Homeschooling.

[jumpluff]

It was alright, I managed to get all the work done. It was frustrating getting approval for it though, it delayed my schoolwork by a month so I only could take 2 subjects (when normally one would take at least 4). I'm finding school a lot better though.

Ah, that's good to hear. It took awhile for it to get approved for me, too -- like two months, since my father was a bitchass and deliberately appealed to have it held up, like wtf. lol =/ The process is a bit slow imo. Way too much paperwork.

Also to those who say socially stunted -- it's obvious that homeschooling makes one more predisposed to being so, I've covered this a bunch of times, but that is way too generalised lol, I think enough of us have pointed out that it's possible to have a successful social life when homeschooled. =/ For interest's sake, I'm looking into getting employed to expand my social horizons.

 

[Ludo]

As a parent I salute any parent who homeschools their children, I for one couldn't do it. I love my kids dearly, but I really enjoy the break I get when they go to school, as I'm sure they enjoy the...well, social aspects of school at least! :D

I do sometimes question the motivation behind parents homeschooling though. I have a friend who was homeschooled because she was so badly bullied at her secondary school, she wasn't taught by her parents though, but by an independant homeschool teacher. I can see why the family came to the conclusion that homeschooling was going to be the best option in their case, but for parents who want to home school without having their child experience the school environment at all is a bit strange to me.

I sometimes think that these parents are a little over protective and reluctant to let go. School can teach invaluable lessons in regards to social skills and interaction, that you cannot get within the family home. Getting one on one attention is fantastic in an academic respect, but I can't help but feel it would only give you unrealistic expectations for college and work.

 

[UncleSam]

I was homeschooled from grades 2-8, and then went to High School. When I got there, I realized that, despite doing about half an hour of work a day as a homeschooler, I came out better prepared for high school than the vast majority of kids who had gone to public schools their entire life. The problem is that a ridiculous amount of time is wasted in the lower grades, and it is just a very inefficient system-for a reason. Quite simply, parents by and large don't care so much about education for their 7-year-olds as that they have a safe, reliable daycare.

I was very happy I was homeschooled, because it freed me up to play videogames for countless hours and just generally enjoy myself while STILL getting prepared for High School. Homeschooling for High School, however, I wouldn't recommend because there is actually some focus on learning in most High Schools (at least in America), whereas there isn't in the lower grades. Also, I never really had to go through any significant validation process for homeschooling...in my state, all we had to do was take a test at the end of the year. If we passed, we could continue homeschooling. If we didn't, we had to go to a "real" school. A much better system then getting validation by filling out a metric ton of paperwork if you ask me (that's the system in some states, or at least it was five or ten years ago).

 

[Jebroni]

This depends on the quality of the high school in your areas. For people who live around elite high schools, I don't see any advantage homeschool can possibly bring.

As for the other case where local high schools have a less than 30% graduation rate (believe me, schools like this actually exist and most likely a government official takes over all of the school's affairs at this point), I'd go with homeschool. It's true that homeschool at its best can only equal a public high school in social experience, but I'd rather take my chances. This goes especially for schools with crap people being the majority.

 

[Ericcc]

Agree with Magic Toaster, although I see people outside of school all the time.
If I was homeschooled it would be so boring waking up everyday with no where to go and see people you look forward to seeing :|

 

[drifblim70]

I went to private school K-3 and 9th grade, public schools for the rest of the time, was never homeschooled but knew a few homeschooled kids, not enough to draw any valid conclusions about how well homeschooling worked for them though. as far as people shitting on public schools, yeah some of them are bad, but i think i just got insanely lucky--i was singled out as a "talented and gifted" person at my public elementary school for 4th through 6th grade and although it seems kinda elitist in retrospect, i loved it at the time. it was the same group of 25 kids every year, so i felt like i'd built up my own family of friends by the time middle school rolled around...and then i moved. 7th and 8th were ok, i didn't really have any inspiring public school teachers or anything--my 7th grade spanish teacher was the man, but other than that, meh...my 8th grade math and english teachers were cool too, they went out of their way to actually teach well and be friendly at the same time.

9th grade i went to an all-boys private Catholic school, basically because my dad went there in the 70s. hated it to the depth of my soul, half the reason i left was because we were shelling out six grand a year to go to a place which basically didn't seem any better than my old public school except for a pretty much ungrounded innate sense of overall superiority to everything. i had two really good teachers--one had a doctorate in theology, but was pretty charismatic/iconic anyway, and the other one was my dad's old bio teacher, who thirty years later was still the man. (if anyone's still reading this, don't worry, i'm getting to the point...)

10th through 12th grade were spent at my [new] hometown's public high school, which coincidentally seemed to be pretty much the best possible environment for education, even if it is an outlier overall. that's because i had two or three really good teachers every year, one or two who even gave a damn about the kids' problems outside school... had a badass old math teacher senior year and a granola-but-rational philosophy/history teacher, and everybody loved me by then because i'd pretty much solved the problem of how to get As in school and not piss anyone off. it was like, "warm" in general there. i learned to talk to other people without coming off as a douchebag or an emo prick basically because of the environment: everything was nice and clean, there was a new computer lab, new library, good friends to go around, nobody cared about how i flitted between different social circles at my liking because that was what i did. and i got a job at an easy-going supermarket too, where i finally learned to talk to older people and be respected, and basically learned to be a competent human being.

The moral of the story is that education by itself doesn't really do anything, nor does blindly deciding to throw yourself into society because that's what you think humans should do. it's the people that matter in the end: i think that for any student to succeed he has to eventually learn to be strong on his own, not for others but because he has a sense of pride, because he's heard from good people and realized why they are good. it's like america, not to piss off non-americans here but to emphasize the point--to succeed and be a hero in a free society you have to learn to think not just for yourself but for the future, have to learn what's important and what isn't and then not be a dick about what you consider important and what you don't. Education exists to build functioning free citizens--that's what public schools are for. Private schools and the notion of homeschooling basically exist because they think they can do a better job of teaching the young; and if they can, fine, but the public schools, if inept/corrupt/cruel, should be reformed to fix those issues. Here's how you do it: public schools should pay good teachers more; public schools, above all, need charisma, competence, and an environment healthy for developing personalities/ethics.
If you want to homeschool kids, fine, but do it correctly: they need to learn more than facts, they need to learn to exist. ...so that's my dickish opinion.