Moms Forum: Why do you homeschool?

Posted in Mom Stuff
by besttech

McClatchy-Tribune

Moms Forum spotlights useful discussion taking place on the parenting forums of newspapers around the country.

———

QUESTION: I actually am not a homeschooler myself; there are some practical reasons why I simply can’t. So for those of you who DO homeschool, or have thought about it – what are your reasons?

— Posted by Mother Nature at detroit.momslikeme.com.

RESPONSES:

“My maing reason for HSing is because I want to be able to form his learning experience around his needs.”

“All I can caution is that you should look to the long-term. Your kid will need to go to college to get a good paying job. Make sure you have your kid take, e.g. the Explore test so that you have some sort of nationally recognized barometer of where they are at. Because when it comes time for college entrance paperwork, all of the home schooled kids I knew had such an extra hard time proving that they “deserved” to be able to go to college. There are some homeschoolers (no one here, I’m sure) who do nothing more than use homeschooling as an excuse to not have to get up and get dressed each morning. I *know* someone like that, her kids are major league messed up. Her 20-year-old son’s biggest life skill is being wicked cool at skateboarding. Um, yeah, OK, and what exactly is he supposed to do to feed himself???

“For me, I think the best homeschoolers are ones who network with other homeschoolers so that their kids get lots of other influences besides just them. The YMCA out by us, for example, has “gym class” just for homeschoolers. So the kids get much of the benefits that they might get by being in a big public school with a gym, without having to deal with the herd style of education.

“Personally, I am not a huge homeschool fan. That doesn’t mean that I would criticize your choice, but I just don’t see it as something that I would want to do with my child. I think teachers are teachers for a reason. They spend a lot of time learning their job. There are a lot of horror stories out there, but I know that there are many more great teachers that know their subjects inside and out and have the skills to pass on that information. I tutored a couple of times and I often teach new hires at work. I easily get frustrated teaching. And while I may have the knowledge to teach my kids lower level subjects, I don’t have the knowledge, experience or authority to do it past middle school. Many teachers once worked in the field they are teaching. I would hope that my kid could learn a lot more from a former chemist than from me, who flunked Chem 101 in college.”

“I am also not a big fan. I think that if parents want to keep their children out of school, they should be required to get a teaching certificate with the same requirements that any teacher needs. I am not saying there aren’t some good home schooling situations but that’s not the case in every home.

“I can’t imagine being stuck with only me for the whole day when all the other kids in the neighborhood aren’t forced to suffer like that. My kids need other adults, if for no other reason so they can compare me to them and realize how whacked I truly am.”

“We are planning on homeschooling our kids for several reasons. The main reason is because we want our children to learn about the world and how to think and process and gain knowledge based on our values and beliefs not based on the beliefs of the local school or private school. An easy example would be evolution. Homeshooling will allow us the freedom to expose our children to lots of things. A second reason that is very important to us is that my husband will get to spend much more time with them if they are homeschooled. He works from 4 p.m. to midnight so if our kids were in school he would virtually never see them. We think this would be very detrimental to our family.”