PoAC: Home schooling

[velvetpage]

An interesting article at CBC got me thinking, again, about home schooling.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_ekoko/20060816.html

Here are my thoughts: when done well, homeschooling can be a valuable experience, however it has certain glaring drawbacks. The first is social. Most adults have a certain common ground in public, or at least institutionalized, education. There's a whole cultural vacabulary surrounding things like pop quizzes, lockers, schoolyard bullies, and report cards that a homeschooled kid is not going to understand in quite the same way. Then there's the type of socialization-by-age-group that occurs at school, which is missing from homeschooling. I'm not certain if that lack would be classified as a drawback or an advantage; I suppose it would depend on the child. But there is a certain value to learning to work with one's peers, that is harder to develop when homeschooling.

The second is exposure to a variety of viewpoints. For many people, the main reason for homeschooling is to give their children a religious education, thereby excluding certain values that don't fit with the religion. The Southern Baptist Convention is one of the largest associations worldwide to promote homeschooling. Their viewpoint is that the public school system promotes a "secular humanist" ideal that goes against Christian teachings. Aside from suppression of exposure to other faiths, there's the lack of breadth in the life experience of parents-as-teachers. How is a child of non-musical parents going to discover a gift for music, if not at school? How could I, who can't draw a stick person, teach my child art? As a teacher at school, I can either trade off the subjects for which I have no passion, or I can hope that the teacher they get the following year will have complementary skills to mine. Homeschooling associations need to be big and broad to emulate that. How many of them manage to teach languages other than English at all?

Thoughts, anybody?

Comments

[mysirensong.livejournal.com]

I have basically the exact same feelings about homeschooling as you do. I had a friend from church when I was in high school who was being home "schooled" for those last years of high school and man oh man did her education suck. She was supposed to be two years ahead of me but she was miles behind me academically -- and I'm from an inner-city school that did just ok . Granted, I was at the top of my class, but still. Anyway, she was the only view of homeschooling that I had for a long time and I decided long ago it was not for my kids if that was how they'd turn out.

When I went to college I met a couple more kids who'd been homeschooled and I saw them totally flounder when they actually had to do things like attend class on a schedule and participate in group work. Then again, I floundered in college, too, because I suddenly had the freedom to not go to class if I didn't want to and no one was going to put me in detention for it -- maybe there's something to be said for teaching that self-reliance that a homeschooled kid learns? I never had to pay the price for slacking off until the 15 week semester was up and it took a good year or two of that before the lesson sank into my late-adolescent brain.

I know a lot of homeschooling proponents will answer the point about involvement in extra-curriculars by saying, "Well, I can just put my kid in ___ extra-curricular activity." That's great for them that they can afford that, but one thing public school did for *my* family was allow us to be involved in things for free that we wouldn't have had the money to do otherwise -- choir, vocal ensemble, the school plays, the newspaper, band, debate teams, sports, art classes, etc. I realize programs are getting cut all over the place -- the answer to that is not to pull our kids out, but to *fix the problems* and get the programs *back in the schools.*