Bolding mine. While I would have loved to focus on the subjects I liked but that would have resulted in a grossly inferior education. I would have been years ahead in math and science and lacking in history and English.
I'd choose the opposite, and would consequentially have an equally inferior education due to the imbalance. Condoleezza Rice spoke at my secondary school when I was in the 8th grade, and the advice that embedded into me was to take classes not just in the subjects that you gravitate towards because they are your forte, but the ones that intimidate and challenge you. That if you are naturally gifted in English but recede from math classes, to make a concerted effort to take more demanding math classes to exercise what you are weaker in. And vice versa. It's not just the content of the class itself, though obviously the knowledge gained is valuable, but broadening yourself and learning the art of perseverance. The school has an excellent, well-rounded curriculum, so regardless of aptitude or desire all students must take courses in diverse subjects. At the time, I saw the advice as being more about the attitude I chose to have rather than the choices I could actually make, but as I progressed through high school and into college I did take it more literally.
I've always been skittish about STEM courses because in comparison to my brothers, I'm not as agile in them. They didn't seem to be as relevant to my interests and ambitions, either, but over time I actually discovered they very much are. I admit I still had to be dragged into taking some classes in high school, and had to wrestle with myself to enroll in and not drop some of them that scared me in college. My HS AP Biology, AP Statistics, AP Macroeconomics, and AP Microeconomics classes have been the most useful I've taken, and they are classes I wouldn't have taken without Dr. Rice's advice and my parents' prodding. I definitely wouldn't have taken the AP exams if my mom hadn't made me, because my college doesn't award credit for any of those classes, and I saw the preparation as being an additional and futile stress. But those scores are what enabled me to be able to jump right into classes without taking the prerequisites first. Because of my background in statistics I was able to take a course on biostatistics that is relevant to my passion about vaccination and public health care. Because of the background in economics I was able to leapfrog into higher level economics, and then from them into ones being taught at my college's business school. I'm not a business major. My classes on economic policy have been taught by the former Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council for the Bush administration. They are not required for my major, but extremely beneficial.
I knew I'd never be a science major, but I also took nine science classes in high school (four year-long classes, two summer classes, and three semester-long electives) and thus far have taken ten at college. I also audited a three week Sophomore College seminar at Stanford when I was attending the OHS called Measles, Sneezles, and Things that Go Mumps in the Night, hahaha. My brick-and-mortar school has a science scholar program where students are paired with mentors to conduct research that is then published. I worked with a psychologist, and continued the research I did then at college, and presented it at the national APA conference over the summer.
I honestly do not see how my parents could have provided a reasonable substitute for brick and mortar school for High School. The knowledge to teach math and science would have been there, but a huge part of real science is lab work and while getting the materials for biology would have worked out OK for chemistry and physics there would have been major cost issues. A full set of glassware for chemistry is not cheap and one also needs a lab counter with a gas outlet for the Bunsen burner. And the ways stand now there would be difficulties getting a lot of the chemicals needed. (There are lots of nasty things that can come out of a good chem lab).
Even parents who possess higher levels of knowledge in a subject may not have the skills to effectively teach that knowledge in an age-appropriate way. One of the reasons for the success of Bill Nye "the science guy" is his ability to teach complex science lessons in a way that is fully comprehensible, engaging, and memorable to kids.
As I wrote in a previous post, home-school programs are often designed to be taught by parents or teachers (they are also used in Christian schools, many of which are unaccredited and do not require that the teachers have credentials) who lack expertise in the subject, so they rely more on workbooks and rote memorization. Rather than the teachers creating lesson plans of their own, they typically just follow the system, teaching scripted drills the students parrot.
They are not as dynamic as a class at a brick and mortar school or an online one where there is interaction with skilled teachers as well as with peers. I think the interaction part is also crucial, not just with teachers but with fellow classmates, learning from them and collaborating on projects. Having a teacher who is truly qualified to evaluate work rather than just marking it using an answer key is very important, too.
And the problem with lab work would have been exacerbated by my ability. I would probably been a couple of years ahead of schedule in the sciences. Math would have been even more of an issue. My mom could have taught it well, but she would have been rusty and she would have had problems once we were past college calculus.
Another issue is that some fields, such as Computer Science, are perpetually evolving, so what a parent learned while in grad school may be obsolete when their kids are in middle and high school grades. Yes, most definitely a parent with a strong background in CS would be much more capable of quickly learning and teaching lessons, but it would require effort on their part to learn what they are teaching.
The homeschool publisher Abeka's math program has been especially criticized for only using what they refer to as "traditional" math and rejecting modern theories.
Still once upon a time it could be argued that home schooling allowed students to progress at a far faster speed in the subjects where they had aptitude. This is far less true today. School systems allow rapid advancement through magnets and other means.
Definitely.
All students enrolled in a high school within the LAUSD is entitled to enroll in their online classes for free, which enables them to take more advanced classes (and also to repeat classes and take ones of interest that aren't offered at their brick and mortar school). Many school districts have a similar policy, as well as full K-12 virtual schools. The Malone Family Foundation provides scholarships to gifted kids who still need more challenges for them to be able to attend Stanford OHS and other comparable schools.
A while ago someone posted excerpts from an article in Stanford Magazine titled "In a class of their own" about home-schooled students who were admitted to Stanford and thriving. The quotes were severed from crucial context, the key one being the date of the article, 2000, with all the kids having completed their high school-level education in the 1990s. The second most important detail omitted was that there were literally only a handful of home-schooled students at Stanford (four in 1999, 5 in 2000) then, and some were enrolled in correspondence programs. There are still only a few home-schooled students here. In the pre-internet era gifted kids were sometimes shuttled from their elementary schools to middle or high schools or college for more advanced classes. Some were enrolled in correspondence programs such as the one Stanford used to offer before the OHS was founded in the mid-2000s. The older brother of a friend who went to a gifted school with me when we were little is the youngest-ever graduate of the University of Chicago's medical school. My friend went on to earn a Masters degree by the age of 18. The gifted school still wasn't sufficient for them, so their mom home-schooled them until they were old enough to be admitted into online college programs. They are, of course, the exceptions, not the norm.
I don't want to give the impression that I think the current school system is perfect or even all that good. I just do not see home schooling as a viable solution.
There's not a singular school system. I think one of the issues with American schools is that their quality is so often dependent upon the socioeconomics of the area it's located in, whereas in some (much smaller) countries all schools are federally funded.
I do think attending school at home is a viable solution for some kids, but only if they are enrolled in a quality online school. I'm guesstimating that around 70% of the kids who are competitive dancers are home-schooled, but they're all in online schools, either public or private. Most began their schooling in brick-and-mortar schools and then transitioned into online schooling around age ten, which is when you typically start training around 20-25 hours a week. They're in a unique circumstance because they are still fully immersed in social settings where they're interacting with kids outside of their own families, from different backgrounds.
I do however see learning at home as an important part of learning. I was cooking gourmet meals at 16. At or before 12 I was making devices that required hand soldering on a circuit board. Earlier than that I was doing Euclidian constructive geometry. By 16 I could take down or top a tree using a chainsaw (though topping was dangerous work and my parents did not allow me to do it).
I've also learned so much at home, but have never taken much interest in domestic skills, haha. Since my parents are amicably divorced and have long been remarried, I have four of them, and they all have important careers and have imparted knowledge about them to us. I decided to become a lawyer like my mom when I was eight, and cultivated an interest in public health policy because of my dad and stepmom who are physicians. Every year they spend a minimum of two weeks volunteering with an international medical organization, and they have brought us with them. That was a perk of going to an OHS because all I needed to attend school was my laptop and a Wifi connection. I've obviously never given medical care, but learned so much about it from observing it being given.
My dad and stepdad did an awesome job teaching me about how to manage finances. How to build up your credit score and manage your stock portfolio. There is absolutely no way I could have made it into the "800 club" at 18 otherwise. I think that's as important, if not more so, than being able to cook a gourmet meal, hahaha. I made the kind of oatmeal this morning that isn't instant, if that counts.
It seems to me that those favoring home schooling are making an implicit assumption that if someone is going to a physical school they cease learning elsewhere. That is simply untrue. But there may be cases where their parents cease actively teaching and if so I would say those parents are not doing their job.
My family has long embraced the maxim about how learning should be a part of life from "the womb to the tomb."
Writing walls of text really do help me to chill out during Dead Week, haha.
