

1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007 - tokenadult
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf

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briansmith
The "reasons for homeschooling" are too vague to be considered meaningful. The
primary reason cited is boils down to "there is something about the school I
don't like." Well, duh. What don't you like?

The second most popular reason was religious/moral reasons. That needs to be
broken down into much more detail. Are the parents looking for creationism?
Polygomy? No sex ed?

A geographical breakdown of the data would probably be extremely helpful. I
have a feeling there are isolated communities that make up a huge portion of
home-schoolers.

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cubicle67
As someone who's seriously looking at homeschooling my kids, I'll give you my
reasons (briefly, because obviously it's a complex issue)

I see a lot of similarity between the school system and having a regular,
steady job. The risk is known, and the outcome is, with a high likelihood,
going to fit between a fairly narrow band. It's safe, it's socially acceptable
and everyone else is doing it.

Homeschooling is like leaving that regular 9-5 job (something I did 9 months
ago now). It's higher risk, it's not socially acceptable (not amongst my
friends anyway) and only nut-cases do it. But... there's the potential for
_much_ higher reward.

My kids have nice teachers, but they're not the sharpest tools in the shed and
have almost no intellectual curiosity.

I want my kids to develop a love of learning, of discovering new things and of
understanding. I want them to know that I don't know everything, that no one
does. I want them to be curious, to question and to explore. I most certainly
do not want them to spent the next 12 years of their life sitting at a desk.

A quick anecdote from only last week. One of my daughters is 8 and learning
about the Solar System. She's loving it and reading everything she can find.
They had an in-class test and one of the questions was "How many planets are
there?" She answered 8-13, unsure if the teacher was after dwarf planets, and
was marked wrong; the 'correct' answer was 9. When she tried to explain that
there were 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets, the teacher didn't want to know.

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tremendo
Also considered home-schooling and remember having many doubts as to whether
in the end my kids would fare better or not. I feel we've been able to nurture
their natural love of learning mostly by unschooling.

My fear of the school system was that it would effectively kill this love of
learning, and in fact, we did give up on public school after 6 months of what
really only seemed like crowd control. My son would sit quietly at school not
really doing or learning that much, and then let out all his energy and
frustrations at home.

Fortunately changing school to one that follows Montessori method has worked
really well for him and my daughter. They get much more personalized
attention, they satisfy their curiosities and make tangible progress in
different areas. For our particular case I don't believe we could have done
better with home schooling.

BTW my son was for several months an astronomy freak and would have given the
same answer as your daughter. I hope you had a talk with the teacher, and
explained to your daughter that she's in the right.

~~~
cubicle67
Thanks.

We've looked at Montessori, but there's only one school here (far south of
Perth) and it's a bit out of our budget and has quite a waiting list. I'd also
be interested in pursuing any other alternative education styles, but because
of location we're limited.

In the unlikely event that there's anyone here who knows of other styles of
schooling in the Rockingham area, please let me know :)

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dkokelley
My siblings and I (all 6 of us) were homeschooled and I'd like to think that
we turned out pretty well. My brother is in the Air Force Academy, I'm just
about done with college and already have experience running a business, and my
sister will finish high school and her AA at 18.

Above all else homeschooling taught me to manage my own time and learn how to
teach myself.

Even though it worked out well for my family, I wouldn't recommend it to
everyone. My mom stayed home to teach us, and both of my parents had degrees.
My mother was a chemist and my father was an engineer, and we also had a
network of other families to fall back on. For example, we would go to a
friend's house for English class, since her mom majored in it.

We also had sports and plays. Since we were a part of a homeschool
organization we were able to put together a team and play against other
organizations, or set up a play. The argument that homeschooled children don't
get enough socialization isn't necessarily true.

~~~
thismat
Agreed. I remember the home school community we were part of, and it was a
blast. Not to mention that you can normally join in your local districts
sports, or play in sanctioned independent leagues.

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skmurphy
This is an under-appreciated market.

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cubicle67
for what?

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mkyc
Education.

Given that parents can more freely choose the curriculum, all sorts of novel
ways to educate can find a niche.

~~~
patio11
Yep. I have sold more than a few licenses to homeschoolers over the years.
Beyond just curricular aids there are all sorts of, e.g., compliance needs,
planning needs, record management needs, etc etc.

Take note: Homeschoolers are a very diverse bunch with disparate needs.
Obviously, an English workbook for a homeschooled 1st grader and an online
study planner for a homeschooled 8th grader needing help in math are going to
look pretty different.

On the plus side: single decisionmaker (mom, typically). Purchase cycle
resembles B2C far more than it does enterprise IT B2B, which is quite common
at school districts. Guaranteed to be strongly motivated about education and
family time. Less allergic to new technology than public schools (because if
you make someone's job redundant, well... great! That means mom is free to do
something other than whatever busywork she was just doing.)

These are all nice things to have in a market when you're selling to them.

