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I was home-schooled until high school. Long story short, it was a disaster. I bordered on having no education at all, on top of no socialization. I'm so fortuna

• ejb999 3y ago
  so kind of like public school then?
• arrowsmith 3y ago
  > a lifetime of stunted socialization skills and poor work habits. The joke's on you, I wasn't home-schooled and I still got both of those.
  • brightball 3y ago
    Is your username related to the actual program out of Toronto?
    • arrowsmith 3y ago
      No, I'm not Canadian and have no idea what program you're talking about.
      • brightball 3y ago
        https://www.arrowsmith.ca/ https://www.arrowsmith.ca/
  • le-mark 3y ago
    This is comment I was looking for. Any number of circumstances can lead to the same outcome, question is what does one do going forward?
• giantg2 3y ago
  Good education vs bad/no education You'll find this in public schools too.
• Hello71 3y ago
  there are obviously lots of kids that had a very bad homeschooling, and also lots of kids that had very bad public schooling. many kids are bullied so badly at school that they commit suicide, and many more develop antisocial habits there. the question is whether those issues are better or worse with homeschooling, and a single anecdote doesn't help us with that.
  • lapetitejort 3y ago
    I see a lot of single anecdotes and see no reason not to include mine.
  • Spooky23 3y ago
    Neither does the balance fallacy.
• biomcgary 3y ago
  Did you notice that the article highlights the rise of homeschooling co-ops? This is intentional on the part of the homeschooling movement. It improves both socialization and educational opportunities (e.g., shared lab equipment). Rather than pearl clutching about individual anecdotes or doubling down on government control, I think states should provide direct funding to homeschool co-ops in addition to direct funding to families. That money and its positive effects on socialization and educational development will only work if governments keep their noses out of the details (i.e., parallels arguments for UBI). My son is autistic and non-verbal. The local public school program that he would be in is overwhelmed. We hire a speech language pathologist to tutor him 3-4 hours a day in our home. That is only possible because of Arizona's support for homeschooling families. Homeschooling is a great outlet when standardization fails.
  • lapetitejort 3y ago
    I was in a home-school coop about 25 years ago. We attended it a few times, until we stopped going. I was just a kid so I have no idea why we stopped. I remember it didn't help. I didn't know how to do any of the homework they assigned so I never did any (a practice that carried into high school). Since I never had tests or grades of any sort it didn't really matter.
    • biomcgary 3y ago
      Thanks for the additional details about your experience (and I'm sorry about them). Statistically, I'm slightly surprised that you were in a co-op that long ago. I was home-schooled a few years earlier and the notion of a co-op was just starting to be discussed.
      • noelwelsh 3y ago
        There is a long tradition in this sort of thing in anarchist (and related) education. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-managed_social_center#Free_schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-managed_social_center#Fre... It's maybe not 100% what you're thinking of, but it's reasonably close.
• zarzavat 3y ago
  People socialised for thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands of years before schools were invented. I went to school and got beat up, colour me sceptical about school as a mechanism for socialisation.
  • civilitty 3y ago
    Were they actually socialized for thousands of years? The average (sub)urban school in the US teaches more kids every day than the average person would have come in contact with in their entire lives, often ten times over. Most people were subsistence farmers and didn't travel very far from their little village in their entire life.
    • jltsiren 3y ago
      The average medieval subsistence farmer probably had ~10000 people living within 6 miles of them. People tended to live in areas with fertile land, and the land could easily support 100-200 people per square mile.
    • wizofaus 3y ago
      Arguably any period of history where the majority of people lived as subsistence farmers and rarely interacted with others not part of the household was an anomaly though, and very different to how pre-agricultural societies lived.
      • kelipso 3y ago
        It's very likely just a US thing. You go to Europe, you see villages (as in groups of houses) and agricultural fields extending out from each village. While US, I believe it's isolated houses surrounded by farmland.
        • wizofaus 3y ago
          Oh I suspect it was quite common in much of Europe for fairly long periods too, when there very limited options for travel for vast majority of people, who were in fact farmers. Yes, the farms were small, but most of your energy went into tending those, and interactions with those even only a km or so away was possibly often only once a week. I don't think it's an environment most people would thrive in though.
• merpnderp 3y ago
  I’m sorry for you bad experience, but statistically kids do better when homeschooled. It’s not like public school as some minimal level they’re assured to bring kids up to.
  • FireBeyond 3y ago
    Citation needed. Beyond studies by the National Home Education Research Institute, that is. The three leading studies by homeschooling advocates looked at "homeschooled students who went to college" and how they did at school versus public schooled students at college, and ignored the fact that the percentage of homeschooled students who went to college was much smaller (why?) than for public schools.
    • noirbot 3y ago
      My guess for the college admission situation is at least partially because, until recently, a lot of public and private colleges essentially refused to recognize homeschooling as a way to get an education, so your chance of getting admitted was almost zero at a ton of schools. This lead a lot of people (myself included) to essentially join something that's legally an accredited private school, but functionally homeschooling, but you take your exams at a central place at a central time. For statistical purposes, I was private schooled, because that was what I needed to do to make it into college. Actually fully homeschooled people went to community college and then tried and often failed to transfer.
      • aeroevan 3y ago
        For reference I had to take several SAT subject tests to get into college ~20 years ago, the homeschooling co-op I was a part of did get accredited while I was attending so I think those tests weren't a requirement for other kids who went through an accredited co-op.
  • wizofaus 3y ago
    I was curious to know what sort of studies had been done in that regard, I didn't notice anything mentioned by the article, though admittedly I only skimmed the 2nd half. FWIW I don't think I've ever met or known of anyone being home schooled in Australia, though I'm sure it must happen.
• SoftTalker 3y ago
  You write pretty well based on these few sentences. I have found that nothing improved my writing more than reading authors I liked and being aware of (in some cases adopting or imitating elements of) their writing styles. Did you read a lot on your own?
  • lapetitejort 3y ago
    Pretty much everything I know I picked up in community college about six years after graduating high school with a 2.6 GPA. I like to think I'm a smart and empathetic person. I would love to meet the person who got to use those innate skills at a young age instead of having to dredge up whatever remained after a decade of neglect.
    • giantg2 3y ago
      I think this is a highly individualized question depending on the circumstances. I'd qualify as smart depending on the metric. I actually went to a private school (the public schools in the area were complete garbage and out of control - bomb threats, drugs, etc at the middle school level). It really wasn't that challenging and most of my useful knowledge beyond the basic read/write/math is self taught. Most of the stuff I learned in college was never used. Using those innate skills at a young age produced nothing tangible. I won't achieve any real success in life even though I checked all the boxes when I was younger - smart, good grades, extracurriculars, family, religion, went to college, etc. Really all any good school or parent can do that is helpful is teach their kids to want to learn and how to self-teach. Most schools are terrible at this and just want to hit test scores and follow procedures/regulations (learning environment can be atrocious). I'd say most parents are average at this. The real question is, what do you think would be different and why can't you achieve that now?
      • anon291 3y ago
        I will second this. I went to a normal parochial school and my wife went to a normal public school and we both agree that our higher-than-average educational outcomes were due to self-teaching and tons of parental tutoring.
• jwells89 3y ago
  The majority of my schooling was at home as well, and while education was mostly ok (with some notable highs and lows) my parents found it difficult to make the scheduling work for socialization (in part due to my semi-rural hometown — any activities meant a considerable drive), and so that was largely absent. I’ve done alright for myself and have even managed to rank among top achievers in my family, but it’s felt like I’ve been stuck playing catchup in various ways throughout my adult life. Now in my mid-30s, in some aspects I feel that I’m where I should’ve been in my mid-20s. With that in mind I wouldn’t say I’m against homeschooling necessarily, but I think it’s crucial for parents to consider if they really have the time available to make it as complete as it needs to be. If there’s any doubt at all it might not be a great idea.
• darigo 3y ago
  I mean, this cuts both ways. One of the most consistent predictors of success in public school is parental involvement. The only school I ever went to that was good for socialization was community college. Tbh, for learning too. I basically learned all of math, from arithmetic up, as an adult at community college, to compensate for learning nothing and getting pushed through all of the grade levels at public school. I wish they had community colleges where I live now lol.
  • troupe 3y ago
    Exactly. There are involved parents whose kids are going to thrive in the public school. There are uninvolved parents whose kids are going to do poorly no matter where they are.
    • chii 3y ago
      So the question becomes "should more taxes be spent to disproportionately favours kids whose parents are uninvolved, in the hopes that they reach the same outcome as kids of the involved parents?"
      • troupe 3y ago
        If a school system is organized around providing each child with the same investment of education and expecting some to make use of that investment more than others, then answer would be no. If it is organized around trying to get the same outcome from each child regardless of how much it costs, the answer is yes.
• gemstones 3y ago
  For real. It's telling that the kids don't jump in here to defend the practice, hardly ever (also homeschooled, education was great, socialization was absolutely problematic despite doing all the homeschool group things.)
  • cpill 3y ago
    read plus the internet are a bit challenging for them :P
  • bigstrat2003 3y ago
    > It's telling that the kids don't jump in here to defend the practice, hardly ever... Homeschooled kids are a minority, and therefore formerly-homeschooled adults are a minority too. More of a minority, even (since the rate of homeschooling was lower when we were growing up). It's not "telling", it's simply the fact that not a ton of people exist to give a defense. For my part I was homeschooled and had a great experience. My parents were able to challenge me in ways that the local public school wasn't willing to, and they made consistent efforts to make sure I had social exposure to other kids. I don't believe I am lacking in any way because my parents homeschooled me - in fact, if anything I believe it was the better option for me. And I think you need to remember that the other side of the coin exists too. My wife went to public school, and was bullied by other kids. She has social anxiety and other issues to this day (she's 42 years old) as a result. That doesn't mean public schools are all bad, of course, but people need to stop ignoring the downsides of public school when they compare the two paradigms.
    • buildbot 3y ago
      Counterpoint - why don't we see defense of homeschooling at the same rate of attacks? Even if they are rare, there are several posters here that have experienced bad home schools. If they are at least 50:50, shouldn't we expect the same rate of defense? That we don't see that is telling. Being bullied sucks and has huge negative impacts. I am glad though, that I have the tools and experience to identify that happening now that I am an adult. A homeschooled me might not, and then suffer much more in the adult sphere. Negative interactions are something kids have to learn to deal with. It's not pretty or fair or even safe, but neither is the world.
• Nicholas_C 3y ago
  My siblings and I were homeschooled up to about middle school. My mother had three years of college but no degree and taught all four of us at once. For financial reasons we all ended up going to public school at around late elementary/middle school and we were miles ahead of everyone from an academic standpoint. There were definitely some social issues integrating which didn't take long but I think our parents could have done a better job exposing us to "normal" kids and not moving around so much. YMMV.
• stronglikedan 3y ago
  Sorry that happened to you, but thankfully you're in a small minority with that outcome.
• JackMorgan 3y ago
  I was home-schooled and thought it was amazing. I then studied education and worked as a public middle school teacher. I definitely will co-op or home-school my kids unless they want to go to school.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• thearn4 3y ago
  You and I have matching stories, unfortunately. I've made a point of sending my sons to public school for this reason. Now, of course this also means that I shopped for a district that aligned with my expectations. But would never want a repeat of my own experience. I think being accountable for your work to a person who isn't in your family is actually an important thing to learn. It also turns out, parents aren't really qualified to be teachers just because they believe that they are.
• micromacrofoot 3y ago
  In middle school I was beaten to the point where my jaw was wired shut. Nothing happened to the kid that did it and I had to be in his class for 2 years. Anything can have a bad outcome.