Homeschooling: FAQ गृहे शिक्षणम् - आक्षेपाः

Motivation and intro

  • People with narrow backgrounds (never having seen gifted and normal homeschooled kids, themselves products of “factory model” education) find it hard to appreciate the benefits of homeschooling, while finding it easy to see supposed downsides. Hence this section. Here we try to answer some common objections from our perspective.
  • But, please see other objection lists below. Where possible we try to avoid repeating answers.:

Socialization

Objection: He has learn to fight and cooperate with other people (kids). He has to learn how to live in the larger society. With homeschooling, this will be stunted.

Answer:

  • Our kids will have plenty of opportunities to fight and cooperate with other kids - and even adults. They will be adequate (unsupervised) playtime.
  • “Forced association is not socialization.”
  • Company that a child gains at school is pretty random - and not necessarily healthy overall. Several of the little brats will be mean bullies, dullards and otherwise indigent. We know of children lost and dispirited due to bullying. With our techniques, we will aim to provide a healthy and dhArmika peer group - while allowing for small exposure to the mean, the bad and the ugly.

Examples of activities

  • India
    • The kids will go to daily RSS shAkhA-s, volunteer at various dhArmika initiatives and be quite well equipped to cooperate for dharma - and crack open enemy skulls.
      • Sub-objection: Aren’t RSS and the like a bit radical/ extreme? Answer: No! That’s your silly perception. It is extreme - ie extremely good. We want to be extremely good hindu-s. Even our fathers happily participated.
  • USA - CA
    • Plenty of park days with local home-schoolers.
    • Weekly HSS shAkhA-s.

Professional teachers and their cost.

Objection: Professional teachers are better than you. Tutoring is costly and hard to come by - you cannot afford it.

Answer:

  • Where science, math and languages are concerned - our family is quite self sufficient; given that we hold advanced degrees in the sciences, have engineering and research experience and are quite well read in Sanskrit, English, Kannada and Hindi. So, just one of us can hold the fort in those regards. So, external tutoring needs here are minimal.
    • Same with several outdoor activities - hiking, snowboarding, swimming …
  • With regard to the arts (music, dancing, vedic chanting), we are as capable of funding special classes as parents of school-goers. If you think you’re close enough to us, we can discuss and prove our financial solvency beyond doubt.
  • It is our objective (not arrogant) opinion that the average school teacher (dividing his attention among a class full of kids) is much less skilled, knowledgeable and experienced (in the real world) than us.
  • Special teachers and classes:

Discipline

Objection: The kid won’t listen to and learn from you. Discipline is required - school can give that better.

Answer:

  • There is a tradeoff between discipline and freedom to pursue one’s natural learning preferences. We prefer to not shove “learning” down the child’s throat - to the extant possible, while still focusing on imparting important and basic skills and knowledge (listed here).
  • Discipline is important -
    • those of us responsible for educating the child are confident in our ability to firmly and calmly enforce rules required of a brahmachArin - while being careful not to spark counter-productive rebellion. (Eg. to note: we have experience increasing our household saMskAra-s.)
    • Discipline will be inculcated indirectly via special activities and classes (veda memorization, RSS shAkha-s, volunteering, … ); and through sagely lore. (Personality shaping would have to be done in such an indirect way that the subject would not realize exactly how he is being shaped until it’s just a deep essential part of who he is.)

Peer learning

  • It is true that some skills and knowledge is imparted better in the company of other students. For example: vedic chanting and memorization, songs, dance, games.. We will ensure that such company is not lacking within those contexts.
  • Mastery over many other skills and branches of knowledge is a matter of (mostly) solitary effort - and our personal coaching more than suffices. This we know from our own learning experience - we did not benefit so much from peers in our studies of history, civics, chemistry or mathematics. That said, in the age of the internet (https://math.stackexchange.com, stackoverflow.com, reddit, …) and exams, learning will by no means happen in isolation.

Who does it? Idiots and paupers.

Objection: Home-schooling is for “special” kids with learning disabilities or poor kids.

Answer:

  • Every child is a special child - with special interests and abilities, so factory model is suboptimal in the first place.
  • It is true that some kids resort to open/ home schooling out of compulsion as a second choice. On the other hand -highly gifted children, as well as normal kids, as well as those with learning disabilities opt for home-schooling. See examples listed below.
  • Famous homeschoolers -
    • Promethea [AT]. US and world leaders - HS, Wiki.
  • See India examples page.
  • Canada: Most homeschooling families estimate that about 10 percent of homeschoolers unschool.
  • Australia- HSAU

USA

  • About 1.7 million school-aged children in the U.S. are home-schooled as of 2018.
  • California
    • San Francisco Bay Area Gifted Homeschoolers - site here, talk by leader here - 201804.
    • 15k homeschools were registered in CA during ~2018.

Degrees and college

Objection: What about degrees and college?

Answer:

  • Various boards allow private candidates to take up public exams for school-leaving certificates. This is a well established practice, even in India. See below for links.
  • We will aim to have kids be more than academically ready for college far earlier than regular school going kids. (School tends to be a big waste of time.) Social readiness for hostel-life may have to wait for some time - or it may happen sooner.
    • Many young homeschooled kids in CA (as of 2018) happily take college courses at local community colleges.

Strain on parents

“Homeschooling and unschooling are the easy choice. School is stressful. In unschooling, there is no homework, tests, PD days, lunches, inclement weather, extra-curricular activities, uniforms, overdue library books, field day permission slips, over-tired kids, science-fair projects, fundraising, classroom volunteering, and parent-teacher interviews. A typical day of unschooling is like a Saturday afternoon in July. Fun. Relaxing. Close relationships.”

Don’t experiment on your kids!

  • “Home-based education is not an experiment. It’s how people learned to function in the world for centuries. And there is no reason to think people today can’t do the same thing. School is the experiment, not the lack of it. And I think that experiment is in trouble.” Wendy Priesnitz, Author
  • “Everyone homeschools the first six years of their child’s life. Some of us want to keep on doing it.” Judy Arnall

Someone like you!

**Objection: **If you are a kid’s guru, he will become a “bad” person like you.

Answer:

  • Firstly, get lost.
  • In any case, the kid’s parent/ tutor is not the only influence on him - he’ll have plenty of role models to follow.

Outcomes and stats

  • A big paid bibliography is avaliable at NHERI site for you to buy. (We’re satisfied with anecdotes and public data, thank you.)
  • About prodigies: “there are no ‘secrets’ other than innate ability, the right environment & driven parents.”

(In)Effectiveness of conventional education

  • “Sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa presented data showing that, over their first two years of college, students typically improve their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by less than a fifth of a standard deviation.” {TW18}

2018 stats

  • There are about 2.3 million home-educated students in the United States (as of spring 2016). This is up from one estimate that there were about 2 million children (in grades K to 12) home educated during the spring of 2010 in the United States (Ray, 2011). It appears the homeschool population is continuing to grow (at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past few years). An estimated 3.4 million U.S. adults have been homeschooled for at least one year of their K-12 years, and they were homeschooled an average of 6 to 8 years. If one adds to this number the 2.3 million being homeschooled today, an estimated 5.7 million Americans have experienced being homeschooled.
  • The home-educated typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. (The public school average is the 50th percentile; scores range from 1 to 99.) A 2015 study found Black homeschool students to be scoring 23 to 42 percentile points above Black public school students (Ray, 2015).
  • The home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem.

What’s wrong with regular schooling?

Factory model

  • near zero care for child’s strengths, weaknesses, interests.
  • Same teaching techniques irrespective of age: “Conventional education takes the same approach to a six-year-old and an 18-year-old: assignments, grades, tests. "
  • Another fallacy is the ignoring of genetics and strong family traditions. Mango trees come from mango trees and banana trees come from banana trees. So, children need not be thought of as “blank slates” whose aptitude can only be determined by observation. 🙂
    • Example: My building contractor’s sons are building contractors. As was his father, grandfather, great-grandfather etc.. He started assisting his father when he was 11. They’re all quite happy and prosperous.

Passive learning, others’ design

“The very structure of school makes children passive recipients of education designed by others. They cannot charge ahead fueled by curiosity, pursuing interests wherever they lead… the top priority in school is completing assignments correctly and scoring well on tests. Despite what individual children want to learn, value is given to what can be evaluated.”

Age segregation

“They have little exposure to essential adult role models and minimal engagement in community life. "

Disembodied learning

“Movement is essential for learning. The emphasis in school, however, is almost entirely static, and almost entirely focused on left-brain analytical thinking.”

Less trial and error

“Coming up with the correct answer leaves little room for trial and error… Emphasis on the correct answer squeezes out unconventional thinking. "

Overemphasis on early reading

“In school, reading is used to instruct in every other subject, so the child who doesn’t read at grade level quickly falls behind.”

Engendering cynicism

“Absorption and play are on one side in opposition to work and learning on another. This sets the inherent joy and meaning in all these things adrift. The energy that formerly prompted a child to explore, ask questions, and eagerly leap ahead becomes a social liability.”

Poor evolutionary fit

  • “Structured education is actually very new to the human experience. Worse, it actually undermines the way children are primed to advance their abilities and mature into capable adults. … That’s because most of the time humanity has spent on Earth has been as nomadic hunter-gatherers, before the advent of agriculture. This time span comprises approximately 98% of human history. Although our culture and lifestyle have changed considerably, our minds and bodies have not. "
  • Among hunter-gatherers: “Their children play freely in multi-age groups without overt supervision or direction by adults. Such free play promotes self-regulation (ability to control behavior, resist impulse, and exert self-control) which is critical for maturity… Hunger-gatherer children must recognize thousands of species of plants and animals as well as how to best obtain, use, and store them. They must know how to make necessary items such as nets, baskets, darts, carrying devices, clothing, and shelter. They need to learn the lore of their people and pass along wisdom through story, ritual, and art. And perhaps most importantly, they need to be able to cooperate and share in ways that have allowed humanity to thrive. In such cultures, children learn on their own timetables in ways that best use their abilities.”