Religion and the fear of “woke” things being taught to their children like evolution, sex education, history,science…
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They are also exposed to alternative viewpoints, different cultures and concepts,.
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This has not been my experience as a either a public school student quite a few years back now, not as a parent of public school aged children.
Public school has its own gigantic share of problems, but the criticisms above seem exaggerated to me based on my experience.
The only one that doesn’t ring true to me (granted now from 25 years ago in the 90s) was the last one.
Your first two points apply far more to private religious schools than to public schools.
Hmmm, I’ve never been in a religious school, but those first 2 were pretty big in my public school in the 90s.
Those people exist, but you should read the article for some more perspective. Trans children who faced bullying and black families who want to avoid systemic racism in the school system are also significant groups.
I have advanced college degrees in science/engineering, I watch electronics and chemistry videos for fun, and I wouldn’t feel qualified teaching most subjects past 6-7 grade. How some of these parents with just high school diplomas do it is beyond me.
I feel the most empathy toward the students who are taught these very myopic curriculums that are very weak in science and math (I’m looking at you young earth/creationists types) and who knows what about history (slavery gave African-Americans jobs skills?) that try to get into college. Most profs will not suffer fools like this even if by some miracle they get accepted in the first place.
How some of these parents with just high school diplomas do it is beyond me. They don’t. I’m in the same boat. Technical Bachelors, MBA. We home schooled my son with a learning disorder for a year, primarily as a response to the school districts failure to do their job. It was not a success. While I still think it was the right decision, it was incredibly hard. Which is why it only lasted one year.
In my case I found an online school where my kid can attend class live or watch recorded sessions, reach out to the teachers in those sessions for help, attend virtual study groups, etc… It really helped compared to trying to do it all myself.
I work in Distance Education at a major university (well I guess it’s called Digital Education now since even the in-person courses use it too) so you have no idea how happy it makes me to read this 😀
I do find it ironic that this never even occurred to me with respect to home schooling … duh!! I’m in IT so this pedagogy thing is for those other people right? 🤣
I think it really depends on the situation. If you’re tech savvy enough and have good enough internet to use Zoom and video playback sites, you might learn well that way. Especially if you can actually get more helpers / educators per student than in person for the live sessions. But most of what I’ve seen said that during COVID pretty much all pre-college students suffered with online learning. I don’t know if it’s a learning style thing, or what - but while I feel like I’ve learned things from like TLC, youtube and other online video education, I never felt I learned as much as when I was actually in a classroom where I could directly interact with the teacher. So I’m a little leery of the “watch recorded classes” idea as being all that useful for many people.
I pulled my kid, primarily because the local school district is awful, and because they harass kids (and their parents) into coming to school sick, leading to constant outbreaks of illness, especially since COVID. As an unexpected bonus, it was refreshing to see my kid actually enjoy learning for once.
I don’t know about everywhere, but where I’m at state funding for schools is based on the lowest recorded attendance, so it encouraged schools to tell kids to come in sick.
It’s also why they started scheduling exit exams and shit on senior skip days.
Sometimes parents homeschool because they want their kids to learn more. Sometimes they homeschool to have their children learn less.
Ive always found the idea of homeschooling utterly bizzare
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The distribution of home schoolers is super bi-modal, either: “we don’t want them learning that sinful science and actual history” or “we don’t think public education will do a good job for our kids, so we’re doing it ourselves”
And the former group is 1000 to one of the latter group.
Actually, it’s tri-modal: “I don’t want my kid associating with those people.” Black people, gay people, non-religious people…
Thats still the first one
This is a normal thought process.
Why? That’s how it was done for millennia, unless your parents were rich enough to send you to an actual school instead of learning a trade.
“That’s the way we’ve always done it!” is never a good reason on it’s own.
Right Wing propaganda, and their concerted war against public education. They do this for two reasons:
1 - They’re so greedy they hate paying taxes. Any taxes, even though they take full advantage of what taxes pay for (roads, police, fire department.)
2 - Illiterate and uneducated people will believe whatever they’re told, and take whatever is offered. Those raised Christian are programmed from childhood to blindly obey male authority figures.
In short, Republicans want to create a Neo-Feudal Theocracy, with themselves as the aristocracy.
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Our school system offers online schooling and we had to put our daughter in it at least temporarily, because she was the most bullied kid in her school and it got to the point one day that she broke down and cried and said she couldn’t go to that school one more day. So I’m glad that option is there, but I have big issues with it, especially with English, because the education company they contracted with only uses public domain texts and your average seventh grader whose experience with English has been books like Hatchet and The Giver, can’t parse at all. Plus, it’s stuff like H. H. Munro, who wrote stories about Edwardian English aristocrats, so she can’t understand the texts both because of the language and the fact that she has no frame of reference. The English teacher I’m emailing about it doesn’t seem to care, but I’m basically having to walk her through the lesson each time and go through the text slowly, reading it to her so she doesn’t mess up all the hard words, and stopping every few sentences to explain to her what’s going on. We’ve only been at it a week, and it’s such a needless slog. She has no trouble at all with the parts of the English lessons that don’t involve those texts. She understands all the concepts being taught. But 19th century literature is not appropriate for an average 7th grade reader.
Eventually, we want to get her into another middle school, but she needs a mental break from being around other kids to heal. This is ridiculous though, and I have no idea how other kids in this program get through it, because we were told everyone from kids with psychological issues to kids who were expelled are in the online school and I doubt those expelled kids are able to follow an O. Henry story about a safecracker full of slang with an ironic twist ending.
Theoretically, in Indiana, we could just pull her out of the school system entirely and find some other homeschool curriculum for her to follow. It’s totally unregulated here. But then we wouldn’t have anyone to turn to if we needed help. At least in this case, there’s a teacher I can eventually browbeat into doing a tutoring session.
We’re just lucky I’m on FMLA right now, otherwise she would just fail out of this entirely.
Sorry, not all that related to what is going on. I just needed to vent. I feel so trapped with my daughter.
I’d say school failings in dealing with bulling and with any student with a special need (even ADHD) is a big part of what’s going on. It’s not just the parents not trusting the education content - it’s often more about the environment at the school preventing education at all, for various reasons. And I don’t understand it - we had bulling when I was in school in the 90s, heck I was a “victim”, but the school kept it clampt down, and I pretty much got over the minor stuff that still happened. There’s plenty of stories about alternative systems like these home school pods and such also not having the same bullying problems either. So what is the issue with public schools? I tend to blame it on the system being rigid, mixed with not enough resources even though we spend so much on the schools.
Last Week Tonight recently did an episode on this.
Let me present my counter-tale to all the anti-home school comments.
My kid is autistic and the schools are some of the most poorly funded in the country. Despite this the school did an excellent job and had very good staff that did a very good job. But as my child went up in grades the resources available decreased. It was quickly heading for a point where the 1-on-1 time they would need wouldn’t be available. Then the pandemic hit. We were forced into online school when the school closed for a bit. The amount of specialist time available dropped to near-zero.
The school wasn’t prepared for online school and the sites/curriculum they used were all over the place. We supplemented with our own field trips and additional resources. But they otherwise took to it really well and were still learning.
The next school year our school still didn’t have its act together. We found a different online school that actually had good curriculum. They’ve been going to that ever since and it’s gone really well.
BIG CAVEATS: I used to be a public school teacher. My degrees are in that, and I was certified. I work in a different field now, but I still have that background to know adolescent psychology, how to evaluate curriculum, knowledge of what is grade-level appropriate, etc. My partner specialized in language and writing, while I was science, math, and tech. We take great pains to socialize our child with outside activities, and make sure they read and participate in art/creative activities. My partner is stay-at-home with the primary job of seeing to our child’s education. I help but assist in my areas of expertise.
TLDR; Home school IS used as a way for a lot of parents to enable hyper-religious or abusive behavior, but that’s not universal. In some cases it can be the best solution for the child.
And you provided the evidence that home schooling is not appropriate for 99% of the families out there. How many other families have the education, background, and resources that you bring to the table? Virtually none. And it’s only made worse by the fact that there are no standards, no testing required, no checks on the child’s welfare.
Agree that child welfare checks should be a thing. Our state does have testing requirements, but no curriculum standards.
To me, all of your arguments just point out faults in the education system. I know you can’t change the system all on your own and I think you’ve made the right decision for your family. I just feel like all the arguments I’ve read on this post in support of home schooling aren’t the best solution for students, they’re just workarounds for the deficiencies of our schools.
My child is also autistic, and my local school board was a nightmare. My kid is taking the GED this week, so we are thankfully at the end of that nightmare.
Former Autistic Child here, now Autistic Adult. My public school years were the absolute worst. I had a 504 Plan and despite that, everyone ignored it except for me being able to leave class 5 minutes early to skip the passing time and get to class early. After looking into college, there was a specific guy I got to talk to for accommodations and everything was MUCH better. Recently dropped out with the hope to go into Aviation Maintenance, though I’m still waiting for approval.
Fingers crossed for you!
Thank you!!
Would you say that a parent’s ability to successfully homeschool is largely impacted by the resources available to that parent from their state and other governmental bodies?
I’m curious because of another comment on a different post from a parent in Florida who said their homeschooling curriculum and resources are really god and well charted/planned out.
I would say it is largely impacted by available resources, but not necessarily limited to government. Some locations have great non-profit organizations dedicated to exactly this sort of thing. I’d say a lot of places have those sorts of resources, but often are hard to find.
Anecdote: the lady nextdoor is fucked in the head and couldn’t let her kid have a normal childhood experience until the 7th grade (I think).
For us it was 1) our work schedules weren’t conducive to taking kids to school as there is limited bus service in CO and 2) we both went to the best public schools in our area of NoVA and they could have done better in a lot of ways. Neither of us are fans of the public school system having been products of them.
Fair enough. Unfortunately, homeschooling in the US has become a breeding ground for religious extremism.
How do you do home schooling if your work schedules interfere with the typical school schedule?
Wife is part time. Two eldest teach themselves for the most part and the youngest does his school on her days off in like 2-3 hours. The older they get the more like university it is. They still have to take the states’ standardized tests.
They’re taught classically mostly. English and Arithmetic are based on how they learn so each child typically takes different courses to suit their learning style. My youngest is way ahead in math but at grade level for reading and writing. He is lazy in history but really likes science. Middle is okay in most subjects but wants to be a terrier and horse vet which a lot of the grade school classes don’t have much overlap for. Eldest is extremely good in physical sciences, is in a homeschool program for aerospace and is already on the path to become an aviation mechanic (school is picked out, etc).
His current teacher is an industry expert with his airframe and powerhouse certs who also used to own his own custom bike building business. He came up with the mixed wheel mountain bike standard. It may as well be college level. He is teaching because he too thinks our kids deserve better and that his generation and the boomers have failed in their responsibility to teach.
All of my kids are extremely social. I haven’t found the media’s stereotypical anti-social homeschooler to be a thing and I’ve met a lot of homeschoolers. The main reason parents are pulling their kids from public school seems to be lack of trust in the US public education system as it currently is. Even the public lambasts it but still seems to think homeschooling is only for the religious nuts. That’s really a media steering narrative honestly. My wife and I have been asked more questions about how we homeschool than ever before simply because people don’t like how the public school system is undeserving their own children.
It’s funny, if you look at the rich, their kids typically don’t go into the public school system. But apparently it’s crazy for Joe public to put their kids in a system that is a lot more flexible per child and teaches critical thinking skills by nature. The public system isn’t set up for that.
I homeschooled one grandson for half a year out of necessity and it went so well we are pulling the other two and Im going to get all three. They were raised in a small town then there momma decided to move to Houston (don’t get me fucking started. Just trust me that my irritation is justified and not what you think) and after getting their scooters stolen, the oldest getting in a fist fight(sweetest little man you ever met. Insane he was in a fight) and the middle one,8, chased around the school yard by a kid with a knife. Yay Houston. Anyways, now I get to teach them the real shit.
