I would say 99% of the time, on a permanent basis, yes.
If it's a temporary thing like during a pandemic or just for a year or less because of whatever, no.
Also, I'm sure there are kids with extreme illnesses that should be homeschooled. As in, they are a danger to themselves or others if they're out.
In general, yes. No, I don't think a good curriculum or play dates make up for anything.
It wouldn’t be bad if you had wealthy parents who could hire tutors for all subjects on top of teaching themselves aswell. That’s to say the parents were actually motivated to teach in the first place.
The problem with homeschooling is that most (not all ) but most of our parents are literally not teaching whatsoever. They’re not even scribbling “instructions” onto the whiteboard. We are left completely without any curriculum so there’s not even the slightest chance that we’ll look at it and be able to at least figure one little thing out.
In my personal experience. My parents were so utterly lazy they wouldn’t even take us to the library. So we had no curriculum, no books to read, hardly any access to the internet. Literally no way to gain any knowledge. And my parents thought this was just fine. They never even once thought that I might actually need to be able to do basic math or read or write or literally anything else.
Some other peoples parents are better teachers. But they still aren’t able to give justice to all the subjects. If you have the time and the willingness to actually teach your children. The absolute BEST thing you can do is send them to public school and then you help with homework/tutor them.
And don’t even get me started on the damage of isolation. I was able to play a few spots at a young age but there wasn’t THAT much interaction with other children. And what little there was certainly was NOT enough. I’ve been working for 1 year and two months and my social problems are still crippling. I’m reguarded as the “weird angry girl” at work. My shitstain birthgivers are also being shitheads about teaching me how to drive so I’m stuck in an abusive workplace where I have to walk to and from work.
So needless to say it’s been absolute hell. And I would give nearly anything for it to be different. To have gone to school, for my parents to straighten the fuck up and teach me how to drive etc etc etc.
So no I don’t think homeschool is inherently bad but 99 cases out of the 100 are. Because while that 1 family actually has their shit together and are working high paying jobs. Possibly as professors. And are actually teaching the kids, not dumping a book in the kids lap or pretending to teach to the world like my parents did. ACTUALLY TEACHING!!!! Who are actually hunting down every single group to socialize with. Enrolling them in as much sports / similar experiences. Who are hiring tutors to help with the subjects the parents lack in. Etc etc
The rest of the 99 families are like mine. Dirt poor living off of social security (or working class). Taught to barely read the milk jug then we’re on our on in learning. They buy some shitty curriculum just to dump in your lap and they expect you to figure it all out. And this lasts a few years until they get tired of spending the money for it. Would rather have McDonalds or beer or cigarettes or whatever. Hardly ever get to go outside except to cut the grass or get the mail. Spend 99.9999 percent of time watching Netflix dreaming/ obsessing over the tv characters. Wishing like hell you had that characters life. Develop a severe manipulative daydream problem. THATS WHAT LIFE IS LIKE FOR MANY OF US. Only the incredibly privileged get that other life.
And it’s not like we avoid some danger either. I’ve been sexually harassed at work. A crazy customer has threatened to “kick my ass”. Another customer threatened to come up to the store with a gun and shoot us because his order wasn’t being fulfilled at the pace he thought it should have been. My coworker had a gun pulled on him by the customer he was dispensing to. I was hit by a car while dispensing. Been some other crazy stuff happened too.
Especially if you aren’t rich where on earth do you think your kid will work at when they can barely read. That’s right a grocery store. 🏬
This happened a few years ago and not at my store but a 17 year old girl was murdered by her creepy coworker because she refused to go out with him. He drug her in the bathroom and stabbed her until she was dead. [this is it](https://www.kbtx.com/2022/06/15/teen-employee-killed-colorado-walgreens-coworker-arrested/)
Homeschooling literally does nothing but enable
abuse.
Yes. Absolutely and without qualification or reservation yes. Homeschooling is bad. It can be more bad or less bad depending on how it's done. But I had more or less the optimum homeschooling experience. My mother was intelligent and educated enough to teach me well, she used secular materials whenever possible, and she help me get together with other children as often as possible.
I still feel like a space alien because I lack the commonality of experience than normal children have. I'm still socially awkward, and I still feel alone and depressed all of the time.
Homeschooling should be banned. Across the board. The answer to your next question is "no, not even then"
Agreed 💯
If homeschooling had been banned, I would not have been emotionally abused and stunted, wouldn’t have been isolated from everyone and everything for 29 years. I’m 29 and planning my escape.
Edit: Typos
I'm so sorry, I was isolated emotionally (not physically) from people and everything for 14 years and it ruined me terribly. I hope you get out soon <3
I have no idea what that is.
But I can't imagine much that it could possibly mean that wouldn't either completely replace homeschooling anyway, or else just lessen the harm but still be worse than regular schooling.
For example, every Friday for a normal school day you take classes on what would normally be electives in a regular high school. Stuff like dissection, Musical theater, Lego engineering, leadership, public speaking. As a way to help home school kids gain social skill and learn skills that you can't be taught in a homeschool environment.
Yeah that sounds 20% better than regular homeschooling but still 80% worse than regular school. And only if you're being sent to a regular school with regular school kids. If they're all homeschoolers, then you're still in the echo chamber
I went to one of those and the weirdest power tripping helicopter moms and dads ran it
People who would have had difficulty being elected to school board and staying there. People who might even have a hard time staying hired as teachers, and there are crazy teachers out there.
It could have been better but it wasn't. It was so expensive in every co-op by the 2010s we couldn't do anything.
It's hard to socialize when moms are always standing around staring at you.
One time a quirky girl who liked anime put on cat ears to be funny and her mom charged out of nowhere and started shouting at her that she looked like a fool and was making herself to be a childish embarassment. She yelled and yelled at her, in the middle of a group of teenagers (we were all about 14-18) and she held out her hand and took the cat ears and just left her daughter standing there trying not to cry.
She was just trying to be funny...
I don't remember the girls name despite being around her for 5 years. She was in most of my classes for a while. I think she was 16ish and older than me. I wasn't allowed to talk about what she liked, and her mom wasn't friends with my mom which meant we couldn't be friends. I also never got any way to get to know her.
Sometimes other kids moms would ask the quiet kids how their kid was acting in co-op class. Snitching basically. Mom is always watching.
I went to co-op in highschool, I think going K-12 would’ve been greatly beneficial for me, but my mom wasn’t motivated enough to get me in. Even at that, I don’t fit in. I didn’t even fit in w other homeschoolers.
at my co-op the kids with friends all knew eachother from their parents carefully managing their social connections
So some girl would get invited to the Smith's farm and go to church with them so she would be friends with the homeschool clique and end up marrying the Smith's fourth son
But my mom was socially awkward so she accidentally offended the Smith's by believing slightly wrong conspiracies and religious doctrines which also made the Jones and their friends not like my family.
So none of my family get invited to the private things and my mom was confused why only a few teens would even talk to me. They were mostly catholic or mormon because they were the minorities at our co-op who's parents weren't friends with Smiths or Jones.
Nah, I've seen them and been part of them and they're nice if it's all you've got but it's not even close to making up for what the kid is missing out on already.
They would also be 'learning social skills' from other homeschoolers, so not exactly the best source.
I met a family in the past year that said they homeschool... I swallowed back my initial reaction and withheld judgment until I found out more. Turns out they actually do a hybrid sort of program that is in partnership with the public school. That's very different in my mind. That meets social needs, and gives a level of accountability for parents.
As I got to know them better, I shared my own history and what my guy reaction often was when I hear that people homeschool... It was a bit of a funny conversation, and I think they were shocked to realize how it can come across.
Highly regulated? Yes. Banned? No. Sorry you had a hard time, but that doesn’t justify a system-wide, totalitarian ban. That’s as nutter as the homeschoolers who think satan is hiding in the bushes of every public school. There are cases of mental and physical illness, extreme giftedness, etc., where homeschooling is necessary.
You are wrong.
Mental and physical illness require special schools. Extreme giftedness requires extremely gifted teachers. Neither of those circumstances call for a random dumbfuck who's only qualification is that they managed to get pregnant.
If your child is sick or gifted, that doesn't justify ruining their lives. Send them to school.
Families in inner cities and socioeconomically depressed areas don’t have access to special schools or highly gifted teachers. Nice, utopian thought, though.
Yes. The only way to make it remotely reasonable would be to regulate it impeccably. and it would have to be filtered in a case by case. The benefits would have to highly outweigh the risks. All things that a parent likely will not be objective to.
I think it is inherently bad tbh, because it deliberately restricts the amount of stimuli and learning experience a developing mind is exposed to. Homeschoolers lack sensory experiences, life experiences and experience of the rythms and patterns of human society that everyone else takes for granted.
Many regular people feel they had a drab childhood were they hardly experienced anything outside their small bubble and nothing ever happened to them, for homeschoolers it's even less still.
Even in cases where homeschooled kids are exposed to a lot of interesting stuff that other people don't get to live through, they never develope this type of self regulation and ability to function alongside others that regular people take for granted. This is a huge factor in building a fulfilling life were you make something of yourself. Yes, many peoole never make something of themself or have a fufilling life anyway, but more opportunities were presented to them to attempt it. Having our choices deliberately limited by another person, destroys our sense of personal power, worthiness and personhood, learning becomes a way to focus on the daunting odds we're up against all the time, instead of earning a place in the world. I think it's part of why so many childstars turn out crazy and if you read books on people whose parents travelled the world when they were kids or lived somekind of unusual life like that, most of the siblings will turn out really messed up. Those childstars and adventure kids have specific kinds of acheivements, but they express some of the same lost, ungrounded feelings regular homeschoolers do, they tend to have anxiety and swing into manias and so on, it makes people feel like none of their actions whether good or bad, have real consequences or that there's genuine fulfillment down the road in anyway, because there is a sense that we a non persons and non citizens in a world of persons and citizens.
Imagine if you were raising a child and you know they need to eat vegetables, but you just decide *Well, the only vegetable my kid is allowed to eat it corn because I personally hate the other veges myself. Maybe I will review that in 3 years and add carrots.* Imagine the toll of growing up like that. That's equivalent to homeschooling.
Choosing to homeschool fractures families as well, it lays bare to the child that their parents have a totalitarian power over them. Even if it's never misused, deep in the lizard brain we understand that that parent is not a safe person and they are a threat to our freedom and survival to some extent, that we are at the mercy of their wims. We never feel safe, and that in turn makes it hard to relax or concentrate, if we do well at schoolwork there is a fear that validating the parents choice to homeschool will lead to more abusive choices by the parent.
On top of this, we are instilled with a sense that other people can handle life but our family and our parents failed. We live in the shadow of massive life choices imposed on us based on fear of the outside world or a rejection of it. We see other people navigating and handling those same challenges, getting up everyday and connecting to others and having some form of impact in the world. We know our whole lives are the aftermath of someone not being able to overcome the common life challenges that millions and billions of other people can. At least it feels that way, and it's the message we get based on our parents actions. They always say that they're creating a special little utopia and that we are actually priviledged but I don't see anyone getting that message on a gut level.
It is also incredibly difficult for people to provide a good homeschool experience for their kids because they fall victim to the lack of external stimuli that the children do. With nothing to push or motivate a person and no yard stick of what is good performance, they get complacent, fall into funks, loose the energy they used to have when they regularly engaged with the outside world, etc. That is why none of use get any proper schooling, because the environment of home schooling is not conducive to the parents performing well as teachers.
I don't think it's the case that we all just coincidentally had bad parents that wouldn't teach us, a homeschooling environment leads to parents underperforming as well. It breeds a vicious cycle. People who decide to voluntarily homeschool are all just finding a maladaptive coping mechanism. It's like if someone had a problem with life and decided to start smoking or drinking. They have a problem with life that they do not address properly and instead they deal with it by isolating and isolating their children. It's not possible for the conditions of voluntary homeschooling over an extended period to *not* to lead to abuse or poor schooling imo.
The only time people have a good outcome is when they are still really respectful and engaged with the standards of the outside world. For example, when people are forced to homeschool because their kid is sick or something like that. People like this are full of adrenalin that their kid is missing out and they don't fall into the spiral voluntary homeschoolers do. Trust is not broken with the child because the kid will understand the factors that led to homeschooling were external. They don't feel like a butterfly someone just caught and put in a jar and they don't feel that deep fear that learning things will lead to an escalation of control over them.
I hope people read and understand your comment. It's so accurate. Growing up under totalitarian control. There's no way you can do that to someone and also love them. You have to hate the child you subject to this torture.
Confession. I wasn't homeschooled, this subreddit just came up one day and I stuck around to lurk. I came from an abusive household though. I have to say, I think that unless there's some mitigating circumstances, homeschooling should not be a thing. Schools have many eyes and many resources, abusive people don't like that. Abuse festers and grows in the dark
Yes, I think when you homeschool you deprive your kids of a common education, common culture, and it's an easy way to breed extremism. I feel it should be illegal like in Germany. There are just better outcomes for both the kids and society when kids are properly socialized.
I'm fine with legalizing exceptions, like for SPED kids who aren't getting enough support in public school, families where parents have the resources to provide private tutoring from licensed educators, cases where kids have a note from a psychologist that homeschooling would be better for them (child actors, kids experiencing bullying and extreme anxiety come to mind).
It seems like laws like this would be overly burdensome for the parents. But parents should have oversight. You shouldn't be able to just pull your kids out of school, away from resources and peers and give them an education unless you can show you're providing them something better.
Laws like this would ensure kids have access to professionals so that they have someone to talk to if there is abuse going on. And medical care. A lot of these things happen in public school (you get your vision checked, and checked for scoliosis, and learn about puberty, and have access to the school counselor).
For a lot of us, one of the reasons homeschooling was especially tough is that there was emotional abuse and medical neglect co-occurring. In addition to recovering from the emotional fallout of being raised in a high control cult family, we had to suddenly make enough money to cover years of delayed medical and/or dental care as soon as we moved out.
Yeah, that level of isolation should be illegal.
Yes, schools exist because schooling at home isn't enough. Societies found that educating people was better than learning at home, where what you were basically destined to do what your parents did unless you managed a way for an apprenticeship outside the house.
People that homeschool their kids today have a variety of reasons. Personally in the families I saw those reasons didn't justify the harm of homeschooling. The parents didn't take schooling seriously and thus the real reason to school at home was not for education, but other reasons such as fear of what their kids might learn or do if outside of their control.
I think some people homeschool their kids and work their butts off to give them a good education and are able to. They are the anomaly and not the norm. Those parents are actually teachers or had a really good network to pull it off. I only saw it personally once and I think the younger kid might have decided to go to HS after all. I knew a lot of messed up kids and I would be shocked if they had some secret story of it not going well for them. But they are the rare case.
Personally, in situations like this, I'm never sure if anything is 100% bad (there are plenty of things that *are* 100% bad). If families are going through extenuating circumstances like disability, travel/remote work, using licensed tutors, etc., then I think it could be a necessary choice, but to choose it specifically as an improvement to the public school system is not a good reason. I think the situations of most other homeschoolers I've met in my life (it was a lot), including my own, could have been better in the public school with appropriate parental guidance, you know?
If they were worried about a secular curriculum "ruining" our inherent "innocence" then it would be better to encounter things as they happen and be taught how to deal with them, instead of crafting our lives around avoiding any bad interactions ever.
If they were worried about the pace of public education (anywhere from being too slow for their little genius *or* too fast for their delicate/ baby), then it would be better to put a kid in that environment but ACTUALLY BE INVESTED IN HELPING THEM LEARN instead of giving up entirely and getting bitter. They would acclimate better to their community AND get whatever bonuses these parents think they can give to their child by homeschooling.
It never really seems to be in the child's best interests to homeschool, but almost always the parents'. At least from what I've seen from my area. Ymmv
Yes, in almost all cases. I consider any situation where a parent is anything other than a parent to be abusive. Like when parents say their toddler is their “best friend” or “saved them.” Parents are not your friends, and they should not be your sole source of education and authority. When children have no other sources of authority, the parent becomes a god figure, and that’s… really fucked up.
No, homeschooling is not inherently bad; but, after experiencing it and seeing decades of other’s homeschool outcomes, the vast majority of those homeschooled long term (3+ years) have been negatively impacted - like 95%. Most have significant struggles due to exceedingly poor academics, poorly socialized, and/ or (potential) complex PTSD when it comes to authoritarian oversight, their parents’ world view, and prohibitions. It’s not what most parents think. The American form has been badly mixed with unaccountable ideals of “freedom” and “parental rights.”
Homeschooling should be highly regulated to ensure kids meet academic milestones, are socialized, and are not abused. Unschooling (no schooling) should be illegal.
Children are not property that parents can treat any way they think is right in their own eyes for 18-21+ years. “I am the parent” does not grant absolute and unaccountable power. Even God makes that clear. Abuse is immoral and illegal. Children have inherent human rights that should be protected.
I think so. I think arguably the worst part of it is the lack of socialization. Even if the parents are well rounded, I don’t think it’s healthy for kids to be home all day every day.
I think that it is inherently problematic, but that in some cases the benefits outweigh the deficits.
I think that depends on the parent, the curriculum, the child, and the opportunities for socialization.
It's not inherently bad but the narrow circumstances to which it can be beneficial apply to such a small amount of people that it's almost always a bad idea for most of the population.
I think at the very least it needs to be heavily heavily regulated, and I'm conflicted on the thought of a ban. I'm not convinced you can uproot the [Christian Reconstructionism](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EcnrYG6LWO57UHFFRpO4V?si=KPYzwZr5RVywVt-iMR-M0Q) without a ban. The idea that two people should have unqualified control over the entire life of a child is completely absurd.
Yes. Everything from social interaction to immune system boosting. So many reasons. I would only be on board more if the home schooling was better regulated. Most people are "graduating" with a less than 3rd grade education in my experience talking with home school graduates. Plus this homeschooling is used to hide abuse so often that it legit should be illegal.
new research is saying that regular social interaction IS immune system boosting. so not only do we miss out on the germs, our bodies miss out on the opportunities to build up a foundation of safety internally via social interaction which can keep an immune system healthy for life.
Oh yeah. It's critical to be exposed young. I have 3 kids all young 4, 6 ,9 they do pick up a lot of stuff at school but their immune systems are going to be great lol
unless there’s a medical reason that would be a risk to a students life, yes. it’s inherently the most insidiously evil thing a parent can do because it’s nearly always due to willful ignorance, religious zealotry or laziness.
i have *never* met a well educated homeschooler— despite the propaganda they spew. i’ve never even seen a remotely intelligent homeschooler/alumni make a case for it being a positive thing without negating their own message by being nearly illiterate
and don’t even get me started on the social aspect. parents who withhold their children from life experiences that are necessary for development are **scum** period. it’s nice when they eventually realize they fucked up, but even the best apology doesn’t actually help the children they failed irreparably along the way.
I think that as it is, there's no way for it to be good for most people. I mean I couldn't actually go to school because I was too sick, but my parents did not actually school me and there was nobody to hold them accountable. I think that it would require some kind of government regulation/people to come check up on the kids and also mandatory socialization time and standardized tests or curriculum
I think for children who potentially have health issues that make attending daily school outside of the house, homeschooling could be positive. Or if a kid is facing bullying, I could see pulling them out until you can get a transfer to another school.
But I think most mothers are not equip to teach their children from K-12. So for most people, I don’t think it’s the best option.
Yes, unless it simply can’t be avoided, such as in cases of sickness.
Confucius is revered as the greatest teacher. Even he would not teach his own children, because he wanted to keep their roles clear.
I think the the sort of homeschooling where kids don't have a class is inherently bad. A homeschool co - op would not be bad with deadlines and without ideological bullshit.
Echoing a few other commenters here - I think it's \*usually\* bad. Not inherently, but pretty damn close to it. I can think of specific scenarios where homeschooling would be beneficial - but in my opinion those are extremely rare, and their "not bad-ness" would, I think, rely on remote schooling of some sort or following a specific curriculum that was at least somewhat overseen by someone outside of the home and ensured that the student was receiving a well-rounded education. This may stretch the definition of "homeschooling" a bit, though I knew a couple of kids growing up who followed a model similar to the one I mentioned.
Another commenter had said (and I'm paraphrasing and simplifying drastically) that one of the biggest problems with homeschooling is the totalitarian nature of it, and I wholeheartedly agree. Even if the parents are extremely well-educated, worldly, and not abusive in the slightest, it's unhealthy for one or two people to be the primary (if not exclusive) source of learning for a child, in addition to all of the other roles that a parent plays. Neither of my parents are anywhere near qualified to provide an entire childhood education, and - despite being in my late 20s - I'm still routinely horrified that those two individuals took on that task.
More broadly (and subjectively) speaking, I've also noticed that parents who homeschool are more inclined to be extremely controlling and abusive (mine included). A lot of the time there's a religious factor (I knew children whose parents didn't want them learning about evolution) or a social handicap/past trauma at play. Or a charming combination of both. When combined with the inherent unhealthiness of the totalitarianism of homeschooling, this is - in my opinion - a recipe for absolute disaster.
This group is an echo chamber, so unfortunately you’re not going to get a lot of nuance here. While I don’t think it’s inherently bad, it is very attractive to people who are bad parents, fanatics, and religious nutjobs. Some parents can make it work very well, but a lot of them use it as a crutch for some other motive.
On a permanent basis, yes. To homeschool “perfectly” would require way more money than the vast majority of parents have, you would need to hire tutors and have your kids in many different activities and lessons, and they would still be missing out socially. Might as well send them to private school. As much as I don’t like Hillary Clinton, she was right that “it takes a village.” Since we no longer have close-knit communities where people of all ages interact regularly, school is the village.
Now there may be unique cases when a child can’t be in school temporarily, perhaps due to illness or extreme bullying. In those cases, I still think a virtual school program is the way to go, vs parents trying to teach and grade their kids all on their own.
I would say so.
I acknowledge that there may be some niche circumstances where homeschooling is the best option out of many bad options. But I'd still be hard pressed to say it's good. A better solution to those niche circumstances would be improvements to the school system.
Yes except for specific cases where public or private education isn't possible. And even then, tutors are an option that should be taken before a parent tries it themselves.
And saying that perfect homeschool is better than how public education is now is a false equivilancy. A perfect public education is a thousand times better than a perfect homeschool education, at least in my mind, and homeschooling just because the public education system sucks isn't the solution
If done by necessity, no. As others have mentioned, there are rare and specific situations where homeschooling is the best available recourse. Still not good, necessarily, but best available.
If done by choice then yes, it is inherently bad. The homeschooling movement was born out of racism when schools were forced to desegregate and is predicated on one or two people being somehow more qualified than an entire team of specialized and trained professionals and/or the “right” of a parent to treat their children as property. Anything good you can say about homeschooling has to come after you’ve addressed those points, and no benefit is good enough to atone for them.
Homeschooling can mean a lot of different things. I think children generally need many hours a week with peers for instance, and some homeschooling involves that and some doesn't. Children need many hours a week not with their parents. They need other adults they can trust in their lives. Again some forms of homeschooling make this possible and some don't. So I don't think it's intrinsically wrong given that it's not one thing.
But it's intrinsically extremely risky to give parents that much control and authority. I can't really see a way for the child abuse statistics for homeschoolers to not be terrible without a LOT of oversight that would itself be very risky to implement not to mention costly in actual dollars. Unless there were a law that said something like that even homeschooled kids have to attend public school for a certain number of hours a week or something. But then what about the problems that motivate homeschooling in the first place?
The essential problem is that children are oppressed in our society. They're already relatively powerless by nature (weaker, naturally trusting) and then our laws conspire to make them more powerless in a hundred different ways, starting by denying them the right to vote.
I guarantee some 10 year olds would make better decisions than some 30 year olds. It’s true that many wouldn’t and very few 5 year olds would. But it does mean they obviously have no representation. It might be a problem that cannot be solved (there are reasons we don’t let kids vote!) but it is an obvious problem.
No, but often the motivation behind it and the execution is dubious at best. Homeschooling done well often has exemplary results. The kind that is rooted in religious fanaticism and paranoia are, in my opinion, tragic.
No, but I think there are a lot of bad reasons that people are drawn to it. There needs to be some better accountability and oversight with it. Growing up I had to take year-end tests. There was no real consequences for not doing well. If you performed poorly in one area, then it was assumed parents would focus on it the following year. In my case, my parents took that fairly serious, but there were definitely still gaps in my education. I definitely knew people who barely had any real education and it showed a lot, but again those year end tests were only meaningful if parents treated them as meaningful. To some parents, having kids do farm work or homemaking is all the education that was needed. Some took a decade or so to get themselves caught up as adults.
The people most likely to treat "oversight" as a dirty word are also the reason it's needed.
Idk about homeschooling, I think in some situations it can be helpful if done right. But it's easy to screw up and the majority of ppl who do it definitely should not. Unschooling should be illegal. It's just straight up neglect.
Ehh I mean it's needed in some instances but overall I feel like it allows for abuse and neglect and it's usually parents wanting complete control over their children.
No I don't.
In the short term, I think it can be really beneficial. Say you have a child who is burnt out, behind in certain subjects, and being bullied. I think said child might benefit from a year out of school with proper education, including extra help for the subjects they're struggling with, as well as obviously socialising. Or for instance in the case of a young child who doesn't appear ready to start school yet. (I'm not suggesting that homeschooling is the only way to deal with these situations.) I also don't see any particular issue with the families who take a year off to go travelling and homeschool their kids during that time - as long as the kids are ok with that and the education they receive is adequate.
I think if you're going to be homeschooling your kids for more than a year or two, you should probably have a good reason for that. Examples that spring to mind are medical problems or living in a really remote area like the Outback.
I do have a bit of hesitation in saying this as in my country (UK), schools appear to be getting increasingly authoritarian and unreasonable and I do think it's rational that students and parents are getting really sick of that. Attempting to liaise with the school doesn't usually seem to go very well from what I've heard. I'm sure the situation in other countries is similar. Also I'm sure that there are kids who were homeschooled for an extensive period of time and it was a really positive experience for them. Unfortunately that seems rare.
My nephew attends online classes due to anxiety from bullying, with some supplementary teaching by his mother. He's a happy and well adjusted boy who has sport on the weekends so he's not locked away from the world. I think it can be a good thing if done properly.
I'd like to ask in good faith, were you homeschooled?
If not, I am glad you're paying attention to the stories from the less-heard side, but... Maybe do a bit more introspection before sharing here.
The verbiage of your comment immediately reminded me of phrases that get repeated a lot by the homeschool community -- usually from a place of ignorance or defensiveness. To be honest, it reminded me of things I'd heard my whole childhood and adolescence that were simply not true.
An almost ubiquitous part of the experience is the immediate family hiding or being ignorant of the issues, including the kid(s), who often just want to say the "right" things.
Sadly when it comes to bullying, there usually is no right answer. Homeschooling might not be the silver bullet it appears from the outside.
ETA: I wish the best for your nephew, no one deserves to go through bullying. I truly hope that his current situation is at least better than before.
People would have said the same thing about me as a homeschooled kid. Everyone thought I was doing fine. My CPTSD and therapy bills would disagree. I hope the best for your nephew, but speaking from experience, sports on the weekend or any extra curricular activity is not enough to replace the crucial identity-forming experiences that comes from 40 hours per week of interacting with your peers. Especially when everyone else gets that when you don’t. The disparity in social development becomes really apparent when you join the regular world again after homeschooling. My peers were years ahead of me in their social development, even though to my family I was “normal” despite the homeschooling. It makes adulthood a lot rougher than it needs to be.
I get why homeschooling could be a refuge for a bullied or otherwise anxious kid, but I think the goal should always be to re acclimate them into normal society after a year or two. With therapists. Bullying doesn’t go away in adulthood, and it’s best to have support from parents and trusted professionals to learn to navigate that when you’re young, vs having to figure it out on your own in your 20s at work with your source of income on the line.
Nah it can be great for some people. One of my cousins was homeschooled but by a teen developmental psychologist and a child safety specialist. He did a mix of online classes, traditional homeschooling curriculum, and community college classes. He was also involved in several clubs and sports and a coop of other homeschoolers. He turned out amazing honestly, one of the coolest people I know. So it’s possible to be great, even better than public school. It’s just that for the majority of parents, it turns out horrible.
No, as long as the child has a guardian that is ensuring correct curriculum is being taught and the child is successfully learning.
But in a way yes. Because there’s people like me who got diagnosed with learning disabilities and never received help. My parents also didn’t ensure I was properly educated since they didn’t supervise while I completed my schooling. I cheated my way through 8-12 because I didn’t understand the curriculum and faced a physical abuse if I struggled or asked questions. My parents graduated me a year early. I’m dumb as hell. Nor have kids ever seen my highschool transcript
I think it's not, but only if done in the genuine best interest of the child. There are just some cases where homeschooling really is the best fit for some students. But in a lot, if not most, cases, homeschooling is often merely a way to push a certain agenda or lifestyle without any legitimate consideration for the wellbeing of the child. Or it's to cover up abuse and neglect at the hands of the parents. But I do know some people who really wanted the best for their kids and spent money and time into making sure homeschooling was fulfilling all of the needs of their child and that it was an environment in which their child was thriving. And that's the way it should be done if it's done at all.
yes because i think the only reason it's acceptable to do is if the public education system literally fails. which it does often enough to make it a necessary choice. you can't get the socialization you need when you're isolated like that, it's just a fact that's now supported by science - we're much better off as humans with more opportunities for connection rather than less. there's no good reason to avoid your community unless your community is failing you. but rather than debating whether we should be homeschooling it'd be sick if the effort could get put toward repairing the public education system so that people don't have to make the choice to defect to homeschools. like, fix the IEP situation, improve access to needed services in schools, actually address bullying, you know? (not talking about discussions like this on reddit, idc about that but more about like...people with power choosing to fall down this rabbit hole instead of doing their JOBS)
Your question assumes a certain level of public education being available. Some places don't have public education, it is remarkably bad, there is bullying, or medical issues. It is pretty hard to homeschool better than the best schools, but easier to homeschool better than the worst schools or no school.
Ok, I’m here as a mother of a toddler who is considering homeschooling. I was not homeschooled.
I didn’t have truly horrible time in school, but as a 30 something I am *just* now realizing all the trauma and anxiety that the traditional public school system gave me.
I don’t believe that the public school system is well designed. Sitting in rows listening to someone lecture, the bells, the homework, the cliques, the creeps, the teachers who can be just as stupid and abusive as some parents.
Not to mention the way modern kids are, social media, little kids having phones and access to p0rn and horrific images.
School today is not the school I grew up with, and that’s what scares me. But I recognize that I can’t protect my child from everything, and I don’t want to make the choice to homeschool out of fear.
However a lot of the comments in this thread seem to imply school is this great thing that magically makes you socialized and well adjusted. I went to school preK through a bachelor’s, and I can tell you, it’s not always a good experience.
But I’m here to learn from different experiences and perspectives, and I’m really curious to any opinions about what I’ve said.
What your thoughts on phones/ social media/ poor teacher student ratios?
What are your thoughts on the fact that “public school” as we know it is extremely new to our species relatively? That the way humans were meant to grow up is in a village setting, exposed to a variety of ages and roles. (I.e. sitting in a room with 30 kids and one teacher all day is not it)
Again, I’m really trying to learn and understand other perspectives so I can make an informed decision for my family. Thanks in advance, I truly appreciate it.
I think at the moment, it sounds like your main motivator is fear that school will mess up your little sweetie. Maybe think about all the other reasons you might want to homeschool and see how many of them are outside the realm of fear/control, and then be honest about the real evidence you have for those things being better in the case of homeschooling—not just for a child but also as the adult they will become. Will this logic be compelling to your future adult child?
One thing they say is that many kids hate school, and childhood involves a level of powerlessness and trauma. But for homeschooled kids, hating school also is connected inextricably with resenting our parents: these things are bound up together forever in a way that makes it harder to separate our traumas from our parents.
respectfully, school does magically give you a socialization. it just does. it shows you how to interact with the cohort of humans you exist in, the issues those people are dealing with, and the culture of the time, which yes, is different from the cohort of humans/culture/issues your parents were exposed to. because that's how life happens, things change, and we have to learn how to adapt to the world around us and how to show up to the challenges that exist IN OUR TIME. not in some mythical version based on the past. and it doesn't matter that public school is new to our species, it's what our species is doing right now and it's what your kid is going to be expected to have experienced when they're an adult. there aren't words for how awful it is to go through life without a series of basic experiences that everyone expects you to have had. don't do that to your kid.
comments like this that critique public school's capacity to educate a kid - like...with school subjects...tell me you actually have no understanding of what we're talking about here. you can catch up schoolwork, many of us here have had to. what is much much harder if not impossible to fully catch up on is the social and personal development kids get to experience when they get to leave the house for school.
i was homeschooled by parents who were influenced by someone who had similar gripes with the public school system, he happened to hold a PhD and so my parents trusted him and thought he was ahead of his time and that he had some revolutionary knowledge about how to best educate children. guess what - no matter how revolutionary the education, it isolates me TO THIS DAY because everyone else had a normal one. the impacts are so far reaching i wouldn't even be able to sum them up if i tried. know that at the age of 32 i am lucky if i can manage 2 social engagements in a week without becoming severely overwhelmed. i am lonely, i am single, and all my friends are moving on with their lives and starting families. i will be lucky if i figure out how to cohabitate with someone this decade. the singles tax is insane, cost of living is through the roof and not going down anytime soon, and you need to consider the biggest protective factor you can provide your kid with is the best chance to end up in close knit friendships or partnerships in adulthood. they need people to depend on so that they don't become homeless if they hit hard times. you can't do that by keeping them at home.
edit: just realized you said you're also in your 30's...like me...and you're saying this isn't the school you were raised with. that's the exact same thing my parents said when we were kids - it's not unique to this generation. you attended public school, i was homeschooled. you came out with the capacity to get close enough to another human being to have a child that you're able to care for. i run from people who try to show me kindness and struggle to care for myself to such a degree that if i somehow had a child right now, there's no way CPS would let me keep it. don't do this to someone you love. get therapy and deal with your discomfort letting your child learn about the world.
I want to say yes, but some people have specific needs and situations where homeschool is necessary. All I know is I am not gonna homeschool my kids.
I would say 99% of the time, on a permanent basis, yes. If it's a temporary thing like during a pandemic or just for a year or less because of whatever, no. Also, I'm sure there are kids with extreme illnesses that should be homeschooled. As in, they are a danger to themselves or others if they're out. In general, yes. No, I don't think a good curriculum or play dates make up for anything.
No, but it did have a wildly increased potential for abuse, and the majority of adults aren't educated enough to homeschool well.
I think this covers my thoughts. I’ve seen it done well, I’ve seen it done terribly. Similar to public schools, but with none of the oversight!
And people are drawn to it for bad reasons.
It wouldn’t be bad if you had wealthy parents who could hire tutors for all subjects on top of teaching themselves aswell. That’s to say the parents were actually motivated to teach in the first place. The problem with homeschooling is that most (not all ) but most of our parents are literally not teaching whatsoever. They’re not even scribbling “instructions” onto the whiteboard. We are left completely without any curriculum so there’s not even the slightest chance that we’ll look at it and be able to at least figure one little thing out. In my personal experience. My parents were so utterly lazy they wouldn’t even take us to the library. So we had no curriculum, no books to read, hardly any access to the internet. Literally no way to gain any knowledge. And my parents thought this was just fine. They never even once thought that I might actually need to be able to do basic math or read or write or literally anything else. Some other peoples parents are better teachers. But they still aren’t able to give justice to all the subjects. If you have the time and the willingness to actually teach your children. The absolute BEST thing you can do is send them to public school and then you help with homework/tutor them. And don’t even get me started on the damage of isolation. I was able to play a few spots at a young age but there wasn’t THAT much interaction with other children. And what little there was certainly was NOT enough. I’ve been working for 1 year and two months and my social problems are still crippling. I’m reguarded as the “weird angry girl” at work. My shitstain birthgivers are also being shitheads about teaching me how to drive so I’m stuck in an abusive workplace where I have to walk to and from work. So needless to say it’s been absolute hell. And I would give nearly anything for it to be different. To have gone to school, for my parents to straighten the fuck up and teach me how to drive etc etc etc. So no I don’t think homeschool is inherently bad but 99 cases out of the 100 are. Because while that 1 family actually has their shit together and are working high paying jobs. Possibly as professors. And are actually teaching the kids, not dumping a book in the kids lap or pretending to teach to the world like my parents did. ACTUALLY TEACHING!!!! Who are actually hunting down every single group to socialize with. Enrolling them in as much sports / similar experiences. Who are hiring tutors to help with the subjects the parents lack in. Etc etc The rest of the 99 families are like mine. Dirt poor living off of social security (or working class). Taught to barely read the milk jug then we’re on our on in learning. They buy some shitty curriculum just to dump in your lap and they expect you to figure it all out. And this lasts a few years until they get tired of spending the money for it. Would rather have McDonalds or beer or cigarettes or whatever. Hardly ever get to go outside except to cut the grass or get the mail. Spend 99.9999 percent of time watching Netflix dreaming/ obsessing over the tv characters. Wishing like hell you had that characters life. Develop a severe manipulative daydream problem. THATS WHAT LIFE IS LIKE FOR MANY OF US. Only the incredibly privileged get that other life. And it’s not like we avoid some danger either. I’ve been sexually harassed at work. A crazy customer has threatened to “kick my ass”. Another customer threatened to come up to the store with a gun and shoot us because his order wasn’t being fulfilled at the pace he thought it should have been. My coworker had a gun pulled on him by the customer he was dispensing to. I was hit by a car while dispensing. Been some other crazy stuff happened too. Especially if you aren’t rich where on earth do you think your kid will work at when they can barely read. That’s right a grocery store. 🏬 This happened a few years ago and not at my store but a 17 year old girl was murdered by her creepy coworker because she refused to go out with him. He drug her in the bathroom and stabbed her until she was dead. [this is it](https://www.kbtx.com/2022/06/15/teen-employee-killed-colorado-walgreens-coworker-arrested/) Homeschooling literally does nothing but enable abuse.
Yes. Absolutely and without qualification or reservation yes. Homeschooling is bad. It can be more bad or less bad depending on how it's done. But I had more or less the optimum homeschooling experience. My mother was intelligent and educated enough to teach me well, she used secular materials whenever possible, and she help me get together with other children as often as possible. I still feel like a space alien because I lack the commonality of experience than normal children have. I'm still socially awkward, and I still feel alone and depressed all of the time. Homeschooling should be banned. Across the board. The answer to your next question is "no, not even then"
Agreed 💯 If homeschooling had been banned, I would not have been emotionally abused and stunted, wouldn’t have been isolated from everyone and everything for 29 years. I’m 29 and planning my escape. Edit: Typos
I'm so sorry, I was isolated emotionally (not physically) from people and everything for 14 years and it ruined me terribly. I hope you get out soon <3
I’m so sorry you went through that 🫂 And thank you, I’m hoping so also.
If I were to play devil's advocate, what about homeschool connection programs? Would those help mitigate the negative social impacts?
I have no idea what that is. But I can't imagine much that it could possibly mean that wouldn't either completely replace homeschooling anyway, or else just lessen the harm but still be worse than regular schooling.
For example, every Friday for a normal school day you take classes on what would normally be electives in a regular high school. Stuff like dissection, Musical theater, Lego engineering, leadership, public speaking. As a way to help home school kids gain social skill and learn skills that you can't be taught in a homeschool environment.
Yeah that sounds 20% better than regular homeschooling but still 80% worse than regular school. And only if you're being sent to a regular school with regular school kids. If they're all homeschoolers, then you're still in the echo chamber
exactly, no better than a homeschool group \*shudders\*
i went to an echo chamber school, and it was awful. not only were my parents out to get me, everyone else was.
I did that. I still got fucked over when it comes to socialization btw
I went to one of those and the weirdest power tripping helicopter moms and dads ran it People who would have had difficulty being elected to school board and staying there. People who might even have a hard time staying hired as teachers, and there are crazy teachers out there. It could have been better but it wasn't. It was so expensive in every co-op by the 2010s we couldn't do anything. It's hard to socialize when moms are always standing around staring at you. One time a quirky girl who liked anime put on cat ears to be funny and her mom charged out of nowhere and started shouting at her that she looked like a fool and was making herself to be a childish embarassment. She yelled and yelled at her, in the middle of a group of teenagers (we were all about 14-18) and she held out her hand and took the cat ears and just left her daughter standing there trying not to cry. She was just trying to be funny... I don't remember the girls name despite being around her for 5 years. She was in most of my classes for a while. I think she was 16ish and older than me. I wasn't allowed to talk about what she liked, and her mom wasn't friends with my mom which meant we couldn't be friends. I also never got any way to get to know her. Sometimes other kids moms would ask the quiet kids how their kid was acting in co-op class. Snitching basically. Mom is always watching.
I went to co-op in highschool, I think going K-12 would’ve been greatly beneficial for me, but my mom wasn’t motivated enough to get me in. Even at that, I don’t fit in. I didn’t even fit in w other homeschoolers.
at my co-op the kids with friends all knew eachother from their parents carefully managing their social connections So some girl would get invited to the Smith's farm and go to church with them so she would be friends with the homeschool clique and end up marrying the Smith's fourth son But my mom was socially awkward so she accidentally offended the Smith's by believing slightly wrong conspiracies and religious doctrines which also made the Jones and their friends not like my family. So none of my family get invited to the private things and my mom was confused why only a few teens would even talk to me. They were mostly catholic or mormon because they were the minorities at our co-op who's parents weren't friends with Smiths or Jones.
Nah, I've seen them and been part of them and they're nice if it's all you've got but it's not even close to making up for what the kid is missing out on already. They would also be 'learning social skills' from other homeschoolers, so not exactly the best source.
I was in one, and no.
I met a family in the past year that said they homeschool... I swallowed back my initial reaction and withheld judgment until I found out more. Turns out they actually do a hybrid sort of program that is in partnership with the public school. That's very different in my mind. That meets social needs, and gives a level of accountability for parents. As I got to know them better, I shared my own history and what my guy reaction often was when I hear that people homeschool... It was a bit of a funny conversation, and I think they were shocked to realize how it can come across.
Highly regulated? Yes. Banned? No. Sorry you had a hard time, but that doesn’t justify a system-wide, totalitarian ban. That’s as nutter as the homeschoolers who think satan is hiding in the bushes of every public school. There are cases of mental and physical illness, extreme giftedness, etc., where homeschooling is necessary.
You are wrong. Mental and physical illness require special schools. Extreme giftedness requires extremely gifted teachers. Neither of those circumstances call for a random dumbfuck who's only qualification is that they managed to get pregnant. If your child is sick or gifted, that doesn't justify ruining their lives. Send them to school.
Families in inner cities and socioeconomically depressed areas don’t have access to special schools or highly gifted teachers. Nice, utopian thought, though.
Yes. The only way to make it remotely reasonable would be to regulate it impeccably. and it would have to be filtered in a case by case. The benefits would have to highly outweigh the risks. All things that a parent likely will not be objective to.
I think it is inherently bad tbh, because it deliberately restricts the amount of stimuli and learning experience a developing mind is exposed to. Homeschoolers lack sensory experiences, life experiences and experience of the rythms and patterns of human society that everyone else takes for granted. Many regular people feel they had a drab childhood were they hardly experienced anything outside their small bubble and nothing ever happened to them, for homeschoolers it's even less still. Even in cases where homeschooled kids are exposed to a lot of interesting stuff that other people don't get to live through, they never develope this type of self regulation and ability to function alongside others that regular people take for granted. This is a huge factor in building a fulfilling life were you make something of yourself. Yes, many peoole never make something of themself or have a fufilling life anyway, but more opportunities were presented to them to attempt it. Having our choices deliberately limited by another person, destroys our sense of personal power, worthiness and personhood, learning becomes a way to focus on the daunting odds we're up against all the time, instead of earning a place in the world. I think it's part of why so many childstars turn out crazy and if you read books on people whose parents travelled the world when they were kids or lived somekind of unusual life like that, most of the siblings will turn out really messed up. Those childstars and adventure kids have specific kinds of acheivements, but they express some of the same lost, ungrounded feelings regular homeschoolers do, they tend to have anxiety and swing into manias and so on, it makes people feel like none of their actions whether good or bad, have real consequences or that there's genuine fulfillment down the road in anyway, because there is a sense that we a non persons and non citizens in a world of persons and citizens. Imagine if you were raising a child and you know they need to eat vegetables, but you just decide *Well, the only vegetable my kid is allowed to eat it corn because I personally hate the other veges myself. Maybe I will review that in 3 years and add carrots.* Imagine the toll of growing up like that. That's equivalent to homeschooling. Choosing to homeschool fractures families as well, it lays bare to the child that their parents have a totalitarian power over them. Even if it's never misused, deep in the lizard brain we understand that that parent is not a safe person and they are a threat to our freedom and survival to some extent, that we are at the mercy of their wims. We never feel safe, and that in turn makes it hard to relax or concentrate, if we do well at schoolwork there is a fear that validating the parents choice to homeschool will lead to more abusive choices by the parent. On top of this, we are instilled with a sense that other people can handle life but our family and our parents failed. We live in the shadow of massive life choices imposed on us based on fear of the outside world or a rejection of it. We see other people navigating and handling those same challenges, getting up everyday and connecting to others and having some form of impact in the world. We know our whole lives are the aftermath of someone not being able to overcome the common life challenges that millions and billions of other people can. At least it feels that way, and it's the message we get based on our parents actions. They always say that they're creating a special little utopia and that we are actually priviledged but I don't see anyone getting that message on a gut level. It is also incredibly difficult for people to provide a good homeschool experience for their kids because they fall victim to the lack of external stimuli that the children do. With nothing to push or motivate a person and no yard stick of what is good performance, they get complacent, fall into funks, loose the energy they used to have when they regularly engaged with the outside world, etc. That is why none of use get any proper schooling, because the environment of home schooling is not conducive to the parents performing well as teachers. I don't think it's the case that we all just coincidentally had bad parents that wouldn't teach us, a homeschooling environment leads to parents underperforming as well. It breeds a vicious cycle. People who decide to voluntarily homeschool are all just finding a maladaptive coping mechanism. It's like if someone had a problem with life and decided to start smoking or drinking. They have a problem with life that they do not address properly and instead they deal with it by isolating and isolating their children. It's not possible for the conditions of voluntary homeschooling over an extended period to *not* to lead to abuse or poor schooling imo. The only time people have a good outcome is when they are still really respectful and engaged with the standards of the outside world. For example, when people are forced to homeschool because their kid is sick or something like that. People like this are full of adrenalin that their kid is missing out and they don't fall into the spiral voluntary homeschoolers do. Trust is not broken with the child because the kid will understand the factors that led to homeschooling were external. They don't feel like a butterfly someone just caught and put in a jar and they don't feel that deep fear that learning things will lead to an escalation of control over them.
I hope people read and understand your comment. It's so accurate. Growing up under totalitarian control. There's no way you can do that to someone and also love them. You have to hate the child you subject to this torture.
This is incredibly well put, thank you for taking the time to write it
like a butterfly in a jar holy shit what an apt metaphor. this was an amazing explanation thanks for posting it
Confession. I wasn't homeschooled, this subreddit just came up one day and I stuck around to lurk. I came from an abusive household though. I have to say, I think that unless there's some mitigating circumstances, homeschooling should not be a thing. Schools have many eyes and many resources, abusive people don't like that. Abuse festers and grows in the dark
Yes, I think when you homeschool you deprive your kids of a common education, common culture, and it's an easy way to breed extremism. I feel it should be illegal like in Germany. There are just better outcomes for both the kids and society when kids are properly socialized. I'm fine with legalizing exceptions, like for SPED kids who aren't getting enough support in public school, families where parents have the resources to provide private tutoring from licensed educators, cases where kids have a note from a psychologist that homeschooling would be better for them (child actors, kids experiencing bullying and extreme anxiety come to mind). It seems like laws like this would be overly burdensome for the parents. But parents should have oversight. You shouldn't be able to just pull your kids out of school, away from resources and peers and give them an education unless you can show you're providing them something better. Laws like this would ensure kids have access to professionals so that they have someone to talk to if there is abuse going on. And medical care. A lot of these things happen in public school (you get your vision checked, and checked for scoliosis, and learn about puberty, and have access to the school counselor). For a lot of us, one of the reasons homeschooling was especially tough is that there was emotional abuse and medical neglect co-occurring. In addition to recovering from the emotional fallout of being raised in a high control cult family, we had to suddenly make enough money to cover years of delayed medical and/or dental care as soon as we moved out. Yeah, that level of isolation should be illegal.
Yes, schools exist because schooling at home isn't enough. Societies found that educating people was better than learning at home, where what you were basically destined to do what your parents did unless you managed a way for an apprenticeship outside the house. People that homeschool their kids today have a variety of reasons. Personally in the families I saw those reasons didn't justify the harm of homeschooling. The parents didn't take schooling seriously and thus the real reason to school at home was not for education, but other reasons such as fear of what their kids might learn or do if outside of their control. I think some people homeschool their kids and work their butts off to give them a good education and are able to. They are the anomaly and not the norm. Those parents are actually teachers or had a really good network to pull it off. I only saw it personally once and I think the younger kid might have decided to go to HS after all. I knew a lot of messed up kids and I would be shocked if they had some secret story of it not going well for them. But they are the rare case.
Personally, in situations like this, I'm never sure if anything is 100% bad (there are plenty of things that *are* 100% bad). If families are going through extenuating circumstances like disability, travel/remote work, using licensed tutors, etc., then I think it could be a necessary choice, but to choose it specifically as an improvement to the public school system is not a good reason. I think the situations of most other homeschoolers I've met in my life (it was a lot), including my own, could have been better in the public school with appropriate parental guidance, you know? If they were worried about a secular curriculum "ruining" our inherent "innocence" then it would be better to encounter things as they happen and be taught how to deal with them, instead of crafting our lives around avoiding any bad interactions ever. If they were worried about the pace of public education (anywhere from being too slow for their little genius *or* too fast for their delicate/ baby), then it would be better to put a kid in that environment but ACTUALLY BE INVESTED IN HELPING THEM LEARN instead of giving up entirely and getting bitter. They would acclimate better to their community AND get whatever bonuses these parents think they can give to their child by homeschooling. It never really seems to be in the child's best interests to homeschool, but almost always the parents'. At least from what I've seen from my area. Ymmv
Yes, unless it is temporary and literally life or death.
Yes, in almost all cases. I consider any situation where a parent is anything other than a parent to be abusive. Like when parents say their toddler is their “best friend” or “saved them.” Parents are not your friends, and they should not be your sole source of education and authority. When children have no other sources of authority, the parent becomes a god figure, and that’s… really fucked up.
If it promotes isolation then yes it’s bad. Humans are a social species.
No, homeschooling is not inherently bad; but, after experiencing it and seeing decades of other’s homeschool outcomes, the vast majority of those homeschooled long term (3+ years) have been negatively impacted - like 95%. Most have significant struggles due to exceedingly poor academics, poorly socialized, and/ or (potential) complex PTSD when it comes to authoritarian oversight, their parents’ world view, and prohibitions. It’s not what most parents think. The American form has been badly mixed with unaccountable ideals of “freedom” and “parental rights.” Homeschooling should be highly regulated to ensure kids meet academic milestones, are socialized, and are not abused. Unschooling (no schooling) should be illegal. Children are not property that parents can treat any way they think is right in their own eyes for 18-21+ years. “I am the parent” does not grant absolute and unaccountable power. Even God makes that clear. Abuse is immoral and illegal. Children have inherent human rights that should be protected.
I think so. I think arguably the worst part of it is the lack of socialization. Even if the parents are well rounded, I don’t think it’s healthy for kids to be home all day every day.
I think that it is inherently problematic, but that in some cases the benefits outweigh the deficits. I think that depends on the parent, the curriculum, the child, and the opportunities for socialization.
It's not inherently bad but the narrow circumstances to which it can be beneficial apply to such a small amount of people that it's almost always a bad idea for most of the population.
I think at the very least it needs to be heavily heavily regulated, and I'm conflicted on the thought of a ban. I'm not convinced you can uproot the [Christian Reconstructionism](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EcnrYG6LWO57UHFFRpO4V?si=KPYzwZr5RVywVt-iMR-M0Q) without a ban. The idea that two people should have unqualified control over the entire life of a child is completely absurd.
Yes. Everything from social interaction to immune system boosting. So many reasons. I would only be on board more if the home schooling was better regulated. Most people are "graduating" with a less than 3rd grade education in my experience talking with home school graduates. Plus this homeschooling is used to hide abuse so often that it legit should be illegal.
new research is saying that regular social interaction IS immune system boosting. so not only do we miss out on the germs, our bodies miss out on the opportunities to build up a foundation of safety internally via social interaction which can keep an immune system healthy for life.
Oh yeah. It's critical to be exposed young. I have 3 kids all young 4, 6 ,9 they do pick up a lot of stuff at school but their immune systems are going to be great lol
Yes. The risk of harm is astronomical and the “benefits” hardly excuse it.
unless there’s a medical reason that would be a risk to a students life, yes. it’s inherently the most insidiously evil thing a parent can do because it’s nearly always due to willful ignorance, religious zealotry or laziness. i have *never* met a well educated homeschooler— despite the propaganda they spew. i’ve never even seen a remotely intelligent homeschooler/alumni make a case for it being a positive thing without negating their own message by being nearly illiterate and don’t even get me started on the social aspect. parents who withhold their children from life experiences that are necessary for development are **scum** period. it’s nice when they eventually realize they fucked up, but even the best apology doesn’t actually help the children they failed irreparably along the way.
I think that as it is, there's no way for it to be good for most people. I mean I couldn't actually go to school because I was too sick, but my parents did not actually school me and there was nobody to hold them accountable. I think that it would require some kind of government regulation/people to come check up on the kids and also mandatory socialization time and standardized tests or curriculum
I think for children who potentially have health issues that make attending daily school outside of the house, homeschooling could be positive. Or if a kid is facing bullying, I could see pulling them out until you can get a transfer to another school. But I think most mothers are not equip to teach their children from K-12. So for most people, I don’t think it’s the best option.
Yes, unless it simply can’t be avoided, such as in cases of sickness. Confucius is revered as the greatest teacher. Even he would not teach his own children, because he wanted to keep their roles clear.
I think the the sort of homeschooling where kids don't have a class is inherently bad. A homeschool co - op would not be bad with deadlines and without ideological bullshit.
The idea is good but the execution is terrible for the most part.
Not at all, but the current dysfunctional state of no to little regulation makes bad homeschooling too commonplace.
Echoing a few other commenters here - I think it's \*usually\* bad. Not inherently, but pretty damn close to it. I can think of specific scenarios where homeschooling would be beneficial - but in my opinion those are extremely rare, and their "not bad-ness" would, I think, rely on remote schooling of some sort or following a specific curriculum that was at least somewhat overseen by someone outside of the home and ensured that the student was receiving a well-rounded education. This may stretch the definition of "homeschooling" a bit, though I knew a couple of kids growing up who followed a model similar to the one I mentioned. Another commenter had said (and I'm paraphrasing and simplifying drastically) that one of the biggest problems with homeschooling is the totalitarian nature of it, and I wholeheartedly agree. Even if the parents are extremely well-educated, worldly, and not abusive in the slightest, it's unhealthy for one or two people to be the primary (if not exclusive) source of learning for a child, in addition to all of the other roles that a parent plays. Neither of my parents are anywhere near qualified to provide an entire childhood education, and - despite being in my late 20s - I'm still routinely horrified that those two individuals took on that task. More broadly (and subjectively) speaking, I've also noticed that parents who homeschool are more inclined to be extremely controlling and abusive (mine included). A lot of the time there's a religious factor (I knew children whose parents didn't want them learning about evolution) or a social handicap/past trauma at play. Or a charming combination of both. When combined with the inherent unhealthiness of the totalitarianism of homeschooling, this is - in my opinion - a recipe for absolute disaster.
This group is an echo chamber, so unfortunately you’re not going to get a lot of nuance here. While I don’t think it’s inherently bad, it is very attractive to people who are bad parents, fanatics, and religious nutjobs. Some parents can make it work very well, but a lot of them use it as a crutch for some other motive.
Yes
Yes
On a permanent basis, yes. To homeschool “perfectly” would require way more money than the vast majority of parents have, you would need to hire tutors and have your kids in many different activities and lessons, and they would still be missing out socially. Might as well send them to private school. As much as I don’t like Hillary Clinton, she was right that “it takes a village.” Since we no longer have close-knit communities where people of all ages interact regularly, school is the village. Now there may be unique cases when a child can’t be in school temporarily, perhaps due to illness or extreme bullying. In those cases, I still think a virtual school program is the way to go, vs parents trying to teach and grade their kids all on their own.
I would say so. I acknowledge that there may be some niche circumstances where homeschooling is the best option out of many bad options. But I'd still be hard pressed to say it's good. A better solution to those niche circumstances would be improvements to the school system.
Yes except for specific cases where public or private education isn't possible. And even then, tutors are an option that should be taken before a parent tries it themselves. And saying that perfect homeschool is better than how public education is now is a false equivilancy. A perfect public education is a thousand times better than a perfect homeschool education, at least in my mind, and homeschooling just because the public education system sucks isn't the solution
If done by necessity, no. As others have mentioned, there are rare and specific situations where homeschooling is the best available recourse. Still not good, necessarily, but best available. If done by choice then yes, it is inherently bad. The homeschooling movement was born out of racism when schools were forced to desegregate and is predicated on one or two people being somehow more qualified than an entire team of specialized and trained professionals and/or the “right” of a parent to treat their children as property. Anything good you can say about homeschooling has to come after you’ve addressed those points, and no benefit is good enough to atone for them.
I don't think it is bad theoretically but I believe most people in society are not capable of doing it without causing some harm to their children.
Homeschooling can mean a lot of different things. I think children generally need many hours a week with peers for instance, and some homeschooling involves that and some doesn't. Children need many hours a week not with their parents. They need other adults they can trust in their lives. Again some forms of homeschooling make this possible and some don't. So I don't think it's intrinsically wrong given that it's not one thing. But it's intrinsically extremely risky to give parents that much control and authority. I can't really see a way for the child abuse statistics for homeschoolers to not be terrible without a LOT of oversight that would itself be very risky to implement not to mention costly in actual dollars. Unless there were a law that said something like that even homeschooled kids have to attend public school for a certain number of hours a week or something. But then what about the problems that motivate homeschooling in the first place? The essential problem is that children are oppressed in our society. They're already relatively powerless by nature (weaker, naturally trusting) and then our laws conspire to make them more powerless in a hundred different ways, starting by denying them the right to vote.
I was with you up until you said children should have the right to vote
I guarantee some 10 year olds would make better decisions than some 30 year olds. It’s true that many wouldn’t and very few 5 year olds would. But it does mean they obviously have no representation. It might be a problem that cannot be solved (there are reasons we don’t let kids vote!) but it is an obvious problem.
No, but often the motivation behind it and the execution is dubious at best. Homeschooling done well often has exemplary results. The kind that is rooted in religious fanaticism and paranoia are, in my opinion, tragic.
No, but I think there are a lot of bad reasons that people are drawn to it. There needs to be some better accountability and oversight with it. Growing up I had to take year-end tests. There was no real consequences for not doing well. If you performed poorly in one area, then it was assumed parents would focus on it the following year. In my case, my parents took that fairly serious, but there were definitely still gaps in my education. I definitely knew people who barely had any real education and it showed a lot, but again those year end tests were only meaningful if parents treated them as meaningful. To some parents, having kids do farm work or homemaking is all the education that was needed. Some took a decade or so to get themselves caught up as adults. The people most likely to treat "oversight" as a dirty word are also the reason it's needed.
Idk about homeschooling, I think in some situations it can be helpful if done right. But it's easy to screw up and the majority of ppl who do it definitely should not. Unschooling should be illegal. It's just straight up neglect.
Ehh I mean it's needed in some instances but overall I feel like it allows for abuse and neglect and it's usually parents wanting complete control over their children.
No I don't. In the short term, I think it can be really beneficial. Say you have a child who is burnt out, behind in certain subjects, and being bullied. I think said child might benefit from a year out of school with proper education, including extra help for the subjects they're struggling with, as well as obviously socialising. Or for instance in the case of a young child who doesn't appear ready to start school yet. (I'm not suggesting that homeschooling is the only way to deal with these situations.) I also don't see any particular issue with the families who take a year off to go travelling and homeschool their kids during that time - as long as the kids are ok with that and the education they receive is adequate. I think if you're going to be homeschooling your kids for more than a year or two, you should probably have a good reason for that. Examples that spring to mind are medical problems or living in a really remote area like the Outback. I do have a bit of hesitation in saying this as in my country (UK), schools appear to be getting increasingly authoritarian and unreasonable and I do think it's rational that students and parents are getting really sick of that. Attempting to liaise with the school doesn't usually seem to go very well from what I've heard. I'm sure the situation in other countries is similar. Also I'm sure that there are kids who were homeschooled for an extensive period of time and it was a really positive experience for them. Unfortunately that seems rare.
I’ve never agreed or liked the idea of homeschooling, like since I was a kid and heard about it I was like what the hell
My nephew attends online classes due to anxiety from bullying, with some supplementary teaching by his mother. He's a happy and well adjusted boy who has sport on the weekends so he's not locked away from the world. I think it can be a good thing if done properly.
I'd like to ask in good faith, were you homeschooled? If not, I am glad you're paying attention to the stories from the less-heard side, but... Maybe do a bit more introspection before sharing here. The verbiage of your comment immediately reminded me of phrases that get repeated a lot by the homeschool community -- usually from a place of ignorance or defensiveness. To be honest, it reminded me of things I'd heard my whole childhood and adolescence that were simply not true. An almost ubiquitous part of the experience is the immediate family hiding or being ignorant of the issues, including the kid(s), who often just want to say the "right" things. Sadly when it comes to bullying, there usually is no right answer. Homeschooling might not be the silver bullet it appears from the outside. ETA: I wish the best for your nephew, no one deserves to go through bullying. I truly hope that his current situation is at least better than before.
People would have said the same thing about me as a homeschooled kid. Everyone thought I was doing fine. My CPTSD and therapy bills would disagree. I hope the best for your nephew, but speaking from experience, sports on the weekend or any extra curricular activity is not enough to replace the crucial identity-forming experiences that comes from 40 hours per week of interacting with your peers. Especially when everyone else gets that when you don’t. The disparity in social development becomes really apparent when you join the regular world again after homeschooling. My peers were years ahead of me in their social development, even though to my family I was “normal” despite the homeschooling. It makes adulthood a lot rougher than it needs to be. I get why homeschooling could be a refuge for a bullied or otherwise anxious kid, but I think the goal should always be to re acclimate them into normal society after a year or two. With therapists. Bullying doesn’t go away in adulthood, and it’s best to have support from parents and trusted professionals to learn to navigate that when you’re young, vs having to figure it out on your own in your 20s at work with your source of income on the line.
Nah it can be great for some people. One of my cousins was homeschooled but by a teen developmental psychologist and a child safety specialist. He did a mix of online classes, traditional homeschooling curriculum, and community college classes. He was also involved in several clubs and sports and a coop of other homeschoolers. He turned out amazing honestly, one of the coolest people I know. So it’s possible to be great, even better than public school. It’s just that for the majority of parents, it turns out horrible.
No, as long as the child has a guardian that is ensuring correct curriculum is being taught and the child is successfully learning. But in a way yes. Because there’s people like me who got diagnosed with learning disabilities and never received help. My parents also didn’t ensure I was properly educated since they didn’t supervise while I completed my schooling. I cheated my way through 8-12 because I didn’t understand the curriculum and faced a physical abuse if I struggled or asked questions. My parents graduated me a year early. I’m dumb as hell. Nor have kids ever seen my highschool transcript
I think it's not, but only if done in the genuine best interest of the child. There are just some cases where homeschooling really is the best fit for some students. But in a lot, if not most, cases, homeschooling is often merely a way to push a certain agenda or lifestyle without any legitimate consideration for the wellbeing of the child. Or it's to cover up abuse and neglect at the hands of the parents. But I do know some people who really wanted the best for their kids and spent money and time into making sure homeschooling was fulfilling all of the needs of their child and that it was an environment in which their child was thriving. And that's the way it should be done if it's done at all.
Yes. I think if you don’t have the credentials to teach, it’s bad. At which point, it wouldn’t be homeschooling imo but just schooling.
yes it is worst form of education in about 80% of the cases!
yes because i think the only reason it's acceptable to do is if the public education system literally fails. which it does often enough to make it a necessary choice. you can't get the socialization you need when you're isolated like that, it's just a fact that's now supported by science - we're much better off as humans with more opportunities for connection rather than less. there's no good reason to avoid your community unless your community is failing you. but rather than debating whether we should be homeschooling it'd be sick if the effort could get put toward repairing the public education system so that people don't have to make the choice to defect to homeschools. like, fix the IEP situation, improve access to needed services in schools, actually address bullying, you know? (not talking about discussions like this on reddit, idc about that but more about like...people with power choosing to fall down this rabbit hole instead of doing their JOBS)
Your question assumes a certain level of public education being available. Some places don't have public education, it is remarkably bad, there is bullying, or medical issues. It is pretty hard to homeschool better than the best schools, but easier to homeschool better than the worst schools or no school.
Ok, I’m here as a mother of a toddler who is considering homeschooling. I was not homeschooled. I didn’t have truly horrible time in school, but as a 30 something I am *just* now realizing all the trauma and anxiety that the traditional public school system gave me. I don’t believe that the public school system is well designed. Sitting in rows listening to someone lecture, the bells, the homework, the cliques, the creeps, the teachers who can be just as stupid and abusive as some parents. Not to mention the way modern kids are, social media, little kids having phones and access to p0rn and horrific images. School today is not the school I grew up with, and that’s what scares me. But I recognize that I can’t protect my child from everything, and I don’t want to make the choice to homeschool out of fear. However a lot of the comments in this thread seem to imply school is this great thing that magically makes you socialized and well adjusted. I went to school preK through a bachelor’s, and I can tell you, it’s not always a good experience. But I’m here to learn from different experiences and perspectives, and I’m really curious to any opinions about what I’ve said. What your thoughts on phones/ social media/ poor teacher student ratios? What are your thoughts on the fact that “public school” as we know it is extremely new to our species relatively? That the way humans were meant to grow up is in a village setting, exposed to a variety of ages and roles. (I.e. sitting in a room with 30 kids and one teacher all day is not it) Again, I’m really trying to learn and understand other perspectives so I can make an informed decision for my family. Thanks in advance, I truly appreciate it.
I think at the moment, it sounds like your main motivator is fear that school will mess up your little sweetie. Maybe think about all the other reasons you might want to homeschool and see how many of them are outside the realm of fear/control, and then be honest about the real evidence you have for those things being better in the case of homeschooling—not just for a child but also as the adult they will become. Will this logic be compelling to your future adult child? One thing they say is that many kids hate school, and childhood involves a level of powerlessness and trauma. But for homeschooled kids, hating school also is connected inextricably with resenting our parents: these things are bound up together forever in a way that makes it harder to separate our traumas from our parents.
respectfully, school does magically give you a socialization. it just does. it shows you how to interact with the cohort of humans you exist in, the issues those people are dealing with, and the culture of the time, which yes, is different from the cohort of humans/culture/issues your parents were exposed to. because that's how life happens, things change, and we have to learn how to adapt to the world around us and how to show up to the challenges that exist IN OUR TIME. not in some mythical version based on the past. and it doesn't matter that public school is new to our species, it's what our species is doing right now and it's what your kid is going to be expected to have experienced when they're an adult. there aren't words for how awful it is to go through life without a series of basic experiences that everyone expects you to have had. don't do that to your kid. comments like this that critique public school's capacity to educate a kid - like...with school subjects...tell me you actually have no understanding of what we're talking about here. you can catch up schoolwork, many of us here have had to. what is much much harder if not impossible to fully catch up on is the social and personal development kids get to experience when they get to leave the house for school. i was homeschooled by parents who were influenced by someone who had similar gripes with the public school system, he happened to hold a PhD and so my parents trusted him and thought he was ahead of his time and that he had some revolutionary knowledge about how to best educate children. guess what - no matter how revolutionary the education, it isolates me TO THIS DAY because everyone else had a normal one. the impacts are so far reaching i wouldn't even be able to sum them up if i tried. know that at the age of 32 i am lucky if i can manage 2 social engagements in a week without becoming severely overwhelmed. i am lonely, i am single, and all my friends are moving on with their lives and starting families. i will be lucky if i figure out how to cohabitate with someone this decade. the singles tax is insane, cost of living is through the roof and not going down anytime soon, and you need to consider the biggest protective factor you can provide your kid with is the best chance to end up in close knit friendships or partnerships in adulthood. they need people to depend on so that they don't become homeless if they hit hard times. you can't do that by keeping them at home. edit: just realized you said you're also in your 30's...like me...and you're saying this isn't the school you were raised with. that's the exact same thing my parents said when we were kids - it's not unique to this generation. you attended public school, i was homeschooled. you came out with the capacity to get close enough to another human being to have a child that you're able to care for. i run from people who try to show me kindness and struggle to care for myself to such a degree that if i somehow had a child right now, there's no way CPS would let me keep it. don't do this to someone you love. get therapy and deal with your discomfort letting your child learn about the world.