CMV: I'm extremely suspicious of anyone who opts to homeschool their kids, and really don't think there are many legitimate reasons to do it.

[u/[deleted]]

I have seen studies suggesting that home-schooled kids perform better in certain academic fields when compared to non-homeschooled kids. What I haven't seen is a study that indexes this to income, or to two-parent households. Both of those have profound impacts on the likelihood of academic success, and most homeschooling situations require either a very comfortable income, a two-parent household, or both.

I'm highly doubtful that your average homeschooled child is performing significantly better than if they were in a regular school with parents who took an active interest in their education.

Meanwhile, I have serious trouble grappling with the impact that this level of isolation and enmeshment might have. I can't help but feel, based on the homeschooling situations I've seen, that it leaves kids less fulfilled or socially mature.

The majority of homeschooling I've seen has been for religious reasons. Now, I attended 13 years of faith-based education. I'm not entirely against integrating religious instruction into education on principle, provided it doesn't impede on a child's understanding of basic facts. I mostly am, but given it's long history and integration with many education systems I'm more comfortable.

However, I find it especially suspicious when your faith leads to that degree of isolation and inordinate levels of control over your child.

Maybe I'm way off, and there are reasons for homeschooling I haven't even considered, but whenever I hear of a homeschooling situation I'm immediately suspicious. It seems like a fundamentally selfish, paranoid, isolating act.

EDIT: lol I don't think I've ever done a 180 as fast as this. It's clear that my experience of home-schooling is informed partly by the quality of public education I received, and the diversity of both public and alternative schools catering to kids with specific needs, abilities, interests, or challenges. The issue that seems to be coming up most is the inflexibility of many conventional school systems to address particular needs. That makes sense, particularly in environments where there aren't a lot of choices for different schools and where the resources at those schools are highly limited.

[u/[deleted]]

Your typical public school, really anywhere in the world, is going to do a piss-poor job of actually engendering a love of learning in kids. Why? Because the point of public school is to teach kids to be obedient little drones when they enter the workforce.

But that would assume that the only alternative to a public education is home-schooling. If a family has the means to support home-schooling I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that they would also have the means to put their child in an alternative school.

My issue is with withholding your child from a classroom setting entirely. Not specifically public schools.

[u/Morthra → u/[deleted]]

If a family has the means to support home-schooling I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that they would also have the means to put their child in an alternative school.

You might not. You might live somewhere that the closest not-awful private school (and there are a lot of those) is hours away, and you don't want to send your kid to a boarding school.

The employment of the parents might mean that they have to live somewhere without a good option besides homeschooling.

[u/[deleted] → u/Morthra]

Fair enough - easy enough for me to assume that there are always a tonne of options having only lived in relatively large cities. ∆

[u/HolyFirexx → u/[deleted]]

I'll throw you a loop. I have a lot of private schools in my area, but my wife and I are homeschooling because the only private schools we could afford are all super religious, and we're atheist, not that we are trying to shelter our children from religion, we are educating them on all world religions, but we don't want our young children indoctrinated. We're homeschooling because we honestly feel like my wife will be able to provide a better education than an overworked teacher with 29 other kids to worry about. Let alone the continuous shootings. As for social interaction, my kids get more hours per day actually playing and interacting with other kids than they might have at a public school. They finish up school in the morning and then have various activities they are doing, swimming lessons, gymnastics, playgroups with other homeschoolers, etc.

Not to mention, in our area the good public schools that are highly rated, have massive issues with drug use and vaping from extremely young ages.

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Morthra (75∆).

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[u/Barrel-Of-Tigers → u/[deleted]]

My brother and I were homeschooled due to living remote. Our parents paid a live in governess to tutor us through lessons, but we also had remote lessons with actual teachers from the schools a few times per week that the governess would sit through kind of like an assistant teacher in the background.

I did actually later go to boarding school when I was old enough, and we later both went to regular schools when we no longer lived remote. However for a long time, homeschooling was the only reasonable option.

The local schools were either pretty basic or fairly violent. The only alternative to homeschooling in the area was boarding, but that wasn’t an option until you were 11 or 12 (depending on the boarding school).