The Case Against Homeschooling

Teacher, Revised ^ | May 30, 2009 | Jesse Scaccia

[aberaussie]

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.

[Ann Archy]

The BEST reason to homeschool is so that your children, gifts from God, don’t have to socialize or be TAUGHT by LOSERS and LIARS like Jesse!

[metmom]

This ping list is for articles of interest to homeschoolers. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping List. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from either list, or both.

[highimpact]

“As for the home-schooled child as an adult: I had to work with one. He was even an Eagle Scout and passed the CPA test at the first sitting. He was hired bacause the hiring manager held the “EAGLE” in high regard. Social skills were very poor. After he was hired, it was found that his scout troop was a troop of one scout and one adult. He did NOT have any of the leadership skills one would normally find in an eagle scout.”

Surely you won’t find any maladapted, socially inept adults who graduated from public school. Right? I mean, they’re all beacons of social grace, and natural leaders, and brilliant. Right? And the example that you used, he must be representative of every home schooled adult in the country. Right?

I know a lot of kids who are home schooled, and a few adults who were home schooled. They are all well-adapted, smart, and their social skills are off the charts. EVERY, SINGLE, ONE. The vast majority of home schooling parents do a much better job than the vast majority of public school teachers. The stats don’t lie. Look it up. I’m not going to do the research for you. I did it before deciding not to send our kids to the local Kool-Aid dispensary.

We’re home schooling both of our kids. Even though they’re only 9 & 11, they both test at the high school level. They’re graceful and kind, and they have many friends. Every time they meet a new adult, the adult is left stunned by their ability to carry on a conversation at THE ADULT’S level. How many brainwashed, government educated, liberally indoctrinated drones can you say that about?

Oh yeah, I’m sending them back to public school. THAT would be the definition of, as you succinctly put it, “lunacy” and “selfishness.”

[repubpub]

She’s a he.

Here are his credentials from the website;

Jesse Scaccia has taught high school-aged students in Brooklyn, San Diego, and Cape Town, South Africa, where he currenty teaches at a home for young men. His journalism has been published by The New York Times, The San Diego Union Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, and The Virginian-Pilot. He co-executive produced a documentary series for BET about post-Katrina life for the band and football team at an HBCU in Louisiana. He holds dual degrees in English and education from the University of Connecticut, a master’s in education from Connecticut, and a master’s in journalism from New York University. He is currently the Perry Morgan Fellow in the MFA program at Old University Dominion in Norfolk, Virginia. You can reach him at jessescaccia@gmail.com.

[metmom]

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.

And you're not lady?

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

Like you are?

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.

This female is a is hypocrisy personified.

[metmom]

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.

By her own admission in reasons 5 and 6.

Kind of surreal, isn't it?

[aberaussie]

reading the Hakim books on US History

I was homeschooled and I'm homeschooling my kid sister. A few years ago we were given a Hakim series, Mom said she wouldn't use them in an outhouse.

To each his own, but Hakim is very pc.

I thought so too. We have really liked Clarence Carson's A Basic History of the United States. It is a little more challenging in terms of reading.

[metmom]

Not only *maybe* can teach English as well as she, but better.

[Westbrook]

>> “Public Schools” are better understood as “The Bus
>> Ministry of the State Church of Secular Humanism”.
>
> Hilarious...I’m stealing it. ;-)

Please do! Spread the word!

You don’t even have to mention where you got it!

The people MUST know what is the REAL mission of the tax-funded, union-run government school.

[metmom]

Someone should tell her that her poorly educated students may call homeschoolers “geeky” in college, but in a few years they’ll be calling them “boss”.

And they'll be calling them to fix their computers while in college.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Right. Moral relativism diminishes the respect accorded to Western civilization and Christian culture as unique. But how would students educated this way know, since knowledge of Christianity and Western civilization has been removed from the curriculum? It gets more and more absurd. The student would have to study Christianity and Western civilization to be in any position to make a judgment call on this. But liberals and secular humanists don’t want students educated to that level. When people are dumbed down, they are easier to control. So they don’t want them to know about other choices, alternatives, or other values, like Christian ones.

[bboop]

Is this a joke? Keeping smart kids out of the schools is a disservice to the others? / rolling eyes

[metmom]

"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."

My first thought is that it's supposed to be the AUTHOR'S job to teach the poorer students. Isn't that what teachers are getting paid to do?

[bboop]

Yes, this is pissy name-calling. Why respond?

[HungarianGypsy]

I really had to check on if you had labeled it as satire, because it was the funniest anti-homeschooling article I have ever read. This is really more from the point of, “I’m a teacher and homeschooling pisses me off.” Personally, with all the budget cuts and overcrowded classrooms, it should be considered a favor that more children are not in the system. Plus, I am not sacrificing my place as a parent just to appease someone else’s social experiment.

[killermosquito]

Don’t forget Buffalo:

Updated: 08/12/08 08:21 AM
Buffalo’s high school graduation rate falls.
As those finishing studies in four years drops to 46%, administrators predict turnaround.

By Peter Simon NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Buffalo Public Schools’ reform effort took a hit Monday when state data showed the city’s already alarming high school graduation rate dropped last year by 5 percentage points, to 46 percent...

go here: http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/buffaloerie/story/412577.html

[Tired of Taxes]

Well said.

[wintertime]

After he was hired, it was found that his scout troop was a troop of one scout and one adult. He did NOT have any of the leadership skills one would normally find in an eagle scout.”

Surely you won’t find any maladapted, socially inept adults who graduated from public school. Right? ( high impact)

I am reminded of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine killers. I bet there are a lot of parents who wish those two had been homeschooled! I bet the Harris and Klebold parents had homeschooled their bullied and tormented sons.

Also....When there is a homeschooler who is shy and not a leader why on earth would anyone conclude that institutionalizing them in prison-like schools would make their personalities more outgoing??? Chances are the prison-gang socialization of the other children would simply make things worse. Instead of being a little shy and odd, the kid would be a high school mass murderer.

[Tired of Taxes]

At first, I thought this teacher was female, too, but he is a male. Someone posted his photo somewhere above.

[wintertime]

Oops!RebelTXRose said the following:

“After he was hired, it was found that his scout troop was a troop of one scout and one adult. He did NOT have any of the leadership skills one would normally find in an eagle scout.”