Damn, I wrote this over an hour ago... Had to get the door and forgot to click submit

*Quality.

I was homeschooled for two years. The only reason is because I was being bullied so much at school it was leaving physical scars and affecting my schoolwork. (I was pretty much socially unaware of my situation so if I had emotional scaring I was unaware.) When we moved back to Minnesota I was 14 and decided to start Public School again. I was prepared to have kids spit on me and find blind spots around the school for them to hit me and steal my lunch or whatever.
I was pretty shocked at how many of the kids in my class greeted me and were pretty nice about it too. It turned out to be good for me an my social development. (Though dealing with lots of adults while being homeschooled helped me mature most.)
The thing is Public Education in the U.S. is terrible. The teachers are underpaid, the federal requirements hold back the potential of most kids, and there is no way to provide kids with the versatility of the learning experence they desperately need.
Homeschooling, excels where Public Schooling fails. Besides the social aspect, which I feel can be compensated by parents who actively enroll their kids in public services and community events, Public School really doesn't have much to offer as an advantage. (Besides the fact that my taxes are paying for it.)

Swampgirl, Good for you! There are too many stereotypes about homeschooling. In fact I think it takes more effort on the part of the child and the parent to homeschool, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

That was really great.

Honestly, I feel guilty for not homeschooling. I "went back to work" before the date that he was scheduled to be born (I took him with me, and it was part time, and in a private office where I could feed him and tend him without annoying others), and I've worked since. My kid's father, on the other hand, hasn't worked at a traditional job since my kid was about 6, but then, he doesn't have the temperment for homeschooling, so it would have had to be me.

My kid is very, very bright, and doing terribly in school. It's heartbreaking.

You know what would be a great thing is something like networked home schooling.

So a network of parents all have their group of kids taught in one parent's home one day at a time. This way each kid gets to mingle with other kids and a different adult each day.

Actually they do, when I was homeschooled we would team up with other families to go skiing or something, we usually had a big activity every quarter. We also had another family that we would take field trips with and do reports and trust building exercises.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

We homeschooled all of last year. We found it very hard. I think the most difficult thing was that both parents and kids had a hard time making the transition between "parent" and "teacher" motivating them to do math or writing was sometimes like pulling teeth.

^Your right about that. Honestly it takes a lot of self-discipline mostly on the part of the kid to take initiative to learn. That part of why I went back to public school was that I didn't have the discipline to keep educating myself. My parents sat down with me and told me something needed to change. I made a decision and that was it.

i went to public schools. ordinary, 'good', upper-middle-class-suburban-american ones.

complete waste of my, and 99% of my teachers', time.

i dropped out in the 9th grade, so i could get a job as a busboy, at Denny's. no shit.
because even that was more value to my education, than grades 10-12 would've been.

outstanding post, swampgirl.

>> ^lucky760:
You know what would be a great thing is something like networked home schooling.
So a network of parents all have their group of kids taught in one parent's home one day at a time. This way each kid gets to mingle with other kids and a different adult each day.


You know Lucky, you're not far off from describing a "Co-Op". We've joined one recently where once a week families meet and hold classes on subjects we've all decided to teach.

Thanks for the responses folks, great read

Dags right, sometimes it's very hard. I don't see how a parent of 5 or 6 do this on a daily basis. Seriously I think it's easier to teach a class of 20 than your own kids.

I'm hoping my daughter will thrive in the new school because she's a personality that's difficult to homeschool. She dominates her brother so much and distracts a major part of the day competing for attention. In a group setting though, she actually more focused I think which is weird. She is happy around groups of people. Being home drove her nuts...and us too!

My son on the other hand loves to be able to separate work from play. At home he can work in a quiet place, in his pajamas, with mom near by to chat about the subjects. He loves the quiet, building his sets, going to homeschool groups to find one boy to play with, and waiting on his bike for the school bus to get back to play w/ the local boys.

Different personalities!

***Don't feel guilty if you're not homeschooling. Every family has their own needs. It truly is a lifestyle change. No matter what school your kid goes to, he/she can get a good education if you keep up w/ them. Personally I hate homework, but it's a necessary evil if your kid goes to school.

Their are books out there that has lists like "What your 3rd Grader Should Know" or whatever grade.... You can use materials like that to find out where your child needs help, and when summer break rolls around...

They're doing nothing during the summer anyhow. There's a decent workbook series for kids on summer break called "Summer Bridge to ____ Grade" I think.


Summing up, homeschooling can be hard...but I love it. You don't have to be anal retentive organized to make it work either (it helps tho ) If you've thought about it, but aren't sure... then use a summer break to give it a try.

ps. my favorites were 6, 11, and 12.

I homeschooled my second son for a whole year and let me tell you, it sucked in many ways. He's autistic and very stubborn at times but the academics wasn't the problem (although it weren't easy neither!) the problem was when his paternal grandparents found out what I was doing (because I like a naive fool that I was TOLD THEM) they added that to their custody suit against me. Honestly I can prove that he did more academic work with me than he got done at public school but dealing with that asinine guardian ad litem who seemed to think that homeschooling = lazy parent (?!?!) was enough to drive me insane.

Let me add one thing, though; I know quite a few homeschooling parents and I have noticed that often times, the entire subject of homeschooling comes about because the HS parents has to point out that THEY are not sending their precious to that icky public school THEY are HOMESCHOOLING *sniff* I hd to tell at least one friend of mine "look, that doesn't necessarily make you superior so come off your high horse please"
I think so long as you say it in a pleasant conversational way, most parents will be cool. But its hard not to take offense or be suspicious about motives when the HS parents acts as if they are somehow better than you just because they are homeschooling. I've met HS success-stories and HS failures - I think there's more successes than failures but failure can happen too, no one is immune.
Grats to you tho! I know it ain't easy!

It all boils down to the parents really. Ultimately we're responsible for their education whether they are homeschooled or go to school. If you're fortunate to have good local schools then by all means use them.

I went to public school. I'm glad that I wasn't homeschooled. The irony of that statement comes from the fact that my mom is a school teacher. I don't know about you, but I don't think my potential or my intelligence (or lack thereof) has to do with anything other than genetics. If you have a set of values that you'd like to brainwash your child with, that's your choice. I mean why leave it up to the government to decide what your kid knows.

I was such a "bad" kid in school(television, sugar)...they tried Ritalin on me back before ADHD was ever a made-up disease, and the dose they gave me made me catatonic)-lasted all of 3 doses worth.....that was the 2nd grade, after that, A's and B's aside, (math was always d's and f's) I could never seem to score more than a U, a NI, or a penciled-in box on the conduct report that the teacher had to come up with to reflect other levels of their pathetic, subjective scales-Got alllll the way to my last year in HS, and got expelled 3 months before graduation.....If I knew then what I know now, about just hoe valuable a HS diploma was.....I would have dropped out after the 8th grade, and started applying to colleges after the GED......

Most kids are kids are home-schooled, for the quality of education, and their freedom from exposure to the casualties of society, called MOST of their peers.....If you brought a group of elementary teachers back from 1922, and placed them in today's classroom setting, you'd have the 1st 4 hrs of class in a conga line for an ass-whipping.....

Hi, there --

Just wanted to let you know that I wrote this list, and it's an article from a magazine I recently started -- Secular Homeschooling Magazine. Could you please put my name, the name of the magazine, and a link to the magazine's site at the top, please?

Here's a link to the mag's site:

http://www.secular-homeschooling.com

And here's a link directly to the list on the mag's site:

http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/001/bitter_homeschooler.html

Thank you,
Deborah Markus
Editor, Secular Homeschooling Magazine

Thanks for the link, Deborah.