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Maybe I could have called this something like what I wish I’d known when I was in homeschool, or life after homeschooling or something like that, but essentially, I want to share a little bit of what I’ve learned about how to be successful after homeschool.
My situation is thus, I grew up in California, being one of seven kids in our family, we were all being happily educated in that great state’s public school system. I made it into second grade and found myself in a bilingual class, everything the teacher would teach would first be in English, then we would do it again in Spanish. Due to some frustrations other siblings were also having with their respective situations in school, my mom made the decision to pull us all out and this began our, and her own, homeschooling career. So going in, I could read short chapter books and do subtraction. :)
So I’ve been homeschooled my whole life until my freshmen year of high school, at which point, I felt like I was missing something, so I went for that year, decided it was a waste of my time, took my GED, and am now in my senior year of college. This post is what I would, and have many a time, muse if asked for advice from a homeschooler, or from a mother or father who is considering homeschooling.
First, homeschooling is not for everybody. It’s not for every family, it’s not for every mother, and it is certainly not for every child. I have argued many a debate with a diverse collection of professors, most of them promoters of public education, and every time I am able to make a good argument for homeschooling, I defend vehemently the option of homeschooling, and very often following my argument they will pose the question “Do you plan on homeschooling your own children?” and without fail I reply “maybe, I don’t know yet.” It really does depend on the individual situation.
Why would you want to homeschool? Homeschool has a few great benefits, I have benefited immensely in my experience. I am an avid reader, and as a result of my open schedule growing up, I am very well read, knowing many classics, and unlike my public school classmates who read strictly due to necessity, I read because I loved it, I read because my mother loved to read and passed that passion on to her children. Also, my career is in IT, I was able to fall in love with computers at a young age. Having the ultimate flexibility in my schedule, I progressed very quickly in the realm of geekdom. By the time I was 15, I had two or three programming languages down, I had tons of experience building and fixing computers, and read and researched everything I could get my hands on relating to computers. These are opportunities that I would not have had if I was committed to eight hours of sitting in a class room every day. I just could not have read as much with as pure motives as I had if I was a product of the public school system. Further benefits would be family vacations in off peak times, and what I see as the greatest benefit is the fact that my parents were in a constant state of educating. Everything was an opportunity to teach, every meal that was cooked was a potential chemistry lesson, and every mouse in a trap was a potential biology lecture. We never stopped learning. Exposure to cultures, religions, and races may actually be greater, as was my case, when homeschooling than when you place yourself at the mercy of the diversity of your own school boundary.
Why shouldn’t you homeschool? Well you sacrifice a few things when your class size is one. No sports, except against your brothers, and if you’re as poor as we were, you definitely aren’t getting $20 bucks for the city league, it’s a sacrifice. You’re paying for your own textbooks, and you don’t have a full-time teacher at your disposal. Mom isn’t standing in front of you all day telling you what to do, and answering your questions if you don’t understand. My mother was always available, but it was up to us to do our work. She would sit with us as we’d plan out our schooling and set goals for what we wanted to accomplish, but after that, it was our motivation that carried us to stardom or failure. Finally, in homeschool you don’t get that broad exposure to every subject out there. In homeschool, you get in depth exposure to a few subjects, public school you get a very shallow exposure to a very broad range of subjects.
The one other con of homeschooling is you aren’t confident outside your own puffery. Every homeschooler feels the need to compensate; it’s just part of the show. No one thinks your as good if you’re not staring at a chalk board for 8 hours a day. It rubs off and you will think that you’re missing something as well. When I went to high school for a year, it was simply to prove to myself and others that I could, that I wasn’t stupid. So I entered and no matter what my parents told me, or my placement tests told me, I just knew that everyone else was years ahead of me. There’s just no way I was going to be as smart as these kids who did this as their job, 40 hours a week you know. I took my first test in algebra and scored 8 out of 40 on it. I dropped the class because it was going to be to hard. Only later did it come to light that no one got over 15 on that test, it was designed to motivate you to study, I just took as confirmation of my deepest fears. Public schoolers have seen this tactic countless times, me, not so much, it shook me up pretty good. That is the main con I think. Confidence is much shakier for a homeschooler, no matter how smart, how good looking, how successful, if you come from a background of homeschooling, you are going to be fighting self doubt constantly until you come into your own in every chapter of your career. I fought it for my first few months in high school, with my first corporate job, with my first Div II college, with my first Div I college, and finally feel I am growing out of it as I head into graduate school and find myself working with huge international corporations. The homeschoolers task is to become confident in every subject, in ever aspect of life, only in so doing will real self confidence ever come to him. Harder? Oh yeah, you always think the cards are stacked against you. Worth it? It worked great for me, but I say that now. I have proven myself all over in my life, so I am very confident now, but the most nerve wracking experiences of my life have come as I registered for high school, college, and so on. Naturally you fear the unknown, in homeschool all you initially know is your home. A lemon with potential I guess. :)

I plan on writing more articles along this line, let me know if this is helpful.