Dovecote Academy - Ready for College?

May. 29, 2008 - Ready for College?

Dr. Laura recently wrote about the success of home-schooled students as they adjust to college life. You can read her comments on her blog.

She accurately states, “Research examining home-schooled students’ academic achievements have consistently found that they score higher than the national norms on standard achievement tests. So the only grenade left to throw at home-schooling parents is that they are hurting their children socially and emotionally.”

People are always asking how home-schooled students can handle the “real world” when they have been “sheltered” up until they leave home. The implications are that:

1. The student’s family are very different from the “real world;” and
2. College life is an accurate reflection of the “real world.”

Since every family is unique, I won’t argue against the first point. It is true that if one stays at home all the time, one is not likely to meet very many people of diverse backgrounds and ideas. IF one stays at home all the time, which homeschoolers are notorious for NOT doing.

As for the second assumption, I have never, since leaving college, ever been in or seen a situation in my life or the life of anyone around me that even closely resembles the college experience. College is as far from “real life” as one can get. Once one graduates from college, one is unlikely to ever be in a similar situation unless one becomes a college professor – and even then life will not be the same as it was as a student.

So the real concern is not that students won’t be able to adapt to the real world. It can’t be, because the real world concerns itself with interacting with people of a variety of ages in a variety of settings, something that homeschooling mirrors far more closely than any school I know. It also teaches kind acceptance of others, no matter their differences, far more effectively than a classroom filled with the influence of young peers.

However, these home-schooled students may, at some point, need to get along in a college classroom. Are they ill-prepared? This is the real concern that is launched at homeschoolers: Home-schooled students won’t be prepared for college life. Is this true? The studies say it isn’t, and Dr. Laura refuted the point effectively on her blog. But I think this begs the question: How is being thrust into a college classroom at age 18 any different from being thrust into a grade 1 classroom at the age of 6? The difference is only the age of the student – and the age of the peers waiting to influence said student.

What I don’t understand is how the same people who criticize us for sheltering our children only to throw them to the wolves at 18 years of age are the same people who do not shelter their young children, but throw them to the wolves at 6 years of age – and often younger. It does not make sense to me.

Perhaps rather than asking if these children who have not yet experienced a classroom are ready to enter when they are college age, we should ask the same question when they are still young, impressionable, and less capable of handling new situations. Once a child reaches 18 hopefully he or she has gained the necessary skills to relate to people and adjust to new situations successfully. If we train our children, this will be the case almost without exception. According to Dr. Laura, “That is probably because, having had the consistent teaching and support of a family and a community, they have developed strengths and convictions that provide a bridge over the troubled waters of a multitude of challenges and temptations.”

But how can a child of 6 be as capable, having had only a few short years of training in new situations? I can guarantee that an 18 year old student who has been homeschooled all his life has met more situations, and those of a greater variety, than a 6 year old going into a school classroom for the first time.

Is that 6 year old ill-prepared? Maybe, maybe not. But the facts are so obvious that most miss them: An 18 year-old home-schooled student is ready for whatever direction they take in life. Common sense dictates this, and the research supports it. The world would be well advised to accept this fact and to start putting as much thought into where their children are educated and by whom – from preschool on - as they put into undermining those of us who have already done so.

Comments