I stumbled across this video on Facebook and it raised a lot of red flags for me. Granted, I love homeschooling, I'm in the trenches, and it's a huge part of our family culture and shared experience. But I fundamentally disagree with several claims and statements that were said in this video, although I do applaud the many wholesome activities that were depicted underneath the speech. Let's break it down.
Claim One: Kids who start their education in preschool are actually behind kids who start later.
What is their source for this, I wonder. Made up from whole cloth? Oklahoma, which is a red state, offers optional universal PreK, and their test scores went up. I watched the linked video, and was absolutely shocked when I saw 5 year-olds who didn’t know their colors (and no, they weren’t color blind.) PreK has helped those kids be prepared for Kindergarten. It’s a sad truth that not all parents are involved in their children’s education, although in an ideal world, their education would start at home. Not all children are so lucky, and those who attended PreK in Oklahoma are more prepared for Kindergarten than those who didn’t, generally speaking. Granted, that’s just one state’s example, I don’t know general statistics. I think it would depend on a lot of variables, like where the kids are going to PreK (not all Preschools are educational, some are glorified day cares). I believe that engaged parents can and usually do give their kids a better preschool education than a formal school can. Not going to a formal PreK doesn’t mean that they haven’t been given a PreK education. Without knowing the source of this claim, it becomes hyperbole, and I certainly don’t see it as an argument against teaching a 3-year-old their ABCs and colors.
I did find this article which reported that while there were initial benefits reported for the preK students, those benefits faded over time. However, high quality preschools had a longer impact. In Tulsa, students who attended preschool were more likely to take AP classes in high school, and the benefits were especially impactful for minorities and low income families.
Personally, I don't think that the "fading benefits" are because the preschool was ineffective as much as the fact that public school classrooms have a way of averaging out kids. Kids who are advanced rarely get the the attention they need, even when a teacher wishes to give it to them. They have to manage a classroom with around 30 kids, and there are limitations to what they can do for those kids.
Claim Two: Homeschoolers outperform public schooled kids.
Indeed, every time they have been tested, this has been the result. However, these tests do not adjust for things like a family’s demographics and home family life. There were a few cases when homeschooling was fighting to be legal in the US when the public schools forced all homeschoolers to take the same tests as the public schools. Forgive me for not citing the source, it was a book I read a couple of decades ago. I think it was in Tennessee or Kentucky. But in that case, the homeschoolers blew their public school counterparts out of the water, and opponents of homeschooling were more than happy to stop mandating that test because the results were embarrassing for them since the test proved the opposite of what they were trying to prove.
Even so, today many homeschoolers opt out of testing, myself included most of the time. Those who do take the tests usually do so voluntarily. It’s hardly a random sample. ACT scores are, on average, much lower in states where it is mandatory for all Juniors to take the test than in states where it is optional. This is because it is the college-bound kids who take it, verses something that everybody just does. The same kind of dynamic plays in to homeschoolers taking most tests. Of course we have higher scores, generally speaking, it's often the brightest who do the testing.
Because most test results come from homeschoolers who opted in verses public-schoolers who were mandated, we are not seeing a fair and equal representation of academic success. Having said that, I do NOT want to create a scenario where homeschoolers are forced to take tests in order to achieve a fair result. We've taken some of the diagnostic tests they give these kids in the past, and they were very long and boring, and while it was fun to see our results, they weren't useful to me. The test results were designed to be useful for school administrators who have been trained in the test materials and understand what is being evaluated. A lay parent is not.
Claim Three: Homeschoolers are thought to be less intelligent.
If anything, we have a reputation for being smart, awkward, and nerdy. Homeschooling culture has changed a lot since I was a kid. It used to be that homeschooling parents really had to push their kids academically because they had a lot of pressure from outside sources to prove that they could provide a solid education. We’re a lot more lax now, on the whole. In fact, many parents are homeschooling their kids because they struggled in public schools, or they are neurodivergent. That would bring our test scores down, but isn’t a reflection on our ability to educate our children on the whole. There are a lot of stereotypes out there, but I don’t like the nasty intonation this video gives when they say people assume homeschoolers are dumb. As a kid, I was subtly tested by teachers and adult family members because they wanted to see if I was learning. I haven’t seen that with my own children. Things have changed. It's a different homeschooling world! Granted, there are always exceptions to the rule.
Claim Four: Parents are afraid to homeschool because it's uncomfortable.
I agree with the bit about the reservations many people have for homeschooling. It often does mean sacrifice. Sacrificed income, and greater responsibility for the parent. I think this is also partially why a lot of homeschoolers outsource their kids’ education to private and charter schools, even if part time. Micro schools are a big thing, and some co-ops may as well be a private school since they cover all of the subjects. And that’s okay. It’s a huge thing to undertake being responsible for your kids’ education. Traditional homeschooling is probably as rare as it always was, but we welcome all of the other homeschoolers under our umbrella.
You got this, Mama! There are a lot of homeschoolers out there you can connect with, and we're here for you. It's hard, but like many hard things, the results are so worth it.
Interjection: “You weren’t reading until 12. By 15 you were in college.”
Does this ever happen? Yes, but it’s rare. Incredibly rare. On the YouTube channel “Mom Delights”, she gave a good expose on how a high school education is possible in 3 years. It has happened. During WWI, the army found that a lot of their recruits couldn’t read, and that soldiers performed better and had a better chance of survival if they were educated. So they educated their cadets and brought them up to speed, and they did it remarkably quickly. When you cut out the fluff, remarkable things are possible. However, I think that the fact that a high school education can be gained so quickly is a testament to some of the inefficiencies of public school rather than an example on how much better homeschooling is. Also consider that many high schooled kids today are able to get their associates degree in addition to their regular schooling AT PUBLIC SCHOOL, along with other options like Trade School. Public schools also offer a lot of electives and allow release time for things like religious education off campus.
I would NEVER ever use the fact that a high school education CAN be gained in 3 years as a case for delaying reading instruction until a child is 12. Barring an intellectual disability (and even with many of them!), it’s rather shocking to me that so many parents, homeschooling parents, are unconcerned that their child can’t read yet. There are dangerous educational philosophies behind this quasi-movement, and frankly, I’M NOT WITH THEM! Many of the kids who are not reading at 12 are still struggling to read when they’re 15. I’ve seen it. I've seen a few exceptions, but they are, in fact, exceptions. There isn’t a magical learning fairy that suddenly makes education appealing to kids who have never had a reason to seek it out. Not all illiterate 12-year-olds are as motivated to learn to read as Frederick Douglass was! Too often these kids fall through the cracks, and it’s really sad. A shocking number of public schooled kids are illiterate too, but for different reasons. Illiteracy is illiteracy, no matter the cause, and it’s sad regardless of the source.
As an aside, I find it very strange that they would bring a comment like this up in the first place. Are there 12-year-olds who can't read? Of course there are, both in homeschooling and public school circles. This particular comment is about homeschoolers especially. Whatever happened to "homeschoolers always test higher than public schoolers"? Those 12-year-olds would have tested very poorly in a 3rd-grade diagnostic test! Either you CARE about testing (presumably because homeschoolers test well), or you DON'T CARE (because it doesn't measure the things you care about). Either way, it's a bit unfair to lump oneself with the high achieving testers (look at how well homeschoolers do on tests!), when one might very well be a negative statistic for the same tests if push came to shove. Personally, as a proud homeschooler, I wish all in the homeschooling circles felt empowered with confidence and discipline enough to do well academically at home. While the children themselves, individually, are the primary concern, I am also looking at the big picture. There are a growing number of states that are trying to regulate and limit homeschooling, and when homeschoolers throw out tidbits like this, it is bad optics for us and it makes me cringe. Please don't give the homeschool-haters fodder. It's not good for us.
Claim Five: Finland has found that children under 7 are incapable of learning, so they start late.
While it is true that FORMAL schooling begins at age 7 in Finland, the average child begins attending Early Child Education around the age of 1.5-2. Children are also required by law to attend “Pre-Primary Education” at age 6, which lasts for 4 hours each school day, where children begin learning mathematics, language, arts and culture. I think a lot of unschoolers take Finland’s educational system out of context, and it is a poor example delayed education. Formal schooling may wait, aka, sit at a desk in a classroom setting, but children in Finland are learning a lot of other things with their peers in a social setting like early education centers, or even day care at much higher rates than we see in the US. Some of these care centers are very competitive and hard to get into! I’m not arguing that it’s better there, I don’t think it is. I think it's better for babies to stay with their mothers in most cases. I just think it’s misleading, if not dishonest, to herald their education system when their methods are misrepresented. Furthermore, Finland does not argue that children are incapable of learning earlier, they just have other priorities, such as play-based learning over a formal classroom setting. Their young children are learning, and they are proud of their accomplishments, as they should be. OMG- it is so triggering for me when I see people say that young children are incapable of learning! My kids all learned to read as toddlers, I’ve got one in the thick of things right now. Incapable, my foot!
My closing Thoughts
Homeschooling is great. Her closing arguments weren't bad, though the lead-up would not convince me of that end. The activities shown in the video are wholesome and beautiful. I would argue that mothers make the best mothers, and they make amazing teachers too. I just think there are so many arguments made in this video that may make some parents feel good, but they are unsourced, and often misleading. I also have huge reservations for the way early education, especially in a homeschool setting, is depicted. You can teach a toddler to read without FORCING them to read. Flashcards aren't evil, they can be gentle and fun. Early education isn't the boogeyman when it's done right. And it's not hard to do it right, and most homeschooling parents have good intentions. I see parents apologetic about the early education they give their kids all the time, and I really wish they didn't feel the need to be that way. I wish at-home early education would be normalized so parents would feel comfortable talking about best practices, philosophies and results just like they do any given math curriculum for 5th graders. Instead we find parents sharing adorable preschool boxes for their kids with an explanation of "I hate to call it a lesson, it's more of an activity." No. It's a lesson, and it's a lesson done right. It's the kind of lesson we should aspire to. There are educational goals being reached and met in a joyful manner, and that's a good thing!
Conversely, don’t wait until your child is 12 to teach them how to read! Please don’t. If they’re struggling, it might be because they’re not interested or what have you, just as you say. But chances are that they may have a learning disability that needs to be addressed, and we don’t do our kids any favors when we aren’t disciplined enough to take on the responsibilities of educating our children. As a homeschooling parent, that’s our job. Even for public schooled parents- it is the PARENT’S responsibility to ensure that their kid is educated. If it’s happening at public school, or the charter school, or the homeschooling co-op, that’s great. But at the end of the day, if it’s not working, it’s the parent’s job to step up and find something that will give their children the education that they deserve.
In a perfect world, my dreamed Utopia, young children would be learning at home in their early years with loving parents who are engaged in their education. That world isn't the world we live in. As an alternative, I actually think that maybe Finland is on to something with their child-led early education centers that focus on music, crafts, outings, and social-emotional intelligence. I think that when kids are put into formal classroom settings with an academic workload they aren't ready for, it can be harmful, and indeed, some studies suggest this. Putting pressure on kids to perform too much too soon can cause them stress and lead them to rebel against schooling altogether. However, quality preschools have lasting benefits for the children who attend them. Not all preschools are equal.
I also want to close by saying that whatever the best practices are for preschools, especially publicly funded preschools, they have little bearing on homeschooling preschool with my own children. I reject the idea that if you teach your children to read or do arithmetic at an early age, you're going to suck the love of learning out of your children later on. I reject the idea that early education is harmful for young children. My lived experience is different. You can spend 20-30 minutes actively teaching a toddler or preschooler reading and math activities in a joyful manner AND also take them outside to engage with nature and do all of the other fun activities depicted in the video short. It doesn't have to be either/or. Why not both?