We have once-close relatives who initiated a black-ops campaign against homeschooling when our kids were all still young. It took several years before it came to the surface of our family relations and we became aware of it – several more before we truly understood the scope of their efforts.

Their activity apparently included everything from surreptitious testing of the kids, spreading around stories among family and friends of “the way things really are”, and even reporting us to folks like the State School Superintendent’s Office, the local school district, and social services.

These were once important people in our lives and our children’s lives. They could not see beyond their bias against homeschooling, and it cost them and us dearly. Awhile back they admitted that some of what they’d done was inappropriate. Unfortunately, at this point there is not much of a foundation left to build a new relationship and not much of an impetus to try.

If I could offer one bit of advice to that skeptical or anti-homeschool relative it would be that it’s better to join them, because you can’t beat them – you will destroy what you hold most dear if you try. Join in and become and active participant (not just a spy or saboteur) in the child’s homeschool experience.

You may be pleasantly surprised at what you find. Worse case? Your support will earn you the privilege of being able to offer occasional friendly advice to the homeschooling parents.

(hi Angilee!)

I suspect there are many people who are primarily worried about the kids “fitting in”. They wouldn’t want to verbalize this feeling because, of course, they know it would sound SO SHALLOW.

I’ve even heard, “if your kids are homeschooled they’ll be so much smarter and they just wouldn’t be able to relate to other kids their age”.

You know, honestly, this one might be a valid concern at our house. I’ve noticed that whenever my 8-year old is playing with his friends, all they seem to want to talk about is square roots, the scientific method… oh, and they just can’t get enough of that name-this-animal’s-genus-and-species game they made up the other day ;) Kids nowadays. It’s just too bad this inevitable intellectual gap will ruin all their fun.

This is why socialization in school is so important, and why you need to prove as a homeschooler that your child is getting proper socialization:

Parents are incapable of doing ANYTHING without GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. Therefore, if you try to bunk the system and do things yourself like able bodied parents have done for centuries, then obviously, there is something wrong with you.

When my parents (against homeschool) met my in-laws (among the pioneering families to create acceptance for homeschooling) for the first time, they had all sorts of strange ideas of what to expect (none of which were true).

After the first meeting, my father made a statement. “They are some backwards thinking people. And their kids were so socially awkward.”

My response: “Backwards? What do you mean by awkward?”

“Oh, they just were.”

“Like what?”

“Just trust me, they were.”

“How?”

“They just were.”

You can’t reason with this.

Thanks for your comments!

It can’t be that they mean school will make their children civilized, and that without school their kids will be drooling savages. Do we really imagine that kids can’t learn to get along and interact with other kids unless they go to school? Our modern idea of school is totally new on the earth. People learned to get along just fine growing up on farms and in towns where they interacted in real life rather than school. So surely parents don’t expect that their kids will be uncivilized if they socialize outside school rather than in school. Right?

So if socialization in school is good for the individual, how does it work? Why? What makes it superior to socialization outside of school – in private classes, churches, neighborhoods, stores, parks, homes, etc.? Because school is where the cool kids are?

If the argument for public school is that it is good for society – which appears to be the main argument from Daniel – then I can see why socialization in school is important. It makes total sense that individuals being compelled to be socialized in public institutions would be good for a particular kind of society. But – why should we care? I didn’t have children so that the USA could compete with China. I’m not raising my children in the hopes of them being instrumental in raising the GDP.

So I’m still not really sure what is supposed to be good about socialization in school. I hear about it all the time as a homeschooling mother dealing with non-homeschoolers. My answer to “What about socialization?” is “What about it?” Will someone who thinks socialization in school is important please explain why?

(After 5 y/o, new sets of social skills/behaviors become increasingly difficult to learn, while dysfunctional behaviors become increasingly difficult to abandon.)

Any Schooling, at least in the traditional academic sense, comes far to late to have a great effect on socialization.

If the idea that public schools are a catalyst for socialization were true, then public schools ought to be a panacea for almost all social problems. (For example: delinquency, violence and abuse, addiction, underachievement, poverty, bullying, risky sexuality, underage pregnancy, relationship failure, etc at al.)If Dewey’s thinking were true, public schools ought to be able to drastically reduce or eliminate these problems. (Dewey and his contemporaries weren’t idiots, but science knew next to nothing about early brain development at the time)

The truth is, schools have been fighting a losing battle against social problems ever since John Dewey’s day. Schools were never the problem, nor the solution.

(Reminds me of the song from West Side Story: “Dear Officer Krupke.” )

The root of most social problems is the “generational” problem of poor parents producing more poor parents. Or in other words, poor early parenting producing more poor early parenting.)

The truth is, if you teach a child excellent social skill in their very first years, they will tend to excel no matter what their environment at school is like.

And Carissa! How nice to see you here! Where have I been all this time?

I don’t know why the burden of proof is always on the homeschooler. Why do we need science to back up homeschooling? Where is the science to say that this modern compulsory public school trip we are currently on is better than the way people were educated for centuries? I’m open minded, too. Somebody, show me the stats to prove why public schooling is better than homeschooling. Then I will decide that public school might be a real option. After all, I’m open minded. Until then, I will remain undecided and unbiased and continue homeschooling.

What is all this about “Show me the Science, then I will bow down”? Ridiculous. Just the kind of pedantic mindset that gave us modern compulsory public schooling in the first place.

Although, I’ve also run into those people who were home schooled, and they’re probably the ones that give it the poor socialization stigma. In that case it’s frightening.

I guess it all depends on how it’s done. The potential for incredible socialization or less than adequate socialization is there either way, right?

I’d prefer that my kids learn from someone who’s done the work in that area.

That’s one of the beautiful things about homeschooling, actually. As a parent, I decide who teaches my child. It doesn’t have to be me, and it certainly doesn’t have to be the high school football coach who got badgered into teaching chem/phys this year. As designated conservative mentioned @ 48, the number of resources and possible teachers is nearly endless. For example, my sister-in-law is HSing her five kids ages three to nine. Instead of learning about about insects out of a book, a state park ranger gave them a presentation about macroinvertibrates found in the park streams and then they actually went to a field site, got in the water, and dug out some bugs themselves. My husband was HSed, too, and when he needed coursework beyond what he, his mom, or their HSing network could handle, he just enrolled at the community college.

Really, the expertise found at your average high school is rather limited. I don’t say that to knock the teachers, because I, as several other commenters also asserted, had some simply superior teachers who knew their stuff, loved teaching, and loved the kids they taught. But I went to college with the intention of becoming a high school math teacher, and when I looked at the miniscule number of actual math classes required to get a math teaching degree, I decided if I really wanted to know anything about math, I’d better get a math degree instead.

Just for some background, I actually had a good/great public school experience, but as is apparent from what I hear from friends with school-aged children, things are changing in public schools. In some ways, I understand it. Many of the strict protocols I hear about (assigned seating at lunch, for example) seem essential for keeping order with the high student/teacher ratios that exist in many places. Schools are under severe pressure to produce results, so they’re giving more and more homework to kids younger and younger. (Personally, I think this is like trying to make a newborn stand up to ensure she becomes a star athlete. More and more work is not the answer.)

Okay, I’ve got an open mind. Now could someone please give me some stats on performance?

I could ask the same thing of you. What makes you so sure HSing isn’t at least as viable as PSing? Your own anecdotal evidence, from what you mentioned @ 16. How about giving the rest of us some of that science you favor so highly? And I mean that in a nice way.

And as far as socialization goes, strangely enough, that’s one thing that actually swayed me the the Hsing side. My HSed husband came out of his schooling functioning far better socially than I did. He spent his days socializing with people of all ages in all situations, while I spent a majority of my time learning how to function in a social/cultural system that ceased to exist for me after graduation. He had a much better grasp of mature social conventions than I did and I frankly had to scramble to play catch-up. I understand why PS does what it does, but that doesn’t mean it’s solely for the benefit of the child. Logistics are most certainly at work.

Not only that but I knew I was not going to go to a four year college right out of high school. I was smart enough to figure out that a community college does not have entry requirements…. except for a GED.. Which I have, barely :)

So in my mind, public education trains us to fail, trains us to rely on someone else and to not think for yourself.

I’d prefer that my kids learn from someone who’s done the work in that area.

Me too. Like the ones who are so experienced and knowledgeable that they author a book on the subject :)

You know how every public school student has all those textbooks? When you or I were in school, did we actually learn directly from the textbook, or did the teacher have to translate the information from the textbook into a lesson for us to understand? The textbook usually becomes a backseat rarely-used reference. A source for homework problems, maybe. To me, this teaches a student to take a passive role in his education instead of an active. “Wait for someone to explain things to you… you need an expert to teach you.”

If a student had the right skills, couldn’t he just bypass the teacher (for the most part) and glean the knowledge for himself? What would this take? A solid foundation in reading mechanics, reading comprehension and vocabulary. A desire to learn and progress. A teacher (or tutor) to hold him accountable, ensure work is being done, point out any mistakes (there are teacher guides for this) and point the student in the right direction for information. The most important job of a teacher (in my eyes) is teaching learning skills and inspiring a desire to know.

I feel that my job is to prepare them enough so that in a few years my children will be reading autobiographies to learn about historical characters along with their original works (instead of watered-down third-party sources). How empowering would it feel to know that you could pick up Principia and learn for yourself straight from the brain of Isaac Newton? That is what I want for my children. Independent thinkers who have the necessary tools and confidence to go out and learn anything they desire.

So my job is to teach them the skills and give them sources of information. I don’t need to be an expert. The expertise is in the books already. I just need to be there to guide, set a good example, and consistently hold accountable.

You will probably find the most stats at HSLDA. Specifically here and here Check out the very left side of the page under Featured Studies for more research.

Those who most vociferously and forcefully object and warn against homeschooling are the ones who are the most ignorant individuals. The ones who are most open-minded in this issue are usually pretty capable, thinking, educated people.

But there have been a few (like myself, and I might include Daniel) who were capable etc. but just hadn’t done the research to realize,”Hey, I guess it isn’t so bad.”

Then it took me years to come to a conlcusion that the choices were about even. In the end, it was a personal choice that my wife and I made for what would work best for us.

This is why I stated earlier that I believe in having options. But let them be real options.

I will submit this one thing for thought (The interpretation of which is anyone’s option):

I have had three categories of responses when I tell people I’m a homeschooler.

1) I was thinking about that myself.–These people tell me they are really worried about the state of society these days. They also worry about the quality of school district in which they live. It is these two issues that will weigh on the balance more than most other issues to determine whether they go through with it or not.

2) “But what about . . . ”
3) “Hey, if you can do it, more power to you.”

As you can see, #2 presupposes that we are ignorant to even try this. We obviously haven’t thought it through or researched it enough.

Response #3 at least gives us the benefit of the doubt. It assumes we have at least the abilities of a civil servant.

I had the opportunity to talk to my high school English teacher (who was one of a handful of GOOD teachers that I had in public school). When I told him I was a homeschooler, he asked, not about socialization, but about our ability to cover advanced subjects like chemistry, physics, & biology. I told him that I’m an engineer and my wife is a biologist. His fears ceased immediately.

Why? Is high school SO difficult that it takes people who are specialists to teach it? I didn’t think so when I was in school. And I still don’t think so.

Daniel, you aren’t looking at homeschooling with an open mind – if you were you wouldn’t have said this. Homeschooling is not “school at home” and a student’s parent is not likely to be their only teacher.

My own kids have been taught by a variety of people (including their parents and grandparents) at various times. We have used YMCA classes, a homeschool co-operative program, private and public school events and activities, library and community programs, 4-H programs, tutoring, apprenticeships, etc., etc. to provide learning opportunities to suit each child’s particular needs and interests at the time.

Most recently we have had kids learning French, Journalism, Government, Public Speaking, and Science, along with a great season of swimming competitions.

It is not only possible to successfully teach foreign languages, sciences, math, and other subjects that may be outside of the parents’ expertise in this way, it is relatively easy in comparison to dealing with the crap that comes with attendance at a public high school these days.

Though I’m still skeptical of an ordinary parent’s ability to teach high school-level bio, chem, physics, mathematics, and (yes) linguistics. I’d prefer that my kids learn from someone who’s done the work in that area. Most people who haven’t done this come into the field with some obviously wrong notions, just because people don’t have instincts in those areas.

This does not mean parents should try to do it themselves. Only a small proportion of parents are capable of doing it well.

You do realize that (in general) the only parents who are willing to commit to taking on the massive job that is homeschooling, are the ones who are reasonably sure they are “capable of doing it well” or at least doing better than their alternatives.

Since you enjoy being scientific, where is your evidence that only a small proportion are capable? Four years ago I would have certainly considered myself incompetent, but determination and hard work can go a long way when you are committed to something. Not to mention the multitude of resources and information that is readily available to nearly everyone.

I’m not trying to make the case that every parent would do a good job. It takes a whole lot of effort and commitment and our culture sure doesn’t encourage parents to take on that role. I just tend to believe the old cliche- where there’s a will there’s a way. I think the will is the key.

I think the existing statistics on homeschoolers prove that it’s reasonably possible for a student to excel academically and socially in absence of the standard classroom/certified teacher environment. They don’t need to prove that homeschooling overall is better than any other type of schooling. The fact that success is possible and moderately likely is enough. It’s an individual choice and lifestyle and it’s working out quite well for (millions now) of people. If you don’t like the idea, don’t do it. But try to give up your prejudices and have an open mind. Homeschooling is whatever it’s made to be.

If we have the top end students from public school vs. the top end of home schoolers, I see this as a fair comparison.

Yes, a fair comparison of the test takers, but not of [public|home] schoolers as a whole, which is what we’re talking about.

1) self-selection indicates that the test takers choose themselves into a group. Well, that isn’t really as valid a point. Either you were homeschooled or public schooled. True there are some who had some of both. But how often does that happen? Acutally, I don’t know. I just imagine it would be a low percent.

2) As a sample of the higher end students (in your eyes) we may be biasing the sample. But what are we biasing?

On the one hand, homeschooling places emphasis on learning and achievement, not necessarily getting a diploma or alphabet soup after your name. Thus there are many who don’t NEED a degree for their profession that will just choose not to persue one. If they really want to take a course, they can often take single courses without the same level of scrutiny as a full time student.

On the other hand. If we have the top end students from public school vs. the top end of home schoolers, I see this as a fair comparison. Not all public schoolers are REQUIRED to take the ACT/SAT. Many in my high school did not because they knew they weren’t going to college.

As far as the other research, you have to WANT to learn more. The only reason why I came around was because my wife kept giving me more information. I had to come up with data on the other side to contradict her. It took three or four years before I finally accepted it. We spent the time and energy because this was a central point to raising our family.

I’m not going to spend that kind of energy here. And, you a public? educator, will probably not be interested enough to spend that energy either.