Homeschooling opinion/experience

This comes from someone who has gone to public elementary schools (6-12), has done homeschooling for 4-ish years (12-16) and is about to go back to public school. This is my personal opinion and experience. If you do/do not agree, please share why in the comments, even if you have no experience with homeschool yourself. (I'm also putting this in general cuz idk where else it would go)

I believe it could work. For the sake of this, our hypothetical child/student is Amy. Let's say Amy has a condition/disability that makes going to a public school difficult for her, then, homeschooling might benefit her. In another case Amy has severe mental health problems due to stress or other students bullying her, then homeschooling might benefit her. And I still say might in these scenarios because it has to be done right. Most things other than that, I don't believe is a good enough reason, most because who knows, maybe there's a reason I haven't heard of but agree with.

In my case, we started homeschool so we could be closer to our mother, and so we would be out of harms way from other students (bullying and such). Me and Alice would've started secondary school, Esme and Bender would've been in I think 3rd class. I had mixed feelings, I had major FOMO, I wouldn't be going to school with the rest of my class, but I was also excited to stay in my pjs all day. Over the years, there were ups and downs, but overall, I ended up deciding it didn't work anymore. 

The good: We get to express ourselves without worry about school dresscode or other students' criticism (eg. dye hair, try different styles). We got pets in that time, I'm unsure we would've if we went to public school. We get to decide which materials we use and what times/order to do things, so we can cater the learning to our needs and see what works best. We had themed weeks/days (eg. Grinch day near Christmas, space week, dino day, etc) so we could break up the boredom of the regular schedule, this was only really in the first two years. We get to be close as a family. We have no homework so we have more free time. More free time meant we can do hobbies/learn new skills. We can delay work if an important appointment comes up.

The bad, which outweigh the good by a landslide: Our mom decides the schedules, but she strays from them often. We've had days where mom was in a bad mood, or one of us felt a off so we just cancelled the whole day. We had times when we'd do things an hour late so the whole day was messed up. There have been several occasions this week alone where they (everyone but me) went past break time and didn't compensate for it. I hear Alice come upstairs up to 15 minutes after break was supposed to end and I had already been doing my work. And by they didn't compensate I mean that if Alice stayed on break until 12:30pm instead of noon, she still stopped at 1pm instead of 1:30pm, so she would be behind on work. 

I'm apparently the only one that cares about schedules here. Sure I wake up at the last minute, but that's a window. Mom says wake up between 9 and 10am, and sometimes I wake up at 9:58, so I don't bother going down to have breakfast and I go straight to work. And one time I worked on my costume for two hours in the morning instead of doing my work, so I added two hours to my finishing time. I got permission for that btw, I asked if I could do it if I compensated for it later and mom said sure in a tone that sounded like she really didn't care if I did the work later. So, flexible schedule can also mean losing structure because you are used to rearranging things.

I have basically no social life. And I know this isn't just a me thing, I've heard the same from other homeschoolers. We've had few courses/classes, both in person and online, but no real friendships formed there, not for lack of effort. We also had penpals for a bit, but that didn't last either. And then there was absolutely nothing, the most outside contact was going grocery shopping with parents. And of course making friends on social media never works (aimed at about a dozen people I've tried to befriend via tiktok/snapchat) I highly recommend that if you are homeschooling to sign up for something that would involve talking to other people. 

Having so few people to talk to really sucks. I can't tell my family about my day because I spend it with them. 'Today I played Roblox with my sister!' 'I know, dumbass, I was the one you played with' See? Not exactly great. And then there's things you just can't tell your family, no way they'll hear some of the things I think. And eventually they get sick of hearing about something I like, so I just sit there with my opinion and nobody can react to it. 

And I'm honest, I'm sick of my family. I don't want to see the same five people every day. And I think this also happened for them, and this leads to bad moods and easy annoyances and then over time being mean to each other is the norm. This kind of behavior makes it hard to be positive and it leads to bad mental health. 

Something that can also be effected by the lack of social life in homeschooling, is not knowing how to interact with people your age. You watch movies and see social media and pick up phrases or habits from that, but that's not how anyone speaks in person. Then when you do end up in a social setting with people of similar age you feel out of place because nobody speaks or acts like you. And that certainly isn't fun. How I speak right now, in this post, I'm guessing nobody my age speaks like this in person. I don't use slang often, rarely in person, and even less online. 

The structure of school is also missing. There is one person in control (mom), sometimes two if father teaches us something in his expertise. A public school has teachers, a principal, assistants, nurse maybe, I wouldn't know, I've been at home for four years. So there is one person to fill all of those roles, and that loses importance. Also it being a parent makes it easier to talk back or disobey because you are familiar with them and know their limits and what punishments you might get. There's no fear of detention or suspension, there's no real rules. I might be weird for this, but I prefer being in fear of getting in trouble because it encourages me to do good. Mom doesn't make me fear doing something wrong because there are no punishments except maybe yelling, and that makes me lose motivation to do well.

Another thing that might just be a me thing, I want to do proper exams and tests and such. And somewhat in relation, is breaks/graduation. Having to do those big important exams or even little pop quizzes makes it feel more real and like I'm actually learning. We have done a few tests but it didn't particularly feel like much. And breaks don't feel like breaks, I'm already at home every day, the only difference is I'm in my room instead of at the kitchen table. And I feared that if I were to graduate secondary school via homeschool it would be underwhelming and just be 'I'm done, now what'. I want to have a final day to count down to and feel like I actually accomplished something. I want a proper graduation, however it may go.

And my strangest opinion, I want to hate school. I want to be like 'omg finally I can go home' I want home to be a good thing, I don't want to feel trapped here. And if I don't end up hating school, that's great, then it proves that my decision to go was a good one. I look forward to making friends, being more structured, and maybe joining school clubs. Of course my hopes for school aren't certain. I may end up being bullied, or feeling behind, or it being too stressful and too much for me. But I will go into it with a positive mindset, and hopefully, it won't be total hell.

Also, non-schooling or whatever they call it, where they just let the kids learn from experience or museums/movies isn't good. They will end up behind and not learn basics until way later in life. Museums and learning from experience is an extra resource, it can be done beside textbooks and workbooks. We've had a couple of informational movie days or museum trips to learn more about for example the human body (Corpus museum in the Netherlands, love it) but that was beside everything else. We still learned algebra and verbs.

In summary, I believe homeschool can be done right, but from my experience and others' stories, it should only be done if absolutely necessary. Thank you for reading this, and feel free to share your own opinion in the comments. Have a great day/night!