To think that home schooling is a bit cult like?

[WobblyWellies]

This is purely anecdotal but based on a group of friends who are all home schooling now, it makes me feel like there is a cult like element to it. There's definitely a click amongst the mums. One of my friends in the group has changed quite a bit since she started home schooling. She's almost become a bit militant about the whole thing. She often posts things on social media about how terrible schools are for children and how home schooling is much better. I feel like she's stirring things up. I am in fact a teacher but I don't push school on people I meet or social media, it's totally individual choice how you want your child educated. I'm not sure if my friend is out to convert people.

However, I do see homeschooling as a privilege to a certain extent because it relies on a parent not working (or part time) and is self funded for the majority. My friend has a house with acres of land and woods, she does loads of outdoor learning with her kids which is great but I wouldn't say it's the norm to have that.

So this group of friends are very clicky over homeschooling and it feels like a them and us scenario now.

Aibu to say it's like a cult for some people?

My niece and nephew have been homeschooled and people who knew me and were aware that I had homeschooled relatives bombarded me with questions about them and arguments about why they were wrong. I found myself defending their right to homeschool and extolling the positive points about their education which was crazy - it wasn't my decision but I repeatedly found myself in these discussions were someone was trying to convince me that it was wrong. I can imagine how it feels to be the parent of a homeschooled child with everyone having an opinion on your choice, it would become reflexive to respond about the benefits.

In a similar vein, I am a holistic medical practitioner and I do not spend my time telling everyone about it but when I am asked what I do, people are not shy in telling me that I must be wrong.

YANBU

I've never met one person who home educated that doesn't act like they're in a some form of cult

Same applies to the online HE groups

I think they need to justify their decision to themselves and therefore become extremely militant about it (much like some vegans!)

I don't know about cult like from what you've said that's probably a bit strong but cliquey sure. No more cliquey than mums at the school gate though.
If I thought I could do a good enough job educating them myself I would do it in a heartbeat. That is the only thing stopping me. School is honestly such a toxic environment.

I home educated my children. DD1 went to school in year 10. DS1 and DD2 went to school in year 12. The girls have gone to Oxford and DS has gone to Cambridge. DD2 was elected head girl by her peers after a year at school.

In our wider home ed community there are many other children who have done very well academically and lots of others who have been able to pursue their dreams, working (for example) in film, the civil service, even blacksmithing!

I don’t recognise this picture of underachieving, poorly socialised children.

I haven’t got time to answer all the misconceptions on this thread but here’s a PhD thesis on home education. Paula Rothermel found that the home educated children in her study did well both academically and socially.
etheses.dur.ac.uk/1005/1/1005.pdf

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 My kids have been home Ed for years, eldest went to college and is heading to uni now, younger sister is going to college next year already has half her GCSEs and younger sister starting exams next year. All have a full social life, after school activities, oldest two have jobs and interact with the world.

Homeschooling parents are usually weirdos who can't function in society, so subject their kids to the same.

@Rockbird that's really tough. I was about that age when I had problems at school. Hope it all works out for your daughter.

Never worked in an office?

Really?!

I’m a teacher and I know a big group of home educators and I wouldn’t do it. You aren’t meant to spend all day every day with your children; the idea is to help them grow up to be independent adults. Some of the people I know who home educate do so because their children are neurodiverse and traditional school doesn’t or wouldn’t suit them, which I can fully understand.

I just think there are so many things children experience at school that just wouldn’t be possible if they were home schooled.

I only really know one person who home schools.
She couldn't help going on about how much she hates schools/the curriculum in our country every time we met up! I got it the first couple of times, no need to go on and on!
Not long ago on Facebook she put up a picture equating school to prisons!
It's just so ridiculous.
I'm quite happy with how I'm doing it thank you

YABU

you may know a group of HS parents that are cliquey or ‘culty’ but I don’t think it applies to the majority of HS parents.

I think, just like parents with children at school, HS parents are diverse.

I know several Hs parents who do it because they have a disabled child who didn’t manage school and wasn’t offered a provision that suited their specific needs (in one case the child was mistreated by staff who couldn’t handle his needs).

I know one more HS parent who HS because they have a child who refused to go to school and have very high anxiety: they got basically no support other than threats of court action. Not helpful at all.

I also know a couple of people who HS for purely educational reasons because they feel they can provide a better learning experience at home. All provide was seems like amazing learning at home.

Then as a social worker I knew a couple of parents who removed their children from school to ‘home educate’ I think mainly to get away from school reporting their concerns/because they relationship with school broke down after they raised concerned.

I think HS can be just as cliquey as other groups. I’m sure there are some that preach about it but most don’t. To be fair our education system is fab in some ways but there are also massive areas in which it could improve.

@Morph22010

Do you actually think most workplaces are single discipline?

There aren't many just 'sales' offices

Most workplaces are a mix of roles

Therefore yes you're likely to be with introverts and extroverts, more than 30 at a time all day 5 days a week

In my experience home Ed allows more meaningful social interactions. For example my daughters go to group classes with friends Monday mornings, Tuesdays have dance lessons with friends, Wednesday work at home, Thursdays eldest to group classes youngest to forest school and Fridays we run a day of group classes at my home with friends, they socialise with a few different groups of children and also attend after school activities where they see friends. They are learning with other children in their group classes, at home and see lots of friends. Home Ed can be as social as you make it. To be honest I feel sometimes being at school can be more isolating as some children can find they are alone in a crowd if they can’t find anybody they gel with. In home ed you can keep looking till you find your people.

Tbh someone who posting that is struggling and trying to validate what they doing. I have two friends on my Facebook who home school...nothing is mentioned about the home schooling... maybe a photo of experiment or something that's all.

It's like the breast/bottle feeding debate. Why does there have to be a superior?

It's all parents doing their best.

It’s interesting the school parents often refer to a wide range of people when in reality they are generally with the same 30 kids for many years. I’m home Ed children can attend groups and classes with a genuine wide range of people. My children see different kids in different days and have built good relationships with many of them. They have also learned to deal with characters and situations that aren’t always easy. They’ve had learning experiences with lots of inspiring enthusiastic teachers. the idea home Ed kids don’t see many people and are not in the real world is very misleading.

There are some aspects of state education I would defend but only if asked. I wouldn't ram it down people's throats or put it on social media.

What my friends fails to see is that school is more than just a way of education. It's a place to socialise, make friends, learn independence away from home. It's also a safe haven for children who have a difficult home life. School can provide holistic care for children.

My friend does live in a bubble in her acres of woodland. Her children are very calm and easy going and I'm sure there aren't too many difficulties in home schooling them. So it works, great. BUT, I'm also a parent of two confident children, who love to get out there and mix with others, see life, etc. My eldest has adhd and despite the fact I'm a teacher, there's no way I could meet his needs at home and to be honest, I wouldn't wanted to. I need the break, albeit with other people's children 🤣

The thing is, I don't disagree with homeschooling because I respect individual choice. But I don't like how 'them and us' it seems to now be with my friend. It's just strange that since she's started homeschooling, she's just changed, friendship wise.

Has anyone else found this with home schooling friends?

But isn't the point that, as an adult, you can generally choose.

Adults who struggle with social interaction will choose jobs where they work alone, or work with animals, or work in very small groups, or work from home etc.

Whereas children who struggle in the same way but who go to state school, are forced to sit with 30+ people for 6-8 hours a day and learn in a style that's often totally unsuitable for them.

Adults who choose the path that suits them best are rarely criticised, but when they try and do what suits their children best, they're socially-anxious weirdos who are damaging their kids for life!

and I can't imagine anything better than spending all my time with my children.

I can’t think of anything worse. I love DD to bits, but due to her health issues I spent the first three and a half years of her life with her 24/7. By the time they had resolved she was ready to go to pre-school and mix with other children, and I was ready to have a break from her.

From my experience there’s sort of 2 types of home schooler, parents who homeschool through necessity (usually SEN and no decent local provision in place), and then the hippy types who ‘don’t believe in schools’ and don’t want to ‘stifle their kids’ creativity’.

That is my experience as well. I know one hippy type mother who decided to “homeschool” because she didn’t like getting up early. After a couple of years of her children “learning” from basically playing all the time she decided to send them to school, whereupon the teachers immediately picked up that all three had dyslexia. Something the mother had not picked up at all.

I couldn’t homeschool for many reasons

1. I didn’t want to
2. DD is an only child and needed to mix with other children
3. I didn’t know how to
4. IMO a parent doesn’t have the same authority over a child the way a teacher does. Sometimes I would tell DD that the teacher was wrong, but she would say but Miss says so (so it must be right)
5. I needed to work for finances and for me to engage with other adults during the day I think to do it properly requires a huge amount of dedication and resources, which I don’t have. So I take my hat off to parents who successfully home educate their children.

Incidentally, DD has just graduated with a first class STEM degree after doing well at GCSEs and A levels. She has learned to negotiate her way through difficult situations with her peers, and made friends, so for me, taking the “lazy option” of sending her to school worked well for her.

No where else in later life I can think of where you put 30 plus completely different people together for 6 hours a day and expect them to get on

I disagree. I work in an open plan office and have done so for years, and you couldn't come across a more diverse mix of people.

I think because there are people like the person I know who post stupid pictures on Facebook equating school to a prison. Rather than doing what they want and not posting stupid stuff like that

Not sure why the numbers formatting went to odd.

@mountainsunsets

Do you think the vast majority of people have the luxury of being choosy when it comes to a job and office set up?

I'm lucky that I work in a specialised field and can make those choices, most earning the national average and below won't have those options

I agree OP.

Also purely anecdotal (based on the three families I've known were decent and kind people with high ambitions for their children but they all had an entrenched sense that their "alternative" worldview was innately superior to the norm. They all held the view that there was something very deadening about the "conformity" of school and that children thrived outside that. And at some level of course they are right. Where I disagree with them is that I think to some extent we need to learn to deal with conformity, if only to reject it in the end.

I'm sure home education is very effective in terms of academic and creative performance. I have no doubt that with an intelligent and motivated home educating parent and sufficient resources, children can exceed at what interests them.

But it is a self-referential circle of frankly rather smug people who associate with other people exactly like them and whose kids never really get exposed to anyone outside this worldview.

Sure, they may spend quality time with other home-schooled kids. But about half the point of mainstream schooling, whether that's state or private, is having to rub along with people who aren't like you, don't share your worldview and with whom you wouldn't have chosen to be educated. And having to knuckle down and do things you aren't particularly interested in and learn to get a sense of satisfaction from having got through them.

If your life is a rarefied world of other rather smug children who are all pursuing unlimited creativity with no restraints on what they can do and you never have to come into contact with people who live outside this bubble you are going to struggle when you eventually bump into people outside this world.

Better to have learned to deal with the reality of the "conformist" world at 11 and taken what you need from it but rejected what you don't like than have it slap you in the face with its cold hard reality at 19 when you're woefully unprepared.

Please do not lump them all in the same group.

It really, REALLY depends on their motivations to do so. I have known some home educating groups to be very cultlike, wrapped up in the arrogance that they can do it better than trained educators, or that the schools aren't religious enough to meet their family's needs (working Ina faith school, I've seen this a lot).

There's also another group for which home education is often the only solutionmost of these are for families with children with special needs which are so poorly served by the education sector in this country-it says more about the sad state of affairs in our government than it does about any cult behaviour.

The concept of people who home educate being privileged comes over to me as almost laughable. Most people I come across who do so are in that position because their children cannot cope with school and/or have been seriously damaged by their school experience, mainly due to SEN and bullying. Even if they have tuition provided by the local authority, it still causes major problems because usually one parent has to be at home and therefore the family's finances are affected. Where it helps their child's mental health they are obviously in favour, but most would send their child to school in a heartbeat if it was remotely possible.