The Homeschool Debate Part 3

The third interview

A Private schooler

Claire:

My parents sent me to a private school because they figured I'd get a better education and not like bad peer pressure. Eventually (I'd face peer pressure) but they figured I'd get a good background, be surrounded by the Word (Bible) without being like... crazy fundamentalist type. My parents expectations were "We pay you a lot more so you should do a better job of making sure our kids don't have bad experiences or traumatizing experiences as young children.

We knew public school kids would come across more temptations.

One of the first interactions I had with public schoolers who weren't from my church was outdoor school, where the other school that was there at the same time was a public school. And we would hear some of them swear or whatever, and our teachers got mad at us because they thought we were imitating them, with the swearing and stuff like that.

I guess sometimes public school kids could be sort of scary or different.

The first home schooler that came to my class that I remember was in eighth grade and we became friends. She wasn't a "typical home schooler." She had no problem making friends or being... normal? As normal as people can be in a private Christian middle school I guess. She stayed for two years and then she left to go to a public high school, acclimated fine there and now she is like "party animal." But nobody would know, you know? She wasn't like the stereotype of homeschooler.

Alexandra: The home schooler you can tell from a mile away.

Claire: But there was one girl in my school that was definitely "home schooler from a mile away!" She was a really nice person but she wore the same jacket every single day, she wore her hair the same way every single day. Her hair was long and wavy and it had like four scrunchies in it just to keep it in place because it was so bushy. You can't really help that, but you know. She went to our school for like three years and looked that same every year.

For School Spirit Week she would come with her friends and wear Lord of the Rings capes, and write stories about wolves, and wear like wolf t-shirts and stuff.

I had another home school friend that came senior year and she acclimated pretty well. She doesn't act as home schooled as the other girl. Like she wore different clothes every day! Not that the other girl was unhygienic, but you could just tell.

But my other home schooled friend was 15 when she came into my senior class. She was three years ahead. She went to college the same time as us, when she was 16.

Alexandra: Do you feel like you've gained anything by being private schooled over the alternatives?

Claire: I wasn't like surrounded by friends talking about parties or whatever, I mean I don't know really what people experience in public schools, but

What we hear in private schools about public schools is, if you wanna find pot you can find it at school, if you want to do a bunch of illegal things you can find a way to do it just by connections at school, if you want to find a party on the weekend you can find that at school.

But for us, we didn't experience that, I didn't have pressure to do that.

Alexandra: Is there anything you feel like you've lost by going to a private school?

Claire: Yeah, I feel like maybe I would be more able to deal with the world, or maybe I would be more extroverted, more outgoing, more comfortable with strangers, or just a more confident person if I had gone to a public school.

But maybe because I am a passive then maybe I would have succumb to the TEMPTATIONS of whatever there is in public school.

I don't know, I can't really say now because I didn't ever experience it to really tell. Maybe private school was the good median for me,

Maybe in a public school I would have just gone along with what people were doing and became a "bad kid." Even though there are tons of kids, just like me who went to public school and are totally fine. Maybe if I was home schooled I would have wound up more introverted and socially bad or whatever.

I don't know. The way I did it was the way I did it.