HomeSchooling: WHY?

Why would any parent voluntary choose to spend every waking minute of the day, every day of the week, every week of the month, and every month of the year with their offspring?
Why choose to have interrupted showers,
to not have one moment to yourself through the day,
to spend all kinds of money on curriculum and supplies,
books and cool posters,
to have the whole responsibility of your child's education on your shoulders?
Especially since the government offers to do all this for you?
For free?
(Well, not free....
but homeschoolers pay the same taxes as those with children in school,
and yet we have to then pay for our school.)
Why would anybody do this?

Are we crazy?

I am going to attempt to explain why I have chosen to do this.


And please don't think that I think my way is the only way. I don't think I'm the "super parent" because I have chosen to do this. Each family is different, and each parent is responsible to do for their family what they deem best.

These are just my opinions.

1.) I like my kids. I don't just love them, but I like them.
When my oldest child reached the age of 6,
I could not fathom sending him away for 8 hours to school.
I would have missed him too much.
This was not one of the reasons I decided to homeschool.
But it is something I realized later.

Our family is close.

My son’s best friend is his brother, and vice versa.

My daughters best friend is her brother.

And they all like hanging out together. They like hanging out with me. They talk to me. Tell me things. They think I’m cool. (For now, anyway.) I like that my children like each other. They don’t feel the need to have a friend come over, they have a friend that lives with them!!

2.) Influence.

When in a classroom setting, who is the biggest influence on your child?
I would say it is his peers.
Other children.
Peer pressure is huge...
the wanting to "conform" and be like the rest is almost insurmountable.
And if a child is not accepted into the group,
then you have problems with self-esteem, and confidence.
Who do I want to have the biggest influence over my children?
Other people's kids, or me?
And yes, these situations of not fitting in,
and peer pressure,
are all going to have to be dealt with in life.
But I choose it to not be on a daily basis, starting when my child is 5.

3.) Quality of education.

This is probably the most important reason…

I am not slamming teachers here.
I think they have a ridiculous amount of responsibility....
teaching 30 kids, all with different levels of understanding,
different ways of learning,
with no real way to discipline,
and having to be sure that each of those children passes.
I do not envy them at all.

Homeschooling is one-on-one.
Can't get any better than that.
And I understand the different ways my kids learn,
their strengths and weaknesses.
I can cater to what they are interested in,
thereby creating a deep love of learning.
A curiosity to know more, to find things out.
Homeschooling takes a fraction of the time traditional school takes...
because of the one-on-one,
because you take out the time it takes to get 30 kids to understand and complete work.
This frees up time for other stuff.
Like playing outside, exploring the bush, learning to whittle, building with lego, reading, drawing, practicing piano, cooking with Mom, learning how to do a load of laundry, cleaning the livingroom, etc.
Life skills.

Here’s some stats I found that pertain to the Quality of Education issue.

Now, this particular article pertains to the States,

but Canada is no different.

My Uncle was a College Professor for many years, and was astounded at how illiterate kids were that came to his class. These were kids that had graduated High School, with high marks, and did not know basic grammar. Had no English skills at all.

This is the truth, folks.

The Legacy of Dumbness

* More than a decade after A Nation at Risk drew attention to the nation's educational mediocrity, the reading proficiency of nine- and thirteen-year-olds has declined even further.

The result is a tragic legacy of educational mediocrity:

* The 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that a third of American seventeen-year-olds say they are not required to do homework on a daily basis.

* Only one high school junior out of fifty (2 percent) can write well enough to meet national goals.

* Less than 10 percent of seventeen-year-olds can do "rigorous" academic work in "basic" subjects.

* In the United States today, only one in five nine-year-olds can perform even basic mathematical operations. According to the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only one in six nine-year-olds reads well enough to "search for specific information, interrelate ideas, and make generalizations." Only one in four nine-year-olds can apply basic scientific information."

* Among American thirteen-year-olds, only one in ten can "find, understand, and summarize complicated information." Only one in eight eighth graders can understand basic terms and historical relationships. One in eight understands specific government structures and relationships."

* Only one in eight thirteen-year-olds can understand and apply intermediate scientific knowledge and principles. The NAEP found that the percentage of American thirteen-year-olds who understand measurement and geometry concepts and can analyze scientific knowledge and principles "was among the lowest of many countries in the developed world."" The 1990 NAEP concluded that "Large proportions, perhaps more than half of our elementary, middle, and high school students are unable to demonstrate competency in challenging subject matter in English, mathematics, science, history, and geography. Further, even fewer appear to be able to use their minds well."

* The writing ability of American students is little short of appalling. American schools, according to the NAEP, produce few students who can write well. Only 3 percent of American fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders can write above a "minimal" or "adequate" level, according to the 1992 "Writing Report Card." The test, which rated students' writing abilities on a scale of one to six, found that fewer than one in thirty American children earned a score of five or six, which meant they could write effectively and persuasively. Only one out of four students even managed to write at the "developed" level, which earned a score of four. "Even the best students who could write effective narrative and informative pieces had difficulty" writing persuasively, the study found." In 1988, only 3 percent of American high school seniors could describe their own television viewing habits in writing above an "adequate" level.

* A "reading report card" finds that 25 percent of high school seniors can barely read their diplomas. A standardized test given to 26,000 Americans sixteen and older "concluded that 80 million Americans are deficient in the basic reading and mathematical skills needed to perform rudimentary tasks in today's society. 1113 A 1993 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that 90 million adults - 47 percent of the population of the United States - demonstrate low levels of literacy. The level of literacy among adults had fallen by 4 percent since 1986 .

* Only 15 percent of college faculty members say that their students are adequately prepared in mathematics and quantitative reasoning lower proportion than among higher-education faculty in Hong Kong, Korea, Sweden, Russian, Mexico, Japan, Chile, Israel, or Australia. Only one in five faculty members thinks students have adequate writing and speaking skills.

* A Washington, D.C., grade-school teacher reports that many of the fifth- and sixth-grade students in her geography class were unable to locate Washington, D.C., on a map of the United States, even though they lived in the nation's capital themselves. A survey by the Gallup Organization found that one in seven adults can't find the United States on a blank map of the world. This shouldn't be surprising. In one college geography class 25 percent of the students could not locate the Soviet Union on a world map, while on a map of the forty-eight contiguous states, only 22 percent of the class could identify forty or more states correctly.

* Despite the growing importance of scientific knowledge, surveys have found that Americans are woefully ignorant of basic scientific facts. A majority of Americans,. for example, do not know that the earth and sun are part of the Milky Way galaxy, and a third of them think humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. A 1994 survey by Louis Harris & Associates and the American Museum of Natural History found that only about one adult in five scored 60 percent or better on a test of basic knowledge of subjects like space, animals, the environment, diseases, and earth.

* Teachers report that the fall of Communism and the demolition of the Berlin Wall was greeted with blank indifference by many students who knew too little about history to understand or care about the events. "I'm sorry," one high school senior asked during a class discussion of the Eastern Bloc, "but what is this talk of satellites?"

* In the late 1980s, a national survey of high school seniors found that fewer than half could define even basic economic terms. Nearly two thirds of the seniors were unable to correctly define "profit," and less than half could define a "government budget deficit." Most seniors were also baffled by the concept of "inflation." The author of the "Report Card on the Economic Literacy of U.S. High School Students" concluded that "our schools are producing a nation of economic illiterates," and that the level of economic knowledge of students who had the benefit of twelve years of education is "shocking."" Especially damning was the finding that even students who took basic high school economics answered only 52 percent of the questions correctly. Students who took "consumer economics" got only 40 percent of the answers correct, while students who took social studies courses were right only 37 percent of the time. A 1992 survey by the National Center for Research in Economic Education and the Gallup Organization yielded similar results. High school seniors answered basic economic questions correctly only 35 percent of the time.

* SAT verbal scores have dropped from a mean of 478 in 1962 to 423 in 1994-a drop of 54 points. The SAT mean math score has fallen from 502 to 479 - a drop of 23 points. While math scores have risen 8 points since 1984, they are still below 1974 levels. The national verbal average has fallen 3 points since 1984. During the same period (1960-90), spending on elementary and secondary education increased more than 200 percent, after inflation. Class size has decreased by one third, enrollment has declined by 7 percent, and the number of teachers has increased by 17 percent. Moreover, the decline in test scores came at a time when average teacher salaries and the percentage of teachers with advanced degrees both tripled.

There are obvious real-world consequences for this decline:

* American businesses are now spending $30 billion on workers' training and lose an estimated $25 to $30 billion a year as result of their workers' weak reading and writing skills.

* A survey by the National Association of Manufacturers found that nearly a third of American businesses said the learning skills of their workers are so low that they are unable to reorganize work responsibilities. A quarter of American businesses say their ability to improve their products is limited because of the inability of their employees to learn the necessary skills.

* In a recent year, the Bellsouth Corporation in Atlanta found that fewer than 10 percent of their job applicants met minimal levels of ability for sales, service, and technical jobs. At the same time, MCI Communications in Boston reported that some of its jobs were going unfilled because the company could not find enough qualified applicants.

* In late 1992, executives at Pacific Telesis found that 60 percent of the high school graduates applying for jobs at the firm failed a company exam set at the seventh-grade level.

And now to compare:

Some statistics on Home Schooling.

Home school students do exceptionally well when compared with the nationwide average. In every subject and at every grade level of the ITBS and TAP batteries, home school students scored significantly higher than their public and private school counterparts (Figure 1).

Because home education allows each student to progress at his or her own rate, almost one in four home school students (24.5%) are enrolled one or more grades above age level (Figure 2). It should be noted that home school scores were analyzed according to the student’s enrolled grade rather than according to the student’s age level. In other words, a 10-year-old home school student enrolled in 5th grade would have been compared to other students in the 5th grade, rather than to his age-level peers in the 4th grade. Thus, the demonstrated achievement of home schoolers is somewhat conservative.

On average, home school students in grades 1–4 perform one grade level higher than their public and private school counterparts. The achievement gap begins to widen in grade 5; by 8th grade the average home school student performs four grade levels above the national average (Figure 3).

Another significant finding is that students who have been home schooled their entire academic lives have the highest scholastic achievement. The difference becomes especially pronounced during the higher grades, suggesting that students who remain in home school throughout their high school years continue to flourish in that environment (Figure 4).

Differences were also found among home school students when they were classified by amount of money spent on education, family income, parent education, and television viewing. However, it should be noted that home school students in every category scored significantly higher than the national average.

No meaningful difference was found among home school students when classified by gender (Figure 5). Significantly, there was also no difference found according to whether or not a parent was certified to teach (Figure 6). For those who would argue that only certified teachers should be allowed to teach their children at home, these findings suggest that such a requirement wouldn’t affect student achievement.

And now to confront the Question.

You know, the one question every home-schooler is asked.

By every one.

What About Socialization?

Because it’s late, and I’m tired, I’m going to let this lady answer that question.

She says it so well.

Homeschooling's socialization snobs
by Patrice Lewis
WorldNet Daily Commentary
Ask any homeschooling parent why they homeschool, and you're likely to receive as many different replies as there are families. Some of the common reasons include religious freedom, academic improvement, one-on-one tutoring and increased family closeness.
But for us, the single biggest reason we school at home correlates to the single biggest criticism homeschoolers get: socialization. Yes, it's largely due to the "socialization" children get in public schools that convinced us to homeschool.
Homeschooling allows us to be socialization snobs. We can filter out kids whose behavior offends us. We don't discriminate on the basis of race, creed, nation of origin, or other such nonsense. No, we discriminate on the basis of morals. If your kid insists on talking about the number of boys she slept with in the last month, I really don't want her around my kid. Call me fussy.
It's been said that too many rats locked up together in too small a cage will soon start tearing into each other. Same with kids. Schools force children to associate with other children based strictly on age. They are locked into cages containing dozens of rats … er, kids with one powerless and overworked teacher who is expected to be psychologist, counselor, nanny, babysitter and, oh yeah, teacher all rolled into one.
Manners are not expected and certainly not reinforced. If one child gets snarky with another, the other children encourage him until the snarkiness turns to meanness, which often leads to violence. This is the breeding ground for public school socialization.
I've been to homeschooling groups with up to 30 kids ranging from older teens to newborns. Everyone associates with everyone. Teens dandle babies. Twelve-year-olds play gentle tag with 5-year-olds. If one child gets snarky with another, there are five or six moms (as well as older kids) around to see the bad behavior and instantly correct it, so it seldom gets out of hand. Manners are expected and reinforced. This is the breeding ground for homeschooling socialization.
Why is this concept so difficult for the critics to grasp? I don't get it. I don't get it at all.
Recently, my husband came across a blog entry by a middle-school teacher that was so shocking that he waited until our kids were out of the room before calling me over to read it.
The blog entry related a conversation this teacher overheard as she left school one afternoon. She passed a group of several boys and one girl (about 13) waiting for the bus. One of the boys had a plate of cookies. The teacher heard the girl say, "I'll give you a “intimate sexual act”

(edit mine) for one of those cookies."
My husband e-mailed the teacher and expressed sympathy for the toughness of her job. The woman e-mailed back a weary verbal shrug and said it was all in a day's work.
Yes, all in a day's work to hear a child offer an intimate sex act in exchange for baked goods. And what does "all in a day's work" imply? That this type of social interaction is nothing unusual. Pretty typical, in fact. The teacher was just as horrified as we were, but she saw no solution. And people still have the gall to criticize homeschoolers for their … socialization skills? Or to criticize us for our parental desire to protect against this kind of exposure? I don't get it.
OK, so meanness, lack of manners and precocious sexualization are some of the "socializing" factors rampant in public schools. What about peer pressure and bullying?
We all remember bullying from our own school days. The fear of gym class. The avoidance of certain parts of campus such as the cafeteria, bathrooms or locker areas. The stomach-clenching dread of facing yet another day in which you were teased, threatened, snubbed or beaten up.
Kids have it tough. The desire to conform to peers is strong – strong enough to overcome parental influences, particularly when those parents are removed (by choice or by state) from being active in their children's lives. But even the children of good, involved parents can get mixed up with the wrong crowd at school simply because they desperately want to fit in. If you're not bouncy and pretty (as a girl) or athletic and handsome (as a boy), then you'll do whatever it takes to be accepted by the bouncy/pretty/athletic/handsome types, even if those types are bad influences in other respects.
"Homeschooling" implies that someone is at home. There are no latchkey kids. There are no after-school hours of "free time" before mom gets off work during which a 14-year-old with burgeoning hormones can get in trouble. Homeschooled kids are guided through the time of life when they have adult bodies but childish minds, a time when they can mature into competent adults or descend into horrifying mistakes. And yet people still have the gall to express concern over homeschoolers' … socialization.
Homeschooled kids don't live in a vacuum. While their publicly schooled peers are locked in a classroom for most of the daylight hours, homeschooled kids are out interacting with adults and children, picking up useful, well, socialization skills. And remember, one of the chief purposes of education is to teach children to become adults – productive, mature adults that contribute to society.
Academics are important, and studies demonstrate that homeschooled kids excel in this area. But there's more to life than academics, and that's one of the "balance" things homeschooled children learn in abundance. These are things like faith, honor, morals, patriotism, volunteerism, responsibility, family values, self-control and citizenship.
We sometimes hear the criticism that we cannot duplicate the benefits schools offer children, whether it's sports or music or chemistry labs. To which I reply, "You're right. We cannot duplicate your environment. We are merely trying to exceed your results."
Especially the results of socialization.