The following is not an attack on either home schoolers or those opposed
to home schooling, but rather an attempt to sum up some of the current
research on the subject.
Home Schooling is seen as problematic by most professional educators not
because there's anything innately wrong with the idea, but because
standards can differ so radically. When a child is home schooled by a
well-educated and devoted parent or parents, that child will almost
invariably receive an excellent education, an education which may well be
better than that provided by the public schools in many ways. Sometimes, if
the well-educated parent is home schooling for religious reasons (ie. an
intense dislike for what the parents see as a secular humanist orientation
in the public school class room), that education will be oddly slanted,
but it will still generally be quite good when it comes to basic skills and
information.
When such children go on to university they occasionally do have trouble
fitting into the structured environment. If they've come from a
conservative religious environment they also have occasional problems dealing
with the multiple viewpoints presented to them in the typical classroom,
but then so do many students who went to public schools. On the other hand,
since home schooled children are used to individual attention, they tend
to be much more willing than the average student to seek out their teachers
and advisors for one-on-one conferences when they're having trouble.
When all is said and done, there is no creditable evidence that children
who have been competently homeschooled will have serious problems
transitioning into college.
This having been said, it should also be noted that a significant number
of home schooling parents (I've seen estimates of between 30 and 70
percent), do not really have the educational background necessary to home
school children effectively. There have been numerous documented cases
of children being home schooled by parents who themselves are largely
illiterate and innumerate. These people tend to be of two sorts: 1)
religious conservatives and 2) migrant workers. In most cases such
parents are well meaning but simply not competent and in many states, any
sort of real supervision is essentially lacking. The education such
children receive is generally poor in most areas and totally lacking in
some areas. In some cases it's so intermittent as to be the equivalent of
only a couple of years of schooling spread out over a decade. Children
who come out of this kind of home schooling environment, and there are
tens of thousands of them nowadays, are often much less well schooled
than their public school peers. They are also much less likely to attend
college than their peers.
Any discussion of the legitimacy of home schooling must be held in the
light of this information. Competent, well-educated home schooling parents
must recognize that they are not necessarily typical of the home
schooling movement as a whole. Those who have heard home schooling horror
stories have to realize that there's an up side to the situation as well.
Mike Levy
Michael M. Levy levym@uwstout.edu
Department of English levymm@uwec.edu
University of Wisconsin-Stout off. ph: 715-834-6533
Menomonie, WI 54751 hm. ph: 715-834-6533
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