Homeschooling at its best
The reasons I appreciate my parents' decision to educate me at home
(July 28th, 2007 / 16 comments)In the past day, I've had two conversations with different parties about the fact that I was homeschooled. Yes, I'm one of those kids.
People tend to assume that being homeschooled was a terrible experience. One common question I get is "How much did that suck?" So, it sometimes shocks people when I tell them that I'm very happy that my parents made the decision to homeschool myself and my brothers.
So, here is my list of reasons why I think homeschooling worked for me.
It built responsibility and motivation through flexibility
The method my parents chose provided me with enough structure to maintain my education levels, but enough flexibility to control my path.
Each day, I was given an assignment for all of my subjects. If I successfully completed those assignments, I was done for the day and my parents could rest assured that I wasn't going to fall below their standards of education. I still had responsibilities around the house such as chores and devotions, but for the most part I was free once my assignments were taken care of.
Some days I took complete advantage of this, finishing my work early in the morning and running off into the mountains behind our house or playing music for hours on end. I was able to control my free time by working hard to finish my school work.
Other days, I didn't feel like working hard and slagged off, sitting at my desk until late afternoon. Again, it was a decision I was able to make. All I had to do was complete that day's assignments before dinner. How I did that was up to me and it taught me to manage my time wisely.
It was an individually customizable environment
My older brother sometimes had difficulty with math. For years he struggled with it, unable to get ahead no matter how hard he worked at it.
Homeschooling gave my parents the chance to explore different options for learning, based on each child's needs. It turns out that my brother excelled at math when it was explained out loud to him and demonstrated visually, so he started taking his math lessons through a video curriculum that featured a live class room setting and a teacher with a whiteboard. His math grades improved immediately.
Over the years I was homeschooled, my parents tried many different curriculums for each of their five sons. In doing so, they were able to customize the educational experience for each of us to give us the optimal environment for our needs.
It was self-paced
As I mentioned before, homeschooling allowed me to balance my days between school and free time, depending on how motivated I was.
It also made it possible for me to get ahead, if I chose to. If I managed to finish my day's assignments early and wanted to continue forward, I could do the next day's assignments as well. If I wanted to do schoolwork during the summer, I could do so. Because of the self-pacing nature of homeschooling, I was able to finish high-school when I was 14 years old.
The social ramifications aren't as bad as you think
The main question I get from people who find out I was homeschooled is "Did you have any social life?"
Yes, I did. My parents made sure that they kept us involved in social activities. We played community sports, went to church functions and attended weekly homeschool groups, which are a gathering of the area's homeschooled families and can be rather frightening. It also helped that I had four brothers to deal with every day.
In the end, I don't feel that I missed out on anything socially. I have just as many stories as anyone who went to public school. I'm fully capable of dealing with people on a daily basis, and although I haven't been all that successful in maintaining romantic relationships, I don't think it's related.
In fact, I'm kinda glad I missed out on some of the things I hear go on in public middle schools and high schools. There are aspects of the "normal" education experience that aren't so desirable (cliques, ridiculous social hierarchies, popularity contests, mindless "dating", etc) and I'm grateful to have been spared from a lot of them because of being homeschooled.
Homeschooling can be done wrong
I was lucky. My parents did homeschooling right. I received a much better education than I would have gotten in the mountain communities we lived in most of my life. I learned responsibility and prioritization. I never felt starved for social interaction.
But doing it right took an enormous amount of work on my parents' part, and many homeschooled kids aren't so lucky.
I've witnessed families who didn't make any effort in homeschooling their children and allowed them to get by with little to no real education. I've seen parents who homeschool their kids purely as a political or religious statement, never really thinking about the work that has to go into it. I've also known families who homeschool their kids as a method of hiding them from outside influence, isolating them from the rest of the world like cowards.
Again, I was lucky. Because of my parents' hard work, my education through homeschooling was second-to-none.
Thanks, mom and dad.
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> The social ramifications aren't as bad as you think
How old are you? Have you been to university yet? Did you go to a 'Christian Bubble' university or to a regular one? My story is essentially the same as yours, until about 21 years of age. That's when I entered a normal college and tried to relate to normal people. It took me years to realize that I really do lack a large body of social skills that other people develop at school. This paper helped to prepare me for the realization: http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
-Michael
http://tamale.net/
Your comment system sucks. It doesn't preserve formatting. :(
Thanks for the link, Michael and sorry about the comment system! It doesn't even recognize formatting in the first place right now. This is a self-built system and I'm adding features as I go. Please be patient!
As far as your questions go, I am 26 years old and went to George Mason University in Virginia - not a Christian school. Before that I went to a local community college. Through my entire life I have yet to find one instance where I felt unprepared because of my homeschool upbringing - quite the opposite, actually.
Everyone has a different experience with this, obviously. I was just lucky to have had a great one.
It's spelled "cliques", not clicks.
Thanks, Glen! Correction made.
This article is made a lot less convincing by a couple things. One, after years of struggling it turned out what your brother needed all along was a normal public-school-style learning environment, which was then simulated. Two, difficulty maintaining relationships with women has nothing to do with spending all your time growing up with four brothers? This may be difficult for the reader to believe.
I went to excellent public schools growing up. I admit that there were a lot of inefficiencies in the whole thing, in terms of learning stuff and developing motivation, etc., but that's life -- a lot of life is dealing with other people (of all kinds) and arbitrary systems.
I have only a twin sister and was more comfortable with female friends growing up, and I'll admit that this probably impacted my ability to form close friendships with guys -- kind of the reverse problem.
Anyway, just my perspective.
David,
Good stuff! I appreciate your perspective. A few thoughts...
If you also had problems with forming relationships (with males, in your case) simply because you had a twin sister, I would think that reinforces my statement that I don't believe homeschooling has a primary role in the fact that my relationships haven't been what I wanted them to be, especially given the fact that - as you stated - I had four brothers.
The reality is that although people have fixated on that single line in the post, my issues with women aren't really that bad. I've had great relationships, - some of them long-term - but have a little dissatisfaction with the fact that I'm still single at 26. I seriously doubt this is all that uncommon or has anything to do with homeschooling.
But again, thank you for your perspective. It was very insightful.
"... devotion ..."
I presume the prime motivation for your parents decision was religion. ... and that's a problem.
Teaching, nay, indroctinating children in religion before age 21 is child abuse, pure and simple. As a child you cannot give informed consent to such brainwashing. You don't know what you don't know. That is the very definition of child abuse.
Indoctrinating you with superstition and pseudo-science does you a great disservice in the long run.
Lorenzo,
The prime motivation was not religion. We moved around a lot because of my dad's job - sometimes several times a year. Homeschooling provided a consistent experience for us. Also, as mentioned in the post, many of the areas we lived in had sub-par education systems. Each time we moved (and thought we might stay put a while), my parents looked into the local schools to see if they would be suitable. They rarely were - and never worth breaking the consistency.
Thanks for your thoughts, though!
I was one of those homeschooled kids who resents the fact that he was homeschooled. But that's probably because my parents made little effort to educate me and didn't provide alternatives for me to have a social life.
In terms of adults I have met a lot of people who were homeschooled and lumped homeschoolers into two categories:
1.) Clueless,
Does not understand the particular ways they are weird from a non-homeschoolers point of view.
Thinks homeschooling was good for them.
Rationalizes their social problems and/or pretends they don't exist. "I'm waiting until I'm married" "I just don't want to have kids" "I'll get that promotion if I just hang around long enough" etc.
2.)
Disillusioned.
Realizes how they are weird to a non homeschooled person and able to acknowledge it in conversation.
Dislikes the fact they were homeschooled.
successful in work/relationships - will not rationalize if they are unsuccessful at something.
These are my observations from meeting people who were homeschooled, and being homeschooled myself.
Mash,
I would have to agree, although I'm not sure all of the disillusioned ones fully grasp how much it's affected them. I think the disillusionment itself might even be some form of rationalization.
"Homeschooling and homeschooling alone made me this way - to hell with all the other varied aspects of my life."
Just a thought.
I ran the educational gamut -- public schools, private schools, homeschool, college, grad school. I've known many home educated people, and for the most part I've seen people like Daniel: well adjusted, normal, and independent.
It is true (in my experience) that homeschooled kids moving into a new atmosphere (high school or college) tend to not know "the rules" off the bat and might be come across as a little unusual. Two points.
1. This appearance is magnified by a tendency toward conformity in kids educated in the "mainstream." For example, maybe the homeschool kid actually says he doesn't like football. A socially conditioned "mainstream" kid is more likely to feign interest or adopt an accepted pose ("football is for dumb jocks").
2. Homeschooled kids typically learn "the rules" pretty quickly. In other words, the problem is not their personality or social skills generally speaking, it's their unfamiliarity with a specific set of norms and behaviors.
And the Dawkins/Hitchens line equating religious instruction to child abuse is complete nonsense. Everything a parent teaches her child is done without the child's consent. Even if we grant that general skills (e.g., folding laundry) are morally neutral, are you suggesting that no moral instruction or philosophical system can be passed on until the child is old enough to peruse the options and pick one? That idea would be self-defeating, anyway, because in teaching your child nothing until he's "old enough to decide himself," you are in fact teaching your child that none of these belief systems are true and are at best a matter of personal preference as some kind of garnish for your life. In other words, in not passing on your philosophical system, you would be passing on your philosophical system. Oops.
I would like to point out to the previous commenter that Dawkins has never said that religious instruction is child abuse, it's commonly cited but I've never heard it or read it from him. If he's said it, please point to where. Dawkins views the labeling children with the faith of their parents as a form of child abuse, which must have got twisted somewhere along the line.
Hitchens might have, but that's a completely different story.
Caleb - see "The God Delusion", chapter 9: "Childhood, abuse, and the escape from religion".
Part of that chapter is accessible from http://tinyurl.com/ypve2h (on richarddawkins.net, title "Religion's Real Child Abuse"). He doesn't specifically say the exact words "religious instruction is child abuse", but the chapter of TGD and this article are fairly clear.
The closest excerpt from the article I can find is "Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place."
I'm a homeschooling parent although my spouse is the one who stays at home and does most of the lessons. Periodically, we would consider whether we wanted to send our kids to public school (we had no money for private!), since as you say, homeschooling is a lot of work. My spouse is not the most patient of people either. Our kids are approx 3rd and 4th grade.
In general, we homeschool because we know we can do better than the public school. The social aspect is something of a problem, but for a while now we have lived in anenvironemtn where the bad influences from the other kids would outweigh the benefit of socialization, so our two kids have mostly played with each other. There have been occasional structured groups, like at a community center.
What I have observed of my kids when they play at the park or something, is that the social problems they have or don't have are almost all due to personality - one is ADHD and would annoy a saint, and the other is cheerful and sunny and would charm anyone.
That said, we now live in an area with an excellent elementary school, in a good community, so we will be sending them to school now. I anticipate social problems for the ADHD child, and perhaps academic problems becuase their progress is not completely in step with the school's schedule. (For instance, we taught negative numbers from the beginning, but have not really worked with factions or cursive handwriting.) There will also be a big adjustment because of the structure and being under the authority of other adults.
Ultimately, I think our homeschooling as served to innoculate against the ills you mentioned, because my kids are old enough to have an identity - to have discovered that learning is fun and reading is interesting, that the science museum in exciting, that it's ok for a boy to enjoy kittens and flowers, and they have learned how to live without TV, pop culture, and fitting into the group. Hopefully, our guidance will be enough to help them avoid the pitfalls of teasing, etc as they adjust to this new environment. The school seems very supportive, though, so I think things will be ok. :)
swan: Have you considered the possibility that your son's ADHD may be caused by sensitivity to artificial red dye? I had ADHD symptoms when I was a child. Finally, when I was 10, my parents did an experiment: removed sugar from my diet. My behavior dramatically improved. At the end of the experiment, my mom gave me a glass of red kool-aid. Ten minutes after drinking it, it was like a switch in my head went from "good" to "bad". By avoiding sugar, I had avoided every food that contains artificial red dye. My parents removed red dye from my diet, turning me back into a normal person. Without the chemical in my brain, I could concentrate on school work just like any other kid.
I'm am not sensitive to the artificial red dyes used in Britain. So I can eat red British candy. I can also eat yellow, green, light blue, and white candy with no problems.
Please try removing artificial colors, especially red dye, from your child's diet.
--Michael (http://tamale.net/)