Harvard’s Bizarre Take on Homeschooling

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I just saw that. Not much of a sample size.

Also, dating on college campuses is dead nowadays.
 
Hume said:
Good case in point:

My wife has two cousins. Wealthy household, dads a surgeon, mom stays at home. Homeschooled the kids.

Graduated HS in their early teens. Finished bachelor’s degrees at a private college before 20.

Impressive, right?

But their social lives were a wreck. Church was the only real socialization they regularly got and they were so much younger than their compeers at university that they weren’t part of the college dating pool. Consider that when most of us who go to college, we also find our spouses there.

She ended up cohabiting with a guy 20 years her senior and he JUST got married.

Even on my side of the family, I always considered my homeschooled cousins to be just a little odd.
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Granted, every experience is unique. But there’s a cost to homeschooling kids, whether we want to admit it or not.
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I wasn’t smart enough to graduate early, but this describes my homeschooling experience pretty well. The only socialization I got was Church, where I talked with one kid once a month, and the rest was all done on message boards, chans, and subreddits.
Despite my family’s best efforts, I was woefully behind in math and science. When I went back into the system in HS, my academics were shot and I couldn’t talk to anybody for most of 1st year.
I think it takes a lot of effort on the parent’s part to homeschool, to the point where it’s almost like another job, and most simply aren’t cut out for it. Even now, I’m known as a rather awkward and introverted individual since I still don’t really have a good grasp on how to start and carry a conversation.
This wasn’t limited to me either. Almost everybody in the homeschooling group I was with turned out to be socially incompetent or severely depressed or both.
I’m sure it works out for some people, but lack of oversight results in these kinds of things.
 
There’s no need for you to be adversarial. Homeschooling comes with costs. That’s just the reality of the thing.

Besides, if the idea is to lock your kids away from the world, remember that one day they gotta leave the nest.

Might be a better idea to encounter the questions the world throws at them while they’re home than when they go to uni and you’re not there to crutch them.
 
ImQuiet said:
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Hume:
Good case in point:

My wife has two cousins. Wealthy household, dads a surgeon, mom stays at home. Homeschooled the kids.

Graduated HS in their early teens. Finished bachelor’s degrees at a private college before 20.

Impressive, right?

But their social lives were a wreck. Church was the only real socialization they regularly got and they were so much younger than their compeers at university that they weren’t part of the college dating pool. Consider that when most of us who go to college, we also find our spouses there.

She ended up cohabiting with a guy 20 years her senior and he JUST got married.

Even on my side of the family, I always considered my homeschooled cousins to be just a little odd.
…
Granted, every experience is unique. But there’s a cost to homeschooling kids, whether we want to admit it or not.
Click to expand...
I wasn’t smart enough to graduate early, but this describes my homeschooling experience pretty well. The only socialization I got was Church, where I talked with one kid once a month, and the rest was all done on message boards, chans, and subreddits.
Despite my family’s best efforts, I was woefully behind in math and science. When I went back into the system in HS, my academics were shot and I couldn’t talk to anybody for most of 1st year.
I think it takes a lot of effort on the parent’s part to homeschool, to the point where it’s almost like another job, and most simply aren’t cut out for it. Even now, I’m known as a rather awkward and introverted individual since I still don’t really have a good grasp on how to start and carry a conversation.
This wasn’t limited to me either. Almost everybody in the homeschooling group I was with turned out to be socially incompetent or severely depressed or both.
I’m sure it works out for some people, but lack of oversight results in these kinds of things.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your honesty on the matter.

Hope things ended up going great for you! If not, it’s only too late when you’re in your coffin.
 
I may b have something interesting 4 u, but can`t post LINK’S in comments… Greetz from Switzerland

Struggling between being a ‘super-mum, 'super-dad', super-employee’ and 'super-businesspartner` at #homeoffice ❓ What are your experiences:question:
 
Hume said:
My wife has two cousins. Wealthy household, dads a surgeon, mom stays at home. Homeschooled the kids.

Graduated HS in their early teens. Finished bachelor’s degrees at a private college before 20.

Impressive, right?

But their social lives were a wreck. Church was the only real socialization they regularly got and they were so much younger than their compeers at university that they weren’t part of the college dating pool. Consider that when many of us who go to college also find our spouses there.

She ended up cohabiting with a guy 20 years her senior and her brother JUST got married.

Even on my side of the family, I always considered my homeschooled cousins to be just a little odd.
…
Granted, every experience is unique. But there’s a cost to homeschooling kids, whether we want to admit it or not.
Click to expand...
I’ve seen this happen.

But I’ve also seen home schooled people get admitted to Ivy League schools (very liberal) and do brilliantly, and go on to be amazing members of society and highly-successful in their chosen profession.

And I’ve seen very sad cases end up like the one you describe.

It all depends on how it’s done.
 
redbetta said:
Do you even know any homeschoolers? Because the ones I’ve met have experienced more and have had more of a social life than I had growing up. Ask the homeschooled people on this forum if they feel like they have missed out on anything.
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This is what I have seen, too. Most home schooled citizens have done well in their public and private lives.

When public schools are soooooo bad (like the ones in our city), and a family doesn’t have the money to send children to a private school, or to move away to a place where the public schools are producing acceptable results (standardized test scores at least in the “average” range, safe environment free of overt gang activity, enough funding to provide a clean, up-to-date environment and heating/windows, a staff that is up-to-date in their training, etc.), then what choice do they have other than home-schooling or online-schooling?

C’mon! Would YOU send YOUR children to school that is a daily obstacle course when it comes to learning and surviving, just so they can be “socialized”? When children experience daily bullying, terrorizing, teacher and administration (principal, etc.) apathy, and especially inadequate teaching–they will be haunted by this for the rest of their lives. At age 62, i’m still considering suing the school (for an apology, not money) where I experienced daily bullying with teacher knowledge but no intervention–that bullying has contributed to many of my shortcomings and weaknesses (e.g., a tendency to “do fierce battle” anytime there is a controversy about anything!–Some of you have no doubt seen that here on CAF!).

Is it possible that it’s the “online schooling” rather than the home-schooling that is producing the poor socialization results?
 
I went to Catholic schools all my life. I hardly did any socializing: I had too much homework for that.

I really wish I was homeschooled. That way, I could have spent more time learning about things I actually care about.
 
This explains a lot.

The grass on the other side is rarely as green once you get there. Don’t spend your efforts longing for a different past. No point.

As a pharma student, I’d risk a guess that your educational experience was adequate.
 
Yes, but I never grew much as a person. Never had any hobbies or really discovered where my passions lie. I was top of my class in high school and was esteemed by my peers, but despised by the administration for questioning them. Even in pharmacy school, I am still a top student and esteemed by peers, but the administration hates my guts for being openly critical of some things that the school does. I am mainly becoming a pharmacist so that I would have the resources to give my children a better life than I had. I intend on homeschooling them so that they would actually have the time to explore what they are truly good at and reach there full potential and not be at the mercy of wannabe dictators.

I am not spending my efforts longing for a different past. My efforts are directed towards a better future.
 
Gently, in your scenario there’s still a dictator. It’s just you.

Maybe your kids will resent being homeschooled and want to be more “like everyone else”.

The grass isn’t always greener.
 
If they hate being homeschooled so much despite all the options I give them in what subjects and interests to pursue, the will always have that option. Though, I will remind them that being just like everyone else is not always a good thing.

Also, that you would call a parent who wants to encourage their children to create their own curriculum a dictator is strange. Last time I checked, dictators do not offer much in in the way of choice.

EDIT: Any homeschool parents on this thread want to chime in? Describe your “dictatorship.”
 
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Well, your ability to determine the curriculum is a bit more limited than you imagine.

There are some educational standards that must be met. The filler and fluff where “we determine what we want to learn” is very, very secondary.
 
The opening posts, if you consider any reasonable disagreement to be an “attack”.
 
And when did I say I was not intending on meeting general standards? The thing is, homeschoolers can generally cover the exact same material in less time due to a smaller teacher to student ratio and the fact that the student can move on when they get a concept and not be waiting for the teacher to decide with the rest of the class is ready to move on to the next lesson. This opens up more space in the curriculum for other things that the student would find more enjoyable.
 
Peeps said:
It all depends on how it’s done.
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And that’s the big problem I have with homeschooling. There’s not a lot of oversight, so it’s truly a dice roll on how the student will turn out.
I’m not saying the current system is great or anything, but at least there’s a more concrete idea of what students are supposed to be doing and how they are performing.
 
Hume said:
Well, your ability to determine the curriculum is a bit more limited than you imagine.

There are some educational standards that must be met. The filler and fluff where “we determine what we want to learn” is very, very secondary.
Click to expand...
Since this is a Catholic forum, there is little need for me to keep this anything but simple. Parents are 100 percent in charge of and responsible for their own childrens’ upbringing and well-being. Their authority comes from God. There is nothing “secondary” about this. Your own ideas of “educational standards” and what constitutes their well-being may or may not be insightful, but are ultimately irrelevant compared to the parents’ discretion and duties.
 
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ImQuiet said:
There’s not a lot of oversight, so it’s truly a dice roll on how the student will turn out.
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The states do have oversight when it comes to academics. There are various achievement tests that all students have to take every year.

I can remember back when my kids were tiny, and many parents were homeschooling or planning to home school (and it was still illegal in many states!) .

I think that there is much more oversight and homeschooling families have many more resources now that we have the internet. Back then there were so few materials, but for the last 30 years, homeschooling methods and materials have been developed, and the internet helps parents learn what’s out there and how others do it.
 
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ImQuiet said:
so it’s truly a dice roll on how the student will turn out.
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This is true of any type of schooling.

There are plenty of public and private school children who have dynamic school years, were 1st in their class, valedictorian, state-ranked athletes or musicians, State Scholars, perfect scores on the ACT/SAT, and appear to be headed for glory and fortune in this life…and they end up just living normal lives–working a low or middle income job somewhere and never accomplishing anything great, in spite of what their glowing yearbook messages predicted.

And there are also a lot of public and private school children who barely graduated and gave their parents and teachers ulcers and prematurely gray hair!–and then something happened to wake the kid up and they went on to brilliant careers and earned a ton of money and have a statue erected in their honor by their hometown!

And then there are the majority of us, who did well or maybe really well, or at least average in school, and we went to college or trade school or joined the military, and now we have decent jobs that pay all our bills and leave enough left over to go on a fun vacation every few years, and we are involved in our communities (but not as mayor or any kind of leader)–and we don’t get into trouble with the law and we love our kids and our churches, and we die with a lot of people mourning our loss–and in my opinion, that’s what “turning out well” is.
 
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