The Pros and Cons of Homeschooling

I think that home-schooling has its merits, but I also believe that it has many, many flaws that people, especially home-schoolers, sometimes overlook. So in this post I’m going to discuss the benefits and flaws that I personally experienced with home-schooling. I think that this is important for potential home-schoolers to know and understand about the pros and cons when making their decision. What I’ve seen is that there are a lot of positive reviews about home-schooling written by home-schoolers, and a lot of negative reviews written by nonhome-schoolers.  I think that another perspective to consider, are the children (now adults) that are dissatisfied with thier home-schooling experience.  Maybe you decide to home-school anyway.  That’s alright, hopefully you can learn from other’s mistakes and make the experience a positive one.

First, the pros of my home-school career:

1. In the state of Texas, there are no laws yet mandating what curriculums home-schoolers should use.  During the years I was home-schooled, we were able to jump around through different curriculums and publishers to find the best fit for each of us kids.  There are many different curriculums available.  Some are traditional and textbook based, others are more modern and have online homework or DVD lectures.  The curriculums can be chosen depending on what type of learner the child is.

2. I also was able to choose what electives I studied.  At the local public school, there was one teacher who taught one foreign language: Spanish. This is what I was told by a few local kids I knew at the time.  I was lucky enough to take two years of Latin and one year of Spanish at a co-op with certified teachers.  I chose to study Latin because I was interested in the medical field which uses many words that have a Latin root.  I was preparing for my future career.  Other options that are available for home-schoolers are: Computer basics, Consumer Math, Agricultural Science, Auto Fundamentals, Beginning Woodworking, Christian Ethics for Youth, Horticulture, a study of The Pilgrim's Progress, and Technical Drawing, just to name a few (clp.org).

3. There are less time constraints on home-schoolers.  During my Senior year, I worked a part time job from 8am - 3pm four days a week.  Then I came home and did all of my school work.  That would not have been possible if I had been in a public school or any school with a strict schedule.  In a YouTube video, Messy Monday’s also talks about how he finished his school early so that he could play outside with his other home-schooled friends.

4. For me, home-schooling fostered a love of learning and taught me how to teach myself.  For the majority of the time, my mother was either working with my older brother, Mark, or my younger siblings.  I was more self led, so my mom let me work at my own pace.  I also took initiative to learn more about the subjects that interested me most, such as literature.  During middle school, I read many classic books, simply because I wanted to.

5. Home-schooling also gave me the opportunity to take any dual credit classes that I believed would give me a head start in college, as well as, also count for high school credit.  When I graduated from high-school, I had 21 hours of transferable dual credit.  I believe that knowing how to motivate myself, as well as, all my experience with college level classes made my transition into college life easy.  I also believe that having college dual credit on my high school transcript legitimized my high school credits by providing proof that I was educated enough to make A’s and B’s in college level classes.

Cons of my home-school career:

1. Because my family could rotate between different curriculums, I had holes in my education that I may have not had if I had stayed with one curriculum.  This was especially obvious in my math.  I was not strong at math, nor did I enjoy the subject.  After 5th grade, my mother switched me from Christian Light math to Math-U-See.  The transition was not smooth because the two curriculums were set up in totally different ways and I believe that I missed important concepts.  Thankfully, I was able to make up for it with my remedial math classes at a junior college before I enrolled in my current university.

2. Socialization, socialization, socialization… or the lack of.  In my previous post, I discussed the time period in my life where my mom worked, my dad worked, and we had a couple thousands chickens to take care of.  I can say for a fact, that I was longing for socialization of any type other than my family.  Another point, is that when you are short on money as my family was, its nearly impossible to join all the clubs and groups that home-schoolers say they are apart of.  First, many groups have a fee of some sort you have to pay.  Second, you have to have money to buy the gas to drive to those clubs and groups.  So when money is lacking and you live in the middle of NOWHEREVILLE, there’s not much you can do.

3. There are hardly any quality textbooks that aren’t super Christian and promote Christianity in every topic they can.  Some home-school science textbooks even go as far as to deny that the Theory of Evolution is even a theory and claim that Creationism or Intelligent Design is the only plausible answer (patheos.com).  I used many of these textbooks just because there weren’t many options.  One of these textbooks was for high school chemistry,  Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Chemistry.  Why should religion even be in science?!  I’ll save that for another post.  To me, it is just sad how brainwashed some of these families are into thinking that any evolution of any kind, either microevolution or macroevolution, are false sciences made up by heathens who don’t believe in God, Creation, or Intelligent Design (Wile)(whyevolutionistrue.worldpress.com).   

4. Specifically to me or anyone else that is home-schooled and both parents work, to put it blatantly - it sucks. The key part of being home-schooled is that your parents are there to teach you, or at least there for you.  However, if your parents were working, like mine where, they couldn’t do that. If both parents work, they do not have the time to invest in your education.  They do not have the time to take you to social activities.  They do not have the time to do anything!  When both parents work, that defeats the entire purpose of being home-schooled: to get a better education and have a stronger family.  It also defeats the theory that home-schoolers are better socialized.  How can you be better socialized if you never go anywhere because your parents don’t have the time to drive you? You may also live in the middle of NOWHEREVILLE so walking to a friend’s house is out of the question.

5. One of the most debated controversies of home-schooling is the lack of regulation in some states. Texas is one of the more liberal and unregulated states when it comes to homeschooling.  In Texas, home-schools are considered a private school and fall under private school laws.  In Texas, there are no laws mandating what is taught in private schools (patheos.com).  Texas Home School Coalition states that to home-school legally in Texas you must abide by three main laws: “the instruction must be bona fide [whatever that means], the curriculum must be in visual form, and the curriculum must include the five basic subjects of reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, and good citizenship [what? no science?!] (thsc.org).
   

There you have it, those are the main pros and cons that I wanted to cover today.  I’ll let you decide if the pros are worth the cons, or if there is anything you can do to change the effects of the cons.  If you have an opinion on this subject, leave a comment below or e-mail me.

Sources:

https://www.clp.org/store/by_grade/17

http://www.thsc.org/homeschooling-in-texas/state-requirements/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leavingfundamentalism/2012/05/07/top-5-lies-told-by-accelerated-christian-education/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2013/04/hslda-and-the-deregulation-of-homeschooling.html

Wile, J. 2013. Exploring Creation with Biology. Apologia Educational Ministries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJHt-m3VX6o

For More Information:

Apologia Science

http://apologia.com/index.asp?proc=pg&pg=1

Apologia Science Review

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/homeschooling-and-evolution/

Christian Light Publication Science

https://www.clp.org/store/by_subject/5

My Home-schooling Story

I often wonder how home-schooling has shaped me, and who I would be if I didn’t have such an unusual upbringing.  My roommate, Natasha, and I are very similar, almost creepy similar, and we’ve often wondered if this was due to us both being home-schooled in a very similar fashion.  So in today’s post, I’ll go over my home-school experience.  In a later post, I will break it down and examine how I think it has shaped me. As a disclaimer, I would like to note that every family’s and every individual’s experience is unique and should be considered as that.  My experience is unique to me, though you may have noticed home-schoolers, or even yourself, have had some similar experiences.

In my previous post I described the origins my family beginning home-schooling and why my mother had continued to teach us at home.  I think that my parents had a different reason for each of their children. My older brother, Mark, was taken out of public school in fifth grade.  Like many boys, he was extremely intelligent, but didn’t feel the need to apply himself.  He also was falling into the wrong crowd and my mother was worried that he would end up in some sort of trouble.  So she took him out of school to take him away from the negative influences that are so prominent in today’s school system.  Her hopes were that she could get Mark to apply himself to his studies and eventually into a collage of some sort.  It ended up well for Mark.  He is now 24, has graduated from a tech school with a degree in Heavy-Diesel Mechanics.  After a few job switches, he has now found a work place he enjoys where he is the shop foreman for a large trucking company.

My experience was a little bit different from Mark’s.  I was taken out of school because I was failing English and writing.  My mother was worried that if I stayed in school, I would fall even farther behind than I already was.  As a side note, I would like to say that I am now an avid reader, like many homeschoolers, and place well ahead of my peers when it comes to reading comprehension (home-school.com).  

Mark’s and my elementary days were dotted with school, playing outside together (we live in the country on 50 acres), and riding on the school bus that my mom drove every school morning and afternoon.  I don’t remember much of the school work we did.  My mother said I had hated spelling so much that I would cry after every test, so she stopped teaching me spelling.  I know that my favorite subject was reading and I would spend hours in my room reading my favorite books at the time, Little House on the Prairie.  My parents said I used to talk about her like she was one of my friends.  Once a week, we would go to a local co-op of homeschoolers and take extra curricular classes, such as home ec. (Keepers of the Home), art, science experiments, and chess.  That was our main form of socialization besides spending time with the other kids who rode on the bus my mom drove.  

There was this type of social isolation that comes with home-schooling in a small town.  The town we lived in had one private school for elementary through middle school, and one public school for preschool through high school.  My family was the only family in the town who home-schooled, and my parents’ decision to home-school was frowned upon.  One of our neighbors who lived a mile away was a retired school teacher.  She would tell my mother that she was worried about our socialization and how we would function after we got out of high school.  The point I’m trying to make is that living in a small town and home-schooling in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE felt more than a little isolating.

Middle school followed the same pattern of elementary school.  The difference was that my mother no longer worked for the school and drove the bus, and now my little brother, Jason, had joined us in home-schooling.  There was a brief span in 6th grade that I was convinced I would like to go to public school.  So my mother enrolled me in the fall and I attended for two months.  It was different for me than other school kids because my father was always complaining about the public school; how we wasted time switching from class to class; how they gave us busy work....  He had a very negative view of the school system which affected the way I felt about attending public school.  I would also come home from school to find out all the cool stuff my family was doing without me while I was gone.  So when the opportunity came up for me to join a Christian home-school basketball team, I took it.  It was my excuse for giving up on the public school idea.  

During 6th grade, I was on the basketball team and had twice a week early morning practices that took an hour to drive to.  My brother was also on the boy’s basketball team, so his practices were after mine.  I could say that I enjoyed being on the team, but I didn’t really.  I enjoyed socializing with the other girls and families, but basketball was not my thing.  Not to mention that we only won one game in the entire season.  So it wasn’t a surprise to anyone that I didn’t return to basketball the next year.

During 7th and 8th grade, Mark stayed on the basketball team, so we continued the early morning practices twice a week.  The founder of the team had also created a separate co-op that had weekly classes taught by certified instructors. We joined the co-op and I spent hours there after my one class, sign language.  It was a big day for us because we would drive an hour away to go into the city for co-op classes, basketball practice, Elizabeth’s therapy, and the public library.  Then for the rest of the week, we mostly stayed at home only to emerge to make a trip into town for groceries. I didn’t go to friends’ houses often because all of my friends lived in the city and it was a big ordeal to have to drive two hours there and back.  If I did go, it was normally for an overnight sleepover.

For me, high school was full of turmoil.  During my Sophomore year, my mother had to pick up a part time job at a group home for residents with intellectual and physical disabilities.  My mom started out working weekends, Friday 5pm - Sunday 5pm, and would be away for the entire weekend.  Being the oldest daughter, it was up to me to cook dinner for the family because we always ate together at the family dinner table.  I also had to make sure the house didn’t fall apart and become a disaster zone.  I would spend my weekends washing dishes, mopping, and cleaning the bathroom.  My father is not much of the parenting type, so I had to make sure that Elizabeth was taken care of, got baths, and had her teeth brushed before bed.  During Winter break of my Junior year, my mom’s work was short staffed and had asked her to work during the week in another house.  She worked Sunday - Friday, 5pm - 9 am.  However, she had already signed up for her weekends, so she also had to work the entire weekend too.  For three weeks, I ran the house.  I helped make the meal plans, cooked dinners, cleaned, and took care of my younger brother and sister.  I didn’t go out very much because there would be nobody to watch Jason who was 10, and Elizabeth who was 5.  It was a lonely time for me.  Looking back, I think I had become depressed, but didn’t know that there was a label for what I felt.  I had my times of restricting food, now I know it was because I craved control.  I also had a two month time period when I felt so sad, lonely, and forgotten, that I would self injure myself.  It was not a happy time for me.

On top of this was my dad’s wild scheme that we could raise organic, free range chickens and sale the eggs to Whole Foods.  Honestly, I try to block out the memories of having to feed and take care over a thousand birds using only manual (unpaid) labor.  Not to mention cleaning the eggs every single night which would take hours and hours.  I had no free time to visit friends because I had to run house and help with all those God Damn chickens.  If you can’t tell, yes, I am very bitter about this, and never want to see another live chicken.  Thankfully, after over a year of the chickens, my dad sold them and reduced the number to a more reasonable amount of twenty chickens for Jason to take care of.

Senior year was when I was my happiest during high-school.  I had a part time job working at the same place as my mom, only in the money-raising greenhouse portion of it.  I worked 4 days a week for roughly 5 - 8 hours a day.  Then I would come home and do homework for my online dual credit college classes.  I also attended a once a week co-op to learn Chemistry and Spanish.  During my second semester as a Senior, I took remedial math classes at the local junior college because I had huge holes in my math education.  I had failed the placement test for math classes, and needed to get my score up before I would be attending any four year college. (I am glad to say that my math is now average and I can keep up with my peers at college.)  For the first time, I had also had an actual boyfriend who I had met at my weekly classes.  I think Senior year is the most socialization I ever had.  I had a part time job, dual credit classes, weekly home-school class, and a boyfriend who I could go on dates with.  I thought things couldn’t get any better than that.  

Sources:

http://www.home-school.com/news/homeschool-vs-public-school.php

For more information:

Keepers of the Home

http://www.joyinourjourney.com/training-our-daughters-to-be-keepers-at-home.html

http://www.homeschoolreviews.com/reviews/curriculum/reviews.aspx?id=112

Why Families Home-school

      Why families home-school has always been an interest to me.  I grew up in a rural small town just north of Austin.  My family had decided that all of us kids should be home-schooled after I had just finished Kindergarten at the local public school.  It started out with good intentions.  Their daughter, that's me, had almost failed the end of year reading test and the school had recommended to my mother that I be put in summer school so that I could catch up.  Instead, my mother had opted to keep me at home for the summer and teach me herself using a phonetic program and audio tapes.  In the following fall, my parents didn't send my other brother and me back to school.  Instead, they send a letter to the school stating that they were withdrawing us from school so that we may be home-schooled.

    That was the start of our long home-school career.  My parents had decided that the small local school was incompetent in educating their children, so they opted for homeschooling.  At the time, I was in 1st grade, my older brother was in 5th grade, and my younger brother was two.  This was actually an abnormal reason to choose to home-school.  The majority of home-schoolers choose to home-school for religious or moral reasons (mommyish.com).   My parents had simply decided that they could do a better job of educating us.

     The second reason why my parents home-schooled us was because my little brother, Jason, had dyslexia.  My mom had tried to home-school him though Kindergarten.  It didn't go well.  At the time, my mom didn't know that he had dyslexia.  Jason had problems remember his letters, the names of colors, and had a hard time with handwriting.  The next year, she enrolled him in Kindergarten at the local public school to see if they could teach him better.  When that didn't go as planned, she pulled him out of school for 1st grade.  Since then, my mother figured out that he has dyslexia, but has not officially tested him.  Now he is so far behind in school because of his difficulties with reading and math, that she refuses to send him to public school for fear that he will be placed grades behind.

    Along the way, my parents had a fourth child, my younger sister, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was born with Down Syndrome.  When she was a baby, she had many complications and was in speech, physical, and occupational therapy.  When she became old enough to go to pre-school, my family enrolled her in the public school's preschool program.  Elizabeth completed pre-school and then moved onto Kindergarten the following year.  That's was diagnosed with legg calve perthes disease.  It's a disease that affects the ball and socket joint of the hip and essentially causes the ball of the joint to deteriorate.  The disease causes pain and inflammation of the hip joint which leads to a limp and loss of mobility.  After this, my little sister was pulled out of school so that she could take it easy at home.  My mother also decided that the school was not doing enough for my sister.  She was kept in the special education program that integrated the children into the classroom during recess and P.E.  The school's special education program had many flaws, but I will not go into that now.

   So there was my parents' three reasons to home-school their children.  They believe that they could do a better job than the local public school could. Jason had dyslexia and has fallen behind in school, and so now my parents keep him at home in fear that they will be judged for him being so far behind. Finally, little sister has Down Syndrome, and my parents believe that they could provide a more specialized individual education plan.  

   In upcoming additions, I will discuss how homeschooling affected me personally, why I don't think it's a great idea and would never home-school my children, what flaws I have personally seen in other home-school families, and what I think should be done about it.

Sources:

http://www.mommyish.com/2012/08/20/because-i-was-homeschooled-im-not-homeschooling-my-daughter-474/