Why are some people so threatened by homeschooling?

Question

I notice on this forum, and on others, that many people are very discouraging when it comes to homeschooling, to the point that I think they feel threatened by it. Why else would anyone be invested in another family's educational choices? I see attacks such as "better put him back in school so he can learn social skills" and "you can't teach your kid everything, put him in school" in the homeschooling Q&A section. I don't think that people legitimately believe that homeschooling creates ignorant misfits (if they do, then they are obviously not up-to-date on studies comparing homeschooled to traditionally schooled students!), so what's the problem?

Asking in all sincerety!

Answer 1

I dont know. I know that sometimes homeschooling is better for social lifes like for mine. People always judged me on how short i was. People dont realize that sometimes homeschooling is better and that we dont just sit under a rock all day. I do all sorts of sports and activities to make freinds. So some people just dont have there facts straight. I think they feel like we are missing out but we arnt AT ALL!

Answer 2

Home schooled kids like mine are very active.  So I will never understand the argument about social interaction.  Perhaps it just boils down to ignorance.

Answer 3

well i am homeschooled myself and i love it but before i started homeschool i thought that it would be stupide but its the oppisite so the answer to your question is because adults dont wanna do homeschool because they think that they have to teach there children but that aint true so all i m gonna tell ya is i get straight As in homeschool and when i went to my regular school i got straight Fs and Cs

Answer 4

I like the comparison that someone made earlier for another question:  If we were not a car mechanic, would we go into the car mechanic section to tell how we are against car mechanics?   It just doesn't make sense.  (Even though,my husband's first cousin's neighbor's grandfather is a car mechanic and he could not fix my uncle's boss's son's car.)(tehehe) (I couldn't resist)

People who protest so much against homeschool apparently have insecurities concerning their own school choice.  Their protest are not based on facts nor on realistic examples.

Answer 5

Well I just stumbled upon this in the Open Questions, I'm not trying to infiltrate your little homeschooling forum. The only person who was opposed to homeschooling got bashed by the rest of you, so why ask?  It sounds to me like you do not care to know WHY people are opposed to home schooling, you just want to sing its praises.  However, I think the post from Sup Cutie Pie pretty much epitomizes home schooling. Her folks must be literary geniuses! Do you think SHE got a decent education at home? Honestly???

Answer 6

I agree with the person who said that they are threatened becuase they don't understand it. They, for whatever reason, have a bias and that bias isn't to be broken through because the other side (homeschooling) is seen as a threat, something to fear. We fear what we don't know or what makes us feel smaller.

Of course, there are plenty who don't understand it, don't realize they understand it and are just not willing to open their minds enough to understand it. I never realized there were so many closed-minded individuals until I started 'hanging out' here.

As for:

" In my personal opinion, and again this is just MY opinion, I think parents are conceited to think they have all the means, tools, and education to home school their children. "

Some of the people apparently lack a particular social know-how despite their public school education. Saying "it's just my opinion" then bashing someone is NOT representative of good social skills. This person has just called me and all the other homeschooling parents I know conceited. Saying "it's just my opinion" does not excuse the judgement being made. Calling names is calling names regardless of how you try to hide it under other words.

Of course, when people go on like this, I think they really mean that THEY couldn't do it so they can't see how anybody else could do it. That just goes back to being closed-minded.

Answer 7

It all comes down to ignorance and misinformation about HS'ing.  Most people (even the PS teachers) have a *very small* sampling of HS'ed kids to compare to.

Also, those against HS'ing love to come to this forum and bash us.  You won't see HS'ers in the other education forums bashing public or private schools.  I'm not sure why the HS naysayers feel like they have to "join the party" here.

Answer 8

people are mostly threatened by anything they don't understand.  if you take the time to seriously look into homeschooling you will see some of the pros over public school.  some public school systems are so bad that parents would rather have some imput over their childrens education.  If you go to a school where the teacher cant control the classroom and you learn absolutely nothing for that entire period then this is not a good thing.  I understand the issue of socializing etc... but this is where the parents have to be more involved and make sure their children are involved in other outside activities.  you dont have to go to public school to join extracurricular football, basketball, soccer, baseball etc......

Answer 9

If someone objects to child molestation, do you think it's because they're threatened by it?  Maybe they just care what happens to children, and they worry that homeschooled kids won't learn social schools.

Answer 10

It's not that they are necessarily threatened by homeschooling. A lot of people who grew up in public school don't understand it. That is expected of course.

If you have grown up with the same kind of thing all your life, then thinking about something different and unique (such as homeschooling) is, well, different.

The social skills thing is easy to get around. You don't have to hang out with people that smoke to figure out that smoking is bad.

The polls don't compare homeschoolers to private or public schooled kids most of the time because either they're already in college, or it would be too embarrasing for many school systems. Or perhaps homeschooled kids are too far behind everybody else. But I think a lot of people know the truth.

Answer 11

Because they are afraid that more people will find out that home scooling is so much better than the public school system.

Answer 12

I have friends who were home schooled and they missed out on so much socialization. They are in college now and are completely unprepared for it. Kids need the challenges of finding their way around campus, and learning from other authority figures besides their parents. My friend home schooled her kids for 2 years, and they begged her to be put back in school. In my personal opinion, and again this is just MY opinion, I think parents are conceited to think they have all the means, tools, and education to home school their children. Leave it to the professionals. If you're keeping them home for something stupid, like, say, their height, then you are not adequately preparing them for the real world. Yes it is a personal choice everyone has to make for themselves, so please don't hate me, but I personally think you do your child a huge disservice by not putting them in school.

Answer 13

My guess is that most people haven't seen a good representation of homeschoolers and the few that they have seen might be shy or really introverted. Therefore they make the assumption that homeschool kids need to get out and socialize...

I was homeschooled until college...which I started at age 15, and now I'm a 17 year old pre-medical student...and no, I don't have any problems in my social life.  :)