What Being Homeschooled Is Actually Like
“All the world is my school and all humanity is my teacher.” -George Whitman
1. Everyone thinks they know what homeschooling is like.
2. And it can be really hard to explain why their assumptions are wrong.
4. When really, your relationship with them is just extra-awesome!
6. People think that all homeschool classrooms look like…
7. When really, you can (and do) learn everywhere!
“And this is where I go to school.”
17. And is the socialization at public school really that awesome?
20. But in real life, lots of homeschooler couples are happy being different… together.
21. People think your parents teach you EVERYTHING…
24. Many older homeschoolers take supplemental classes at a community college.
25. You even have the freedom to take on an apprenticeship, volunteer positions, or a job.
Texas Home School Coalition interns.
26. Yes, homeschoolers are sometimes a little “different.”
28. But we are also totally awesome.
Actress/writer/gamer/nerd-queen Felicia Day was homeschooled throughout most of her childhood until she began attending college at age 16.
Illustrator and writer of cute animals, Beatrix Potter was schooled at home by a private governess. She once said “Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” -Leonardo da Vinci, who wasn’t formally schooled.
32. And as he points out, it’s awesome how flexible your schedule is…
36. Also, homeschooling prepares you for real life (because you’re in it!)
37. But some people are convinced that homeschooling is SO weird, no matter what you say.
39. Sometimes you end up saying things you don’t even mean in order to get someone to understand.
40. But let’s face it: school is hardly perfect either.
42. There isn’t one education solution for everyone, but everyone CAN learn something from homeschooling:
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- asias What Being Homeschooled Is Actually Like and thinks it’s Win
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asias 3 months agomost “homeschools” are online now and you get to be jn online live classes with your peers.. some of the kids in my 8th grade homeschool class are pretty . …..quirky ..but most of them are totally normal teenagers !! a lot of my friends that i’ve known for a long time used to go to public school and decided to be homeschooled and like it a lot more!
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janebenderw 3 months agoJeesh, that data is aggravating. Here’s a run down of what percentile rank is: If you are at a 50% percentile, you are in the middle of the normal distribution of scores. So, it would make sense that public schools would be at the 50th percentile since the sample size is so large, it’s really a cross-section of the general population. Even if every public school child started performing exceptionally well on standardized tests, their aggregated scores would still turn up in the 50th percentile. The bell curve doesn’t change when the scores do. Homeschoolers represent a much smaller population whose scores will look differently on the frequency distribution. Also, as it clearly shows in the data, education (and presumably income, since those things are correlated) is disproportionately high among parents of homeschoolers, so it’s likely you will see higher percentiles on standardized tests when compared to the general population. A more accurate representation would be to compare public school students and homeschooled students of similar educational backgrounds and socioeconomic status. So, in other words, apples to oranges.
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timirem 3 months agoI went to school in Germany - where homeschooling is not allowed - and I enjoyed a broad and detailed education in History, Politics, Geography, Latin, French, Biology, Chemistry, English, German, Math, Sports, Music, Art and Physics. Tought by some amazing teacher personalities that made me give my best. Show me a parent that is able to replace that!! I think thats impossible… A system that makes homeschooling even an option needs a BIG change!
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Kizeree 2 months agoMaybe they cant teach all those subjects, but they could facilitate their children learning those subjects if the child wanted to. Its not as hard as you think to get a tutor, or books, or a class for the child. Parents of home educated children are NOT teachers, they are facilitators.
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Starwarschick 3 months ago
There are different kinds of homeschoolers. There’s the kind like my family - according to standardized test scores, I’m smarter than 99.8% of American seniors and next year I’m attending one of the best colleges in the country. Then there are religious fanatics who do bible study for hours a day, and unschoolers. In the proper hands, unschooling can work I guess, but all the unschoolers I know are nasty-tempered, idiotic and spoiled kids. They don’t study anything (even things like math and history) unless they want to, and they drive me crazy because they give the rest of us homeschoolers a bad name.
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Kyliopa 3 months ago
That’s funny, as I’ve always thought the regular homeschooled kids were the ones giving us unschoolers a bad name. Granted there are certainly unschoolers out there that you are describing; however, there are “nasty-tempered, idiotic and spoiled kids” in every aspect of the world. When it comes to down to the actual studying of things, yeah, we chose what we wanted to study and when we wanted to study it. I was not particularly fond of math, so I didn’t do much of that, rather I read history books and hung out in the library. And because of that way of life, I’m now working my way towards a Master’s in Library Science. I don’t think I turned out so bad with my whole not “studying anything” way of life.
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Kizeree 2 months ago
I’m an unschooling mother of 5 children and they are not “nasty tempered, idiotic spoiled kids” They do learn maths and history, but not sat at a table working from a book writing or doing loads of sums. They learn from TV, workshops, the internet, reading books, reference books etc. I think you have the wrong idea of unschooling
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spradasaurus 3 months ago
I wish I’d been homeschooled. Being frequently bullied and unchallenged at school made me hate it, and I never really loved it again until I went to college. I’m not sure if I would choose it for my own kids, but it’s certainly a possibility.
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Ali Wherewithall 3 months ago
The only homeschooled kids we had on our block growing up were the Jehova witness kids, they looked completely miserable, they never spoke to us and the little boys had to wear dress shirts with a tie. I remember my mom telling us they were against the religion and sex ed classes in public school. One of the boys is committed to a psych ward now, he got real depressed in his teens, really messed up. The anti-social aspect of homeschooling couldnt have helped
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- Colette What Being Homeschooled Is Actually Like and thinks it’s Win
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lenikdot 3 months ago
sounds nice, if you’re parents are strict and very educated+ if one of them doesn’t need to work. my 15 months old kid already seems a bit bored to be alone with me… and she’ll do tons of other things then just glue macaroni pictures at the kindergarten. the thing is, do i just want to offer her my own horizon?
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Kizeree 2 months ago
I’m strict to a point, but only got the equivalent of a high school education and I’m home educating 5 children. Its not what you were taught that’s important, if you an read, write and know how to find information you don’t know, you can home ed. best thing i ever did for my kids
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rheajane 3 months ago
Summer, while it’s great you had a positive homeschool experience, i don’t understand how you can support it knowing the risks. As evidenced by the comments, a child’s experience can greatly vary depending on how capable the parent is. The person who commented on how their brother had developmental disabilities that the mom didn’t catch makes me so sad. One of the (many) problems with homeschooling is there are no standards or structure. A parent can be completely negligent and incapable of teaching the child and get away with it. How can you support this?
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Summer Anne Burton 3 months ago
Children’s experiences with their education vary greatly whether they are homeschooled, private schooled, or in public schools. I know of many equally sad/horrific/dangerous stories from kids and families in public schools — you too, I’m sure, read about the failings of public school systems, the monotony of standardized testing, the bullying that often goes unpunished, and the *over*medication of kids who just don’t learn well in a school environment. Saying I shouldn’t support something that made sense for me and my family because it didnt work for others would be the same as suggesting someone eschew their public education that may have been rewarding for them just because other kids suffer greatly from it. My post isn’t advocating for homeschooling for everyone, I’m simply suggesting that many of the assumptions about what it’s like are wrong, and there are a lot of good things about it from where I stand. I doubt there will ever be an educational structure that works the same for everyone, which is precisely why I wish everyone on both ‘sides’ would simply be open minded. Also, my second grade teacher (just before we started homeschooling) slapped me in the face, so, you know, the personal horror stories do go both ways.
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annam27 3 months agoYou can take these and apply them to public schools as well. Being in public school doesn’t guarantee a perfect environment. Have you looked at the news recently? Teachers have sex with their students, school shootings, drugs, kids graduating with a 5th grade reading level, and bullying are just the ones that come to mind right now. Your idea of what “structured” schooling looks like is just the one that has been culturally programed into you. Just because homeschooling doesn’t replicate what you think it should look like (which by the way is a massive failure) doesn’t mean that it is not worth supporting. Just because a teacher went to school and got a degree doesn’t mean they are a good teacher and just because there are good teachers doesn’t mean the system is working for everyone. Taking away the rights of all parents because of a few who abuse it is faulty logic. Why are you not advocating that all PSs be shut down when a teacher abuses a student or when a student graduates only to need remedial classes in college?
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whynotzoidberg 3 months agoOkay, this makes some good points but it misses the bad ones. I was home schooled (and unschooled at times, my mom was pretty experimental) back in the dinosaur times when there weren’t the fancy after school programs for the homeschoolers and it was something weirdos who didn’t let their daughters cut their hair did to keep them from learning that the Remington bolt action wasn’t given to us by God to help fight the dinosaurs. There are two problems with home schooling that I’ve experienced first hand: for one thing, a parent isn’t a trained developmental specialist. My brother was diagnosed with dyslexia in the seventh grade after he’d been in public school for a year. My mother had assumed he couldn’t read because he WOULDN’T read, when in reality he spent his entire childhood with a severe learning disability that went entirely untreated. My mother had assumed that because I outgrew reversing letters and numbers he would, too but he didn’t. The other issue we had was that my mother is naturally good at arithmetic. I’m not. She had no frame of reference for how to teach someone who didn’t share her natural gift for it and I couldn’t learn from her. To this day I can’t multiply without singing some skip counting songs we got from a video tape and counting on my fingers and I’ve never learned how to divide things. But she also lacked the ability to help me improve in areas I was good at, like art and creative writing because she wasn’t good at them. I’m not saying never ever ever home school your children because I’ve known people who did get a lot out of it, but I am saying that there are trade-offs that people should be aware of.
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Alison Cawood 3 months ago
Homeschooling requires you to have educated parents who make enough money for one of them to stay home. Super-classist conclusions!
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Summer Anne Burton 3 months ago
I know not everyone can or wants to homeschool and I didn’t mean to insinuate that they should! The conclusions are about what people assume about people who are homeschooling, not what people should do about their kid’s education. I believe thats up to each family to figure out — I just wish that people who are horrified by homeschooling saw it that way, which is what this post is about! FWIW I do know lots of homeschooling parents where both parents worked, but one or both worked from home. I also know single parents who homeschooled. Again, it’s definitely not for everyone but your assumptions about it aren’t entirely true either. Cheers.
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ahmedrohingyac 3 months agoAlison - Not sure about what living standards other people are after, but I do a lower-level corporate gig @ $55K and provide for my family of four just fine - home, car, trips, pizza nights, extracurricular courses.
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noell2 3 months agoThis is not true. There are plenty of two income families that work different shifts to ensure that someone is home teaching their children. There are other’s that view raising and teaching their children at home as something important and forgo having a two income family. We certainly are not rolling in the money on a Enlisted Military Salary but we make due. Why? My children are important to me, I want to do right by my children.
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Summer Anne Burton 3 months ago
Sorry to hear! It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, but like public school I think it’s different for everyone. <3
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Summer Anne Burton 3 months ago
You’re not very nice. Public school didn’t teach you how to be kind?
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MMR 3 months ago
“You’re not very nice. Public school didn’t teach you how to be kind?” Kids who go to public school learn one thing homeschooled kids don’t understand…how to deal with assholes. When regular folk mention the homeschoolers don’t get socialization, what they mean is that homeschooled kids won’t be able to develop the thick skin you need for the real world. Homeschool advocates hear “socialization” and think that just because the kid isn’t a bubble boy, they’ll be fine. Of course you added examples of the great people who’ve been homeschooled but if you saw the socially inept wierdos I’ve met who have been homeschooled you’d know why people think homeschooled kids are weird.
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nyankochan 3 months agoNot necessarily. I went to public school, and you’d think with all the taunting and bullying that I went through, that I’d have a thick skin? Hell no. I’m a pretty messed-up adult, and quite socially inept at that. Years of bottling up emotions so that I wouldn’t be teased further and having to put up a tough front have worn me down. Even though that was over 10 years ago, that stuff stays with you for life.
So yeah, it varies for each person. You might have some well-adjusted homeschoolers, and people who went to traditional school, who came out with issues. (Not blaming school for ALL my problems, but mentioning that it did play a huge part in my mental health) -
pearldianec 3 months agoMMR, you say homeschooled kids are weird? Maybe they are the normal ones and YOU are the weird one.
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jennifeverm 3 months agoYeahhh… except when you have an unstable parent who pretends to homeschool you and instead you get a full time job and the state doesn’t realize it for 3 years.
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