Ask Lemmy

Former homeschooled kid here. Everything I'm about to say is personal experience but I've known many other homeschooled people throughout my life.

With homeschooling you get out what you put in. If the parents take the time to really dial in to the child's learning needs and set up adequate socialization through after school activities or meetups with other homeschoolers I truly believe it is one of if not the best option for raising a child.

That being said, most of the people choosing to homeschool are not doing it to give their kids the best. Many are narcissistic conservatives who deny modern science and homeschool not to teach the child but to indoctrinate. They don't consider mental health important. They don't consider friends important. They consider the kid learning the Bible and toughening up important. The parents are often social outcasts themselves because of their more strict beliefs.

Homeschooling is not a problem and doesn't result in anything directly, it's the people choosing to homeschool not being equipped to do it properly. In my experience the kind of parent who would choose homeschooling is likely to produce a social awkward kid even if they don't homeschool.

TL:DR - Homeschooling good. Most everyone who chooses homeschooling bad. Hug your kids.

It is illegal here, parents are required to send their children to school for a minimum of nine years.

This is to protect the interests of the child, Sweden has several laws that are focused on the child's rights over the parent's authority.

I have read arguments from people in the US who homeschool their kids about how it is the parent's right to manage their children's education.

But to me that just seems wrong, in Sweden children have the right to a high quality education that follows a proper plan and is done by professional teachers, it is the duty of the parents to make sure the children attends their education.

Homeschooling means that the government can't verify that the education the children receive is up to standards set by the department of education.

Just about all education in Sweden is free to Swedes and EU citizens, so there is zero financial reason to do homeschooling over regular schooling here.

The absolute back-breaker of the US educational system. They keep kids out of school to indoctrinate them by completly incompetent people instead of giving them a proper, universal education and the ability to come in regular contact with kids of their age outside the normal circles.

That does not mean that the US school system is the ultimate solution, on the contrary. But it would be much more important to fix that than to allow any yokel to brainwash their kids at home into a next generation undereducated and narrowminded person.

The majority that defend homeschooling do so on pure ideological grounds. They accuse schools of indoctrinating kids, but they want to personally ensure their kids are indoctrinated the way they (the parents) deem correct. "Sex is evil! Women should submit to men! is pure evil! Never question me!" - these parents should NEVER homeschool their kids.

There are very few situations where homeschooling would be better for the kid over traditional schooling, and those situations are usually remedied with the school getting its shit together and being at least decent.

The school can't always get better though and can even be harmful to kids, due to bad teachers, bad staff, bad classmates or general precarious conditions, especially if the kid has any sort of special need (autism, down's syndrome, etc). Changing schools isn't always an option, whether due to distance or cost of moving back and forth every day, and that's usually when homeschooling should be done.

Depends on the where and why.

In the Netherlands because you think it's inadequate? No, the public education system there is exceptional, this is objectively the wrong position.

In the Deep South in the US because you feel the education system is inadequate, racist, corrupted by christofascism, and designed for failure? Based, there are plenty of good homeschool co-ops for parents with the same gripes.

In the Deep South because you think it isn't loony enough and you want your kid to be a raging lunatic like you? Go fuck yourself. Seriously. Stop having children.

Unless you’re an expert on child development and education, then you’re not qualified.

I was "homeschooled", along with my many siblings, by Southern Baptist parents. I couldn't really read until I was 9, and my younger siblings until even later. My older siblings had it marginally better, but not by much.

I was horrendously under-socialiazed, and I still struggle with debilitating social anxiety to this day. Although I should emphasize that a couple of my siblings are very socially competent and relatively well-adjusted, so I'm not sure how much of my issues in that domain are nature vs. nurture.

It always made me feel awful and dumb to hear peers at church talking about school-related things and what subjects they were learning, because I had no idea what they were talking about, which exacerbated my social difficulties. In my teenage years I started to understand what was happening, and I practically had to beg my mother for any kind of instructional material. I taught myself algebra with the help of internet friends. I still distinctly recall how utterly unscientific and creationist-bent was a biology textbook I got; it was so bad that even I was questioning it at the time.

My younger siblings were eventually allowed to participate in a homeschooling "coop" after my younger brother begged for something. Homeschool coops involve homeschool families getting together to have some semi-structured classes, usually something like once a week. Said brother took a "psychology" class there, the textbook for which was written by a guy with a business or economics degree and no background in psychology, and it said mental illness was the result of sin.

Home schooling in my state is ridiculously under-regulated. All you have to do is be registered with a private school as homeschooling and submit transcripts that comply with the state education requirements. That's literally it. My mother fabricated them - the records say I took Spanish in high school, but I couldn't have told you much beyond "hola".

I went to college with what was essentially a fake high school diploma. I languished in my 20's. I got a master's degree in my 30's, but I was lucky and happened to be gifted when it came to academia; most homeschool kids aren't so fortunate. Most of my siblings have not managed to actualize their potential. I myself could have been doing much more much earlier if I hadn't gotten a woman pregnant during college because I'd never had anyone tell me to use a condom. In retrospect, my parents' duress at learning that I was having a child out of wedlock is almost comical for having been essentially self-induced.

I don't know if homeschooling should be banned outright (as I'm aware of select cases where some parents weren't neglectful and it was actually a better option for some kids due to various circumstances), but something needs to change. At a minimum, I think homeschoolers should be required to do the same state standardized testing as required in public schools in order to ensure they're not being outright neglected like I and my siblings were.

My child is attending public school, which has had it's own set of issues (bullying and a shocking amount of violence, for starters), but it's a marvel to me the gap between what she knows and what I knew at her age. She's learning things that I still haven't. She's better off for it.

Tl;Dr: don't homeschool, do improve public school.

It's bad for kids. Like, objectively proven to be bad.

I saw this question asked before and my answer is still the same. I have never met a homeschooled person who wasn't a fucking idiot. Do with that what you will.

It took me years to overcome getting homeschooled for my first two years of high school. Learning how to socialize and deal with other people is an essential skill for the rest of your life and arguably more important than anything else they teach you - you can catch up on academics relatively quickly but nothing can replace daily interactions with your peers over multiple years. Everything important requires at least a little social skill - jobs, relationships, friends, peer networks

I homeschool my kids and each kid is different. My son is awkward AF because he is autistic and has ADHD so yeah he will be one of those weird homeschoolers later in life and it will be in part because he didn’t get to socialize in school but because of his autism and ADHD it’s forced us to bring him into home school to keep him regulated and on task which wasn’t happening in public school.

My daughter who is now an adult didn’t enter homeschool until her sophomore year of high school. It was because HS was a mental issue for her and she just couldn’t do it with the pressures and social anxiety that came with being in HS.

She is also socially awkward but not as much as my son.

All of this to say that yes you’re right. HS kids are more often than not socially awkward but it’s not because they were homeschooled per se.

In some cases like mine they were already socially awkward or uncomfortable which in turn lead to the homeschooling because they couldn’t cut it in public school.

"Think you can provide more resources and well thought out and efficiently applied curriculum than a centuries old and constantly corrected product of society that draws on every corner of society and hundreds of lifelong full-time employees whose entire lives revolve around hopefully improving society and giving the confident, respectful, and considerate qualities to children? That system isn't perfect and is compromise and resource-short hell... Why not give it a REAL half-assing and short-change your kids EVEN WORSE!"

I was homeschooled k-12 because my parents didn't want me to learn about evolution and "communism". I didn't have any close friends ever growing up because there was just no opportunity for that. I didn't have extended participation with other kids on a daily basis like I would've gotten if I was in a real school. At best I had some playtime outside of school hours with a few of my neighbors and there was things like Boy Scouts and tennis club. But it wasn't enough. It really stunted the development of my social skills. Throughout my 20s I was I having to learn a lot about how to make and maintain friendships and just like socialize and talk to people and date and such, things that most people would've done in their tweens and teens.

I guess one nice perk was I never really had to deal with bullying as a kid? But then when I encountered bullies as an adult (terrible roommates, colleagues, coworkers etc) I didn't have the skills to deal with them well.

I'm in my mid 30s now, and I still struggle with socializing but I'm better at it. I've been in a relationship for 4 years and I'm relatively content with my life at least.

In my eyes, the two biggest problems are teaching competence and socialization. It's possible for a parent to adequately cover a wide range of subjects if they're quite intelligent themselves and they have good materials, but school teachers specialize in a few subjects and have plenty of experience teaching. Sure, a parent might have specific issues with parts of a curriculum, or think it isn't suitable for their child's intelligence, but that can be covered with spot checks and home study.

The bigger problem seems to be socialization. Sure, there are meetups and extracurriculars, but I don't think that can really replace being around dozens or hundreds of students your own age, navigating social situations shoulder-to-shoulder with your peers. These are critical skills, arguably more important than the bulk of the actual school curriculum, and it's much more difficult to build them later. We are social creatures, and we learn best through immersion. Like you, most of the homeschooled kids I knew were socially awkward.

I think much better than homeschooling is supplementing schoolwork with individualized study.

I was homeschooled 4th through 8th grade. Only the actual book work was done at home tho. Still had other stuff that involved more hands on classes with other kids for a lotta shit. Choir, PE, drama, even science (I came 3rd in the 7th grade science decathalon for my balsa wood plane). The only book work also done with other kids was the stabdaridized testing thing.

I actually made more friends being homeschooled than I did when I went to regular school. Wasn't bullied, either. 🤷‍♂️

I think it's a big mistake, but don't think 'the law' should get involved, either.

Include meals, that's a good incentive and will help a lot of kids that are fed total garbage at home.

if we can't feed children what are we even doing?

Big part of school is training on how to be socialized into society. Interact with people who are different than you. Homeschooling provides none of that.

Depends heavily on the parents. I had a few cousins who were home schooled for primary school so up until 10yr and they were 100% different to interact with and at the time I thought they were nerdy. But looking back it was because they were better socially developed and more mature than my friends and I. They were far more polite to kids (we were all polite to adults), smarter on topics we learnt in school (they didnt know about stuff like fighting and stealing from the local dairy and couldnt even ride a bike or swim) and more empathetic because they spent most of their time interacting with adults who'd correct bad behaviors while my friends and I would be socializing with kids unsupervised for most of the day.

But we all turned out fine and had good upbringings.

It's hubris and/or abuse, and should be illegal barring exceptional circumstances.

Public schools should be well funded.

Private schools should also be illegal.

Homeschooling is rarely successful and deprives children of the chance to socialize and practice it. As well a lot of the people who do it use it as a method of indoctrination for religious reasons.

I think home schooling (and private schools) should be illegal. Everyone's kids should have to go through the same public education system. No exceptions. Public schools could use an influx of cash, and there are definitely edge cases that they don't handle well currently. We should advocate for making them better rather than finding an alternative.

Every homeschooled person I've met has lacked all tact but YMMV. I haven't met anyone that was homschooled after leaving university so no clue if that improves over time.

I was homeschooled 2nd grade thru high school. Best thing to ever happen to me. I would not have been diagnosed with ADHD at the time because I suffered from hyperfocus, not hyperactivity. I would do one subject a day instead of constantly switching. Hundreds of field trips to historical sites, museums, science centers you name it, but I also had a lot of socializion with other homeschoolers through co-ops, meet ups, honor society as well as with other peers through scouts and community sports. I don't think of myself as being socially awkward at all and in fact in scouts I was unanimously voted in as chapter chief, then in community college was so popular won their equivalent to homecoming king. In college and uni I was the guy people came to to help them understand concepts if they didn't get the way the professor taught it. What I do notice as a difference from folks who were public schooled is that my personal bubble is larger and I didn't go stir crazy working from home during the pandemic. And I don't touch other people without their consent. It kinda weirds me out internally when people randomly touch my elbow or pat me on my back, especially when I'm focused and working but I'm working on accepting it. That no touch without consent has really helped me connect with folks with ASD and led to some great connections with people who never thought they could.

I think it is economically disadvantageous to occupy more people than is necessary to perform education activities. On average, trained professionals will do a better job at most things.

100% depends on the parents' education and if they believe in conspiracies.

For under-educated parents, your kids need to be in school.

If the parents graduated high-school and are well adjusted, rational people, I see no issue with homeschooling.

I have neighbours homeschooling their kids, that ate similarly aged to mine. Sometimes we see them at the school playground on the weekend. The kids seem fine, the parents seem normal. They mentioned they take the kids to a weekly home school kids play date, and there is some sort of education resource worker that makes sure the kids are learning what they need to.

so I did one year of a homeschool co-op where we only had class on Fridays and the rest of the week was homework. I fucking LOVED IT.

Now, this particular program was pretty mediocre in terms of educational quality, mainly because it was religious nutjob oriented. I had the good fortune that my mom is a natural at teaching and I already knew how to learn stuff from the internet fairly well for a 7th grader in 2007 (identifying quality sources, etc.)

the main benefit to me was a VERY MUCH APPRECIATED escape from being mercilessly bullied at the traditional (well, also private religious, but still in-person daily) school I had been at for 5 years. Just being able to hit a hard reset on the group of kids I went to school with was already a huge social boost, and additionally, I only had to socially interact one day a week so even bad days weren't completely overwhelming.

If I hadn't had my mom to ensure I was actually learning stuff, maybe it wouldn't have been worth it. But fortunately I had her, so my educational progress didn't completely capsize and I finally started making some progress learning how to interact with kids my age somewhat normally, instead of just isolating myself

TL;DR one type of home schooling is a co-op that meets weekly or so, and that could have a lot of benefits if your kid is socially stunted from being bullied into oblivion

Actually not too bad. I wasn't fully homeschooled, however, my old man augmented what school was teaching me. Basically he taught me mathematics, reading and writing. It kept me well ahead of my class. I had a good handle on fractions and so on at about grade two.

Then again, my old man was a physicist with a PhD.

It's fine.

Homeschooling or not isn't the issue. Plenty of kids who do go to school have a horrible education. I have known some perfect wonderful home schooled people, and some total weirdo religion nut job home schooled people.

The issue is the parents. And there isn't much you can do about shitty parents unless you remove the child from the home, which is typically only done under the case of severe neglect or abuse. The state doesn't and shouldn't have say about how people conduct their private affairs though and how you raise children is very much a private affair.