Home school v. Private school v. Public school

once again this is a topic that i have thoughts about, and the posts are too long for me to read, so heres my thougths...
i thinkhome schooling is fine if they get to go to schoolin high school, i think the interaction in h/s is critical, i never went to private or home schooled, i was in public my entire life, i don't know what it's like but i know that public h/s helped me learn alot.
private school is fine but i think the kid misses out on too much, most kids see private school as a rich kid school, and will be thought differently for it. i think all kids shouold go to public h/s, but thats just my opinion, and im dumb, so hopefuly the public school is better then mine was.

 

Yes, interaction is critical. I'd want my kids exposed to all walks of life, all different types of people. You can't get that if you are sitting around at home with your family all day long. In my eyes, you are just sheltered if you don't get out of the house. Home schooling is fine in some rare cases, I suppose, like if one of the parents are ill and needs the help of a child, if the child is ill, or say, if he/she is a working actor-child in Hollywood. I don't know, I met all my friends in school. I'd want my kids to have friends.

 

Yes, interaction is critical.

You can get interaction with homeschool.

I'd want my kids exposed to all walks of life, all different types of people. You can't get that if you are sitting around at home with your family all day long.

No homeschooler that I have ever met in my life has sat at home all day with the family. We were in Boy Scouts, went to Church, met with other homeschoolers in homeschooling groups, participated in regular school activities, my sister was a cheerleader for a local Christian school, I used to participate in debates and scholastic competitions with public school kids, etc. This view a lot of you have of homeschoolers is skewed for some reason.

In my eyes, you are just sheltered if you don't get out of the house. Home schooling is fine in some rare cases, I suppose, like if one of the parents are ill and needs the help of a child, if the child is ill, or say, if he/she is a working actor-child in Hollywood.

How about if the public school is bad. Poor education standards, gang problems, etc?

I don't know, I met all my friends in school. I'd want my kids to have friends.

I met the best friends I have ever had while homeschooling. My best friend and I homeschooled, and used to have school at eachothers house. I had friends at church. I had friends in my neighborhood who went to public school. If your kids can't make friends because you're homeschooling them, then you're doing it wrong.

 

I'm seeing the same thing that JediStryker is seeing. I think many people out there, and I include myself in this until I did research on it, have a very different idea of what homeschooling is about.

My view on homeschooling, and this was because I had never met or known anyone that was homeschooled in my life, was that it was kids sitting at home learning from their parents. Sounds right, doesn't it?

I also thought that they never left the house during these hours, they never learned from anyone else, they never got involved in activities with schools, they didn't have friends their own age that they met while homeschooling, and they really only spent three hours a day studying and the rest they watched tv.

This is, based on my experience, what many people see as homeschooling. The common wisdom when I was in high school was that the people who were homeschooled (I knew they were out there but I never met a single one of them) were in one of two groups:

1) The people who couldn't cut it in "regular" school

or

2) The people whose parents wanted to shelter and control every aspect of their lives, including educational.

Obviously these were wrong but, then again, they might have been a little closer to the truth than they would be now. Homeschooling has really only caught on as a viable alternative, one in which the stigma isn't as great as it used to be, in the last few years from what I understand.

So many people who grew up the way I did have a hard time seeing homeschooling as anything but the easy way out for social inepts and screwups or people that couldn't keep up with the learning curve in regular classes.

I don't believe that now (such is the benefit of continued knowledge) but many people still do.

Homeschooling, as it is today, is actually a pretty darn good idea for those kids that want and need individual instruction. As long as they interact with other kids and don't become that sheltered person people perceive them as then I say more power to them.

That's all I have to say other than that my public school experience was excellent.

 

I think we're all relooking our perceptions of other types of schooling, yodafett999. And it's very good

A lot of you mentioned the importance of high school interaction. You seem to feel strongly that a teenager should go to public (or private) school during those high school years. I was homeschooled throughout high school so I didn't have those high school interactions.

I'm curious. What kind of social interactions did you have that were/are important? I do't know a lot of people personally who had great high school experiences, although some did. But I never paid much attention. What kind of interaction did you get that you would have missed otherwise.

 

I went to public high school, and actually had less interaction than I had had in homeschool, because I was not a part of a clique. I did eventually make some good friends, but none as good as the ones I made in homeschool, (except for my wife). In high school, everyone was caught up in looking good for other people's benefits, a problem I never saw in my friends while homeschooling. I don't think it did me any good, it didn't jade me to the world or make me learn to be more tolerant, it just forced me to look harder for people who shared my interests. I don't understand how that would have been better than if I'd stayed in homeschool.

 

To be fair, my two best friends I met in church, not in school. And they are both homeschooled and have been since early elementry school. So yeah, you can meet people if you are homeschooled. The problem I see is that they don't meet many people who have opposing opinions and views.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

<sigh>

I give up.

 

There is hope yet, JediStryker, there is another ....

solojones, I had a lot of varied friends. My one invisible friend was a fairy, the other one a dwarf, and the another one some alien creature. I also had a toad friend, some trees for friends, and the occasional ladybug. See! My friends were varied!

But seriously, I met a lot of people in many different places and made many friends. I had friends from church, the YMCA, sailing, neighborhood, etc. Believe you me, I've had varied friends. Some of them were a little too "varied" though.

 

lol

I don't dislike homeschoolers at all, don't get me wrong. I just don't think it's the preferable way of schooling. I would keep it as a last resort.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

On the friendship note, my closest group of friends (there are 5 of us) all went to school togeather k-6, except me. I was at the private school and I only saw them at church and it's hard to keep contact. In 7th I got to be with one of them and in 9th we are all at the same school and it rules all. I finally got to have classes with my best friends. It is possible to maintain friendships you don't ser at school but it's very hard.

Also for me, once you "leave the pack" of private schoolers you're never accepted by them again. I had insights into the bigger world that they didn't have.

A very important thing for private school kid parents to remember is, get the kid out into the community aside from the school. I know kids who never saw social divisions until high school and it freaked them out. My parents had me in stuff, like church and local community art programs. Because of that I wasen't phased when I got to public. Keep the kids rounded and experienced.

 

TDS, I think that is something that's important for any kid, no matter what kind of schooling they have

In High School, I am starting to become better friends with those kids I see at school every day. Some are really close and I've known them a long time. The ones I know outside of school, are harder to keep in touch with (and several of my really good friends live hundreds of miles away). So it's good to have kids in school that I enjoy being around and see every day and that I can hang out with outside of school.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Why has this turned into the "Is homeschooling social enough" thread? Why isn't anyone responding to my post?

 

Sorry, Ariana Your school does sound nice. Small classrooms are always better. I hate it when I have classes with like, 30 people. But as I get in more honors classes and further along, we have smaller and smaller classes. My class on a whole has 615 kids though

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

See? Exactly what I said

People have this perception that homeschool students don't get out there and interact because they look more at the "home" part of the word.

We'll change their minds yet!

My high school senior class has 1500 students in it. You could say we were a fairly large school. However, we were a nationally ranked facility in the richest county in the state. So my experiences might be a bit different from the norm of public schools.

I think the social interactions that people are talking about are twofold. On the one hand you have the interaction between students in each particular class, raising questions and challenging ideas in order to try and come to an understanding. This happens with some kids more than others, with some classes more than others, but with homeschooling the common thought would be that you don't have that. You are fed information and you take it in but you have no one to challenge your ideas. However, if you have a good teacher (be it a tutor, a parent, a neighbor, a friend.......whatever), then you don't necessarily lose this kind of thing. You just don't have it from people your own age usually.

The other interaction is the more social of them. Sports, debate, forensics, drama, student council........all of the school sponsored and orchestrated activities that multitudes of children take part in every day. There is also the day-to-day interaction on a social level in classes, halls, lunchrooms, break areas, and parking lots. This is frequently where people begin their friendships in school. Now it can definitely be achieved if you have more than one person in your homeschooling experiences but quite a few homeschooled children are taught in solo or sibling settings.

I'm not necessarily saying that these day-to-day interactions are "necessary" but some sort of interaction, in some sort of way, is in my opinion. Making friends in church, in YMCA, on sports teams, in community theater or civics projects...all kinds of places are open for kids. I'm glad to see that all of the homeschooled people who've posted so far in this thread about it have done this and I'm sure they can let us know how they feel those experiences impacted them as they developed or are continuing to develop.

So, homeschoolers, just for everyone else's benefit why don't you let us know what a typical day was like for you. I'd be more than willing to reciprocate if it was needed in order to show what my public school career was like

I'd also like to hear from some of the private school people too, as I've never experienced that either.

 

Does anyone know howmany students are homeschooled in the US?

 

In my cursory online perusal of info I found data from the Parent Survey of National Household Educations Surveys Program from 1999 that says that approximately 850,000 children, aged 5-17 (corresponding to grades K-12), in the United States were homeschooled that spring. That accounted for 1.7% of students at that time.

If anyone has more recent data feel free to post it. I'm going to bed so I wasn't looking really hard

 

Also, studies show that the number of parents deciding to homeschool their children is growing by about 11% each year.

 

Hmmm... Maybe I should check this thread more often... It's getting heated.
Can I have the final say on the ability of homeschooled children and their social skills? It depends entirely on their parents As if it wasn't glaringly obvious! Homeschool kids will do fine in society, provided that their parents give them the opportunity to do so. Frankly I think everyone has gotten caught up in the cliched homeschool kid from an almost fundamentalist background who gets their kicks from things with sugar in them. Yeah, they probably exist, but I think most intelligent people who've read the posts here would conclude that it's not the case in the majority.
Yodafett I'm privately schooled - in Australia - and the system here isn't that much different from public schools anywhere in the world (or as far as I can gather). We have slightly smaller classes, particularly in the senior levels (My literature/politics classes have 11 people in each) but the same goes generally for the rest. What I mean is that there is still the same stuff, just that the school places more value in tradition than a public one and that the kids do tend to breed an air of arrogance, but it does tend to iron out by senior levels. I think the only major difference is facilities, we have wireless networking throughout most of the school and every student is required to use a laptop. Furthermore, there are facilities for most sports played here and they are - generally speaking - kept in better condition than would be expected at Australian public schools.
The difference isn't that great!

 

Rogue- I'd add that I think it depends on Parents, but also kids. Some kids, like me, need day to day social interaction and couldn't be homeschooled.

Does anyone know any homeschoolers who are extroverts? Just curious, because I would think other extroverts like me couldn't take it.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

I don't need day-to-day social interaction with people my age. I get bored if I'm not around people, but I couldn't care less if the people I'm around are my own age.

 

Rebecca, that's how people I know that are homeschooled think too. They have plenty of social interactions, just not necessarily with their own age group. My friend was homeschooled and he could hold up his end of a conversation with adults and teachers at the age of 14 more easily than most people I know. This is mainly because he was taught that teachers aren't the big scary authority figures that they're made out to be in school. He just thinks of them as people with ideas that he can learn from, and they can learn things from him as well.

 

My teachers aren't made out to be big and scary They are to be respected because they are our elders and authority figures (which I think is a good thing), yet at the same time I can certainly hold an intelligent conversation with an adult. I actually do it quite often (on here, especially) and I think I do a fine job of holding my own ground. Admitedly, my parents have observed that I have a natural gift of diction and composure when talking to anyone, but I still don't see this as a problem (I know some kids have it) related to schooling.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Yeah, the people I'm around are usually adults, or little kids (I love to babysit, and I think kids are great). I tried joining a teenage volunteer group, but I had to quit because the upped the number of volunteer hours required per month, when they didn't have enough volunteer oppurtunies to go around with to begin with.

 

Feeling more comfortable around adults or little kids has less to do with being homeschooled and more to do with being the first or only child. I'm an only child, and I can go to a party of one of my parents' friends and feel totally comfortable and hold a long conversation. Throw me in a group of strangers my own age and I choke.