
Go to Homeschool - llambda
http://www.vice.com/read/homes-school-go-to-homeschool
======
travisfischer
As someone who was home schooled in a situation similar to that of the author
(extremely beneficial, highly unstructured but with very accelerated learning
pace) but who had friends & acquaintances across the spectrum of those
described in the article I find this article and the respond in the comments
on vice pretty troubling. There are parents who will isolate and brainwash
their children regardless of where they receive their education. Yes, more
hours at home means more isolation but the alternative of mandating some kind
of "approved" educational process is not worth sacrificing freedom in
educational choices.

While this article vividly describes a sub-culture that will be troubling to
those previously un-exposed to it, it also manages to throw one of the most
important and effective educational revolutions of the last 20 years under the
bus. This revolution is that of parents taking their children's education back
into their own hands and teaching their children at home. The internet has
massively enabled parents in this revolution. Freedom in educational choices
is one of the most important freedoms I can imagine especially in a country
where education is as broken as it is in the United States.

The truth is that many home schooled kids are a little less socially refined
in their earlier years unless their parents go to great efforts (as mine did)
to involve them in social activities outside the home on a regular basis.
However, of all of the home schooled kids that I knew growing up even the most
isolated have managed to adjust eventually and I would argue that the majority
of those I knew were receiving a superior education and went into the post
K-12 years with many advantages over their public schooled counter-parts.

There is a strong anti-homeschool contingent in this country with a mix of
motives and arguments against and I get very bothered by articles like this
because of the misinformation and in-balanced perspective they propagate. Even
though the author doesn't argue against home schooling directly or as a whole,
it does reinforce stereotypes and ideas that are simply not the truth in the
majority of cases. Read the comments thread on vice and you will see exactly
what I'm referring to.

------
georgebonnr
I was homeschooled in a conservative (although not full-on-fundamentalist)
Christian household the whole way, K-12. No TV, etc... although with my family
it was only partially due to Christian conservatism and almost more due to
ivory tower intellectualism (an odd mix, I know... I wasn't allowed to listen
to rock music, but we listened to either classical music or liberal NPR
instead, not Rush Limbaugh). I've never seen an episode of Transformers. Most
"Wasn't the 90s great?" memes I can't really relate to.

I learned a hell of a lot, though, because I was allowed and encouraged to.

By the time I was 12, most of my social group (a fun, tight-knit youth group
at church) was not made up of homeschoolers, so I adjusted pretty well
socially. In college most people were surprised if I mentioned I was
homeschooled.

I definitely knew several families of downright weird kids like the ones the
author described... they were generally a minority though. (I homeschooled in
a relatively large metropolitan area, so that perhaps helped). The majority of
homeschooled kids, at least in my area, were not obviously socially awkward,
although they were almost all trained by rote to be morally conservative.

The truest line in the article is the first one: "To a very great degree,
school is a place where children learn to be stupid." \- John Holt

I'd also add that school is a place where we learn how to treat other people
like dirt. If I ever homeschooled my kids it would be because I thought it
gave them a distinct chance to be a nicer, more decent human being.

~~~
georgebonnr
By the way, since it is perhaps an underrepresented voice in this community, I
don't mind saying that I am still a Christian, and if/when I have kids I hope
they come to the same faith, since I believe it's the most important decision
they can make in life (and after -- heyyyo).

But I wouldn't homeschool them for this reason.

Being (or in the case of kids who were raised in a Christian household,
remaining) a Christian is and always has been a personal choice, and to
implicitly undermine this by trying to ingrain Christianity into somebody is
ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.

------
jimmyjazz14
I feel this article probably paints an unfair picture of the south to many
that may read it. Having grown up in the south I can relate to some of what it
talks about (crazy evangelicals) but people at the extreme end of this are
very much a minority.

------
codva
Cherokee County schools in the late 90s are the reason we decided to home
school our kids. Although we moved to VA soon after, we ran into all those
same stereotypes farther North too. My family holds the rare distinction of
being kicked out of the local liberal home school group for being too
conservative while also being unwelcome in the conservative groups for being
too liberal.

My son had a very successful first year of college last year and my daughter
will be taking community college classes for this fall in what would be her
senior year if she went to high school. They both had the choice to attend
high school. They both passed.

------
d4vlx
"Their playmates were so selectively chosen that they were rarely allowed to
interact with other kids at all. It showed. They were socially underdeveloped
to a degree that, in retrospect, is legitimately sort of troubling."

"His skin was paper white, in Georgia, in August. He hadn’t been out in the
sun in months. Not only did he not understand the rules of baseball, he was,
at the age of about 12, physically unable to throw an object."

"Steve, in effect, was completely socially isolated."

The culture of acceptance of this kind of abuse in the US needs to change.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm curious - would you say the same thing if it was a kid in rural, bible-
thumping Arkansas with secular, scientifically-educated parents who want him
to learn about evolution without interference?

It's easy to forget that sometimes whole communities of people - sometimes
millions of them - have values different from ours. And that there are people
_like us_ who are minorities in those communities. You can't protect the
rights of those minorities without also protecting the rights of minorities
within our communities, as strange as their beliefs may be.

~~~
d4vlx
Good point, I definitely agree that the rights of minorities need to be
protected. Some problems with this idea are with defining what are rights and
what constitutes child abuse, and what to do about abuse.

The extremes of social isolation that some of these kids endure falls on the
abusive side of the line for me. I don't know what to do about that, it's a
hard problem. Becoming less socially acceptable to behave that way among
American adults seems like a reasonable step in the right direction.

To answer your question, I think it would also be best for the scientist
parents children to interact socially with other local children in rural,
bible-thumping Arkansas. If they wanted to home school their kids that is
their decision to make. Humans are social animals however and a reasonable
amount of real world social interaction is important.

------
georgebonnr
Home schooling was the education hack before hacking things was a thing.

