Homeschoolers united!

[Elenia]

In response to Rdearman's question: I wanted to be homeschooled because I was one of those kids who was ahead of the curve. When I was about five or six, my teacher had to tell my parents not to let my older sisters play 'school' with me because I was doing to well in class. The problem with that was I'd finish all my work early, get bored and start distracting other kids. A teacher about 20-25 other 5-6 year old does not want that student in their class. I spent most of my time in class reading, and certain teachers let me because I was doing well (and I was too loud otherwise, probably). That lead to complaints from other students sometimes. I also had difficulty making friends sometimes, which didn't exactly strengthen my desire to be in school.

One of my friends was homeschooled for part of her secondary education (although she went back into the school system for her GSCEs) due to bullying. Another friend here in Sweden would have really benefited from homeschooling being legal as she was bullied so extensively by her classmates and neglected by her teachers that she was eventually forced to drop out of school. She had to make up for lost time at the equivalent of a community college.

If I had my way, I would have had tutors. Not that I don't think my parents would have been capable of teaching me - my dad's maths skills are fantastic, and the advice my mum gave me on essays and the like was always the same things my teachers told me. But I don't think I would have liked learning from them, because I am stubborn. And I don't think they would have taught me for the same reason. They refuse to even give me driving lessons but that would have been a huge financial burden on them, so it wouldn't have been an option, probably.

[tiia]

Well, if someone is just ahead of the curve (and teachers are hopefully competent enough to see that), there is the option to let the kid skip a whole year. I know someone, who just did that still in elementary school, because it was obvious that one year above was more suitable. The grades were still good until the end, leaving no doubts that this had been the right thing to do in this particular case.
Unfortunately this depends quite a lot on the teachers ability to make the right decision.

Later some schools tried to make skipping a year easier for good students from grade 10 to 11, but only at those specific years, not in general. (That still with 13 years of school. Grade 11 was often a rather relaxed year and therefore skipping then was easier.)

[MamaPata]

It's generally not possible in the UK to skip a year - certainly, I don't know of anyone who did even if their academic level would have meant the content was accessible to them.

I'm in pretty much the same boat as Elenia on all the things she said. I read this thread because I find the idea of homeschooling interesting in theory and I'm very intrigued to see what everyone does or plans to do. Also like Elenia, I hated being taught things by my parents, much as I love them. Is that a problem that anyone has had? What did you do?

[Systematiker]

I had always wanted to be homeschooled for similar reasons as Elenia and MamaPata. My wife wasn't allowed to skip a grade in Germany, as she was already near the age cutoff, so she already had issues being the youngest (and perhaps most precocious) in her class. We both would have benefited greatly from it.

Now, we're not officially homeschoolers; although we have started with our son, he's two, so no one really cares. But it's important to us for a number of reasons, one of them being that we give our children access to educational opportunities that we just didn't have (and that's sometimes odd stuff, maybe they won't want to, but they'll have the option. I went to a private school, and lived near a large city, and there was still stuff I was interested in that I had to learn as an adult because the option wasn't there as a child). Another is the "multiple-standards": we will hit the standards for whatever US state we live in, another that we've picked as rigorous, and Baden-Württemberg.

Another factor is that I am an educator myself, albeit in higher ed, and we've got some pretty well-considered theories about holistic education and formation that we think are important. And then there's the fact that we might have to move often (who knows, in this field!), so it would provide some continuity.

As for the financial factor: we are very aware of what it costs us as a family to have my wife stay home even now - and what it means to follow the path we do. In some areas, she could out-earn me, if we chose to live there. It's in part a "sacrifice" for our opinions on education, but also a part of a conscious lifestyle choice that we make, about how we want to live as a family.

And for the record, while I don't distrust the government in general, I don't trust the US government to pay me on time
No, really, I worked for the German government at one time, too, and there was a coverup going on among my colleagues! It's "how to make people think you're working when you're not"

(I apologize if those last two jokes are "too soon", they are intended tongue-in-cheek)

[Ani]

Well, if someone is just ahead of the curve (and teachers are hopefully competent enough to see that), there is the option to let the kid skip a whole year. I

This is not always a good fit socially and it is often not enough acceleration for gifted kids.
Children make large jumps in maturity in middle school and high school that I would not want my kids to be feeling they should be part of earlier. Childhood innocence is precious, IMO and the ending of it should come with a somewhat more mature brain as part of their natural development -- I don't just mean dating/sexuality but also the ability to handle difficult history topics, wars, death and tortures. . The difference between a 9 year old and an 11 year old is huge for example.

Another issue with grade skips is that many children don't develop all areas equally. My daughter is 3 years or more ahead in all areas that involve words, but she's only on grade level in math. She couldn't handle a 3 year grade skip because of that and also the written output required would probably be too high. Even with that she'd be bored to tears in science class.

Other times kids may be capable of all the academics but not handle the type of books and smaller print used in higher levels. When you have a first grader doing pre-algebra it takes a lot of parental support to write the problems out on big paper and find texts with enough white space, or even to do everything orally. That sort of thing just can't happen in schools.

[Elsa Maria]

I skipped from 3rd grade to 5th grade. It solved some problems and created new problems. But the same can be said for homeschooling - there are always trade-offs.

[IronMike]

I'm not aware of financial penalties in the U.S., except perhaps California (which I know little about). Since I wasn't in public high school long enough to get a high school diploma, I took the GED: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Educational_Development, and I know many people that were only homeschooled took the GED as well. The cost of it in Idaho is $120. From there it is easy to enter a two-year community college. I imagine to be competitive for an ivy-league university, you would need to score really well on standardized tests like the SAT or ACT, amongst other things.

For anyone reading this and considering homeschooling in the U.S., I will strongly encourage your kids to NOT take the GED. In the U.S., a parent-created transcript is legally equivalent to a school-issued one. The concerns with GED is the stigma that comes with a GED ("Oh, you dropped out of high school?") not to mention the concerns if your child wants to enlist in the military (that is a longer discourse of which I have experience and can discuss if any want). Additionally, many colleges and trade schools have limits to how many GED "graduates" they will accept, as opposed to those holding a high school diploma.

[IronMike]

For every outstanding parent who homeschools their children there will be many more who are average and many who are below average. I suspect that many countries (perhaps Sweden) feel the risk of sub-standard learning outweighs any potential benefit. I don't know anyone who has teenagers would think they are compliant robots. This risk of sub-standard education is the reason the UK reserves the right to issue a School Attendance Order to force you to send the child to school full or part-time.

I don't think the numbers follow:
--The home-educated typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. (The public school average is the 50th percentile; scores range from 1 to 99.)
--Homeschool students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income.
--Home-educated students typically score above average on the SAT and ACT tests that colleges consider for admissions.1

As to the "risk of sub-standard education," how is the UK doing with their non-homeschooled population? What percentage of those students are receiving sub-standard education? I know in the U.S. unfortunately, that number is high, especially compared to the homeschooled population.

I'm interested in why people choose this path since it incurs a number of penalties financially for the parent (in the UK) and some issues for the children later. Here I'm mainly discussing the fact that non-school educated students in the UK must pay for examinations GCSE, etc. which would normally be funded by the school and county council. In addition lack of testing to the National Curriculum standard has caused problems for the children when making applications to Universities even if the parents have paid for the relevant testing for GCSE's. However, I'm also told that now due to the fact the UK no longer funds Universities and you don't get in solely on merit this is less of a problem.

I know you were talking about the UK above, but I'll speak to almost 20 years of homeschooling: Sure, there are financial penalties. Curricula are expensive. There are no tax benefits to homeschooling (thankfully). School trips are self-funded. Most cities don't allow homeschooled kids to participate in public school sports teams (despite their parents paying property taxes) so that means any sports your kid wants to do is self-funded. All true.

But all of that is still outweighed by being able to direct your kid's learning. By not having to spend 20 minutes of every "class hour" dealing with calling roll, discipline issues and the like of a classroom. (I taught fifth grade and was happy to get 20 minutes of time-on-task for any 45-min block of instruction.) One-on-one certainly is ideal for learning, as shown anecdotally by my kids' results and in the linked studies above. Not to mention the selfish reasons like being able to take family vacations when schools are in session, thus avoiding crowds, being able to spend a day at the Smithsonian and counting that as school.

The homeschooled population in the U.S. is still hovering around 2% of the total school-aged population, so we're still a minority. Parents a generation before my wife and I were parents fought hard to remove laws restricting homeschooling and those fights are still on-going. Just last year I had to "call in the lawyers" to help with one of my kids who was being discriminated against because of his parent-issued high school diploma and transcript. Guess who won?

[rdearman]

As to the "risk of sub-standard education," how is the UK doing with their non-homeschooled population?

No idea. But really I wasn't questioning the validity of home schooling, simply stating that some countries politicians may feel the risk is to great, or there is no real desire for homeschooling in the country. They are a plethora of reasons why countries might not make home schooling legal. In fact I think it is a fairly recent thing in the UK (The Education Act 1996). There is also some concern that some parents have used home schooling to cover up domestic abuse, so guidelines were put in place for home visits.

I know in the U.S. unfortunately, that number is high, especially compared to the homeschooled population.

Education in the USA lags behind most developed countries anyway according to recent research.

The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

The UK ranks 15th place out of 71 countries, 15th place for science, 21st in maths. Singapore ranks number one if you're interested, both over all and in each testing section for reading, maths, and science.

Personally I'm not for or against home schooling, have no axe to grind either way.

[Ogrim]

I've been reading this thread with a lot of interest as the homeschooling idea is rather alien to me. Homeschooling is not prohibited in Norway, as the law on Education only says that parents have an obligation to ensure that their children receive education, not an obligation to send them to school. However, in practice the number of Norwegian kids being homeschooled is negligible. There is really no tradition for it, and besides, in most couples both parents work, and very few people would give up their career to stay at home and educate their kids. The few cases I have read about have mostly been situation where children were subject to harsh bullying, or had some condition which made it difficult to integrate them into a normal school.

In Norway homeschoolers have an obligation to follow more or less closely the national curriculum, and the local authorities require parents to submit reports on what they teach. The authorities can also send a teacher or social worker around to check on the children's educational level as well as mental and social health. If they find shortcomings, they authorities can oblige parents to stop homeschooliing and send the kids to a state school. This may be considered an intrusion into the private sphere, but the thinking in Norway is that the kids' needs are more important than the parents' right to decide how to educate their children.

Like redearman I am not for or against homeschooling, and I can see that there can be good reasons for making that choice. In a way I admire people who take on such an obligation - giving a child a rounded education comparable to what schools provide seems like a daunting task to me.