Has homeschooling changed for the better?

[speedmom4]

YES! I believe homeschooling has improved dramatically since I began in 1999/2000. There really weren't a lot of good options back then. We used Sonlight almost exclusively and I'm so thankful that was around. Homeschool companies catered mostly to fundamentalist Christians. Homeschool conventions were full of denim jumpers and uncut hair in our area! (No disrespect to denim jumpers and uncut hair  :tongue_smilie:) 

Also, I am not fearful of the authorities showing up on my doorstep. In the beginning homeschoolers, including myself, joined HSLDA to protect ourselves from the government. I'm happy that we can be out during school hours and not be looked at as total pariahs! 

 

 

[Guest]

dp

Edited March 30, 2017 by Guest

[Guest]

Nope.

 

You kids get off my lawn. ;)

 

I'm Hunter's era but a different geograophical location and cultural milieu. The "Golden Age" was between '92, when I was that starry eyed "toddler parent" hanging around Park Day with a three year old and an infant, hero worshipping Pat Farenga, the Hegeners, the Colfaxes, etc. the way normals hero worshipped TV and rock music stars, through 2003, when the charter schools took over our area and a divorce and downward mobility had our family shuttled off to "you people do better with supervision from the professionals at xxx charter and we don't want our kids playing with your kids because we really care about our kids so please don't come back to our park day/forum/yahoo group again."

 

I don't have a do-over with the caboose baby at all, but I love him to pieces and do have something unique to offer him with the perspective I am lucky enough to have had fall in my lap just because of when and where I happened to live, the choices I was able to make, and the people I was able to meet.

 

It gets better as the adult kids approach their 30s. I don't know if they realize how lucky they were or how briefly this "Golden Age" lasted yet, but it definitely influenced the amazing people they are today.

 

Ah, those were the days. They are gone. I don't belong here so it's kind of a waste of my time and yours to run my mouth like this, but I do appreciate your hospitality over the past few years of my visit so I'll just be on my way and leave you folks in peace to be yourselves now.

 

Carry on.

Edited March 30, 2017 by Guest

[Lang Syne Boardie]

IEF, there are a lot of us who were homeschooling in the mid to late 90s...we are belonging here less and less (too many of my WTM cronies have shuffled off these mortal forums), but we're not all gone. We're quieter, because there are only so many ways to answer, "I don't think you need a 'completely independent program' for your 6yo, maybe you could read to him and spend some time learning with him," or "I don't know where you should outsource because we only insource; to us, that's hs'ing." But we're still here, kind of.

 

I was not inspired by the Colfaxes, b/c I grew up in a trailer park and the Harvard thing sounded like a different universe, so I didn't even follow them much, although it was nice to know they were out there.

 

John Holt was my guy. I was reading him in the 80s when I was still a public school student, because my mother wished she could homeschool and left his books lying around the house, and we kids all read them. When my eldest was a baby, I read GWS magazines at the public library while he played.

[birchbark]

Yes and no. I was homeschooled myself, a child of a HS pioneer family in the 80's. The increased legal freedom and multitude of resources we have today makes it a completely different world. I think the potential of what a home education can be is vastly improved, especially for high school. However, as is always the case with progress, it comes with pitfalls and drawbacks. Most of these have been discussed above. The one I notice the most is the sheer number of distractions!

 

I think technology and co-ops have produced a whole different group in the world of home education. Those who are not really homeschooling, but are doing home-MANAGED schooling. Those who couldn't or wouldn't undertake the entirety of their children's education now have options that are more economical than a private school. And it is wonderful they have options.

 

But it does make oldschoolers feel more and more in the minority. And a little strange that they share the same name with a group that really is quite different. I remember watching a video of a blogger describe her homeschool and realizing that she outsourced almost everything for her young children. I thought, "You aren't going to have that much to say to me. Our lives are completely different."

 

And that is fine. 

 

But if anyone knows where the oldschoolers hang out online, send me a PM. I really miss all the ones that used to post here (and greatly appreciate the ones that remain)!

 

 

[....]

I remember watching a video of a blogger describe her homeschool and realizing that she outsourced almost everything for her young children. I thought, "You aren't going to have that much to say to me. Our lives are completely different."

 

But if anyone knows where the oldschoolers hang out online, send me a PM. I really miss all the ones that used to post here (and greatly appreciate the ones that remain)!

 

I think this fall is our 9th year, so we haven't been doing this homeschooling thing for as long as some parents...but, I had something similar happen to me at a homeschoolers' get-together.  The younger parents were outsourcing *everything*.  I felt like a weirdo.

 

Also have been looking for people who are "oldschooling"...

 

My sister homeschooled high school in Illinois in the mid-90s.  Very, very different from now.  My mom was actually told by the school superintendent not to let my sister be seen outside during the day - or someone could call the police.  Ridiculous.  Oh, and if there was curriculum, my mom didn't know about it or where to buy it.  They just used the library and took community college classes.  My sister now has her own law practice.  I guess she turned out ok.   :tongue_smilie:  

[Bluegoat]

Nothing to do with public vs private, or state funded or not (though here, private schools are state funded).

 

I am more positive about the Scandinavian systems of education, while being aware that these systems, more to my tastes re pedagogy and values, also create those particular conditions in the school body that deeply concern me. 

 

Nothing really to do with unschooling. Nothing really to do with academics either. 

 

A lot to do with scale, with the segregatory and compulsory nature of schools, with school's tendency to mirror and amplify dominant paradigms such as corporatism and nationalism. 

 

The smaller the scale, the flatter the structure, the more voluntary, the less segregated from the community, the more conscious of inadvertent or overt propaganda, the more palatable the learning becomes to me, imo.

 

So far, the only model I have seen which can incorporate all of the above is home education. Obviously, home education then introduces its own set of problems, and is utterly capable of replicating the issues I have with schools. So it is far from being a perfect answer.

 

It is, however, my personal answer, and one I am grateful for being able to access; I am likewise grateful when I am around other homeschoolers who feel similarly.

 

I hope in the future there are many more options but I doubt it. 

 

Ah, I see what you are getting at.

 

This is very similar to my thoughts on what an ideal system would look like. I tend to see it, for elementary/middle school anyway, as being largely a series of neighbourhood based cottage schools.

 

Once they get to high school I think they are ready for something more like vocational training or a college model, that may require a larger more organized arrangement.

[Bluegoat]

I guess I should say, to me the ideal "cottage school" would be a teacher, probably paid for through taxes, who sees a group of kids from a few grades, within walking distance of the school. 

 

I suppose this is the CM perspective coming out for me. 

 

I'm not sure I consider a lot of the co-ops I hear about as the same, although some may be.  But many seem to lack educational scope.

 

I sometimes wonder, as an aside, how some of these coops justify themselves as such.  Around here, you have to have a license to be a private school, but it sounds like they are essentially private schools to me.

[Jean in Newcastle]

When I was growing up, I went to a one-room school house.  No one said that we were homeschooling.  But today, with all the blurred lines, they might say that.  (We did have a paid teacher.  I had one other girl in my grade all through grade school.  My sixth grade year we had 7 kids in the entire school spanning all six grades.)

 

Also when I was growing up, I knew kids who were "attending" Calvert or University of Montana doing correspondence courses.  No one called that homeschooling either, though today it would definitely be called that.  My mother never thought of it as homeschooling though even though my brother was one of those students.  She helped keep him on task and helped to explain difficult concepts etc.  but she did not assign things and she did not grade them. 

 

I don't mind how people choose to school their kids.  But the blurred lines on what is homeschooling and what isn't, bothers me.  Part of it is because when talking about homeschooling you don't really know what you are referring to anymore.  And because things aren't defined as narrowly, if there is a problem then everyone who "homeschools" becomes tarred with the same brush.   

Edited March 31, 2017 by Jean in Newcastle