Why is homeschooling so popular as it seems to be in the USA, more than in other Countries?

31 comments

  1. Maybe it’s more popular than other countries. But it’s certainly not *popular* — most American kids go to traditional school.

  2. The US is more religious, and a large portion of the people homeschooling their children are religious families who disagree with how secular the public schools systems are. If for example you don’t believe in evolution, and want your child to be taught a creationist view of the universe, you would need to homeschool them or send them to a Christian private school.

    Likewise, the US has a stronger cultural emphasis on independence and self-reliance than many other countries do, which encourages some families to try and raise and educate their children themselves rather than send them to a public school.

  4. Bullying, religious reasons, the child has various disabilities, the parents question the school districts quality, and or believe they can do better as teachers than the schools. These tend to be the common reasons for why parents want/prefer to homeschool their children.

  5. It’s not *that* popular. From a cursory Google search, most estimates seem to be in the range of 5-6% of kids.

    As for *why*, that’s complex and likely varies heavily by location and individual family. Some jurisdictions don’t adequately fund their public schools. Some parents have religion-based reasons to want to teach their children differently. Some small number of people just don’t trust “the government.” There are any number of reasons.

  6. For a variety of reasons:

    Compromised immune systems that make public schools dangerous

    Unwillingness to get vaccines

    Behavioral problems

    Cable news convincing people that public schools will chop off their son’s wieners

    Misusing the system to keep kids around for farm labor

    Religious reasons

    Living in communes

  7. Because there are a ton of state approved resources available to anyone who wants to homeschool their kids. I’m not sure how it works in other countries, or if someone needs a “reason” to be allowed to homeschool or not. Here your qualifications don’t matter, as long as the child can pass the required aptitude assessments.

    I knew homeschooled kids who had serious intellectual and social development issues, and other homeschooled kids who were geniuses and did it so they could start college at 14 years old. I think there’s value in attending classes in person, but remote learning and independent study can give you everything you need if the student is motivated.

  9. I can’t speak to how common it actually is here vs other countries, but I can say it’s really not common here. Most people I know who were homeschooled were because either their parents didn’t want them to be exposed to drugs, sex, etc in high school (normally religious), because they were expelled, or because they were bullied.

  10. 94% of American students go to a traditional school, so it’s not much more common than other countries unless you want to argue 94% is some massive difference from 97%, but I digress. Some key reasons why the US rate is higher:

    1. Curriculum, if a parent disagrees with the state’s curriculum they can homeschool. Some countries have less of a “fuck the government” culture than the US or have requirements that the curriculum be taught in the homeschool as well, removing this factor.
    2. Legality, as in it is actually legal here. A surprising amount of countries, like Germany, Sweden, have made homeschooling illegal, if not heavily restricted.

  11. It’s still not popular. It has increased in recent years from the pandemic though.

  12. Most homeschool students are in a traditional school by high school and many even earlier than that

  13. Homeschooling is simply not allowed in Germany, for example, so even having the option of someone without teaching experience being allowed to educate their own children in the US makes it seem more popular

  14. There aren’t many, it just increased after covid. Most of my friends were aware that the education wasn’t to their expectations, but the pandemic confirmed it. Only one friend of mine switched to homeschool after, but most of my friends had their kids switched to other schools that had smaller classrooms since public schools in our area have large classes which just means you won’t be able to advance through the material as fast.

  15. Eh…It’s not really *that* popular. It takes a lot of effort. One of the main issues is the child losing out on learning to socialize with peers. How to read the room and other such social cues. In the bigger areas it’s not much of an issue because there are Home School meet-ups for field trips and the like. Gives the kids and the parents a chance to mingle. In the smaller areas, you might be the only home-schooled child in town. And maybe play with kids if you happen to meet them at the park, if there is a park.
    A friend of mine was homeschooled because the school district where she lived was utter shit and her mother felt that if her children were going to get any sort of education, she was gonna have to do it herself.
    My cousin was home-schooled for a little while because he was very ADHD and medication was still pretty new and hadn’t really been available. He was a good kid but his teachers would have said he was a terror, the worst student in the whole school. They treated him like a slacker, a troublemaker, back-talker, lazy and stupid. He was expelled from the school for his acting out and his mother had to home school him for a while until medication became an option for him. It turned him into a zombie, but he was able to go back to school and he did rather well.
    People might also home-school for religious reasons. They might not agree with how the teachers teach or what they are teaching.
    Kids might be too sick to go to school. An immune-compromised child like one with cancer or some other illness might make it too dangerous to send a child into what is nearly the germiest place possible.
    Their disabled and it is severe enough that the child might not be safe in public school. Many schools are good with this but some are too small or too poor to really be able to accommodate and keep the child safe.

  16. People i know that have homeschooled their children have done so for a few reasons. Some have a disagreement with curriculum on religious grounds or view schools as dysfunctional either on safety concerns, bullying, or just generally ineffective. I think many school districts make it easy to access curriculum via online formats now

  17. We home school, so allow me to add our main reason as it isn’t listed elsewhere:

    People don’t often realize how much freedom, timewise and location, it can create.

    When a student has nearly 100% focus of their instructor they can learn and accomplish a lot more in the same timeframe. Assignments can be adjusted to work on areas they struggle and move on from topics as soon as they have them down pat.

    Additionally, there is no commuting/bus travel.

    Finally, you can do the school work anywhere with wifi. Being able to travel and not fall behind is a major advantage and perk.

    I’m a bit biased in favor. I just hate all the insulting claims and insinuations with which these threads are always filled.

    Edit: clarity and transparency.

  18. Because American public school is dangerous due to other ill behaved children, and kids don’t really learn much there anyway. Kids learn more with family with more useful skills and experience.

  19. IMO, the only benefit to public school is that your kids can socialize.

    I’m not blaming the teachers… but you just can’t teach 30 kids at once. It’s a _very_ inefficient system. Homeschooling isn’t perfect but it is what I would want to do if I had the time and resources.

  21. I wasn’t fully homeschooled, but I did go to a school where you only attended classes 1-2 days a week (depending on what you were taking and how they were scheduled). We then worked on our assignments through the rest of the week. Not really true homeschooling, but pretty close.

    That system allowed us more than enough time for classroom instruction, and if you needed more time then the teachers were happy to make time for individual instruction. Admittedly, we had tiny class sizes, but still. I really don’t understand what they are doing all day in public schools. Public school students (at least, this was the case when I was young) attend school 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, and still bring home 1-2 hours of homework. I mean, really? What are you doing for those 5 days that still leaves homework to be done mostly every afternoon?

    To answer your question: homeschooling and similar alternatives, in my experience, tend to yield equivalent or superior outcomes to public school, whilst also allowing more time for non-school activities throughout the week.

  22. You have to remember there is a lot of wilderness and just emptiness in the USA. There are communities you can only reach by plane, helicopter, boat, snowmobile, sled, or foot with no roads or other infrastructure that connects to them. Not everyone can commute to a shared building due to the remoteness of some communities so sometimes homeschooling or distance learning is the only viable option. Also some kids are nomadic which makes attending a conventional school hard. So homeschooling and distance learning curriculum were developed ages ago to meet this need. Also homeschooling can be a better option for children who don’t fit well in traditional school environment especially if there are no alternative schools or programs available.

  23. I was homeschooled, and I like to say that there’s good reasons and bad reasons to do it.

    The good reasons might be that maybe the school district where you live is utter shit, or maybe you’re pretty well educated yourself and you think that with a smaller class size, you can do a better job than a teacher who has to juggle 30 kids might. Maybe you live in buttfuck nowhere, and it’s literally your only option. You have to think you can do a better job than the alternative to a degree that it’s worth the drawbacks, and you have to recognize and mitigate those drawbacks.

    Mine did it for the wrong reasons. They were afraid we’d be “corrupted” in public school by being exposed to other religions, races, beliefs, etc., and by being taught to be tolerant of such things. They basically wanted to keep us isolated as much and as long as they could. That, and that they were afraid of health and biology classes.

    My impression is that most homeschooling families do it for the wrong reasons. I have a lot of observations that make me think that, but I don’t have a lot of hard data to back it up.

  24. Public schools around me haven’t been accredited in over a decade, why would I subject my children to that?

  25. I have some friends who home school. They basically fall into two camps

    Religious – They want to make sure their children are instructed in their religion and values

    Education – 2 families I know (not religious) pulled their kids out of public schools during COVID, when they saw what was being taught.

    https://fee.org/articles/us-census-homeschooling-triples-diversifies-during-pandemic-response/

    Spare a moments pity for public school students in Baltimore.

    https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/dst2019/pdf/2020016xm4.pdf

  26. 1. It’s illegal in many countries
    2. My guess is that there are more stay at home parents here than in other countries where maternity leave is well supported
    3. Deep individualistic streak here, a lot of families don’t want to conform.

    With that said, homeschooling is only *relatively* popular, the vast majority go to public or private schools.

  27. A large part of it is that I assume in most countries you don’t have the freedom to do that. So part of the reason for its relative popularity in the US is that it is allowed. Another part is cultural, in say Finland I assume most people would consider home schooling to be some sort of disservice to the kid, and they might be right if it isn’t done properly.

  28. It is extremely popular with celebrities and the uberwealthy because there is less of a chance their sons and daughters will be kidnapped for ransom. Its how I make the big bucks (I teach and mentor homeschooled children).

  29. Some countries don’t allow homeschooling at all. (Germany for example).

    Both of my kids are/were homeschooled. It’s more popular in some states than others, and has become more popular recently due to issues around the disease-that-shall-not-be-named and the shutdowns and other policies resulting from it.

  30. Whether online or irl I’m seeing more and more people fed up with the public school system, for varying reasons. If you don’t want that, your other options are private or homeschool and private school is pricey.

  31. There is a feeling in some circles that Public School does not meet the interests of children.

    Most people don’t know how many good arguments for it there actually is, because the resources available in libraries and bookstores work a lot better than school for teaching and at less cost in aggravation. Even homeschoolers don’t exploit opportunity properly; sometimes they just buy a version of school textbooks that suits their needs and try to imitate school.

    Real books that had to survive on the open market teach better than school textbooks that are assigned to unwilling students and therefore promise the author an assured market.

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