Sunday, January 25, 2015

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.


  1. 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).


  1. 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.


  1. 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.


  1. 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.


  1. 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.


  1. 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).   


  1. 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.


  1. 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:
Wile, J. 2013. Exploring Creation with Biology. Apologia Educational Ministries.


For More Information:


Apologia Science
Apologia Science Review
Christian Light Publication Science

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