I was homeschooled until age 15, then I was placed with a Christian homeschooling group that met in an elderly woman’s home. Now, at 24, I’m still working toward earning my GED.

While I accept that there may be situations where homeschooling is necessary, I believe it should be heavily regulated. Ideally, a private school would be a much better option.

I was more or less a social outcast, and I got bullied by other students. We eventually moved to a setup where schooling took place in a rented church hall when things truly hit the fan. The head “teacher’s” secretary’s son once accosted me in the bathroom. When I reported it, I was reprimanded and threatened with bad grades.

It was a creationist program using PACE—Packets of Accelerated Christian Education—with the Bible as its core curriculum. We did eventually get a new Physics teacher who would occasionally try to sprinkle in tidbits of common sense, which was nice.

All in all, it was a total waste. Who would’ve thought that telling a kid they’re going to burn in Hell for not understanding a math problem would mess them up?

TL;DR: Homeschooling isn’t a solution.

Challenge: Your kid becomes socially stunted and developmentally behind.

Reward: You can fully indoctrinate your kid and control every aspect of their brain. Nothing you personally disagree with will permeate your child’s brain.

Seriously, homeschooling is not schooling. It is abuse. Don’t do it unless your child can physically not attend school.

Our kids have done a mix of public, private, and home school depending on where we have lived and their individual needs. We are fortunate to have this level of flexibility.

Most challenging: It’s just a ton of work. Doing it well is a full-time job, which is of course why the world has professional teachers.

Most rewarding: Watching the kids really get into certain topics. There is a level of flexibility you can’t get in a large group, and your kid can move at their own speed. So if they decide they’re super into some topic they can quickly finish the other required work for the day and then have time to dive deeper into their topic of interest. I came home yesterday to find that my preteens spent the afternoon composing original music for percussion ensembles, and it’s actually good.

Edit: I know home schooling isn’t popular here on Lemmy. There are definitely people who abuse it to the detriment of their kids. But there are good reasons to do it, too: maybe your kid has special needs that school can’t accommodate, maybe your kid is being harassed, maybe your kid is significantly ahead/behind their grade level and sees school as a pointless waste of time, etc. And you can get plenty of social interaction with sports, clubs, or just playing with other kids in the neighborhood. It does not have to be a solitary activity, and should not be.

homeschooling

Get away from me your weirdo.

Chellenging: Getting their attention that long.

Rewarding: Getting their attention that long.

I joke a little, but seriously, homes are distracting. It’s where all the videogames, food, siblings and windows are.

But at the same time, it’s rewarding to spend that time with them; and to provide for them education on things that the public school can’t or won’t teach them, like civics, advanced mathematics, Native American history, and extra art.

It’s sad I have to include this caveat, but I want to make clear that I’m not advocating for homeschooling as a replacement for public school, but as an addition or complement to it.

I don’t think homeschooling is good for a child’s development. All current or former homeschooled kids who I know reasonably well seem to have stunted social development and had trouble connecting with their peers. (And I know a lot of these people, relatively speaking.)

School isn’t just about learning your ABCs, it’s also about learning how to socialize with your peers through constant exposure and practice. You can try to put a homeschooled kid in sports or whatever, but they almost never spend the same amount of time with their peers as a normal kid would. And once that developmental window is over, it’s very hard to compensate for that loss. It’s like trying to learn Vietnamese as an adult. Sure you might be able to hold a conversation, but you’ll never get the subtly of the tones or accent entirely correct. The only path to true fluency is learning as a child.

I’ve also seen some homeschool kids struggle with holding down a job or going to university. Some parents might take issue with how schools operate, seeing them as overly disciplined and structured, because apparently that stamps the creativity out of a kid or something. And maybe there is some truth to these criticisms. But that’s not just a criticism of our school system, it’s a critique of society at large. If you’re going to have a super losy-goosey attitude towards deadlines and discipline when you homeschool your kid, then your kid is going to grow up never learning how to meet a deadline, never learning how to motivate themselves to do something when they don’t want to do it, and they will be unable to function in a workplace and a university. So some of these perceived downsides of schools (discipline, deadlines, test stress etc) are really just preparation for the world at large. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows out there. Your kid is going to have to learn how to handle these things eventually, and if they don’t learn young then the learning curve may be too steep for them to realistically handle.

That said, this issue about discipline doesn’t apply in every case of homeschooling. But the issue with socializing impacts 99.99% of homeschooled kids in my estimation, though. Even parents who think they are compensating for this with sports and things never are, in my experience (and Ive met a lot of these kids / families).

So please, for the love of god, DO NOT HOMESCHOOL YOUR KIDS.

hi, homeschool victim teenager here!

i do like the flexibility i get quite a bit, however i lack motivation, have awful grades and have become a vrchat frequenter to fill the social void. take with that what you will

Challenge: Your kid is weird.

Reward: I can teach my kid that LGBT people are subhuman scum without underpaid teachers trying to teach them that other people deserve basic human rights and dignities all while being vulnerable to the Mumps and Rubella.

I think homeschooling is great. My resume isn’t particularly impressive and I have a mediocre GPA from a mediocre school. When I apply for jobs in today’s economy, there’s so much competition. It would be awesome if they could look at the next resume and see “education: school of life, professor mom, A+ and ten stickers for chores”. I would get that job easily.

I finished high school at a private Christian home school program that functioned like a small school run out of a church. Four days a week, late start to the day, get out hours earlier than public school. There was Bible verse trivia in every subject but they only counted as extra credit. Creation in the biology class

Honestly shit was way better than public school. My public school was a cursed mold infested nightmare build on top of an old plantation and the descendants of the slaves work there as janitors still bearing the same name as the school. The teachers at the home school program was just as good but much much nicer and more permissive. Hats on inside, take a snack break whenever, iPods on in class. Only like 10-20 kids per grade level, everything was really personal.

At public school they would be oppressing us, sick from the nasty environment, strict rules, constant trouble, kids acting horrible because the environment was so toxic

Say what you will about Christian homeschool but done right it’s a massive improvement over the nightmare that is secular public school in the American South. I graduated and went to college earlier because of Christian homeschool. Public school had me needing surgery every other year because of how bad the moldy environment was fucking my body up.