Homeschool World Forum

Hello, Against Homeschooling!! and everyone else who has submitted to this thread. It is a great read!!

Against Homeschooling, I want to start out by saying how impressed I am with your writing and debating skills. I attended and was graduated from a private school. I would put money on it, that very, very few of my classmates would today be as articulate and clear in their writing as you are. It is definitely a gift.

From what I have read here, your main argument is that you were lonely as a result from your years at home. Perhaps not allowed, for whatever reason, to socialize and learn people skills. That is very sad and I can see how that might be possible in an extreme situation.

I am not going to argue with you over this issue but I would like to present my reasons for homeschooling my youngest two children. I would also like to say that most homeschoolers work very hard at making sure their children have the best. I believe that includes the best education, the best safe environment, and the best social skills.

I first looked into homeschooling about a year ago when my then 4 year old son was about to turn 5. This child is extremely intelligent and very social; however, he cannot sit still for long periods of time and he never shuts up. He is always talking and asking questions. If I put him into the school system, they are going to label him ADHD before the first day of school ends. I saw it happen when my 13 year old son entered the school system at age 5. I also saw it happen with my 18 year old son.

Socialization!!! Yeah both of my older boys have a social life alright. It is to the demise of their academic career though. They hate school because no one ever took the time to help them learn. The material was slung at them, probably while they were talking to the person sitting next to them, and it might have even been slung at them a second time before there was a test of some sort. After being in school all day, homework was the last thing they wanted to do. We fought. I cried. They cried. We fought some more. Then it was time for bed and we would repeat the whole scenario again the next day. Summers were spent dreading school in the fall. My 18 year old dropped out of school in the 11th grade. My 13 year old is doing fair, but the hormones are kicking in and I suspect next year is going to be hard for him.

You are probably going to jump in at this point and say it is the parents fault. However, I am not going to buy into that nor am I going to blame the teachers. It is the whole school system approach. It holds back the truly intelligent and loses the ones who cannot keep up. Only the middle of the road kids are going to be o.k. in the long run.

Now the socialization topic is scary to some of us who are just starting to homeschool. But I know a few things for certain. If I homeschool, my child will not be faced with drugs or alcohol, at least not on my premises. They will not be abused or bullied. The will have continuity of care and a stable, quiet environment in which to learn. They will learn the material before them, before they are pushed into something new. They will have friends and family around them very often. We socialize at least 3-4 times a week with other children their age.

It is true as you say that they may not have a huge pool of people from which to choose their friends. But I have always been very selective about with whom my children socialize. Could this be a bad thing? Maybe, in your opinion. However, my job is to get these boys to their 18th birthday and hopefully instill in them morals and a passion for life and learning. If that means keeping a tight reign on them, then so be it.

I want to thank you for your passion. You have given all of us here some valid points upon which to think. I am sorry that you had such a bad experience. I feel your frustration and your resentment through your words. I pray that you will have resolution in this area realizing that you have been given a superior education, as is relevant from your writings. Really you have encouraged me probably more to homeschool than not to just from your obvious English, grammar, and composition skills.

Blessings, Robin

I must congratulate you, Theodore, on catching that deeply ironic misspelling. I actually laughed when I saw your post, and I will admit that it is quite embarrassing as well as entertaining given the point that I was trying to make. But then again, you must recall that I am a student and not a teacher (albeit of the homeschooled persuasion) as most posters on this forum are, and if I had to make a judgment I would say that the English teachers I have been exposed to in the public school system so far would find it comical that anybody with so weak a grasp of grammar yet alone argumentation skills would be trying to teach English. But this debate aside, that really was quite a slip up on my part.

Sparkie12, flattery aside I am glad that you posted such an intelligent and worthwhile change of pace from the silly bullying issue. Also, I am glad that you have a plan for how your children are going to be socialized. Having such a plan (and followthrough for that plan) would be a step in the right direction for homeschoolers everywhere. You should be warned that the reality is that out of a small pool of peers it is likely that your child will fail to find individuals suited extremely closely in interest to him or her, so even if you succeed in letting your child spend a lot of time with a limited peer group your chances of success are spotty. My parents certainly tried to get me connected with other homeschoolers, but obviously there was seldom any success in that area. Likewise, looking back on it I see that most of them never had any friends either (and in some cases still don't.)

As far as your homeschooled child making friends with children in the school system, I wish you the best but it didn't work for me. My parents signed me up for all sorts of scripted activities in which I should theoretically have been making friends with non-homeschoolers (art classes, soccer team, etc.), but due to their organized nature they just didn't work. It's really hard to keep up with friends, especially at a younger age, if one is not in consistent contact with them.

Moreover, I certainly wouldn't blame you for your children's problems academically in school, but the reality is that there are many factors in education and some kids do fine while others struggle. Whatever specifically has held your kids back, it certainly can't be blamed on the school system as a whole because many, many individuals have gone on to fame and fortune after being prepared by a public education. It seems to me that if they were so consistently bored by middle and high school perhaps they should have been placed in more challenging classes? I rarely see homeschooling families who claim to have not received difficult enough work trying this avenue which certainly kept me satisfied.

Motivated people succeed regardless where they are. The fact that there are some successful public schoolers (or successful public schools, for that matter...) does not mean that the public school system overall is working to anywhere near its full potential. If it were working to its full potential, why would the same successful public schoolers homeschool or send their children to private schools? How do you explain the huge differences in test scores between homeschoolers and public schoolers, especially in the majority of cases where the parents have no teaching degree (and quite often, not even a college degree)?

If a large number of patients at a certain hospital died, would you blame the patients or the hospital? But wait, maybe the patients should have requested a more vigorous treatment! It's all their fault!

http://www.worcestermag.com/archives/20 ... 6/ed1.html
Colleges that have accepted homeschooled students appreciate the maturity and self-direction these students demonstrate. They believe that because homeschooled students have been involved in shaping their own education, they tend to be motivated learners and are comfortable assuming positions of leadership, both in class and in social situations.

http://www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/alum/2003/12.html
Minster also consults colleges trying to evaluate home-school applicants. "What I hear from colleges is, ‘Send me all the home-school students you can,'" she said. "These are students who know how to study independently."

Does anyone else find this one word ironic. What I mean is that everyone thinks of socialization as having our children interacting with children of thier own age right. The thing that we seem to forget is that children are children for a short period of time while we remain adults for the majority of our lives. With that said though, how many of us now interact with peers of our own age. I know that I don't. I am usually in a crowd for the most part where I have people that are 10, 15, and 20 years older. That is the socialization that my children will have as well as with children of their own age. How we teach them "socialization" is by bringing them where every we go and present the manners in which they should act with people of ALL ages.

Bravo, Annette!! I had the same experiences as you in public school. My kids are 7 and 3; they have never been away from me except for a few hours a week in the gym daycare. They are the most social kids you have ever seen, and they are equally comfortable with adults and kids.

I went to public schools and at the time, I really didn't know that it was bad. I thought I went to a great school... I suppose that academically it was okay. Not great, because I was bored through several classes in several grades, but it was okay. Or so I thought.

Thinking back on my school years, I realize that it wasn't really a great thing at all.

When I was in kindergarten people called me retarded because I had an overbite. Nevermind that I was actually very intelligent, but just because I looked different I was teased.

For most of middle school and high school I felt like a loser and a reject because I didn't have a boyfriend. I was consistently questioning myself... was I not pretty enough? Did I have a horrible personality? What was wrong with me? I really didn't get it. I spent several years of my life with a fake smile plastered to my face trying to hide my internal pain, all the while wishing that somehow I could die and end it all. There were hours during the day that I might not feel that way, but inevitably I would go back to feeling the same old depression.

I did have a few very good friends, who I still keep in touch with occasionally today.

However, out in the real world, life is nothing like public school. I moved over 1000 miles away from my old school and old life. People don't reject you because of what music you listen to. You can pick the people that you choose to associate with, and make friends with common interests. You don't have to spend time with people that torment you... there are laws against things like that.

Not everybody can be prom queen, or student body president, or captain of the football team. For everybody that reaps those benefits, there are many people that have few friends and don't excel socially in the public school system.

I have a beautiful 4 year old daughter that has many friends. She is not shy when meeting new people of any age... she gets along well with 2 year olds, 4 year olds, teenagers, and senior citizens (they love her to pieces). I made my decision to homeschool years before she was born, but whenever I read about public school horror stories, it just makes me more glad that she will never go there. Reading this thread, I just can't help but looking at my daughter and being thankful that she will never have her friendliness and social ease beaten out of her by the public school system. Hopefully she will keep the level of social adeptness that she has now.

While for the most part I suppose that I may have recovered from public school, it took at least 10 years to get where I am today. I'm still shy in many situations and feel slightly inadequate, I don't think I would be quite this way if I hadn't been in public school.