Homeschool World Forum

[septembersaphirre]

My belief is not that people shouldn't have a right to homeschool their children. I just think there need to be more rules. There should be a standard that parents are held to regarding homeschooling their children. You can say "I should have the right to do what I want with my children as a parent!" but what about the children who's parents are not making sure they get an adiquate education or are being abused? Are you so selfish that you don't think there should be monitoring to assure the safety of innocent children or are you that afraid for people to see what you are doing in your home? If you have nothing to hide, what's wrong with rules? Inspections? A CPS worker talking to your child?

I am 29 years old and was homeschooled from 1st grade through highschool. I should have graduated in 1999, but I didn't. My mother did not take the proper steps to make sure I had a diploma, heck, a textbook hadn't entered my house since I was in the 4th grade. My mother would spend most of her days asleep while my sister, 4 years my junior, and I would be left to fend for ourselves. When she did get up, she was looking for a reason to beat us or verbaly abuse us.

My father worked overseas and was rarely home. Before his arrival every few months or so, we would have the talk that we couldn't say anything bad about her to him or we'd be in big trouble. And we knew what that meant. A hanger, a woden spoon, a belt, punches to the back of the head, her squeezing your face so hard you had bruises. We also weren't suposed to "complain" to ANYONE about her. Nor were we aloud to compain about homeschooling. Neither of us EVER saw a doctor or a dentist EVER.

The only time we left home was to go to church. My point is: nobody questioned it, nobody did anything. I walked all over town desperately while she slept and got a job at 17. She told me to quit or get out. I got out. I ended up falling in with a man that abused me for 6 years horribly and am now far away and safe and a finally building am happy life and am in counceling.

I have no diploma. I probably have the math skills of a 6th grade child. The thing is, I know so many other adults now who were homeschooled and have similar stories.Something needs to be done. I can't stand the thought of this happening to another child. Would you not sacrifice some of your own privacy to save a child? What are you hiding?

[jcollins]

Your post suffers from the logic fallacy: Converse Fallacy of Accident or Hasty Generalization. It argues from a specific case(your experience) to a general rule. Example:
Argument: Every British person I know is a middle aged woman. Therefore all British people are middle aged women.
Problem: Those people one has met are a subset of the entire set. One cannot have met all people.

You cite your experience as well as others you have talked to as evidence. On the whole homeschoolers are doing well(much better than their government school counterparts in comparison) socially, academically, and in terms of personal happiness.

Academically better:
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200908100.asp

Socially better:
http://www.hslda.org/research/ray2003/Beyond.asp

"Homeschool graduates are active and involved in their communities. Seventy-one percent participate in an ongoing community service activity (e.g., coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association), compared to 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages (Table 2). Eighty-eight percent of the homeschool graduates surveyed were members of an organization (e.g., such as a community group, church or synagogue, union, homeschool group, or professional organization), compared to 50% of U.S. adults."

Better in terms of personal happiness:
http://www.hslda.org/research/ray2003/Enjoyment.asp

"Taking all things into consideration, 59% of the subjects reported that they were “very happy” with life, with another 39% declaring that they were “pretty happy” (Figure . Life is exciting for most (73%, Figure 9). When compared to the general population of the United States, homeschool graduates are just more content."

Also:

"For parents who sometimes wonder whether they are doing the right thing by homeschooling their children, it will be an encouragement to know that 95% of the homeschool graduates surveyed are glad that they were homeschooled"

[narrow4life]

Looks like OP is a "fake" account, or just really interested in causing a stir. Just joined, and this is the only post, and a poor one at that.

There are several things about the post that are way off...for example:

"My point is: nobody questioned it, nobody did anything. I walked all over town desperately..."

The problem is not that you were homeschooled. Homeschooling did not cause your poor upbringing (if it were even real), nor did it prevent your poor upbringing from being discovered.
_________________
We use My Father's World Homeschool Curriculum for our 2 kid's homeschool education.

[cpascal]

If the OP's story is true, I'm very sorry that she came from an abusive home. I had toxic relatives growing up, and I know how it is.

At the same time, home schooling isn't to blame. I attended government schools and nothing was ever done to protect me from the home. Many other kids from abusive homes attend government schools too, and they're also not rescued. And that's before you even start on the bullying and other negative social aspects of the schools themselves.

Why not still get your diploma? There are a lot of online high schools, or you could study to take the GED. There's all sorts of useful information on this website, and there's no reason why a lot of it can't apply equally to an adult learner.
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http://homeschoolcollege.wordpress.com

[uid467]

Homeschool are the best, you shouldn't care what outside saying.

[JEarnest]

If the story is true:

1. No one knows if it is, so don't berate the person who, if it IS true led a truly horrific life.

2. To the author: MOST people who are homeschooling are doing it to PROTECT their children. I acknowledge there are parents out there who are doing it to avoid the energy it takes to get their children to school or even bother in any matter about anything.

3. Along those lines, if what happened to you is truth, I am sure your mother did not go looking for support groups like this to make her better at what she was doing.

4. Bottom line: The jury is out. The people homeschooling for the "right" reasons, in the "right" way are looking to provide the best for their children. We have no way of knowing if we've done so until way down the line.

I have not started yet to homeschool.

It has been gnawing at me since my first-born was in utero. I have been on the PTA Board at my girls' school for four years (since my oldest was in preschool). I spend more time at the school than I do working...I love the staff, love the school, even love the district..but I do not like the things my kids are learning from other kids.

I have informed the Principal that we are going to homeschool. **shake of the head*** "You have no idea what you are getting yourself into". Told another teacher, *Shake of the head*, "My friend tried it, she had those kids back in school in a month."

I feel for the poster, because even if THAT story is NOT true, I know there are 100s if not 1000s that are. Depending on the regulations of your state, you can get away with a lot if you are a crappy parent. I would not be angry if there were "checks and balances" on my schooling. Hey, even better if they would provide me funding because I was SO EXCELLENT!
_________________
Jene' Earnest
WAHM to AnnMaree (7) and Georgia (6)
www.mymangosteen.com/whynotnow

[hypnot]

I believe that if the parents are of a reasonable education and know where there limits are, then homeschooling is fine. Tutors are easy enough to get to fill in the blanks, and there is so much information on the internet to help the kids along.
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Mike Green
Hypnotherapist In Norwich

[squrrl]

I see that this is an older post, but the subject is one I've been thinking about lately as I research general homeschooling laws. I share the others' doubts as to the authenticity of the post, if only because it really stretches the imagination that the person could know "so many" people in the same situation, but also because the post disregards the fact that there IS oversight in almost all states, and in many states, fulfilling gov't requirements is actually a fair little bit of work.

If true, though, this story has to be extremely rare. Public school is just too good a deal for the parent. The bus goes by in the morning, it takes your kids away, and you get free babysitting, maybe even free food, for the next eight hours. If you really didn't care about your kids, it would be absolutely bizarre to pass up this society-sanctioned opportunity to get rid of them. This is certainly how it works three doors down from me, where the mother never visits though she works half a mile away and the father spends his days at the tv, and he rarely even remembers to sign the various permission slips that come home. Keeping your child at home automatically requires a great deal more effort, or, even if you choose to ignore your childrens' requests, more annoyance. That doesn't mean that the OP's story is untrue, but it would take a special sort of sick to keep your kids home and then ignore them. Plus, as noted, state law in many, if not most, states, would pick up on this level of neglect.

Also, though, as others have pointed out, neglect is certainly (obviously) possible in children sent to school, and the school doesn't necessarily do anything to prevent it. The thing is, child protection laws should have prevented this sort of neglect, regardless of homeschooling laws. They don't always, but that's not homeschooling's fault in any way.

My guess is that someone with an inflated sense of the powers and responsibilities of the public school system, and little or no idea of the actual laws regarding homeschooling, created this post as a hypothetical situation. My apologies if I am wrong--and I am confident that there ARE people out there who have experienced this horrible level of neglect--but I consider it to be sufficiently wildly unlikely as to not be a viable criticism of homeschooling.