Homeschooling and Maturity

By: Eva Ryman

For my final report, I would like to discuss something that has been prevalent in my personal life for years now. That topic is how homeschooling, for me, helped me to become more focused, independent, autonomous, and mature. I have been homeschooled for most of my life, but I did attend public school when I was much younger. As such, I was able to gain perspective from both sides. My family has done almost every different style of homeschooling: classical, unschooling, tutoring, tutorial, traditional, and co-op (this video goes into a brief overview of the general co-op structure). Overall, homeschooling is not a perfect fit for every family or every situation, but it did work for me, so this is a summary of the collection of homeschool experiences that helped me to “grow up”.  

To gain perspective (this video goes into more detail about the differences between public, private, and home schools), there are about 2 million children in the nation being homeschooled versus almost 51 million in public schools and around 5 million in private schools. So, homeschooling is the minority group here, meaning that to many people, it’s a complete mystery. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrases and assumptions “well you don’t SEEM homeschooled,” “do you even have homework?” “how do you socialize?” and even “do you ever wish you’d went to REGULAR school?” These sorts of questions have never really offended me; rather, I usually get surprised that people know so little about homeschooling, but then I remember how few people actually do. So, to explain the true difference between home and public schools, here’s a few examples from my life as a homeschooler. 

First of all, homeschoolers are not from a different planet or anything. I know a few families who do things in an old-fashioned and specific way (like wearing denim skirts), but most everyone I know is indistinguishable from everyone else. It’s shocking the amount of people I meet that have these crazy misconceptions about the daily life of homeschooling. One that I always found amusing is the idea that everyone in the family wakes up at the same time, makes their beds, gets dressed like they’re actually GOING to school, goes to the kitchen to eat breakfast (prepared by the mother every morning, preferably fresh from the garden), and then sits at the table all together with their primers while the mother or father teaches while pointing at a whiteboard. I can tell you that this couldn’t be further from the truth. We wear sweatpants, slack off and sleep in, have phones and electricity (that we have to sneak using during schooltime), drink soda, and eat Pop-Tarts and cereal like everyone else. I’ve exclusively seen this thought process in people who have grown up in public or private schools, or with a “typical” classroom setting. And yet, I could count on one hand the number of families I know that do this, and even they typically have children all around the same age. So, this idea of a “school” is really more of a social construct.  

A “school” day for me in high school, or even middle school, would be waking up whenever I wanted, within reason. Typically, most homeschoolers I’ve met are night-owls, so they sleep later in the day, around 9 or so. I usually woke up around 9 or 10, since I was often up late doing homework (yes, I had homework, and no, not all of my work was “homework” just because I was “homeschooled”; I got that one a lot growing up as well), working night shift in foodservice, or babysitting. Then, I would go and make myself some breakfast, eat, and usually I would go back to my room to start on schoolwork. The issue with the “sitting around the table” mentality is that I have four younger siblings, all in different grades and with different attention spans. We’ve only ever tried once or twice to do something together, and it’s torturous every single time; the subject is usually too easy for me, too boring for my next two sisters, and too complicated for my youngest two siblings. So, everyone goes off to their rooms, or a quiet room in the house since most of us had roommates, and works on their own homework. This in of itself was foundational in my focus levels and maturity, because I had to be responsible enough to focus on my own coursework. No one was making me or watching to make sure I did what needed to be done, I was left to my own devices. If I didn’t complete my coursework by the end of the year or semester, I would have to work on it over the summer or winter until it was finished. When I transitioned from K-12 to college, this previous experience alone prevented me from becoming overwhelmed with homework or bad grades, because I had already learned how to focus on my coursework and be solely responsible for completing it. 

Another thing that helped me to grow up, specifically to become independent and have problem solving skills, was the variety of coursework I was exposed to, and the structure of said work. More often than not, I had a relatively short school day, only around four to five hours of actual class time, and that time was spaced out with several smaller breaks in between. This was because my schoolwork was completed at my sole decision, and I chose to have a longer school day with a break of around 10-20 minutes per hour. This sort of scheduling experience definitely came in handy in college, but the biggest thing was the fact that not all of my coursework was in a “study” setting. It wasn’t uncommon for my family to go to a park, a location like Lost River Cave, or even to the Nashville Zoo or Adventure Science Center in replacement for coursework that day. When I got later into high school, some of my textbooks were replaced with practical experience, such as finances textbooks being replaced with practical finance examples and work, like balancing my own checkbook. I didn’t learn about the different kinds of poetry, I wrote poetry. My younger siblings don’t read about simple machines like levers and pulleys in books, they create them and practice with them. My sisters don’t read about art and literature, they participate in it through practical art class and Shakespeare drama productions or recitations. This sort of real-world experience, especially in a child, can teach much more effectively than just reading about a certain topic. It also helped to capture the joy of learning about new things and kept us from becoming burnt-out with repetitive coursework and monotonous lessons. 

 

Of course, parenting style plays into this maturity as well. My parents have always encouraged me to be independent by letting me have my own space and make my own decisions, as well as push me outside of my comfort zone in more ways than one. Asking me to defend an issue I disagree with, putting me in uncomfortable situations like public speaking or performing, always pushing me to be better than I was yesterday, all of this played a big part in how quickly I grew up and my current maturity levels. Doing extracurriculars was also helpful: sports, choir, mock trial, martial arts- I've done a lot of things outside of school that have pushed me to be independent and grow my social skills, thus the “you don’t SEEM homeschooled” remark I’ve encountered so frequently in my life. I have met some socially awkward homeschoolers, but they are a rare case, typically the homeschoolers that were pulled from public school for some sort of insubordination, disruptive behavior, or even expulsion. Almost all the homeschoolers I meet have great social skills, can effectively handle stress and decision making without folding to the pressure, and are comfortable in their own skin. This is what I would add on to Kant’s definition of maturity, “the ability to think for oneself,” as my own definition of maturity. In a society where people are more comfortable to have someone else tell them what to do, as seen in schools, homeschooling allowed me to avoid that sort of authority. Overall, the situations outside of my comfort zone, brought about by homeschooling, helped me to learn to think critically, be independent and autonomous, and ultimately, to be mature and grow up.