And now, a few words for our non-home-schooling public
I get tired of people looking at me funny when I say the word “homeschooler”. You’d think I grew another head. However, I think the best course to combat funny looks is …
some basic education, and that means popping a few illusions that The Non Homeschooling Public may harbor. But just a few, because if I tried to take on all of them, we’d be here until graduation. And I have kids to teach.
1. Homeschoolers are mostly a bunch of religious zealots.
Actually, if you look at the survey by the National Center for Educational Statistucs, only 30 percent of homeschoolers cited religious or moral reasons for homeschooling. And they weren’t even the biggest group: the number one reason cited was a concern about the environment of other schools.
2. Are homeschool kids socialized?
To be socialized means to be fit for companionship with others. I think instead of insinuating that homeschooled children aren’t fit to be around others, you actually mean to say do they get a chance to socialize? I’m going to be charitable and assume you’re saying this because you quickly grasp that someone who takes on responsibility for their child’s education has basically created for themselves a full time job and in the 30 seconds since we both met and began this conversation, you haven’t quite pieced together exactly where we find time to do things non-academic.
Right?
3. But you’re not a teacher…
That’s right, I’m not. (Although, I’ve heard from a number of homeschool parents who hold teaching credentials, live and have taught in a well-regarded public school system, and still choose to teach their kids at home. A subject to be discussed later.) A study released by the National Home Education Research Institute shares the following facts:
a) Homeschool students had very similar achievement scores (between 80th and 90th percentiles), regardless of whether their mother had completed college or had not completed high school,
b) Students taught at home by a parent who had not finished high school scored about 50 percentile points higher than a publicly schooled student with parents of a similar background. According to this table, it also appears that the same homeschooled student averaged a higher score than a public student whose parents had some post-undergraduate education.
3.1 But can you teach (fill in the blank) grade?
I don’t see how anyone can ask this of a parent of elementary-aged students and maintain a straight face. This is a joke, right? Because surely you recall elementary school, and I ask you: was it that difficult for you?
For those of you speaking to parents of middle and high school age students, okay, that may be a slightly more legitimate question, given that (for example) a lot of people felt their basic math foundations start to rock in middle school. However, it’s not uncommon for students to earn credit from the local community college – a move that covers a wide range of needs, from filling in a gifted gap at school, to allowing greater scheduling flexibility for a motivated student, to simple financial sense in the form of squirreling away college credits early that can be transferred to a regular four-year institution. And b) God Bless the Internet.
To quote: “…the school system in this country—public and private—is designed for the industrial age. We’re in a technological age. We don’t want our kids to memorize. We want them to learn.” Guess who? Actress Jada Pinkett-Smith, whose family is not only homeschooling their own two children but her husband’s nephew as well.
4. Won’t your child miss out on…
1. prom;
2. theater;
3. sports;
4. Those Memorable School Social Experiences,
5. learning to work just like everybody else does in a classroom.
Answers:
1. No, we have that;
2. no, we have that;
3. no, everybody has that;
4. let’s first have a discussion about the experiences you’ve been trying to forget for 25 years; and –
Ah, that last one. Well, that’s sort of the thing about homeschooling: we’re not a breed who believes that “learning to work” and “just like everybody else” need to be in the same sentence together. Ever.
