Confessions of a Homeschooler

Ok, so like the next kid at college, I went around a circle of new students and told everyone what my name is, where I am from and what my favorite toothpaste is etc...eventually, the question of past education came around.

To make a long story short, everyone answered with a resounding "public school" with a few "private school" responses thrown into the mix. However, when it got to me I had to answer truthfully: "Private school...for a few years - I was homeschooled all the rest of my life!" Now, as much as home schooling has become slightly more mainstream and acceptable recently, I still got my fair share of odd looks and slight embarrassment from my peers.

Personally I was not offended in the slightest - I can't tell you how many times I had been through this ordeal...college orientation was no surprise. But since I have your attention, I really want to blow the lid off of some commonly held myths regarding home schooling in America and shed some light on the both the pros and cons of the system.

Myth #1 - Homeschoolers have no social life...

My family has always homeschooled at least part of our elementary and upper-level education - my cousins, siblings and the like. My mother was my personal teacher, as she had taught my older brother and sister and my younger sister after me. To be honest, that woman had to absorb a lot of criticism from her own friends regarding her "educational doctrines."

Of course, the biggest and most-often-brought-up question regards my social life, and that of my siblings etc..."How can they possibly learn to flourish in a social environment if they never get out?" Says the common skeptic. Well, from my own experience I can say that "children who never get out" is certainly not the norm in modern home schooling.

As I grew up in a homeschooled environment I met every Wednesday with a large group of other local homeschoolers and had specialty classes like Medieval Art History and elementary language courses like Spanish. But even more so, it gave all of us a once-a-week opportunity to really reach out to each other. We put together plays and had performances on the weekends...we went camping once and participated in an annual state-wide homeschool talent and drama competition similar to high school speech meet.

Also, we were all allowed to join local school council recreational teams and play on "real school" sports teams. My older sister played soccer for the West Geauga Schools children's soccer team for years. Plenty of local school council activities, library rights and community events were still open game for us lowly homeschoolers. In short, we never "crawled out of our caves" to go do something, we functioned just as normally socially as any other kid, with maybe just a smaller tight-knit group.

Myth #2 - Homeschoolers are all radical conservative Christians...

Nope - my family is Christian and we did take part in a loosely-affiliated Christian Homeschooler's Co-op (our Wednesday meetings). However, I will say quite frankly that my family never was nor ever will be "radical conservatives." I know that the overarching stereotype of home schooling, the mother vested in her heavy denim jumper herding sheltered children clad in baggy clothing and wearing big "WWJD?" bracelets, is a fallback for those who like to take a stab at our humble educational beginnings, but once again, this is a very small sect of home schooling that has become the generalized example for the whole.

I will admit, some of the earliest roots of the home schooling movement were planted by overbearing mothers and fathers who wanted to hide their children from the "heinous evils of modern society" and thus created their own little living-room pow-wows to train their children to shun contemporary education...however, present-day home schooling represents every spread of the spectrum - from traditional denim jumper moms to online cyber-schools and posh high-end home curricula.

Myth #3 - Homeschoolers get a shoddy education...

This is a slightly more delicate matter because one of the biggest cons of the system is definitely a lack of uniformity in teaching styles, quality and curricula. But frankly, the whole point of home schooling is to get away from a standardized education. Again, this can be viewed negatively, but the general rule is as follows: if you are serious about educating your children well from within your own home, you will. If you don't care, your kids will suffer academically.

So while there is not a thoroughly definite answer to this myth, I can attest to my own schooling as an example. I was homeschooled from Pre-K to 7^th grade and every year I took standardized aptitude tests and engaged in studies varying from science, civic studies, history, mathematics, Bible courses and English.

I went to a private school from 8^th through 12^th grade and felt completely prepared for the advanced high school studies therein. I did well on my SATs and ACTs and got into the college I wanted to. I am now a History and Psychology double-major and am one of the more socially outgoing and extroverted students on campus. I can vouch for my mother's teaching because she deeply cared about my academic well-being and wanted to oversee it herself. She was never overbearing and always willing to help me in my studies without shoving anything down my throat.

My older sister is a Natural Biologist with a specialty in Children's Nature Education and graduated with a degree in biology from Geneva College. My brother is now a full-time internal medicine doctor specializing in Hematology and Oncology at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

In short, the three of us have stepped into the "real-world" with a great deal of educational and person experience and were fully prepared for the rigors of upper-level academia. Both of my older siblings were homeschooled as I was, and are greatly successful in their education and occupation.

Personally, I have cherished my home schooling childhood and everything that I learned and experience therein. Yes, I did homeschool once a week with some extremely hardcore conservatives - literal denim jumpers and all - but I came away with a unique perspective on education itself and have used it to my advantage all the way through high school into present-day collegiate studies.