Home Schooling

iguana

Was reading an article today about home schooling* and am wondering if everyone else has an opinion on it. And what their experiences of school were.

I mostly hated school, I enjoyed the time I had with my friends, but I don't think it was the right learning environment for me. There were subjects that I loved such as science, but grew to hate due to uninspiring teachers. Most of the stuff I learned was by myself or with my family.

I enjoyed the 1st few years of school, but mainly because I was always best in the class. I was classified with adult literacy and math ability at 6/7. So I always did really well without trying, my teacher in 1st class was fantastic, he moved me and another boy along much faster than the rest of the class. (He was also very involved in establishing special needs classes and helping identify learning disabilities). That was great but the next year my parents moved house and I changed schools. There I ended up with a teacher who seemed to resent the fact that I wasn't trying but still got full marks at everything. She ended up being quite abusive toward me until my parents intervened.

I think that was where I started hating school, I was intensely bored, and rarely challenged or interested. I was also very rebellious and would openly disagree with teachers opinions, which was fine with the more progressive teachers who welcomed debate. But for the most part it was construed as insolence. Occasionally teachers would ask questions of the class and when I would try to answer, they would ask if anyone else could answer instead. I can see why they did this but it was hardly fair to penalise me.

Schools obviously can't cater to each child individually, but some teachers are just bad and lazy. In fact there seem to be 9 bad teachers to every good one. I don't have kids yet but when I do I'd hate to send them into that environment.

In Limerick where I come from there is a project school which has a terrific reputation, but I don't think there are enough of these. I hope to be in a financial situation where I can afford to not work when I have children and I would definetely consider teaching my children myself if that's what they wanted.

*http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1459735,00.html

magpie

You mean 'Home Skooling'?

josh40

Kids learn more from each other than from teachers. At school they learn how to socialise and mix with all kinds of other people. Kids do not get one on one treatment at school, teachers are not always fair, that's exactly why you should send your children to school. Nothing prepares them for life half as well!.

Mothman

josh40 wrote:

Kids learn more from each other than from teachers.

Agreed

josh40 wrote:

At school they learn how to socialise and mix with all kinds of other people.

I fail to see how being in a class of 20-30 other kids of the same age teaches them to socialise and mix with all kinds of other people. Practically no socialising happens while in class.

josh40 wrote:

Kids do not get one on one treatment at school, teachers are not always fair, that's exactly why you should send your children to school. Nothing prepares them for life half as well!.

Home educating isn't just about teaching the curriculum at home. Part of it is living out life by partaking in whatever the family are doing. So while most kids are in school, the ones not in school are learning about life the hands on way.

padser

You can only home school kids so far. At what point do you put them into the education system? For example you will not be able to teach them the full range of secondary subjects and if they are bright presumably at some point they will want to go to university.

My point is that when this happens they will be swamped and find it very difficult to cope with the change from one on one attention to being in a class of 30 or a lecture hall of 300.

Also id have to agree that even if they can cope intelectualy, socially their growth will have been stunted.

astec123

I have been schooled in a class of thirty, still a very shy type person, but without socilal interaction of school I would never go out. I beleive that home schooling would be a no no completely as they would not get the same level of socialising. In a home situation they see no other faces so will be hard to keep up with things and real people. I would also agree with learning most things from friends, as lunch breaks people complain about Mr/Mrs/Ms whoever and they discuss things about the class and what was learnt, may be indirect but thats a good thing as its not so obvious to them, also remember that teachers are biased and are under pressure to make grades out of students, the students will be persecuted to proform so that they dont get the sack, personally I feel that grades that a class gets should not matter, a student will do as best as they are willing to work for no better and being cruel etc will have no end result and if there is any it will only serve to be a minor one and not worth the persecution the suffered.

padser

astec123 wrote:

students will be persecuted to proform so that they (teachers) dont get the sack, .

teachers cant get sacked in this country (unless convicted criminal eg sexual assault or phyisical assault).

iguana

As for social interaction. When I was a kid I attended the brownies, a drama class, a martial arts class, gymnastics, irish dancing and I played soccer. In addition to school, so obviously I didn't do all of these at once. But I had social interaction in all these groups. I also played with the other kids in my area, not all of which attended the same school.

There are home-schooling networks in the UK where different parents meet up with each other with their kids in order to arrange educational trips, like a school tour.

Education wise; I have heard of parents who hire tutors to help older children with complicated subjects they aren't as familiar with, such as science, if the child wants to learn them. And exams can be sat without having to attend a school.

In the UK there are universities that will make addmitance allowances for home-educated. And there are other options in life other than a college education.

Yavvy

There are home schooling co-ops in ireland too and government certified tests. There is no reason why home schooling cant be a social and educating experiance for a child. The most important part of this is a comitted parent. My wife and I have spoken about this and tried to weigh up the pros and cons, im still slightly infavour of school ( private if possible) but my Wife is more in favour of home schooling. we are a few years out yet so havent come to a decision.

On a personal note Secondary school seriously damaged me - I got mixed up in all sorts of bad things that provided no real value to me in later life , I learned very little and did most of my learning when I left school at 16 for an engineering apprenticeship.

I like the idea of a home school network with maybe 10-15 Children and rotating parents as teachers - maybe 3 per class. I would also give me the oppertunity to offer real world life lessons to kids, Things you dont usually learn from school books. Things about technology(from a non technology perspective) , Corporate politics, Entrepreneurship thats sort of thing.

Also I think often Schools teach children how to get just enough knowledge to performe in a job. there is a lot more to be learned.

irishafrican

Been looking at home-schooling myself for my 3 kids and I must say I am veering very strongly towards it. Besides excessive bullying in schools, controversial trends and ignorant teachers, you can better manage your childs education and gear things towards their personal abilities. After all who would know them better than you, the parent. I think those that are against it are just fearful of going 'out the box' so to speak.
I wish I had been home-schooled

metrovelvet

I think if you have kids who are outside of the average scale, homeschooling is the way to go.

They can learn to socialise and mix in outside school activities.

No point teaching them to hate education and bore them to death.

irishafrican

I totally agree! I have one gifted child and 2 with mild learning disabilities and sadly none of their needs are being addressed. I think with home-schooling you can address these needs as well as build their confidence to allow them to educate themselves further in the future! And the added bonus of spending time with them.

up for anything

padser wrote: »

You can only home school kids so far. At what point do you put them into the education system? For example you will not be able to teach them the full range of secondary subjects and if they are bright presumably at some point they will want to go to university.

My point is that when this happens they will be swamped and find it very difficult to cope with the change from one on one attention to being in a class of 30 or a lecture hall of 300.

Also id have to agree that even if they can cope intelectualy, socially their growth will have been stunted.

Links to studies proving these points please. :rolleyes:


I don't home school but my sister does. I had some of the same attitudes as Padser does when she began, seventeen years ago, but now I can see the benefits of it.

Lots of home schooled children go on to 3rd level education. Brightness is not a prerequisite for going on to university.

Yes, some of them do find it difficult to go from one-on-one attention to being in a large class but then again there are children who have had this problem from Junior Infants right through the school system. More of them slip seamlessly into the system.

As for having their social growth stunted!! Most home schooled children have a far wider social network of friends, both home educated and school educated, and activities. One of the main things I have noticed when meeting home educated children is that their social skills and confidence levels are far higher than most school educated children. They also tend not to tolerate the things which school educated children have to in order to survive in a school environment such as bullying, changing yourself in order to fit in and peer pressure.

I don't know why people still have that outdated view that home education consists of a parent sitting down with a child and teaching them from the curriculum and never leaving the home either for social engagements or 'extra-curriculur' activities.

This is a link to HEN (Home Education Network). You will find most of the members will be more than happy to discuss home education with you. The plus side of home education is that it is what you want it to be and that your children will take out of it what you have put into it - if that makes any sense.

Kimono-Girl

just wanted to say on the topic of going from a home schooled environment to university,

i attended mainstream schools, both were very small (100 pupils or less in my entire secondary school), and to this day in a university setting i still get panic attacks when attending lectures with a large amount of people, put me in town with 20,000 people around me and i'm fine, it only happens in an education environment.

the only thing i'd have reservations about with home schooling is the parents themselves, every parent is biased towards their child, and i have to wonder would this apply to home schooling even sub-consciously? i know i personally would think often enough she's ready to learn something, when she isn't, or that she's clever enough to do something when she's not, but as her parent i know she is the best in the world.

so i would imagine some (but obviously not all) wouldn't differentiate between 'mum' and 'teacher' i guess?

metrovelvet

If Iguana starts homeschooling I think she'd do a great job because her ideas on education are so terrific and she has been through a system that failed her so she would be in tune with the kids needs and development.

Moonbeam

Out of interest are any of the people home schooling qualified teachers?
Do you follow the national curriculum?

Ayla

I actually started a thread about this last month on the Preschool & Primary Education forum, and have linked some independent research on the outcomes of home-eductation.

We're home-edding our (almost) 4 yr old daughter & hope to continue it for as long as it works for all of us. So many advantages!

iguana

I just want to point out that I originally started this thread over five years ago.:D

cynder

I'm dead against home schooling, i have my reasons. (long story)

I cannot tell anyone how to raise their child, its their choice, be it right or wrong at the end of the day. I must say no one knows its the wrong choice until its too late.

I also think no child should be home schooled unless they are taught by a person with an teaching degree.

Ayla

Iguana - . I wasn't on boards then, but happy the thread's popped back up.

Grindelwad - You're entitled to your opinion, as we all are. But teaching degrees don't always make good teachers, and vice versa. Proof is in the pudding, so they say.

cynder

Ayla wrote: »

Iguana - . I=
Grindelwad - You're entitled to your opinion, as we all are. But teaching degrees don't always make good teachers, and vice versa. Proof is in the pudding, so they say.

May be in your case! but not all puddings taste good.

Also don't most parents educate their 3 year olds, i know i do, he goes to preschool 3/4 days a week and comes home for more education, he goes to the early intervention educator, once a week has group education once a week he also has me backing up what they are teaching him all day long.

He also has a once a week appointment with the speech therapist who goes through loads of words in each session and i then back her up by doing it all day everyday while he isn't at preschool and when he is at pre school he has his personal pre school assistant backing up what the early intervention educator and the speech therapist do with him. busy busy busy. His not stupid, he just has issues.

But i don't class my self as his teacher even though i talk him about birds (nature) and trees and electricity (science) asking how many he has (maths) he helps me cook (home economics). It's grand when they are 4 what a about 14 when they are doing algorithms? or chemistry,biology, literature, trigonometry, religion (all), arts, history, and many many more....

Ayla

grindelwald wrote: »

May be in your case! but not all puddings taste good.

True, true. Case by case basis - sometimes schooling (at a school) works well, and sometimes it doesn't. I'm not "dead set" against schools across the board - they have their merits. Can't understand why someone would be "dead set" against homeschooling as a rule?...I should talk to my mom, she must've gone to school with you...

littlebug

I think home schooling would have been a better option for my youngest to be honest but I can only really say that now with hindsight and it isn't really an option just now What's keeping me going is the fact that I know that the teacher he'll have next year is lovely and takes a very individual approach so hopefully it'll get better for him then.

cynder

Ayla wrote: »

Can't understand why someone would be "dead set" against homeschooling as a rule?...I should talk to my mom, she must've gone to school with you...

Because ive seen the darker side to home schooling.

Ayla

grindelwald wrote: »

Because ive seen the darker side to home schooling.

Ok, unless you're going to explain this at all I can't really see why you're even bringing it up. Obviously, there are extremely rare cases of a parent using HE as an opportunity to do ill to their child, but if you're not referencing this than I have no idea what you're talking about.

And whether or not you call it so, you are Home edding your child. You are acting as a teacher - and look! you may not even have a degree :rolleyes:

As far as education of a teenager, who's to say that someone with a degree is any more able to teach things than a devoted & interested parent? Anything that isn't already known is either (1) useless info school officials deem necessary to learn but is forgotten immediately b/c it has no relevance in real life, or (2) learnable. I think adults sometimes forget that they can learn things too. :P

iguana

grindelwald wrote: »

Because ive seen the darker side to home schooling.

And what about the darker side to schooling? I mean I had a pretty miserable time at school but at least nothing actually awful happened to me. Unfortunately I can't say the same about all of my friends/relatives. Many schools were places of deep, systematic abuse for generations and even now it still happens an awful lot more than it should.

Outside of serious criminal abuse, an awful lot of teachers are utterly incompetent and frustrated bullies. The best teachers get burned out because of the ridiculously large classroom sizes and the demands of the curriculum. The national curriculum doesn't cater to anyone who falls outside of average. Many things on the curriculum are actually wrong, as in wrong facts written in school books, supposedly for the sake of simplicity. Schools are little more than standardised learning factories, there can be some stand out fantastic teachers but most of your school career will be meeting certain targets or failing.

I've spent most of my career in the charity sector and since starting this thread I have met a lot of adults who were home-schooled and they were all extremely impressive people. It's hard to describe it exactly but they all had a deep aura of calm and confidence, they just seemed like nothing could ever truly rattle their foundations. I've also through working for a children's charity for a number of years been able to access information on school problems that most people don't see.

Yes there are problems with home-schooling but that is usually down to problems with the parents. People home-school for different reasons. If a child is home-schooled because the parents wanted their children to have a wider education, designed around each particular child with the purpose of teaching them to learn and love learning, then it's a great thing. However there are home-schoolers who decide on that method of education because they want to limit what the child learns, perhaps for fundamentalist religious reasons, and in that instance almost any outside school experience would be far preferable.

For what it's worth I don't yet have children. I lost a baby 2 years ago and after that my husband developed liver and kidney problems which made us decide to hold off on trying again. However we have both decided that if possible we will send our children to a full Montessori primary. (There is only one in the country that sticks to Montessori methods all the way through - Drumnigh in North Dublin.) If that's not possible either Steiner or home-schooling are both higher preferences than state schools and the only state schools that we'd be happy with, as they currently exist, are Educate Together schools as they mostly appear to advocate a child-centred element of learning. (Though this varies from school to school.)

The biggest thing that would hold me back with regards to home-schooling is that if either one of us was ill again, like my husband has been, then a good school could provide a buffer from living with that.

Grawns

grindelwald wrote: »

Because ive seen the darker side to home schooling.

I used to associate home schooling with religous radicals, total freaks who wanted to make sure the only pollution going into their children's heads came directly from them. You see it in America all the time and here within minority religions such as jehovah's witnesses. They want their children to be outside mainstream society and don't think of the emotional and social consequences of demonising society as a whole. So there is a dark side.

That being said I probably would have appreciated homeschooling ( but by who?) in primary school as I was bored out of my tree and often faked illness so I could stay home and read. I wouldn't have the patience to home school myself so there would have to be a pressing reason, bullying etc. Funnily enough my Mother was a primary teacher and not suited to teaching at all. I would not have enjoyed her teaching me

Chuchoter

Although I would be one of the kinds of students that people are saying would benefit from home schooling (gifted children) I would personally say home schooling would have been incredibly damaging for me, and I've been bullied a fair bit in my time in school, it hasn't been easy. Being in a community of people is part of life, you have to learn to fit in (sorry, its true) and respect everyone. Sure our education does not serve my educational needs, but in terms of my own personal development, it has forced me to learn important lessons about myself and the world that I simply would not have learned in with my parents all day. I also think it would deprive you of the chance to see other points of view on life, it sounds like an excellent opportunity for some very controlling parents to influence every waking moment of their child's life. I don't know how people home-schooled all their lives manage to function as normal people when they get into university.

iguana

crayolastereo wrote: »

Being in a community of people is part of life, you have to learn to fit in (sorry, its true) and respect everyone. Sure our education does not serve my educational needs, but in terms of my own personal development, it has forced me to learn important lessons about myself and the world that I simply would not have learned in with my parents all day.

But in general home-schooled children in this part of the world do that far better than schooled children. They actually spend their early lives as parts of the real community rather than in the extremely unnatural school community. Schools have very, very little compatibility with real life. No where else are people so segregated by age, do they have to sit and stand when told (outside of mass), is it ok to utterly humiliate a person in front of their peers. It certainly doesn't simulate community. Children learn social development and interaction better outside of school, just playing with their peers and interacting with their friends, family, family friends and friends' families.

Chuchoter

iguana wrote: »

But in general home-schooled children in this part of the world do that far better than schooled children. They actually spend their early lives as parts of the real community rather than in the extremely unnatural school community. Schools have very, very little compatibility with real life. No where else are people so segregated by age, do they have to sit and stand when told (outside of mass), is it ok to utterly humiliate a person in front of their peers. It certainly doesn't simulate community. Children learn social development and interaction better outside of school, just playing with their peers and interacting with their friends, family, family friends and friends' families.

In work, you are separated by seniority of post, are bossed around by anyone and everyone and in careers like medicine, being humiliated by angry senior doctors is part of life, you have to learn to not let it get to you. Home-schooling is an idealized version of real life. Life is hard, people are mean, school prepares you for that.

Nevyn

Home school kids are monitored and have to pass exams to prove they are being proplerly educated, but the curriculum is more flexible.

http://www.henireland.org/
http://www.homeschool-ireland.com