Home Schooling vs. Institutional Schooling: Key Tradeoffs

Introduction

Home schooling has become increasingly popular, but there are many arguments to support the position that home-schooled children will be ill-equipped to deal with the common problems that today's — and tomorrow's — world poses to them. As we look at the world around us, we see that it is evolving toward a global community. As such, the skills that a young person acquires through the socialization processes experienced in an institutional school setting will be invaluable when they leave school and begin participating in and contributing to society. Some students will go from high school to college, where their interactions with people of other ethnic origins and cultural traditions will form part of their academic experience. Those who choose paths that do not include college will find themselves in a fast-paced and culturally diverse world that is highly competitive.

Home schooling does not provide the social experience gained from the institutional setting that acclimates young students to the diversity of the world around them. Nor does the home-school environment afford students the opportunity to experience and benefit from the diversity in thought that comes through the institutional setting. This puts home-schooled children, if not at an academic disadvantage, at a social disadvantage — one that will manifest not just socially, but in the ways in which they apply even the best home-schooled learning they have acquired.

This essay examines home schooling versus institutional schooling in an effort to focus on the benefits of the institutional setting in the academic and social experiences of the student. While the reasons that parents choose home schooling may seem clear — more focused academic training in the intimate setting of the home — this essay argues that this goal is more often than not a failed one. Home schooling is perhaps a parent's best intention gone awry.

Home Schooling Is Not New or Innovative

Jane Van Galen and Mary Anne Pitman (1991) point out that it is the institutional setting and the requirement of primary education that is new in the social order, not home schooling (1). When we consider the history of the United States — and the world at large — we must agree with Van Galen and Pitman, because compulsory school attendance for juveniles, though found at intervals throughout history in Europe and in America, became legislated into law in Virginia in 1646, and in 41 other states by 1852 (Cunningham McLaughlin and Bushnell Hart, Eds., 636). Seven of the southern states had no such laws, but did have laws limiting child labor (636). The amount of time spent in a formalized academic setting varied but evolved over time. It was not until 1948 that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created, wherein it holds that primary education is a human right (Morsink 212).

If we consider, briefly, the history of the United States as it is known to most of us — a vast wilderness settled over the centuries — we understand why home schooling was prevalent, since much of the population was scattered across that wilderness and there were no social structures for institutionalized academic settings. In urban settings, however, compulsory education was more prevalent, especially in Europe, where it was believed that society must guard itself against ignorance (Cunningham McLaughlin and Bushnell Hart 636).

Leaders and governments came to the conclusion that education left entirely to the discretion of the family did not reliably prevail. This is the same fundamental problem with home schooling today. While parents who choose to homeschool their children often report that their children demonstrate improved academic achievement as a result of individualized instruction, Van Galen and Pitman cite research conducted by Brian D. Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute and Jon Wartes of Bothell High School in Washington state as finding:

"(However) Parents who teach their children at home usually do not have formal training in pedagogy, curriculum design, or learning development, and many do not even have a college degree (43)."

This lack of preparation in academic disciplines and pedagogy by the home-school educators (parents) should be a concern for those in institutional settings, the government, and society in general. It suggests that the academic achievements and learning skills of children whose parents report improved progress as a result of home schooling are, at best, an exaggeration, and at worst, a form of self-denial about the reality and gravity of home schooling's impact. The latter, of course, is very difficult to overcome — if at all possible — should the child be home-schooled for the entire course of primary education.

Ray and Wartes also describe the academic agenda in two parts: first, the academic task, or classroom content (43–44); and second, the "hidden curriculum" of socialization through the workings of the classroom setting (43). A child can receive and process information, but that information and information processing cannot prepare the child for the social skills or provide the social experience that comes through the institutionalized setting of classroom diversity. As geographical and technological bridges connect us ever more closely to the rest of the world through technology and economic endeavor, it becomes essential for students today to have that social experience so that they will not find themselves inept and socially lacking when confronted by ethnic and cultural differences. The social bonding experience that children gain from the institutional setting surpasses ethnic and cultural differences. Children form friendships and relationships enriched by their differences, because they focus first on their commonalities, and then explore one another through their diversities.

David Tyack (2003) discusses his experience with Paul Vass and Gus Barros, two immigrants from the Cape Verde Islands, colonized under the Portuguese (67). Tyack, Vass, and Barros formed friendships and bonds working alongside one another in construction (67). Their relationship became a cultural exchange: "They introduced me to their community in Roxbury, Massachusetts (67)," Tyack recounts. Their friendship, and especially the exchange of cultural traditions, is a vivid memory that Tyack clearly cherishes fifty years later (67). It was not just that Tyack was exposed to their cultural differences, but also to their perceptions as immigrants who had originated from a Portuguese colony — perceptions Tyack found fascinating. He gained a sense of how people from distant lands perceive America and Americans from afar, and how, once having experienced America directly, those perceptions take on a greater breadth of analysis. Tyack writes:

Concerns about Academic Preparedness in Home Schooled Children

"Long before I had heard about the 'social construction of reality,' Paul and Gus taught me how arbitrary and punitive was the American conception and practice of 'race' (67)."

It is precisely this social construction of reality for which home-schooled children are poorly prepared, and which they must nonetheless navigate once they leave the confines of their homes for the world at large.

Every parent wants to believe their child is gifted. We can gain that sense by spending a small amount of time in any play setting where we might overhear a parent exclaim that their child is a genius, then proceed to recite the evidence they have observed that led them to such a conclusion. Parents are proud of their children, but this pride can blind them to the normal developmental milestones of a child, which they may mistake for genius. It would not be surprising to learn that parents making such remarks have only one child, or that they themselves are only children with limited exposure to young children of varying developmental stages. They are astounded by their child's milestones, often mistaking typical development for exceptional ability.

The psychological preparedness of a child to meet academic challenges is periodically evaluated in formal settings (Craighead and Nemeroff, Eds., 1455); there is no such systematic evaluation in the home setting. This means that in order to assess academic progress and special needs, parents must be prepared not only academically and socially, but also with some level of expertise or external guidance in assessing their child's readiness to meet age-appropriate academic requirements. If, as Ray and Wartes contend, parents are often not educated or familiar with academic curricula to an adequate degree, then it follows that these same parents are even less equipped to conduct the psychological assessments needed to determine their children's special needs and readiness to advance.

Formal institutional settings employ, by law, extensive testing of children's abilities to determine preparedness for entering school and for advancing through the levels of education (Craighead and Nemeroff, Eds., 1455). Craighead and Nemeroff explain:

"School readiness is determined by assessing the developmental level of children in such areas as listening comprehension, visual perceptual and fine motor skills, expressive and receptive vocabulary, and experiential knowledge. Readiness in these varied areas is generally considered to be the necessary foundation upon which to base more diverse and complex learning skills . . . Those children who are relatively lacking in one or more of these areas are considered less ready and at risk unless some type of educational or family intervention is provided. Controlling for other factors, the chronologically older children from a higher socioeconomic background will typically achieve more during the initial school years. Depending on the ability and the resourcefulness of schools to acknowledge and adapt to the individual special needs of their students, the influence of these age and socioeconomic status differences in school readiness can be minimized (1455)."