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I was homeschooled k-12 and my recommendations are much more nuanced. 1. Homeschooling is an enormous investment both in time and money. Not every family can a
by zaphar 5y ago
I was homeschooled k-12 and my recommendations are much more nuanced.
1. Homeschooling is an enormous investment both in time and money. Not every family can afford to do it.
2. Done incorrectly homeschooling can have an adverse effect on the child. (See point #1 about the investment). On the other hand done properly it an escape route for families who may have no other way out. I would not be where I am now without the advantages of my homeschool education.
To do it well you have need a few components:
1. You need at least one parent who is able to focus on the education. It takes planning and preparation. In many cases this could mean that a family loses all or part of one of the parents income.
2. You need a good support network. Your child will need interaction with both other children but also other adults who are not their parents.
3. To get the most out of it you need to tailor the education for each child.
The benefits can be huge but it's not a slam dunk for anyone. I'm glad the option exists for those who will get no other better outcome though. Not every public school is equal. And homeschooling can sometimes be an overall financial win compared with private schools.
I know a lot of people whose experience was not as good as mine though so I include a lot of caveats when someone asks me if it's a good idea for their family. It's not something to jump into blindly.
- pnathan 5y agoThere are times when homeschooling is absolutely the right choice. For example: I would homeschool my child if the right circuits close and he turns into a prodigy aiming at a PhD by 18. Similarly, I can imagine its the right choice for children with specific disabilities which the school district simply can't serve adequately. I've chatted with a black gent who said if he had kids, he'd homeschool, because of the heavy racism in schools that he experienced. That's definitely a variable that has to be solved for too. I would also homeschool (before moving to a new school district...) if the school district decided that Zoom school was appropriate for children barring specific acute crises. =) There's probably a very nice PhD dissertation on the atomization of US society and how modern homeschooling both is an outcome of that social drift and, in combination with a sufficiently atomized poor socialization of the specific family, produces poor outcomes. I reckon we had probably close to the best-case academic outcome. One thing I've noticed as I've matured and lived - it's been 20 years since my last time at the kitchen table doing school work - is that my conclusion regarding homeschooling has gotten more and more negative. I don't mean to say that public or private schools are de facto better. They are not. But homeschooling has very ugly and very easy failure modes, and it fails-unsafe.
- zaphar 5y agoI think I mostly agree. I will always be grateful that my parents were able to do it well for me. But I don't think it's automatically always the right choice and should not be undertaken lightly.