homeschooling
As far as conventional schooling goes, I’m not sold on the idea of young children being indoors for most of the day, sitting on chairs at desks, and following orders. I worry that cool individual quirks will be lost under pressure to conform, playground politics will become Life, and rigid homework schedules will infringe on free time.
But homeschooling? I immediately think of religious indoctrination techniques, children being isolated from society in a potentially dangerous manner, and sheer boredom.
To be honest, the idea of either me or my partner spending the next two decades preparing and delivering lessons on every subject under the sun is horrifying. From a purely selfish angle, I can’t imagine either one of us giving up the escape/rest of paid work to spend what would necessarily be almost every waking hour attending to the kids. Could anyone cope with such strain?
And, please, don’t anyone tell me this happened naturally in some fictitious “good old days”. In every society, at every level, siblings, grandparents, neighbours shared childcare and work. Children “naturally” learned by observation, not modern tuition, even when no kind of formal school setting was available.
The idea of limiting their potential social circles, limiting their network of influence, denying them the variety of focused adult input that schools provide, would be concerning. Schools provide a safe space for children to develop and learn, away from direct parental influence: a chance to learn to freely express themselves as individuals free from whatever baggage and bias all parents carry.
Also, where’s the humility? I don’t know everything. I’m not the best teacher. I’m so happy there are trained and competent adults out there willing to share their knowledge with the next generation.
There are a number of reasons we’re unlikely to ever need to seriously consider home schooling our kids. Most importantly, I’m not a member of a paranoid religious cult. In the majority of cases, this seems to be the motivating factor for parents removing their kids from mainstream society – hiding from the influence that commonly understood facts could have on the brainwashing exercises that are their children.
There is nothing wrong with parents raising their own kids their own way.
What is heinous is the leftist indoctrination that goes on in public schools worldwide.
Young people today take for granted the hoaxes of global warming, overpopulation, solar and wind as alternative fuels, government as the prime agent for social justice, ObamaCare, that since wealth happens all by itself, everyone must have the same amount of wealth…
In fact, the public school system was designed specifically to produce the “right” kind of citizen.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You clearly haven’t come across the NZ public education system, where students are encouraged to question everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. While you might not approve of our strictly secular public education system, I hope the independent thinking that Kiwis are renowned for world wide would met your approval.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Barry,
Evidently not. The NZ public school system sounds like one of the best kept secrets in the world!
LikeLike
Well, it was, but the current administration is reforming it along the American model. It’s resulted in our children slipping down the the international comparison charts in areas such maths, English and social studies.
Schools are becoming less of centres of learning for living, and more of institutions churning out paper qualifications for jobs.
I’m not convinced that school is the right place to train students for specific jobs as (a) 12/13 year olds are not ready to make career choices, and (b) children are beginning to see themselves as production units instead of indiviual thinking members of society.
Tertiary institutions should be where vocational training is given, not schools.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I suppose if you are insanely to the right, reality will appear left-leaning to you.
LikeLike
Thank you for the usual vote of confidence, Violet. We actually unschooled all four of our kids at some point. It wasn’t about indoctrination or force feeding them every subject under the sun at all, it was self directed learning. Two went on to college and graduated.
I however, am a product of secular homeschooling. My parents didn’t want me exposed to any outside influences, ironically what they perceived was going to be of a religious nature. It was hellish and it obviously backfired. On the bright side however, I did understand that children don’t really need to be “taught” at all, we are all capable of learning what we need to know. Some reading perhaps and a bit of basic math is all kids need in order to get started. Kids have a natural affinity for learning and our attempts to school them often do more harm than good.
LikeLike
Thanks for your input here. Why did you take your kids out of school, especially if your own homeschooling experience was so awful?
I like the idea that kids don’t need formal education. Like I said at the beginning of the post, I find the idea of school very rigid and limiting. But I know neither me or my partner are cut out to teach our kids at homes, and I don’t have an agenda to push on them.
Unless they have terrible experiences at school that we can’t otherwise solve, I can’t see us embarking on it at any point. But you never know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
NZ has one of the highest rates of home schooling in the OECD, and our daughter home schools her three children. She primarily uses the unschooling model, and each child is progressing at their own pace: in some “subjects” ahead of their conventionally educated peers and in others, slightly behind.
Essentially, everything can be made into an experience of discovery. You’d be hard pressed to find a more enthusiastic set of students anywhere.
Religion is not a significant factor in choosing to home school here. While my daughter home schools all her children, it is not uncommon for a family to have both home schooled and publicly schooled children. (As an aside, our nine year old granddaughter, through her broad range of reading material and questioning adults of various religious persuasions, she has decided that the Christian god is not believable. She’s decided that if she was going to believe in that sort of thing she’d prefer the gods of Maori mythology. What can I do, but admire her independence of thought).
Do children at school get much socialisation inside the classroom? Probably less than my grandchildren do during the same hours. Most socialisation occurs outside the classroom, either in the playground or outside of school hours anyway. So while most children sit in an environment where communication is primarily one-way from teacher to the class, my grandchildren experience two-way interaction with the community at large.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had no idea home schooling would be so popular in New Zealand. Any idea why more than other countries? There’s something about it I find attractive: tailoring learning to their individuals interests and strengths, incorporating learning in everyday life rather than putting them in a sterile over-full classroom, and of course maximising the time we spend with our kids. But realisitically I would be a rubbish and lazy teacher, impatient and critical. Also I would worry about all the socialisation aspects I’d have to compensate, and how healthy it would be for both kids and parents to spend so much dedicated time together.
LikeLike
Why so popular? I’m not really sure. I could perhaps put it down to our rugged individualism with a strong dash of liberalism and a dollop of number 8 wire mentality. It’s possibly our attitude of “If you want something done properly, get stuck in and do it yourself”.
About one percent of Kiwi kids are home schooled, which might seem low by North American standards but relatively high compared to the rest of the developed world. Here it’s a legal alternative to the public school system, and not simply the public school system transferred to the home.
LikeLike
I have seen homeschooling fail children in many ways. I saw some successful homeschoolers, but it usually involved a very educated parent with the time and money to invest in their child’s education.
And before someone jumps all over me about not knowing what I’m talking about-we home schooled for a few years, and my wife and I both have teaching degrees. But it was a monumental task and most homeschooling groups were more about shielding children from opposing points of view (primarily religious)and not teaching them to learn and think for themselves.
Homeschooling is way over sold and the expense (both financially and socially) minimized by those who advocate it zealously.
For those traumatized by their experience as a home schooled student,
http://homeschoolersanonymous.org/ is a site to check out.
LikeLike
Thanks, that’s really interesting. A monumental task when both parents have teaching degrees says it all. I’ve done limited teaching (English as a foreign language) and thinking about lesson preparation for children in different years covering essentially every subject going, I did wonder how realistic it can be. It sounds like a lovely idea in many ways, and I’m sure some parent and children combinations would have a wonderful and fulfiling time. But I bet they are few and far between. Also, of course, as you point out, the main motivation for most home schoolers is to shield their kids from something in society they don’t approve of, essentially hide them from opposing opinions for as long as possible. That just isn’t healthy at all.
LikeLike
Homeschooling is a complex issue. Yes, I’ve known a lot people who homeschooled their kids to keep them “out of the world” and used a religious curriculum. By and large, I think their children are nice kids with good manners and a really poor education who are either going to breed more fundamentalists or go completely off the rails. Such is life, can’t hide forever!
But I’ve also known people who homeschooled so their kids would receive a more challenging and differentiated education, or because their kids just didn’t fit into the (sorely lacking “traditional” classroom environment. I even thought about homeschooling my child at different points for different reasons. Luckily we could afford private Montessori education through middle school and now are lucky enough to be at a public charter school that employs Socratic method and encourages non-traditional, individuated learning.
I’m SO glad it worked out that way because I think leaving the workforce and staying home with my kid would drive us both NUTSO! However, if we hadn’t been that lucky or lived in an area where public education was lacking and private education was prohibitive or non-existent, I would have found a way to homeschool my child collaboratively with field experts, primary sources, and student-lead research.
PS You’re right: “good old days” are a myth!
LikeLike
Another really interesting perspective. I’m all over the place on this topic, really draw to it and repelled by it at the same time. The only thing I’m sure of is that if it is done to attempt to program kids with parents’ beliefs, it shouldn’t be done at all. But as an alternative education model that is more flexible and focused on the individual child, it does sound appealing. Or would do if I thought I’d be a decent stay-at-home teacher. I’ve also noticed from lurking round the homeschooling tag that there is a prevalence of ‘where has my life gone??’ from the homeschooling parents, with even mentions of being jealous of the kids! Psychological disaster areas for most people, I would say.
LikeLike
I heard of a couple who came to the Quaker meeting, but insisted on always being with their children in the small children’s meeting. They seemed very controlling. OTOH it seems possible in theory to let the child explore their world and explore with them, not controlling but facilitating. That could be hard work, and rewarding. You would learn, and could learn faster than a twelve year old.
LikeLike
Yes, it definitely could be rewarding in many ways, like you say. But it seems that most people do it to control kids. It swings from cool to sinister.
LikeLike
Interesting perspective to which I disagree. I never wanted to homeschool my children, but ended up doing it. You have a couple of flaws in your argument. 1st that schools provide a safe place to learn. Not true in many cases. Bullying by peers and indoctrination by teachers is rampant in the school systems, not to mention physical safety issues that cause many children to be fearful. 2nd that children who are homeschooled are isolated from society. The hardest part of homeschooling was trying to find the time to homeschool. My kids were involved in all sorts of community events and happenings. We had to fit in schooling with all of the activities. Plus my teens took a class or two in the public school system when I didn’t feel qualified to teach it. They had a wide range of experience, probably more so than those that were sent off to a school building for 7 hours a day. No, homeschooling is not for everyone, but public school is not either. We should have the freedom to choose where and how our children are schooled along with many other choices.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree that parents should have freedom to choose.
However, what happens when the parent is the one bullying and indoctrinating the children?
Where is the support system? The guidance counselor, the school board, etc… are in place in amost schools (public & private) where do those children go for help in a home school scenario?
At least in many public schools, there are systems in place to try and right the wrongs. Is it perfect, absolutely not….but until there are more safety nets in place for home schooled children, I continue to cast a wary eye on it, in general.
LikeLiked by 1 person
christianagnostic makes great points about the checks and balances that are in place in any school system, versus the lack of any external reference point for children if they’re homeschooled. It’s so open to psychological abuse, and unfortunately that seems to be the main motivating factor for people choosing it (if you accept that trying to brainwash your kids with religion is psychological abuse).
But I take your point that schools aren’t always safe spaces: it did cross my mind when I was typing it. I guess many people move area if they find their kids aren’t fitting into a particular school and any attempts to find solutions through the normal channels aren’t working. But I can see how homeschooling may seem like the best option in some circumstances, and certainly there should be choice. Were there any checks from civil authorities in your case? I’m never sure how it works.
LikeLike
It has been great reading all the opinions on homeschooling so thank you for that violetwisp. I live in the only liberal city in all of Kansas and the homeschooling community I am a part of involves university educated non-secular families who believe they can do better for their children but also utilize many community resources. I am one of them. I also never wanted to homeschool my children as a top choice. What I did want was for my children to have the opportunity to become more solid in who they are before unleashing them into the harsh world that can be very unforgiving. I think reaching middle school and high school age with your self-esteem still in tact is a gift and can make people stronger and more resilient. That is the agenda that I am pushing. I am attaching a blog post I wrote a week back on why I homeschool.
http://perfectmayhem.org/category/homeschooling/
LikeLike
Thanks for stopping by to comment perfectmayhem. I read quite a few of your posts while browsing the homeschooling tag and found them very interesting. I can certainly relate to a lot of the reasons you list for wanting to home school your kids. I’m still quite sure my kids will have a more useful experience in mainstream school than they would at home with either of their parents. My daughter’s been going to various nurseries since she was one and a half, and I’ve appreciated all the opportunities for play and learning she’s had in that time. I know I would never have matched it at home. She’s four now and very excited about starting school later in the year. But I can imagine if she’d been unhappy I would be considering all other options. Are you planning to send your kids to mainstream schools when they’re older?
LikeLike
Great to hear from you. I would certainly be open to it when they are older like beyond middle school. Many of my friends with older kids have had great experiences with high school after homeschooling. You cannot match the experiences offered in school-school versus homeschool when it comes to band, choir, sports, and collaborating artistically with other kids. I don’t feel I need to be in a hurry with all of that. Better late than early. Warm wishes to you and yours.
LikeLike
I have no experience about homeschooling. My native Finland has one of the highest scores in PISA tests and comparably high literacity level. We have almost no homeschooling. We have no private schools either. Our law demands, that all citizens are eligable to equal education. Finnish kids sit less in school than most kids in the first world. Kids here start their school only at age 7 so they are a bit better prepared to meet the world outside their home, than the average age of 6, that seems to be rather frequent in many other countries. More importantly to be a teacher in Finland you have to have a university degree in pedagogy and if you teach a specific class, such as for example chemistry, or history, a degree in that too.
I for one, appriciate the professionalism of teachers. But then you have to have actual professionals as teachers, wich I hear, is not the case even in all western countries.
In addition, Finnish society gives more support and money to schools that do badly, instead of punishing them by taking their finances down as some sort of punitive measure, as I have heard is done in some countries.
Even so, there are those extremely ignorant creationist people here too. Though not many.
The job of the school is not just to pour information to the heads of the kids. The purpose of education, is to provide the youth, foremost, with critical thinking skills. A professional and well educated pedagogue is more likely to understand that, than an average parent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You start school at 7? I remember reading about that, and the benefits. In Scotland they start at 4 or 5, which does seem too young for some kids. Is there some sort of pre-school before then where they learn but it’s very play-based? I totally love the idea of them starting later because I know from watching my nieces that 7 is an age where they come out of “little childhood” and start to seem stronger, more confident. However, I don’t know what I would do with my daughter if she had to wait till she was 7. I already feel like this last year of nursery has wasted a lot of her desire to get on with reading and writing – she’s taught herself loads already but I suspect she would have loved more formal input.
LikeLike
Well, it has been a number of decades since I went to school, and I have no kids of my own, so I am no expert. Even though my sisters have children and they have their own children, I have not been paying much attention to their schooling. But essentially yes. I and all of my age group started at age 7 exept some kids who were accepted to school already at age 6. I do believe this is the common practice even today. Then there is school for everybody for the next 9 years. After that at age 16 kids choose to either go to professional schools, where labourers are taught some average 3 years, or continue to a 3 year “gymnasium” for them to continue to universities or other higher education. All education is for free. The government support indipendend students with money. Though it is not quite enough to live on, it means they do not need to lend as much money from the banks and especially, that the education even on higher grade is not dependant on wether or not the parents can support or pay for their kid’s education. Equal opportunity. This is the “natural resource” of our nation – Education.
There is a subjective right for daycare here, wich means every kid has the right to have daycare wether their parents are working, students, unemployed, at home, or not. Between daycare and school there is these days some sort of one year of preschool. The preschool teachers also have to have proper education to be actual professionals.
Years ago when my niece was in school I was a bit alarmed, when she was appointed to a special class for the gifted. Of course I was proud of her, but I do not think this is a direction our society should take. Equality is important and if you take the gifted kids out, the general level of study is reduced for those left behind. Besides of that, they are kind of told far too young, that they are not even expected to be good at studying.
About homeschooling: Every parent wants the best education to their kids. Some of them have a somewhat limited scope on what is the best possible education. Some parents might be able to give better education to their kids, than the public school, but when many people come to such a conclusion, that should be an alarm bell for the society in general, that there is something seriously wrong about the public school system. The public school system is supposed to be able to give better education to the kids than any average parents. If it can not do that, it has totally failed it’s task. The solution to that problem is that the public school system needs to be repaired, not that all kids should be educated home. This applies even to the ignorant religious people who think they need to teach their kids home because the school might “indoctrinate” their kids to believe in evolution, because their level of understanding of such basic science as evolution shows, that the public school system has failed the poor creationists, in that they never even understood how biology works.
LikeLike
My wife and I home-schooled our two children and the primary reason was getting them a better education. Public schools in California at the time were horrible, at least in our area, and private schools we’re extremely expensive. Because I was a musician, the only time I really could see my kids was in the day. So it seemed to be a great solution.
It was hard at first. My daughter had been in private school and had learned to read there. Teaching my son to read…THAT was work. But we did it and he’s now in college and made the Dean’s list every semester for 3 years while playing football for a National Championship team AND playing NCAA soccer. That isn’t easy to do.
They were part of a large home school support group and had tons of interaction with other kids. If I had to do it over again, I would, but I would probably put them into high school at least for a couple of years.
I use to quiz my kids friends when they were over with math problems that my kids were doing. They had this drill where I would string together a bunch of math and they had to shout out the answer at the end. Something like: 5×5 +5-17+2 /3×10-6= ________ My kids could do that all day long, and their friends couldn’t. I would ask their friends how to spell words my kids were spelling, how to diagram sentence structure and things like that. My kids were always doing better than their friends. In large part, this was due to the one on one attention we could give them. Also, we could teach each child according to their own learning style, something that even the best teachers have trouble doing, because of the number of students they are dealing with.
Homeschooling isn’t for everyone, but it was great experience for my family.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Really interesting Jim, thanks. I’ve enjoyed all these contributions on this topic. It’s a broader area than I thought, and clearly not just the domain of religious brainwashing. Did you do all the teaching?
LikeLiked by 1 person
My wife and I did a lot of it. It was pretty easy to do before they hit high school. After that, we had a lot of different types of helps!
LikeLike
If you don’t feel compelled to homeschool, then certainly don’t. But unfortunately you’ve bought into the most flagrant myths about homeschooling. Myth #1: It’s not social isolation, but social freedom. It’s the kids living in the real world with people of all ages, doing real stuff, usually alongside a parent as guide. Or having time to pursue passions without regard to a school schedule, while having to own your education and be self-motivated at an earlier age in order to cover your academics as well.
The social concern is the number one bad thing flung at homeschooling but it is in reality its greatest strength. My kids are not followers, they are not peer-dependent, and conformity is not their thing! It’s rare to meet a kid who’s been a school attender who hasn’t succumbed to groupthink.
And BTW, we hs’ers excel academically as well.
As you might have guessed, we homeschooled several. They turned out quite OK.
LikeLike
Thanks for your comment here. Homeschooling fascinates me, I think part of me feels sold by your form of sales pitch about it. That’s great your kids are independent thinkers. Can I ask if any of them have veered from your family belief system? I am wondering if you mean they don’t follow the norms of the majority of their peers – but would that not just be a reflection of their upbringing? To be truly independent thinkers I’d imagine they’d have to reject whatever you’ve presented to them (given the range of possibilities out there).
LikeLike
To “reject whatever we’d presented to them” would not have made my kids independent thinkers. It would have made them reflexively reactionary but still ruled by our thinking, like teenagers who are compelled to reject without assessing what they are rejecting. To simply rebel is to accept the original parameters. There is no original thinking or creativity there. To think outside of the box requires thinking through until you have the right answer.
Independent thinkers examine and discern, fairly examine other views, then own the answer they believe is the right one, regardless of the pressures to conform, and without regard to whether it looks like conformity or rejection to the casual observer.
Of our six, (we are talking of adults here, minus one older teen) four have torn down and then built up from zero, studied, applied discernment and owned the faith. None have done so wholesale, but with their own personal perspective applied. One is totally disinterested, one is going through her own re-assessment and the outcome is yet to be seen.
As for the larger subject, I could talk about homeschooling for a very long time, and I am trying very hard to be concise here. There is so very much more to be said on this subtopic here alone. After about 25 years, I could really write a book, and I have opinions aplenty.
We have found that our homeschoolling experience allowed for the perfect balance of encouragement to pursue each one’s strengths and interests while cultivating strong and close relationships between all of us. The chance for each one to push out, but a safe place to come together too. My kids are very close and our relationships with them are honest and again, thoughtful. My kids have rejected some of my beliefs and advice but never without knowing exactly what they were doing and why. There’s a subtle difference between that and the 30 year olds who are still rejecting their parents’ lifestyles and beliefs exactly like 14 year olds.
LikeLike