Dismantling hype: Some Data about Homeschooling

Homeschooling seems to be an issue people cannot discuss without a strong emotional response one way or another. In discussions on homeschooling I've heard both unrealistically enthusiastic endorsements and baffling emotionally-charged attacks. As a homeschooler from 3rd grade through highschool, I would like to address a few points on each side. I've then included an infographic which gives some actual numbers to cut through the hype which seems to crop up at every discussion of the topic.



As a homeschooler for most of my pre-college education, my experiences of both the joys and pitfalls of homeschooling, as well as other people's reactions to my parents' choice of education method, lead me to the following conclusions...

Comments to homeschooling advocates:

1. Not every family can or should homeschool. Many households have two working parents (and many times it's not as simple as "if you care about your children's education then one of you will quit working"), or are disorganized enough that kids not being in school would result in their simply having no education at all. There are a variety of factors which might lead parents to decide that homeschooling is not the best decision for them, and while we would certainly seek to correct any false impressions or information which led to a decision to not homeschool, it's very insulting to assume that parents who send their children to public school do so out of some lack of sufficient desire for their children's well being, and I think that impression is sometimes what is being communicated.

2. Homeschooling curricula (and the corresponding education) vary widely in quality; choose carefully and change if needed. As we began our homeschooling adventure in the mid-90's, there were not the options available that there are today. We mostly used the A Beka curriculum for me, and changed/upgraded for subsequent siblings. I don't know if it has changed significantly over the last decade, but at that time it was very strong on English and literature, while the math courses were merely adequate and fairly unwieldy for self-education (many familes who used A Beka opted to use other math curricula). The history books were well-intentioned as Christian moral education but too selective in their coverage to provide a well-balanced education in history. (For example, I was surprised to learn of some of the "exemplary" persons of history were quite morally ambiguous in their decision making in real life, and some of the "bad examples" had done some very good things. Those parts were often simplified out in an effort to place historical characters in either the "good" or "bad" camp) The science and health/anatomy books were not poor in quality, but certainly emphasized a fundamentalist perspective and in doing so left out some information of which any graduating highschool student should be aware. (E.g., in biology even an overtly Christian textbook should be able to describe evolutionary theory without feeling the need to always portray it in a negative light)

Obviously, there are now quite a range of good homeschooling curricula to choose from, and with MIT and other schools making some courses and information available for free online, a very high quality education is now possible without ever setting foot in a school. Indeed, I believe that the current school paradigm as an extended product of the industrial revolution has been rendered fairly obsolete by the internet, and more pragmatic decision-makers than our current lobbyist and union-dominated Department of Education would be wise to come to this realization before other developed countries put even more distance between the quality of their education and ours.


Comments to homeschooling opponents:

1. Your children are not appropriate missionaries. I am quite astonished to hear some Christian parents decrying homeschooling as a failure of our duty as Christians to be "salt and light" in the world by sending children into public schools as representatives of the gospel. Scripture speaks of training your child in the way they should go, and of the importance of maturity. Children are not mature; their minds and worldviews are still developing, even into highschool. They do not yet have the discernment to reliably differentiate what is right and what is wrong when that information is coming from trusted authority figures in a school environment. Also, you have no idea if your children will be "leaders" or "followers". Will your child lead other children towards good behavior or follow other children into bad behavior? As they get older they can begin to get involved in this kind of ministry, but as elementary or middle school students they are certainly not mature or equipped to do so, and should not have that burden placed on them.

2. Homeschoolers will not necessarily end up 'socially backward,' sometimes quite the opposite. I say "necessarily" because many are. This has to do very little with homeschooling itself, and very much with the parents' attitudes and lifestyle. Students whose parents have literally or metaphorically isolated themselves and their children from what they view as a hostile and corrupting culture may indeed find it difficult to learn to follow the social norms of that culture, sometimes to a degree which does cause problems for them, and those parents may be more likely to homeschool as another way to ensure that isolation. But students whose parents dislike these negative cultural influences but instead teach their children discernment and have them actively involved with other children their age should have no problem. The statistics below suggest that more homeschooling parents are doing the latter. It boils down to: parents who want to isolate themselves and their families will have socially inexperienced children, and parents who ensure their children have opportunities to interact, learn, and participate in activities and competitions other children will not. Homeschooling itself is therefore associated with socially unconfident or inept kids only as a demographic correlation, not a cause.

3. With all due respect, please stop taking the homeschooling issue as a vicarious insult to your own upbringing. The more I talk to people about homeschooling, the more I begin to have the impression that the real problem many people have with it is that they feel claiming their kids should be educated differently than they were is an attack on both their own educations and their experiences in school. I say this because surely the statistics demonstrating that homeschoolers generally outperform public school students academically can't explain the angry reactions I have observed; it would at that point just be a debate about whether those numbers are accurate or not, and that's certainly not like the gut level hostility I have seen. I think on some level homeschooling opponents feel that their own identities as people who went through the public education system are being attacked by smug conscientious objectors, and respond in kind.

Now to be sure, homeschooling is more than a different education method, it's a whole different way of life. Homeschooled children will not have the same nostalgic memories of public or private schooled children, and they won't be "peers" of those children in the most immediate sense that they've complained about the same cafeteria food, embraced the same school rivalries, cheered for the same football teams, attended the same prom... but they will have different, equally meaningful ones. And based on the data below, will have an increasing number of peers who went through the same education process they did, and there is a camaraderie that many homeschoolers share that is instantly apparent.

But maybe for many people it's simply "different" that is the problem. Maybe many people simply are angry that some people want to buck the system they themselves are invested in, that they should dare to think they are better qualified to educate their own children than those the State has deemed qualified, and in doing so suggest that "our" education was inferior somehow.

In that case all I can do is encourage you to open your mind to the possibility that the imperfect system in which you succeeded has declined much further since your participation, and that you can offer your children a chance for a different education more suited for a changing world than you received. Don't force them into the mold of your own experiences simply to validate those experiences; consider the data below and provide them with the best education and chance of success these times offer.

And Now For Some Numbers:



Source: TopMastersInEducation.com