Homelearning and Homeschooling

Abstract. Homeschooling can influence the rest of your children's lives for the better.

Evaluating studies and statistics provide information you can take into account before deciding on homeschooling for your dear little ones. For one thing, homeschooled children become better students in average than those of public schools. On standardised, academic tests, homeschoolers typically outperform children who have got a public education. Yet, take into account there are individual differences among children and grown-ups too.

Further, homeschoolers do not end up worse socialised or less socialised than others, studies show (below). The overriding tendency is the other way round.

More money does not necessarily mean a better education: Average cost per homeschool student was $546 one year, while the average cost per public school student was $5,325, about ten times as much. Homeschooled students outrank students from public schools anyway, in average.

Look to the fruits of homeschooling versus public schooling

Achievement study 1: Homeschooled students, better students: Stanford University accepted 26% of the 35 homeschoolers who applied - nearly double its overall acceptance rate. (Article of Sep. 11, 2000, Times)

Achievement study 2: Better students in the public schools: More than 5,000 homeschoolers from over 1,600 families were studied. Homeschoolers typically out-performed children who got a public education, by 30-35 percent in all subject areas. (1997 study entitled, "Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America.")

Achievement study 3: Better students by far: Dr. Raymond Moore studied several thousand homeschooled children throughout the United States. On average, homeschoolers performed in the 75th-95th % on Stanford (SAT) and Iowa (IAT) Achievement Tests. (Explanation: If a score is in the 75th percentile, it is higher than 75 percent of the other scores.)

Acievement study 4: Better students again: 20,760 students in 11,930 families took the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS; grades K-8) or the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency (TAP; grades 9-12) through Bob Jones University Press Testing and Evaluation Service. Almost 25% of home school students were enrolled one or more grades above their age-level peers in public and private schools. The median scores for every subtest at every grade were above those of public school students. Home school students in grades 1 to 4 performed one grade level above their age-level. (Source: The Scholastic Achievement of Home School Students)

Socialisation

As for how socialised homeschooled children get as adults, there is a study by Dr Gary Knowles that is much cited, though. Of adults who had been homeschooled as children., Knowles found that more than 75 percent felt homeschooling had helped them learn to interact with others as an adult.

Further, in a meta analysis of 24 studies about homeschoolers and socialization, Dr. Susan McDowell concluded socialization was a "non-issue". That means she probably could not find anything definite about it.

In 2000, Dr. Patricia Lines of the Discovery Institute studied the socialisation of homeschooled children. She found that homeschoolers were well-adjusted, and experts were unable to distinguish homeschooled kids from children receiving a public education. And homeschooled children also demonstrated fewer behavioral issues than their public school peers.

Additional studies have shown that homeschooled children participate in many activities outside of the home, which allows them positive interaction with not only their peers, but a variety of age groups.

The sources reflect American conditions: [◦Source] -- [◦:Source 2]

Why wait long?

It could be a good thing to have been homeschooled. "The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) commissioned a study drawing data for the 2007-2008 school year from multiple standardized testing services. Once again, the national average percentile scores were higher in all subject areas by at least 34 percentile points, and as high as 39 percentile points. Factors such as parental college degrees, how much parents spent on education, level of state regulation, and sex of the students made little difference in the range of scores in all areas among the homeschooled children." (My emphasis)

More on college admissions: "Approximately 50 percent of homeschooled children go on to attend college, which is the same number as children in public schools." Dr. Michael Cogan published his study findings in the Journal of College Admissions. He found that homeschooled children were more likely to graduate from college and less likely to drop out than their peers. He also found that children from home education programs had higher first semester, first year, and last year grade point averages than their peers.

Homeschooled ones as adults: In the previously mentioned survey by Dr. Knowles, he found that nearly two-thirds of the adults he surveyed who had been homeschooled owned businesses. Socially, 2/3 of the adults surveyed were married, and none were unemployed or on welfare.

"Data supports the effectiveness of homeschooling, indicating that homeschooled children wind up at least as academically and socially successful as their public school peers. Likewise, rates of college admissions and graduation match or exceed those of children educated in public school systems. With the bulk of studies showing that homeschooling does not harm, and may in fact help students throughout their lives, it's up to you to decide what's best for your family," writes ◦Karen Frazier

Mulling over some issues

Many can educate themselves at home, and also their near ones. Neat knowledge of how to go about it may trigger sustained efforts. There are many books on home education, also called homeschooling.

Seek to benefit yourself in many decent ways, and then it may be fit to benefit close ones in your care. In most societies the state and government has taken over the schooling, and many results of it are quite disastrous, so victimising that the victims hardly know they are badly treated, and why.

Victimising, public education should not be the norm, but it may be to so many millions of children who grow up to become fakers. So many do not realise their inborn growth potentials because of stunting, public education. And when innate interests are curbed rather than encouraged, when most of what happens is directed by others, serving conformism, fakers result, I am sorry to say.

Gatto

A teacher who has become concerned about these issues is the retired American school teacher, John Taylor Gatto (1935 -), author of Dumbing Us Down. He was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. Then, in 1991, he wrote a letter where he announced that he retired, saying that he no longer wished to "hurt kids to make a living."

He then began a public speaking and writing career, and has received several awards, including the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for Excellence in Advancement of Educational Freedom in 1997. He promotes homeschooling, and specifically unschooling. Wade A. Carpenter, associate professor of education at Berry College, describes himself as in agreement with Gatto.

What does the school do with the children? Granting there are differences among schools and forms of schooling, let us look briefly into Gatto's stand in Dumbing Us Down. For one thing, public schooling makes many children confused. There is an artificial needs to memorise to stay in school. Tests, lessons, and trials fill almost all the "free" time of children.

The school teaches them to accept their class affiliation; makes them rather indifferent and emotionally dependent; teaches them an artificial pop-up kind of self-confidence and self-digging that requires a lot of confirmation (provisional self-esteem); and makes them know they "cannot hide", for they are being supervised.

And some grown-ups think that is not too bad.

Harold E. Gorst on Dangers of Public Education

110 years ago the British author Harold Edward Gorst wrote a scathing or telling book, The Curse of Education. Many of the issues he dealt with back then, may still be found. Some sides to enforced, public education are exposed by Gorst. I recommend much of his central matter, despite his "big-mouthed" performance of a sort. He is quotable, so I have gathered many quotes from his book on a separate page. [More Harold Gorst]

Many would like to help their children with their education, and some also provide them with a good learning environment at home along with the ongoing stunting in slow motion at school. In these times, when the Internet has changed much and offers access to vast amounts of information, the conditions for home schooling and home learning with their challenges and opportunities have improved correspondingly. This may be the case with its related distance education too, which has blessed many a child on outback farms in Australia and many other countries. Distance education is less centralised, may be much helped by the Internet if used properly, and may be suitable for grown-ups who do not live close to university towns, and for younger persons who live far apart, as settlers in Australia and on other continents.

Around Frank Furedi and his Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating.

Frank Furedi was born Ferenc Furedi in 1947 in Budapest, Hungary. He is emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in England. He is known for work on education and the sociology of knowledge, and much else. More recently he has been exploring the sociology of risk and low expectations, and one of his most recent books on this topic was Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating (Continuum 2009). He is said to be the most widely cited sociologist in the UK press.

Furedi maintains that society and universities are undergoing a politically driven 'dumbing down' process. As a humanist educator, he is critical of the attempt to subject schooling to technocratic and instrumentalist policy making: in society, education is praised for its potential contribution to economic development, as a central instrument for encouraging social inclusion and mobility. Thus, and increasingly, the official promotion of education has little to do with learning as such.

Furedi assesses that the modern society has got a lot more education but of much poorer quality. Adult authority has generally eroded. Furedi's defends a subject-based curriculum and a philosophy of education that recognises the duty of one generation to impart a canon of knowledge to the next.

Furedi points a finger to this: Regardless of all the attention devoted to education there are problems that go along with it and worries that surround it. Why do so many of the solutions proposed actually make matters worse?

British education has fallen victim over the last three decades to a cross-party, cross-professional consensus based on unexamined assumptions. In our times the purely educative function of education has never been so marginalised, nor has the authority of teachers per se ever been lower. Furedi says things that some people in the UK are thinking about education. Many of the themes in this intellectual's book may be detected in other books he has written too, including The Culture of Fear: weakening of authority, infantilisation of adults, are among them.

Some admire Furedi's thought and his exposure of hypocrisy and intolerance.

The book could be a starting point for understanding many issues in contemporary education. One recurrent problem is how to develop the curriculum. Another is how to teach so that students learn something beyond cramming, and keep interest in learning despite all they are obliged to "cough up" at exams. All are not learning of their own free will, and it is a cause of behaviour problems.

Basically, we easily learn a lot where our real interests are; and also learn and recall better what is meaningful enough. We may also learn better if we get trained to pay attention. This doesn't change as we get older. However, just cramming for exams at public schools tends to cause forgetting at a surprising rate afterwards. If that happens, learning has not lasted long, schooling has not been wise, and much money could have been saved. Imagine!

Homeschooling, Home Education

Homeschooling in the modern sense is an alternative to public or private schools outside the home; an alternative in developed countries to attending private schools or educational institutions operated by civil governments. The education of children at home is typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, and not in any public or private school. Before the compulsory school was established by laws, much childhood education took place within the family or community.

Homeschooling - also called homeschool, home education or home based learning) - is not at all different from self-education, and can be pleasant, so pleasant that one asks for more voluntarily. Ronald Gross goes well into sides of such sides to learning in his book Peak Learning.

Simply put, displeased with the sordid, compulsory education that tends to "make stiff" and maybe regret one's learning experience so deeply that resentment comes to the fore like lava, you may take the matter in your own hand and at least update yourself, and hopefully help your dear children as you learn how man learns more and better.

This is to say there are alternatives to Waldorf Education, Montessori Schools, and the public education that serves the State far and wide, making children less than first-class themselves, for the sake of conforming to the more or less short-sighted needs or foolish ardour that a larger society can be ridden by.

Many Norwegian parents seek to help their children on and up by doing their homework with them – maybe seeking "to have it both ways somehow" thereby. Others go further, and Tony Buzan is one such person. He advocates learning groups at home, to ensure more, faster and better skimmed learning for those involved. Buzan has authored many books. A sample is below.

He is much in line with Ronald Gross, author of Peak Learning and Socrates' Way: Seven Master Keys to Using Your Mind to the Utmost.. If you cater to a jolly good learning processes for yourself, finding fuel for it in savoury, very helpful books and programmes, you may easily want your near ones to benefit from great learning too, as you go on and help them with their various pieces of equipment, advocating lifelong learning also, and telling the near ones to "Live and learn," "Life is a school" and other apt proverbs.

There is good reason to take a proverb with a pinch of salt, that is, to add something like "more or less, to some degree, perhaps" to it. That can help against "dumbening" too. There are many other reservations (qualifications) to adjust ensnaring statements by, as a help against duping, or a means to inspect them fairly at first glance too.

American Proverbs

Newspapers are the schoolmaster of the common people. [Ap 107]

Education doesn't come by bumping your head against the school house. [Ap 176]

Experience is a dear school, but fools learn in no other. [Ap 189]

We learn not for school but for life. [Ap 366]

As the old cock crows, the young cock learns. [Ap 366]

We learn something even by our failures. [Ap 366]

Learn from the mistakes of others [for example by reading good textbooks]. [Ap 366]

You have to learn to walk before you can run. [Ap 366]

Wise men learn by other men's mistakes; fools insist on learning by their own. [Ap 366]

A learned man can be appreciated only by another learned man. [It takes one to know one.] [Ap 367]

A closed book does not produce a learned man. [Ap 367]

Advance in learning as you advance in life. [Ap 367]

Learning makes a man fit company for himself. [Ap 367]

A handful of common sense is worth a bushel of learning. [Ap 367]

Repetition is [a] mother of learning. [Ap 367]

If you have wit and learning, add to it wisdom and modesty. [Ap 367]

A mere scholar, a mere ass. [Ap 527]

He who robs a scholar robs the public. [Ap 527]

Scholars are their country's treasure and the richest ornaments of the feast. [Ap 527]

You can send a man to school, but you can't make him learn. [Ap 527]

We may enlarge on that: "You can send a man to the moon, but can you make him happy there?" - and - "You can send a man to school, but can you make him happy there?"

The first quip dips into the aims of very much education: technological mastery, much in the hope of tackling the long run bad results of misfits who have made the planet less hospitable by exploitations and much else and much worse.

The second dips into the long process of schooling that is subservient to the looming aims of those who curse mankind's future - although it still happens that students enter courses with genuine interest, and get it drained or halfway drained by the system they get engulfed in.

Moral and Results Count

It depends on how much you can handle and how far you are willing to go for yourself and dear ones. Parents cite numerous reasons as motivations to homeschool, including better academic test results, individualized instruction, to help the public system with fewer kids, more hands on environments, to try alternative methods, poor public school environment, religious reasons, improved character/morality development, the expense of private education, and objections to what is taught locally in public school.

Homeschooling may also be a factor in the choice of parenting style. Homeschooling can be an option for families living in isolated rural locations, living temporarily abroad, and to allow for more travelling. Also, many young athletes and actors are taught at home. Homeschooling can be about mentorship and apprenticeship, where a tutor or teacher is with the child for many years and then knows the child very well. Some parents also want the freedom of choice to providing a better education than the rather typical public education in some countries.