Apparently homeschooling in Australia is on the rise and a big chunk of that is down to bullying in schools. I recently came across an article arguing that despite some recent suicides due to school bullying homeschooling should only be a stopgap in these circumstances and not a long term solution. Naturally I was curious as to what those arguments were, because bullying would always have been a reason for me to homeschool and was even a deciding factor in the end for one of my daughters, while not the only factor.
Image courtesy of @crosheille
The reporting itself was actually fairly unbiased, despite the leading headline. It briefly covered 3 suicides, with photos of those children and their families. It gave some statistics on the most popular reasons given for homeschooling and then it gave some quotes from someone qualified about why homeschooling for bullying should only be temporary. The first time I read the article I just skimmed it and didn't realise until I read it out again for my daughter, the one who experienced exclusion, that I realised these quotes came from someone with a background as a teacher and school psychologist.
I'll just give a bit of background from my youngest daughter's experience of bullying in school. I've never really talked about it more than briefly because I don't like to seem overly critical of the school system and teachers and I don't like to talk badly of people.
We had moved house and needed to change to a new school. I chose the nearby Christian school due to it apparently having good outcomes and being a desirable school for the area with a waiting list. My girls started for the last term of the year and my youngest's class and teacher were all good. The next year she started in the new grade and her teacher had favourites and she was not one. The teacher basically singled her out for humiliation and made her a target for exclusion from the rest of the class. It wasn't until after I'd pulled them out of the school that I suddenly remembered that our old neighbour, who did some of her teacher training at the school, saying that it was a cliquey school where generations went and outsiders who got in were often made examples of as being less intelligent or under educated. Ironic, really, as it was my eldest's grades that got them bumped up the list to get in early.
I suppose things didn't really reach the point of all out bullying for my daughter, possibly because I pulled my girls out before it could escalate, but what sticks in my mind the most is that she had started to form some connections, but that teacher's treatment of her quickly reversed that and at least sanctioned, if not encouraged, the exclusion by the other children. This doesn't really exude confidence that the school would have dealt with bullying effectively and something that crops up often with stories of bullying is the failure or inability of the schools to do much about it.
So back to the qualified Dr Moore and his reasons why "homeschooling is at best a short-term solution to bullying that should only be considered in the most extreme situations." My instincts here say that this kind of situation should be addressed before getting to the point of extreme, because if it's reached that point then it might be too late to address it even with homeschooling, as the parents of the children highlighted in the article found out.
So let's look at his actual reasons as to why he doesn't think that homeschooling is a good long term strategy:
“From a professional perspective home schooling doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of educational outcomes because you are taking kids out of the space of experts,”
There is so much to unpick here. The fact that there is more than one way for a child to learn would probably be lost on him, so I won't even go into unschooling, play based learning, Charlotte Mason, Waldorf and other methods I'll just point out that many parents choosing to homeschool actually do it through a distance learning curriculum which is put together by qualified teachers and will have qualified teachers to help out and mark the work. Therefore they are very much keeping the education in the realm of what he would consider as "experts". There is also so much educational material available online now that even when parents choose to educate their child themselves they have all the help they could ever want at their fingertips. Even schools will use things like Khan Academy to support their students' learning and this is free for anyone to access. The delicious irony here is that Khan Academy evolved from Sal Khan helping his cousins out with their mathematics when the school system had failed them.
Dr Moore said it was important to recognise that schools teach more than just literacy and numeracy. Schools also provide opportunities for social learning.
All the people in the world around us provide us with opportunities for social learning. Schools actually restrict it to others their age and a few teachers. When I homeschooled my girls I was initially in the same mindset having come from the school system. When required to write in the forms what social interactions and learning opportunities my girls got I could only think of their extra curricular activities like dance and gymnastics. The home education officer was the one to point out that going to the shops and library also gave them social interactions and even seeing extended family was counted under social interaction. Later we would also go with other families on homeschool trips and they made some firm friends, but also often met different people each time. All different ages would interact with one another and it was organic interaction rather than contrived.
“By withdrawing students from the school system due to bullying, we’re actually depriving those students of the opportunity for learning how to deal with difficult social situations.”
This gives me the vibes of those who argue that bullying just helps you to learn how to deal with difficult people. While it's true that we are guaranteed to encounter difficult people throughout our lives, as children guidance on this from the adults around us is far more productive than leaving us alone with some bullies, surely?
“The merits of professional teachers can’t be underestimated.”
And what when that "professional teacher" is part of the problem, as in my daughter's case? I would also mention here that teachers are teaching a whole class of children in one way and if they struggle to learn with that given method they will start to fall behind. Everyone is different in how they learn and absorb information, but teachers rarely have time to tailor the teaching to each child. Some do as much as they can and put a lot of time outside of school hours into doing so. On the other end some children are very flexible and learn however they are taught; my eldest is like that.
My eldest is very academically oriented and my youngest is very hands on with learning. My eldest is currently doing a PhD in genetics and my youngest is doing an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering. Both were homeschooled for the majority of their school age years. There are a lot of misconceptions about homeschooling, yet the irony is that many children who do well in school and in higher education were also being educated at home by their parents. I once had a teacher tell me once that teaching isn't just abut teaching the child, it's also about helping the parents learn how to support their child with learning. It's a corroborative effort. She even voiced her support when I met her after we'd started homeschooling.
What are the most inaccurate beliefs you've heard about homeschooling?