College Professor Critiques Homeschoolers

[Dobela]

A friend sent this to me and I thought I would share here. It hsa some very good points. And, if you are wondering, her dd takes his online science classes and loves them.

 

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College Professor Critiques Homeschoolers

copyright 2009 by Greg Landry, M.S.

 

I teach sophomore through senior level college students - most of them are

"pre-professional" students. They are preparing to go to medical school, dental

school, physical therapy school, etc.

 

As a generalization, I've noticed certain characteristics common in my students

who were homeschooled. Some of these are desirable, some not.

 

Desirable characteristics:

 

1. They are independent learners and do a great job of taking initiative and

being responsible for learning. They don't have to be "spoon fed" as many

students do. This gives them an advantage at two specific points in their

education; early in college and in graduate education.

 

2. They handle classroom social situations (interactions with their peers and

professors) very well. In general, my homeschooled students are a pleasure to

have in class. They greet me when they enter the class, initiate conversations

when appropriate, and they don't hesitate to ask good questions. Most of my

students do none of these.

 

3. They are serious about their education and that's very obvious in their

attitude, preparedness, and grades.

 

Areas where homeschooled students can improve:

 

1. They come to college less prepared in the sciences than their schooled

counterparts-sometimes far less prepared. This can be especially troublesome for

pre-professional students who need to maintain a high grade point average from

the very beginning.

 

2. They come to college without sufficient test-taking experience, particularly

with timed tests. Many homeschooled students have a high level of anxiety when

it comes to taking timed tests.

 

3. Many homeschooled students have problems meeting deadlines and have to adjust

to that incollege. That adjustment time in their freshman year can be costly in

terms of the way it affectstheir grades.

 

My advice to homeschooling parents:

 

1. If your child is even possibly college bound and interested in the sciences,

make sure that they have a solid foundation of science in the high school years.

 

2. Begin giving timed tests by 7th or 8th grade. I'm referring to all tests that

students take, notjust national, standardized tests.

 

I think it is a disservice to not give students timed tests. They tend to focus

better and score higher on timed tests, and, they are far better prepared for

college and graduate education if they've taken timed tests throughout the high

school years.

 

In the earlier years the timed tests should allow ample time to complete the

test as long as thestudent is working steadily. The objective is for them to

know it's timed yet not to feel a time pressure. This helps students to be

comfortable taking timed tests and develops confidence in their test-taking

abilities.

 

3. Give your students real deadlines to meet in the high school years. If it's

difficult for students to meet these deadlines because they're coming from mom

or dad, have them take "outside" classes; online, co-op, or community college.

_______________________________

 

Greg Landry is a 14 year veteran homeschool dad and college professor. He also

teaches one andtwo semester online science classes, and offers free 45 minute

online seminars.

http://www.HomeschoolScienceAcademy.com

[fairfarmhand]

thanks for posting this. His concerns have been some of the same concerns I've had with my oldest dd.

[regentrude]

I liked the assessment. I would like to add a book recommendation I found useful:

College-prep homeschooling by David Byers, who is a homeschooling father and college professor. This book addresses some of the issues of college preparedness in homeschoolers

[RamonaQ]

I feel that those are fair critiques (and I was already reading them with my hackles up).

[Renee in NC]

I totally agree with him - these are things I have been mulling over alot as my oldest hs child gets older.

[southcarolinamom]

Excellent advice!

 

I have just one thing to add - one of my homeschooling friends's sons had a difficult first week or two of his freshman year, and got an F on an English paper, simply because ... are you ready for this? ... . He did not realize students could go to their teachers and ask for help. When he got the help he needed, he pulled his grade up and did fine the rest of his college years.

 

So let your college-bound children know that they should always go to their teachers for advice or help - that's what they are there for! :001_smile:

[emubird]

Only one problem with that timed test obsession. When my daughter got to college she was amazed at how much time they had to take tests. They could sit for hours working on the thing.

 

Most professors try not to pack so much on a test that the students are scrambling to get it done --unless they have some strange pedagogical ideas, or are too inexperienced to know how long it takes to answer certain questions.

 

And my daughter who had never had deadlines at home -- not a single one -- has done just fine when presented with deadlines. She tends to finish early, while the rest of the class stays up all night to get things done the hour before it's due. Her only real problem with deadlines has been when she has lab partners who drag their feet and don't want to get things done because the deadline is not yet upon them. These are ps kids who presumably have had deadlines since kindergarten, so it doesn't seem that practicing with deadlines before college is any help.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I think it is a good and fair evaluation of trends he's seen. But of course it is a trend and doesn't fit every homeschooler out there. And of course there are trends for public or private schooled kids entering college too. My freshman year (after coming from a college prep high school) I got lower grades at first. Then I corrected some of the problems I was having and did better - just as many of his homeschooled students did. I will take his advice though.

[Dandelion]

Thanks for sharing! Mine are still young, but it's good to keep these things in mind (especially the insights around timed test taking)...

[Caryl]

Although it differs by children (I have a rainbow range!), some of my kids have a problem with managing their time and figuring out how to take a large project and split it into manageable chunks. Paper management is also an important skill to teach - some of my kids naturally keep papers neat and organized and others are walking chaos generators. I realized a year or so ago that I was doing too much of the organization for them and they needed to learn how to do it themselves- develop a system they are comfortable with and will use when they leave home.

[Teachin'Mine]

Excellent advice! We're working on deadlines ... well, maybe we're working more on extensions. :lol:

[Pretty in Pink]

Agreed, and I appreciate the fair tone of the article.

[specialmama]

I've also heard that students should get used to writing their name and the date on all their work. Apparantly many homeschoolers are not used to that and will hand in a paper without a name on it. Some teachers will give the student a 0 because of this.

[gaillardia]

Very interesting and helpful to know a college professor's opinion on homeschooled students.

Thanks for posting.:001_smile:

[mom31257]

I appreciate the advice!

[Matryoshka]

That seems very fair and balanced.

 

I've already been planning on starting to give my kids timed tests for the first time this year (7th grade) - actually the first tests of any kind. I'm actually probably going to time some but not others - ease us in. :tongue_smilie: But I do think they need to get the idea of studying for a test.

 

Deadlines are tougher - we do have some, but it doesn't help that I tend to be a crammer myself...

[emubird]

Oh, and my husband the college professor just pointed out that the several homeschool students they've had in the department have been stellar students: responsible, on time with assignments, etc etc -- unlike many of the other students.

 

I would guess it's just a personality thing. Some people are just good with deadlines and timed tests. Some aren't. It wouldn't matter if the latter had 13 years of practice at dealing with these things, they'd still be a bit flaky unless they decided to change. And there are undoubtedly hs kids who are flaky like this when they get to college. The only difference is, there are so few hs kids that professors make their opinions about ALL hs kids based on very few data points.

 

It reminds me of my SIL who claims she HAD to go to school for 13 years or she never would have been able to get out of bed for her 8 AM job as an adult. Seriously? It took 13 years to train her to do this? (This was her best reason against homeschooling.)

[dangermom]

I think that's a very balanced and fair critique, and except for the science part, it looks like his pros outweigh his cons.

 

And he's probably right about the science--that's the most difficult part to do well at home and quite a few people just kind of avoid it or muddle through with something less than adequate.

 

These are things I'll be giving thought to as my kids get older. I do worry about the deadline thing.

[tearose]

I really think that having problems meeting deadlines is across the board with students and is not just a homeschooler problem. Teaching undergrads, I had a lot of students begging for extensions the day before a big paper was due, and I know that most of them were not homeschoolers. The key is to be firm with your deadlines and let your dc face the consequences if they miss them. It's better to experience this early than to get a zero on an assignment in college because no late papers are accepted.

[Laurie4b]

I agree with many of his points. Since he is a science professor, he may not be aware of one other one: homeschooled students often don't receive enough writing instruction or experience. (I would think many on this board would be more clued in than in other homeschooling groups because of SWB's emphasis on writing.) I observed this when I used to give individualized, standardized tests to homeschoolers. Those tests included a writing component. There was a significant trend for the writing aspect to be lower than the student's other scores.

 

Something we learned with ds#1 when he took his first serious outside-the-home course was that there is an art to reading a textbook. Reading a textbook is not the same as reading a living book. In most books, you can easily grasp the main points, and there are lots of supporting details. In a text, nearly every sentence can be a critical point, and that point is not illustrated by additional details. You just have to dissect each sentence.

 

I highly recommend outside classes by middle school. After our first, who started them in 9th grade, I started the rest in outside science in middle school. That has made a much more graceful transition.

[cottonmama]

I think it is easy for homeschool moms to gloss over the subjects that aren't our own strengths or interests... and based on what I hear on this and other homeschool forums, homeschool moms as a whole tend to be more comfortable with the liberal arts than with the sciences. It would seem reasonable to me that the kids who are not impressing their college science prof's are learning it from moms who are not science buffs themselves. I wonder if that explains the whole trend, or if moms who love science also have trouble teaching science just because of the inherent difficulty of doing labs and such at home?

 

In any case, I agree that closer to middle school it's probably important for most of us to put our kids in outside science classes with enthusiastic teachers and good lab resources.

[Mejane]

I tend to agree overall, but also think much depends on the individual student. My daughter went into college at 14 either possessing or easily adopting all those skills, none of them formally taught by me. She has always been naturally disciplined and quick to catch on. Otoh, some students never achieve in those areas, whether taught at home or in ps.

[Guest]

What I see in this and many other remarks about homeschoolers -- and regular students -- is that people tend to feel those who come into their own area of expertise are underprepared. This holds true with Greg Landry about the sciences, SWB about writing, on and on. My husband and his colleagues regularly complain that incoming graduate students don't have enough lab work and are underprepared. To some extent I think it just goes with the territory.

 

I also agree with the poster who said homeschoolers are relatively small in numbers in college, so professors can tend to make categorical judgments based on a small number of kids.

 

And I taught for over a dozen years at the University of California, saw maybe one or two homeschoolers, and had LOTS of kids who had trouble meeting deadlines for papers, taking timed tests, and all the rest of it. I wonder how one would judge that homeschoolers in general have more difficulty with this than the typically schooled college kid.

[Frontier Mom]

These are the same reasons we decided to participate in a co-op this year. Great science classes and time management! Thanks, this makes our decision even more necessary.

[tiffijo1]

Interesting!!!

[cottonmama]

people tend to feel those who come into their own area of expertise are underprepared

KarenAnne, I think this is true, but isn't the whole idea of a well-rounded education to produce a student who is prepared to pursue any area of expertise? A science expert is a great judge of what it means to be prepared to pursue science. A writing expert is a great judge of what it means to be prepared to pursue writing. And so on.

 

Most of us don't want our shortcomings in educating our children to put them in a position where they are not equipped to study something like science at a basic college level. If you have evaluated your goals for your children and feel that choosing a specialization earlier than college is right for you, then that's different. But most of us don't want our kids hung up on an entry-level science course just because we're not great at science ourselves.

 

This is a common argument against homeschooling by people who aren't as fair with us as this college professor. They say that public school students have the opportunity to be taught by specialists, and as a result they don't end up with gaps that reflect a single teacher's lack of interest or proficiency in a subject.

 

I guess my point is that whatever we choose to do (outside classes being a great idea but not the Official Solution), we should at least take comments like these seriously.

[Onceuponatime]

What I see in this and many other remarks about homeschoolers -- and regular students -- is that people tend to feel those who come into their own area of expertise are underprepared.

 

:iagree:

 

I wonder if homeschoolers are really less prepared than ps kids in these areas overall. I would think it there are plenty of kids from both settings with and without these problems.

 

I'm tending to think that the author addresses these specific issues because he is a homeschool father and has a vested interest in how good all our homeschooled children look to other educators. In other words, he's giving us tips on how to groom our children to be the best students they can be. Nothing wrong with that.

[cottonmama]

I wonder if homeschoolers are really less prepared than ps kids in these areas overall. I would think it there are plenty of kids from both settings with and without these problems.

 

:iagree: You should hear my husband complain about his freshman math students... across the board, they're underprepared.

[TravelingChris]

The area that I have seen the worse preparation in many homeschool families is math. I would think that such a deficit would also impact on science classes. Too many homeschooling parents I have met have allowed their children to do less than normal in high school math. I have known otherwise conscientious parents where children are doing Alg 1 until age 16 and never getting past the beginnings of Alg 2 let alone getting through pre-calc by high school end. This lack of math preparation isn't only bad for those going into sciences and engineering. Most of the social sciences now have a lot of statistics included and it isn't so much that not enough math was taught as much as that it was treated as a strange cousin in the corner.

 

My son had not as much writing done by high school end as I would have liked. It didn't make any difference. His few papers he wrote and rewrote were enough to get him to do well in college. On the other hand, his math (and science skills) really helped him in those freshman classes.

 

Now do I think the schools do a really great job of teaching math? No, not really at all. But the math (and science) teachers in high school are not people who have math phobias.

[Jean in Newcastle]

If you look at the many threads we've had on rants by co-op teachers, the point about deadlines doesn't surprise me. Remember how many homeschooling parents and kids don't prepare for classes or do homework? (This tends to the sort of thing that is ranted about by those who frequent this board, though.)

[kalanamak]

I think it is a good and fair evaluation of trends he's seen. But of course it is a trend and doesn't fit every homeschooler out there.

 

I will take his advice though.

 

:iagree: I am already giving time limits....very reasonable, of course, but time limits. Kiddo's dad is a dawdler, and what child doesn't have that tendency? I'm particularly working on his doodling in the margin whenever mom leaves the room" technique.:001_smile: There is nothing wrong with relaxing or playing, but if it is work time, hitch up the cinch and git to 'er.

Edited August 19, 2010 by kalanamak

[SailorMom]

Sounds like a very fair assesment (finally:tongue_smilie:)...

As for the science - I have seen this so much. When we were in a co-op, frequently the moms would talk about "just not having enough time for science".

As for science minded people - that would be me:D While the organization takes a bit of time, my kids are getting (and have gotten since preschool) far more science than the kids in public schools. To me, science (and history) is just as important as math and gets equal time. We do at least one or two lab experiments a month, do microscope work, diescted a pig, isolated their DNA, etc.

Anyway - it is all very manageable. Now - I don't know about HS sciences as the lab work is a lot more elaborate and may be too expensive. We may have to look into CC classes for labs....

[carolinagirl]

I think he's made fair points. I know for my family we started adding in more formal portions of work including lecture/notes and testing a couple of years ago.

[spradlin02]

Thanks for the post, quite valuable information. At some point, I'll certainly start putting deadlines into our project development.