Homeschool, Highschool...Many times I've read things from HS students who can't keep up, or catch up, (more.)

Question

Are these kids being left to do this on their own..what kind of future are you giving them in that situation? Honestly, unless I was a 12th grade school teacher, or higher, I would not trust myself to provide all my childs education. What about all the different social situations you have to learn to deal with for the rest of your life? Who approved this, and who is "over seeing" it so that so many of our youth are not falling behind in "how to live with and deal with other people?" Test results don't really reveal that. Please enlighten me...I just want to know how people justify this? I know I couldn't do it.

Answer 1

I know of two types: those who don't want their kids to be exposed to the "bad" world, (sex, drugs, rock and roll) and the other that doesn't want their kids days wasted learning nothing in the public schools.
A good parent would help find other social things, so their kids have friends.

Answer 2

You've gotten some good answers here so I will try not to repeat what has already been said.

First of all, you are assuming that the teachers in ps are skilled. This is a false assumption in some cases. I know that there are skilled, dedicated ps teachers out there - my mom was one of them. There are many more that are not.

Speaking of my mom, she taught for 22 yrs in ps. What she found was that the kids over the years were increasingly difficult to teach because of the family breakdown. The kids were not disciplined and so had difficulty learning. It was harder to keep classroom control. The administrators did not back teachers who tried to discipline kids. More and more nonsense curriculum was required to be taught, such that the last several years my mom taught, she was not able to teach the basics that you'd expect a child to know. Also, kids that were mentally or emotionally disabled such that they could not be in a regular classroom...started being 'mainstreamed,' so the most disruptive and farthest behind academically kids are now often put in with the others. Many school teachers are required to teach the material on various standardized tests.

I have MANY hsing friends who hs because they volunteered extensively at their child's school and found out what was really going on there and being taught in the classrooms. One mom was so appalled after volunteering nonstop for 2 yrs while her daughter was in middle school - she said that even the advanced classes had been so dumbed down that the kids were too bored to do anything in them.

Also, school does not reflect the real world. I can remember many things from my own school days that I have NEVER come across as an adult.

Answer 3

Most that I know (I did this, too) go through a distance education course. They have teachers they can snail mail, e-mail, or call. They send the work into a school. They get comments on it. They get graded.
And Columbia University conducted a study that showed that homeschoolers, on average, scored higher on college entrance exams than other students. This does not mean that all of them do, but many of them do.
There are bad examples of social and educational in every form of schooling. Some of the people on here were not very scheduled like they should have been. Others, who ask for answers, are just plain lazy.
Also, very few homeschoolers have social problems. There is always a bad example, but most of them get plenty of socialization. Most communities have homeschooling co-ops that provide their children with field trips, extracurriculars, dances, etc. They still have people that they run into in other situations.
I actually became more social after I was homeschooled.
Enlighten me as to how cramming kids into a class with 20 or 30 kids their own age teaches them how to deal with life? This is the only situation in life where they are. And how are they social during school? At my school we had three minutes in between classes to grab books and run to the next class. We had a 45-minute lunch period. You had to rush through eating, so there wasn't much time to talk there, either. After school, we were all running to catch our buses, so there wasn't any talking there either.
You probably know homeschoolers and don't even know it. On yahoo! answers is the only place where I've heard people complaining about the social aspect. You see, the people around me knew I was homeschooled, and I proved ALL of the social aspects that people assume wrong.
Most of the children on here will tell you that they are very social.
In the past, there was a problem with socialization because the kids were just left in the house. That is definitely not the case anymore. I was so busy doing other things, there were times when I had to try and force homework around everything else (I always managed to get it done with excellent grades, though).
I find it hilarious that people think that most homeschoolers are socially retarded. Most of the kids on here definitely disprove that.

Answer 4

I'm a public school teacher and have TESTED many home school children because they come to school to get tested (where I'm from). RESULTS will surprise you on what SOME of them know. They are off the public school charts and others just don't do the job. So like knowledge, to steriotype home schooler in social situations is also not fare. Some are very social and "get it" while others don't. However, the same can be said of public school students also.

The truth is we are dealing with people. Some are greatly aided by one-one learning while others do better in group situations.

The "approval" for home schooling is Constitutional. Although parents have a legal responsibility to have (or to teach) their children, WHERE they do it is one of their freedoms. It's sad to say that it once was a state reponsibility to run our schools, but now with No Child Left Behind, it has become Federal. It's really no wonder the home schooling movement continues to satisfy a need for children to be educated. Generally this is successfully done and you need to know that.

Answer 5

The answers you have gotten are good.
I wonder how much info you have looked at before you actually asked the question. Home Schoolers now have really "proved themselves" in society and in college. There is always going to be a home school family here or there that isn't measuring up,(kind of like a lot of public schools) but typically Home school kids do better on test scores and in social settings than their public school counterparts.

Answer 6

I even have theory the comparable ingredient many circumstances, yet I do continually ask 'could I ask you a query' of clerks in shops ... this gets their interest in direction of me, no longer in direction of folding clothing or including numbers or some thing else. I additionally say i could desire to invite a 'quite stupid' question, because of the fact for some reason when I say that the guy i'm asking continually thinks i'm asking a extremely clever question ... As for the final question, I even have merely ignored many busses by way of being around the line while it glided by way of, and function been waiting there for fifteen to thirty minutes, and that i might opt for to kick the questioner interior the tooth while they ask if the bus has come yet ... for the comparable reason. in specific circumstances, i will tell the guy the different bus that has long handed by way of as a thank you to get my 'small anger' out ... yet locate that the bus they needed is the single that left 3 minutes previously their arrival. What gets me is they seem to think of I could desire to have 'held' that bus for them, even regardless of the indisputable fact that i've got by no skill even viewed them previously. those human beings are not merely 'stupid' ... they are so self based i ask your self why they do no longer 'force' ... perfect off a cliff!

Answer 7

You have read about homeschooling high schoolers who can't keep up? And yet never once have you heard about kids graduating from public schools unable to read, perform functional maths, without knowledge of world history, literature or logic? Most hs homeschoolers are far beyond public schoolers, because public schools have already left the children behind, it's so bad the feds had to pass legislation on it! According to the NCES, approximately 3.4 million persons in the United States ages 16 through 24 were high school dropouts. That's more children than homeschool in the entire country!

What kind of future do they have? Where is your concern for that?
According to CEES, 28% of college freshmen need remedial courses...while college preparatory classes in high school positively impact student academic achieve-
ment at the college level, many high school students lack access to such courses and to other advanced classes. At the same time, some high school teachers’ low expecta-
tions for students influence the types of classes that students can take and consequently their success beyond high school.
High schools often fail to motivate students most during their last year of high school. Many high school seniors experience “senior slump,” during which they focus
less on academics and more on relaxation (Kirst & Venezia, 2001). For instance, many high school seniors do not take mathematics classes because they have already fulfilled the minimum mathematics requirement for college admission, or they do not work as hard to keep their grades high after they are admitted to college.

Finally, just because YOU could not do it, does not mean that no one else can. I am more than happy to learn alongside my children, to help them have a better future. I AM a college graduate, and half the stuff I had to know to graduate is gone. However, I know that it takes very little to learn something, and because my children and I work one-on-one, it takes little effort to find how best for my children to learn the same topic.

As for socialization. What a poor argument against homeschooling. Every homeschooler here will laugh at it, because we see our children socializing with a huge variety of people every single day. Much more so than public school children, who are in a building with the same people day in and day out, getting complacent about building relationships because they never have to, they've known these same kids since kindergarten! It is not homeschoolers who are falling behind in how to live with other people, it is a large group of children that crosses all kinds of boundaries, educational, economic, social, who are being taught by American media that self-importance is the only concern. It's emphasized in public schools where survival of the fittest (coolest, smartest, toughest) is the primary social goal

Answer 8

Our kids learn how to socialize by example. They watch us interact with others on a daily basis. They see us succeed, they see us fail, and they see the pain involved in having to correct a situation that was handled badly. Instead of mimicking our actions, they adapt them to match their unique and individual personalities.

I think this is a much better way of learning social skills than from a peer who is equally inexperienced and socially inept. After all, if you think learning from your peers is more effective, why shouldn't children learn Math, English, Social Studies, etc. from one another as well? Think about it.

Answer 9

J.S.Y.K
Home-school programs have stepped it up so to speak over the past years. They are doing as much as they can to help better socialize children. Most home-school students have groups that they can join to meet, and hangout with other Home-schooled kids/teens. I can't understand if you're talking about High School students can't keep up, or home-school students. As a student of home-school, and previously high school I see more problems in the American Public school system than in any home-school program. (That I've seen)
A lot of home-schooled students such as my self are not home-schooled by their parents. There are different ways to home-school your children.

Answer 10

I'm not sure that it's any different than public school high school kids who get behind, especially for novel studies or long-term projects.

You need to understand that a lot of the homeschooled teens posting here are doing online programs of some sort. It is totally normal to have a year or so of really learning to manage your time. Adult distance-learning has the same issues. You may see it as a bad thing; I think it's a great opportunity for them to learn some time management skills.

I have no intention of providing all of my child's education; I'm not a walking set of encyclopedia/textbooks. However, there are a ton of resources out there that will allow us to continue at least through the end of junior high (gr. 9). At that point, we'll see what we want to do. But again, there are so many resources at the high school level, so many correspondence courses, even the possibility of going in to the school for a few courses... More to the point, *I'm* not providing all of my child's education. She's learning stuff I never learned simply by reading books I haven't read. She participates in summer camps and extra-curricular lessons. There are clubs and workshops galore popping up here for homeschooled kids. Many homeschoolers like to do co-ops where different subjects are taught by those who are able.

And frankly, my education in school had little to do with the teachers for the most part. If you read your texts, there was little else that most of them added.

"What about all the different social situations you have to learn to deal with for the rest of your life?"

Let's pretend for a second that the social stuff that occurs among immature children is also what happens at the adult level. Who's going to be better prepared and have a good strategy for dealing with something the first time it happens: a child or an adult? The adult, naturally. It's something called maturity. There's no need for us to experience everything as children. That would imply that we can't learn and grow later on. And besides, most homeschooled kids I know are very socially active. The fact that they can talk with their 'teacher' and their 'classmates' throughout the day instead of sitting in a desk listening or working most of the time (under threat of punishment if they start talking to an neighbour), means they are getting more social interactions, more learning how to live and deal with people.

People have to get it out of their brains that the current model of education is the only way to create people who know how to work with others. Most of the people before the mid to late 1800's were schooled at home. Their education wasn't limited to the home, just like homeschoolers' isn't. They participated in their communities, just not in masses every day. They still learned to read, write, become engineers, lawyers, Presidents... I read in some survey done that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were among the top favourite presidents. Both of them were educated at home. Were they at a disadvantage to learn how to live and deal with people? I think not.

Have you studied developmental psychology? I have. There's nothing in there indicating that children need to be surrounded by masses of same-age peers each day in order to be successful. In fact, there are definite issues that arise with such a model. We can just look at the changes in student behaviour over the past 100 years. Just think about what teens were like over 100 years ago, before they became part of the 'herd instinct' that was forced upon them when schools had to create different grades to best accommodate the children who were now being forced to go to school. At 15, they knew how to work, take care of themselves and a household (especially the girls at that age) and how to deal with others, probably BETTER than today's teens, yet they didn't spend 35 hours a week in school.

I justify it by seeing beyond what I grew up with, seeing that what I grew up with is not necessarily good, that it doesn't produce what it is supposed to produce, that the kids I grew up with were not truly successful in learning how to deal with others at that point. Also by knowing that my kids being able to go their own pace and to have a broader knowledge base presented to them than they would have in school and by being focused on the learning and exploring and asking questions instead of just providing the desired answers will give them a better foundation for learning as adults.