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Homeschool Anyone??

To the members here that currently HS, are all of you happy with the choice?

We started home school this year and its been great. The one thing that I didnt expect is that the drama around homework/dinnertime went completely away. Dinner time was always frantic with trying to get the kids fed, and make sure that they had their homework done. Now they work on their homework during the day, and dinner is calm and peaceful.

My wife decided to home school for a number of reasons.
1. Kids dont get sick as often and when they do, they dont fall behind.
2. They are ahead of their grade level, and in public schools there wasnt the ability to tailor the content to their level.
3. The middle school in Norcross has a lot of apartments feeding into it, lots of kids with single parents, or parents in jail, sometime both parents. My middle son was afraid to go to the bathroom for fear of getting in a fight.
4. Sexual pressures on the bus, oral is considered commonplace and "cool." Didnt want my daughter do have to deal with that.
5. Schedule - we can follow our own schedule and dont have to live by the school holidays, and schedule.

Downsides.
1. Less involvement in sports and physical activity - they used to walk to school, and had some form of physical activity, now we need to figure out how to work in physical activity.
2. More of a workload for my wife.

What I did/do differiently
1. Involve them in outside activities,and make it part of the routine.
2. Help more with household stuff, grocery shopping, cooking, dishes.

I would recommend it highly if you have the means to stay home, or work from home.
 
My mom used to do a summer homeschool with me and my sister through elementary school, I swear I learned more in less time and had twice as much fun doing it. At some point she probably would have maxed out her expertise, but I'm not sure those teaching highschool have all that much expertise as is. I enjoyed public school, but it was a joke and I think you can probably get your kids socialized better in other activities like sports, boyscouts, and being around mature adults. My views have changed on it after doing legislative research into teachers pay and schools budgets, it absolutely a scam.

The same amount of teaching takes half as long with home school. There is a lot of wasted time/effort in public schools, only about half the time they are learning. Home school takes about 4 hours a day of actual work. Public schools your kid may be gone for up to 8 hours depending on the time it takes for the bus ride.

The other thing is that public schools get "credit" for your kid, even if you homeschool, which why the state/county doesnt care, its costs them less and they still get to collect revenues, and pay salaries as if your kid was in school.

If this ever changes, watch out.
 
3. The middle school in Norcross has a lot of apartments feeding into it, lots of kids with single parents, or parents in jail, sometime both parents. My middle son was afraid to go to the bathroom for fear of getting in a fight.
4. Sexual pressures on the bus, oral is considered commonplace and "cool." Didnt want my daughter do have to deal with that.



These two points make me so sick to my stomach. I have a 3.5 y/o daughter, and my wife is a certified teacher who doesnt have a job right now. I am seriously considering everyones opinions on the HS subject.
 
My 1st child is a few weeks away from being here and my wife and I have already decided that we are homeschooling her. My wife has extensive university education and I'm working on mine currently. We feel that the benefits of home education greatly outweighs public schools. Plus we both work from home 95% of the time and both of our work schedules are very malleable.
 
Wow. I'm going to open a school. Most of you folks seem like one parent works to feed the family, the other to feed the government. I don't understand why there is not a RIGHT to option out of school taxes (which is 90%) if you home school or pay for private education. The system seems broken compared to 35 years ago when I grew up in "IT."
 
You reap what you sow. This is my response to when people ask me about home schooling.

I was home schooled starting in 6th grade, my sister was in 4th. My mother had always wanted to be a teacher, but wasn't able to go to college to become a certified teacher. She was a regular substitute teacher the whole time we were in school so she knew how to be a teacher. Our schooling consisted of regular class times and we used the same books as the local schools. For grades 9-12 we used a correspondence courses, I used American School and my sister used ICS or "The Sally Struthers School" for some of the older ones. We both grew to be normal, capable and successful adults.

But you get out what you put into it. I've seen many other parents that have home schooled because they are unhappy with the schools their children attend. They more or less threw books at their children and were hardly ever involved in their schooling. A lot of the children that home schooled in this type environment turned out, I'll say less capable. Many now in their late 20's still live at home and haven't been able to hold any real jobs. If parents can really be involved in home schooling then it can be a very good thing. But if parents start because they think it's easier for everyone or that they don't like the way the school treats their child then it can be disastrous.
 
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Offroadtek is right. If you don't have the capabilities to educate (which is an entirely perceptual notion), then it may be better left in the hands of someone who is paid by the state. That was, after all, the whole concept of shared schooling. If you don't have 6-8 hour to DEDICATE to your kids and teach them the skills they need for the appropriate age level, then you should be thankful that there is a system of support. And, let's face it, most of us do not have the ability to dedicate the time and have the appropriate resources to educate our kids, especially when very young, that allow them to grow intellectually and physically at a rate that sets them up to be competitive with their piers, whom, ultimately, will be their bosses or employees respectively.
 
All I'll say is I know one kid who was home schooled... hasn't been able to hold any jobs more than a few months and spends a thousand dollars plus a month on weed and recently was arrested for domestic violence after he got in a fight with his girlfriend over weed.
 
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