The home-schooled kid — a commentary
by Jessica Petzel, posted Dec. 4, 2007

Socially adept, sense of style, lots of friends and knowledge of the world are not qualities you would assign to a kid who has been home schooled. Yet, what you would expect often couldn’t be further from the truth.

Yes, I was home-schooled. And I loved it. So here are some things I think you should know.

Common misconceptions

Q: So you could wear whatever you wanted!?
A: No. We had a poster of school rules and one of them was no P.J.’s.

Q: You got to sleep all day!
A: No. We had a set start time every year, usually 8 or 9 a.m.

Q: So, do you have any friends outside of your family?
A: Yes. And today, I can’t walk across campus without having someone say ‘hi.’

Q: You don’t know how to interact socially.
A: You obviously haven’t met me.

Rachel’s story
Rachel Smeda, an MU junior, was also home schooled. She shares a bit of her experience:

“My parents home-schooled me from kindergarten through sophomore year in high school. My mom had a master's in elementary education, and I never thought I was getting a lesser education as a child. I liked getting to sit on the couch to do my schoolwork and not having to change out of my pajamas. I didn't develop any sense of fashion until I was 12 or so, likely due to there being no need. In some ways, we acted like our own little ‘real’ school, where my brother, sister and I took ‘recess’ at a set time and Mom gave us stickers on our homework when we did well. The other local home-schooling families would arrange activities sometimes, and I was in a fun science-based class once a week that we called Fantastic Fridays. We did little experiments, led by a couple of the moms, like placing ice cubes on sheets of construction paper to see how different colors absorbed sunlight differently.”

My story
I had a very similar experience as Smeda. Furthermore, we both had to rethink home schooling when it got later into high school. Her family dealt by creating Heritage Academy, which is a cross between a private school and home schooling. I went to the local public school part time, and that experience is a whole different story.

Home schooling is similar to any other type of education in that different people can have the same experiences and take completely different things from the experience. Smeda would agree.

“Socially, I've known some home schoolers who assimilate into schools like MU very easily, and others who don't,” she said. “My freshman year here, I was in a biology lab with a student who felt miserable at such a large school, although her public school graduating class of 150 blew my graduating class of two out of the water. Each person is different. Home schooling worked for me, but I wouldn't say it's the best choice for everyone.”

One of my favorite things about being home schooled is that it taught me how to learn, but more importantly it taught me to love to learn. Mark Twain once said, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

While we had a schoolroom complete with desks, a globe, a microscope and more books than some public schools, school usually happened outside of books and boundaries. 

Our encyclopedias and dictionaries have a few food smudges because of dinner discussions. I learned a lot of English when mom and dad would disagree whether a word existed, or science when my brothers would want to know what was the biggest fill-in-the-blank. Questions became the jumping off point of an adventure started by someone sent to go get the required book. We would continue on with dinner and discussions on things like whether Pluto should be a planet and other such quests.

Basically, we were taught to be curious and then how to find answers to our own questions.

Now, I am studying agricultural journalism and political science and am finally done with my math credits. But, I want to take calculus just for the fun of it. Apparently, statistics works because of calculus, and since I had to take statistics, I want to take calculus just because I can, and I want to know how stuff works.

But there is only so much time in the day. So I will fondly remember when I could finish my homework by noon rather than be writing about those experiences at 3:30 a.m. as a university student.

What I think are benefits

• I did get to sleep in.
• I got a month off for Christmas.
• Birthdays are considered school holidays.
• I ate what actually looked and tasted like real food for lunch.
• Gym class was always fun and usually involved getting muddy.
• I rarely did work after lunch, even in high school.
• I never had to take a dumb class.
• I never worried about grades.
• Home schooled students test higher on the ACT. The average composite score of American high school students taking the ACT test was 21, and home-schooled teens scored 22.8 on the scale of 36 in 2000, according to WordNetDaily.
• It prepared me to study in college because I already knew how to teach myself.
• It taught me responsibility and time management skills.

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