Homeschooling has its problems

Like many teenagers navigating the clanging lockers, crowded hallways, and uncomfortable seats of a typical school, I wondered what the point was. I spent seven hours of my day trapped inside depressing ivory-painted brick walls with teachers running down their retirement clock by assigning busywork. I grew weary of what a total time sink the experience was. A couple of the teachers were passionate role models, but everything about the experience seemed to stunt a young man’s growth more than mature it. The school won awards for its relative safety and rigor, but that was a low bar. The time spent on class management and trying to elevate the lowest common denominator made everything creep along at a numbing pace. The unspoken rule to graduate everyone demanded it.

The grim extent of this observation came when I got sick and missed school for a full week. I asked the teachers to tell me what I missed and was gruffly advised to get the assignments from my classmates. Thanks. I assumed I would be spending several long nights getting up to speed with the material, but easily got caught up over the weekend. One class had test prep for a couple days, another made a vocabulary game, and the literature class spent its time as an open hour to work on a five-page essay. Far from being hopelessly behind, in eight hours I accomplished an entire week’s worth of work. My grades didn’t suffer a bit. Anyone who understands elementary math can see the problem and if they can’t, no amount of additional school will help them.

In modern times, the response to the inefficiencies of teaching to the lowest common denominator and unruly classmates hasn’t been an aggressive overhaul to allow far more rigorous academics and separating students based on skill, but doubling down on the same failed policies. Gifted student programs are being erased, algebra options are being removed from middle schools, problem students are sent back to class, topics are less information dense, and even outstanding teachers are hamstrung by the overwhelming force of the educational bureaucracy. And this doesn’t scratch the surface of the misuse of technology on an already brain-rotted generation.

When my son was almost of age to enter kindergarten, I had strong reservations about sending him to the same grinder. The private school we looked at was 30 minutes away in the opposite direction of my work and would burn a massive hole in my wallet. I wondered if it was worth it. Public schools were out of the question. Then, serendipity struck when Covid happened, and I was stuck with the choice of putting my son on a screen for seven hours a day or homeschool. The choice became a no-brainer.

I estimated that 45 minutes of reading, writing, and math drills would put him at grade level. It ended up jumping him two grades within six months. I don’t think this is because of exceptional cognitive skills, as I know other parents with similar stories. At that point my family was sink-or-swim with homeschooling. I could never in good conscience spend several thousand dollars to have half my child’s day wasted in classroom management when I could do it myself. With this came socializing with fellow homeschool travelers. While homeschoolers twenty years ago were very isolated, it’s grown to six percent of children now. Not an earth-shattering number, but expansive enough where families can pool resources together and build social cliques. Homeschooling had matured, and infrastructure was in place.

Contrary to many complaints about a lack of socialization, homeschool families band together. We are part of two co-ops with over a hundred families, some with more than six kids, that has become our social bedrock. Talking to them has given me a broader understanding of the movement, warts and all. While I have total confidence I made the right choice, like any social group, it has its share of problems. These aren’t relegated to just homeschoolers, but it seems they get cranked up to eleven due to its relatively new and unregulated nature.

Mom Beefs

Most married guys are aware of their wives’ frenemies. They’re kind of friends but also in an existential winner-takes-all competition that allows neither to relax. A thousand little status games are being played, and the score is being kept. Levels of favors are assessed, they will analyze every speck of dust in the other’s house, and the competition of whose kid is flourishing the most is always prevalent. Is Rachel’s son doing Algebra II while Heather’s daughter is in pre-algebra? Is little Jimmy doing great at sports while Tommy is picked last? Rest assured that’ll find a way into the conversation. The guys will be swigging a beer hanging out on the patio while this cold war brews inside. If you missed it, don’t worry, you’ll hear the play-by-play later.

In planning, a mental tally sheet is made of who is hosting what, and how many times as well as the caliber of dishes presented. Something as simple as a rotating system is out of the question, and instead there are a swath of passive-aggressive texts asking who wants to host next as they all try to avoid the need to clean and sanitize the house at the level of a royal household.

Even in homeschooling, kids will be kids with all the trouble that entails. Sometimes it explodes into accusations of bullying, leaving dad to assume he has to get involved. Often, he ends up just making things worse as the narrative he was told had nothing to do with reality and he’s stuck eating a heaping dish of crow. The smart dads only have to learn this lesson once before bowing out of the drama forever and just assuming both moms are insane. The kids can work it out as long as they don’t come home bloodied.

Because there is no underlying authority like a principal, designated teacher, or other to moderate these disputes, they can spiral out of control. Because there is no set curriculum. the space is ripe for showmanship and getting ahead of everyone else. Because there are no formal school events, the ad-hoc ones have a more anarchic nature to interactions. The lack of a clear set of rules everyone follows tend to exacerbate conflict in an emotionally precarious realm.

Checked-Out Dads

I admit a large pull for homeschooling was my ability to set the curriculum for my kids. While homeschooling packages are far better than secular school counterparts, they are still in the post-war consensus framing. World War II was still “the good war” for freedom, To Kill a Mockingbird is still holy writ, and the blessings of democracy are assumed. My oldest son has almost reached the age where I can teach these subjects with far more nuance and I’m relishing the opportunity to converse with him. My excitement, however, is not shared by the other dads.

One common feature I’ve seen in all the dads is they are present for their kids but leave too much of the planning and work of education to their wives. While this makes sense for many households, especially the ones where dad is working 50+ hours, what makes little sense is their total indifference to teaching materials. Any time I ask what books their kids use, what math methods they teach, or the literature their kids read, they tell me they have no idea and I should talk to the wife. It’s infuriating.

The dads aren’t bums. I see them going swimming with their kids, playing catch, teaching them how to use tools, and overall being present in their lives. Yet they are totally ignorant of how the core subjects are being taught. They will enforce discipline if the kids are giving mom a hard time but are otherwise hands-off. I don’t think any of this is malicious. They don’t see school as “women’s work” but simply have other priorities with the kids when they’re home. The problem is that fathers are much more likely to be able to tell some hard truths that the kids won’t get in a textbook and give an opinion that’s outside the bounds of “respectable” thought.

Wild Variance in Outcomes

I’m a homeschool maximalist and believe in no regulation for homeschoolers. Luckily, I live in a state where such a policy exists. That being said, I also believe some parents should not homeschool. Contrary to internet discourse, it’s not because they aren’t educated enough either. Anyone with a reasonable high-school education can teach their child the basics and get help for the rest.

What’s lacking in many is will and discipline. As the number of kids grows, the rigor of routine needs to grow as well, and failure to do so will spell doom for learning. I know a family of thirteen kids whose house runs like clockwork, with every child helping the younger ones down the line. I also know a family of twelve whose oldest son could not write a proper sentence in high school. You have the striver parents who homeschool to cram even more sports, music, and other activities in, and those who just let the children run feral and play in the fields.

Even for those with a lackluster education, they do okay. They go into trades and live a decent life after their happy but thoroughly undisciplined childhood. This is hardly ideal, and some of these kids would have been better off in a different line of work. There is no real baseline, which is a godsend for the kids who can exceed the bare minimum with little fuss and get on with their lives, but it leaves some kids behind in getting even a rudimentary education.

This can be seen most in the arts and sports, where you have one cohort that sings Latin Hymns, plays two instruments, and eschews sports while the other side has kids who play organized sports year-round, coached by a dad who is more passionate to win than the professionals. It becomes two worlds that don’t overlap. There’s little balance between the extremes because of the natural separation of cultures due to different mindsets.

There are also parents whose kids walk all over them. Every tantrum is met with pleas for better behavior, every lack of discipline blamed on ADHD or some other malady. Their homes are bedlam, and if the kids can’t get stability at home, they should be somewhere else most of the time.

Distance

While there are a lot more homeschoolers than the more legally nebulous times of years past, and acceptance of homeschooling has increased dramatically, it’s still hard to get the kids together. Homeschooling families are overrepresented in the homesteading community for obvious reasons, so many are spread about across the vast countryside. There is far less density of homeschoolers, and the closest homeschool family we know of is over a mile away. While this doesn’t seem that bad, unfriendly traffic makes it hard to tell the boys to just take their bikes over and play. They need a ride. The more kids, the worse the logistics, and unfortunately a lot of our kid’s friends live 20 minutes away, largely because the co-op we go to is in that area.

While kids riding bikes around the neighborhood isn’t as prevalent because of moms freaking out over stranger danger and kids being inside glued to their phones, there is still the random field hockey game in the middle of the street, but interaction is harder because the kids know each other from the public school. It puts homeschool kids at a disadvantage.

The Homeschooling Movement is Due to Systemic Failure

Educating children is a paradox of sorts, as the parents are the primary educators, but they need the support of wider society to do it well. As educational institutions collapse, the increase in popularity is homeschooling isn’t from an ideological commitment, but more often an escape from a system that is either corrosive to their value system or incapable of properly educating their children.

The Supreme Court has spoken in absolute terms as to parental rights regarding homeschooling but allow states to handle the details. Some states, like New York or California, have stringent requirements that try to corral homeschoolers into a standard public-school education as much as they can. Others, like Michigan and Texas, don’t even require filing a homeschooling intent.

Overall, educational outcomes for homeschoolers range from equivalent to public schools to far superior. Because there is little leverage in talking about lack of education when the public schools are failing left and right, and the graduation mill of modern K-12 education is such that practically no one fails, they focus on more nebulous reasons like avoiding abuse. They often use gruesome case studies of neglect that had nothing to do with homeschooling, not to mention ignore the horrifying number of sexual abuse cases in schools.

As I said before, I don’t believe in homeschool regulation, even if I concede some parents are a poor fit. Calls for more homeschooling oversight are all done in bad faith and designed to make homeschool onerous and legally fraught enough to scare people away and keep them in the standard system. They are a tool to allow busybodies to harass parents into compliance. You’ll never see a more rabid group of activists than homeschooling parents when the legislature threatens their ability to teach at home. They are a small cohort, but regularly flood the capital and unceasingly call their local representative to fight even the most mundane of regulation. And they’re correct to do so.

I could see the argument for minimal standards if public schools were universally safe, well-staffed, had appropriate rigor, and were willing to fail those who couldn’t muster the harder material. Yet in our current environment we know that’s not possible. Useless admins are continuously handcuffing teachers on the ground, and day-to-day operations grow more strained. Most teachers I know either quit or retired early, and the system is getting worse. This collapse that has percolated through both the richest and the poorest schools, has done more to make homeschooling acceptable than any other factor.

Maybe a single percent of parents would homeschool if the public schools were excellent. It’s a lot of taxing work and most parents would be happy offloading it. The growth of homeschooling is not because of a new, radical philosophy, but the disintegration of public trust in education. It’s part of the transition from high-trust to low-trust, from civic-mindedness to tribalism. A confident, cohesive society has no problem with every kid in a geographic range going to the same school, learning from the same textbooks, and digesting the same value system. The attempt to stem homeschooling and force everyone back into the failing box will not make people more trusting, but increase resentment among both youth and parents.

So yes, there are issues. Yes, a standard education in a trusted setting in a set region would be ideal, but that’s not our world. For those educational bureaucrats who lament homeschooling, I say, “physician, heal thyself!”

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