8 ms·

You interacted with a homeschooled student who made it to college. Huge difference compared to the average homeschooled student.

pard68 3y ago
Do you have any studies or sources to show outcomes of homeschooled children? I've since met many outside of college, they all seem far better off than the average high schooler I knew as a kid.
- 2020aj 3y ago
  Is the average high schooler you knew as a kid representative of the types of people you now meet in your circles? Each stage of our lives is its own sort of selection bias.
adolph 3y ago
Presumably there is a similar difference between the average non-homeschooled student and the population that made it to college.
- ghufran_syed 3y ago
  as there is between the average high school student and those who make it to college?
bitzun 3y ago
I was completely unschooled prior to college and while I did fine in school I was generally very poorly adjusted. I actually don't know a single homeschooled person who came of age nearly as prepared for the world as anyone I know who went to primary school.
- argiopetech 3y ago
  Can you expand on how you felt unprepared? My experience doesn't mirror yours.
  - bitzun 3y ago
    My observatiom has been that a lot of unschooling families have parents who do it because of their own neuroses and are otherwise ill equipped as parents. Conspiracy theories and fringe religions are common. Emotional manipulation and abuse is common. Isolation and poor social skill development is common. Important childhood experiences are restricted. Often these parents don't want their children to succeed and leave the nest. I'm glad you had a good experience, and I am sure there are a lot of people who do when their relatively well adjusted parents commit to homeschooling their children. I just suspect most homeschooling experiences aren't like yours. I've met several families from very different backgrounds with a similar outcome to mine.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      Prior generations had more of that, but the more recent trends have lots of support groups for home schoolers, where you get more socialization and support from other families. Parents are increasingly opting for home schooling to get away from bad or ineffective schools, rather than for purely religious or psychological syndromes.
      - graemep 3y ago
        It is also a lot easier than it used to be. The internet hugely improves access to materials. There is a vibrant online community to discuss and get help.
    - thirdtruck 3y ago
      Speaking from first-hand experience, the positive and negative experiences aren't mutually exclusive. I might be a college-educated autodidact who made an entire career out of self-taught tech skills but that was despite a parent trying to raise me as a young earth creationist and despite all kinds of still un- and underdiagnosed trauma and disorders. Didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until my late thirties and still haven't been diagnosed as autistic, among other things, all of which likely would have been glaringly obvious to public school staff.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lolinder 3y ago
Can we please not get into the homeschool flame war here again? Every time it comes up it turns into a pointless war of anecdotes, because the data on outcomes simply isn't strong enough for it to be anything else (trust me, I've tried).
- bitzun 3y ago
  Sorry, I jumped in because I hadn't seen it before. I agree it's difficult to generalize at this point, I just chafe at the suggestion that homeschooled kids do better overall since I've heard it my whole life and my experience was so different.
  - ummonk 3y ago
    We really need to get better data that's disaggregated based on reason for homeschooling. A lot of academically inclined parents are afraid about the risks of homeschooling when they're not really the population that needs to be targeted by messaging about the risks of homeschooling.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    All good—this difference is why it always turns into a war of anecdotes. Homeschool outcomes are as diverse as parents are—in public schools we at least try to standardize, but not so for homeschool. And since emotions surrounding our parents are some of the strongest that we have, everyone who's been homeschooled has strong opinions of some sort about how it turned out. I'd be happy for the conversation to happen if there were data, but the big problem is that for every study that leans one way there's another that goes the opposite, because the outcomes are so incredibly diverse and the numbers involved are so small.
    - iaw 3y ago
      I said in another comment before I read yours: homeschooling, having more outcomes at the extremes, lead to many people to have observational biases (and strong opinions) in both directions.
  - 3y ago
mildchalupa 3y ago
Probably a bimodal distribution here in terms of homeschool education. Though the entire set is probably more useful and practical.

pard68 3y ago

Do you have any studies or sources to show outcomes of homeschooled children? I've since met many outside of college, they all seem far better off than the average high schooler I knew as a kid.

2020aj 3y ago
Is the average high schooler you knew as a kid representative of the types of people you now meet in your circles? Each stage of our lives is its own sort of selection bias.

adolph 3y ago

Presumably there is a similar difference between the average non-homeschooled student and the population that made it to college.

ghufran_syed 3y ago
as there is between the average high school student and those who make it to college?

bitzun 3y ago

I was completely unschooled prior to college and while I did fine in school I was generally very poorly adjusted. I actually don't know a single homeschooled person who came of age nearly as prepared for the world as anyone I know who went to primary school.

argiopetech 3y ago
Can you expand on how you felt unprepared? My experience doesn't mirror yours.
- bitzun 3y ago
  My observatiom has been that a lot of unschooling families have parents who do it because of their own neuroses and are otherwise ill equipped as parents. Conspiracy theories and fringe religions are common. Emotional manipulation and abuse is common. Isolation and poor social skill development is common. Important childhood experiences are restricted. Often these parents don't want their children to succeed and leave the nest. I'm glad you had a good experience, and I am sure there are a lot of people who do when their relatively well adjusted parents commit to homeschooling their children. I just suspect most homeschooling experiences aren't like yours. I've met several families from very different backgrounds with a similar outcome to mine.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Prior generations had more of that, but the more recent trends have lots of support groups for home schoolers, where you get more socialization and support from other families. Parents are increasingly opting for home schooling to get away from bad or ineffective schools, rather than for purely religious or psychological syndromes.
    - graemep 3y ago
      It is also a lot easier than it used to be. The internet hugely improves access to materials. There is a vibrant online community to discuss and get help.
  - thirdtruck 3y ago
    Speaking from first-hand experience, the positive and negative experiences aren't mutually exclusive. I might be a college-educated autodidact who made an entire career out of self-taught tech skills but that was despite a parent trying to raise me as a young earth creationist and despite all kinds of still un- and underdiagnosed trauma and disorders. Didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until my late thirties and still haven't been diagnosed as autistic, among other things, all of which likely would have been glaringly obvious to public school staff.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lolinder 3y ago

Can we please not get into the homeschool flame war here again? Every time it comes up it turns into a pointless war of anecdotes, because the data on outcomes simply isn't strong enough for it to be anything else (trust me, I've tried).

bitzun 3y ago
Sorry, I jumped in because I hadn't seen it before. I agree it's difficult to generalize at this point, I just chafe at the suggestion that homeschooled kids do better overall since I've heard it my whole life and my experience was so different.
- ummonk 3y ago
  We really need to get better data that's disaggregated based on reason for homeschooling. A lot of academically inclined parents are afraid about the risks of homeschooling when they're not really the population that needs to be targeted by messaging about the risks of homeschooling.
- lolinder 3y ago
  All good—this difference is why it always turns into a war of anecdotes. Homeschool outcomes are as diverse as parents are—in public schools we at least try to standardize, but not so for homeschool. And since emotions surrounding our parents are some of the strongest that we have, everyone who's been homeschooled has strong opinions of some sort about how it turned out. I'd be happy for the conversation to happen if there were data, but the big problem is that for every study that leans one way there's another that goes the opposite, because the outcomes are so incredibly diverse and the numbers involved are so small.
  - iaw 3y ago
    I said in another comment before I read yours: homeschooling, having more outcomes at the extremes, lead to many people to have observational biases (and strong opinions) in both directions.
- 3y ago

mildchalupa 3y ago

Probably a bimodal distribution here in terms of homeschool education. Though the entire set is probably more useful and practical.