Things You Ought to Know About Me #2: Home school to Grad School

Things You Ought to Know About Me #2: Home school to Grad School

So the way I've planned this series is that each installment will be a standalone description of a single topic, although each one intersects with all the rest. Today I'll talk about my education, and how that's played a huge role in my life, for better or worse.

Note: I'm sorry I couldn't get this post finished and polished in time yesterday. I have to figure out a good update schedule that I can reasonably maintain, and a change in work schedule totally threw me off.

I'll briefly explain for anyone who isn't clear what home school is: I use home school as a generic term for parent or guardian-taught home education (for the sake of simplicity, I'm just going to write parent* from here on out, but I note this because I'm not ignoring the home schoolers who were taught by someone other than a parent, you guise matter too). It was long the only option for rural families, but wasn't popular (and sometimes not allowed) in large cities, as public schools were supposed to make education readily available.


During the '80s, the home schooling movement in larger cities took off in the conservative religious circle due to fear of increasing exposure to the "sinful world." My family joined this movement in the early '90s, and by the time I was old enough to go to school, we had already switched to home school, so I was home schooled entirely until college. Due to the support systems set in place in the '80s, we were able to home school through a private home school group, a gathering of families that filed official affidavits with the state as a private school. This group was responsible for basically the administrative aspects: collecting lesson plans from parents* and recording grades that had been assigned.

Being part of this group is perhaps the most beneficial choice my parents made when they decided to home school. None of us knew it then, but as it turns out, having this administrative framework in place meant that, for some reason, diplomas issued by our school group hold the same weight as public school diplomas, facilitating admission into college. This isn't common to all private schools in the area I grew up.

That being said: exposé time!!

You see, a major part of home school is parental* involvement, with one or both parents* (or other situations because nuclear family is a myth) assuming responsibility for a child's education. Which I'd say is one of, if not the sole, biggest problems with this scheme. It varies by state, but in mine there were no regulations on private school teachers, although public schools require teaching credentials.

Since home school often falls roughly in the category of private schools, this means that often there are no educational requirements for parents* who home school, and personally I've met many who lack a full college education, and some who didn't finish high school.

Now, I in no way advocate forcing everyone to go to college (although I do think high school completion is important), but if you want to be an educator, you need to have AT LEAST the knowledge you purport to teach. Now, the current trend of further deregulation of home schooling, pushed by HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) and others, should be extremely alarming. If anything, home educators need MORE regulation, not less. They need help with properly teaching. They need accessible resources for subjects they aren't familiar with. They don't need blind eyes turned their way.

One example I have is a family I knew, where upon finishing a math book after only a few months, it was decided that since the math book was finished, they didn't need to study math for the remaining 6 months of the school year, but their submitted lesson plans were written such that this math book was apportioned across the whole 9 months. Tell me what school should get away with ignoring a subject for 2/3 of the school year?

What this means is that there's a whole group of children (not all home schoolers, but it's not uncommon either) that are being taught by parents* acting as teachers without any training in being an educator. Maybe this is why home schoolers on average are worse at math than their public and private school counterparts, because math is one of those subjects that's hard to learn and harder to teach. Parenthetical note: I'm good at math, but I'd argue it's despite home school. Neither of my parents know Calculus, which is a bit disconcerting, considering part of my high school education was Calculus.

Where am I going with this? Well, I was also part of a large family (5 kids), so after the age of 11 or so until I graduated high school, there were at least 3 kids being taught simultaneously, in different grades. Only a year ago, with my younger brother's graduation and move on to college has the number dropped down to two: my sisters. And large families aren't uncommon in home schooling; I've met kids from families with over 10 children who home school.

What this means is that home school in my experience isn't as much constant parental* instruction per se, but rather mostly unsupervised self-education with random parental* checks to make sure you're doing your homework. Further, during my middle school years, my ailing grandparents moved to be close to us, further reducing focused time with parental instruction. This is not an environment any child should be made to learn in, and I feel that the only positive thing that arose from this was that I learned how to teach myself.

When I started college, I was amazed at how "easy" it was because there actually was someone who could teach you and help you with homework, and that was a new experience for me. For context, during my home school years, I would be lucky to get 15 minutes of instruction per hour, and more often than not, I'd go hours without assistance, just me and a book, pencil and paper.

This obviously wasn't my parents' intent, but with one working full time and the other in charge of schooling and house upkeep (and later ailing grandparents), they just couldn't keep up.

My older brother and I got the brunt of this self-schooling, and I'm happy to say that after me, the paradigm shifted so that my younger siblings have been able home school while participating in some high school classes at a local religious private school that offers this as an option for home school families. So they get science and math and other difficult subjects with the instruction I never got.

I'm not trying to vilify my parents, rather the system that fooled them. This is the religious conservative base that is offended by things like evolution and sex ed taught in schools, and the view that home schooling will protect your kids and their salvation. It's outright censorship of ideas that are offensive to a certain faith.

So what did I get from home schooling?

Well, on the positive side, I learned to teach myself independently, a skill that was extremely helpful in college. And to some extent, my education was custom tailored to me, so if I struggled with some curriculum, it was switched. And maybe, what with the brain I've got, it was the best route for me. I can't say. I don't actually know if public schools would have been better for me. I only know the problems I had with home schooling.

On the negative side?

First: Due to the questionable legality of home schooling in the early '90s, as well as the scare tactics and propaganda from home school organizations like HSLDA and CHEA (Christian Home Educators Association), many home school parents* were desperately afraid of truancy charges and that Child Protective Services would take their kids away for home schooling. My parents were no exception.

As a result, this meant it was standard practice to instill these same fears in home schooled children. Never talk to adults. Always have a good excuse if asked why you're not in school. You can't go outside during school hours. Social Services wants to take you away from us because we're good christians and they want to send you to public school to learn vile things. &c.

It wasn't until college that I learned what CPS actually does: protect children from abuse and neglect, not seek out religious families and take their kids away.

When kids are terrified of all strangers, and government entities in particular, and parents* similarly afraid keep kids hidden out of sight, this breeds fear and isolation which breeds PTSD and anxiety disorders.

Second: Further, social isolation may not be avoidable in rural environments, but home schoolers in cities should have social contact. We didn't. The only time we got to interact with other kids was twice a week, once for Wednesday night bible clubs and once for Sunday at church. Because of this, I never learned to socialize or behave around people, and never learned to really make friends until college. Sure, there are other contributing factors, but regardless, I was denied socialization that is essential for normal development. Let's also briefly glance too at the many aspects of identity that depend on socialization, and then it makes sense why I don't fit into the "normal" boxes that define everyone else.

Third: I don't mean to be disrespectful, but my home school education was, in my opinion, both better and more complete than the majority of home school families I met and yet subpar in many areas compared to public schools (although in some ways superior). History after WWII was basically ignored. I didn't learn what the civil rights movement entailed or meant, other than Rosa Parks riding a bus, until college. I opted to attend community college because I knew my knowledge wasn't good enough for four year university simply because I had to teach myself math and science.

On the flip side, the standard things I didn't learn were replaced with nonstandard things that not many get a chance to learn, and I think that's been helpful. Instead of 20th century literature, we eschewed Catcher in the Rye for Classical literature, from the ancient Greeks to the Renaissance, from Gilgamesh to Beowulf to Dante to Luther to Calvin to many others that I could list on and on. To college-level Anatomy and Physiology in Sophomore year of high school, and "Historical Dictators and Genocides" for history in Junior year (the 20th century history I got was centered around Hitler, the Soviets, and Communism). I only wish these had come without the expense of the normal things everyone else got.

As I mentioned before, I found college easy because there actually was assistance to learn. I don't attribute my high grades (GPA 4.0 from community college, 3.92 from University) to possession of extremely higher intelligence, but rather that I'd already been wired to learn independently, so having an instructor and actual feedback on homework gave me a competitive advantage. That being said, my IQ above 100 doesn't give me a disadvantage. No, everything was evened out by the disadvantage that I had to learn things in college everyone else learns in middle or high school.

Now I'm in grad school, in a PhD program. Maybe the independence that I was forced to adapt to in home schooling is the reason I got so far. Or maybe it's the reason I was able to get so far despite the gaps that home school left. I think, and I'll expound on it in a different post, that my neurology is such that the independence is natural,, and I just happened to become aware of it out of necessity, so I think I got this far despite the lag home schooling gave me. Through massive effort on my part, I was able to catch up and finish with a university degree 5 years after graduating high school. Considering how behind I'd say I was, only one additional year at community college should be evidence of how hard I worked (sometimes 12 hour school days, in addition to work and homework).

Of the few home school friends I did have, those that went to college mostly started off at community college, for the same reasons I did. It's even become a trend for home school students to start attending community college classes in high school to make up the classes parents* can't teach.

I can't speak for home schoolers around the country, but I can say that in my experience, the majority of home school students I've been exposed to are undersupervised, undersocialized, and undereducated. Sure, there's always the shining examples of when it works. But no one outside of the community gets to really see what's going on. There's no accountability for education. These are mostly parents* who reject the concept of anyone overseeing the quality of their kids' education, because they fear that secular education will corrupt their kids and steal their faith.

This is the reason I write this. I'm in grad school, researching for a PhD. But I'm not a success story of home schooling. I'm a success story of community colleges, university outreach programs, and perseverance. And what with all the issues I've mentioned, I should be a warning story. Sure, I've made it, but I've already mentioned that my education was better than most of the home schoolers I've met.

Home schooling shouldn't be illegal. But it should be held to the same rigor and core standards as public school. It doesn't need deregulation, but should rather be regulated fairly, as everyone else. Will this prevent many families from home schooling? Yes. But should children be exempt from learning due to their parents'* religious objections or simple lack of the requisite education for teaching? NO! Parents* do not have the right to deprive their children of a fundamental institution. And if you're not capable of teaching your children a quality education, then you shouldn't be teaching. Your right of conscience doesn't trump your children's right to learn.