Does anyone have experience with this? My brother's kids are home schooled, and my son is in Public schooling. I'm trying to see statistics as far as how kids have fared with each type, both intellectually, as well as socially. Any articles that any of y'all have would be greatly appreciated, also. Thanks!
My wife and I did quite a bit of research about home schooling not too long ago. There is a TON of material out there and google is your friend. I think that the biggest influence is who is actually going to home school your kid. Are they responsible? Consistent? Patient? Do they have the ability to teach? Luckily my wife has all of those qualities. Unfortunately my ex-wife has custody of my kids and therefore we are unable to home school them. I know that if\when we get custody and\or have kids of our own, we will definitely home school. Everything we saw showed that most home school kids are smarter and well adjusted.
Have your brother's kids been home schooled all their life? A friend of ours grandsons were/are home schooled, but each had been in public school for a period of time. One has graduated and I think the other still has a year or two left. Both seem like typical teenagers (not sure if that is bad or good ).
You cannot really compare the two, unless on a case by case basis. Like MB said, it depends on who is doing the schooling. My wife and I looked into home schooling. In the process of researching, we came across quite a few mom-blogs. These blogs go into great detail as to what goes on in these mothers' lives. We both came to the conclusion that most of those moms are pretty much bat**** insane.
The home schooled people I have known have been extremely intelligent, but they are very intraverted. These kids and their families are also deeply religous people and they are really well-behaved. I think you get the best education and are less prone to bad behavior if you are home schooled, but public school builds you better for the real world. As long as you are in a good school district, I wouldn't think of taking your kids out of public school.
I thought about public versus private schooling. But I never seriously considered homeschooling. In the end I'm just going to move to a good neighborhood and do public schooling.
From what I understand, Houston has one of the more robust home-schooling networks in the country. I know a family that was deeply into it and they would have people who specialized in different subjects to the point that it seemed like a communist private school start-up. I can't vouch for how good or bad it is for kids. My feeling is that there is probably a lot of variance depending on the the abilities of the teachers. Are you thinking about home-schooling your son?
Another important think to consider is the social aspect of home-schooling. Make sure the child gets opportunities to interact with kids... Not just kids from the neighborhood, but like a play group/network or something. And field trips. Field trips rock!
I was pulled out of Public School when my mom remarried to a religious nutjob after kindergarten. After that I attended a private Christian School for 2 years. By 5th grade my mother was homeschooling me full-time. She was a certified kindergarten teacher for 15 years, but it became difficult for her to give me proper lessons as I got into the higher grades. Also she had to start teaching my 3 younger siblings once they reached kindergarten age. The curriculum was challenging and my mother was steadfast in her approach, we never got to take a lot of days off or vacations like a lot of the other parents in the church we were attending did. I finished high school on time and graduated with a certified High School Diploma and a GPA of 3.65, the work itself was honestly just like doing the homework for a subject without hearing a lecture or seeing examples written out. I had to learn a lot of the stuff simply through reading comprehension. This was hard when it came to stuff like Algebra, my mom wasn't very good at explaining it. Socially it was not very good for me, honestly the church we were in was almost a cult-like atmosphere that believed in "Sheltering" us from the outside world. It was really dumb. Luckily when I was about 16 we left that church and started attending a normal church not being run by psychos religious nuts, and I found a nice circle of friends which helped me break out of my shell. When I got to college I found the work to be a lot easier in some cases, since I was actually hearing lectures in subjects like History and Biology and seeing examples done in Math courses. The transition was a smooth one. Homeschooling is NOT for everyone. I know some homeschooled kids who struggled to get their GEDs at the age of 20. My mom had an iron will when it came to keeping us to a strict attendance policy. It took a tremendous amount of dedication on her part to teach 4 kids in 4 different grades every day. I know I could never do something like that. The social aspects depend on you the parent, get your child involved in some outside activities where they can interact and they should be fine.
Thanks for that, Moes. Can anyone find any recent statistics on this? Everything I'm finding is over ten years old, and I know it has grown quite a bit over the last decade.
Not really. I know we read Home Schooling for Dummies or something like that. There is tons of material out there. You have to go and do the research really because different people are looking for different things. We looked at different cirriculums as well. I know we liked this cirriculum: http://www.calvertschool.org It has so much to do with how invovled you want to be and how you want to do it. You have to go through all of the different options and pretty much put something together that fits your needs. We saw that it would be a LOT of work to do it right or at least what we thought was right. I think that you need someone that is very creative and motivated to teach homeschooling in a way that is beneficial. As for the social aspect of homeschooling, from what we found, home school kids can be very well adjusted and often more adjusted for the real world than kids that go to public schools. Once again, it is very up to you how you mold that for your kids. Most of the books that you read can explain it much better than I can. There are even entire books that are dedicated to the social aspect of home schooling. I think that there is a lot more research involved than reading a few articles and a lot more dedication to home schooling than most people realize. I also think it is nearly impossible for it to be beneficial unless both parents are on board and dedicated. You also have to realize that not all home school kids and cirriculums are religious. We had to weed through all of the religious crap to get to something that was appropriate for us.
I don't think that statistics on home schooling are reliable because each situation is unique. You have to remember that.
Just from personal experience, the few kids I've met that are/were home schooled seemed to be very introverted. Granted they were athlete prodigies, so their training may have led to more isolation than usual. I think socialization is something that home schooling should not forget. Granted that was only from personal experience and a small group, I'm sure many have normal experiences through hanging out w/ neighborhood kids, extracurricular activities like local soccer leagues, etc.
homeschool is much better if you have a parent that does not work. you still have to socialize somehow, most parents use church or summer camps to do this. Private schools around houston, especially the christian schools, are total garbage for advanced subjects.
I agree that there are some private schools I've seen that aren't given you any benefit over the public school, but I don't see why you'd think Houston private schools, generally, are garbage. There are some that are quite good.
