Homeschooling Reconsidered

Stanislav asks:

Would you work with micromanaging boss, no salary, and all your work thrown away?

Unfortunately, my subject line ruins the punchline of his (non-joke) post about institutionalized public education, which you should go read anyway. I get the impression he opted out of for his young daughter and it made me think about my own kids, who are 11 and 8 years old. My daughter is about to start middle school and my son is going into fourth grade. They're relatively smart and athletic kids, and overall they are growing up in a typical American suburban way of life. I really haven't given much thought about homeschooling, even though my religious, borderline nut-job parents homeschooled all four of my younger siblings after struggling with their perception of my own high-school career.

The thing is, school really is just a glorified daycare center. As an intelligent, misunderstood and equally rebellious kid, school didn't do anything for my discipline and life prospects other than keep me out of trouble (and poorly at that, once I hit high school). I spent my entire childhood with my head buried in books and computers, and I'm sure that most of what I learned during those years was self-taught. What school taught me above all is that other people are cruel and stupid, and to always, unfailingly question and challenge authority figures. (It has served me well, I think.)

So as I reflect on my children and their school experience, I have to ask myself some tough questions. Given the luxury of time and resources to be able to afford the investment of homeschooling, am I willing to consider it as a realistic option? The actual schooling wouldn't even have to happen at "home", since I could easily set up an office with two desks here at Hashrocket HQ and treat them as junior interns.

Any of you dealing with similar questions?

Comments

[Yardboy]

My kids are nearing 9 and 7 years old.

I think that public education is what you make of it. There are certainly problems and funding being the at-core issue affects everything else.

However, the parents who think that educating their children is solely the school system's responsibility, and do not actively participate, (like a neighbor of mine), get what they deserve.

I believe that the school system's responsibility is to >help me< educate my children. Ultimately, their outcome as productive human beings is my responsibility, and mine alone. It all starts at home, and by the time they get to high school if they're little scuzzbags with no discipline or respect, I have no one to blame but myself (won't happen, I promise).

As long as you take an active interest and role in your kids' education, the public school system will serve you just fine, imho. As I said on Stansislav's post, my kids will get a perfectly good education from the public school system - I will make sure of it.

[Matt V]

My son is 7 and I'm not thrilled with his school either. He goes to another school on Saturdays, as well, so he doesn't lose his Japanese language and culture.
In Japan, the regular schooling isn't really intended to educate (although that is an unspoken truth). Instead the de facto purpose of school is to teach kids to 'be Japanese.'
I see similar things happening here. School is primarily for learning cultural socialization, and any educational benefits are those which the parents invest time in.
The thing is, I'm not all that happy with the acculturization that happens either. I'd rather my son learns that it is ok not to fit in sometimes.

[Doug]

I've got four kids: 10, 7, 6, and 1. I'm pretty unimpressed with what our local schools have done with the kids. I know "it's what you put into it" but I feel badly about how much time the kids are wasting at school. If I'm going to put a bunch of time into my kids' education above and beyond school why not just keep them home? There's a lot of things I'd like to teach them (or rather help them learn) that we just run out of time for given the prime hours they spend in public daycare.

I'd like to homeschool my kids. I have no doubt I _could_ provide them with a better education. My only concern is that I'd be over committing and not actually provide them with the education they deserve.

[Steven Hilton]

My kids are nearing 9 and 7 years old.

I think that public education is what you make of it. There are certainly problems and funding being the at-core issue affects everything else.

However, the parents who think that educating their children is solely the school system's responsibility, and do not actively participate, (like a neighbor of mine), get what they deserve.

I believe that the school system's responsibility is to >help me< educate my children. Ultimately, their outcome as productive human beings is my responsibility, and mine alone. It all starts at home, and by the time they get to high school if they're little scuzzbags with no discipline or respect, I have no one to blame but myself (won't happen, I promise).

As long as you take an active interest and role in your kids' education, the public school system will serve you just fine, imho. As I said on Stansislav's post, my kids will get a perfectly good education from the public school system - I will make sure of it.

Posted by: Yardboy | June 20, 2008 at 02:27 PM

My son is 7 and I'm not thrilled with his school either. He goes to another school on Saturdays, as well, so he doesn't lose his Japanese language and culture.
In Japan, the regular schooling isn't really intended to educate (although that is an unspoken truth). Instead the de facto purpose of school is to teach kids to 'be Japanese.'
I see similar things happening here. School is primarily for learning cultural socialization, and any educational benefits are those which the parents invest time in.
The thing is, I'm not all that happy with the acculturization that happens either. I'd rather my son learns that it is ok not to fit in sometimes.

[Mike Gunderloy]

We've got 4 kids - 7, 5, 4, and 2 - and two work-at-home developer parents, and we're homeschooling. So we have all the fun of home office + homeschool. I wouldn't dream of even trying this without a supportive spouse.

One thing I will say is that it takes less time to do the actual academics than public school spends. We do an average of perhaps 4 hours a day of actual hardcore teaching, and that's enough that our kids are well ahead of grade level. Of course, that means they're underfoot even more the rest of the time.

People worry about socialization in such a setting. We're in the suburbs, they've got friends, and there are outside activities. Still, it's not the relentless exposure to other kids they would have in the public schools. Given all the other problems of the schools (and my own experience of being bored witless for years), that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make for them at this point.

[Miles]

My wife's a Kindergarten teacher and I work as a Web Technologist for the same School District. My children and 4 and 6 and I'm seriously considering Homeschooling.

I wonder if there are other parents out there who'd be willing to let my wife, a professional school teacher who loves teaching, school not just our kids but a couple other children as well. Sort of a half-private school. I found school to be difficult, boring, and, frankly, scarring.

I guess the question isn't should I Homeschool my kids, but rather why wouldn't I?

[Bob Aman]

I was home-schooled for seven years, so I have a little experience with the subject. I'm a long way from getting married or having kids, but I long ago decided they if I did home-school my kids, they would need to go into the public school system around 7th grade. Home-schooling puts students at a serious disadvantage in certain areas, most notably foreign language studies. Many schools start students on a foreign language sequence beginning in 7th or 8th grade. Most school districts won't make this same requirement of home-schooled students. If your kid enters high school in 9th grade without this background, they may end up being the smartest kid in a room full of 8th graders taking remedial Spanish because the guidance counselor has no educational history to work with. That's what happened to me, and I ended up having to learn an entire semester of Spanish in 2 weeks so that I could test out of the Regents exam and join the rest of my grade for 10th. Re-entering the public school system in 7th grade or 8th grade gives the student ramp-up time that's desperately needed for home-schoolers.

That said, I wouldn't trade my home-schooled background for anything.

[Matt Darby]

I don't have children; but I completely agree with you on the day care point.

My school had textbooks from the 60's to go along with the teachers. I all but dropped out for four years, then decided to just get it over with. I did so much work that I skipped two of the lost four years. Eight years later I have a MSCS.

High school is a breeding ground for angst and rebellion and a wholesale waste of time.

[Phil]

Having a only six-month old I've got plenty of time to consider the question, but there's no way my kids are going to attend US public school. We'll probably try a classical education at home with a heavy dose of the great books of western civilization, at least two foreign languages, and throw in a lot of hands-on tinkering with electronics and hopefully the OLPC mk. 2. Even better would be to do it in a cooperative fashion so as to take advantage of a variety of strengths.

"Junior Interns" or an apprenticeship type program would be awesome; I hope to be working independently or with a more flexible job by that time so I could swing something like that.

[Chris]

My kids are a few years off from school (14 months and 4 months), but I've known many parents and children involved with home-schooling. Living in Chicago, I dread sending them to a public school, so we'll likely send them to a private school. But as other posters above have noted, age of the child is a serious factor.

Having been involved in athletics and music during high school, I can't imagine my kids missing out on those "expensive to produce" activities. There's simply no way to emulate that in a home-schooled setting, no matter what the advocates may say.

On another note, I'm curious as to why you're such an ardent supporter of Obama. You just stated above that questioning "authority" is a big part of who you are. That's great, but what do you think Obama's philosophy is? Answer: creating more authority in the form of creating more institutions like the public school system that you rebel against. You strike me as a libertarian rather than a liberal. And please don't tell me Obama is "moderate" or "centrist." His actions speak louder than his words. And I hear plenty of his words, living in Hyde Park myself.

But, keep up the great blog. I enjoy reading your posts, even when they don't pertain to software!

take care,
Chris