Is Homeschooling a DIY approach to education?
We began our homeschool experience as a cautious experiment that eventually led to homeschooling through high school. We had a few reasons – one was a private school teacher mom that would have spent her entire salary sending three kids to private school. The reasons for homeschooling are always evolving and maybe now thriving in the culture of the “Do-it-yourself” and “LifeHacker” crowd. A recent article from Wired Magazine talks about this latest reason for home schooling – provide a completely unique experience that no school could provide (Read the article, interesting story). I’m not sure I’ve run into any with this motivation in the homeschool community here in the midwest, but welcome to our eclectic crowd (if 3% qualifies as a crowd).
Really home schooling has always been a DIY approach to education. For many in the United States homeschooling is an option where the local schools are low-quality or where parents have certain philosophical or religious views they feel are not represented (or disliked) in the public-school systems. Others choose homeschooling because they have kids with special needs that don’t fit in schools that are more traditional. Our reasons may vary but every one of us takes our own approach, even customizing for each child – how DIY is that?
Many people fear that kids that not in a government school will receive lesser quality education. Given the state of the public school system and our ranking worldwide in educational effectiveness this concern always baffled me! The truth is home schooled kids score higher on standardized tests than any other school group and they’re highly sought after by college admissions [more details]. Others wonder if homeschoool kids spend all their time indoors with their parents can ever develop any real social skills. The truth is home school kids do spend a lot of time with other kids and without the constant pure pressure develop social skills quite naturally [NPR Article with more background].
I’m a big fan of DIY mentality and hacking anything into something new and more useful. Thanks Wired for pointing out how I hacked my kids education into something unique. Next time someone asks why I homeschooled my kids I’ll just reply, “Because I’m a life hacker”.