Were you homeschooled?

[Carlotta]

I'm not asking about your kids, but about adults here who were schooled at home. What was it like, and how are things going now?

 

[novaphile]

Not by a strict definition (i.e. did not attend schools).

But... My parents made sure that I had basic reading, writing and arithmetic under my belt before I attended school.

(NB. Really basic. i.e. no particularly complex words, but understood the alphabet and was making the first attempts at writing. Similarly really basic info about numbers.)

 

[catsmate]

No.

 

[Trebuchet]

I was definitely NOT homeschooled -- 12 years public school, four of state college.
However, I lived in a home that made sure I did the best I possibly could in school. I had educational toys, was encouraged to read, and got tutors a couple of times when I struggled with math. Best of both worlds, I think.

 

[Brainster]

It was extremely uncommon when I was growing up; I don't think I know anybody in my age group who didn't go to either a public or private school.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Mum was a teacher and I could read and write before I started school, but no, I wasn't "homeschooled".

 

[gypsyjackson]

Mum was a teacher and I could read and write before I started school, but no, I wasn't "homeschooled".

I had the same. Such an advantage - I still read at about three times the pace of most people, which means it was easier for me to finish lots of books and thus learn how to write well.

 

[arthwollipot]

State education, from kindergarten to Year 12. Turned out all right, I think.

 

[catsmate]

Mum was a teacher and I could read and write before I started school, but no, I wasn't "homeschooled".

Neither of my parents were teachers but I could read and write before primary started. My eldest niece likewise (I don't know about the others).

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I've met one person in my life that I known to have been homeschooled for non-religious reasons and they were a perfectly sociable person that seemed to be quite talented student.

All the rest I've met were usually homeschooled for less good reasons, mostly to seclude them away from the secular world. Not surprising that the quality of education coming from religious whack-a-doos was generally quite poor.

 

[ahhell]

I've known quite a few homeschooled folks, mostly for religious reasons, most I've know were at least as well educated as the typical public school kids I've known.

I had a friend in grades school who's parents homeschooled him from around the 3rd to 10th grade. Funny thing is, his dad was a public school teacher.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I've known quite a few homeschooled folks, mostly for religious reasons, most I've know were at least as well educated as the typical public school kids I've known.

I had a friend in grades school who's parents homeschooled him from around the 3rd to 10th grade. Funny thing is, his dad was a public school teacher.

That seems like damning with faint praise to me. A student getting one on one attention, assuming they don't have any complicating factors, should be outperforming any public school where large group instruction is the norm. It's a huge manpower demand to homeschool children vs sending them to public schools, you'd hope there was some benefit to justify it.

 

[Orphia Nay]

I've met one person in my life that I known to have been homeschooled for non-religious reasons and they were a perfectly sociable person that seemed to be quite talented student.

All the rest I've met were usually homeschooled for less good reasons, mostly to seclude them away from the secular world. Not surprising that the quality of education coming from religious whack-a-doos was generally quite poor.

Yes, it always seemed (up until Covid) that people who were homeschooled were being homeschooled for religious reasons.

 

[Spektator]

I was not home-schooled despite the constant pleas my parents received from my teachers.

 

[marting]

I wasn't homeschooled but the math and science I learned from the 7th grade on had nothing to do with school classroom learning. These subjects just fascinated me and I'd check out books of interest from the local public library or Boston's museum of science library (which had a lending period of 4 weeks unlike the 2 weeks the local library had).

In my school classrooms I just daydreamed or did homework for the non science/math classes except when they had tests.

Had the internet existed back then I would have been in hog heaven.

 

[HansMustermann]

For the most part. I mean, I still had to endure school, if nothing else, as a self-storage facility where my parents could dump me for half a day. Although I could read and write since 3, and could do integrals and differentials about two years ahead of the school schedule (respectively), and I was already into Berkely University physics manuals in the 10'th grade, etc.

So yeah, I already knew everything from home, but technically I still had to go to school anyway

Sucked to be me

 

[Worm]

Strictly speaking, no I was not homeschooled. But both my dad and stepmother were teachers, and specifically my dad was my teacher (mathematics) so inevitably some stuff blurred across the divide between home and school. In particular I was an avid reader of my dad's books on manthematics and popular science.

Not sure it made any significant difference other that made my mathematics studies a bit easier becasue I was familiar with a lot of the concepts through my own independent study rather than in the classroom, and it gave me a healthy respect for the teaching profession

 

[marting]

So yeah, I already knew everything from home, but technically I still had to go to school anyway

Sucked to be me

Yeah. In my case it had one big downside. I developed non-existent study habits so, in college, when I opened my last trimester, 2nd year finals I had almost no idea what to do. Everything was quantum mechanics including the math course. I had never found it interesting and hadn't previously studied it at all. While the finals were all take home and open book, they were limited to 3 hours. No way to learn QM and related stuff in the 3 hours. Flunked eveything except a grad level EE course I went to the class and dealy loved. Got an A in it. Had to repeat the semester.

DIY approach to learning had it's downside.

 

[ahhell]

That seems like damning with faint praise to me. A student getting one on one attention, assuming they don't have any complicating factors, should be outperforming any public school where large group instruction is the norm. It's a huge manpower demand to homeschool children vs sending them to public schools, you'd hope there was some benefit to justify it.

If you went to my public school, you'd realize that's just praise.

 

[bruto]

Not home schooled here - not really an option in the 1950's, but I was taught to read at home, after the complete and utter failure of the Detroit public school in their first grade attempt at whole word reading. At the Christmas break they were disappointed that I could not read yet. I knew the alphabet but flummoxed by the pictographic approach to words. By the end of the Christmas break they were using the front page of the New York Times as a primer.

At other times I got some sort of random home schooling in other things. My older sister, though a pain in many ways, had a knack for teaching, and in second grade (now in Massachusetts, thankfully) she decided I ought to get ahead on arithmetic (which had been utterly absent in first grade, because the entire day was consumed by mindless marching from room to room, stupid movies about the atomic bomb threat, and mostly the futile attempt to teach anyone to read). So she taught me stuff like carrying and borrowing, and fractions, and for a brief time I was ahead of the curve in arithmetic. Unfortunately, I did not take to math in general, but it was a nice start.

 

[HansMustermann]

Strictly speaking, no I was not homeschooled. But both my dad and stepmother were teachers, and specifically my dad was my teacher (mathematics) so inevitably some stuff blurred across the divide between home and school. In particular I was an avid reader of my dad's books on manthematics and popular science.

Strictly speaking originally, I had asked stuff like the usual "why is the sky blue" (or later, "why is Z80 assembly faster than ZX-81 or ZX-Spectrum BASIC), they just gave me a bunch of manuals (I actually got the 8080 and ZX-80 pin diagrams and signal timings at age 11) and told me to <bleep> off and figured that out from there.

It got worse from there once I got to a Physics Olympiad in secondary school, at which point my mom wanted to brag about those results too to her idiot friends. Then I got BURIED ALIVE in extra homework to make her girlfriends proud of her at the next olympiad. (Seriously, if we think it's illegal for a 13 year old to take a job to pay for his dad's booze addiction, why is it ok for the same 13yo to spend even more time to fuel a 'tiger mom's' addiction to praise from other women? Honest question.)

So... "home schooled?" In the sense that any of them contributed ANYTHING to that? Quoth Bender: "ha-ha-ha... Oh wait, you were serious? Let me laugh even harder: HA-HA HA-HA HA-HA!" In the sense that I've learned everything outside school? Yeah.

If you thought that was the lowest point, HA-HA, you're so wrong. By the time I was 14 and into high school, my dad got into it too. We'd spend an EXTRA 2h a day of him pretending that he taught me physics, when, at best, I was teaching him. On top of the extra physics and maths homework my mom buried me alive in.

He STILL has no <bleep>ing clue about physics. But he wanted to brag about my achievements too. We're talking the kind of berk who currently thinks that every single anti-intellectual CT, all the way that they don't know any <bleep> about the stars and QM so relativity and QM and even basic biology must be BS, has got to be true. But he wasted my childhood to pretend that he has any right to be proud of my achievements.

And you know what hurts the most? The late realization that they had neither the expertise, nor the interest in any of that. It was just to keep me from getting in their way. I could have written, "X => Y, therefore Y => X, QED", and none of them would have been any wiser. Yeah, my younger brother figured that out. I didn't. I'm dumber.

 

[marting]

Interesting the way different people learn beyond formal education. And it's been much observed that, over the last few decades, the availability of zero cost knowledge resources has grown exponentially.

I'm interested in how this can supplement formal education, including home schooling, in a more organized and encouraged manner that brings out the best in all students.

 

[HansMustermann]

Ah, screw that. In my time, we didn't have Internet. My parents actually bought university manuals and beat the crap out of me if I didn't go learn them instead of getting in their way.

(Yada, yada... 2 miles through the snow uphill both ways, and we liked it that way... actually, no, who am I even kidding? I still don't like one bit the whole idea.)