The Case Against Homeschooling

Homeschooling: great for self-aggrandizing, society-phobic mother…… but not quite so good for the kid.

Here are my top ten reasons why homeschooling parents are doing the wrong thing:

10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not). And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered an outsider, a natural outcropping of being homeschooled.

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools.

8. Homeschooling is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, students who get homeschooled are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) high achieving students out of our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates.

7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)

6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me? Well, maybe you can. I’ll give you that. But there’s no way that you can teach English as well as me, and biology as well as a trained professional, and history… and Spanish… and art… and counsel for college as well as a school’s guidance counselor… and… and…

5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)

4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week. Homeschooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.

2. Homeschooling parents are arrogant, Part 2. According to Henry Cate, who runs the Why Homeschool blog, many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling.”

More comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future.

1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.

*** Please see the comments for thoughts on the word ‘geeky.’ But, in general, to be geeky connotes a certain inability to integrate and communicate in diverse social situations. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment without peers. It’s hard to get by in such a diverse world as ours! And the more people you can hang out with the more likely you are to succeed, both in work life and real life.

One last note, to those homeschooling parents out there: it’s clear from the number and passion of your responses that TeacherRevised is missing an important voice in the teaching community. If any of you are interesting in writing for us, send me an email: jessescaccia@gmail.com. I would love to have you as part of our conversation.

This person is an idiot. My kids are home schooled and they always test in the highest percentiles on the standardized tests we submit to every year. My children also are very highly socialized they spend more than 10-15 hours a week in activities outside of the home. They are involved with so much stuff that often times it is difficult to find a time to take a proper vacation. Also doesn’t this person who wrote this realize that there are many prepackaged curriculum available with step by step instructions for even the most inept parents to teach. It isn’t like most teachers make up their own curriculum no matter how much education they have.

The benefit is that our kids aren’t left to the whims of Union Educrats who seem far too interested in delving into the sex lives of children, indoctrinating kids in the propaganda of Al Gore and radical secularism than teaching the basics. We opt out not because our kids are not good enough for public schools but that public schools are not good enough for our kids and we actually like spending the extra time involved with their education.

These bitchy feminists many who can’t even find a proper man can keep their ivory tower all to themselves. The success of our children shows they are irrelevant and over paid and their fetish with liberalism leaves me with no sympathy for them or their plight. The world will go on without them. My apologies to all the good God fearing teachers I had in Public school. They and those like them are not the target. It is those that the person who wrote this piece of trash which I hold disdain.

Oh my gosh. This entire ridiculous and superficial article is a definite reason TO homeschool!

Point by point:

10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm .

So no one should be gay, then, because that is another dorm insult kids use at college. Yes, yes, we must fear the college dorm 18-year-old arbiter of morality.

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope).

Should it instead be a place where they can trade pills, joints, and gang signs?

So lend your Lexus for a while to the neighbor down the street whose beat-up truck is on blocks. Anything you have is patently unfair because someone else does not have it.

7. God hates homeschooling. --snip--From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people.

Religious talk is not even permitted in public schools, so this is just stupid.

6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include

They apparently include attempted sentences like "For Real!" Yes, I can do better, and I know where to get resources and experts to do better and at my student's OWN pace, be it faster or slower, than your teaching.

5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)

This I can at least understand. You can't rationalize it; there is cognitive dissonance for teachers about homeschooling. Luckily, homeschooling is not for everyone. Your job is secure. (Probably too secure.)

4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism.

Because the schools in the inner cities around here are not doing it fast enough??

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage.

So playing sports and music with other kids is not as good for socialization as learning how to hold the weed smoke in your lungs, how to mock the overweight girl with out of style clothes, or how to cheat on tests together?

And being a strong individual is against the American way of life how?

1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.

Please remember that these Really Cool Guys will one day be fetching coffee and shining cars for the geeks.

10. Irrelevant if the young adult was prepared for it ahead of time and has learned to bear the scorn of “the world” as a badge of honor, to the point of preferring it.

9. Irrelevant. All children learn more in the home than in school. Whether they learn good or ill, from parents or Spongebob Squarepants, is up to the parents.

8. Just wrong. Taking the time to see that children are well-raised is the single most self-less act parents can do other than giving up a kidney or their physical lives.

7. Children are neither prepared nor qualified to be missionaries. Otherwise, we would have eight-year-olds leading Sunday School classes.

6. In the modern (post-modern?) era, a diploma from a major Liberal Arts institution is the first sign of DISqualification to raise children into productive, moral, and genuinely happy people. Help in the form of readily-available curricula more than makes up for any lack of personal knowledge in parents. Would the writer do as well without the Teacher's Editions of the textbooks?

5. Irrelevant. Public schools do the same for me. So what?

4. The visibility of other races is irrelevant to the (non-)development of racism. Jeremiah Wright became a virulent racist despite the abundance of persons of race other than his own amongst his peers, in the media etc.

3. Here's where I think “diversity” pays off. The homeschooled kids I know best are “socialized” among kids their own age, young adults, middle-aged adults, elderly, toddlers and babies. These people are part of their daily lives. How many public school kids can count an unrelated WW2 vet among their friends? How many would benefit from such a thing? How many university-trained teachers would scoff at its irrelevance, or worse, suspect the old man of being a pervert? Oh yes...they're in band, choir, science lab, and team sports (and 4-H, and church activities—oops, that's bad, isn't it?) with other homeschool kids, whose parents comprise the single;e largest Parents AND Teachers Association it has been my privilege to witness in action.

2. “Risk taking” is not the same as “gambling”. Even if it were true that homeschooling is “risky”, the results (in educational achievement, which curiously go unmentioned in this collection of irrelevancies) speak for themselves.

1. “You say that like it's a bad thing!”

This list is more funny and pathetic every time I read it. Let’s see.

I am a homeschool graduate, future homeschool mom (I think my daughter has to be more than six weeks old before I can claim to be homeschooling her), married to a homeschool graduate.

Homeschoolers come in every flavor. Some of us are proud to claim the title of “geeky”. We make silly comments even more than a decade after graduating about how this or that is because we were homeschooled. Regardless, our friends and colleagues don’t tend to know we were homeschooled until after we tell them, putting the lie to the idea that being homeschooled is a stigma you will never lose.

Some of us are arrogant. Homeschoolers draw disproportionally from the upper brackets of intelligence and that tends to bring in arrogance. Most of us have seen first hand that it doesn’t take advanced degrees in education to provide an education and that comes off as snobbery when we’re talking to defensive “educators”. My own mother has a high school diploma, couldn’t help me with my advanced math courses, and yet has managed to educate (so far) two engineers, a journalist, and a history Ph.D candidate, with between two and five more children to go.

I personally will take the not-so-risky gamble that my husband and I can educate our children. We have three degrees between us in mechanical engineering and computer science, more math than you can shake a stick at, and interests that cover most of the rest of the spectrum. Based on my college experiences I know my English, history, and general education is superior to most ed majors’ (since I used to have to help tutor them for the tests in those classes). And I can write better sentences than the author of that screed can.

My daughter is not a pawn for a political game, to be sacrificed for the improved education of other children or to be martyred as a witness for them. She can choose to help others as she likes once she is an adult. Until then it is my job to protect, educate, and nourish her. Everyone else’s children are not my responsibility.

In conclusion, until I see a “case” that uses facts and figures instead of some idiot’s postulates, I will not be in the least shaken from my conviction that homeschooling is the way to go.

Here’s the reply I wrote on my blog, spunkyhomeschool

The Case Against Homeschooling
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Because I am a socially-phobic selfish mom who has chosen to use my vast wealth to homeschool my children and isolate them from their poverty-stricken peers (and I have nothing better to do,) I feel I have the necessary credentials to rebut the case against homeschooling written by a public school advocate and teacher, Jesse Scaccia. I’ll address Scaccia point by point. For context, an excerpt of each of Scaccia’s points is in italics followed by my response:

10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not) And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered an outsider, a natural outcropping of being homeschooled.

This is a reason against homeschooling? What happened to all that tolerance training the non-homeschooled kids received in their 12 years of public education? I guess it didn’t make the difference some thought it would.

9. . Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study.

You’re not old-fashioned at all. In fact your comment speaks to your vast knowledge of the modern American family but alas also to your ignorance of the American homeschool family. I’m sure this is hard to understand for a teacher confined to teach in an institution all day, but the world is truly both a child’s playground and their classroom. It provides both a focused place of study and the ability to roam freely. It’s time to think globally and liberate yourself and your students from a classroom-centric world. And by the way, I’m not sure if you’re into saving the environment but you might like to know that homeschooling is also eco-friendly.

8. Homeschooling is selfish....

Now on this one you may have a point but not for the reasons you stated. It is selfish for me to give birth to not just one but six children, feed them, clothe them, and educate them for 18 years from our increasing wealth. I mean, gosh, wouldn’t it be better if we shared our burden with the rest of society? Maybe my husband ought to quit his job, go on welfare, and put my children in government assisted education so that they won’t be so “geeky” when they get to college (federally assisted of course.)

7. God hates homeschooling... To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)

I”m not so arrogant to presume that I can speak for God, He does a pretty good job on His own. So I’ll let Him speak for Himself on this one. Proverbs 6:16 talks about the six things the Lord hates, funny homeschooling doesn’t make the list. But in Proverbs 1:8 it says “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction And do not forsake your mother’s teaching” Now, I wonder why God didn’t tell a son to hear a public educator’s instruction or warn against forsaking public education? As to your point about going out into all the world, please see point #10 above and this post.

My primary qualification is that I gave birth to them, you didn’t. But since you seem to be impressed by degrees, I have a double major in Computer Science and Mathematics. Those that couldn’t cut the program became English majors or teachers. For real! I also have real world experience. I won’t bore you with my 46 years of experience though. Read the archives. As my son loves to say, “School is life and life is school, you never stop learning.”

5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)

I’d encourage you to buy a pack of Depends and lighten up. We’re a relatively small group of families over all, no need to get yourself all messed up over it.

4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism.

Now, comes the heavy artillery, let’s call homeschoolers racist (or come close). But remember point #1, it’s those that are public educated that consider us the “geeky” ones. So who is really breeding intolerance?

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage.

Okay I won’t. But remember we’re the ones who are breeding intolerance you might want to watch your words here.

Arrogant. Remember, it wasn’t I who presumed to speak for God. As for taking risks, I think Cate is right. I hope I don’t sound arrogant when I ask you this, but can you tolerate an opposing opinion?

1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.

You should have really left this one off. Not to hate, but does a college educated man with advanced degrees really want to come off sounding like an intolerant freshman insulting those who have chosen to live differently than you?

Scaccia goes on to define the term “geeky” this way, “But, in general, to be geeky connotes a certain inability to integrate and communicate in diverse social situations. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment without peers.”

So then how do you explain Joe Biden?

Scaccia finishes with this invite to homeschool bloggers, “If any of you are interesting in writing for us, send me an email: jessescaccia@gmail.com. I would love to have you as part of our conversation.”

Thanks for the offer but I’ll pass. I’m a busy homeschool mother of six “geeks” who would rather selfishly isolate myself on this blog. But if you’re on Facebook, I promise to add you as my friend.

10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not).

Yes, because freshmen public school grads in college are immature twerps. What is your point?

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools.

That is not remotely old fashion. Which you would know if you read any history. Getting taught at home is as old fashion as it can get.

8. Homeschooling is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, students who get homeschooled are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) high achieving students out of our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates.

The function of my children is not to educate their peers. As a teacher that is YOUR JOB.

7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)

Even the devil can quote the bible. You have not clue here whatsoever. Eccl 3:1-8.

6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me? Well, maybe you can. I’ll give you that. But there’s no way that you can teach English as well as me, and biology as well as a trained professional, and history… and Spanish… and art… and counsel for college as well as a school’s guidance counselor… and… and…

Yeah, I went to engineering college. You don't want to know what my 'arrogant' self things of your 'qualifications'. Let me give you a hint though. You are not capable of teaching your intellectual superiors. That is what my children will be. I think your are colossally arrogant to even suggest you would be capable of challenging them on any subject. I chose carefully and picked a woman capable of doing that. I married her.

5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)

Glad to see all of your qualifications left you well equipped to think logically and rationally. To recap, your number 5 reason why I should not homeschool is that it bugs you? Go look up the words 'conflict of interest' and then go teach your public school pupils a class on that topic.

4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?

Like in tolerance for those that are 'geeky'? If that is an example of how well you and your institution can teach 'tolerance' I will take my chances trying to do a better job.

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week. Homeschooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.

Scientific studies have disproved your premise. The life experiences of millions of homeschoolers have also. You apparently have preconceived intolerant views of what proper social behavior should be.

2. Homeschooling parents are arrogant, Part 2. According to Henry Cate, who runs the Why Homeschool blog, many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling.”

More comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future.

Have you seen the drop-out, illiteracy, suicide, or teen pregnancy rates in public schools? Seems like a pretty safe bet, right? Remind me not to take any booking tips from you.

1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.

Thank you. That is the first nice thing you have said...

*** Please see the comments for thoughts on the word ‘geeky.’ But, in general, to be geeky connotes a certain inability to integrate and communicate in diverse social situations. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment without peers. It’s hard to get by in such a diverse world as ours! And the more people you can hang out with the more likely you are to succeed, both in work life and real life.

Oh, you did not mean it as a compliment? Well let me redefine geeky for you. The geeky kids in college where the ones doing majors you would have flunked out of.

One last note, to those homeschooling parents out there: it’s clear from the number and passion of your responses that TeacherRevised is missing an important voice in the teaching community. If any of you are interesting in writing for us, send me an email: jessescaccia@gmail.com. I would love to have you as part of our conversation.

Conversation? Is that what your call that arrogant condescending drivel you posted. If public school teachers thing that is dialog then the state of public education is no surprise.

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