This started as a comment in the megathread but got long so I decided to make it it’s own post. Obviously covid makes this different, but for general purposes, I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it till I die, please don’t homeschool your kids
I was homeschooled from early in elementary school until halfway through my sophomore year of high school. The reason I joined high school is because I was so depressed and lonely I wanted to die, and I knew my education had been neglected for years, so I begged my parents to put me in public school. Basically the only thing my parents kept up with was math and that’s only because they had me in online math classes.
And of the homeschooling parents I knew, mine were some of the best ones as far as actually educating their children go. Mild neglect with some basic math and science from atheist parents is worlds better than the psycho Christian “education” some people I knew got.
But even with all that the education was the smaller problem. Turns out math is the only thing that actually builds on itself over time in the American education system, everything else just restarts but slightly more complicated when you get to high school.
The bigger problem was how alone I was and how stunted it made my social skills, something I’m still dealing with now and I’m in fucking grad school. Kids and teenagers need to be around people their own age. I straight up did not learn how to function properly in social situations. I almost got the shit beat out of me in my first week in high school for calling a football player a dumbass. If adults said things to me that were mildly accusatory I’d cry, but also I had no concept of not saying shit so I’d call out adults for any minor system issue or other problem completely out of their control which most people just found annoying. I had so much trouble understanding fairly basic social interactions.
My younger brother was homeschooled from after kindergarten all the way until his senior year of high school, which he then dropped out of. He was more stunted both socially and educationally than I was, and started smoking weed nearly every day when he was around 15 to cope. It also definitely didn’t help that my whole family is chock full of mental illness. I think he did just start at community college though, which I’m super proud of.
So yeah. Rant over. Don’t home school your kids. It’s shitty.
Yeah I'm a teacher but before I worked in a class I used to work with homeschooled kids and have a pretty good understanding of the lay of the land. (For context I worked in a lib/hippy area not a don't-tread-on-me area, to give you an idea of the parents.)
I concur. 100%. Many of the kids, most, were pretty socially maladjusted. Just like way behind for their age group. And there is nothing wrong with being weird, but it did seem like a source of frustration for a lot of them. There were a few kids who were negligently behind in academics (and like basic shit like a 14 year old kid who didn't know the months of the year or how to tell time) but these were the exception, most of them were pretty fine academically, average spread.
A few notes: there are confounding factors here. Students who are socially behind are more likely to have trouble in school and be removed, so my experience may be a chicken and egg thing.
The kids I worked with who were normal mostly had something very social that kept them from attending high school full-time. Professional actors, professional-track athletes, etc. They had a vibrant social circle of friends in those domains. So if you really want to home school your kids make sure you put a heavy emphasis on finding genuine, regular and independent social development.