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What Could Schools Learn from Homeschools?
Why does homeschooling work? Specifically, what could traditional schools — public and private — learn from homeschoolers?
This is a neglected debate. Many traditional educators, of course, feel threatened by homeschooling or reject my premise that it works; certainly they aren’t looking to learn from uncredentialed parents. And once homeschoolers find what works for them, they tend not to look back in the opposite direction.
Even education reformers favorable to homeschooling — who should be interested in this topic — never seem to ask this question (if they have, they’ve sure been quiet about it). They would probably give you some broad answers why homeschooling works: homeschooling parents tend to be well-educated, stable, and involved; they can give plenty of one-on-one attention; they’ve freedom to customize freely, without having to overcome bureaucratic inertia; they aren’t as subject to behavioral distractions; etc.
This is all true, and I wouldn’t suggest we can simply import a few things and replicate homeschooling’s success in traditional school systems. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing for traditional schools to learn, and I believe we could find some unexpected things that could apply to public debates about how to teach children, including some that could shake common assumptions.
In education, as in any other field, there’s a need to innovate and experiment, a need to challenge assumptions and try out what works. Public schools are bound by bureaucracy and politics, and private schools often have to contend with tradition and cultural assumptions. Homeschoolers have — and use — a unique flexibility: it’s the one segment of education where innovation and experimentation flourish. People who want to make a difference in schooling should research how homeschoolers use it. In searching out things that work for themselves, it’s likely that many homeschoolers simply find things that work, full stop.
Some of these ideas might be broadly applicable, but there are probably more that would benefit only certain populations or be practical only in some situations. There are old things the public schools have forgotten or rejected, and new, 21st century things that they’ve lacked the flexibility or imagination to put to innovative use. There’s undoubtedly some low-hanging fruit, but also, perhaps, some things outside the box that are less obvious.
We have some homeschool parents here, and some teachers, and some people who are simply informed and smart. What are some things you’ve seen in homeschooling, big or small, that might also work in traditional education?
Published in Education
Ugh, I feel pretty depressed for having repeatedly and accurately advanced a point I didn’t intend to make. I need a do-over.
I am not suggesting schools can’t change; I’m suggesting they can’t change by learning by example. The surest way to change is to destroy the teachers unions as they are known today, thereby putting parents back in charge so that all these suggestions can be tried. There are certainly some places that are more open than others, such as Arizona. But I think that is the exception.
I say treat public schools (in California, charter schools are public too, and not as bad as traditional public schools) like micro zeitgeists. This is a major component of homeschooling. Each school can teach according to the conscience of it’s leaders.
I have five math students, in 11th, 9th, 7th, 4th, and 2nd.
Each day the student has an assignment. If the student has questions, he comes to see me. We use Saxon math, starting in 3rd or 4th grade, which I have found to be outstanding. The primary grades we use MCP math.
Saxon loves to drill and support memorization of facts. They repeat concepts in problem sets so practical use of knowledge is constantly reinforced.
Their math methods are old school, which means children learn them easily.
I correct math notebooks at least twice a week. If a student needs correction or guidance, I will go over mistakes or problems with the student.
We won’t keep going if we’re not getting something, because I’m the teacher and I decide what is correct to be doing with the student. I can let the student play Monopoly all day and call it math class if we make the third grader the banker. He’ll learn more doling out our money correctly than he will adding up bananas or butterflies in his math book.
I am fortunate to have mostly bright children who make learning pleasant, but also consistency is important.
Finally, the 2nd grader shouldn’t be doing more than halfhour of math, four days a week. The eleventh grader spends at least 1.5 hrs five days a week on math.
As I said, my experience, and maybe I’ve only met the exceptions. It seems to depend a lot on the child. I’m quite certain that each of my children would have reacted in their own individual way to home schooling–better for some than others.
It may also depend on the parents.
One reason we’re thinking of homeschooling is that we’re both weird people from weird families, and my and my siblings’ experience in an elite public school system wasn’t a good one. Oh, we got by OK, and we got the benefit of graduating from a high school with a big name, but… well… the principal himself apologized to us at graduation for the school not serving us better…
So, we’re weird. We have weird talents, weird interests. Assuming our kids take after us, they’ll be weird, too. I would like our kids to be less socially-awkward than I was, but I’m also not holding my breath. We’d definitely want to do a lot of club activities if we homeschool.
How did you know?!
Ricochet should offer a home school club. A place for kids to post stuff and chat about their ideas. A membership tab available to the kids and member parents. But parents can’t post and comment there.
I keep thinking about this issue today.
Homeschool and institutional school are really really different. I don’t have to please anyone but myself and my husband, and I guess the State of New York in the person of the six-figure salary deputy superintendent who receives my quarterly reports on my students.
My cousin teaches high school in Florida. I can’t imagine most of the things that make homeschool work for me and my family working well for some of the crazy things she deals with.
My goal is to make sure the kids don’t spend too long doing their work each day in order that we all can thrive by pursuing other interests than purely academic, but still getting our necessary college-prep curriculum done.
She has to worry about getting beat up, or students who can barely read.
I just discovered this thread last night. And as it happens, my 15 yo wanted to talk about school and what would make it better. She was homeschooled through 6th grade and enrolled in a small, rigorous, classical Christian school in 7th, where she is doing fabulously well. I think we prepared her well at home, but she is wired to be diligent and thoughtful so it would have been hard to mess her up. For her, the ideal school would be a homeschool/ school hybrid. She really misses controlling her time and and being able to explore and practice things she cares about. She appreciates her teachers, classmates and curriculum, but not the inevitable time wasted when teaching a group.
I think the lesson to be taken from homeschooling is that more families would find more suitable learning environments with more choices. The government monopoly on education that crowds out so many options is the whole of the problem to be improved on. Remove the monopoly part, and the innovation and customization that happens in home schools and in private schools and a few public classrooms would explode.
The only universal best practices in education are the same universal best practices in life. “Do unto others…” “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” “Love your neighbor…” et cetera et cetera et cetera
The actual dance steps are up to you.
Leigh – thank you for this thread.
I have two children, seven and nine. I don’t homeschool, but the distinction increasingly seems part of a spectrum to me: We did Kumon until about two years ago and Khan Academy ever since. Pound for pound each has simply been more productive than school.
I understand educating my own kids.
It’s been about six months, but I’ve posted a few times on Ricochet about education related topics: here and here.
Spoiler alert: They’re not very good. I simply didn’t take the time to edit them properly. My apologies. However, I do care about the subject very much. My heart is in it – big time.
I’m growing tired of the debates about education. I’d rather prove there are better ways by building something new. And so I am.
Before the end of February I’m launching virtual service for K-8 kids to learn math and programming using Khan Academy.
The premise: Learn math better than in school, meaning your child will:
It will be priced (very purposefully) at $15/wk. No commitment.
Of course the odds are that this will fail. Please wish me luck. I could certainly use some fans.
I’m going to write a separate post on this now. Going up in 3, 2, … well, give me a couple of hours…
You’re reading higher expectations into my post than I actually have, I think. I’m not asking what they will learn. I’m asking what they could.
I’m not expecting any kind of massive change in the public schools. Believe me, I’m not naive about the state of public education.
Put it this way: what could one school — public, private, charter, anything with real freedom of action and the nerve to innovate — what could they do? There are people trying to think outside the box, and I think they ought to take a look at those who’ve been living outside the box for years.
Thanks for the details. I’m familiar with Saxon, not MCP (at least not by the initials). In my scattered public school experience (though I know there are public schools that use Saxon) that kind of very systematic consistent review is not the default.
Basically, you’ve taught your students how to be self-taught, with guidance when needed. And you check their work and expect them to correct as necessary, so they’re held accountable (and not just with a bad grade they don’t necessarily care about). Would that be fair to say?
This fits with the general pattern I’ve seen in my limited experience in homeschools. And there are lessons there that could apply outside the homeschool environment.
Teachers are always explaining to students what to do and how to do it. Here’s the basic “best practice” model: introduce the concept, give them examples, work an example together, gradually move them into independence until they can do it themselves.
(cont.)
This isn’t wrong. It has its place sometimes. But… maybe, at least sometimes the kids would benefit from needing to rely on their own brains a little more initially. Not to stumble through a blind open-ended project, but to read and think through the directions themselves. Maybe that’s part of what builds reading comprehension and those 21st century problem-solving skills everyone promises to teach but no one quite seems to know how.
Yes, and I might add that of course there are weaknesses, and not every homeschool is a success — and maybe some could learn something from the classroom, too.
Just to quibble a very little: this isn’t a Common Core issue, specifically. States had grade-level standards before the CC. It’s partly an NCLB issue. But there is absolutely nothing that means you can’t go above and beyond the standards. The testing tends to take the focus off the highest achievers (since everyone’s concerned about getting the struggling students to proficient above all). But it doesn’t force that neglect and should not be an excuse for it.
Definitely. But I think I’m looking more outside the box than people realize. (Blame Rick Hess at AEI.) I’m thinking if traditional schools could throw out the box — what are some things they could learn? It’s precisely through looking what people who don’t have to please anyone but themselves do that I think we can get some idea of the harm some of the regulations and assumptions cause.
I can’t imagine the way you teach math working for her students either — now. She doesn’t have the flexibility. She has children who are too far along to radically change. But what if a charter school were to get some of those kids at age 5 — maybe there are some things they could learn that might put them on a better path.
We can’t throw out something altogether by saying it won’t work everywhere, because nothing will work everywhere.
Leigh, I’m working on the post I alluded to above, but I wanted to say this is exactly what the Khan Academy platform has allowed my to work on with my children, and I think it is critical.
After some time on the platform I simply backed off trying to get them through something when they got stuck. Instead I would have them switch tasks – perhaps laterally from, say, multiplication to fractions, and usually this lateral move would also be to something a little bit lower on the difficulty scale. Or we would simply go back over skills they had already mastered.
The bottom line is I keep them moving. Over time, if their input in time is roughly (even VERY roughly) consistent (a couple hours a week?) their overall performance easily outpaced their school experience. It’s hasn’t even been close.
The best part? Gradually, naturally developing their muscles to work things out themselves. This seems to pay large dividends.
Of course, this is possible because everything they need to know to complete the exercises is on the platform. If they can’t do one yet they either weren’t paying close attention – totally natural and a frequent occurrence, or they weren’t quite ready yet for the skill. In that case a pivot is exactly what’s called for.
Five comments in a row…
By the way, in considering strengths of homeschooling, don’t assume a distraction-free environment. This is home. With siblings. Sometimes they quarrel. Sometimes the two-year-old throws a screaming fit as bad as anything I’ve had to deal with in the classroom for a long time. Sometimes the telephone rings, or the laundry machine goes off. You can smell lunch cooking…
This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while too. I think it might be a very, very big thing.
In a school setting, there’s much less freedom to simply set a topic aside and move to another thing. (Not necessarily no freedom.) But you could go with the basic premise.
But before any of this can work you have to get early literacy right.
Understood, and yes you are right.
I do come back to my suggestion of the mini zeitgeist. Open the public school up to teach the values of the parents it serves (or should be serving). Some 40% – 47% (I can’t remember which) of homeschooling parents do it because they want to pass on their values to their kids. Many would come back to public school if they knew their kids didn’t have their values undermined. Plus, many of those parents who have kids but not the luxury or inclination to homeschool would be much happier knowing the right thing were being taught.
Let the Unicorn Hippy Rainbow school exist; let the school of Our Glorious Lord exist. The market will sort it all out.
Leigh – I went back over your comments and the one that contained the above quote was the most liked one.
This seems to be exactly what I am experiencing with my kids. The interesting part is that I’m using a universally available, crowd tested, free platform to do it.
And, I’m not a homeschooler. I work and my kids go to a regular old public school.
This is why I think my experience may be more broadly applicable than many of the comments to your post would suggest.
Okay, back to working on my post. I’m not very happy with it, but I’m going to have to hit publish here at some point.
To some extent that’s what vouchers accomplish.
I’m running out of time today and probably won’t get to it tomorrow — but I’ll be looking for it when I’m back around.
Thanks Leigh.
No worries. Also, I’m coming at this from a different angle than you are, and so I should switch to my own post.
However, I’ve really enjoyed reading through yours and much of what you have said resonates with me.
I’m now at a point where I’m less interested in changing the current educational system and instead think it better to simply create something that beats it (pragmatically, only bit-by-bit.)
A little tongue-in-cheek here, but it’s such a bloated beast and so sclerotic that, really, how hard should it be to just beat it with something better? If anything was ever a sitting duck, it’s the current educational system. It vigorously RESISTS innovation, which is exploding all around it. This can’t go on forever.
Put another way, what is the more difficult task: Changing the current system, or creating something that’s simply better? They’re both unbelievably hard, but with all the advances in tech and personal computing that’s going on we’re going to cross the point where just building the next thing is going to be the more fruitful approach.
Speaking of fruit, everyone can now throw rotten pieces of it at my ideas in the comments. :)
Actually, that’s basically the premise of the book I just read! That basically you have to start from scratch. But it’s hard because besides coming up with ideas you have to 1) finance it, and 2) move students from the old system. And in trying to do that in any significant scale you run into some of the same barriers and politics. But there are ways, and maybe you’ve found one.
Interesting. What book?
Also, my approach is not to create a choice between school and what I’m providing. They can keep right on going to school while they learn math at twice the rate through me.
The school thing will take care of itself.
Look, even if they are behind or struggling, any child will know some math. Meet them where they are, or even a little further back so they can get on a roll before they face any real struggle. First, let them build legitimate confidence.
Then just run the process from there. The phrase I love is “time variable, mastery definite.” Keep them learning and don’t care about exactly when they learn any particular thing. They need to pivot? Pivot. They need to repeat? Repeat. Eventually they will move through a body of work – a skill domain like a grade level.
This way is more productive, and eventually they will catch up and pass what their school is doing.
There is no master decision to make or coordinate with a school system. Just transcend it.
To some extent. But not nearly enough of an extent.
Education Unbound, by Rick Hess at AEI. Sorry, can’t link from this device. It’s not what I would call a fun read, but lots of good stuff.
Well, better late then never. Here’s the post I promised yesterday about the new math and programming service I’ll be launching: Taking a Bite at the Apple.