, because I had no idea what they were talking about, which exacerbated my social difficulties. In my teenage years I started to understand what was happening, and I practically had to beg my mother for any kind of instructional material. I taught myself algebra with the help of internet friends. I still distinctly recall how utterly unscientific and creationist-bent was a biology textbook I got; it was so bad that even I was questioning it at the time.
My younger siblings were eventually allowed to participate in a homeschooling “coop” after my younger brother begged for something. Homeschool coops involve homeschool families getting together to have some semi-structured classes, usually something like once a week. Said brother took a “psychology” class there, the textbook for which was written by a guy with a business or economics degree and no background in psychology, and it said mental illness was the result of sin.
Home schooling in my state is ridiculously under-regulated. All you have to do is be registered with a private school as homeschooling and submit transcripts that comply with the state education requirements. That’s literally it. My mother fabricated them - the records say I took Spanish in high school, but I couldn’t have told you much beyond “hola”.
I went to college with what was essentially a fake high school diploma. I languished in my 20’s. I got a master’s degree in my 30’s, but I was lucky and happened to be gifted when it came to academia; most homeschool kids aren’t so fortunate. Most of my siblings have not managed to actualize their potential. I myself could have been doing much more much earlier if I hadn’t gotten a woman pregnant during college because I’d never had anyone tell me to use a condom. In retrospect, my parents’ duress at learning that I was having a child out of wedlock is almost comical for having been essentially self-induced.
I don’t know if homeschooling should be banned outright (as I’m aware of select cases where some parents weren’t neglectful and it was actually a better option for some kids due to various circumstances), but something needs to change. At a minimum, I think homeschoolers should be required to do the same state standardized testing as required in public schools in order to ensure they’re not being outright neglected like I and my siblings were.
My child is attending public school, which has had it’s own set of issues (bullying and a shocking amount of violence, for starters), but it’s a marvel to me the gap between what she knows and what I knew at her age. She’s learning things that I still haven’t. She’s better off for it.
Tl;Dr: don’t homeschool, do improve public school.
My experience is the same. I think it can possibly work but most who do it are not competent enough to do it. Likely those that are are likely to competent to have the time. Even if you are you realize you need several people like yourself with similar aged kids to cover various basis which at that point is called a school. At some point to the subjects get advanced enough that its going to be increasingly hard for a single parent to cover them. I can say I sub for high school and there is a reason teachers a subjective specific at that point. Its one thing to do various curriculums for various classes in the same subject but keeping up with half a dozen completely different curriculums. You end up leaning on the preset things that basically the people are trying to avoid with public school but now your kid is losing different perspectives, the social aspects, and the challenges of having to figure things out for themselves. Add to this that very early education benefits massively from socialization and is more about that. So like pres school. kindergarten. you need other kids. maybe you can do 1-3 and utilize the public school things. like bring your kid over for recess or clubs and sports if they have them (this is a big reason most peoples home schooling falls flat you sorta need this stuff). maybe you can do 4 or 5 but even junior high they need to start making decisions for subjects and learning to learn from strangers and likley one adult is not going to cut it. Honestly they would be better off putting the effort to working with their kid after school.
It’s fine.
Homeschooling or not isn’t the issue. Plenty of kids who do go to school have a horrible education. I have known some perfect wonderful home schooled people, and some total weirdo religion nut job home schooled people.
The issue is the parents. And there isn’t much you can do about shitty parents unless you remove the child from the home, which is typically only done under the case of severe neglect or abuse. The state doesn’t and shouldn’t have say about how people conduct their private affairs though and how you raise children is very much a private affair.
I think home schooling (and private schools) should be illegal. Everyone’s kids should have to go through the same public education system. No exceptions. Public schools could use an influx of cash, and there are definitely edge cases that they don’t handle well currently. We should advocate for making them better rather than finding an alternative.
Didn’t Finland do this? (Ban private schools)
Not really, but they’ve regulated very similarly to public schools. They have to follow the national curriculum and can’t charge tuition.
In practice I’ve only ever seen Waldorf schools as far as private goes. Maybe internatioal baccalaureate is private, too? I guess there might be some with focus on going pro athlete, too.
I saw this question asked before and my answer is still the same. I have never met a homeschooled person who wasn’t a fucking idiot. Do with that what you will.
Working engineer with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree 👋. I credit an older sister who got into the world first who gave warning to us younger ones and the good sense to listen to her advice. I can clock a homeschooler a mile out but the well educated, well socialized ones have put in a lot of effort to get there and I won’t out them if they don’t want to be. The well-adjusted ones don’t talk about it much, same as a public school educated person wouldn’t bring up their grade school experience frequently.
You’ve met many people who introduced themselves as homeschooled who were what you describe. You’ve interacted with many more who did not make their school history their whole personality.
I didn’t mean to say all homeschooled people are stupid. Only the ones I met.
Cool. I’ve met several who went to Harvard, MIT, etc and were extremely successful in life.
It is illegal here, parents are required to send their children to school for a minimum of nine years.
This is to protect the interests of the child, Sweden has several laws that are focused on the child’s rights over the parent’s authority.
I have read arguments from people in the US who homeschool their kids about how it is the parent’s right to manage their children’s education.
But to me that just seems wrong, in Sweden children have the right to a high quality education that follows a proper plan and is done by professional teachers, it is the duty of the parents to make sure the children attends their education.
Homeschooling means that the government can’t verify that the education the children receive is up to standards set by the department of education.
Just about all education in Sweden is free to Swedes and EU citizens, so there is zero financial reason to do homeschooling over regular schooling here.
I’ve heard that before, and would be a fan of making it illegal in America as well, there’s a strong argument that doing so would improve the quality of American schools significantly.
The idea being that if rich children go to public schools then the rich will be more focused on improving public school instead of attempting to defund it
Americans value individual choices over collective responsibilities.
Homeschooling her is predominantly for those who fell they are not a part of our mainstream culture or that culture is corrupting. A lot of religious and other minority belief groups practice it.
In the US, the quality of schools varies drastically based on where you live. There’s no guarantee that kids are getting a good education unfortunately
True
But there is more or less a guarantee that kids that are being homeschooled are not getting a good education.
The Swedish school system didn’t pop up out of thin air either. Of course you’ll have to invest in the system for it to work.
we don’t have national education policy.
education is 90% determined by the town or city you live in. even states have minimal influence over local districts.
schools in the same district, and schools a few kim apart, can have wildly different standards and outcomes.
the only major factor is basically, how wealthy your zipcodes/parents were. that is the overwhelming determination of your educational outcome, because richer parents value education more than non-rich parents.
in poorer communities, education is seen negatively and it’s actively discouraged.
right but we have a significant portion of the population trying to privatize it, which by design makes it unequal
Homeschooling means that the government can’t verify that the education the children receive is up to standards set by the department of education.
Well… They do tests. They’re sent to outside test centers so no one can cheat for them and mask their incompetence or something. Doesn’t everyone periodically run tests to ensure they’re on track?
I was homeschooled in the US and no such testing was required, and it still is not required in my state. I think it absolutely should be required if homeschooling is going to continue to be allowed.
You say this but I know someone homeschooled for years who learned next to nothing and is ruined for life because instead of having lessons for hours every day, he played videogames. You’re suggesting he could not have gotten away with that, but he certainly did.
You mean the national tests?
Sure, we have those, they take place in your normal school at the same time all over the country.
Ok, say a child is homeschooled for five years, and then fails a national test, that means that they have effectively lost a lot of their best time to learn, and they need to retake the subjects to catch up.
Proper schooling allows for students with special needs to get extra help.
I was one of those students, I was on the spectrum of having light autism, possibly some ADHD/ADD and similar stuff, I got an assistant teacher in school for several years, and even went to a smaller class specifically tailored towards students with my kind of mental issues, as I grew up I became more independent and learned to live with my difficulties, these days I don’t consider myself to have any real problems from my earlier diagnosis, and can even use them to my advantage.
I got the help I needed, when I needed it, while attending mostly normal classes and getting socialize with fellow students.
The socializing part was hugely important for my development, without that I would not have been able to go as far as I have.
When I look at homeschooling, I see it as parents denying their children a proper education, often to force their own warped worldview onto their children, this obviously comes from someone who experienced a well functioning school, even if I was bullied at times.
TL;DR: Testing only shows the result of time spent in education, it can’t catch students as they are about to fall through the cracks as a proper teacher can during lessons, this means that a homeschooled student that fails the test has lost a lot of opportunities to get extra help during their schooling.
not really. i did the ACT and maybe one other state regulated test and i was homeschooled my entire life.
The absolute back-breaker of the US educational system. They keep kids out of school to indoctrinate them by completly incompetent people instead of giving them a proper, universal education and the ability to come in regular contact with kids of their age outside the normal circles.
That does not mean that the US school system is the ultimate solution, on the contrary. But it would be much more important to fix that than to allow any yokel to brainwash their kids at home into a next generation undereducated and narrowminded person.
a lot of schools are full of yokels. my primary and secondary education were full of yokels. 1/3 of the teacher staff were townies and a lot of them were idiots and drunks.
i never met a smart person until i went to college.
That’s why beefing up public schools is something that should have priority.
You can’t beef them up from the top down in the USA. 10% of school funds come from the feds.
This is funny to me because I was homeschooled specifically so I wouldn’t become an uneducated yokel lmao
Former homeschooled kid here. Everything I’m about to say is personal experience but I’ve known many other homeschooled people throughout my life.
With homeschooling you get out what you put in. If the parents take the time to really dial in to the child’s learning needs and set up adequate socialization through after school activities or meetups with other homeschoolers I truly believe it is one of if not the best option for raising a child.
That being said, most of the people choosing to homeschool are not doing it to give their kids the best. Many are narcissistic conservatives who deny modern science and homeschool not to teach the child but to indoctrinate. They don’t consider mental health important. They don’t consider friends important. They consider the kid learning the Bible and toughening up important. The parents are often social outcasts themselves because of their more strict beliefs.
Homeschooling is not a problem and doesn’t result in anything directly, it’s the people choosing to homeschool not being equipped to do it properly. In my experience the kind of parent who would choose homeschooling is likely to produce a social awkward kid even if they don’t homeschool.
TL:DR - Homeschooling good. Most everyone who chooses homeschooling bad. Hug your kids.
I was homeschooled by such parents as you describe, and I still have social difficulties in my 30’s because of it. I also wasn’t hugged at all, but I don’t think that alone would have fixed it 😛
This… I remember one of our neighbors finally letting their homeschooled kid go to public school and play with us. We had to teach him how to run. I remember my young mind being baffled by this. He was incredibly naïve and overly trusting so he got bullied mercilessly and beat up at recess. His mother did him no favors by being really nasty with us when we went over to take him fishing, exploring, etc. We moved away and i wonder what happened to him… he was a gentle soul.
Aw that’s so rough on the poor guy, it likely did him a world of good moving forward that he had friends like you to open his eyes, even if it was a short time.
I had the reverse happen where I was teaching the public school kids that you could climb trees. I’m sure it wasn’t mindblowing for them, but they had just never thought about it before. We were like 13 at the time.
I had a wonderful experience too, my parents really put their heart and soul into me and my siblings and we had a local homeschooling group larger than one of the nearby schools that did minimum weekly outings and the like.
I’m an electrical engineer now, my sisters are lawyers, bankers, and concert pianists, my brothers are studying for medical doctorate and running a forge, and many of my friends are in similar places.
Just to add my voice to yours, it’s absolutely all about what you put into it. I have deep lifelong friendships from my homeschooling days, the heavy intent our parents had on the social aspect was imperative. I joined after school activities by the local high-schools later on and met some great public school friends.
The natural flow of learning time-wise vs the rigidity of public school is a studied and proven to be far more conducive to education, as well, and I wish public schools would learn this.
Mine and my siblings’ and friends’ experience was amazing compared to most if not all of my public school friends, and it was all thanks to our parents pouring their lives into giving us all of the knowledge and environments we needed. It can definitely not go this way, if the parent isn’t actively providing those environments, but it is and always will be an issue of the tool being used incorrectly.
Just need to correct one small thing.
I had a wonderful experience too
My experience was absolutely terrible and I would have been better off in a public school. My parents were proof of why homeschooling is the wrong choice 99% of the time
I have friends in the old country who do homeschooling. They’re the kind who do it for good reasons. The amount of controls, checks and justifications the parents have to go through constantly is huge. Constantly prove the teaching methods, program, environment, everything. So there are ways to permit homeschooling that seem better it seems.
Yeah the ones I know only see Facebook news (pushed by Russian bots and right wing propoganda) about how public schools are evil and bad and you should definitely send your child to private religious school (who definitely won’t rape them) or home school them to install horrible values to ensure they grow up to vote regressive .
Its bad man.
People say there are parents who do it for good reasons and do a good job, but I haven’t seen that and find it hard to imagine as being common. The person I know who was homeschooled had his life destroyed by his parents, with homeschooling being the first of a series of horrifying blows to his mental state. He doesn’t know the very basics of how society works or anything about math, science, history, or language, but he thinks he knows everything. He seems to think everything taught to kids in school is wrong or unimportant. But his Internet rabbit holes? Invaluable.
Ps he was homeschooled because his parents were religious extremists.
