Comment by kajumix

My kids are enrolled in a homeschool parent partnership program (because its one of the few public montessori programs within an easy before-school-drive for our kids). My experience has been that the families attracted to that school fall into one of two categories:

1) Families who are skeptical of standard American public school methods and/or families who have recognized that standard public school methods don't work for their children's peculiarities. They treat the program (and especially the Montessori program) as like a school acceleration program.

2) Families who do not want the government dictating the terms of their children's education in any way shape or form. Within this latter category, the minority are active participants in their children's education, and the majority are the weirdly religious and/or abusive sorts.

The school's administration seems to cater to category 2, and expend a lot of time and effort to try to communicate that whatever requirement they're enforcing (like "your child must actually talk to, in-person, on the phone, or via video call, a teacher holding a state-issued teaching certificate at least once per 2 school weeks") is not a school requirement, but a state requirement, and failing to meet these minimum requirements will trigger a state investigation, not a school investigation. Its sort of unsettling to hear them belabor the point, but then, during the parent orientation where I was hearing that sort of thing, it seemed like most of the audience was not at all interested in suspending whatever they were doing (conversations, watching youtube videos, etc) while the principal was talking through that stuff. Like, its telling that the administration goes to great pains to say "we aren't holding you to the rules designed specifically to prevent child abuse and neglect, so don't send us your death threats or whatever", and most of the audience to that actual message of how to comply with those rules are themselves completely disengaged from the presentation of them.

I'm going to hazard a guess with zero grounding in data to attempt to answer that, caveat emptor. Please also note that even though these are my guesses, these assertions do not really reflect where I personally land on this. I'm not really sure what the breakdown is, but I think I can understand how someone gets to this point of view.

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In order for parents to choose homeschooling, some (but not all) must be present in the parents:

- a conviction that the herd choice of sending a child to school is wrong, and not just a little bit - the belief that you know education better than expert educators with many years of hard earned experience - relatedly, the belief that you are fully qualified to teach anything of importance, and that anything you can't teach is not of important - the ability to forgo the opportunity cost of an in-home full time tutor

Add these up and you will skew towards parents who either have extremely strong convictions (faith related or otherwise) and a mentality that presupposes that the parent is "right."

In the best case scenario, this is an extremely well educated/informed parent who knows enough to keep their pride at check and can handle their emotions well in the face of at times extremely frustrating circumstances, all well being under more financial strain than they would be if they weren't showing up every day to school. These people definitely exist, and I think most parents strive to be this for their children regardless of how they educate their child.

But the "average" human is not well informed, often makes rash and/or emotional decisions, and is struggling to make ends meet. Thus, the "average" parent that chooses homeschooling skews towards dogmatic thinking and/or a presumption of "I'm right and you're wrong" that over a period of a childhood easily leads to abuse, especially if the parents are struggling to make ends meet.

I guess there is a counter argument that people who choose to homeschool can "afford" to do so and thus are well resourced enough (financially or socially) to have a good shot of success, but even among the top 10% of earners you will be hard pressed to find parents that believe they can afford homeschooling.

Well, normal, boring people tend to send their kids to school, so your chances of a normal, boring homeschooling experience are pretty slim. And even the most well-intentioned of counter cultural folks don't always excel at parenting, never mind educating.

I've met a fair number of other homeschooled folks over the years who had a great childhood, but I've met more for whom the lack of community/government oversight meant their parents could get away with things we wouldn't generally countenance (be that actual abuse, various forms of religious indoctrination, or just plain old "unschooling" - aka "ignore the kids till they go away").