You’re “shocked”, really, that homeschooling isn’t always the best education. besides problems cause by religious dogma, there are also class issues that come into play — I’m the oldest of two, seven years apart, and my mother stayed home throughout my childhood. That isn’t affordable for every family. And though I don’t think higher education is a requirement to homeschool well, the fact that my parents had a Masters and a Bachelors certainly helped.

I posted only in case anyone was considering the secular homeschooling path and had questions, not because I have any intention to endorse the Quiverful practices.

Eh… Seriously? I mean, okay… Seems like the quality of a homeschool education would depend upon the knowledge and teaching abilities of the homeschooling parent(s). Without national standards, then, you’d have people who turn out to be fantastically successful, but overall, you’d see people having terrible difficulty with getting into college.

A good friend of mine had a really unstable homeschooling family life. She did it all on her on and taught all of her four younger brothers for years. She had to take a couple of years of courses at a community college before she could get into a 4-year accredited university because her homeschooling education was so bad.

And, then, of course, another homeschooling friend of mine (in a Quiverfull family) had a brilliant and highly educated mother with a master’s degree who gave her a damned good education. She ended up getting the National Merit Scholarship to attend college.

So, I would say… It would have to vary quite a lot.

Kristin

– the homeschooling mom doesn’t have time to do justice to her children’s learning, because she’s busy trying to keep house for a multitude, and/or she’s always got infants and toddlers taking up her attention;

– the curricula used are slanted toward a conservative Christian viewpoint, and don’t adequately cover certain subjects, especially science;

– the family is isolated in their own religious community, and doesn’t seek out learning opportunities that might bring the children in contact with “outsiders”

Those are just a few things I can think of, as someone who hasn’t/wasn’t homeschooled. People are talking about their own experiences with conservative Christian homeschooling. The only homeschoolers I know well do it for completely secular reasons, and their children do very well academically.

Also, could you read on the sidebar that says “ATTENTION ANONYMOUS”, and please make up a name for yourself if you plan to continue posting? Thanks.

I think that 2 or 3 people are not really a representative sample and those posting here may have an agenda.

I took Economics, Psychology, and Composition at night school, lab science courses at a community college, and had Japanese from a tutor. Everything else I learned from a homeschool co-operative or independent study.

I don’t mean to suggest that most homeschool families look like this, or that most Quiverful families would have the resources for something like this– I just have to stick up for homeschooling in the abstract.

I have a question: how did you and other QF mothers feel about Christian schools? I went to the Christian school my church had established for all of high school. To put it succinctly, it was a nightmare. My best friend at the time was a girl who was being homeschooled, and having heard your story, I bet her mother was QF (she was the eldest daugter of … six?) and I don’t know if her parents didn’t approve of the Christian school (although they went to our church, and sang with our choir, which is how I knew her) or simply couldn’t afford the tuition.
As to the education we received, it was good where religious bias could not interfere (Math, Grammar, such things) excellent in places which were useful to the church (we had a wonderful choir, everyone could sing, harmonize, and the majority of us played musical instruments in the school band, which played during every church service) and terrible in everything else (History, Biology, all the sciences in general). Our church was large enough (several thousands) to have a large (for a Christian school) student body, although people are astonished when I tell them I graduated with a class of 10.
Anyway. As to the effects of the school — four school and five years later, I have emerged from the wreckage with a fairly useful associate’s degree. I had to take the GED to get into the last school, since my high school was not accredited, so I could have saved my father thousands of dollars (and myself years of therapy) and just skipped the whole high school experience, but hindsight is always 20/20. =P

Awesome! I almost went to U of C myself. I’m glad homeschooling worked for you, remember my comment did say that *I’d* never seen it work, I’ve probably seen about a dozen people homeschooled through high school and it is always worse than the alternative, of course there is always a possibility of it working but your right about it requiring resources and special circumstances to work well, resources which are hard to come by in fundamentalist families where you are “adult” by 14, (especially as one of the first few children), and special opportunities some of which are probably considered “worldly” by most homeschooling families.

For full disclosure I was homeschooled through eighth grade and loved it, however I think it is important that parents keep their options open, and actually SEE what their kids are and what they are doing to RECOGNIZE when homeschooling has stopped working (at whatever point that occurs) and then search for alternatives. When parents decide that it would mean hell for children to go to school… that just leads to ignoring very real problems in socialization and education.

Can you tell me where you got your curriculum for secular homeschooling? And what was your parent’s background? Sorry if I’m being nosy, but I’m really curious how it worked for you.

I just wanted to pipe in with a bit of commentary on the thread’s very first comment, that it is “untenable” to homeschool through highschool. I like to think I’m a coutner-example, homeschooled all my life and currently an undergrad at the University of Chicago. It took a lot of resources and special circumstances to get me here, so I’m not saying there’s nothing to your point, but… just wanted to offer a counter-example and answer any questions people might have about secular homeschooling.

I think homeschooling young children, and sending the older ones to Community College to supplement their basic homeschooling, isn’t a bad setup in general IF:
1)there was any sort of quality control on the books (a sort of “USDA organic” certificate, but instead it would be “National Science Association Certified” or something), so that your children wouldn’t HAVE to learn from sub-par creationist textbooks.
2)the children had contact with “the outside world”, either by playing team sports, or joining clubs or something. socialization is very important, and kids who only have a very limited group of people they interact with won’t learn how to interact well with strangers/newcomers/people who are completely different than them

The socialization point is BTW one of the reasons homeschooling is illegal in Germany. It’s considered a form of child abuse to not let your kid become socialized into your culture and/or deny it the same teaching standard as all other kids get.