I Can't Blame Them

I used to think that homeschoolers did basically the same thing as "everyone else" and resented that some people like college admissions officers did, when they questioned of the validity of what homeschoolers were doing.

Now that my kids are older and I have one child in homeschool high school I am starting to get it. Now that my own kids are working hard while I know some other homeschoolers are slacking off, I can't help but think that there is a difference in the quality and content of the education they are experiencing. Now that I see what some high school kids are doing I get it, at least from my perspective -- I see high schoolers working hard and barely having any time left to goof off and just relax. Anyone who does the hard work and many hours deserves credit. Anyone who cuts corners and passes off what they do as equivalent instruction is a cheater, and it is just wrong.

Let me give an example that is pretty simple to discuss: sports.

There is something to be said of participating in a competitive sport and attending practice 4, 6 or 7 times a week. There is a certain amount of dedication and persistence that is required to just be on the team let alone to perform well and to win. In order to compete, there are usually attendance requirements for the practices. Slackers or unreliable members of the team either are banned from competing or are kicked off the team, especially by the high school years. Some teams have rankings, varsity vs. JV and A team vs. B team.

When it is said that a high school student did X sport for Y season of the year, or the whole year, everyone universally knows what that consists of and how much hard work and the hours that went into it. People know what it means when someone says they played football on the high school team, they know that means hard practice from August through Thanksgiving and lots of games.

My son is doing competitive rowing. According to our records he has already exceeded 120 hours of direct instruction and exercise practicing rowing and this is just the third month of the year. If I were to use Carnegie credit hours to calculate this as a physical education course he would be done with a full credit for PE for grade nine and it is only October.

I guess as the year goes on and as he does three seasons of rowing in this grade level I could add that time in as extracurricular classes but I'm not sure if we should bother. On the other hand if a student did three sports in a year with the three seasons they would list that on their transcript so why not list the full amount done with one sport? Hours spend honing a physical skill and getting in good physical condition takes time away from doing other pursuits. If my son were not on a rowing team he would have more time to study and do one or two more academic classes a day. No one would balk at a student doing more academics so why should they balk at counting all the hours done for physical education?

Not all homeschoolers will access high school level sports, even if they are available in the community somehow. Yes, I know that competing on actual school teams is not allowed by various rules (they vary by state I believe) but some get around it by participating through private schools. A homeschooler may be allowed to compete on a team for a Christian private school for example. One group of homeschoolers in my area has taken what I'd call a homeschool co-op and made it an official private school (in legal terms) for part-time admissions and they have real sports teams that compete against schools. So those are three ways that homeschoolers might participate in real high school level sports.

A homeschool mom friend of mine from Connecticut is trying to get me to enroll my younger son into a travel competitive fencing team. There is one in our area (for middle school and high school). College scholarships are available sometimes as it is played on the college level. One of my friend's children competes in fencing and they travel to various states on weekends to compete.

However there are other homeschoolers doing something more watered down. I keep seeing homeschool classes being offered for fencing in my area which is not an equivalent program. From what I can tell they have some lessons and have fun with it. They do not compete with teams. They do not put the hours into practicing that a competitive travel team would.  A nice homeschooling mother told me of a homeschool option for soccer near me which has one practice a week and one game but it is not competitive to the point where they do not even keep score at the one game they play each week. In those two cases if we did these watered down homeschool sports it would not be fair to call them the equivalent of what the majority of kids do in a traditional environment.

My younger son has put in hundreds of hours with a private lacrosse team and the experience has included learning about sports and navigating the tough social experience. He had to deal with some immature kids and some bullies. He dealt with cliques and popular kids and exclusion and a strong pecking order. There have been pros and cons to every part of the experience.

I think my son learned a lot by sticking with the sport and showing up faithfully and not quitting after being pushed around by the biggest bully on the team. My son had to learn to be more assertive to jerks which is not the same as being assertive with a more mature minded reasonable person (a skill he'd mastered previously).

I share that social part of my son's community sport experience as multiple homeschool moms advised me to force my son to quit the team when I told them the negative social crap that was going on. I felt the social stuff was typical for school kids and that my son was used to the more mature, more kind and non-physical bullying kids who homeschool. I felt that my son had everything to gain and nothing to lose by learning to deal with the nonsense as it was "the real world". Yes, my heart ached that he was not instantly being welcomed into cliques and that he was not even being given a chance to show that he's a likable kid. I hated the fact that he was being bullied and even physically taunted (no serious injury occured) so I took that up with the coach and the physical stuff did end then. I would not have repeatedly put my child into harm's way physically if that part hadn't stopped after my intervention.

In playing lacrosse in a serious manner, my son learned skills of the game and he still has a lot to learn if he is to continue to improve. I could see the difference in poor conditioning and worse skills (for all team members) the year we had three practices a week and one game versus the year we wound up having 3-5 practices and 1-3 games a week. Thus I saw the direct benefit of a more rigorous program. Although I complained, back then, of the time this took for not just him but for me also and time taken away from family dinners in the spring, the reality is it is one tough quarter in the year and the rest of our year was not as crazy with the schedule. The fact is that in order to do a job well and to do it seriously, real work needed to be put into the pursuit. I guess the question is how hard really should a fourth or fifth grader work at a competitive sport, how much is worth it really? Is 15-20 hours a week for one sport too much?

If I were to cobble together homeschool kids of various ages to teach a lacrosse skills clinic for two hours a week it would not compare at all to my son's experience on the community travel team. The two things are just not equivalent. Period.

Homeschooling allows a family freedom to customize a child's academic education and all of their pursuits. However when something is watered down and when an attempt to pass an experience off as equivalent it is not fair or right. If a student can study for 1/5 the time that a schooled kid can and he can learn the same information that is fantastic and you can get away with saying "this student did high school chemistry in grade 10". But it is not right to either study 1/5 the content and call it an equivalent high school academic class or to do a sport 2 hours a week and pass it off as the same thing as spending 10-20 hours a week doing it. Now I can't blame the use of Carnegie credits in order to add up hours of instruction to try to have some kind of standardization of the credit hours.

I am surprised and disappointed when I see homeschoolers cutting corners at things that really matter. Soccer may not matter. But counting up 20 hours of hiking and calling that physical education class for the entire school year is pushing it. Doing some walks around the neighborhood is not the same as having a fitness plan and actually following it over a period of time.

I heard a homeschool conference speaker say that her daughter worked a job at Girl Scout camp in charge of Scouts and then they put that down as an equivalent class in sociology. What baloney. When people exaggerate the work done intentionally in order to say that XYZ equivalent instruction was completed they are potentially harming all homeschoolers not just cheating their own child out of the experience of a more complete and thorough learning or sports experience.

Can you blame colleges for wanting homeschoolers to jump through hoops such as getting certain scores on SAT subject tests to try to gauge if the student has really learned what they think is basic course material? As much as I hate boring standardized testing that requires parroting back of facts I really can't blame people for wanting a quick litmus test result as proof that the homeschooler really learned high school biology versus just taking a nature walk, learning a few of the most common trees and looking at pond water under a microscope for the umpteenth time.

Really in the end who is being cheated by trying to cheat the system? The student loses out, that's who. By not doing much for the learning experience or the sports experience or the whatever else experience (musical instrument or Boy Scouts etc.) the student has missed out on the good and the bad that came from putting in all that time and actively participating in a rigorous program. This isn't just and issue of playing a college admissions game the core issue is what the student has learned and experienced.

I'm not looking for my kids to get by doing minimal work and then proclaim they did a lot. What good would that do? If they did get into college based on my puffed up Homeschool Mommy Transcript they may not be able to cut the mustard in their classes to earn that degree to move on to do that job as their career. Yes, putting in the hard work now to actually do the work will be worth it when my kids are competent and able to do the work that all of this learning is gearing them up to do.