I have a friend who was homeschooled. He's very smart, and I wouldn't call him socially inept in terms of how he acts with other people. He's fun to hang out with, likes to go out, can definitely hold a conversation. But the guy didn't know who The Beatles were until a couple years ago. He managed to miss out on basic pop culture that the majority of people seem to at least have a basic knowledge of. I realize that in the grand scheme of things he could have turned out a lot worse, but I think this is proof that homeschooled kids are always going to be missing something.

Quote :

"however, in a lot of cases I don't think it's the homeschooling itself that makes people weird. It's their bat-shit parents that do it. "

I would imagine that has a lot of weight behind it. What kinds of people tend to homeschool their kids?
I think that in some school systems and up to a certain time limit there is probably some merit to homeschooling a kid. The school system where I live is appalling, so I'd be hard-pressed to send my kid into it.
The only other homeschooled kid I know is ridiculously religious, got married when she was 18 to a guy she'd spent a grand total of 3 weeks of physical time with (she'd known him for a few years through online chatting), and basically scares the crap out of me as a person.

11/9/2006 7:14:16 AM

Quote :

"but I think this is proof that homeschooled kids are always going to be missing something."

and how is that any different than someone who grew up in India or Africa - I suppose we should go over there and force them all to listen to Pop Music

11/9/2006 7:27:56 AM

Heh, I was oblivious to a lot of pop culture and I went to public schools. But I don't feel any worse off in the grand scheme of things.

But there was a lot that public school had to offer that I did enjoy too.

I know at my last high school though, it was basically a hellhole w/ lots of know-nothing teachers who would much rather change the answers in the back of the texts (which were right by the way) than admit that they didn't know how to get the correct answer.

And the AP teachers would rather spend days making sure students knew where to download programs for their TI-83's so they could pass the AP exam, because they themselves did not know how to do the study review sheet.

There were a handful of good teachers in the whole lot, and they were stifled from teaching us all they knew because of having to constantly babysit and discipline a couple class clowns and ghetto thug wannabes.


And as others have stated, public schools manage to pass through a ton of socially inept students as well, and ones that are barely qualified to work at McDonald's no less.


To be fair though, there are lots of pros for public school systems.. I loved most of my school career. Opportunities, competition, etc. Different structured environment and having to deal with some level of disorder and learning how to cope when things don't go your way. Two parents can have income coming in without losing family time together at nights or weekends. I can also imagine it being very stressful to homeschool; it would likely be a full-time job with no pay (except your child's development). And not having a place to retreat home to after such work could be a great disadvantage as well. There would be no sanctuary to destress.


But I will say, having seen some of the folks graduating w/ a degree in education... I've met many I wouldn't want anywhere near any kid I'd ever have.

[Edited on November 9, 2006 at 8:31 AM. Reason : .]

11/9/2006 8:31:15 AM

Quote :

"Sounds to me like the high school kids are the socialy inept ones. I can tell you that by the time I was a junior in highschool it didn't matter much what grade or age you were."

There is a huge difference, both physically and mentally, between kids at the age of 13 and 16. Many 13 year olds haven't even gone through puberty yet. Also, the high schoolers will feel stupid because such a little kid is smarter than they are. That will cause resentment at the very least.

Quote :

"Then why do homeschoolers, on average, rip PS kids to shreds on the SAT?"

The CNN transcript said that homeschoolers only beat public schoolers by an average of 80 points. I wouldn't call that "ripping to shreds"

11/9/2006 8:49:00 AM

11/9/2006 9:33:31 AM

11/9/2006 9:54:41 AM

Quote :

"There is a huge difference, both physically and mentally, between kids at the age of 13 and 16. Many 13 year olds haven't even gone through puberty yet. Also, the high schoolers will feel stupid because such a little kid is smarter than they are. That will cause resentment at the very least. "

Doesn't change the point that the highschool kids are the inept ones if they can't handle a little preassure and would resort to any sort of retalliation on the kid. Furthermore, I think this is one of the failings of public schools segregating kids into their own little groups of equally the same peers. The end result is that when they get out of school they're in for a rude shock when someone younger than them is twice as smart as they could hope to be, and that they're not really as average as they thought they were.

I breezed through the public school system pretty easily, and was at one of the upper schools in my state, but it was still a very humbling and mentaly shocking experience to come to college and find out just how little I knew compared to some of my peers.

11/9/2006 3:48:12 PM

Tulip, I'd actually be interested in reading about some of the points you mentioned. Can you provide some links.

11/9/2006 3:59:27 PM

there are an ass-ton of public schooled kids who have a severe deficit of social skills

don't forget to include gang members, TWWers, and other miscreants in that category. I wouldn't exactly call them very well socialized, mmmk

[Edited on November 9, 2006 at 4:14 PM. Reason : s]

11/9/2006 4:13:12 PM

I really do not think that the public school system is a failure. I think that it is a much larger societal issue than simply our schools. Just take a look a some of the people who are reproducing. Our kids aren't exactly all coming from quality stock.

And have you ever just thought that some people are going to be successful no matter where they are and some people are going to be failures no matter where they are. . .and that it really only makes a difference in the success of a precious few?

I, personally, believe that my husband and I are the type of people who would have been successful no matter what kind of educational situation we were given and I think that this it true for most successful people. We both happened to go through very average public schools and graduated in the top few in our classes. We both came into college and succeeded in college -- and neither of us were humbled at all when we saw where we stood next to our peers.

And, I think that some of the data on home schooling is probably misleading. The students who are home schooled through high school obviously come from a situation where homeschooling was successful. There are a number of parents who only home school for a year or two and then they send their kids back to public schools for one reason or another. I don't think that homeschooling is bad. . .I just think that it's very difficult to do it right.

And have you even taken a look at the kind of parents that typically home school? *shudders* Working at Sylvan Learning Center, I saw a lot of homeschoolers that came to Sylvan to work on skills that their parents felt that they could not teach adequately. Most of the parents home schooled because a.) their child had such behavioral issues that they could not succeed in a classroom setting and inhibited the learning of others and b.) they felt that the public schools do not provide the "right" kind of education (subjects are taught that shouldn't be (like the Holocaust or evolution) and subjects are not taught that should be (religion, morality, etc.)).

[Edited on November 9, 2006 at 4:42 PM. Reason : sp.]

11/9/2006 4:41:05 PM

It would be awesome if all teachers were as skilled and enthusiastic as my younger sister. She rocks.

11/9/2006 4:43:47 PM

Quote :

"Then why do homeschoolers, on average, rip PS kids to shreds on the SAT?"

i would say that an 80 point margin is quite impressive...but this is misleading. public school kids include kids from all different backgrounds and the smart kids are equaled out by the dumb kids.

however, with homeschooling...most home school kids come from a well educated family with one parent who makes enough money to support the family and the other one who is educated enough to teach functionally. if that same kid that was homeschooled scored 80 points better than the average PS kid, i'm willing to bet they would score about the same thing had they went to public schools.

so my point is, its not valid to compare SAT scores of HS and PS kids and say, "omg home school kids did 80 points better!!11 therefore homeschooling is better"(you didn't say that, but one may infer that). i would argue that is more a result of the kids themselves rather than the type of education they received.

11/9/2006 6:05:35 PM

If you home school your kids you're a fucking moron

11/9/2006 6:27:42 PM

^I take exception to that, you jackass.

Personally, I don't know if I would want to homeschool my kids after seeing the insane amount of work my mom put into teaching us. Though once my sister and I got to the last couple years in high school, she wasn't teaching so much as supervising. I also dual-enrolled at Durham Tech during my junior and senior years, taking two classes per semester. I equal those classes to the AP-level stuff we couldn't take normally.

Quote :

"ADHD & deviant sexuality have been linked to homeschooling"

O rly? You got some backing to that statement?

11/9/2006 6:52:07 PM

BigDave41, I mentioned this to my husband and he made a similar point.

SAT performance has been directly linked to socio-economic status. Public school students over-whelmingly come from single parent families, low income families, and families that simply could not survive without a second income. So it is very misleading to compare the scores of home schooled students to the scores of all public school students. My husband suspects that if you were to compare the SAT scores of home schoolers to the SAT scores of public school students who come from a similar socio-economic background that there would not be such a discrepancy.

^I know that this is just anecdotal evidence, but I met at least 3 students at my former job that were pulled out of public schools and home schooled because of their behavioral and emotional problems that made a traditional classroom setting unsuitable.

Although that does not mean that home schooling CAUSES these problems, that simply means that home schooling is a strong alternative for such students so that there may be a higher occurence of these problems seen in the home schooled population.

[Edited on November 9, 2006 at 9:27 PM. Reason : ^s.]

11/9/2006 9:20:37 PM

A guy I work with was homeschooled, AND lived at his parents' house while he went to college. On one hand he toured the country as the homeschool poster-child.

On the other hand his people skills just aren't there. Most people on my team end up just wanting to smack him whenever he tries to join a conversation. While he has more than enough brain capacity for our job, the soft skills aren't there. We estimate 2 years and he'll be fired because he just can't function on customer engagements by himself.

11/9/2006 10:36:48 PM

Quote :

"however, with homeschooling...most home school kids come from a well educated family with one parent who makes enough money to support the family and the other one who is educated enough to teach functionally."

That's a rational guess, and one that I had believed to be true, until I looked into it a while ago, and a number of separate sites and studies all gave information to the contrary.

From Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moores’ The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook, "The average annual family income (for homeschoolers) is around $25,000."

That's his estimate, but all the estimates I've seen for average homeschool family income are at or below the national average for family income.

Contrary to what you'd think, rich parents just don't homeschool much at all. And those who do homeschool love it so much they make a lot of sacrifices to pull it off.

So that 80-point gap is probably even more impressive than it appears at first glance.

[Edited on November 10, 2006 at 5:20 AM. Reason : a]

11/10/2006 5:16:31 AM

1.) Homeschooling does not socially cripple kids in general. I could offer anecdotal
evidence but you would do better to read through the studies linked below.

2.) Homeschooling does better for most individuals precisely because it can be individualized, this is
in great contrast to the homogeneous mediocrity of the public schools at large.

3.) When the parents are stupid they can still get tutors, just like the parents who employ me to
tutor their kid because the professional educator was to stupid to educate their child in our glorious public schools.

4.) When the child is advanced they can take courses at the local college, if the mother(father) has
encouraged autonomy in the pre-university education then that child is better prepared to cope with the demands and short-comings of the university system. They know how to teach themselves so they are less damaged by bad professors who can't teach.

5.)http://www.nheri.org/content/view/174/62/

6.)http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000000/00000017.asp

7.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling read the last bit.

8.) school vouchers should become a reality so we could have real choice in education and end
this monopoly of government funded ignorance.

that is all.

11/11/2006 12:35:55 AM

mmmk pretty sure that deviating from negative anecdotes is contrary to the spirit of this thread!!!

shame on you for bringing science into this wanker-fest

11/11/2006 12:44:58 AM