Have you ever thought about your children's education before doing homeschooling?

Question

Any one who is doing homeschooling is welcome to answer.

Now I am planning a questionnaire of homeschooling.

Answer 1

When my daughter began school, I had never heard of homeschooling-- I was also a single mom going to school in the morning and to work at night, so I had her in preschool by age two. Every time she went to a new school/grade, I checked it out, and was very involved with assisting in the classroom, volunteering, PTA, etc...

I would not say that I wasn't concerned about education before homeschooling... I was still very involved, just in a different way.  It was a fluke that we stumbled upon homeschooling nine years ago, and it just happened to work out for us really well. I had just graduated with a BA in education so I had a lot of pre-concieved notions about education, and after homeschooling a few years and working with other homeschoolers, as well as gaining experience teaching in a traditional classroom setting, my educational philosophies and approaches began to change, but involvement pretty  much stayed the same.

I do have to say that in my experience as an involved school parent and as a teacher, that you do have a point-- there are parents who simply rely on handing their kids over to the closest local school with little thought or research, and with little real involvement other than drop off/pick up and nagging for homework to be done. Not all parents are like this, though, as there are a lot of parents that realize a partnership with the school works better.

Answer 2

Concerned parents who want the best for their children need to question if they are capable of providing the best education.

Answer 3

We were very concerned about our son's lack of education in the public school.  He was passed from grade to grade and was at about 6th grade level when we took him out in the 8th grade.  We thought about an alternative method from the time he was in 3rd grade until he was in 8th grade.  He learns at home.  He did not learn at school.

Answer 4

Given that our educational choice is pretty much restricted to home-education or no education (there are no schools up here), our parents always knew they'd have to home-educate us. They didn't have to put any thought into that, lol!

Mum and Dad were both home-educated as well so they pretty much knew what they were getting into from the start.

As a family, we're unschoolers so, day-to-day, much of what my siblings and I study is left up to us to decide upon and organise.

However, our dad especially put heaps of thought into what he wanted his kids' education to be like...or, more precisely, our dad put heaps of thought into what he wanted our education to *not* be like.

Answer 5

I've been thinking about it since before my daughter was concieved!

Answer 6

Yes.  We put a great deal of thought into academics before starting homeschooling.

For us, this is an ongoing iterative process.  We constantly think about what is working and what is not working and we are willing to change direction when necessary.  We think very carefully about the next 3 1/2 years and do so "with the end in mind."  The "end" is acceptance into a desirable college and hopefully some scholarship money.

We are also working to build our son's marketable skills now (computer programming, web development, multimedia).

Answer 7

My wife and I currently home school six of the 8 children living at home. I have also been involved in creating two charter schools and have served as research director for an education reform organization. I am currently interviewing for a position with a private school. Needless to say, I have done a lot of research!

With that said, I have observed three different types of parents: There are parents who dilligently participate in their children's educations; these folks may choose to homeschool, seek admission to a charter or private school, volunteer in the classroom and augment their child's studies at home; they may be active in PTA, parent groups, and education reform causes.

A second group of parents, and probably the largest group, are acutely interested in their children's education, but feel that things are "better left to the experts" and rely on the establishment to teach their children. These parents generally either don't know what resources are available to them, have limited resources because of work or other committments, or don't feel comfortable using the resources that are available. These parents may accept the public school mythos as fact and may not question whether the current public education system is appropriate and functional. Many of these parents have become frustrated that their input or concerns have been ignored and have given up on trying to work with the system, but they don't know what else to do.

A third group, and I think the smallest, uses the public schools as a free child care service and gives little thought to their children's education.  Generally these folks are in the lower social economic status groups; many are on public assistance. They tend to place little value on education or on becoming economicaly productive.

It's pretty nigh impossible to make a decision to homeschool without giving the matter some thought.

Answer 8

Of course my mother and I were thinking about my education. We homeschool because the public/private schools weren't challenging me enough.

Answer 9

my parents got me home schooled but its not very healthy for the student well its not for me because i stress over it to much and its 2:56am and im still working on my school work which is very hard and also it makes  the student have no social life like in school because in school u can actually learn how to protect yourself and make mistakes and learn from them.

Answer 10

I researched homeschooling for about 6 months before I decided to go ahead with it. I've been homeschooling for about 5 years now and still have to do a lot of research to adapt our style and curriculum to best suit how and what my children learn.

Answer 11

Our children's education was the main reason we homeschooled them.  We chose to not just send them to a government babysitter 7hours a day because we were too cheap and lazy to give them the best.

Answer 12

Yes, I spent a considerable amount of time doing research into different educational models, read as much research about homeschooling outcomes as I could get my hands on, and generally exhausted the library's supply of books by John Holt (and every other homeschooling item they had was checked out by me, at least twice).  

I attended a homeschool convention when my youngest was 3 to check out what was available curriculum wise, and also to see what real homeschoolers looked like! I formed a homeschool group with a few other parents around this time as well.

To say the least, this was not a decision I took lightly!

Even down to this day, we still actively research different curriculum types and enjoy reading the latests books about homeschooling. Learning is an ongoing process and in our house it never ends!

Good luck in your information gathering. Thanks for the interesting question.

Answer 13

I though about our children's education a lot before we made the decision to home school. My daughter was in public school in second grade before we pulled her out. A decent education was only one reason that she was pulled. Others included the bullying, 4 hours of homework(not exaggerating) and the general lack of care from the teachers she had.

Answer 14

We've always homeschooled, although I guess in legal terms, we didn't start homeschooling until my daughter was grade 1 age. Yes, we thought about her education before we began. The parents I know who have pulled their children from school also thought about their children's education--it's the number 1 reason the parents I know pulled their children from school.

ADDED: Violet, how you are being homeschooled is not how most people are homeschooled. There should be no reason why you are homeschooled and stressing about your work at 3am, nor why you don't have a social life. Try talking to your parents about it.

Answer 15

We believe every parent is concerned about their children's education; home schooling or otherwise.

Home schooling is just one of many ways to pursue an education; it is however the only alternative choice for us.

Conventional schooling is not what would work for the life style we have chosen for our family, and we also do not agree with the many things taught in the schools today.

Many of these classes/courses have little or nothing to do with basic academics; we call them filler classes.

Schooling does not have to take 12 years to complete, it is inadequate in many area's, and does not provide enough flexibility, or choices for students who wants to go into the direction of skilled trades, or finish an academic program in about 2 years versus 4.

Taking into consideration what our children want to do after acquiring their basic academics, and how to best allow them to pursue their interests was one of the main reasons we knew that the conventional schools would not be able to meet their needs.

Home schooling is not for everyone either, since academics are only a small part of home schooling; it is a way of life.

We believe that all forms of schooling should be available for parents to choose from, home schooling, private, charter, virtual and public.

The best way to ensure that a society has a well educated work force is to give them a choice in where to receive this education, and  to not make either of them mandatory; which by the way is one of the main reasons why public education lacks in many area's.

If you think you have a monopoly, and students have to come to you no matter what, because it is he law, what incentive do you have to improve your service?

Making these schools only one of many options would force them to improve their services greatly because they would have to compete for students.

That's why enrollment in private, and home schools is increased greatly over time, and is still growing rapidly today.

Answer 16

I know my parents thought about it for a year or two before I actually started 'kindergarden'.  But they were teaching me simple math and how to read at age four so I guess they were already getting started!  I have been engaged for a few months and am getting married soon so there have been quite a few discussions about future kids and their education.  My fiance is supportive of my homeschooling our kids someday.  When we first met he was surprised that my family homeschools because we are all so outgoing.  It took a while, but I think I have finally rid him of all the awful homeschooling stereotypes.

Answer 17

I think most parents are concerned with it, at least passively, but don't have the time or knoweldge to do something about it.

Some parents do institute things, like bonuses for As and Bs, which is a good idea.

Most people who work will not do extra work for the same pay.

So bonus pay and incentive pay has real world backing.

Home school only works with self-starting, self-movtiated students.

This is not to say those people don't do well in brick schools, they can.

Brick schools, however, are more for moo-cows, worker ants and hard to control individuals.

These are people who are incapalbe of learning on their own and must be told what book to open, what page to open it to and how to do the work.

They perform for the teacher.

These are people who have trouble getting into college and often drop out.

College, you see, relies on self-motivation and research on your own.

The moo-cow worker ant passes the prism spectrum at the university and says

How pretty

And believes what their teachers tells them about it

Isaac Newton thinks otherwise.

He puts his brain to work and tells the teachers what is really happening and proves it with math.

Not only does he use math, but he creates math.  He invented the Caclulus.

There was no Calculus before Newton and the other fellow.

Newton and the other fellow invented the first new form of math in 1,800 years.

All the other math was invented by ancient Greeks and Arabs and Persians.

There are two aspects to the process

Education, which is the ways and means

Learning, which is the individualistic result of the Education

So one does not concern one's self with Education until they discover their child is not learning

Then you have to deal with the moo-cow, worker ant syndrome for if the parent is one of these they cannot see the forrest for the trees.

This may seem a sad state and an indicitment of students and systems, but it is, sadly, true for those with Masters and PH D degrees walked by the Prism with blinders on for almost a hundred years before and undergraduate student showed them the light.

This is a reality we have to face and it is why we have so many worker ants and so few Einsteins

Everyone want's their child to be an Einstein so they better evlauate if their child is learning or not.

Memorizing is not learing.

The primary and secondary system is based entirely on ROTE, memorization.

Answer 18

well i'm almost 19.. and wanted to be homeschooled for a couple months((middle school drama))

but i think it's good for the child to interact with other kids and develop people skills. i'm sure if they have hard times..they are going to ask to be homeschooled. .. but personally, you should send them to a public..even a private school.

they both have their cons and pro's.