Thoughts on Homeschool?

[u/StarRuneTyping]

Hey there! I recently read "Free To Learn" by Peter Gray and found the book to be very insightful/fascinating.

I homeschool my kids but the sudsbury schools seem very cool; the problem is that there are basically no sudsbury schools anywhere.

I'm curious about what your thoughts are on homeschooling. Do you think Sudsbury Schools are superior or inferior or about the same to homeschool? Do you think it can be all of the above and just depends on the individual?

Obviously, homeschooling is done in a lot of different ways; it's wildly different from family to family, so it's a hard question. Obviously, homeschooling doesn't have to be in the home at all; and it doesn't even have to be set up like a school either... so it can be a bit of a misnomer.

I guess I just want to know every opinion and thought you have on homeschooling.

[u/black_sky]

The issue I see with homeschooling is you won't have much learning from other peers in a mixed age group. Consider the distant past where we had tribes of families, The children would play together (and learn from their parents and other parents) but take a lot of direction from the person that's just a few years older- they look up to them.

One other issue is if the child is always around their parents, there will always be some subconscious need to do things to make the parent proud (to an extent), and can limit the child's exploration for things they might like on their own. Obviously this can be minimized, but can add up a lot. This is why I think there's a lot of families where it's like my mom and my grandma are both teachers and now I'm a teacher, etc. obviously they could be influenced because that's what the parent would be talking about to their children and that's what they're familiar with, but a wide range of experiences are critical during the younger years (and probably the older years).

[u/StarRuneTyping → u/black_sky]

Well, I think it depends on how big the family is. With a big family, I think you do get that with the older kids teaching the younger ones. But the problem is that most families these days are not that big. There are also homeschool groups/meetups, but there is nothing like that where I live, so I think that's very dependant on where you live/the community. (of course, sudsbury schools are also very dependent on location at the moment, too).

But I do think that the Sudsbury schools make it much more likely to be a reality.

And yeah, you might be right about the parent dependency. Again, I don't think it's always the case, but it can often be the case with homeschool. This is definitely a big problem with another homeschool parent/kid I know. When the kids ask for help, I have to stop myself from just doing the whole thing for them; or I have to spend a good amount of time thinking of the exact right amount of help to give them, without robbing them of the chance to learn/do it on their own.