August 20, 2012 • 27 mins
Cristen was homeschooled. What was that like? Why and how do people homeschool their kids? Is homeschooling as effective as traditional schooling? Listen in for the answers to these questions and more in this podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told
You from housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:20):
are getting around finally to the topic of home schooling.
And I say finally because A people have requested this
topic for a long time, and B I have dropped
references throughout the history of Stuff Mom Never Told You
about my homeschooling past. For a little refresher course for
(00:41):
folks out there who don't know. I was homeschooled from
second through eighth grade, and I'm living to tell the tale.
Do tell the people need to know. I mean I
I I really enjoyed it when I was a kid.
It was super fun. Uh My mom home schooled me
as well two of my older siblings, and they were
(01:02):
actually homeschooled through high school. I was kind of gratefully
like sent to a traditional high school. Uh. Middle school
started to get a little it wasn't too into it,
but it was. It was great. I mean, my mom
was a training teacher. She would essentially give us assignments.
(01:23):
It was very self directed. We would have a couple
of meetups during the week to go over things. She
would administer tests, all of that. And I mean, I
did well in traditional school, graduated from college. I would
say that I am. I hope my mom is listening
to this. I think I could say a homeschooling success.
(01:44):
You know I didn't. I turned out weird, but not
too weird that I can't talk to people because there
are all of these stereotypes about homeschoolers and how they
have horrible social skills. And I'm not gonna lie. You
were in homeschooling groups and there were certain kids who
were more adept at talking to the parents than interacting
(02:09):
with their peers. But you know, I think that's that's
going to happen in any school. You're gonna have some
uh some socialization gaps there. Well, do you think it
helped you in college? Study in college, for all those
classes where you have to be kind of self directed? Yeah,
I would stay in my The biggest thing that I
noticed with the transition to traditional school was that I
(02:34):
was great at homework. I loved reading assignments like I
could knock that stuff out. Studying for tests, yes, The
one thing I had to learn how to do was
sit through lectures and take notes. And I had no
idea how to take notes. Like my first notes, really
we just every everything the word here there. I also
(02:54):
remember someone teaching me how to highlight in books. I
was like, what do I highlight? I would highlight higher
paragraph because it was like the cool thing to do,
you know, And I was really pumped to have these
highlighters that I could use in the school books. So
enough about me, uh, or do you want more about me? Well?
I mean, I feel like you can definitely add a
(03:15):
lot to these various topics that we're going to cover,
because we're going to talk about kind of the history
of it, how it came about, how it was viewed
very negatively as this fringe activity and then has now
just totally taken over and blossomed, and so many people
are homeschooling their kids, but also the social effects, you know,
academic achievement, all that stuff. So I think the people
(03:38):
would like to know, you know, how your parents got
involved in that. I'll give him the inside scoop. Do Well,
let's first take a step back in history to just
understand when schooling in the United States became compulsory right,
and the concept of schooling education, the whole compulsory thing,
you're going to send your kids to school and educate them,
(03:59):
is very deeply ingrained in American society. And it starts,
not surprisingly if you think about it, with the Puritans
of up in Massachusetts. In sixteen forty two, the first
general compulsory education law in the country, well in the
colonial group of regions, was enacted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
(04:22):
and it required that children be taught to read and write.
And the thinking went that basically, education is your moral
and social obligation, because they wanted their kids to be
literate enough to both read the Bible and read and
understand the laws of the land. Yeah, And in sixteen
forty seven the Colonies General Court passed the first law
requiring that towns provide schools. And then again Massachusetts, loving
(04:46):
this compulsory education, in eighteen fifty two they passed the
first compulsory education law. And it's not only a requirement
for education, but also a requirement that children attend public schools.
And before we say hey, way to go Massachusetts, I
will say that the motivations behind passing the law or
a little sketchy because it was targeted at immigrant families.
(05:10):
So they wanted to ensure that their kids learned the
American way so they could become good workers. Yeah, and
I mean we've talked about this in a couple other
other episodes, particularly the p t A when comes to
mind about we we just want to fix these kids.
We want them to fall in line with what we
think is the proper American way to be. Um So,
by nineteen eighteen, all states had passed school attendance legislation,
(05:32):
but it wasn't really until the nineteen thirties, uh, that
many were successful in enforcing those laws. So during the
nineteen twenties through the nineteen seventies, homeschooling it's still happening,
you know, here and there, but it's pretty underground, usually
in rural areas. But in the nineteen sixties and seventies
we have both the Christian right and the counterculture left saying, hey,
(05:58):
how about this home school and thing. Yeah, they had
very different reasons for wanting to home school their kids,
but at the root it was it was very similar. Basically,
things weren't being taught the way that they wanted them to.
Be taught or their children were being educated the way
that they wanted their children to learn. Yeah. In nineteen
sixty nine, for instance, and this is on the more
(06:18):
Christian right end of the spectrum, we have Raymond Moore,
who was a missionary and a former U. S Department
of Education employee who started looking into educational research and
figuring out how public schools were teaching or in this case,
in his mind, failing to teach kids in the US.
(06:41):
And um. He and his wife saw all this advice
from family development specialists and research, and the thesis they
came up with was that public schooling is horrible for
your kids. Yeah, the things that they say public schooling
will do to you, or just sitting in a classroom
all day, private or public like, They said that it
(07:02):
caused developmental problems, problems like hyperactivity, near sightedness, and dyslexia.
And these things were often the result of prematurely taxing
a child's nervous system and mine with continuous academic tasks.
So it's amazing that I'm even sitting here. I should
be totally stunted, like in the fetal position somewhere. Um. Yeah.
Dr more referred to public schools as godless monstrosities. That's
(07:28):
that's serious, pretty strong. He thought that formal schooling should
be delayed until at least eight or ten, so just
just let him play in the sandbox until then. Well,
and he advocates instead a Christianity based homeschooling. So keep
in mind, we've got the Christian right starting to say, hey,
you know what, maybe public schools are godless monstrosities. Um,
(07:50):
this could be a better way to go. So now
moving over to the other end of the spectrum, to
the more counterculture left side, we have John Hole who
was an author and educator who rose to prominence in
the nineteen seventies because he was advocating for decentralizing schooling
and allowing parents and teachers greater autonomy. And it's developed
(08:13):
into his theory of unschooling. Yeah, that basically means that
learning learning that doesn't look like school learning. It doesn't
necessarily need to take place at home, but it's not
your traditional sit at a desk all day kind of thing.
He thought that that constituted basically a lack of humanity
towards school children, and thought that teachers really stymied kids
(08:34):
natural curiosity, forcing them to learn which one might argue
could be a good thing to force someone to learn,
but he said that it completely would change kids personalities.
So in the seventies and eighties we have all these
theories of homeschooling that start to brew, but it isn't
really until the nineties that more significant numbers of parents
(08:56):
start taking their kids out of public schools and teaching
at home. And it's largely due to uh sort of
fear of the conditions of the public school system and
also religious motivations. Yeah, there are some people who definitely
are not big fans of the education system in general.
(09:17):
Mary Novello, for instance, who at the time in n
was an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute, considered the
link between actual education and schooling to be weak. And
she is one of many people who argued that this
whole school bureaucracy thing, it was more about the bureaucracy
and maintaining the system than it was about really educating kids.
(09:38):
And then we have, you know, the whole libertarian attitude
of like, get the government out of my family. And
so David Boaz, who was the executive vice president of
the libertarian Cato Institute, cited declining school quality, lack of
moral instruction, and forced volunteering as downsides of public forced education.
And there was also at the time mounting fear about
(09:59):
violent in public school, whether you were exposing your kids
unnecessarily to potentially harmful situations. And I know we've talked
a lot, like mentioned the Christian right and sort of
the sphere of public school a lot, and we're not
harping on it. I will say in my experience with homeschooling,
those two factors did play a large role in my
(10:20):
siblings and I being pulled out of public school and
being taught at home. Um, so you know, and I
will stay in that regard. You know, my parents did
have my our best interest in mind. Yeah, same with
my cousin's similar situation. Religious beliefs conflicted with the way
their kids are being taught at school. Yeah, And it
(10:40):
was this was also happening in the nineties early mid nineties,
and we were a minority in the town where I
grew up like that, didn't know many other homeschool kids.
I always kind of wanted to avoid the question where
do you go to school, because I'd have to say, uh,
and well, we have we have a room in the house.
I still live in the same house. We had a
(11:02):
room designated as the school room, which we still refer
to as the school room, but it was also the
place where you would go if you ever got in trouble.
So mom, if Mom ever said Kristen, can you meet
me in the school room, just like no, that's bad
associations school and getting in trouble. So moving forward. Uh,
(11:24):
In nineteen nine, they're about eight hundred and fifty thousand
families in the US who were homeschooling their kids, and
in two thousand three that number goes up to one
point one million. And now according to the National Center
for Education Statistics, they're probably about one point five million
(11:45):
kids being homeschooled. Yeah, humongous jump. Ginormous amount of people
relative to how it used to be, especially in the seventies,
putting their kids in homeschooling. Uh. This is we got
a lot of information from education we Institute of Education
Sciences and a study by Brian Ray in the National
Home Education Research Institute, from lots of statistics to cover
(12:09):
and he said. Ray said that between two thousand seven
and twenty, for instance, the number of students increased by
an estimated seven percent, and I will say that, yeah,
we have one point five millions. Some people estimate that
it's closer to five million kids. They're not entirely sure. Uh.
And that represents about three percent of the school age population.
(12:31):
And you might be thinking three percent, that's nothing. Well,
it's huge compared to what it used to be. And
the numbers only keep rising more every year. Yeah. In
two thousand seven, just to throw some more stats that
you confuse you. Uh, In two thousand seven, eight percent
of home schooled students received all of their education at home.
Did you did you? Were you all at home? Or
(12:52):
were you venturing out? Or we were never allowed to
leave the house. But Shane, the chainer in your foot
only stretched so far. We had one of those like
the invisible fences to get your dogs. Uh, No, we did.
We did leave the house, but we were taught exclusively
at home. Yeah, but I did have friends who had
private tutors come in, or they would go take a
(13:15):
specialty class like a fine arts class at a private
school from time to time. Well, eleven percent, Uh, we're
enrolled in school less than nine hours per week, and
five percent were enrolled nine to five hours per week,
So there's there's definitely a mix. Obviously, it's not cut
and dry with home schoolers. People choose to do it differently.
Oh yeah, there are many different ways that you can
home school a child. But first, why do people choose
(13:39):
to do it today? According to the US Department of Education,
there are obviously plenty of different motivations, but mostly are white,
religious conservative families who want to provide religious or moral instruction.
And again, not to harp on my own upbringing, a
(14:00):
lot of our curriculum was Christian based, and Judeo Christian
ethics were woven throughout history, science, literature, all that stuff. Yeah,
and that was according to the Department of Ed the
two thousand survey, that was thirty six percent, the moral
and religious instruction coming in at second of parents said
(14:23):
they were most concerned about their child's learning environment, so
maybe not happy with the school or the way things
are being taught, sevent sided dissatisfaction with the institutions their
kids were in only seven percent side of the desire
to provide a non traditional approach to education, hippies more
of the the John Holt side of the with the unschooling. Yeah, um,
(14:44):
and for a little demographic breakdown we mentioned white religious conservatives. Uh,
seventy seven percent of homeschool students are white, eighty nine
percent are living in two parent households, and a greater
percentage also lives in more rural areas. And most of
these families do have two or more children. Their parents
tend to be well educated, middle class. So, but that's
(15:08):
not the only group of people. It's definitely UM A
lot of the articles we read cited, you know, studies
showing that it is expanding. More people are getting interested
in taking their children out of traditional school settings for
whatever reason. Um USA Today in February of this year
had an article about the growing African American involvement in
home schooling and Joyce Burgess, who's the co founder of
(15:29):
National Black Home Educators, said that their network has grown
from about five hundred home schoolers a decade ago to
about twenty five hundred. And she said that her parents
in the network, their reasons are typically more practical than
than focusing on the religious aspect. Yeah, and that's something
that you are seeing more and more. The pool is
diversifying away from the white religious conservative So what about
(15:55):
student achievement? I mean, I did okay, you know me
to be successful at being a human. I got some
good walks in school. Uh and thank you human too,
all right. But you know, a question that has often
been asked about homeschooling is whether or not kids will
get as good of an education as they would in
(16:17):
a traditional public or private school. And it's kind of
up in the air. I mean, I think the stereotype
that I have in my head is that home school
children are super smart. I think that's an okay you
like to have. I mean, I feel like if you
get such individualized attention from your parents or your tutors
or whoever is teaching you outside of a school setting,
(16:39):
I feel like you're you're almost more set up to
succeed because there's more focus on teaching you whatever your
learning style is. But Christopher Lubynsky, professor of education policy
at the University of Illinois, told USA Today there's really
not good evidence that it's a better model for children,
and he basically says that high achievers might excel anywhere,
(17:00):
whether you're learning at home or whether you're learning in
a public school. And he says that some parents. One
of his concerns is that some parents just aren't qualified
to provide the education for their children. But here's the
thing about about the homeschool studies. I mean, he says
that there's not good evidence, And the reason for that
argument is that there have been studies published saying, yes,
(17:22):
homeschooling is fantastic for your children. They on average make
higher standardized test scores, they will go to college, they
will be successful. But a lot of those studies have
been sponsored by groups like the Homeschool Legal Defense Association,
which obviously you know, homeschool advocacy groups, that it would
be in their best interest to sort of self select
(17:44):
these high achieving groups to publish those test scores. And
I'm not saying that these groups are fudging the books
in any way, but there have been methodological problems that
they've run into because there just hasn't been a lot
of apples to apples comparisons between public and private schools
versus home school. Yeah. Well, one of the youth side
of the Home School Legal Defense Association, in two thousand nine,
(18:06):
they put out a study that showed home school students
typically score thirty four to thirty nine percentile points higher
than average students on standardized tests and Lawrence Redner in
study in Education Policy Analysis ARCHIVES said that homeschool students
test scores are exceptionally high, and of these students were
enrolled in one or more grades above their age level peers.
(18:29):
But again, you know these are coming from those results
are coming from these exclusively like homeschool advocacy groups. So
in two thousand eleven, some researchers at Mount Allison University
in Canada published a study called the impact of Schooling
on Academic Achievement Evidence from homeschooled and traditionally schooled students,
(18:50):
trying to figure out whether and like how homeschooling stacked
up against public schooling. And it was a very small
sample size. I believe there were thirty four or thirty
five homeschoolers that they looked at, and when all of
the numbers were compared, the homeschoolers did as well as
the public school kids. But then when they broke down
(19:13):
the way that the homeschool kids were taught, um, there
was a group that was more traditionally taught with a
structured curriculum, a structured plan every day, and then there
were kids who were unschooled who were very had a
very footloose and fancy free kind of education where math class,
say is going to the candy store and having to
(19:35):
pay for something and count out change um. And those
the unschooled kids did the worst compared to public school
kids and the structured homeschool kids. But the kids with
the structured homeschool did the best out of all the kids. Yeah,
structured home school, then public school, and then unstructured home
school students bringing up the rear. But I think it's
(19:57):
something to to bring up about that is maybe the
top two groups are being taught to the test. I
mean maybe in that structured environment at home school, the
parents are or whoever's teaching the kids are focused on
ensuring you do well on these standardized tests so that
maybe you go to college or you do whatever you know, uh,
(20:18):
same as in the traditional school setting where you're being
taught the test. Or it could also be benefits from
things like small class sized. I had a class of
one individualized instruction, and there's more freedom to really dig
into core subjects because of the small class size. But
(20:39):
there was also the researchers from Mount Allison also pointed
out that testing conditions for public school kids vastly different
from sitting at your breakfast table like I would do,
and take my CRCT tests every year, rather than being
in a room with all of your classmates and all
of those distractions postal going on. Yeah, well, speaking of distractions,
(21:05):
I'm going to use this as a bumpy transition into
the social aspect of home school, an awkward homeschool awkward transition, yes, exactly,
or an only child awkward transition. Let's just bring it
all together. Christ, there you go. Let's come full circle.
So how did your parents ensure that you had friends? Well?
I had extracurricular activities. Uh. Probably at this point in
(21:27):
the podcast, it wouldn't come as a surprise to hear
that I went to church a lot, had my youth
group Sunday school, and I also took ballet and was
on a soccer team. So yes, I left the home.
I interacted with children of the same age group. I
made friends a few good one or two. Well that's
(21:54):
I think. The social stuff is a huge sticking point
for a lot of opponents of home school. Uh. Samantha
li Beta, in a paper in Journal of Contemporary Legal
Issues from two thousand five, said basically that a lot
of educators are worried about the social thing, and they
think that it deprives children of the ability to develop
socialization skills, and arguing that school itself, the institution going
(22:18):
there every day, dealing with bullies shoving you in your locker,
play the significant role in socialization learning how to cooperate
developing those skills. And they say that when you're homeschooled,
your home, your school, your peers, your teachers, it's all
one and the same. And uh. Homeschool supporters of course,
would say, well, listen, socialization depends on interaction with adults
(22:39):
in addition to peers. And also the point about, you know,
getting pushed into your locker by bullies. Uh, maybe the
socialization in a day to day school setting could have
a negative impact of always having, you know, having to
negotiate all these difficult you know, relationships with your peers
as hormones are developing. And they like that, uh, and
(23:01):
that there are ways outside of the home for your
kids to receive plenty of socialization. Um. And I mean,
I will say that when I went to high school,
I didn't have trouble making friends, but there were certain
times when I did experience homeschool gaps because there. It
(23:23):
is a big difference between like having to walk in
every day into that environment rather than like waking up,
getting breakfast thing and out doing your thing. You know,
it's just like it presents more, um more obstacles, I
guess to kind of overcome, you've gotta ge used to
a whole different set of social issues. Yeah. And and
(23:44):
also realizing that school portrayed on television movies, And I'm serious,
this might sound crazy, but that portrayal is not the
same as it is in real life. And I would
have to get that through my brain sometimes. Yeah, people
in high school aren't at tually thirty the way they
are on TV at the time. That would be weird.
(24:05):
Um well, you know, bringing it all together, Larry Shires
of the University of Florida and his doctoral dissertation, Yes
it's stated, but bear with me, talks about school children
being videotaped at play. These were traditional school students and
home school students. They brought in trained counselors to observe them,
and these counselors could not tell the difference. They didn't
(24:26):
know who was home schooled and who was traditionally schooled. Yeah,
I mean, I think the socialization factor. In the same
way that the parent will determine whether, like the kind
of curriculum the child will have, what form of education
at home they will receive, they're also the gatekeepers of
the socialization factor. You know, kids need to get out,
(24:47):
you know, you need to if you are being homeschooled,
that kid probably needs to join a soccer team or
do something. But you know, I don't think that saying
homeschooling will there's no way that they'll get enough socialization.
I think is it's dramatic. Yeah, I mean I feel
like I knew plenty of people in regular school who
(25:07):
we're weirdos. I mean, adolescents is just awkward. I mean
a lot of it has to do with just your
family environment to whether you're homeschooled or traditionally schooled. Yeah,
I don't sound weird like I'm schooling, you know. I
think I think that's a good point. I think it
would be difficult if you were an only child to
be homeschooled. There was a period when I was the
(25:28):
only one at home being homeschooled, and that's when it
started to get lonely and I really didn't like it
as much because my older siblings were all out of
the house at that point, and then I got to
go to high school. I can picture you gazing out
the window wistfully from your school room in your house,
like a little Disney birds coming to land on your finger.
That totally happened, because I could see the kids walking
(25:50):
home from school and I'd be like, what's that? Like,
why can't I have a trapper keeper? So how did
you end up going to regular school? I think my
parents realized that it would be good for me to
go to high school just because I was the only
one at home and my mom had returned to work.
So even though I was really good with the self
(26:11):
directed aspect of it, um, I was a little glam
about it. So I got to go to school. Yeah, cool,
that's that. If I if I have children, would I
homeschool them? I don't think so, But that's just because
I would make a terrible teacher. I get why people
do it, religious secular, however, which way, Like, I get
(26:33):
why people would do it, but I myself would probably.
I can't do math. I can't. I can barely like,
oh god, if I do long division and get a remainder,
I don't know what to do with it. I learned
that in home school I could probably teach you. So
that is the story of homeschooling, from my life to yours.
(26:53):
I would now love to hear from listeners out there
who have been at home school, who homeschooling their children,
who are considering homeschooling. Send me your homeschooling stories, all
of them, because I have told so many stories of mine. Now,
mom Stuff at discovery dot com is our email address,
(27:14):
and of course you can always hit us up on Facebook,
and of course you can find us on Twitter as well,
follow us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you'd like
to learn more about homeschooling, you can read the article
how Homeschooling Works. It's at our website how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(27:36):
Does it how stuff works dot Com brought to you
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you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told
You from housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:20):
are getting around finally to the topic of home schooling.
And I say finally because A people have requested this
topic for a long time, and B I have dropped
references throughout the history of Stuff Mom Never Told You
about my homeschooling past. For a little refresher course for
(00:41):
folks out there who don't know. I was homeschooled from
second through eighth grade, and I'm living to tell the tale.
Do tell the people need to know. I mean I
I I really enjoyed it when I was a kid.
It was super fun. Uh My mom home schooled me
as well two of my older siblings, and they were
(01:02):
actually homeschooled through high school. I was kind of gratefully
like sent to a traditional high school. Uh. Middle school
started to get a little it wasn't too into it,
but it was. It was great. I mean, my mom
was a training teacher. She would essentially give us assignments.
(01:23):
It was very self directed. We would have a couple
of meetups during the week to go over things. She
would administer tests, all of that. And I mean, I
did well in traditional school, graduated from college. I would
say that I am. I hope my mom is listening
to this. I think I could say a homeschooling success.
(01:44):
You know I didn't. I turned out weird, but not
too weird that I can't talk to people because there
are all of these stereotypes about homeschoolers and how they
have horrible social skills. And I'm not gonna lie. You
were in homeschooling groups and there were certain kids who
were more adept at talking to the parents than interacting
(02:09):
with their peers. But you know, I think that's that's
going to happen in any school. You're gonna have some
uh some socialization gaps there. Well, do you think it
helped you in college? Study in college, for all those
classes where you have to be kind of self directed? Yeah,
I would stay in my The biggest thing that I
noticed with the transition to traditional school was that I
(02:34):
was great at homework. I loved reading assignments like I
could knock that stuff out. Studying for tests, yes, The
one thing I had to learn how to do was
sit through lectures and take notes. And I had no
idea how to take notes. Like my first notes, really
we just every everything the word here there. I also
(02:54):
remember someone teaching me how to highlight in books. I
was like, what do I highlight? I would highlight higher
paragraph because it was like the cool thing to do,
you know, And I was really pumped to have these
highlighters that I could use in the school books. So
enough about me, uh, or do you want more about me? Well?
I mean, I feel like you can definitely add a
(03:15):
lot to these various topics that we're going to cover,
because we're going to talk about kind of the history
of it, how it came about, how it was viewed
very negatively as this fringe activity and then has now
just totally taken over and blossomed, and so many people
are homeschooling their kids, but also the social effects, you know,
academic achievement, all that stuff. So I think the people
(03:38):
would like to know, you know, how your parents got
involved in that. I'll give him the inside scoop. Do Well,
let's first take a step back in history to just
understand when schooling in the United States became compulsory right,
and the concept of schooling education, the whole compulsory thing,
you're going to send your kids to school and educate them,
(03:59):
is very deeply ingrained in American society. And it starts,
not surprisingly if you think about it, with the Puritans
of up in Massachusetts. In sixteen forty two, the first
general compulsory education law in the country, well in the
colonial group of regions, was enacted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
(04:22):
and it required that children be taught to read and write.
And the thinking went that basically, education is your moral
and social obligation, because they wanted their kids to be
literate enough to both read the Bible and read and
understand the laws of the land. Yeah, And in sixteen
forty seven the Colonies General Court passed the first law
requiring that towns provide schools. And then again Massachusetts, loving
(04:46):
this compulsory education, in eighteen fifty two they passed the
first compulsory education law. And it's not only a requirement
for education, but also a requirement that children attend public schools.
And before we say hey, way to go Massachusetts, I
will say that the motivations behind passing the law or
a little sketchy because it was targeted at immigrant families.
(05:10):
So they wanted to ensure that their kids learned the
American way so they could become good workers. Yeah, and
I mean we've talked about this in a couple other
other episodes, particularly the p t A when comes to
mind about we we just want to fix these kids.
We want them to fall in line with what we
think is the proper American way to be. Um So,
by nineteen eighteen, all states had passed school attendance legislation,
(05:32):
but it wasn't really until the nineteen thirties, uh, that
many were successful in enforcing those laws. So during the
nineteen twenties through the nineteen seventies, homeschooling it's still happening,
you know, here and there, but it's pretty underground, usually
in rural areas. But in the nineteen sixties and seventies
we have both the Christian right and the counterculture left saying, hey,
(05:58):
how about this home school and thing. Yeah, they had
very different reasons for wanting to home school their kids,
but at the root it was it was very similar. Basically,
things weren't being taught the way that they wanted them to.
Be taught or their children were being educated the way
that they wanted their children to learn. Yeah. In nineteen
sixty nine, for instance, and this is on the more
(06:18):
Christian right end of the spectrum, we have Raymond Moore,
who was a missionary and a former U. S Department
of Education employee who started looking into educational research and
figuring out how public schools were teaching or in this case,
in his mind, failing to teach kids in the US.
(06:41):
And um. He and his wife saw all this advice
from family development specialists and research, and the thesis they
came up with was that public schooling is horrible for
your kids. Yeah, the things that they say public schooling
will do to you, or just sitting in a classroom
all day, private or public like, They said that it
(07:02):
caused developmental problems, problems like hyperactivity, near sightedness, and dyslexia.
And these things were often the result of prematurely taxing
a child's nervous system and mine with continuous academic tasks.
So it's amazing that I'm even sitting here. I should
be totally stunted, like in the fetal position somewhere. Um. Yeah.
Dr more referred to public schools as godless monstrosities. That's
(07:28):
that's serious, pretty strong. He thought that formal schooling should
be delayed until at least eight or ten, so just
just let him play in the sandbox until then. Well,
and he advocates instead a Christianity based homeschooling. So keep
in mind, we've got the Christian right starting to say, hey,
you know what, maybe public schools are godless monstrosities. Um,
(07:50):
this could be a better way to go. So now
moving over to the other end of the spectrum, to
the more counterculture left side, we have John Hole who
was an author and educator who rose to prominence in
the nineteen seventies because he was advocating for decentralizing schooling
and allowing parents and teachers greater autonomy. And it's developed
(08:13):
into his theory of unschooling. Yeah, that basically means that
learning learning that doesn't look like school learning. It doesn't
necessarily need to take place at home, but it's not
your traditional sit at a desk all day kind of thing.
He thought that that constituted basically a lack of humanity
towards school children, and thought that teachers really stymied kids
(08:34):
natural curiosity, forcing them to learn which one might argue
could be a good thing to force someone to learn,
but he said that it completely would change kids personalities.
So in the seventies and eighties we have all these
theories of homeschooling that start to brew, but it isn't
really until the nineties that more significant numbers of parents
(08:56):
start taking their kids out of public schools and teaching
at home. And it's largely due to uh sort of
fear of the conditions of the public school system and
also religious motivations. Yeah, there are some people who definitely
are not big fans of the education system in general.
(09:17):
Mary Novello, for instance, who at the time in n
was an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute, considered the
link between actual education and schooling to be weak. And
she is one of many people who argued that this
whole school bureaucracy thing, it was more about the bureaucracy
and maintaining the system than it was about really educating kids.
(09:38):
And then we have, you know, the whole libertarian attitude
of like, get the government out of my family. And
so David Boaz, who was the executive vice president of
the libertarian Cato Institute, cited declining school quality, lack of
moral instruction, and forced volunteering as downsides of public forced education.
And there was also at the time mounting fear about
(09:59):
violent in public school, whether you were exposing your kids
unnecessarily to potentially harmful situations. And I know we've talked
a lot, like mentioned the Christian right and sort of
the sphere of public school a lot, and we're not
harping on it. I will say in my experience with homeschooling,
those two factors did play a large role in my
(10:20):
siblings and I being pulled out of public school and
being taught at home. Um, so you know, and I
will stay in that regard. You know, my parents did
have my our best interest in mind. Yeah, same with
my cousin's similar situation. Religious beliefs conflicted with the way
their kids are being taught at school. Yeah, And it
(10:40):
was this was also happening in the nineties early mid nineties,
and we were a minority in the town where I
grew up like that, didn't know many other homeschool kids.
I always kind of wanted to avoid the question where
do you go to school, because I'd have to say, uh,
and well, we have we have a room in the house.
I still live in the same house. We had a
(11:02):
room designated as the school room, which we still refer
to as the school room, but it was also the
place where you would go if you ever got in trouble.
So mom, if Mom ever said Kristen, can you meet
me in the school room, just like no, that's bad
associations school and getting in trouble. So moving forward. Uh,
(11:24):
In nineteen nine, they're about eight hundred and fifty thousand
families in the US who were homeschooling their kids, and
in two thousand three that number goes up to one
point one million. And now according to the National Center
for Education Statistics, they're probably about one point five million
(11:45):
kids being homeschooled. Yeah, humongous jump. Ginormous amount of people
relative to how it used to be, especially in the seventies,
putting their kids in homeschooling. Uh. This is we got
a lot of information from education we Institute of Education
Sciences and a study by Brian Ray in the National
Home Education Research Institute, from lots of statistics to cover
(12:09):
and he said. Ray said that between two thousand seven
and twenty, for instance, the number of students increased by
an estimated seven percent, and I will say that, yeah,
we have one point five millions. Some people estimate that
it's closer to five million kids. They're not entirely sure. Uh.
And that represents about three percent of the school age population.
(12:31):
And you might be thinking three percent, that's nothing. Well,
it's huge compared to what it used to be. And
the numbers only keep rising more every year. Yeah. In
two thousand seven, just to throw some more stats that
you confuse you. Uh, In two thousand seven, eight percent
of home schooled students received all of their education at home.
Did you did you? Were you all at home? Or
(12:52):
were you venturing out? Or we were never allowed to
leave the house. But Shane, the chainer in your foot
only stretched so far. We had one of those like
the invisible fences to get your dogs. Uh, No, we did.
We did leave the house, but we were taught exclusively
at home. Yeah, but I did have friends who had
private tutors come in, or they would go take a
(13:15):
specialty class like a fine arts class at a private
school from time to time. Well, eleven percent, Uh, we're
enrolled in school less than nine hours per week, and
five percent were enrolled nine to five hours per week,
So there's there's definitely a mix. Obviously, it's not cut
and dry with home schoolers. People choose to do it differently.
Oh yeah, there are many different ways that you can
home school a child. But first, why do people choose
(13:39):
to do it today? According to the US Department of Education,
there are obviously plenty of different motivations, but mostly are white,
religious conservative families who want to provide religious or moral instruction.
And again, not to harp on my own upbringing, a
(14:00):
lot of our curriculum was Christian based, and Judeo Christian
ethics were woven throughout history, science, literature, all that stuff. Yeah,
and that was according to the Department of Ed the
two thousand survey, that was thirty six percent, the moral
and religious instruction coming in at second of parents said
(14:23):
they were most concerned about their child's learning environment, so
maybe not happy with the school or the way things
are being taught, sevent sided dissatisfaction with the institutions their
kids were in only seven percent side of the desire
to provide a non traditional approach to education, hippies more
of the the John Holt side of the with the unschooling. Yeah, um,
(14:44):
and for a little demographic breakdown we mentioned white religious conservatives. Uh,
seventy seven percent of homeschool students are white, eighty nine
percent are living in two parent households, and a greater
percentage also lives in more rural areas. And most of
these families do have two or more children. Their parents
tend to be well educated, middle class. So, but that's
(15:08):
not the only group of people. It's definitely UM A
lot of the articles we read cited, you know, studies
showing that it is expanding. More people are getting interested
in taking their children out of traditional school settings for
whatever reason. Um USA Today in February of this year
had an article about the growing African American involvement in
home schooling and Joyce Burgess, who's the co founder of
(15:29):
National Black Home Educators, said that their network has grown
from about five hundred home schoolers a decade ago to
about twenty five hundred. And she said that her parents
in the network, their reasons are typically more practical than
than focusing on the religious aspect. Yeah, and that's something
that you are seeing more and more. The pool is
diversifying away from the white religious conservative So what about
(15:55):
student achievement? I mean, I did okay, you know me
to be successful at being a human. I got some
good walks in school. Uh and thank you human too,
all right. But you know, a question that has often
been asked about homeschooling is whether or not kids will
get as good of an education as they would in
(16:17):
a traditional public or private school. And it's kind of
up in the air. I mean, I think the stereotype
that I have in my head is that home school
children are super smart. I think that's an okay you
like to have. I mean, I feel like if you
get such individualized attention from your parents or your tutors
or whoever is teaching you outside of a school setting,
(16:39):
I feel like you're you're almost more set up to
succeed because there's more focus on teaching you whatever your
learning style is. But Christopher Lubynsky, professor of education policy
at the University of Illinois, told USA Today there's really
not good evidence that it's a better model for children,
and he basically says that high achievers might excel anywhere,
(17:00):
whether you're learning at home or whether you're learning in
a public school. And he says that some parents. One
of his concerns is that some parents just aren't qualified
to provide the education for their children. But here's the
thing about about the homeschool studies. I mean, he says
that there's not good evidence, And the reason for that
argument is that there have been studies published saying, yes,
(17:22):
homeschooling is fantastic for your children. They on average make
higher standardized test scores, they will go to college, they
will be successful. But a lot of those studies have
been sponsored by groups like the Homeschool Legal Defense Association,
which obviously you know, homeschool advocacy groups, that it would
be in their best interest to sort of self select
(17:44):
these high achieving groups to publish those test scores. And
I'm not saying that these groups are fudging the books
in any way, but there have been methodological problems that
they've run into because there just hasn't been a lot
of apples to apples comparisons between public and private schools
versus home school. Yeah. Well, one of the youth side
of the Home School Legal Defense Association, in two thousand nine,
(18:06):
they put out a study that showed home school students
typically score thirty four to thirty nine percentile points higher
than average students on standardized tests and Lawrence Redner in
study in Education Policy Analysis ARCHIVES said that homeschool students
test scores are exceptionally high, and of these students were
enrolled in one or more grades above their age level peers.
(18:29):
But again, you know these are coming from those results
are coming from these exclusively like homeschool advocacy groups. So
in two thousand eleven, some researchers at Mount Allison University
in Canada published a study called the impact of Schooling
on Academic Achievement Evidence from homeschooled and traditionally schooled students,
(18:50):
trying to figure out whether and like how homeschooling stacked
up against public schooling. And it was a very small
sample size. I believe there were thirty four or thirty
five homeschoolers that they looked at, and when all of
the numbers were compared, the homeschoolers did as well as
the public school kids. But then when they broke down
(19:13):
the way that the homeschool kids were taught, um, there
was a group that was more traditionally taught with a
structured curriculum, a structured plan every day, and then there
were kids who were unschooled who were very had a
very footloose and fancy free kind of education where math class,
say is going to the candy store and having to
(19:35):
pay for something and count out change um. And those
the unschooled kids did the worst compared to public school
kids and the structured homeschool kids. But the kids with
the structured homeschool did the best out of all the kids. Yeah,
structured home school, then public school, and then unstructured home
school students bringing up the rear. But I think it's
(19:57):
something to to bring up about that is maybe the
top two groups are being taught to the test. I
mean maybe in that structured environment at home school, the
parents are or whoever's teaching the kids are focused on
ensuring you do well on these standardized tests so that
maybe you go to college or you do whatever you know, uh,
(20:18):
same as in the traditional school setting where you're being
taught the test. Or it could also be benefits from
things like small class sized. I had a class of
one individualized instruction, and there's more freedom to really dig
into core subjects because of the small class size. But
(20:39):
there was also the researchers from Mount Allison also pointed
out that testing conditions for public school kids vastly different
from sitting at your breakfast table like I would do,
and take my CRCT tests every year, rather than being
in a room with all of your classmates and all
of those distractions postal going on. Yeah, well, speaking of distractions,
(21:05):
I'm going to use this as a bumpy transition into
the social aspect of home school, an awkward homeschool awkward transition, yes, exactly,
or an only child awkward transition. Let's just bring it
all together. Christ, there you go. Let's come full circle.
So how did your parents ensure that you had friends? Well?
I had extracurricular activities. Uh. Probably at this point in
(21:27):
the podcast, it wouldn't come as a surprise to hear
that I went to church a lot, had my youth
group Sunday school, and I also took ballet and was
on a soccer team. So yes, I left the home.
I interacted with children of the same age group. I
made friends a few good one or two. Well that's
(21:54):
I think. The social stuff is a huge sticking point
for a lot of opponents of home school. Uh. Samantha
li Beta, in a paper in Journal of Contemporary Legal
Issues from two thousand five, said basically that a lot
of educators are worried about the social thing, and they
think that it deprives children of the ability to develop
socialization skills, and arguing that school itself, the institution going
(22:18):
there every day, dealing with bullies shoving you in your locker,
play the significant role in socialization learning how to cooperate
developing those skills. And they say that when you're homeschooled,
your home, your school, your peers, your teachers, it's all
one and the same. And uh. Homeschool supporters of course,
would say, well, listen, socialization depends on interaction with adults
(22:39):
in addition to peers. And also the point about, you know,
getting pushed into your locker by bullies. Uh, maybe the
socialization in a day to day school setting could have
a negative impact of always having, you know, having to
negotiate all these difficult you know, relationships with your peers
as hormones are developing. And they like that, uh, and
(23:01):
that there are ways outside of the home for your
kids to receive plenty of socialization. Um. And I mean,
I will say that when I went to high school,
I didn't have trouble making friends, but there were certain
times when I did experience homeschool gaps because there. It
(23:23):
is a big difference between like having to walk in
every day into that environment rather than like waking up,
getting breakfast thing and out doing your thing. You know,
it's just like it presents more, um more obstacles, I
guess to kind of overcome, you've gotta ge used to
a whole different set of social issues. Yeah. And and
(23:44):
also realizing that school portrayed on television movies, And I'm serious,
this might sound crazy, but that portrayal is not the
same as it is in real life. And I would
have to get that through my brain sometimes. Yeah, people
in high school aren't at tually thirty the way they
are on TV at the time. That would be weird.
(24:05):
Um well, you know, bringing it all together, Larry Shires
of the University of Florida and his doctoral dissertation, Yes
it's stated, but bear with me, talks about school children
being videotaped at play. These were traditional school students and
home school students. They brought in trained counselors to observe them,
and these counselors could not tell the difference. They didn't
(24:26):
know who was home schooled and who was traditionally schooled. Yeah,
I mean, I think the socialization factor. In the same
way that the parent will determine whether, like the kind
of curriculum the child will have, what form of education
at home they will receive, they're also the gatekeepers of
the socialization factor. You know, kids need to get out,
(24:47):
you know, you need to if you are being homeschooled,
that kid probably needs to join a soccer team or
do something. But you know, I don't think that saying
homeschooling will there's no way that they'll get enough socialization.
I think is it's dramatic. Yeah, I mean I feel
like I knew plenty of people in regular school who
(25:07):
we're weirdos. I mean, adolescents is just awkward. I mean
a lot of it has to do with just your
family environment to whether you're homeschooled or traditionally schooled. Yeah,
I don't sound weird like I'm schooling, you know. I
think I think that's a good point. I think it
would be difficult if you were an only child to
be homeschooled. There was a period when I was the
(25:28):
only one at home being homeschooled, and that's when it
started to get lonely and I really didn't like it
as much because my older siblings were all out of
the house at that point, and then I got to
go to high school. I can picture you gazing out
the window wistfully from your school room in your house,
like a little Disney birds coming to land on your finger.
That totally happened, because I could see the kids walking
(25:50):
home from school and I'd be like, what's that? Like,
why can't I have a trapper keeper? So how did
you end up going to regular school? I think my
parents realized that it would be good for me to
go to high school just because I was the only
one at home and my mom had returned to work.
So even though I was really good with the self
(26:11):
directed aspect of it, um, I was a little glam
about it. So I got to go to school. Yeah, cool,
that's that. If I if I have children, would I
homeschool them? I don't think so, But that's just because
I would make a terrible teacher. I get why people
do it, religious secular, however, which way, Like, I get
(26:33):
why people would do it, but I myself would probably.
I can't do math. I can't. I can barely like,
oh god, if I do long division and get a remainder,
I don't know what to do with it. I learned
that in home school I could probably teach you. So
that is the story of homeschooling, from my life to yours.
(26:53):
I would now love to hear from listeners out there
who have been at home school, who homeschooling their children,
who are considering homeschooling. Send me your homeschooling stories, all
of them, because I have told so many stories of mine. Now,
mom Stuff at discovery dot com is our email address,
(27:14):
and of course you can always hit us up on Facebook,
and of course you can find us on Twitter as well,
follow us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you'd like
to learn more about homeschooling, you can read the article
how Homeschooling Works. It's at our website how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(27:36):
Does it how stuff works dot Com brought to you
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