Here is a very rough draft of the paper I submitted for comp class today…

The Three Main Prejudices
Against Homeschoolers


Paul Suarez
Mrs. Baxter
ENGL 1010
October 7, 2008

It is understandable that parents and the educational system might be concerned about children who take their education at home rather than from their local public school. Homeschooling seems so “against” the system. Why would parents want to educate their children at home? Why would a child want to be homeschooled? Homeschoolers are often misunderstood, which sometimes results in people forming a prejudice against them.
Here are a few points that some prejudiced people make against the homeschool movement. Just like any other prejudice, these are ignorant assumptions:

1. Homeschooled students aren’t intelligent and can’t possibly learn as much from their parents as they could from a licensed teacher. Parents aren’t qualified to teach.

2. Homeschoolers can’t socialize; they’re stuck at home all day. Homeschooled students don’t have the benefits of a public school as far as sports and other extracurricular activities go. Homeschooled students shouldn’t be sheltered and should be allowed to interact with anyone of their own choosing; therefore, they can learn from their own mistakes.

3. Homeschoolers seem to be fanatics, separatists, i.e., “religious nuts”.
I frequently hear these kinds of statements from public schooled students and/or their parents. They spit out these prejudiced assumptions without even thinking them through first. The following paragraphs address the points above based on my personal experiences with other homeschoolers for over 13 years, along with unbiased statistics to support some of my conclusions.

Homeschoolers can’t learn as much from a parent as they could from a teacher.

I hear this myth a lot. This argument lacks good, solid evidence. Actually, it goes the other way around; homeschooled students are frequently outperforming public schooled students in national spelling bees, science fairs, geography bees, and other competitions. Some biased individuals mistakenly assume homeschoolers are less educated than public schooled students, based on the amount of schooling the teacher versus the parent had. But the educational outcome of the student actually has very little to do with the amount of education the parent had. Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation, stated that homeschooled students, from parents who have had little to no college education, are often times several grades ahead of their peers in the public schools!


"On average, home school students in grades 1–4 perform one grade level higher than their public and private school counterparts. The achievement gap begins to widen in grade 5; by 8th grade the average home school student performs four grade levels above the national average" (3) .


Sure, the parents have to be capable of teaching their child reading, writing, grammar, and basic math. But once a student possesses these basic tools, he can do a lot of his schooling independently. Apparently, this method works very well. According to Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, homeschoolers average 22.6 points on the ACT exam, which compares favorably to the national average, of 20.9! Homeschoolers seem to actually enjoy learning. Dr. Brian Ray additionally states that over 74% of homeschool graduates continue their education through college, compared to a mere 46% of the general United States publicly educated population (2).

Socialization

Even though statistics have sufficiently proved that homeschoolers are getting a great education, one of the main prejudices is that most homeschoolers don’t know how to socialize with their peers. This argument has surfaced time and again. But this is an unfair assumption (as are all prejudices) because homeschooling hasn’t been around long enough to disprove this myth. But from what I have witnessed, homeschoolers not only don’t have a problem socializing, but they may be even more socially integrated. Of course, there is no way to prove this point, but we do have access to a few polls from Dr. Brian Ray’s research which demonstrates how homeschoolers are more involved with their communities, both politically and socially, than public schooled students. Seventy-six percent of homeschool graduates from ages 18-24 voted in national and state elections in the past five years versus the 29% of general United States graduates. Approximately 71% of homeschooled students/graduates participate in ongoing community services, but only 37% of the general United States can say the same (3).
Homeschoolers aren’t tied down to any one method of educating. There is a lot of liberty and flexibility in the customization of a child’s education. For instance, some children are auditory learners; others are primarily visual. Still others learn best by touching or feeling (kinesthetic). Public-schoolers spend most of their school time in classes with other people of their own age. But that’s not how the “real world” works. When we enter the work force, we will be interacting with people of all ages. Sure, public-schoolers can socialize with other students their own age, but from what I have observed, those same students have a hard time interacting with people of different ages. Homeschoolers just seem to do well socializing with people of all ages.
There is so much flexibility with homeschooling; these students school online with friends, siblings, and with large groups called co-ops. Homeschoolers set their own hours and pursue their own interests. They have plenty of time to socialize and plenty of like-minded homeschoolers to socialize with.
There are 2.5+ million homeschoolers in this country, and the community is growing at 15% annually according to reporter, Shannon Bream from FOX News. (1) Therefore, socializing is not a problem for homeschoolers.
Remember high school? The teachers would go on intermittently for six hours a day. How much of everything learned was retained? How much learning can really take place in a classroom with one teacher instructing thirty students? On the other hand, homeschooled students have one-on-one schooling with one to two teachers (primarily parents). These parents are going to make sure the student pays attention, and they are there to help the student along the way. My point is, homeschoolers can spend half of their time doing school work while maintaining the same GPA as their public-schooled counterparts (as Dr. Brian Ray has demonstrated above), and so they have more time to socialize.
Another common tag-on assumption is that since homeschoolers are at home all day, they don’t have the benefits that a public school offers, such as sports teams, chess clubs, bands, and other extracurricular activities. This may have been true when homeschooling was first legalized in all 50 states back in 1982, but now the homeschool community is so large that co-ops have sprung up in virtually every community and in every city. A co-op is a homeschool support group that has teachers, which are often parents of the students, that make up the learning group. Co-ops do, in fact, have sports teams, bands, clubs, and classes of all kinds. Homeschooled students have access to the same advantages – only better because they can customize to their own individual needs.

Homeschoolers are religious nuts.

Homeschoolers, for the most part, are religious - but they’re not nuts. Ninety-one percent of the homeschool community claims to be Christian, according to George Barna of The Barna Group (11-12). Most homeschoolers are firm believers in parents’ rights, too. I think parents should have a say over when sex-education is taught to their children. A lot of schools have mandatory attendance to “gay-days” and “diversity training.” Subject matter of this nature that students learn from the public school system is introduced without a parent even knowing about it in many cases. My point is, yes, most homeschoolers are in fact religious and they do believe in parents’ rights. And from an extreme point of view, it may appear that parents are “sheltering” their children. But honestly, parents aren’t keeping their children locked up at home 24/7. No one can learn like that and education is the whole point, after all. Homeschoolers often have more real life experiences than public-schooled students. They actually get out a lot more than people may think. With such a flexible schedule, they can fit in more field trips, go camping with the family, or just take the day off. For instance, in my family, we tend to travel frequently, which fits into our personal learning goals. I’ve been to 42 states, to England twice and Ireland once. As a matter of fact, this weekend, our family is headed to Gettysburg to study Civil War history. From there, we’ll head to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, further fulfilling my desire to visit all 50 states one day. Field trips might consist of places such as zoos, national parks and monuments, and other historic sites.
A lot of people are prejudiced against homeschoolers. They have a distorted picture painted that all homeschoolers are a bunch of lifeless nerds. And I’ll admit, I’ve known a few that are really odd but for the most part, homeschoolers are normal. Just look at the data; I think the reports speak for themselves.

In my opinion, homeschoolers aren’t socially-retarded; they get a fine education, they have the same advantages as public schoolers, and they’re certainly not nuts.



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