What are your reasons for homeschooling?

[SilverMoon010]

My son is only 2 1/2 right now so we're not really thinking of school just yet.  I'm on the fence about a private school and homeschooling (my husband wants him to go to school so it would be a battle for me if I wanted to homeschool I think). I'd really like to homeschool, but where I live there's not a big community of homeschoolers, if any.  I'm a nonvaxer and I noticed by visiting the other forums on here that a lot of nonvaxers choose to homeschool.  I'm not sure if that's just coincedental or if there is more reasoning behind that.  A part of me wants him to go to school because me and everyone else in my family and everyone else I knew went to school, so homeschooling is nothing I have experience in, and I'd also like him to develop friends at school. 

Anyway, I'm just wondering what your reasons are for homeschooling as I noticed homeschooling is becoming more and more common these days.  TIA!

[Momma Aimee]

• Faith

• Education standards

• founding belief that children under the age of accountablity should be vith the mother or a specific adult chose personally by the parents at all times

• concern for physical safty, and moral safty

I actually created a mission statment for us -- http://scribinglife.wordpress.com/education/family-education-mission-statment/ -- it is not 100% operfect, but it covers most of it ....this is part of it:

 

Socialization:

• Young children are impressionable; we the parents are morally obligated to ensure that the models the children are impressed upon by are worthy.
• Children should not be expected to exercise sound judgment regarding actions and associations independently until they are of an age to be able to make such moral decisions.
• The family must be the most important circle for children till they reach the age of accountability and can be a motivational force within their peer group.
• You cannot effectively compensate for 30+ hours/week of a humanist worldview with a few hours at home when the child is already tired or emotionally done.  The influence of the school system on young children is a very serious thing.
• It is very difficult, even impossible, to tell a child the MUST listen to an adult (teach or other) then to tell them NOT to listen / believe certain things that person says, or not to trust that adult or believe him / her on certain issues.  That is an unfair situation to place a child in; and will effect child ability to learn anything in that situation.

Goals of Education:

• Generally:
  •  
    • To facilitate an education developing the ability to locate, understand and utilize needed information.  To be a fully functional productive member of society that is able to think for ones self and make sound choices and demonstrate the ablity to reason and evaluate data and arguments. 
• Specifically

• To read well, critically, for comprehension and for joy.  To be able to find and expertly use reading to gather needed information on any topic
• To learn to research and gather information and data confidently and quickly.  While evaluating the gathered information for validity and relevance and “trustable”.
• To be a critical consumer of pop culture and the media.  To evaluate bias and its effects data offered.
• Confidently express self well orally and in writing, present information clearly and persuasively when necessary
• Be able to successful use a variety of math skills in daily life and for complex reasoning. 
• To be able to engage in complex reasoning and use advanced logic in life and professional / academic endeavors
• Enjoy Art and Music and Lit for its intrinsic beauty as well as understanding how it fits into history and expresses and reflects the time period of its creation, as well as how it makes God visible in our daily lives.  To recognize and appreciate universal truths. 
• Understand history and politics so as to be able to make critical choices and make sense of current events with the end of being a fully participatory member of the electorate and the body politic personally if necessary.
• To understand the scope of science to an extent that allows for an understanding of current event and the working of the world around us.  Also to allow for recognition of and respect for God’s inherent design in all. 
• To understand the human body, its form and functions and care.  To make wise personal choices in lifestyle and personal behavior.  To be an educated and wise consume of health care.
• To build a solid foundation in faith and the Word of God.  Both as it speaks to our lives in matters of personal choice and faith, and also as Lit and History. 
• To be aware of other world religions / schools of thought / faiths.  To compare and contrast them with our faith, and with each other.  With an eye towards being able to understand others, live tolerantly and to understand world history and politics and current events more completely.

Other:

• No fear of bullies on the playground or being disgraced in front of our social group (class) when you struggle with a subject
• No opportunity to fly under the radar and get by with out truly accomplishing a task or learning information or skill
• Expectations
  •  
    • Age / dev app – not sitting quiet all day at age 5
    • Achievement – higher  personal goals, not dictated by the average of a class of 30 (or even 20)

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

 

nothing here, i am still getting used to the nev stuff

[kindergirl77]

 I think that all the above mentioned are good points for Christian parents to consider, when you are comparing homeschooling to public school, where prayer and bible are not allowed. However, Christian private schools can do a great job of educating children with a Christian world view, including bible instruction and prayer. When my dd went to the Christian school I wasnt worried that she would be taught something different to what we were teaching at home. The downfall is the cost! It would cost us $1000/month for both of our children to go to a private school!
Even if you could afford it, your child will not get the one-on-one tailored education that you could give them at home. You can move at their pace, instead of being pushed too hard or too little. You don't have to worry about stressing them out over grades and testing at such young ages. There is also a lot of FREEDOM to school how you see fit, or to teach to different modalities or to take off on field trips anytime. There is a lot of real life learning that can happen that children in school don't get. So those are some of the positives - that and not having to get them all dressed up and take them to school and pick them up everyday! We don't have to be tied to the school schedule. My hubby gets home late, so my kids are up past 10 at night to have more time with daddy, but then they can sleep late or take naps any time. We also vacation in mid-September and don't have to tailor our trips to school schedules. We are also taking off 2 weeks next week to go on another trip and there is no problem like we would have in school. So freedom is my big answer here!

One more thing, I had no problem telling the schools that we dont vaccinate, and that I would like to sign the waiver form on the back of the school immunization card. Schools will tell you that vaccines are mandatory for school entry, but most states have a religious exemption form you can sign. So that wasn't a factor in my decision to homeschool.

[phathui5]

We have a lot of reasons for homeschooling and the list has grown each year that we've homeschooled.

1) School lunches are mostly gross. Generally no real fruit or vegetables in sight.

2) We can do swim lessons as part of our gym class at the Y and don't have to fit them in after school or on the weekend.

3) With homeschooling, we get to make our own schedule. We don't have to rush out the door in the morning to get to school on time. And on days where it's three degrees outside (not uncommon in upstate NY), we can stay indoors where it's warm.

4) The Outer Banks! The week after Labor Day, when everyone is back in school, we're getting an incredible discount on a beach house with friends.

5) Most schools don't study a second language until around 7th grade. My children are learning Spanish and Latin years ahead of when they would have been starting just one language.

6) Reading! My 10yo ds can stay up for hours at night reading and I don't have to tell him to bed because we have to go to school in the morning... cause we don't. Also, my children aren't stuck on a "reading level" because their age puts them into a "grade." They can read any books, easy books, hard books.

7) My ten year old is doing 6th grade math. If he were in school, his age would put him in the 4th grade and I would have to fight for him to have harder work to do. 

8) The outdoors. On days when the weather is nice, our kids get to play outside for hours, not just the 20-40 minutes they would get outside if they went to school.

9) Field trips. Instead of having to take our kids places on the weekends, we can do field trips whenever we want. We can go to the zoo on a Wednesday and don't have to ask anyone's permission.

10) With homeschooling, studying history is actually fun. No boring history textbooks here! We use Story of the World as a spine and read lots of library books about each topic and do activities that go along with what we're studying. Last week, we mummified an apple and yesterday my kids made "Phoenecian dye" (which smelled horrible).

I could go on and on forever about why we love homeschooling...

[Needle in the Hay]

Freedom and flexibility are the biggest reasons. We can go visit my family in the U.S. and stay many weeks. We don't have bedtime battles or hectic mornings. We have lots of time to relax at home as well as go do things.

I went to school and so did everyone I know, but homeschooling feels much more natural to me and school seems sort of foreign. Our lives would be drastically different if my son went to school and I can't really imagine it.

My husband seemed OK with homeschooling when we had talked about pre-child, but ended up against it when it came down to actually doing it. I told him we'd take it year-by-year and could always reassess. I felt I had more say in the matter since it would be me dealing with either school or homeschooling, plus I had done lots of research whereas my husband just relied on his own uninformed opinions.

[cappuccinosmom]

Freedom and flexibility in curriculum, schedule, and pace of work.

A safe (physically and mentally), learning-promotional educational environment.

The ability to incorporate our beliefs in to the fabric of our learning.

My children's unique needs being served and not squashed in order to fit the classroom model.

Fostering our family's togetherness.

[cappuccinosmom]

Aimee, love your mission statement, btw.  That's awesome.

[Nicoleandco]

Many of the reasons listed were deciding factors for us. 

But other things too, that make up a bad experience/environment for people- For instance, in middle school whenever we wanted to go to the bathroom we had to take the hall pass...which was a (clean) toilet plunger.  How embarrassing for a prepubescent kid! 

I remember spending several days a month watching Disney movies or "educational" movies in classes.  Whenever we had an assembly, or got out early, or it was before a break...so quite often.  

Plus, I really like being around my kids!  I feel it's my job to educate them and I really enjoy it.  

[Cyllya]

So many reasons. I'd be here all day if I tried to list them all. I don't have kids yet, but I'm planning on homeschooling my future kids mainly for the sake of giving them a happy childhood.

I went to public school and I got good grades. I wasn't bullied often. All the teachers liked me and I was reasonably popular with other students. I hated it, but I believed all the authority figures who insisted it was important. Even though I didn't struggle too hard in school, was always mentally exhausted when I got home. There were years at a time where I couldn't do anything when I came home except instantly go to bed (which would make it hard to sleep that night, which would make me sleep-deprived the next day; repeat for years). There were tons of projects I wanted to work on during my teenage years, notably I was trying to write a series of fantasy novellas, and even though I diligently spent almost every day after school for years working on one of them, most of them were never finished. I went to college and got a BA in 2.5 years, with an even better GPA. It was a small private college, and it was very enjoyable.

Now I'm making minimum wage at a mind-numbing temp job I could be let go from at any moment, because even after three years of job searching, I haven't found any other job I have the skills to do (and the one I've got is pretty hard for me too). I have about $45,000 in student loan debt, and my mom has to make half my payments every month because I can't afford to. She also pays most of my other bills. The only reason I don't still live with her is because I'm able to live with my DP. The only reason I'm not in therapy is because I can't afford it. I'm still working on various projects in what is now even less free time than I had as a kid. Every night, going to bed breaks my heart, because I'm tearing myself away from what I love to do, and I will be going to my crappy job in the morning. I want to be an entrepreneur, but all my 15.5 years of formal education were designed to turn me into an employee. I don't have any of the skills I need for this. I'm trying to learn them, but it's not easy when you have so little time and energy. I wish I could have learned this when I was a teenager, but I wasted my time in school, because my mom told me it was necessary. In retrospect, I should have known better than to trust her. College was fun (the most expensive fun I've ever had), but those other 13 years were a waste of my life I will never get back.

And here I'm reading articles about gosh damned unschoolers getting into freakin' Harvard! Or starting businesses, or just going straight into jobs they love. The Teenager's Liberation Handbook has an entire chapter devoted to listing out all the cool things that various home/unschooled kids are doing with their lives instead of going school. That's when it hit me just how many opportunities I would be depriving my kids of if I sent them to school.

I figure, what's the worse thing that could happen if I don't make my kids go to school and don't make them do any home school work either? They might spend 8-16 hours per day for 13 years playing video games... and then they'll be able to get a job as video game testers, which makes more money than I make. I will be a proud mama if that happens. But what's the worst that could happen if I force them to go to school? They might feel the way I felt about school (or worse, more likely) but tough it out because they trust me like I trusted my mom, then they'll get killed by a drunk driver two days after they get their high school diploma, and all those years they sacrificed will be for nothing. And I'll be kicking myself.

Coercive education just doesn't jive with my life philosophies. I'm not sure how I'm going to teach my kid to take responsibility for his own choices in life and force him to go to school.

Oh, yeah, I'd probably let my kids go to school if they reeeaaaally wanted to, but it would be with great reluctance because (a) it's a very strict schedule which constrains the entire family, and (b) en loco parentis. En loco parentis refers to the law saying that schools can act as the legal guardian of your child when you're not present. It's why a school in Arizona once strip-searched a 13-year-old girl because another student said she was hiding an ibuprofen tablet in her underwear, and while I consider that sexual abuse, it was totally legal. Is there any other situation wherein you would turn over guardianship of your child to someone that you haven't considered very, very carefully?

[isabchi]

Originally Posted by phathui5 

We have a lot of reasons for homeschooling and the list has grown each year that we've homeschooled.

1) School lunches are mostly gross. Generally no real fruit or vegetables in sight.

2) We can do swim lessons as part of our gym class at the Y and don't have to fit them in after school or on the weekend.

3) With homeschooling, we get to make our own schedule. We don't have to rush out the door in the morning to get to school on time. And on days where it's three degrees outside (not uncommon in upstate NY), we can stay indoors where it's warm.

4) The Outer Banks! The week after Labor Day, when everyone is back in school, we're getting an incredible discount on a beach house with friends.

5) Most schools don't study a second language until around 7th grade. My children are learning Spanish and Latin years ahead of when they would have been starting just one language.

6) Reading! My 10yo ds can stay up for hours at night reading and I don't have to tell him to bed because we have to go to school in the morning... cause we don't. Also, my children aren't stuck on a "reading level" because their age puts them into a "grade." They can read any books, easy books, hard books.

7) My ten year old is doing 6th grade math. If he were in school, his age would put him in the 4th grade and I would have to fight for him to have harder work to do. 

8) The outdoors. On days when the weather is nice, our kids get to play outside for hours, not just the 20-40 minutes they would get outside if they went to school.

9) Field trips. Instead of having to take our kids places on the weekends, we can do field trips whenever we want. We can go to the zoo on a Wednesday and don't have to ask anyone's permission.

10) With homeschooling, studying history is actually fun. No boring history textbooks here! We use Story of the World as a spine and read lots of library books about each topic and do activities that go along with what we're studying. Last week, we mummified an apple and yesterday my kids made "Phoenecian dye" (which smelled horrible).

I could go on and on forever about why we love homeschooling...

Freedom and Taylored Education.

We're unschoolers and my  5yo is reading in English (2nd grade level) and Spanish. She's fascinate with Maths, also second grade level and Geography. We never teach any lessons so far, by she's vivid learner. I can't image her in any school, really! . Sha have this idea that learning is everywhere.
 

[Momma Aimee]

thanks, if you check the blog post -- there is more discussion of it -- i only copied the bullet points here -- but there is more 'thought process'

 

Originally Posted by cappuccinosmom 

Aimee, love your mission statement, btw.  That's awesome.

[~Boudicca~]

The above mentioned freedom and flexibility.  There are so many things that fall under those 2 things. 

[Lisa1970]

In the beginning, it was because of the bullying in the schools. Later, it was because of the lack of education in the schools. I am quite tired of teachers who hang out on the internet during classtime. I am sickened by teachers who know little or nothing about their subjects they are supposed to teach. I am exhausted of kids in gifted middle school and high school classes coming home with pictures to draw and color. And the math and science education? Disgusting!

[Picard]

Many reasons, really. They stem from having been in the public education school system for way too many years myself. I feel robbed of my sense of self. I was bullied, I was bored. I disliked the time I had to do. I felt awkward and depressed. And, then, later on, at university the first time around, it was a total joke! The profs often did not even show up for class! The second time around, I felt that they just wanted my money as I was a great, competitive, reliable student. I landed up with huge debt and little knowledge about what I would like to contribute to the world. My partner has similar experiences and is equally jaded referring to the high school here as 'our local education bunker'.

I'm also quite positive that schools by their bureaucratic nature are not the most progressive places to learn right now. The world is changing enormously with all that time-space compression going on, and I just feel that DS will learn and flow with the times much better if he is not surrounded by four wall most of his time. We have a great number of friends and acquaintances who love to be there for him, showing their professions, crafts, skills, and sharing their knowledge.

In any case, I am looking to cultivate a subjectivity in my DS where he is confident in who he is; non-uber-competitive - I dislike tests; I would like him to be auto-didact; most of all, I want him to fly with what he loves doing whether he finds out at age 3 or any age thereafter. Oh, - and how can I forget - I want to travel with him so that he can see for himself.

[moominmamma]

Freedom to soar. Freedom to explore. Freedom from age-based learning expectations.

Flexibility ... to follow interests, to self-pace, to cater to learning styles, to diverge from standard curriculum.

Family. And real, genuine community. Not a pseudo-community of age-peers and authority figures.

We actually started homeschooling because my eldest was academically way too advanced for Kindergarten but emotionally not quite ready for school yet. Our reasons to continue homeschooling as the other kids have grown have multiplied as we've discovered more and more advantages.

Miranda

[Needle in the Hay]

Originally Posted by ~Boudicca~ 

The above mentioned freedom and flexibility.  There are so many things that fall under those 2 things. 

There really are. That's why they are my two main reasons--it keeps it short. I could spend an hour posting my reasons/perks of homeschooling and they would all fit under freedom and/or flexibility, especially our long trips to the U.S., but lots of little things too.

When my son was three and everyone expected him to enter school (this was in France and that's when kids start) I made pro and con lists for both school and homeschooling. I think I could only think of one pro for school--that it would stop everyone from pressuring me to send him! Well, that intense pressure stopped anyway once school started and it was clear he wasn't going.

[sublimeliving]

The reasons that I chose to homeschool have all paid off with a seventeen-year-old that is wholesome, outgoing, has great self esteem, being offered academic scholarship to every college she applied to, and she loves her parents.

Reasons-

1. 1 on 1 education. The numbers don't get any better.

2. Foreign language starting in kindergarten.

3. Concentration on a literature based curriculum

4. Ability to move at the student's pace (not the pace of the slowest student).

5. Time to do twice as many extracurriculars as friends and become proficient at all.

6. A parent child relationship that can't exist when the child goes to school all day.

I spent every 8 hour day for 180 days for 12 years (my daughter graduated 1 year early) with my dd. That's over 2,000 days that I would have missed out on. Eek, that's around 17,000 HOURS more that I got to get close to, hug, talk to, develop an amazing relationship, educate, travel with my child, eat picnics, have tea parties, backpack through Europe for six months, read in bed, watercolor paint, watch movies... I wouldn't have missed out on raising my child (for those 2,000 days/ 17,000 hours) for anything. 

[Lakeeffectsnow]

I wanted to home school since I was a teenager and read the "Teenage liberation handbook" and John Holt.  When I had my daughter, I had no real idea about what I wanted be like as a parent, but I knew I wanted to unschool her.  Over the years, as I met my DH and my stepson, followed DH on his military career, and had more kids the idea evolved.

1.  Education tailored to each child.  OD does great with unschooling. OS needs a much more structured approach.  MS is thriving with weekly scout meetings and recorder lessons and YS needs to be very busy with tons of activities every day.

2.  Continuity, they didn't have to switch schools every single time we moved.

3.  Flexibility with our schedules.  I can take all five kids to visit family on discount tickets.  DH doesn't have to fight coworkers for time off during the school breaks.

4.  Making sure the kids learn our values and not the values of every one else.

5.  I don't have to have four kids up and out the door at 730 am.  That is the real reason.

[SpiderMum]

• I was homeschooled myself (K-12) so I see it as normal and an obvious choice for my kids.
• Having the freedom to learn whatever we want whenever we want.  No tests, no coercion, no grades, no curriculum...just learning via life and personal interest.  IMO, school kills your natural drive to learn and explore, which is bad enough....but they're not doing a very good job teaching what they set out to anyway.
• Living by our own schedule that works for our own family.  Being able to take a vacation whenever we want instead of whenever school allows.
• Socialization.  Not only at the social opportunities in school unhealthy in most cases, but they're few and far between to begin with.  Keeping my kids home means they'll actually have TIME to be social.  In my experience as an HS grad, homeschooled kids had it way better in the social department to begin with.
• Free time.  School eats entirely too much time.  Kids need time to relax and take on hobbies.  Save the 8-hours days and commutes for working adults.
• For teens, the ability to get a day job if they choose.  School really limits your availability.

We're radical unschoolers so our take on education is a bit different than most, by the way.

[marimara]

• It started with a lack of decent educational options in this town
• increased flexibility to travel and enjoy life (we're military and our schedules aren't always 'neat')
• I'm pretty sure we'll continue to homeschool because dd has some special learning needs that I'm not sure could be met in a public school (and we can't really afford private school)