[ SECRET POST #4496 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4496 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #644.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/uuyRDws.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad that homeschooling worked out well for you. The timing on this secret is unfortunate.

[(Anonymous)]

??

[(Anonymous)]

Wait what homeschool scandal happened recently?

[feotakahari]

The novel Skellig portrays homeschooling positively.

[rosehiptea]

That looks really interesting, just in general. I just borrowed the Kindle book from the library.

[(Anonymous)]

Ohhh I loved that book as a kid.

[(Anonymous)]

I've never understood the reason people homeschool, to be honest. I mean, I understand supplementing knowledge if you don't think your kid is learning all the things you think they need, but as a whole it baffles me.

[(Anonymous)]

Some popular reasons for home-schooling your kids:

1. Your kids have special needs that aren't/can't be met by the schools in your area. A lot of public schools have next to no funding/resources for special education and whatever private schools that are available may either be just as bad on that front or prohibitively expensive (or both!).

2. You are extremely religious and don't want your kids learning about other religions and the evil-lution and the only way to keep the nasty humanists away from them is to keep them at home.

3. Probably soon, if not already happening: you refuse to vaccinate your children and the public schools won't take your plague babies because of it so you teach them your own dang self.

[(Anonymous)]

new to this thread

In my case, it's because I was threatened with a gun at school and the school would do nothing about it (and this was right after Columbine, so you'd assume they'd be hyper-vigilant, but nope). My mom chose to homeschool us at that point. Usually people assume it's for religious reasons but we were atheists (well, my brother and I are; my parents are the "believe in a god but don't practice a religion" types). Anyway, it was all on computers and we got to set our own schedule so we traveled a ton and structured our school work around it.

In my state homeschooled kids had to take the same standardized tests that kids in school took to show that they were learning the same things. Every year we were in the top 3% in the state, so we actually got a better education than if we had stayed in the public school system (the schools in our district fluctuated between the top 10-12%). I finished at 16, took a few months to just be a kid, and then worked a year before starting college.

It worked out really well for us. People always talk about the "social aspect" but I find that's more down to the kids' individual personalities than anything. I've always been somewhat of a loner, so I was perfectly happy hanging out at home a lot, and going to concerts with friends occasionally. My brother, who is basically the polar opposite of me, had just as much of a social life as any high school kid (this was later; we were both in middle school when we started). He went to multiple proms, had a ton of kids he hung out with, went to parties frequently, etc. There are groups for homeschooling kids with various events/activities/etc., and there are usually childhood/family friends that aren't in any way connected to school, so if a kid wants to be social they totally can.

So it's entirely possible to be homeschooled and "normal", it's just almost never portrayed in media.

Homeschooled here

[syncing_feeling]

I was homeschooled up to the point where my mother ran away, and for the years leading up to that she gradually showed less and less interest/discipline in schooling us because her mind was elsewhere. I would say it contributed to me being extremely anxious and awkward in social situations, but that was probably more down to the fact that my mother schooled us solely because she was extremely paranoid and insular, didn't allow us outside unaccompanied and actively discouraged socialising.

I do feel like I missed out massively. Not just the later years of education that she dropped like a hot potato, but having friends growing up. I still remember my dad being super nervous when I invited my first friend around for dinner, at the age of 16. Obviously this wasn't a typical situation though, had she been less of a twisted person I think I would've really enjoyed it, and I have friends now who had a really good experience of homeschooling and have turned out brilliantly.

[(Anonymous)]

Home schooling is an extremely foreign concent to me. It basically doesn't happen here, unless you have explicit permission, which is only given in some cases - for example childhood cancer patients whose immune systems are so low they cannot attend school, or are more in the hospital than anywhere else.

And even then the parents / those who teach must present their teaching material and methods to make sure the home-schooled kids don't fall behind standards.

[(Anonymous)]

By "in the media" do you mean the news or fiction/drama? Because I can't think of any portrayals of homeschooling in entertainment media outside of things with historical settings, while there are lots of portrayals of kids having bad experiences with public schools, boarding schools, etc.

[philstar22]

I never was homeschooled myself. But all the people I saw homeschooled, it was because their conservative, fundamentalist parents hated public schools and wanted to indoctrinate their kids and not teach them basic things like actual science. So no.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't get this. So homeschooling doesn't deserve positive portrayals because you saw it used badly?

I'm one of the people who was (briefly) homeschooled because the school system didnt bother with even teaching us. Without homeschooling I wouldnt have gotten any kind of middle school education.

[(Anonymous)]

All these comments about homeschooling being for religious nutjobs are super weird to me because where I live and in the couple of articles I've read about homeschooling, homeschooled kids had hippie parents who thought school was too stifling and conservative and wanted their kids to learn by living in the real world. Going on field trips and nature walks, for example, was a lot more common for homeschooled kids than schooled ones.

[(Anonymous)]

Tbh, I always thought that homeschooling was for those who couldn't go to school for whatever reason (too remote area, disability, etc) or for super religious people who disagreeded with the curriculum, but nowadays I see more and more middle class people around me getting interested in homeschooling their kids to avoid sending them to schools which are supposedly crushing their spirits and not teaching them them anything but test preparation and what not. I assume this last group is giving their children fairly good education, but I still don't particularily support it when it comes to society as a whole? When fairly well-off people start leaving the public school system, it suggests that something is not working, but if the system is faulty, the solution is fixing it not fleeing from it. I understand it on a personal level, I really do, but on a social scale, growing popularity of homeschooling is not really a good thing. It will always create inequality, because some parents will never be able to homeschool their children for financial, educational or other reasons. And those who need good education the most will be again left with less attention and care.

/sorry for the tangent, OP..?

[rosehiptea]

I homeschooled my son until third grade and I wish I had done it for longer. Looking back he says he wishes that too. When you think how much school can suck I don't see why it would surprise people that many kids love homeschooling.

The only books I can think of with homeschooling in them where it's not portrayed negatively are The View from Saturday (though she did end up in school) and Gerald Durrell's memoirs in which he was taught by tutors at home. Mostly you have books like "Educated" where the parents are abusive and neglectful. (It's a very good book by the way, and I'm glad she told her story, but I also awish there were more variety and some positive stories.)

[(Anonymous)]

I was also homeschooled and it was great for me! So much freedom. I think I'm a more curious, more well-informed, more capable person because of it. My family are atheists, they just chose to homeschool me because they didn't believe in the testing first, high stress environment of public school. I knew lots of kids homeschooled for similar reasons, and they pretty much all turned out great too.

[greghousesgf]

I wish I had been homeschooled, I was really badly bullied and my parents are both very well educated and could have homeschooled me.

[(Anonymous)]

I know plenty of people who were home schooled who loved it and turned out wonderfully. I also know a handful who loved it, but ended up being very poorly educated in one or more subjects (this happens with out-of-home schooling, too, but the students in those cases tend to be a little more aware that a problem exists). I also know three who were home schooled, loved it, and then had mental breakdowns in college or on their first job when it turned out that the no pressure/no tests style of schooling favored by their parents hadn't prepared them for the "give us results now and show your work, or gtfo" demands of the rest of the world.

Home schooling and out-of-home schooling both come with their own set of pros and cons.

[(Anonymous)]

I know of kids who benefited from homeschooling and are thriving in that environment. Unfortunately, homeschooling gets a very bad name from people who do it for... well, IMO the wrong reasons, i.e. protecting them from the "evils" of modern life like science and evolution, girls wearing pants, homosexuality, etc. It doesn't help that people who think this way are often really, really poorly equipped to conduct a child's education or socialization properly.

(sorry for the misfire on secret 3!)

[(Anonymous)]

Homeschooled kid here. No, I don't have links offhand, but a few things that most people don't know: homeschooled kids are more likely to pursue degrees, more likely to be happy, and more likely to marry. (I participated in this study.) A recent study showed that the educational level of the parent was irrelevant to the child's success, which just goes to show that it can be more important to have an adult with a personal interest in the child's success than to have a 'highly qualified' teacher.

Of course there are bad homeschooling parents. But they are by far in the minority. From what little statistics are available, homeschooling parents are not more likely to abuse their children than those that attend public school. Cases where abuse occurs in homeschooling families is publicized because it fits the narrative that homeschooling parents are crazy religious nuts, which it seems a lot of people here believe.

And the demographics of homeschoolers? Increasing in diversity year by year, from the income and educational level of the parents to the race and ethnicity of the parents, along with religious views. I heard about a family that sold their house and went on the road with their four/five kids, homeschooling while they traveled the country. People homeschool for a LOT of reasons these days.

I'm in a mom group and most of the moms are interested in homeschooling but feel unqualified, and I think that's sad. If you need help teaching highschool math or other difficult subjects, there's online classes available, and increasingly, charter schools, too. The growth that the homeschooling movement has seen is incredible, and that means increased resources. I'm talking group classes set up by a local homeschooling group, proms, social events, and more. Some children are even homeschooled for a few years to focus on a particular needed subject (whether for special needs or something else) and then attend public school once they're caught up. Homeschooling is flexible in a way public school simply can't be, and some children need that.

I cannot tell you how often I hear about parents worrying about bullying that has led to PHYSICAL BEATINGS, vomiting every morning before school, and other reactions to the trauma, and they KEEP THEIR KID IN because they feel helpless. And often, they are. Public schools are massive bureaucratic systems, no matter how motivated and wonderful the teachers are. My sister was a music teacher at LAUSD for a couple of years. The person she replaced kept the job for 8 months without showing up to work. He finally quit. They never caught him literally never showing up to work. I wish public schools were better, I really do. And some are great.

Some are not. It should be the right of the parents to make the call about what is best for their child, not a bureaucracy.

[(Anonymous)]

Idk, I hope by “spirit and soul” you mean, like, self-worth and individuality or something, because that phrasing comes really close to the wording used by the religious fundamentalist homeschooling parents I’ve run into who think that the average public elementary school is a “den of iniquity and sin” that will have their kids sneaking of for orgies and Satanic Mass for extra credit.

But then, I think that childhood religious indoctrination is kind of gross. Exposure to and education about different religions and belief systems is cool; telling your own kids that heathens/unbelievers/whatever roast in hell (with the unspoken rider that if they don’t believe the same way you do they’ll spend eternity turning on a spit) is basically child abuse.

[(Anonymous)]

Homeschooling had its challenges, but as an u diagnosed till adulthood girl with aspergers, I suspect public school would have been a nightmare. At least I didn't have to deal with social anxiety every day and was able to focus more on my passions.