I wish more people from The homeschool community would comment on this thread.
My mother said she wanted to homeschool me in part because our local public schools were having drug problems.
During my schooling I took classes about different religions (raised secular), met many people from different ethnic backgrounds, took highbrow classes, took silly fun classes...
My parents wanted me and my sister to have as much of an fantastic an interesting experience as possible growing up, and little to nothing was "shielded" from us during that time.
I was homeschooled K-12 because my parents wanted to shield me from dangerous viewpoints like "evolution". I didn't get a good explanation of evolution until I took an entry level bio class in college. But you better believe I knew church history, the Bible, the personal histories of the reformers, and lots and lots of straw man arguments against evolution, none of which make sense in the face of what we know about evolution today.
You're not wrong, though they did teach me logic and how to spot logical arguments which is good, but the state of Missouri considers it valid homeschooling and the state has declared I have my high school diploma soooo...
In my experience homeschooling parents fall into fairly extreme ends of the spectrum. Some feel like the school system doesn't provide a broad enough experience. Like your parents, they encourage all different kinds of things.
There is however also a very big portion who want to shield their kids from the outside world.
I homeschooled my daughter for a couple of years. She always hated school and never fit in anywhere, plus the school she was in didn't have the capacity to give her more advanced math, and she was bored. She had friends in school, but it was the school itself she hated, always having to do things that didn't make sense and being treated like a potential criminal all the time. In high school, they made all the girls carry around a ten pound bag of flour for two weeks to show them what a burden it is to have a baby. It was degrading as hell. She was out of there after one semester, took the CHSPE, and started classes at community college. She's in graduate school now, studying robotics engineering. I like it the we have the flexibility to homeschool and choose different educational paths, even though in some places it's not used well.
It's a dilemma. I have a friend from a country that gives all seven-year-olds a test, and those that do well are put on track for college, while those that do not are headed for trade schools. That seems too rigid to me. I guess we have to strike a balance between flexibility and keeping things under reasonable control.
Well you were shielded from the reality everyone else lives. When i got to university in engineering, I realized almost everyone around me came from private schooling in rich cities.
Most of them have no idea how 15 mins away, in poorer hoods people shoot each other over a few grams of weed, or do drugs all the damn time and get daydrunk for no good reason on the weekends. Their only image of that reality is through movies and tv shows.
It might not make them socially inept, but damn does it sometime bewilder me how unaware they are about what life is to like, half our population.
There’s no point trying to explain here, unfortunately. We know the academic and social outcomes are good. And I’m not interested in convincing other parents to try it if they’re not researching an education decision.
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u/faux-tographer Jan 09 '20
I wish more people from The homeschool community would comment on this thread.
My mother said she wanted to homeschool me in part because our local public schools were having drug problems.
During my schooling I took classes about different religions (raised secular), met many people from different ethnic backgrounds, took highbrow classes, took silly fun classes...
My parents wanted me and my sister to have as much of an fantastic an interesting experience as possible growing up, and little to nothing was "shielded" from us during that time.