re: #298 HappyWarrior

I remember my first exposure to home schooling. A neighborhood friend was briefly homeschooled by his mother and I just remember thinking it really did more harm than good since to be frank his mom wasn’t cut to teach him. I think the reason why education as it does now works is we get multiple perspectives and people. School is probably the first place we go where we get opinions and observations different than our immediate families. And that I think is why wingers hate the public school system. At the same time, I think a parent who is a trained educator and or dedicated to teaching their kid, home school could benefit that kid but I’m not a fan of isolating kids socially and I have seen that in the home school community. They’re not completely isolated but often times they are separated from kids who aren’t in that community.

There are situations and families where home schooling or even unschooling (no structure at all) can be better than classroom education. But it requires the parents to know their limitations, and often parents do not. If their own education or understanding of a subject is deficient, they end up passing that on to their children. I’ve taught kids who were home schooled, and usually their math and science skills were the weakest. But they were able to catch up quickly because most had a very good work ethic and were self-disciplined.

The bad side of home schooling is when parents want to shelter their kids from the reality of the world, whether it be modern science or people of a different religion or color.