School at Home

This week I need help from my readers. I am asking anyone who is or was homeschooled at one point to sort of summarize their experience with it. Here's the kind of thing I'd be interested in:

Do you like it?
Are there any classes you take outside of home with other kids?
Do you find it hard to make friends?
Would you rather go to a public/ private school?
Do you take a lot of extra subjects?
Do you feel like you're missing out on "real school?"
Do you think you move at a fast pace?
Would you say that you're a hard worker?
Do you prefer to work by yourself?
Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
Do you have a youth group you attend?

If you've been to public school before please also include some of these:
If you started out at a public school, why did you switch to homeschool?
Do you feel like you have/had more opportunities homeschooling?
When at public school did you feel that it was slow or that you could go much quicker?
Were the kids generally nice?
Was the homework tedious or was it helpful?
Did you enjoy working in groups?
Were things taught in your learning style or something you were comfortable with?
About how much time was wasted per day/ per class?
Did you enjoy public school? Did you dread it?
Were the teachers good at what they did? Were they nice?
Did you have helpful textbooks?
If you went to public school in elementary, was it all a big waste?
If you were home-schooled until high school and then switched, did you feel prepared? Overwhelmed?
If any of my questions offend by all means skip them!

You may be wondering about this time whether I'm one of those public school kids who has all these misconceptions about homeschooling. Just a minute and I'll answer the questions myself. Here's why I'm asking for comments. If you've read any of my other posts (all two of them!) you'll find that I myself was homeschooled through 4th grade. I loved learning and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then in 5th grade I was forced to go to public school and I've been stuck there ever since. This was due to the fact that my parents were divorced and my father was given decision making rights that included my schooling. This is what the courts call joint-parenting. They make everyone happy by evenly splitting us kids. They let one parent have custody but then the other gets the decisions. Brilliant, right? Wrong. It was torture and I got almost no say in any of it. Father sent me to public school in order to keep me away from mum as much as possible. He originally wanted to send me to a boarding school but that didn't go down real well. It wasn't fair at all. All of a sudden he was taking this great interest in my schooling when he'd never done so before. He was acting all involved in everything I did and it was upsetting all I was used to. He gave no thought that it might ruin my education or even me for that matter. It destroyed my love for learning but he could have cared less. His sole purpose was to keep me away from home. Some plan huh? Guess he didn't realise that in the act of putting me in school he would also be severing any respect I'd had for him. So though I know that his sending me to public school had nothing to do with academics and it will likely do no good, I need him to understand exactly what he is sacrificing my education for. That through his selfishness and his stubborn belief that he was right to do so, he has ruined most of my future options all because of that one decision. It didn't even accomplish the goal that he'd set out to achieve in the first place. All this time he has insisted that it was the right thing to do but was it worth it?

Okay so did I like homeschooling? I loved it. I took a ton of classes outside of home, more than they ever offered at the public schools. I also went to Greenhouse, a once a week school for homeschoolers. I did as many extra activities and sports as I could and I loved every minute of it. I would say that I went at a fast pace, though it didn't feel like it, but now having other students to compare with I know I was way ahead of my year. It was completely against my will that I went  to public school in fifth grade. Had it been my choice I would have dropped out after the first week. I never had trouble making friends, I was a pretty outgoing little kid. However, I am an introvert and I don't like making a fool of myself in front of strangers. This may make me come across as shy when I'm really not. If anything, public school is what made me "shy." The other thing is that I prefer to work alone. I hated all the little group projects that were assigned mainly because I had to rely on the other members to do their part otherwise everyone got a bad grade. Okay I know that the teachers are just trying to show us how to collaborate but maybe school age isn't the best time. It's just not the best approach and I feel like if in the future you want a job that involves working with others that's probably because you're already good at it. I'm not saying that I don't like other people, rather that being homeschooled I've found that doing things myself is much more efficient. The youth group question was merely out of curiosity. I'm pretty sure that most homeschoolers go to church and/or a youth group regularly and I wondered if perhaps that's why I enjoy being around them more than some. That could just be in my area though.

Now for public school I'll try to be brief. That one year of elementary was all just a big party for me. I started about a month after school began and something I found out they did every Monday was have "Circle Time" to tell about their weekends. During it kids would try and come up with the best, coolest stories to tell about, all of them lies, while I tried to come up with the shortest, easiest thing I could think of. These story times usually lasted about an hour. It nearly drove me mad with boredom as I listened to the wild tales the boys told that anyone could guess were fake. Maybe that's how I became appreciative of true story telling. I don't remember much of middle school. One thing I can think of is that all of the science was material I'd already learned at Greenhouse in 2nd and 3rd grade but it wasn't nearly as fun. Everything was an easy A. People say that because not all homeschoolers have a set schedule they don't really do school but with all the interruptions in the classroom public schools waste their own fair share if not way more. I'd say a day of homeschooling is equivalent to a week anywhere else. This brings us to my first year of high school last year. Nothing prepared me for the load of homework that I got from all my advanced classes. My teacher for biology was awful besides which made it all the harder and I nearly failed. The textbooks were no help either, especially for math which turned out to be an issue because at home my whole lessons were out of the textbook (Saxon in case you were wondering). I had to drop two of my A level second semester or have no time to have a normal life. Obviously things weren't going well for me and again I pleaded father to let me homeschool. He persisted that it was all for the best, it would get better, that I wasn't really trying. Well I've tried it for five years and it is only getting worse. I'm missing out on all these opportunities and I can only pray that I will find a way out soon. There have been many studies done which all prove that homeschoolers are much better equipped for college and good careers but if I continue this for the next three years I don't know where I'll be. A last piece of advice is that if you're going to high school just so you can make friends, that might not be the wisest though it really depends on your personality. None of my true friends go to school where I do. I'm not antisocial but the people I talk to are just lunch table friends--the kind that you never see outside of school. I don't mean to say it's all bad. Many homeschoolers switch to public in high school and like it just fine. There are a lot of other issues I've had with my father which I'm not including here which may contribute to my extreme dislike of it. This is just my own experience. Thank you for any comments!

I'm including this video for your entertainment. A friend showed it to me and I thought it was pretty hilarious and it pokes fun at most of the stereotypes of homeschoolers.   ;-p