First, some background. We have 4 kids, in their late teens and early 20s.
A full gamut of personalities - from the artsy kid, to the social diva, to the mathy/introvert, to the football stud. Gross oversimplifications, to be sure, but they hit the archetypes.
Our decision was ultimately *against* homeschooling. Does that mean we were universally happy with our choice to public school our kids? Not entirely. If we knew then what we know now, we'd have looked harder for some sort of private school or charter school that we could have afforded. Our local public schools were terrific in elementary years, mediocre as junior high schools, and pretty nearly horrible as high schools. The high school experience was nearly wasted, with bored unengaged teachers, listless classes, challenges that petered out by 11th grade, and an administration that seemed capable of only making the worst possible choices whenever presented. We should have pulled our kids in junior high and sent them *anywhere* else. Oh, they still did/are doing fine academically - ACTs all 30+ - but this was despite the horrible high school system, not because of it.
The reasons we chose against homeschooling, in no particular order:
- simple expertise: while a reasonably educated parent (we both have Bachelors' degrees) can certainly teach pretty much every elementary and general junior-high subject simply by 'staying ahead of the kid' in the materials, but by high school and certainly in terms of anything advanced placement, nobody's well-rounded enough to be a teacher of everything.
- don't just like what I do: the fact is that if our children developed special interests or things that they loved that we didn't anticipate, there's little we could offer them. We in no way wanted to constrain their interests to our own, which would be natural given our own enthusiasms.
- the "social" thing: humans are social animals. We all exist in a hodgepodge of organizations (formal and informal), status structures, power relationships (formal and informal), with countless others ranging from direct family, relatives, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. *Fundamental* to the emotional and social development of a child is being involved in those evolving relationships *particularly* at certain stages of maturity with others going through the same learning curve. Generally, this is going to continue through our whole lives - at school, at work, in relationships, clubs, volunteer organizations, churches, etc. Simply put, we felt this was very much a 'time served' sort of thing; an hour playdate once weekly (or whatever) wasn't going to give our kids the sort if intrinsic, long-term give and take that primate children and adolescents need to learn those structures and how to navigate them. To best learn the gamut of situations that they would have to deal with would involve not just social experience, but social immersion. And let's be absolutely candid: the teen years for both boys and girls are awash with hormones and their follow-on effects. Learning to come to terms with this (& themselves) in-context is not something you as a parent can deliver by lecture.
- 'bye mom & dad! - following-on to the reason above, the primary thing a kid needs to learn as they mature? Doing without you. Really, how can you teach that?
- sports: if you're in the US, youth sports at a certain level are pretty much only through schools. I think sports are important to the development of a child, learning about competition, to win, lose, deal with others, trust others, as well as important values about diet, physical fitness, and the pure joy of physical activity when you are at the most perfect physical condition you'll ever be in your life. That choice isn't much available to homeschool kids, or if it is it's in a sort of stilted "we'll let them be on the team" sort of way.
- want to give your kid more intensive, in-depth learning better than what schools offer? Nothing's stopping you. School is really only a teeny part of the day and modern public schools are almost hilariously easy. Spend the rest of the time taking your kids to museums, field trips, or even watching educational television that will challenge your child, and then talk seriously about the things that interest them. They like music? Go to concerts, get them lessons in the Flugelhorn. Heck, learn it yourself with them. Ultimately, like our kids, they'll begin to see that their day *begins* when they get home.
- oh no, they learned something 'bad': depending on your convictions, this may *really* be the driver of why you want to homeschool- you want to put blinkers on your kid and prevent them learning "inappropriate" things. Personally, I find this such an utterly unrealistic view that it's tragic. You can't lock your kid in the 19th century: the fact is that we live in a culture that is pluralistic, multicultural, and variegated - many times in ways that I'm personally uncomfortable with. But you can't build a bloody bubble around your kid and expect them to stay inside "for their own good". Unless they're going to live in an underground barrel their whole lives, they're going to be confronted with things like other religions (or non-religion), sexuality, porn, drugs, the internet, and a host of other things that you might consider "dangerous". They need to learn to *deal* with these things, not hide from them. Yes, I detest the early sexualization of children (particularly girls) in our society, but this just meant that our job as parents was a little harder, explaining earlier than I'd have preferred to our kids about why we feel the way that we do about porn, etc and help them cope with their natural confusion and questions as constructively as possible.
In retrospect, every parent would do some things differently. This is not one of them. We're happy we chose not to homeschool our kids.
Finally, yeah, there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
(WKUK Homeschool skit)
