Home Schooling - Good idea or bad idea?

[Scottydont]

We have a 8 year old son who is home schooled. As many do, I was concerned about the socialization aspect. I have met many kids who have been home schooled and have been amazed. They are some of the brightest, self confident, polite, outgoing, and unselfish kids I ever ran across. My son has lots of social opportunies. to deal with kids his age, those that are older and even mentoring younger kids. I can say that we will be educating our 1 year old the same way.

We sacrifice for my wife to be at home but it's worth it. I felt public schools let me down and it seems even worse today. There are plenty of resourses for support, guidance, or activities for parent concidering alternative eduction for their kids. I think too many kids lack parental involvement in public schools. I am very proud and satisfied with being very active with mine.

The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn is very insightful to anyone concidering homeshooling.

[ufg8r85]

Alex, I sent you a PM. Give me a call.

Steve

[Hellrazor]

In my not-so-humble opinion, there are three things need to happen for most students to have a decent chance at a good education: concerned, involved parents, small classroom sizes, and be above the poverty line. It doesn't matter to me if the kid is home-schooled or not, as long as all three of those are present.

I was going to type a long rant, but I just got out of rehearsal and I'm tired and need to go home.

I've worked for a public school for 17 years and I agree with parent part. The best kid can be a train wreck if the parents don't bother.

I tend to dislike home schooling. 80% of the people fall into the "Arrogant" or "Dysfunctional" grouping. The arrogant think school should focus on their child 100% because they are superior and the dysfunctional think they are going to beat the system. And the other 20% are normal people who are unsure public education is the best way.

Charter and cyber schools are a whole other topic.

[Alex Franke]

This is a lot of great input to sort through. I started searching around for public school statistics (e.g. graduation rate) and came across www.schoolmatters.com, which looks like a great resource. You can compare schools side-by-side. I found graduation rates specifically on my state's site.

The schools in my county are not as good as the neighboring county as a whole, but according to the statistics they're pretty comparable for our specific groupings (sex, race, economic dis/advantage), except in math, unfortunately. Good thing my wife was a math major. =)

I'm still on the fence -- It might be interesting to try a year-on, year-off approach when the time comes. In any case, though, we'll definitely be involved.

Personally, I really wish public school teachers had smaller classes, more trust and support from the community and government. (I'd always thought that public school teachers should be exempt from paying federal income taxes, but that's another story altogether.) Most of the teachers I know are just fantastic -- but they often feel limited by the all the rules, the lack of appropriate funding, and the apparent winding down of programs in music, art -- even woodshop.

It's a tough decision. I want my kids to experience the "real thing" and I'm interested in contributing to the system as a whole, too -- issues like bussing and forced diversification make a lot of sense in the big picture. But these are my kids -- my only kids -- and maybe I'm a bit selfish here, but I want to give them the best chance I possibly can.