Don’t know if you still have an interest in homeschooling as an ideology – nor if you’re aware of the growing movement of “2nd generation” homeschool “apostates” – but the only really interesting writing about homeschooling is coming from those individuals.The reaction of homeschooling parents to having their arguments challenged by the very generation they raised is fascinating as well. Much more than conversations happening in 2008.

https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/ is a good jumping off point, if interested.

I love this comment, as I love all comments that are so obviously hypocritical. Wow, I’ve neither stated nor implied that I am, myself, homeschooled, so everything you just said about reading comprehension really only applies to youself. 😀

hoary: “The autism spectrum child could have his school day broken up into shorter periods with rest in between, so his stress levels didn’t build up. The child with dylexia had a very intensive program at home– hours and hours of reading and being read to, with books the child found particularly interesting.”

My son has ADHD and is severely dyslexic and we do many of these things, as well. Being able to skip the meds and focus individually on the needs of each kiddo is pretty amazing. 🙂

Greg: “A student shows up after having been home schooled and they have that whole socially awkward and/or not up to snuff in key areas thing going…”

And students who have always been publicly schooled don’t?

“…and oh, look, one of the courses finished over that time was biology.”

This is a silly scenario. Do you have any evidence that this actually happens? I ask because parents already have the right to ask for alternative assignments, and because many public schools don’t teach evolution. My high school certainly didn’t, and I passed Honors Biology with flying colors.

I’m somebody, therefore I too haven’t claimed “public schools *cause* problems like autism spectrum…”.

“That was *your* misreading.”

Going for a search, I find “autism” in:

Posted by: hoary puccoon | May 15, 2012 10:25 AM
Posted by: Rose M. Welch | May 15, 2012 8:51 PM

So I find nowhere your claim of *my* misreading supported.

I was sent to school very young. When I was 8 my reading age was 18 years.

I also had tonsilitis and spent many many weeks at home making noises like an angry Walrus on heat. REALLY bad tonsils.

And I watched Open University (as well as kids educational programs).

However, I’m not normal.

And, in needing to cater for “most children” (as with TV catering to “most viewers” or corporations producing goods for “most consumers”), school could have gone a LOT faster to get me through it, but would have had an unmanageable process for dealing with the 30 kids in a class of different abilities and interests.

My parents, too, didn’t mind me learning geometry, biology, geology and all manner of “irreligious” study.

Most parents aren’t like that either. Most USians that want homeschooling want it to avoid having their kids learn irreligious/liberal/hippy stuff.

That is, however, what a lot of teachers think of home schoolers, because that is what they encounter. What many middle school and high school teachers encounter is one of the following: 1) A student shows up after having been home schooled and they have that whole socially awkward and/or not up to snuff in key areas thing going, or 2) a student in regular school suddenly vanishes (perhaps in 10th grade or so) and returns after a year or a semester “home-schooled” and oh, look, one of the courses finished over that time was biology.

Here’s the thing: It isn’t any more valid to make the claim that all home schooling is bad because the above happens (and it really does happen) than it is valid to make the claim that traditional schooling totally sucks because (fill in the blank with your favorite public school horror story). Both happen, and neither is the whole story.

The thing that annoys me about much of the home schooling community is this: Lots of people in traditional public education are willing to critique it and readily admit to its shortcoming. I work with traditional public school education issues all the time in several different capacities and this is often the conversation. Among homeschoolers, it is much more common to see great effort expended to boost homeschooling, identify real critiques and deflate them without really addressing them, and there is often an added sensitivity whereby critiques that are not even being made a are address.

“I don’t expect someone who got homeschooled to have the same level of competence at basic English comprehension as someone who had to do what professionals have considered the required learning.”

Yes, my comprehension of that, poor as you may find it, Greg, is that traditional public education is vastly superior to homeschooling. As my post above indicates, however, that is not necessarily the case.