Homeschooled Voices

Category: Impacts of Homeschooling

  • Stuck In-Between: Growing Up Homeschooled Part 3

    image my own

    Click here for part 1, part 2

    Ages 13-15 (2018-2021)

    A transitional period

    If there was one thing that was true about my family it was that we were always either about to move, about to have a new baby, or both. The year I turned thirteen we did both. My little sister was born, and several months later we moved from Montana to Texas. I’d come to love our little city in Montana and wished we didn’t have to leave. This was also a hard time for me because I was growing up and dealing with many mental and physical changes. All of the sudden, my body was different, my thoughts were confused, and I had questions I wasn’t sure were appropriate to ask. I didn’t have a strong sense of who I was or what I could even do anymore. I was not a loud or rebellious teenager and never got involved in drama. I lived a quiet life and may have even seemed mature for my age. What defined my teen years was a persistent, awkward feeling of being in-between, like I wasn’t the age I should be.

    My secret curiosity

    Around this time, I secretly became curious about school. This curiosity did not come all at once, but through a series of random little incidents such as the ones I list here.

    • My homeschool group held a track meet at the middle school I would’ve been attending, all the kids came out for recess, and my parents made remarks about it looking like a prison yard.
    • Mom gave me a book from her childhood and said that she knew I had a very different life than she did in middle school, but she hoped I’d still like it. I thought my life must be better right? but was also fascinated by the experiences the characters had with starting junior high and forming a friend group.
    • We watched a movie about a homeschooler going to school. It wasn’t always easy for him, but his school still looked nice.
    • I found my family’s books on homeschooling, and learned that unlike public schoolers, I was apparently learning to think critically and had no unnatural attachments to my peers.
    • I also found my parent’s old high school yearbooks, which made school look almost fun.
    • My mom talked about hypothetically putting my siblings in school when the moving finally ended. I thought our family would do that? but realized I’d be too old then anyways.
    • I was at the playground with my mom and siblings when a school nearby let out and the park flooded with other kids. It was interesting to see them all.
    • In 2020 I watched my neighbor’s graduation ceremony held on their front porch. I knew it was sad that they didn’t get a proper graduation. But I also thought hey, I bet my graduation will look like this anyway. I pitied the kids missing out on senior year while knowing that I wouldn’t have that experience myself.

    As you can tell I had an extreme amount of cognitive dissonance during this time. I was so grateful to be homeschooled, have lots of free time, and not be in those oppressive public schools, but if I’d been told I now had to attend those same schools, I probably would’ve been excited. I had no idea what I wanted. Deep down I suspected that public school would not be a real option for me anyways. Regretfully, I never said a word about these thoughts to my parents. I wonder what conversations we could’ve had. For example, mom has since told me that even she took those Christian homeschooling books we owned with a grain of salt. How could I have known that as a thirteen-year-old? I was just a kid becoming aware that I was different and looking for something to explain my own life to me.

    Too old

    I hated being thirteen. Nothing particularly bad happened to me then, and my family life continued much as it always had. But I still hated it. I didn’t like having a growth spurt, I didn’t like having my period, and I didn’t like being too old to enjoy the things I once had. Sometimes I still tried to join in on the games my siblings played, but it just didn’t feel the same anymore. So, I did my schoolwork, helped with chores, and then came the awkward in-between time. My younger siblings and cousins played on playgrounds marked for ages 5-12, while I paced around the park collecting acorns, or sat awkwardly near the adults while they chatted. One evening a week, I went to a Christian scout-type program with a few other girls my age, and sometimes my family attended a church with a youth group. I liked these outings and found the other kids fascinating even if I didn’t fully know how to interact with them or be part of the group. Reading was still a passion of mine, but I rarely even met another kid my age in the pages of a book. The characters all seemed to be twelve still, and I just had to be thirteen.

    Increasing connections

    Fourteen seemed like a luckier age for me than thirteen had been. My family moved again, but this time we stayed within the same city, and it felt like a positive change. A nice house opened up in military housing, so we took the opportunity to move on base. Dad no longer had to put up with a long commute, and we all liked our new home that came with the amenities of living on base. The surroundings felt familiar and almost nostalgic to me as I’d lived on or near bases when I was younger. I enjoyed meeting the neighbors who were also military kids and understood my lifestyle. Another positive development was my mom finding more homeschool activities to join. In addition to the scout-type program I’d been in the year prior, I was now part of two new activities. The co-op had enough fourteen-year-olds that we could do an actual ninth-grade biology class together. The homeschool band was something that I never would have thought of on my own, but mom encouraged me to try it. To my surprise, I discovered I was capable of learning an instrument, and I still enjoy playing my flute to this day. Three activities every week! That was the most I’d ever had. As a young teenager I loved this and began to put more effort into my social interactions than before. I hung out with the other older girls at the park after co-op, went on campouts with my troop, and got invited to a few parties. The homeschool community my family found was welcoming and kind. I still remember the people I knew during that time fondly. For a little while, I sort of had a social life.

    Did everyone become like us?

    New Years came and it was a new decade. I had no idea what the next ten years would be like, but so far, the beginning of 2020 seemed like the continuation of a good time for me. Even the weather was nice (mild Texas winters are a break from the heat). In early March, some of my siblings and I had a lot of fun at a troop camporee where there was facepainting, cake decorating, and time spent with our friends. We left early though because Dad was suddenly busy with work and Mom had to return home to watch the other kids. It turns out Dad was busy because he had to help make a plan for how the base would respond if this new virus we’d all heard of became a problem in our area. Of course, we were on the brink of witnessing the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic spread to the United States.

    The pandemic was a global tragedy that affected everyone, and I know there were many families who were worse off than ours during that time. Quarantine came with massive costs to children as schools were shut down for an indeterminate amount of time. Suddenly every family homeschooled. I remember my dad commenting that we kids were normal for the first time in our lives. But were we? What did it mean to be a homeschooler during the pandemic, not just a pandemic homeschooler? First, unlike many children, my siblings and I were fortunate that our academic progress was not interrupted at all by quarantine. If anything, we had more time to do schoolwork. Second, although we already spent most of our time at home, being completely stuck at home was still a strange experience. Not having those activity days to look forward to each week felt like having the having the rug pulled out from under me. Zoom meetings weren’t enough. I never thought I would miss mundane things like shopping and library trips so badly. One thing that helped was that our neighborhood had access to a path and a lake. Sometimes Mom would take us kids out for what we called a “pandemic picnic”, so at least we got some fresh air.

    For me, a third aspect of being a homeschooler during the pandemic was being part of a community that reacted to the risks of COVID-19 differently than mainstream society. In the spring, the world was shut down, and it was clear that we were living through a global emergency. I remember watching the news and seeing footage of deserted city streets, and rows of tents set up because the hospitals were full. I understood that this was serious and that of course my family had to stay home so we wouldn’t get sick. But we also lived in Texas where the quarantine regulations were lax and not everyone believed they were necessary. By May, my family was going to state parks and even visiting my grandparents. I heard that this thing I had been truly scared of only a few months before was actually no worse than a cold or flu. This was confusing because even if some people had mild cases, weren’t others actually getting sick and dying? Still, over time I began to feel that perhaps the situation wasn’t that serious after all, because that was how all the adults in my life were behaving. Then, I found out that the regional summer camp my scout-type organization ran was still happening. Yes, leaders from troops across the south decided to run it the summer of 2020. I hadn’t expected to go to camp that summer, because obviously there was a pandemic (right?), but then I did. Although I enjoyed some parts of it, I still had a vague sense of uneasiness, especially when eating meals in the crowded main hall where no one was wearing a mask. If I was exposed to COVID then, I didn’t get noticeably sick, but looking back I’m a little shocked that I participated in a pandemic summer camp. And I will note that many of the girls there were homeschooled. That was a weird time.

    Overall, homeschooling meant that I didn’t even experience a once-in-a generation crisis the same way most of my peers did. I stayed in my niche subculture while they gradually transitioned back to in-person schooling. Everyone else had not become like us long-term homeschoolers. By January of 2021 I was fifteen-and-a-half years old, my family was preparing for another move, and I still felt stuck in-between.

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  • More Learning and New Worries: Growing up Homeschooled Part 2

    my room in 2018 (my photo)

    Click here for Part 1

    Ages 8-12 (2013-2018)

    School(work) continues

    Educationally, my siblings and I thrived during this time. My mom lived up to the demands of her role as the sole teacher of several young children. Each year, boxes of colorful new books arrived on our doorstep, and we’d each begin a new grade. There were the math workbooks with pages of problems, the Latin workbooks full of conjugations and declensions, the science books with an experiment for each lesson, and the history CDs we’d listen to in the car. Schoolwork wasn’t always fun, but sometimes I liked it. I especially enjoyed learning anything related to science or geography. I was also a devout reader. My favorite section of the library was the one that held all the historical fiction series like Dear America, about girls like me who’d lived in distant times and places. I learned through my reading. I remember identifying the birds in our yard, reading books on cat care and gardening, and going through a space exploration phase with my brother. There was so much to learn!

    My family-centered life

    If there was one thing that was true, it was that my family was always either about to move, about to have a new baby, or both. I had four younger siblings at age of eight, and a fifth one by age twelve. Our house was always busy with lots of little people running around! My dad’s military career progressed with long working hours for him, and my mom stayed at home with the full-time job of caring for and educating several young children. The frequent relocations of military life can make jobs for military spouses and school for military children difficult to maintain. My family adapted to this challenge by containing the lives of Mom and us kids within the home. A homemaker does not have to find a new job every other year. Homeschooled children can take their curriculum with them anywhere, and don’t have a school or teacher, or classmates that must be left behind. And so, that was our life for many years. My family-centered life was mostly happy. Mom had us on a routine: breakfast, morning chores, schoolwork, lunch, playtime, maybe some errands, dinner, evening chores, TV time, and bed. We were all so young and close in age that we were treated like one big group of kids. As an oldest daughter I will always be grateful for this. I was close with my siblings and can still remember the games we made up together. Homeschooling gave us lots of free time during the day. In the evening, Dad would come home from work, and we’d be excited to see him. My parents got along, and our family system stayed stable.

    Venturing beyond the home

    One significant difference between homeschooling and traditional school is this: as a homeschooler, you don’t have leaving the house built into your schedule in the same way that your traditionally schooled peers do. Every errand, every activity is something extra for mom to accomplish. Until I was thirteen and allowed to stay home alone, leaving the house meant accompanying mom on all her errands. I didn’t mind though. I was a weird kid who liked the grocery store. Mom would usually buy snacks for my siblings and I to eat as we followed her around the grocery store, so our weekly shopping almost felt like a fun outing. It was interesting to look at all the stuff on the shelves, and because we went there so regularly, the grocery store became a comfortable, familiar place. So was our local library (of course), playground, and the church where our co-op met. At eleven, I did a girls’ science class, and the next year I played YMCA soccer. At eight, my speech therapist was a regular part of life, and at twelve, I spent time at the doctor’s office for my mom’s prenatal appointments. Dad liked outdoor activities, so on the weekends we’d go hiking in the Virginia woods or camping in the Montana mountains. This all was my life outside of the home. Besides our house, the stores, parks, libraries, and co-op buildings were the places I missed after every move, and the places that hold my nostalgic childhood memories today.

    Friends? Aren’t those just kids you see sometimes?

    I always thought that I had enough friends. I did weekly activities, after all, and there would usually be some girls my age I’d talk to. If our moms happened to be friends, we’d even see each other outside of activities. I even got invited to sleepovers and birthday parties. These social events were rare, special occasions. Friends moved, we moved, homeschool groups changed, and social opportunities shifted from year to year. People drifted in and out of my life. Looking back now, I’m not sure if any of my relationships went deeper than friendly acquaintances. I pretty much considered any other kid I saw repeatedly, talked to, or even just did activities near to be my friend. Maybe that made me socially behind, but if it did, I didn’t know that. I was content with my social life. I liked the other people I knew and looked forward to the times I got to see them.

    Being homeschooled is my normal

    I still didn’t think much about the fact that my siblings and I were homeschooled. We just were. My parents never did or said anything to suggest that attending a traditional school was even within the realm of possibility for me. Sometimes I heard them speak vaguely of possibly putting us in school far in the future, when my dad retired from the military. I wasn’t sure if that would really happen though, and besides, I could do the math. I would be eighteen by then. I continued to enjoy stories where the characters went to school, in the same way you might enjoy a story set in a time and place far away from your own life. I had an idea that no matter what the books and movies said, real-life public school would be bad. Or perhaps I would be too sensitive to handle it. I never thought of going to school. Why would I have? After all, I had a good family, and good life as it was.

    Undiagnosed anxiety disorder

    As a young child I had always been what my mom called “high-strung”, easily getting overwhelmed and frustrated by my surroundings. However, once I got calmed down, it was over. There was no prolonged underlying anxiety about serious matters. This changed rather abruptly for me around the age of eight. I don’t know where it came from, but I was suddenly absolutely terrified of not being saved. For several months I even convinced myself that I had somehow run out of chances to be saved. The year before, in second grade, my mom had read the Bible out loud to my siblings and I as part of our schooling. I vividly recalled her talking about people running out of chances to get saved and how it is a sad day when that happens. Upon my “confession” several months later, mom was confused that I thought this and had no memory of ever saying such a thing. Maybe I had misunderstood her words that day. We searched in vain for the Bible verse that had worried me. To this day I know of no verses that say people can “run out of chances” to get saved. Mom told me that Satan must have been lying to me, and we said the prayer of salvation together. I finally felt a sense of relief.

    Afterwards, the anxiety faded for a little while. But soon, I felt a new desire to read my Bible, my King James Bible with its tiny font that I’d received on my eighth birthday. Not just a little bit, but chapters every day. This might seem like a positive desire for a newly “born again” Christian, but for me it became problematic. My symptoms resembled religious OCD. See, If I didn’t read it, I felt guilty. This guilt ruined my enjoyment of many games and activities. I created elaborate reading plans and had to say my prayers in a specific way for them to be right. I was afraid of hell, demons, not really being saved (still), and the second coming. I also worried about other things like getting sick or dying, but most of my worries were religious. My largest influence by far was the evangelical Christian beliefs my parents taught at home. Our family’s church attendance was sporadic, even at the height of my anxiety. I didn’t have a true faith community for most of my childhood. Like the rest of my life, my religious struggles were something private and home-centered.

    Did my parents notice my mental health struggles? Yes, they did, and they actually tried their best to support me. It was never their intention for me to be so anxious over our family’s faith. They bought me children’s books on anxiety and even an entire program on CD called Turnaround. Doing the exercises from this program helped even if they did not cure my anxiety. I still have some of it now, even at the age of 21. However, I was fortunate enough to outgrow the worst of the panic attacks and obsessive-compulsive symptoms in my teen years. Somehow puberty had a stabilizing effect on my moods! I certainly did start to feel different after I became a teenager. Which leads into to the next segment of my story…

    Click here for part 3

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  • My Early Years: Growing up Homeschooled Part 1

    photo by the author

    Author: Grace

    Introduction

    Homeschooling is a practice mostly performed by those who have never experienced it. By parents who had a more typical childhood for their country and culture than what they provided for their own children. No matter how successful homeschooling is for a family, and no matter how the grown children eventually feel about it, one thing that will always be true is that the parents cannot understand what it is like to be homeschooled if they themselves were not homeschooled. They can understand whatever motivated them to homeschool, whether it be religious beliefs, educational philosophy, or special family circumstances such as moving frequently. They can approach homeschooling with their adult maturity, good and bad memories of traditional schooling, and vision of providing something superior for their own children. However, they will not understand what it is like to be raised outside of mainstream educational institutions, and to have the exceptional be your default assumed existence, an upbringing some homeschool graduates have likened to that of a third culture kid. See this article and this video. As someone who grew up in the United States like my parents did, I personally would not claim the third culture kid label solely for having been homeschooled. However, the fact that some homeschool graduates do demonstrates how growing up homeschooled can lead to a feeling of differentness in adulthood.

    In the following article series, I will share my homeschooling story. I will discuss what happened over the years, as well as how my emotional life and understanding of the world evolved throughout time. I will mention my parents, siblings, and people we knew, but will give no identifying details. To make a few things clear: first of all, this is not an attack piece on my parents. They had good intentions and mostly did a good job at raising us homeschooled. I still had a privileged childhood compared to many. Second, these are my personal experiences, and they do not represent all homeschoolers. For example, see Homeschoolers Anonymous for a large archive of homeschooling stories. My goal in writing this to increase awareness of what homeschooling can potentially look like from a student’s perspective. I hope you find it interesting!

    My Early Years of Being Homeschooled (ages 4-8, 2009-2013)

    Advanced Academically

    To start my homeschooling story at the very beginning, I must go all the way back to the year 2009, when I’d just turned four and my mom began doing a kindergarten curriculum with me. This was not a dramatic transition to a new place that involved teachers, classmates, and separation from my parents. The only change was that I now did a little bit of schoolwork with my mom some days. Every week I learned a new letter, and about something that started with that letter. Every school day I wrote a new number in my chart, counting toward my hundredth day of school. Mom read me the Genesis creation story, and I colored a picture for each of the seven days. I took it literally, and so did my parents. I painstakingly sounded out each word in my reading exercises. The following year, my mom did a phonics curriculum with me, and I learned all the rules, and that apparently a lot of words broke them. As I got better at reading, came to love it, and would devour all the children’s books mom gave me. Homeschooling was working well.

    When my brother and I were in kindergarten and second grade respectively, we did a curriculum on different countries and cultures, and this is probably one of my favorite memories from elementary school. I loved reading books about kids from different parts of the world, listening to music, trying new foods, and studying our atlases. Mom was surprised by how quickly my brother and I learned our geography, a pattern which repeated itself with many subjects. She has said we were like “sponges” for information. The work she put in to homeschooling us seemed to be paying off. I still consider those early elementary school years to be a special phase of learning, when you can discover so many things about the world for the first time.

    A Happy Family Life

    When I wasn’t doing schoolwork or the couple of chores I had daily, I could always find some way to entertain myself. I didn’t often feel lonely or bored. I was especially close with my next-oldest brother, and we spent hours making up weird stories about all our toy dolls and trains. My brother and I even won prizes at our homeschool co-op for being the individual boy and girl who had read the most books that year (yes, they separated it by gender instead of grade level for some reason). My family lived in Florida from when I was six until I was eight, and the beach became a favorite activity. I loved being in the water and collecting the colorful Florida seashells. I still have a whole box of them from about thirteen years ago. Back then, it felt like the world of my home and family was still plenty to explore.

    Socialized?

    Of course, I also had people in my life besides my immediate family. We went to church, park days, field trips, and homeschooling co-ops when we could. Dad was off at work a lot, but mom was at home all day with us and still wanted friends. So, she met up with other moms to talk, while we kids had a playdate. I was lucky that some of mom’s friends happened to have little girls my age! I felt happy and excited when it was time for these meetups. Back then, I considered any kid close to my age whom I saw repeatedly to be my friend- even if we didn’t actually interact very often. So, in my mind, I had enough friends, just like characters in books and movies. If I was socially behind, I wasn’t aware of it. Though looking back now, I think I was a bit behind. I was spared the stress of bullying and peer pressure in public school, but the tradeoff was less time with peers. It’s impossible to say just how much this aspect of homeschooling affected me though, because I never had anything else with which to compare it.

    All That I Knew

    What did I think about being homeschooled? Honestly, I don’t recall thinking much about it at all as a young child. It was my default state of existence. I knew what a school was, of course. My favorite characters often went, and so did my neighborhood friends. If I was being difficult, Mom would exclaim something like: “what if you were in a school?”, or “how embarrassing if you did that in a classroom!” On some level, I must have known my lifestyle was different, even if I don’t remember exactly when I first realized this. I never questioned it, never once asked my parents for school. I’m not sure if I fully comprehended that I, personally, could attend a traditional school. It felt like a fictional place to me, like in The Magic School Bus (my favorite show at age eight). In my mind, kids in our family didn’t get on that yellow school bus and go to this mysterious, possibly scary place called “public school” to sit at a desk for hours. We did schoolwork at home with mom and had lots of free time to play. We were Christians, military kids, and homeschoolers. The latter two things on that list might be circumstantial, but I still internalized all three of them as part of my identity at a young age.

    Ultimately, my life was different, but not all bad. I was a child with loving parents and a safe home. When I look back on my homeschooling experience, the early elementary years are still the ones about which I have the most positive feelings.

    Click here for part 2, part 3

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  • Socialization Explained for Homeschoolers: Integration Into Society

    This absolutely essential part of human development may be more complex than you think.

    https://images.pexels.com/photos/296301/pexels-photo-296301.jpeg

    Author: Grace

    Socialization is a commonly debated issue related to homeschooling. Do some research on it, and you will find everything from claims that homeschooling produces superior social skills, to warnings about the dangers of isolation. To participate in this debate, you must first understand what socialization actually means, and how it happens. This article series will give a brief overview of socialization. Hopefully it will be helpful whether you are a homeschool alumni evaluating your own socialization, or someone who wants to ensure that a homeschooled child in your life is well-socialized.

    Definitions

    The word “socialization” has two meanings related to human social development. Merriam-Webster‘s online dictionary defines it as following:

    a: the process beginning during childhood by which individuals acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of a society

    b: social interaction with others

    Socialization is multi-faceted and involves an individual learning the rules of society as a whole, not just that individual’s social interactions with others. What exactly can be meant by “society” though? The relevant Merriam-Webster definition is:

    a: an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another

    b: a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests

    A society is like an ecosystem of humans, where the interactions of different members keep the entire system functioning.

    Becoming a Part of Society

    A child born anywhere in the world will be born into a society that is defined by their culture and nationality. Just as different species in an ecosystem are dependent upon each other, each individual person relies upon their fellow human beings. That is why it is necessary for a child to be socialized into their own society and learn how to form relationships with the people around them.

    The Role of the Family

    For most children, their journey into society begins in the home with their own family. Babies are normally held, cared for, and spoken to by caregivers long before they can communicate for themselves. As they grow older, kids can learn about the basic norms of their society from siblings and extended family members. As the textbook Introduction to Sociology available on OpenStax puts it:

    They show the child how to use objects (such as clothes, computers, eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,” others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbors”); and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”).

    The consequences of not getting this early childhood interaction are devastating. Introduction to Sociology opens its chapter on socialization with an example of a seven-year-old girl who family had severely neglected her.

    Without regular interaction—the holding, hugging, talking, the explanations and demonstrations given to most young children—she had not learned to walk or to speak, to eat or to interact, to play or even to understand the world around her. From a sociological point of view, Danielle had not been socialized.

    The little girl had been left alone in rooms for most of her life and had never attended school. Without sufficient attention from her family, she was not capable of walking or eating properly let alone communicating with other people. Even basic abilities like these must be learned from others and are not naturally discovered by a child in complete isolation. This tragic case is an extreme example of parental neglect that underscores just how important it is for all children, homeschooled or not, to receive plentiful attention from their family members.

    The Role of Peers

    The family plays a critical role in how a child learns to interact with the world around them. Homeschooling keeps children at home with their parents and siblings more than they would be otherwise. However, the family alone cannot socialize a child. There are multiple agents of socialization. Members of a society have “organized patterns of relationships” with each other that extend beyond family, and children need to learn how to act in multiple social contexts- including those with peers. Peers offer the chance to form friendships with others of a similar age and developmental stage. This helps children learn “essential social skills such as cooperation, leadership, and conflict resolution“. For adolescents, peer groups are especially important as they “begin to develop an identity separate from their parents and exert independence“. As a young person matures into adulthood, so will their peers, who will become potential coworkers, friends, and romantic partners. They will forever be members of the same generation, connected by shared cultural experiences that began during childhood.

    Collective Experiences

    Society is defined partly by the fact that its member share “common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests”. Participating in these things gives people common experiences with others in their society beyond their family or even their friend and neighbors. It allows them to “acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of a society”, a core part of being socialized. For children, school is not just a means to the end of learning academic skills it can be considered one of the shared institutions of society. As Introduction to Sociology puts it:

    Students are not in school only to study math, reading, science, and other subjects—the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent function in society by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks. School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders, regularly reinforce what society expects from children.

    Homeschooled children are separated from the common experience of attending school that most children in developed countries get by default. So, it seems that being homeschooled will cause a child to be participate in society and be socialized differently than most children are. Not necessarily in a worse way, just a different way. They will miss the good of school along with the bad, but instead they will have their own good and bad experiences as a homeschooler. They may have fond memories of co-op friends rather than school friends or going on field trips with their family rather than classmates. Some homeschool alumni may look back with regret over not experiencing a more typical childhood, others with gratitude for their uncommon upbringing, some may have a mixture of feelings. This largely depends on individual circumstances. However, all homeschoolers will have a unique journey into society.

    None of this is written as an attack on homeschooling, just an observation about it. Every society is flawed, and homeschooling can be an escape from prejudice and negative peer influence. However, while young people do not need to accept social injustice, they do need to learn to function in society. This is why it is critical for homeschoolers to partake in community outside their home and family, as many already do to some extent. They need frequent, repeated activities that expose them to different parts of society and allow for learning social norms and sharing in common cultural experiences. This includes many types of social interactions and interpersonal relationships.

  • Recent Homeschooling Research

    Author: Grace

    Homeschooling is an increasingly popular educational choice. According to the Johns Hopkins School of Education, homeschooling is increasing at an average rate of 5.4% per year in the United States. Parents are turning to homeschooling as an alternative to traditional school, often in hope that it will provide their children with a superior education and social development.

    Despite its growing relevancy, studies on homeschool outcomes are few and often flawed. The research that does exist gives a messy, incomplete picture of homeschooling. Without enough research it is difficult to get an accurate picture of what the average homeschooled student is truly like.

    The Study

    In this article I, the author, will discuss a high-quality study on homeschool outcomes titled “Diverse Outcomes for a Diverse Population“. This 2025 report by Albert Cheng and Angela R. Watson was published by the think tank Cardus. The data was taken from the 2023 Cardus Education Survey, which was given to a representative sample of 2,350 U.S. adults by the polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs. About eight percent (181) of these were homeschoolers. Some major strengths of this study are that it allows homeschoolers to be compared with each other, and with a control group of traditionally schooled adults, and that random sampling reduces the likelihood of the results being biased towards a specific type of homeschooler. The authors also controlled for demographic factors besides school type.

    How Long Were Respondents Homeschooled?

    The authors divide the respondents into short-term (1-2 years), medium-term (3-7 years), and long-term (8-13 years) homeschoolers. Overall, about 36%, 27%, and 36% of participants fell in each group. The most common number of years spent homeschooled was only 1 year (20% of respondents) with an additional 16% percent of respondents spending only 2 years homeschooled. The next most common time was 13 years (17%), so K-12 homeschoolers were found to be a minority representing less than 1/5 of the total homeschool population. Homeschooling temporarily or making it a long-term commitment both seemed to be a bit more common for students than splitting their education more evenly between homeschooling and traditional schooling.

    Is There a Higher Education Gap?

    According to this study, there is a gap, with homeschoolers being less likely to pursue higher education.

    The 2023 Cardus Education Survey revealed some disparities between different educational groups. Rates of bachelor’s degree attainment were found to be about 46% for non-homeschoolers, 45% for short-term homeschoolers, 27% for medium-term, and 29% for long-term. On the other hand, the rates of having only a high school diploma were 27%, 36%, 47% and 41% respectively. According to the authors’ analysis medium and long-term homeschoolers were less likely to pursue any kind of higher education, and all homeschoolers were more likely to have nothing above a high school diploma than non-homeschoolers.

    The study cannot prove that homeschooling causes these outcomes, just that homeschooling for three or more years was correlated with lower pursuit of higher education among those surveyed. Unfortunately, the authors did not discover why the homeschoolers pursued higher education at lower rates.

    Do Homeschoolers Earn Less?

    According to this study, they do tend to earn less.

    52% of non-homeschooled respondents reported a household income above the U.S. median. Only 41% of short-term, 33% of medium-term, and 35% of long-term homeschoolers could say the same. Unemployment was also worse for homeschoolers, especially the medium-term ones who reported an unemployment rate of 33% compared to 19% for non-homeschoolers.

    Why does this gap exist? Cheng and Watson speculate that it may be partly due to homeschoolers’ attitudes towards life:

    “…long-term homeschoolers may value other things in life more than money, which might partially explain their lower educational attainment and income levels. However, long-term homeschoolers also placed more value on hard work, which might be a partial explanation for why their likelihood of employment was similar to that of more highly educated short-term homeschoolers.”

    However, this is just a suggestion, and the authors do not offer an explanation for the source of these differing attitudes.

    Are Homeschoolers More Content in Life?

    They said yes in this study.

    Overall long-term homeschoolers scored the highest on gratitude, positivity, satisfaction with life, and close social relationships, and the lowest on depression and anxiety. Of the three groups of homeschoolers medium-term ones tended to score the lowest on these. The authors do not say whether all of the differences between groups were significant, but the findings suggest that homeschooled respondents at least did not report worse mental health than the others. Homeschoolers were also more likely to have volunteered, and to attend religious services regularly.

    When it came to marriage and having children, the largest divides existed within the homeschooling community. Sixty-three percent of long-term homeschoolers were married compared to only 34% of medium-term ones. Long-terms had an average of 1.23 children each while medium-terms had .61. This shows that while some homeschoolers were more likely to have formed a family than non-homeschoolers others were less likely to have done so.

    Conclusion

    The research by Cheng and Watson truly demonstrates that there are “Diverse Outcomes for A Diverse Population“. Some findings are encouraging, others are worrying. The variations between differently educated adults suggest that traditional schooling, homeschooling, and switching between the two might affect life trajectories. However, Cheng and Watson still warn that their work does not prove homeschooling as the cause of varying outcomes.

    ” It is important to reiterate that the associations between outcomes and amount of time someone was homeschooled should not be interpreted as causal. The analytic methods used in this report cannot account for every potential factor that leads to the differences observed among homeschoolers. Likewise, the findings in this report cannot speak to why homeschooling for different lengths of time might lead to different outcomes.”

    Where will homeschool research go from here? It’s hard to say, but there are many things that could be investigated. I believe that the first step would be to do more surveys like this one to see which outcomes are the most consistently reported. Replication would help researchers to be more confident in their evaluation of the homeschooling community. A good direction for research would be the causes of the apparent lower rate of college attendance among homeschoolers. Is it just a matter of different priorities? Are there barriers in the preparation or application processes? The results of this survey were a bit surprising to me as a homeschool graduate in college. I would also like to see more investigation into the mental health of homeschool graduates. What specific homeschooling experiences are correlated with good mental health? This information homeschoolers should want to know. Hopefully, future generations of homeschoolers will have access to more data than what is available today.

  • Navigating High School: My Advice for Homeschoolers

    Author: Grace

    Photo by Benoît Deschasaux on Unsplash

    As someone who has been out of high school for a few years, I have had time to reflect on my homeschooling experience. Much of it was good, but I definitely could have done better at some things. So, I wanted to share some advice for homeschooled teens.

    1. Make sure you’re prepared for whatever you want to do after high school.

    This is something in which I succeeded. I knew I wanted to go to college (and thankfully my parents supported this), so I completed four years of high school level math, science and writing to be academically prepared. I took SAT prep seriously, because getting the highest score I could would help prove my merit in college applications and make more scholarships available. Extracurriculars such as orchestra and volunteering were also useful. The only thing I regret is not taking any dual enrollment courses. At the time, I was not motivated to do this, but now I see that the practice with time management might have made me more ready for college.

    Before you graduate you should:

    • Make sure your parents are keeping a record of your schoolwork, grades, and extracurricular activities. No matter what you want to do, you should have evidence of your high school education!
    • Look up what the high school graduation requirements are where you live, and what is needed to pursue whatever higher education or training you may want to in the future.
    • Consider taking an SAT/ACT/GED test. I was able to register online to take the SAT at a public school. If you want to go to college, you will very likely need one of these.
    • Consider taking community college courses or something else that will get you experience in a traditional classroom setting.

    2. Learn from various sources

    I am grateful to have had access to the internet and the local library. This helped me expand my knowledge beyond only my assigned homeschool materials. For example, astronomy books I checked out from the library discussed the big bang while my high school textbook didn’t. Everyone has biases, so make sure to explore both sides of issues.

    3. Don’t be too isolated

    I could have done better with this. During the school year, I attended activities 2-3 times a week but never made close friends. More activities may have made friendships easier, but I didn’t know what else was available. I wish I’d been more outgoing and tried to arrange more get-togethers outside of co-op. There were a few families I knew that actually lived in my neighborhood, but I still didn’t go over to their houses very often. It felt awkward, but I wish I’d tried harder.

    It is possible to become isolated as a homeschooler. I’m not stereotyping homeschoolers as weird and unsocialized here; I’m just pointing out that socializing can require more effort when you are not in a traditional school. As a teen, I noticed that my mom never seemed to mind when activities were cancelled, as she was already busy taking care of a large family. I don’t think my mom is an anomaly among homeschooling parents either. During the pandemic, my homeschooled pen pal told me that her mom was happy she couldn’t be late for anything. Because there was nothing to be late for anymore! Stay-at-home parents sometimes just want to stay home, but being a stay-at-home teenager is not ideal. You should have free time to interact with others your age multiple times per week. Looking back now, I see that only one of my activities (co-op) allowed that, and that was only 2-3 times per month. My other activities either only had younger kids (American Heritage Girls) or weren’t meant for socializing (orchestra). I should have had more social time than that, and I should have listened to my feelings of not quite having enough. Advocate for yourself if you ever feel bored or lonely! And if that remember that even if you’re isolated now, you will have more freedom to go out into the world eventually.

    4. Consider your options.

    Plan your future! Research colleges and jobs and find out what it takes to apply. If there is anything in your current life you are unhappy about, you can at least try to find other options. Research extracurricular activities in your area. Some things you could try are libraries, community centers, scouting programs, homeschool groups, youth sports and summer camps. If you have a specific interest in doing something, look it up. If you are interested in switching to traditional school, research schools in your area. Even if you are already partway through high school, it is not too late to try something new if you think it might benefit you. One of my biggest regrets is that I was somewhat passive as a teen and accepted situations that could have been improved to make my decent homeschooling experience even better.

    5. Final Advice

    Finally, if you are struggling with academics or your home life try visiting the Coalition for Responsible Home Education website to find some advice. I just wanted to put this out there because I don’t know what your circumstances are, and I recognize not everyone has supportive parents like I did.

    This is just what I’ve learned based on my personal experiences and research, and hopefully it’s useful to some of you readers. It is important to take advantage of the potential benefits of being homeschooled, while minimizing the potential downsides.