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Each year more than a million children are homeschooled in the United States, and that number is steadily growing. While some parents believe homeschooling is an ideal situation, others fear that a student's education can be severely hindered in such an environment. When making a decision about your child's education, which is the more reasonable school of thought?
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a question
re:question
"how are homeschooled kids taught the more advanced subjects like calculus or physics?"
Lots of ways! Some take jr. college classes, if they choose, some buy a book and read and learn the material, and like many in public schools, some kids choose not to take these classes. One can't be good at everything or be an expert in every subject. So many of these classes aren't available to most students in public schools anyway. As homeschoolers, we at least know how to find the answers and help our kids get the information that they need or want.
- karribest
September 16, 2008 3:29PM
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let me see if I understand
they either don't learn it (which you seem to justify heavily) or they go to a community college to learn it?
- reckoner
September 17, 2008 8:57AM
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They do learn it
Many homeschoolers learn advanced subjects. And just because a student is in public school taking those classes doesn't mean they learn the material. That's why so many tutoring businesses are out there!!!
Homeschoolers have the advantage of learning those subjects in a way that makes sense with the way they learn. They can take a class, have independent study, a virtual course online, or buy a textbook. Homeschooling families are very resourceful.
But I do think it's a bit disingenuous to imply that these so-called "advanced" topics are crucial. I was a grade ahead in math in the public schools when I was a kid, but I don't use trigonometry in my daily life.
Education should and can be tailored to the talents, interests, skills, and abilities of each individual student. Public education is mass education. Homeschool education is individualized.
- nlj September 17, 2008 2:43PM
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surprised
i'm surprised the tone I keep hearing is that kids don't need to learn advanced subjects.
"Education should and can be tailored to the talents, interests, skills, and abilities of each individual student. Public education is mass education."
I had good teachers that did tailor lessons for students or gave them one on one help. This is harder when class sizes are large, but this only means we should make them smaller. Do you not send your children to college because it's "mass education"?
- reckoner
September 18, 2008 8:58AM
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It depends on the teen's interests.
I went to an A-level high school and even there not everyone was required to learn calculus and physics. But it's not too hard to find someone who will tutor those subjects if the student is interested. My husband tutors in calculus, physics, chemistry, trigonometry, biology, and computer science to both homeschoooled and public schooled students. He finds the homeschoolers much easier to teach because they have a much better foundation to learn from. The local schools tend to skimp badly on the fundamentals students need to learn before they reach high school
- Lioness September 18, 2008 10:33AM
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sampling bias
I think you may be basing your opinion on a sampling bias. Home schooled kids are far more likely to have parents that are very active and concerned with their education where as public school kids are hit or miss. Attributing their foundation to the school system may be misplaced. I'm sure public school kids with equally active parents will have the same solid base, or maybe better.
Second, I'm unsure how well someone can teach all those subjects you mentioned. My degree is in computer science and I doubt that someone who doesn't actively study computer science could teach it well. I also know that I couldn't teach biology or chemistry.
- reckoner
September 18, 2008 12:18PM
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Denpends on the teacher.
My husband has BAs in Biology and Chemistry, a minor in Mathematics, and a PhD in Molecular Biology. He currently teaches high school, and routinely teaches high school Chemistry, Physics, Advanced Mathematics, and Computer courses in the same year. He jokes this ensures they can never fire him, as they would have to hire three teachers to replace him. He's won awards for his teaching, and his students do well in all those subjects at the university level.
As for "bias" I can tell you horror stories from him and from his fellow teachers about what actually happens at public schools that would curl your hair. He typically spends two hours a night talking to concerned parents on the phone trying to undo damage their children suffered from classroom experiences in other subjects and prior to their reaching his class.
Thing is, he's the only teacher in the local school system like that. He can't save all the kids, and he can't undo all the damage. But we sure don't want our own children suffering the same damage.
When my daughters were toddlers, he was with them at the local grocery store one day when they met the local first grade teacher. She pulled him aside and whispered in his ear, "Please homeschool those girls. I don't have the resources to handle gifted children. They would only become bored and end up in trouble. You don't want that and I don't want that." My husband nodded, as he had plenty of bright, gifted students who had ended up tuning out of the school system years before they got to his classes for just that reason. He didn't bother to tell her we were already homeschooling.
- Lioness September 18, 2008 12:35PM
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You misunderstand
They are not saying children don't need to take the hard subjects, but they are saying that if your child is more interested in biology instead of chemistry, they can downplay the chemistry and help the child pursue their greater interest in biology.
That is the beauty of homeschool. They can just learn the basics in chemistry in order to pass the SAT for college but can spend hours on end on biology is that is their passion. They can correspond with biologists, read textbooks, perform experiments, volunteer at a hospital, order a formal course from various curriculum providers, and do the same things public school students would do, but at their own pace, so if they want to spend months on plant cells instead of the two weeks they might spend in public school, they can.
Some college classes really are no better than just reading a book. My university psychology class had over 400 students. I got nothing out of it. I wish I had chosen a smaller college.
- crunchymom September 19, 2008 9:34PM
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same at my public school
"That is the beauty of homeschool. They can just learn the basics in chemistry in order to pass the SAT for college but can spend hours on end on biology is that is their passion."
My public school gave me the same option. I took AP biology and only did the one year of chemistry, which is really just the basics.
- reckoner
September 22, 2008 2:28PM
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Not all are like that
Not all public schools are like that.
- UltraConservative September 22, 2008 8:00PM
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Not every kid is going to be an engineer
Most public school students would not be caught dead in Physics or Calculus. Why should home schooled kids be that much different? Also, at the community college where I work, we have hundreds of high school students enrolled in classes. We bill back their high schools for the instruction. If a home schooled kid takes a community college class, how are they different than the public high school students?
Some homeschooling parents are much more qualified than the public school teachers their children would have. Personally, I wouldn't home school my kids, though I'd be qualified to teach physics and calculus and a lot of other subjects at a high school level. For example, my engineer neighbor who home schools his kids - he'd be qualified, too. My engineer friend who home schools could do the math and science, and French, too, since he taught high school level science at a private school in France for a few years. Home schooling parents are generally pretty smart. That's why their kids outperform public school kids, on the average.
- dmsharp
September 29, 2008 7:34PM
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most parents
most parents are not more qualified than public school teachers. Physics and Calculus were only one example. What about high level writing and composition, etc, etc.
- reckoner
October 4, 2008 7:11AM
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outlier
Your neighbor is an outlier, and his situation does not apply to the wider population.
One cannot know if any arbitrary child is going to be interested in physics or calculus... by not giving them the option of studying it (because the parent is not qualified to teach it) then you are depriving the students of an educational opportunity.
For example, what if your neighbors child wanted to learn German and not French? Or was interested in literature / poetry instead of math and science ?
- MrBook
January 16, 2010 8:59AM
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higher learning
Trig may not be useful in everyday life... but learning it (as well as other advanced subjects like calculus and statistics) are vital to advanced degrees.
- MrBook
January 16, 2010 8:48AM
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This is not true
From my own experience with Home School, you do not have any choice in whether you take those classes. They are in the Materials we use for home schooling in our Church. When you get to that level, you have a multitude of choices, you can either teach it, use live video feed, use video feed, or use computer based learning for it.
- UltraConservative September 22, 2008 7:56PM
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oops
I am on the no side. I do not believe that children who are home schooled are at a disadvantage. There are, I am sure, statistics to prove that.
- UltraConservative September 22, 2008 7:58PM
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statistics
Some of those statistics you mention are displayed on the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image :Homeschool_grades_chart.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image :Homeschool_academic_scores.jpg
To quickly sum them up...yes, homeschooled students have higher academic scores than both students of private/Catholic schools and public schools.
- ebsarver
September 24, 2008 1:01AM
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I think what they mean
is not all children that homeschool choose to take those subjects, just the same as they don't always choose to take them in public school. I went to public school and never had them. The highest I went was biology (but I got A's in college level astronomy) and geometry. My oldest is only 12 and I'm already checking into math programs that I don't have to understand the higher levels myself to teach. There are some great programs out there. The one I will be using teaches by DVD and book. It also has a feature that it goes through each problem in the entire book step by step on the computer so if your student misses any problems, they can see what they did wrong. My husband was a computer science major, so he can help the children, if I can't. Even if I didn't have him as a resource, I could find someone to help. The homeschooling community is VERY helpful to each other.
- eclecticeducation September 24, 2008 1:14PM
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Calculus/Physics
Just for the record, the curriculum that I am using for my children does offer advanced science and math courses. (ie - physics and calculus) as college prep. classes.
M
- ROLSongbird
August 10, 2009 12:34PM
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