Just saw a tick tok of this upper middle class girl who was apparently homeschooled k-10 grade then switched to public school and is now going to university. And of course everyone is swooning in the comments about how wonderful homeschooling / unschooling is and how they plan to do the same with their children. While completely ignoring the reality of “properly” educating a child at home.
I say properly in quotation marks because in my opinion doing what would actually be necessary isn’t homeschooling. It’s taking classism and “I want to be special” to an extra step. I wanna be clear and say I’m completely against homeschooling / unschooling and the only times I feel that a child should not be in some sort of school is when they are chronically or terminally ill and even then there should be teachers payed for by the government that comes out and educates this child and every accommodation should be extended to the child.
Also I want to express my opinion as to why I don’t consider homeschooling and what it takes imo to successfully “homeschool” the same thing.
So I see homeschool as a situation where a parent(s) try’s; some to their best and others not so much to teach a child some educational skills, like reading, writing, math, etc. Unschooling kind of overlaps for me because that’s basically what happened in my household. I feel like homeschooling and unschooling goes hand in hand for most of us. Some are genuinely crazy enough to feel that we don’t need education or that we can magically learn as adults as if we won’t have any bills to pay. Then it just kind of falls off for some people they either realize the work it takes or get obsessed with some nonsense.
At the very start like when I was 5 they tried a little then realized how hard it actually was so instead of enrolling us in school they just…. stopped doing anything. No lessons, no access to books, barely any access to computers. Only watching the same tv shows over and over.
My parents didn’t work so we had little money and they never left the house. We were all cramped up together with practically nothing.
To successfully educate a child without putting them in school imo. Is to have a tutor for every subject, math, biology, history, music, physics, English, etc. and while I’ve never experienced a tutor it’s basically like having a real teacher in your house cause these people are actually knowledgeable about these subjects it’s waaaay different than an ignorant parent. Most well I’d say all are upper middle class or low rich people and so can be more involved with their children in the first place. They pay for their kids to have lots of extracurriculars like chess, music, multiple sports, ballet, etc and etc.
That type of life is literally so different than the one I lived, than the one I’m currently living. And while I understand that their life would’ve still been so different even if both of us wouldn’t be under the umbrella of “homeschool”. It makes me so angry that people conflate people like her experiences with people like mines and what’s more is that these people act like I’m an asshole for voicing my experiences and talking about how parents need to do better. Also they act as if they can’t comprehend how my experiences was different from people like that when I clearly point out the economic, educational and motivational differences between our families.
What’s crazier and my parents do this too, is when people rise you like how I was raised and still act shocked when you’re not living tick tok girls life. No shade to her btw. I’m happy for her and hope she lives the best life and from what I’ve seen of her account she hasn’t said anything negative about other homeschoolers. I just can’t stand how so many act like we all live the same life.
Like maybe I could be in college too if I had been given basic educational experiences, if instead of having to immediately work full time and pay for all my necessities, if I didn’t have to have homelessness as a constant threat over my head, if my parents could literally grow up and be stable decent adults, if I didn’t have to fight with them over getting my license, and literally so much else.
smh 😒