Homeschooling - a plus or nail in the coffin?

[The Hoosier Oxonian]

I was homeschooled for thirteen years (kindergarten through high school graduation) and am undecided as to whether it's useful or harmful to bring this up in my PhD applications (I've ended up not mentioning it in my SOP, but it does seem to make sense to mention it in diversity statements/personal statements). I believe homeschooling had an incalculable influence in shaping my intellect and work ethic - I wouldn't be the student I am otherwise. That being said, I know homeschoolers are still a minority (about 3.5% of all U.S. students) and often hugely stigmatized (for every great story like mine, there seems to be one of children being neglected; since the neglect stories are sensational, they're the ones that tend to get media attention). Has anyone else had the experience of trying to navigate grad apps with a homeschooling background (or do you know anyone who has)? What's the prevailing attitude toward homeschooling in the academy? As I said, I feel that having been homeschooled has been crucial to shaping who I am, but if I don't bring it up in any statements, no one will ever know - it's not as if it's reflected on my college transcripts. Will bringing it up help me stand out, or is it likely to elicit prejudice?

[Wimsey]

Your experience sounds very similar to mine! Except for first grade, I was also homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. I don't mention it in my SOP, but it is a part of my personal/diversity statement. I frame homeschooling in a positive light, but I briefly point out the challenges I faced when transitioning from homeschooling to community college. I then continue the narrative by talking about the transition from cc to the private university where I earned my BA.

I'm inclined to think that homeschooling can help me to stand out, providing that I address it thoughtfully in the appropriate documents. Talking about homeschooling in my undergrad university application was actually a significant factor in my acceptance there, so my instinct is to do something similar in my current apps. Obviously, graduate admissions are vastly different from undergrad, but I still feel comfortable sharing my background as a shaping influence in my academic career. Besides, my transcript gives the name of my homeschooling program, so an attentive adcom would be able to catch on even if I didn't mention it.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Wimsey

[merry night wanderer]

I was also homeschooled. I brought it up as part of my personal history, though for other reasons (for me it was a mixed bag - it definitely gave me an edge with the liberal arts, but it was also isolating, and I had some mental health struggles as an undergrad during the transition, like Wimsey). I don't think anyone cares unless it's part of a bigger narrative you're presenting. 

Though, I must ask the classic homeschooler-to-homeschooler question: what was your curriculum?

Edited December 12, 2019 by merry night wanderer

[Glasperlenspieler]

1 minute ago, merry night wanderer said:

I don't think anyone cares unless it's part of a bigger narrative you're presenting. 

This ^^^^^^

You have limited space in an SOP. Don't waste it talking about your pre-undergraduate educational experiences when you could be further articulating your research interests, who you are as a scholar, and where you hope to go with your research. 

[merry night wanderer]

^ I do want to say, I only brought it up in the Personal Statements (when those were framed differently from the SoP and requested information on your background), and in the 1,000-word SoPs. Schools that only require one 500 word SoP won't have a clue. 

[onerepublic96]

2 hours ago, merry night wanderer said:

^ I do want to say, I only brought it up in the Personal Statements (when those were framed differently from the SoP and requested information on your background), and in the 1,000-word SoPs. Schools that only require one 500 word SoP won't have a clue. 

I think that sounds reasonable. Though honestly I feel like it won't be a really big deal either way.

Also, may I just say - those 500 word SOP limits? Ridiculous. ?

[The Hoosier Oxonian]

3 hours ago, merry night wanderer said:

Though, I must ask the classic homeschooler-to-homeschooler question: what was your curriculum?

But of course! We started out doing Waldorf (the original impetus behind homeschooling - my mom wanted to send us to a Waldorf school but there weren't any in the state, so she decided she could do it herself at home). After seven or eight years of that she started to diversify and really just pulled together her favorite pieces from a lot of different sources for middle and high school. We did Sonlight for a couple of years (a de-Christianized version, ironically, because although my mother is a minister, she's a liberal crunchy granola Christian and all the religious curriculums were too conservative!) And in high school I did a bunch of dual credit and online AP classes.

[Wimsey]

My family used a Catholic curriculum. The program really helped me to discover my love for reading and writing, but it was very conservative in terms of politics and theology. I'm sure some of my homeschooling acquaintances would be scandalized at all the talk about gender and marginality in my SOP.

[merry night wanderer]

54 minutes ago, The Hoosier Oxonian said:

But of course! We started out doing Waldorf (the original impetus behind homeschooling - my mom wanted to send us to a Waldorf school but there weren't any in the state, so she decided she could do it herself at home). After seven or eight years of that she started to diversify and really just pulled together her favorite pieces from a lot of different sources for middle and high school. We did Sonlight for a couple of years (a de-Christianized version, ironically, because although my mother is a minister, she's a liberal crunchy granola Christian and all the religious curriculums were too conservative!) And in high school I did a bunch of dual credit and online AP classes.

I loved Sonlight! I definitely used the Christianized version, but I attribute a great deal of my love of ancient civilizations to their curriculum - they had so much glorious historical YA fiction in their middle school program. This led to a love for mythology and me almost becoming a classics major in undergrad. I think I would have loved homeschooling if it hadn't had such a religious tint for me, so kudos to your mom.

 

20 minutes ago, Wimsey said:

My family used a Catholic curriculum. The program really helped me to discover my love for reading and writing, but it was very conservative in terms of politics and theology. I'm sure some of my homeschooling acquaintances would be scandalized at all the talk about gender and marginality in my SOP.

I feel this intensely (though I was in the evangelical homeschool quarters, not the Catholic ones). I really got to go to town on the humanities in a way that is rare among my peers who went to public school. My classes were discussion-based and highly emphasized argumentative structure, rather than the sort of paint-by-numbers "find the foreshadowing" bullshit high school teachers are forced to teach these days. But it was so ridiculously conservative. I remember my teacher mocking "Song of Myself" in front of class for being this narcissistic, godless, gay manifesto. Everything was just filtered through this meat grinder of conservativism. It's one of my favorites poems now, and never fails to bring tears to my eyes for being so gloriously narcissistic, godless, and gay. lol

Edited December 13, 2019 by merry night wanderer

[vondafkossum]

8 hours ago, merry night wanderer said:

rather than the sort of paint-by-numbers "find the foreshadowing" bullshit high school teachers are forced to teach these days

I think this is a deeply unfair portrayal of what high school English is and/or does, speaking as a high school English teacher. 

[merry night wanderer]

2 hours ago, vondafkossum said:

I think this is a deeply unfair portrayal of what high school English is and/or does, speaking as a high school English teacher. 

I don't mean to paint too broad a brush on this, especially since I don't have direct experience, but my conclusion here is from trading notes in my peer group, and from the fact my professors commented that I seemed much better prepared for English, as an undergrad, than my peers. I'm sure quality depends quite a bit depending on resources available, and I hope it goes without saying that I blame teachers for none of the problems we have with education and core curricula right now (I am very pro-public school). But that was what people observed about my performance as a homeschooler back then. On the flip side, I remember nothing about my science education and my biology textbook was like a fourth pro-creationist propaganda.

Edited December 13, 2019 by merry night wanderer

[vondafkossum]

I don't really want to get into it--and I should have just not responded at all because I have neither the time nor the inclination to jump into a discussion here about the problems with K-12 education and how that transfers to the college level (or the problems with collegiate studies and how that transfers to K-12)--but so much of this conversation (like many going on here in different threads, like almost all of the ones about education in general) is rooted in inherent class and race issues.

[merry night wanderer]

No doubt, and the comments were made by people within a similar class demographic. But at least by comparison, and using the standards of the university, people often made those comments, and in the case of my peers, they often felt quite negatively about their high school English education. I don't intend to condemn or condone those comments, and I'm certainly not condemning or condoning homeschool. I've never been to public school or taught it, so I only know Common Core standards in an abstract way, as someone who has created eLearning for them.

Edited December 13, 2019 by merry night wanderer

[karamazov]

@merry night wanderer I'll chime in just to give a very different perspective on English education in public high schools. My high school English teacher is one of the most brilliant individuals I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and I consider him the sole reason I can even write an essay. I had always loved reading, but he taught me how to make a claim about a text and support that claim with concrete evidence. His comments on essays were thorough and ultimately invaluable to the improvement of my writing. His classes themselves gave me insight into difficult pieces of literature, and taught me to read closely and critically examine the texts I read. When I got to college, I found myself well prepared for serious academic writing, and my professors never shied away from telling me so. If I hadn't been taught by that particular high school English teacher, that wouldn't have been the case. My friends, who also took his classes, found themselves similarly well prepared for their English courses at their respective universities, and the love for literature and writing that he fostered in his students led my whole group of friends to study English in some capacity at the college level (I majored in English, another friend minored, one double majored, another majored in writing). There are definitely some brilliant, demanding, life-changing public high school English teachers out there, regardless of the constraints of Common Core, so I would hesitate to make blanket statements about the quality of public high school English education. Some people have really bad experiences with English in high school, while others don't. And, of course, I'm sure the same holds true for homeschoolers. I just wanted to share my experience to illustrate that not all public high school English classes consist solely of "paint-by-numbers 'find the foreshadowing' bullshit." 

[merry night wanderer]

36 minutes ago, karamazov said:

There are definitely some brilliant, demanding, life-changing public high school English teachers out there, regardless of the constraints of Common Core, so I would hesitate to make blanket statements about the quality of public high school English education.

I didn't mean my broad, comparative generalization in my case as a suggestion that there aren't such teachers. I know there are; I should have couched it better. But I also know that I basically got college-style English classes in high school when many people are not that fortunate, I know that this was pointed out to me many times by people who weren't homeschooled, and I also know from friends who are English teachers is that their curriculums are often (obviously not always) extraordinarily stifling and constrained. But to be honest, I likely sound way more positive about homeschooling here than I actually feel, and way less enthusiastic about public school than I feel as well, when politically, I am a thousand percent in favor of public school, and think it's absolutely urgent to put more resources into it. All I really intended to do here was say that I got a great humanities education, in some respects, as a homeschooler, even if other aspects of it I feel quite ambivalent about.

Edited December 13, 2019 by merry night wanderer

[The Hoosier Oxonian]

Regardless of our homeschool vs. public school backgrounds, it sounds like the common theme here is that we are all grateful for the English educations we received, and perhaps we can at least all agree that we're all on the same page about the importance of providing the like to future students (I know we are all stressed about applications right now, so just trying to promote a little positivity!)

Edited December 13, 2019 by The Hoosier Oxonian