Homeschooling for primary/secondary education, if done correctly, is far different than taking courses online. Really, the only real similarity between the two is that the student has more control over the pacing than in a traditional classroom setting.

And there is no reason that the homeschooled person can't work as part of a team. Indeed, that is part of what makes homeschooling so much work for the parent -- it becomes the parent's responsibility to provide different kinds of interaction with others. I've talked to any number of college students who were homeschooled, and almost without exception, each of them were farther along in their "teamwork" skills than the average 18-year-old coming out of the public schools. And, quite honestly, it isn't even close.

Are there homeschooling parents who fail to provide this kind of environment? Absolutely.

But there are a helluva lot more students who come out of the public school environment not buying into the value of teamwork at all because they haven't just had to work with people they don't like, they've pretty much had to do it all the time on projects they thought were a waste of time who no one ever justified as important. They may have learned to "conform" and "play the game", but they've moved farther away from people able to complete projects with others on time and at a quality level, much less do so with creativity and innovation.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason you had such negative experiences with that online statistics course was because of flaws in your earlier education. Part of what that earlier education *should* be about is preparing you for problems where there isn't instant response, where there isn't someone there to tell you whether you've got it correct or not. By the time you're taking a college-level course like that statistics course, whether that course is to provide its real value to you (whether its online or not) will depend on how and when you trust your own judgment and your own learning skills.

Using statistics in a meaningful way (as opposed to typing numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and then plugging, chugging, and printing the table and graph) demands constant acts of judgment by the user. And that's true whether one is using the most basic descriptive statistics like the mean and standard deviation as well as when you are using some doctoral level nonlinear regression model. I've seen hundreds of 18-22 year olds in the introductory stats course -- and maybe 10% of them are at the level they ought to be before taking such a course.

I'm not saying all homeschooled kids end up in that 10%. But I am saying that I am more confident that they will appear there significantly less often than those who had public school educations.

And again, I doubt it's even close.

---

Wade added more insight on why homeschooling is not the way to go lol

The only way homeschooling can work in my opinion is if it's tiered learning with a dedicated and responsible parent. Although, I think I might have an incorrect understanding of the definition of homeschool.

---

Of course, the same could be said of public education. Except that public education needs dedicated and responsible parents AND a system that works.

[grin1]

---

Yep, I'm not too fond of our Public School's and my area has one of the better ones in Wisconsin.

In the perfect world ... I'd home online school my kids at their pace with materials that I choose for them to cover out of a wide array of options.

---

I can't complain about my kids' elementary school so far. Possibly they aren't challenged enough.

The problem I have with home schooling is that the people choosing to do this need to be committed and not a bunch of wack jobs who want to shelter their children from the world. The primary job of a parent is to prepare the child for the world and that is pretty tough to do if all they see is the kitchen table at home. Basically you would be hindering your child socially.

And the other problem is how well rounded is the parent to begin with?

---

I didn't real all the responses, but one I've seen a few times I have to call out on. The social aspect of homeschooling. It's a faux con to homeschooling. Every homeschool kid/person I have ever met were actually better in social situations than the average public school student. I don't necessarily know why, but it may have something to do with being homeschooled by the right program/parents, or just the fact that they aren't bombarded with anti-socializing tendencies (don't talk to strangers, etc). Whatever the case may be, and I know there are exceptions, homeschooling can NEVER be worse than the public school system. Certainly if one is homeschooling their child for the wrong reason, it can be damaging.. but don't underestimate the adaptability of kids.

That said, my wife and I would love to homeschool. We are working on making sure we are in the right place financially before having them so we can do as such. My sister-in-law is a HS history teacher and she is vehemently against homeschooling. We want nothing better than to prove her fallacies on homeschooling wrong.

---

I can't believe someone actually notes who was home schooled versus the traditional schooling and rates their social prowess on it. That's just frigging creepy shit right there.

One thing that would go against the social experience in a traditional school setting is ... your kid won't learn the negative social "norms".

---

i would be going into this eyes wide open. thankfully i know a few people who have home schooled their kids & they know what works & what doesn't. no decision has been made yet & probably won't until next year.

my kids have been exposed to alot far too young. they have an alcoholic father with parents who bail him out of everything. they've seen him lose his semi, his place to live, job after job, & believe me, they're learning a hard lesson from all of it. they watched me struggle with the decision to divorce their father, meet someone new, move to a new town, & start over. they've been right by my side through all of this. i wish i could've kept them 'little' far longer but i failed. we discuss more adult matters than i ever thought i would with my children but they are very inquisitive & i don't feel right lying to them about the way the world works.

someone mentioned fear as a motivation in this decision. i must admit that it is a small part of why i'm considering home schooling. we live near peoria which is a pretty rough city. that element has slowly been moving into my small town & it's not good. kids in school are extremely disruptive & disrespectful. last year a kid had a gun in the high school & another child - a 5th grader - brought drugs into the boys school. it's a pattern i see escalating.

the main reason for wanting to home school is to give my kids the best education possible. i don't feel at all that they are getting that now.

I'd go with the advice I gave my mother regarding my brother. High School, yes, have him go to a traditional school. The years prior, if the right situation is presented, a home schooling routine could be greatly beneficial.

I'm pretty ignorant on the facts about a child earning a scholarship with home schooling and that is one reason I mention high school should be at a traditional school, plus some other positive learning opportunities.

If I could have afforded it, I would have done home schooling for my daughters in a heart beat. I would rather raise my children my way, than have some teacher who cares more about their benefit package than teaching kids any day of the week.

I feel teachers are more worried about their job security than their students actually learning. Yes, some teachers care not about their salary and care only about the kids, but in my experiences over the last several years ... that was not the case.

If a teacher has 30 students, only 4 of them earned an A ... it's the fault of the teacher, not the student. I find that very bothersome.

---

Having been homeschooled from 2nd grade through high school, I will tell you that I am a huge proponent of homeschooling as an educational alternative -- but NOT as a lifestyle choice.

In other words, do not let yourself make the mistake so many early homeschooling families made and become "homeschoolers." People who send their children to public school aren't "public schoolers" (except in the fevered minds of radical homeschoolers), so why should you become "homeschoolers"? If you are choosing to educate your children at home, that is awesome. They will almost certainly receive a far more in-depth and well-rounded education than their peers in the school. If you choose to make homeschooling your identity, though, if you make it an us-against-the-world mentality, then you start to create problems. Education is only a part of life -- it isn't life itself, and it certainly shouldn't be your worldview.

In my experience, a healthy homeschooling family answers the question of "So where do you go to school?" with "We educate our children at home" or "We homeschool." A family who brands itself "homeschoolers" is typically insular and experiences the socialization problems some people attribute to homeschooling.

I agree with Wade that the socialization issue is way overblown though. If your kids have friends in the community, participate in activities (sports, choir, volunteering, whatever), they get socialized. Learning how to interact with your peers is not how you succeed in the world anyway. In the real world, you have to know how to interact with people both much older and much younger with you. Dependency on people your age is a great recipe for failure in life.

---