Home school or public/private schools?

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Any of you parents have children that have autism or LD and that is home schooled? I went to public school and had to deal with the bullies. I thought that maybe if I was home schooled I would avoid most bullying. Smaller class size, not having to deal with going to classes and dealing with mean kids on the way to my next class. Not going to a locker to get books. Not having to eat in a huge cafeteria with other kids. Not going to prom.

My 11 year old PDD/AS son has home-un-schooled most of his life. He's happy!

We chose to keep our 6 year old son, diagnosed with HFA in the private school he attended for preschool because the school encourages parental involvement and it is a "community" of people that for the most part, share the values and principles that we have. These values also create a respect and dignity for one another, regardless of their range of abilities. I know there are some excellent public schools out there that probably can boast the same qualities- I am merely speaking from my personal decision. I have always said that if I couldn't find a school that I felt was helping stabilize my childs' self-esteem, then I would not have a problem home-schooling. We can find social outlets in other ways.

I was home schooled through the 2nd grade, went to a private school for disabled kids 3rd-5th, catholic school (IT SUCKED) 6-half of 7th & public half of 7th-graduation (PHEW, again HATED it). I think aspie/autie kids should be homschooled/private school for disabled kids when they are young b/c they can get the academic help they need & help with social skills. Complete isolation from bullies won't realistically help them cope as adults .

I went to a state school (a public school here isn't ) and hated it. But my parents (probably correctly) didn't feel able to teach me at home. The headteacher at my infant school told my mom that I was the only child she had ever seen who would have been better off being home educated.

We've got all of the above on this board. There is definitely no one-size fits all solution when it comes to education.

My son THRIVED in public elementary school, and is making it through public middle school. I have offered to pull him from middle school and home school, but he has rejected that offer for a variety of reasons. We've been lucky that bullying has not been a pervasive issue for him, that he does have the level of friends he wants, and that he is naturally optimistic. He is also, interestingly enough, drawn to crowds of people (although the vast majority of actual individuals in those crowds are, by his description, annoying.) And he likes the routine of institutional school, even if so many individual parts of it annoy him.

The one thing I will say to every parent is that children can and have the right to thrive in their education. If they are not, then look at a change, whatever that means.

I really wish that I could have been home-schooled. Anyone who defends public-schooling by way of "but what about social skills!" can be assured that I did not learn anything good in the form of social interaction from public-schooling, and the same can be said education-wise.

Yes, again! :lol I thought I'd just expand a little on my previous reply, ( inspired by buryuntime's post! )


Interestingly that is exactly the argument in defence of school which my son's year teacher used when I said that after just 12 days of college we were thinking of homeschooling again ( he stopped after 14 days ) , because he was so deathly bored, and had no time anymore to do all the other things which interest him. She had nothing to say about his boredom, but said with some conviction that she thought that the "vie de classe"/"classroom social life" would be good for him.

I said that surely children aren't allowed to talk in class, and the twenty minutes twice a day of recreation, ( my son came home for lunch ), were a lot less fun at college than at primary school because noone played real games anymore, they just hung around nattering and exchanging punches, and giggling, being stupid etc, whereas at primary, just three months ago, the same children were running around playing tag and hide and seek and other group games.

She agreed that children were not allowed to talk in class but that the non-verbal communication of connecting with others, exchanging signals, belonging to teams, etc, was rich and important. Well, Timothy doesn't even see any of that; he sees the teacher, the task, and hears the noise that the incorrigible chatterers/whisperers are making around him ( and the repeated time-wasting lectures they get from the teachers about it too ) . And he was dying of the sleep inducing pointlessness and dullness and outright idiocy of most of the school work.

I am feeling a lot more confident this time about home-un-schooling ( "freestyle"; little or no regular "school work/exercises, he does whatever he's interested in, whether that is reading, writing stories, creating complex games, playing on the computer, constructing lego technic stuff, etc ), because he did so phenomenally well during the five months last year that he attended a tiny local private catholic primary school ( nominal fees ), despite having only ever been to school for three weeks aged five.

He started at the little local primary school in February 2010, and although he had done virtually no school work for a year and a half before and only about an hour a day in the previous three years when we followed a correspondence course, he shot to top of the class in maths, and was among the top of the class in history and geo, science, and french, ( and obviously top in english, he was bilingual in a french school ), etc. ... And was getting massively bored by mid-May/early June, because they took so long, spent so many lessons, on the smallest of tasks, the simplest new things.

And "college" was worse, instantly. No longer had Wednesdays off, and lunchhours half an hour shorter, and an earlier start; he had almost no time left to do the things he loves. A class of 26, ( compared to 19 of mixed ages at the little school ), and even more painfully slow presentation and repetition of lesson materials. He said that the most awful thing ( apart from having almost no time left for the things which interest him that is ), was being put to sleep by the lack of stimulation/interest but having to make himself stay awake.

I saw his work books. I could totally see the problem.

The strangest thing is that this time, because I am so much less scared about the Academic Inspection Controls at the end of the year, because he did so wonderfully well at the little school, ... I am really understanding far more why homeschooling and homeschoolers attract so much hostility from so many directions! ... which is that it is very disorientating/challenging to one's value systems, ( even for me after so many years of HEd ), to realise just how little *use* school is for "learning".

My son learned to read and to write and to do basic maths with no lessons at all. He learned to read aged 7, which had me anxious for at least a year before, but I waited, put almost no pressure on him, and lo and behold, almost overnight he started reading, and has already read some Kipling, some Dickens, Tolkien's "Lord of the Ring", Wodehouse, Conan Doyle, ancient myths and legends, Agatha Christie, Philip K Dick, John Wyndham, Mary Stewart"s arthurian trilogy, and Harry Potter, of course, aswell as C S Lewis, and many other classics.

He learned basic maths, ( adding, subtracting, multiplication and percentages ), from playing games on the internet, and to write at speed on in-game chat windows, or on forums, skills he has used increasingly to write stories, and to plan intricate games, etc. He loves calculating percentages and complex interest sort of sums, and fractions, etc ... online, and also on paper in order to construct well-balanced games, etc.

When I look at what he was doing at college, and even at the primary school ( but he had some fun there, in breaktime, and art lessons ), all I see is make-work, an extraordinarily complex collection of tasks designed not to educate, not to teach a love of learning, nor even "how to learn", but to fulfil school's real purpose, which is to sort and classify children for the gigantic pecking-order machine which is the "work place", and to turn children into compulsive consumers and obedient members of the pecking-order, convinced of its justice/rightness/authority.

And, free of the fear which used to weigh on me before, ( and the Academic Inspection does behave menacingly ), I am assailed by a feeling of disorientation, of unreality ... because if school, which is such a central part of our society, is not about teaching children how to learn, if it is almost totally useless at that, if as is the case children do most of their learning at home, if school sends a great many children to sleep, if so many children leave school illiterate, loathing and hating books and all learning, if what school teaches a great many children is how to "pass the time", without moving, without talking, because there is nothing better to do, if all that school teaches children to do is succeed at school, ( and to feel proud and pleased at succeeding in this selection process ), if this is true, as it does appear to be ... it's like the emperor's new clothes; there is nothing there ( except a cheap babysitting service with brainwashing thrown in for free ).

PS. The two friends, both younger than him, that he made at the little school, he has kept in touch with over the hols and will see at weekends.
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Right now my son (freshman in HS) has a hybrid educational system where he spends the first half of the day in public school taking two core classes and two electives, and spends the rest of the day at home taking the other two core classes through an on-line virtual high school. Our goal is to find the right mix between public school and homeschool that makes him successful. Its only been about four weeks so its too early to tell how well its working but so far so good.

I doubt home-school would have worked for me. I learned most of my social skills by observing the NTs at school.

Am I missing your tone here or just confused? Didn't you home school at least part of high school?

Home-schooling is good and bad. In my case, I have no siblings and my parents are both getting on in years. Mostly they left me alone. House full of breakables. Vitamin D deficiency. Obese. Lonely. Stir-crazy. Bored. Depressed. On the other hand, it beat public school. I was alone often. Taught myself a lot, though little that overlapped with the public school curriculum. No one bullied me. I played a lot of videogames, watched a lot of TV, read a lot of books; became a good writer and learned social skills that way. Gained a lot of wisdom and values that I'm glad to have and might not have gained in public school. Very glad to be in school now; very glad not to have been then.

(And no, the answer to that is NOT to drag your kid out to the park and refuse to come home no matter how much they beg. Lived through that, too. Nor to do it with the backyard. Nor to try to interact if you happen to overload your kid by walking around or speaking or sometimes breathing.)

Ouinon made me thinking. I didn't value educational part of the school at all, whatever is useful for job is done at a college level but I (from the personal experience) valued that school gives the opportunity to observe lots of people and learn how to function among them (preparation for cubical/office work). I think internet changes everything.

you really cant just simply pick one or the other, public school or home school. so much of your childs success depends on varying factors about the school, services available, the teacher, even the student and the other students. likewise with home school, the dynamics between child and parent, available home school groups or clubs, learning opportunities in the surrounding area.

you really have to evaluate each situation on an individual basis with regards to the child and the school and the home.

my oldest will never be home schooled. it simply cant happen. his personality type and those of his parents make it a complete non-issue. instead, we have him enrolled in a gifted charter school, its public so free of cost, but gets him an education better than most private schools. his school just ranked tied for 5th in the state out of over 3000 schools. he spends half the day doing traditional classes (math, social studies, english, etc) and half doing a chosen concentration. his choice is theater, and his elective this year is musical theater, but they also offer visual arts, math and science, dance, voice and keyboard, and language arts. next spring he is going on a school sponsored trip to washington dc, and in high school he will have the opportunity to go on a two week trip to japan, and most of it will be paid with by fundraising efforts. through his school he is getting an education and opportunities that we simply couldnt provide him at home.

for us, for this one child at this time given the options, we chose this school. in the future that may change. for his brothers, that may change. but it was the right choice for our family right now.

it just makes me nervous to see, or imagine i see, people holding up home schooling as the be all end all of educational choices. ive known lots of successful home schoolers, but ive also known some nightmare cases who probably would have fared better in public school. neither choice is better for all children all the time.

If my parents had not taken me out of public school to homeschool me, I would have commited sucide.

Private school is working for us right now. I don't think homeschool would work for my daughter-she wouldn't learn as much as she learns at school in a structured environment. That said, my daughter will never again go to public school no matter what I have to do to prevent it!