Home-schooling?

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This woman, who frequents the newsagents I work in, home-schools her child. He's about 9, I'd say, and he also has really really long hair that makes him look like a girl (I thought he was a girl for a while). He's not allowed play with the kids in his area, which is probably just as well, because at that age they'd probably give him hell about his appearance.

I can't think of a good reason for doing this - he'll surely end up socially awkward. He doesn't even have any brothers or sisters - he only hangs out with his mother. Convince me otherwise. Any of you home-schooled?

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Saturday, 4 January 2003 22:26 (twenty-two years ago)

no but I've read an article abt this. it was a pro-home schooling one so all the kids (who all went to uni) were fine abt it. they didn't come across as awkward or anything.

given the state of most public schools nowdays (and the fact that some ppl 'retire' earlier) it could be the way forward.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 4 January 2003 22:35 (twenty-two years ago)

In USA it tends to be the fundamental xians who home-school...the kids never really get a chance to be exposed to other worldviews. Dud for everyone involved, I think.

My mom home-schooled me for 1st grade in the mornings while I was going to kindergarten in the afternoons. (not sure why except that we moved around a lot and maybe she was trying to make sure I was learning enough whilst getting moved around. also I was far ahead of my age group at that point and she didn't want me getting bored.) I quite enjoyed it at the time, but it had to help that my mom was a teacher before she had me...I tend to think that most parents doing home-schooling aren't as qualified as teachers as they think they are.

I think home-schooling is dud in most cases but the other side of it is that I've never met a child who wasn't socially awkward in some way, so it's pick your poison if you ask me.

― teeny (teeny), Saturday, 4 January 2003 22:50 (twenty-two years ago)

With bright, committed, widely knowledgeable parents plus some way of properly socialising the child (I'm not sure what this would be), and some freedom for the child to find their own kind of fun, I guess it can work. I think most often it ends up with the kid turning out bright but lacking social skills, and I doubt that that is likely to lead to great happiness.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 4 January 2003 23:32 (twenty-two years ago)

for the love of god i wish more of the bastards would be homeschooled. or prison schooled or something. . .

― That Girl (thatgirl), Sunday, 5 January 2003 01:01 (twenty-two years ago)

"With bright, committed, widely knowledgeable parents plus some way of properly socialising the child (I'm not sure what this would be), and some freedom for the child to find their own kind of fun"

This is true. I think with this kid, it's not so much that he's home-schooled, rather that he has no opportunity to make any friends his own age. And the appearance his mum has encouraged him to cultivate can't help matters. Ok, children SHOULDN'T judge people on how they look, but that's not how things work at that age. No-one wants to stand out to that degree when they're 9. I don't think jeopardising your child's happiness and well-being is the best way to make a point about the importance of individuality.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Sunday, 5 January 2003 01:16 (twenty-two years ago)

what if the little boy really likes his long hair?

― That Girl (thatgirl), Sunday, 5 January 2003 01:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I have to second the observation that it seems to be mostly fundamentalist or at least fervent Christians who home-school their children in the U.S. I agree too that this is dud. I did know one boy when I was growing up who was home-schooled, and I recall that he seemed overly attached to his mother (would run to her the minute anything upset him)--perhaps this satisfies the mother but it seems unquestionably bad for the long-term development of the child socially.

Obviously a good reason for home schooling could be the sorry state of urban public school systems, but of course most of the parents who send their children to public school could not afford to home school (single-parent families such as my own, or families where both parents must work).

Does anyone know where we could turn to find info on the demographics of home schooling? I'm afraid to spew any more speculation here w/o checking against the facts.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 5 January 2003 05:26 (twenty-two years ago)

In Aus the home-schooling thing is predominantly hippies and other alternative types who don't like the whole school thing. I agree with them. If I had kids I wouldn't send them to school unless they wanted to go, but I'd want them to do stuff like ballet, karate, girl-guides, soccer, horse-riding etc. so I guess they'd still get socialised. I mean, school fucking sux and it's not as if you learn anything in primary school - or even grades 7 and 8 - so why waste your time going when there's so much better stuff to do.

― toraneko (toraneko), Sunday, 5 January 2003 12:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I've only known two families who homeschooled, I don't know why one did but the other did because they were just sure they were smarter than everyone in public school. (They weren't arrogant, it was true. Or maybe the homeschooling made it that way? In any case the parents were very smart and energetic people.) That seems like a good reason to homeschool. The kids had friends, of course, so it wasn't like isolation.

I wish I could homeschool my last semester of high school, I'm so annoyed that I have to bother right now because my schedule next semester's going to suck. Whine whine whine.

― Maria (Maria), Sunday, 5 January 2003 15:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Toraneko - looks like Australia is the same as Britain in this field. The thing is that my parents didn't fundamentally agree with home education but in my circumstances there was no other option ... it didn't remove my social skills, I didn't have them in the first place. For the ten years or so we did it it was the least of several evils, despite the horrible unsatisfactory way it fizzled out.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 6 January 2003 06:23 (twenty-two years ago)

hmmm is home education another example of my current "hippies = far-right in disguise" thesis?

(cf I just put "Pentangle" into WinMX - one of the filesharers who came up used the name "Zionism = Nazism")

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 6 January 2003 06:25 (twenty-two years ago)

hmmm is home education another example of my current "hippies = far-right in disguise" thesis?

at least over here, i think that it was an idea that the hippies came up with, and which at some later point the Jesus Freaks adopted for their own purposes. not so much "hippies = right-wingnuts."

i'm going to sound like a massive snob here, but if home-schooling gets the Jesus Freaks out of the public schools then i'm all for it. it won't stop them from still trying to dumb down public school curricula with creationist and America-First nonsense -- 'cause they will still feel as though they have to "save souls" and all that bullshit -- but at least my kids (when i have kids) won't have to put up with the pod-people rug rats.

― Tad (llamasfur), Monday, 6 January 2003 06:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Anything to spare kids any school at all pre-post-secondary is OK in my books.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Monday, 6 January 2003 07:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Christians do not equal right wingers, BTW. A couple in one of my French classes home-schooled their children. They were devoutly religious, but hardly right-wing.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 6 January 2003 07:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Thanks, Tad. In my experience home education in Britain 10-15 years ago was very much the territory of bohemian Welsh farmhouse resettlers who tended to originally come from well-off suburban parts of England (it may well have widened out since - the *number* of home educators has certainly risen). Thankfully we don't have the Christian loony right to any meaningful extent in this country (we have more the sensible moderate Christians the Amateurist cites) but I am interested in any common ground between these two extremes because it fits with my study of political chameleons like Patrick Harrington, Aidan Rankin, Zac Goldsmith et al.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Tuesday, 7 January 2003 04:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Two of my cousins are home-schooled. They are extremely bright and invariably acheive off the scale on standardized tests. They are not socially awkward at all; at least no more than most junior high and early high-school aged kids.

On the other hand, their parents are both teachers/college professors and they are involved in many extracurricular activities (soccer, fencing, etc). It works well for them, but their situation is undoubtedly far in the minority for home-schooled children.

Overall, I think the abilities of parents should be taken into account before kids are allowed to be home-schooled. I also know of several situations where "homeschooling" was basically an excuse to not send kids to school until they were old enough to officially drop out.

― webcrack (music=crack), Tuesday, 7 January 2003 04:48 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

so the long-haired kid turns up in my shop the other day in a SCHOOL UNIFORM!!!!! So they've abandoned the home-schooling idea, and i really want to ask the mother why, but eh it's not really appropriate for me to do that being Some Guy Who Serves Them In The Shop.

this raises the question: how do home-schooled kids get on if they transfer to real school? I'd love to ask them how things are going, i'm biting my lip whenever they come in!

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Monday, 16 February 2004 17:06 (twenty-one years ago)

most of the home schoolers that come into the bookstore looking for materials are fairly odd, but the bookstore i work in tends to draw nonreaders, if that makes any sense. They are mostly religious fundamentalists and a handful of people who still miss segregation. I have no clue as to whether their kids are adequately socialized or not, but i guess they are. It's their actual education that i worry about. Many of these parents that come in have poor grammar skills and a limited vocabulary. It's a skewed sample though...

but Grover Norquist loves it. He wants to abolish public schools, i think.

― badgerminor (badgerminor), Monday, 16 February 2004 17:38 (twenty-one years ago)

From what I have seen in my business, the parents who think about homeschooling are those who are very frustrated with public schools being unable/unwilling to teach their kid, who is in Special Education. These kids can have anything from a specific learning disability to autism to ADHD. Because we ONLY see Special Ed parents, we don't see the fundamentalist/hippie/bizarro parents who are into homeschooling. We see the desperate ones who want their kids to be able to read and write their names!

It typically happens around 6th grade, when the child is becoming a "behavior problem" because they are bored because they are NOT learning anything!

When the parents sit down and talk with us about it at this age, what is usually resolved is that the mother-child relationship doesn't need to be complicated by making it a teacher-student relationship at that age, going into puberty and especially not after. Children are very much comfortable by people having well-defined roles, and this fundamentally becomes a confusion for them. In addition, mom is then given the 24 hour responsibility of tirelessly switching between the teacher and mom roles. This is exhausting and not really practical. Even teachers get to go home at 3:30. Mom can't. This sounds like a recipe for a breakdown.

In addition, most parents are not trained Special Education teachers.

After discussing the options and "what-ifs" with the parents, they usually decide to place the child in a non-public school that is geared towards the child's particular leanning problem, The hope is that with some intensive remediation, the child will be able to return to public school and keep up after a year or two.

Homeschooling is the option that they come in with, though, but it is because they don't know what else to do. Once they know they have other options, homeschooling goes right out the window.

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 16 February 2004 19:29 (twenty-one years ago)

This is what happens when you homeschool kids:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0785263683/qid=1076962816/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-5389498-5999926?v=glance&s=books

not too pretty

― .., Monday, 16 February 2004 20:21 (twenty-one years ago)

most of the home-schooled kids i've known have been real grade A number one weirdos. doesn't mean this is true across the board.

one turned out to be a stalker. one turned into an uber-slut before she turned 16. one (and his also home-schooled sister) can't seem to interact with anyone socially, they live together and she takes care of all his bizness for him, while he stays inside and gets fat and weirder.

so that's my experience.

― the angry cowboy (dick), Monday, 16 February 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

I might have said something different on another thread about home schooling, but thinking about it most of the people I know that were home schooled are really great and not weird at all. These are all people whose parents were both extremely well educated and the mother just decided that she could do a better job schooling them than the schools. The kids just tend to be quiet and retiring, but not strange.

I think that's probably the only circumstances in which people should home school their children, if they are qualified to do so enough that they honestly think they could do a better job of it than a school. Any thing else: religion, distrust of organized institutions, "my kid is too smart for normal school", or just general paranoid/egotistical insanity are all recipes for disaster.

― Dan I., Monday, 16 February 2004 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

My fiance's brothers and sisters (there are 3 and 2 of them, respectively) were home schooled, because they were / are all in show biz. There was little choice once the decision was made to pimp the kids out for cash. I'm against it, of course, because I feel that children should be allowed to experience what constitutes a 'normal' childhood - skinned knees, bloody noses and all.

Her youngest brother had a brief experience going to a public school when the family moved, and didn't last a week - was picked on mercilessly. He couldn't adjust at all. His parents, perhaps showing poor judgement, took him out of school instead of making him stick it out (we all know, here on ILM, that even as a misfit, you eventually find other misfits and find your social niche). Dude doesn't know what the Alamo is, has zero knowledge of current events, etc. Shameful. He's also spoiled rotten now (becuase, at 13, he's loaded beyond my wildest dreams) and can (and does) basically tell his dad to fuck off when Dad suggets he bone up on his fractions. I guess you can't blame the kid too much at this point - this monster was created.

That said, while I do believe that school helps children become social and prepares them for the 'workplace' or whatever, I have seriously considered home schooling my children because I don't feel that the public school system is teaching the necessary fundamentals. I'm not religious nor a right wing fanatic nor the kind of guy who wants to raise kids that look like the Hanson brothers.

Still, I'm not sure i'm up to the task. I'm not qualified to 'teach,' and bringing in a tutor or something would totally defeat the purpose. I will, however, be VERY involved in things like the PTA and whatnot. Will never miss a parent-teacher conference and will probably set up impromptu "conferences" of my own from time to time.

It's a tough call - there are pros and cons on both sides so I can't say classic or dud for sure - sometimes a smart kid is a smart kid, regardless of his environment. And the opposite, of course, is also true...

Kilian - as far as properly socializing a child, what about playgrounds? summer camp? Little league?

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Monday, 16 February 2004 22:00 (twenty-one years ago)

i agree, there are definitely still ways for the child to interact with people their own age - even just hanging out with neighbouring kids would help. it's hard to know exactly what this particular kid's life is like, as i'm just the guy who serves them in the shop. but judging from stuff my co-workers and other customers have said, his entire life seems to be spent at his mother's side (until now that is, as he's started school). also, he's an only child, so he didn't have any brothers and sisters to muck around with. i'd be really intersted to know how he's getting on, but i'll probably never find out.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Monday, 16 February 2004 22:37 (twenty-one years ago)

so the long-haired kid turns up in my shop the other day in a SCHOOL UNIFORM!!!!! So they've abandoned the home-schooling idea, and i really want to ask the mother why

How do you know they're not just making him wear a uniform at home?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 17 February 2004 01:44 (twenty-one years ago)

possible, but unlikely

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, 17 February 2004 11:48 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

So what do we think about home schooling?

I'm working my way through my major areas of disagreement with the gf and this is one that we just don't see eye to eye on. She thinks it's great and insists that I'm not really listening to the arguments in favor.

I'm not looking for anecdotes of "well I knew a kid and he was weird," I'm wondering if anybody here was homeschooled or has friends who homeschool their kids etc etc, real experience of what the real thing is like. What are the real arguments in favor of it?

― been HOOS, where yyyou steene!? (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 5 March 2009 04:55 (sixteen years ago)

Home-schooling is fine, but only if you insist that they socialize only on the Internet and never leave their bedrooms except to make potty.

― ergo almondnut (libcrypt), Thursday, 5 March 2009 05:07 (sixteen years ago)

help us out hoos. tell us what she things the arguments in favour are

― w/ sax (electricsound), Thursday, 5 March 2009 05:21 (sixteen years ago)

Long story, but I was home schooled for two years in high school.

― kids love cofradia tattoos (latebloomer), Thursday, 5 March 2009 05:22 (sixteen years ago)

I went back though.

― kids love cofradia tattoos (latebloomer), Thursday, 5 March 2009 05:25 (sixteen years ago)

(to "real" HS)

― kids love cofradia tattoos (latebloomer), Thursday, 5 March 2009 05:26 (sixteen years ago)

HOOS, don't you remember starting this thread already?

Homeschooling: C/D?

― WmC, Thursday, 5 March 2009 06:06 (sixteen years ago)

lol

― been HOOS, where yyyou steene!? (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 5 March 2009 06:33 (sixteen years ago)

no, sorry. it didn't come up when i searched!

― been HOOS, where yyyou steene!? (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 5 March 2009 06:33 (sixteen years ago)

ten years pass...

Exhibit A in the case against: a doc I just received at work titled 'Homeschool Coarse Breakdown.pdf'.

― John Denver – Led Zeppelin IV (Part II) (Old Lunch), Friday, 31 May 2019 18:17 (six years ago)

maybe they're just not bothering you with the fine detail.

― The Pingularity (ledge), Friday, 31 May 2019 18:20 (six years ago)

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