I don't think that's it. School sucks, and my school was 11 years of pure hell, I don't argue that, but locking a child with a parent and giving parents even more control over their life is not a solution
Raising your kids is ultimately about preparing them to be full productive adults that can seek fulfillment and provide a net good to the world once they're adults.
I don't see any way you could create a microcosm in your home (any home) and meet that goal or not severely hamper your kid from meeting that goal.
Homeschool isn't only at home, though. My kids, and all of the other homeschooled kids I know are out at some activity, museum or educational "thing" at least twice a week. Depending on their age, they can also volunteer or work somewhere that interests them. For example, my oldest loves reading, so she volunteers at the library once a week, where she gets to meet people of all ages.
Also, it's much easier to travel when you're homeschooling. You can go pretty much anywhere anytime as you don't have to be back home before school starts. As an example, we recently came back from a year on our sailboat traveling up and down the US East coast and the Bahamas. My kids spoke a different language (we're not anglophone), tasted different foods, met people from all the places we saw, but also from all over the world (you tend to meet a lot of other travelers when you travel), saw incredibly diverse fauna and flora, made friends incredibly quickly, etc. How's that for a microcosm?
Homeschooling's biggest misconception is that it's at home, when in reality, it's wherever you are. It's like remote work for kids.
But Museums aren't what school prepares kids for once they're adults. It's the conflict with lots of other kinds of people and learning how to navigate that in my opinion.
You're not wrong but you picked "museum" and ignored "volunteering at library" where they meet many kinds of people, learn to help them with their problems, learn to navigate an office environment, etc.
Sounds great until they get to university and have the culture shock realizing not everybody else grew up on a sailboat traveling the coast.
Why would they expect that? I've not seen any culture shock at college from homeschoolers, except perhaps being surprised at the amount of shenanigans that are gotten up to.
The gist here is that not all homeschooling is equal. Yes, you have homeschooling that's designed to facilitate raising your kid to be an idealogue and and ignoramus, but there's also homeschool intended to be a true alternative to public school sites. I ended up homeschooling my kids for a few years because they both had really bad ADHD and both were too young to be medicated. In my first's case, the school refused to assess for it (because it would cost money and resources (money) if she did have it) and just allowed her to flounder. Like, the teacher just got to the point of ignoring her in class. When we tried to talk about what to do, the teacher pulled her aside and said "okay, [child], I need you to focus in class from now on, can you do that?" Ah, yes, just focus. Quality education from our taxpayer funded institutions.
Anyway, homeschooling was hell for me, turns out I really don't like being a teacher, and it was tough on everyone, but I'm confident that my first at least learned more than she would have in public school over that same time period.
Why not? There's plenty of activities for homeschoolers(at least near here) with group co-op for one day a week, plus several clubs and group activities like sports, PE, and robotics.
for homeschoolers
I suppose if the kids in a community being homeschooled are representative of the rest of the kids, sure, but I doubt that's happening, though I don't know.
I am glad I went to public school after starting at private school because of all of the exposure to 'the real world' and all the kinds of people in it.
Are American schools really that horrible?
Not just American ones.
My kids seem to be doing ok. I mean they're not crazy about studying and homework and they have the odd complaint about a teacher, but they made great friends, they have pretty good teachers overall. It's probably not the same everywhere or for everyone but I don't think they'd be happy stuck in the house with me every day.
Fuck yes. At the time, I was glad my school didn't have much violence. When my trans egg started to crack, and I was a male shaving his legs and painting his toenails... Well, no one accepted me, nor hated me either. I dropped out and took a year of homeschooling, and studying alone and cycling everyday was a wonderfup break. But that backing off into more dependence on my parents fucked up my life for a while anyways.
Mine definitely weren't when I graduated in 2016. Towards the end there, I legit spent most of the day just sitting in the band hall with a handful of 360 controllers playing games (mostly Duck Game) on my laptop with friends and passersby. Virtual classes, concurrent college classes, and a travel hour pretty much gave me free reign to fuck around most of the week because I wasn't required to be in class except on specific days for those classes. Never got physically bullied, even had a middle-school verbal bully apologize to me. I saw plenty of people come out as LGBT comfortably, I saw football players compliment the marching band, it really wasn't that bad unless you were one of those people who got into fights, stole shit, and tried to sell drugs.
I have no doubt that schools can be hellholes, but I wouldn't say it's a given.
Yes. In my experience it was frequently a Lord of the Flies situation. I had hour long bus rides in my rural district where the only adult was busy driving. Knowing teenagers you can probably imagine how the freaks and geeks got treated.
Kids in America are so fucking cruel. We're taught pretty much from the get-go that it's everyone for themselves, and the only thing that keeps it from turning into Lord of the Flies is the school's culpability if one kid kills another.
Homeschool is so creepy and weird.
Because you only hear about shitty experiences.
I got bullied pretty bad as a kid but homeschooling seems way worse
That guy sounds like a pretty poor teacher and a bad environment to learn in.
So close...
Doesn't really answer the question, though ...
It is a stupid question. School is not the only place where you can socialize.
It's a blatantly reasonable question about fundamental logistics of homeschooling. Equally valid are "how did you set up the lesson plans" or "how are you supplementing teaching in areas you are weak in"
There are absolutely awful homeschooling parents out there but it really is up to the home in question doing the schooling. My Mom would, every semester, find text books covering the topics you normally have in school, and then some, and make a weekly plan out of it. I was given the plan, the books, and an essay to have written about topics presented by the end of the week. It was encouraged to cross topics, so for example I might read Tom Sawyer, then read a history book about the real steamships that were on the Mississippi, then the steam power that moved the ships and the science behind that. Not every parent can or will do that, but I just mean to say like, not all homeschooling parents are making antisocial disorganized idiots with no work ethic. I'm only anticisocial and disorganized.
So, I reckon your parents didn't solve the "how does a homeschooled child get properly socialized" issue?
Yea the people in this thread who think homeschooling should be banned have no idea what they're talking about. If I'd gone to public school as a kid I would've gotten bullied for being neurodivergent and being an atheist in a very mormon place; I would've gotten fed conservative mormon propaganda; and would've either had teachers that wouldn't know how to teach me, been in special ed when i didn't really need it, or tbh probably both.
I do wish I'd gotten more opportunities to socialize as a kid, but at most points in my childhood school would've been hell, so Idk if that would've been better for me in the long run. I wound up going to public school part time for high school, which imo should be an option for everyone. I got to take some electives that would've been hard/impossible for my mom to teach me without having to sit through all the unnecessary shit you have to do in school. Banning homeschooling would be stupid, there's other ways for kids to learn hot to socialize and a lot of shit the school just does a shit job of teaching from what I've seen and heard
I’m sorry this is so long, but I’ve put a lot of thought into this matter over the years, so I implore you to consider this decision very carefully before actually doing it.
Good homeschooling isn’t impossible, but my main issue with homeschooling is that many, perhaps most parents are either incapable or unwilling to put in the huge amount of effort that would be required to rival or surpass a typical public school education. I don’t want this to seem like a personal attack, it just seems like a lot of parents thinking about homeschooling don’t realize just how difficult it would actually be to do well. They bite off more than they can chew and the only one who really suffers for it is the kid. Your options for a decent home education are basically total personal dedication, treating it like an unpaid 60 hour a week job, or being wealthy enough that you can pay for private tutoring to free your time up. Otherwise, it would be a very difficult undertaking. The following questions are mostly rhetorical, just some things to think about:
Are you able to spend the time to do it right? 6-7 hours of actual hands-on instruction, 5 days a week? That much time would of course require a stay-at-home parent, something many or most families can’t afford to do. In addition, will you still have time to be able to homeschool as well as run necessary non-schooling errands in the same day? Things like grocery shopping, going to the doctor, cooking lunch/dinner, doing things after school, etc. This 6-7 hours also does not count towards any time you’ll have to spend outside of lessons, such as reviewing teaching materials, reviewing your child’s study materials, designing overall course curriculums, designing a daily lesson plan for each subject, physically setting up lessons/experiments, creating assignments/tests, grading assignments/tests, taking your kid to do extracurriculars, etc., so it’s more like 10-12+ hours per day. And if you were planning on just downloading all that stuff online or pulling it right out of a homeschooling book, that’s perhaps not even as good as what those unmotivated teachers you complain about would’ve done (which are actually pretty few and far between, in my experience). One of the best advantages of homeschooling is that it can be catered to your kid individually, but over-reliance on premade materials can have many parents delivering a cookie-cutter experience regardless.
Schools also have plenty of specialized staff because they know it would be impossible for one teacher to do everything by themselves in an effective way. What’s your plan to ensure you can cover each topic as well as a group of people who largely specializes in teaching that subject? Do you actually know the material well enough to teach it in the first place? Many parents simply aren’t informed enough on a given topic to teach a whole unit on the subject, and you might have to try to answer some pretty advanced questions.
Is this what your kid actually wants in the first place, or is it what you want for your kid? You seem to be under the impression that your kid would choose homeschool over public, but is that really true? Sure, it’s anecdotal, but everyone I’ve known who’s been homeschooled says that it was a net negative experience for them and that they’d have been much better off just staying in public school. They missed seeing their friends everyday, they felt they hadn’t learned as much as their peers and struggled in college, they felt their parents had dropped the ball in general. At the same time, it would have saved their parents a lot of time, money, and prevented an unfavorable result. That saved time, energy, and money could then in turn benefit the child by providing better rested parents who have the time and resources to go out and do fun things with them. It’s definitely still possible to have a great relationship with your kid even if they’re in public school, and they may benefit from the space it affords.
What is your plan to ensure adequate socialization of your child? I’ve known several homeschooled kids and they were all noticeably a bit socially stunted. I’d hope in addition to all the schooling you do, you can frequently still find time to take them to the park, enroll them in a sport or club of some kind, and otherwise provide many opportunities for them to make new friends/hang out with old ones.
Overall, homeschooling isn’t inherently bad, but I haven’t personally ever seen it done well. Providing a place full of love and support for your child is commendable, but I don’t know if the love of a parent alone is automatically a good replacement for a thorough education by a whole team of instructors alongside their peers. You admit that homeschooling has a bad reputation “because you only hear about shitty experiences,” but this seems like a good opportunity to quote another one of your comments, “So close…” I’m not saying good homeschooling doesn’t exist, but if we only hear about bad experiences, perhaps that should lend credit to how hard it is to do well and how many fail despite trying.
Public school gives better education, but if the goal is indoctrination and total control of the child, homeschooling comes out on top.
I'm not sure what the split is between controlling vs misguided parents. Have there been any studies on that?
Was home schooled because my mom couldn't afford to send me to a decent school. I really don't recommend it. When I did it, I also believed in that whole "why would I want to go to school where kids are mean and bully each other" shit. And while I think kids are cruel and school is shit, I do not recommend doing home schooling at all. It just fucked me up.
Granted this is anecdotal but I was homeschooled k-12 and it messed me up in a lot of ways. I had to spend most of my twenties learning things that your average person would have learned in their teens if not earlier.
Yeah, taking parenting advice from someone going by the name xxxSexMan69xxx is how you end up on a list.
Also, the guy on the left has a valid point and the other one is just an ass.
The fact that homeschooling is legal in one of the leading nations is just purely insane and super creepy
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