The Life of a Homeschooler

A student’s perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of an “unconventional” education…

Image by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

It was not until college that I ever considered the uniqueness of my education. I was homeschooled from preschool until my senior year of high school, so it is only natural that I perceived homeschooling as “normal.” I was surprised, then, when I began hearing questions from my peers during my freshman year at Campbell University, a private institution in Buies Creek, North Carolina. Did you actually learn anything? Do you have friends? Did you stay in your pajamas all day? The questions never bothered me — if anything, I found them to be humorous. But those questions did force me to realize that other students knew only of the stereotypes surrounding my education.

It is time to dispel those myths and focus on the advantages that homeschooling can create.

In the perception of many traditionally educated students, homeschoolers are awkward and antisocial. Those views may be true with some students; I do know many homeschoolers who would fit into those categories. But, by the same token, I know many traditionally-educated students who would also fit that description. Awkward people can be found in any classroom, but in a public or private school those students are often overshadowed by their more social peers. Because our associations with homeschoolers are generally with one single student — and not a group of students — it is easier to stereotype the entire population based on that one sample. But if you were to meet ten, twenty, or thirty homeschoolers, I believe that you would find the same percentage of antisocial students as you would in a public or private school.

A second common critique of homeschoolers is that the students are unwilling to mingle with the outside world. The myth that homeschoolers are stuck in their houses and only leave to go to church once a week is comical but pervasive. This may be true for homeschoolers in rural areas, but it is far from autobiographical for my own personal childhood in Wake County, North Carolina. In fact, homeschoolers in my hometown outnumber students at private institutions by a large margin.

According to recent studies, there are 18,000 homeschoolers in Wake County, and that number increases annually by 14%. With that large…