Although almost 2 million families homeschool their children, there continues to be many misconceptions about the entire process. As always, it’s best to help illuminate the facts instead of feeding the misunderstandings, and so here are the answers to the most common misconceptions about homeschooling.

1. A homeschool education simply cannot compare to a more traditional one.

Actually, test scores seem to indicate that homeschooled children in general test well above average across the country regardless of income, race or the level of education of the parent.

2. Homeschooled children will not be able to get into college.

This is also a misconception as more and more colleges and universities are admitting homeschoolers into their program including such well recognized institutions as Harvard and Yale. In order to qualify for these schools, homeschooled children will most likely have to submit samples of their work, along with letters of recommendation, and CLEP and SAT test results in order to verify the quality of their education.

3. Homeschooled children are not able to develop social skills.

Many people seem to feel that if a child does not attend a public or private school, they will not be able to develop the social skills needed to function well in the adult world. However, the negative behavior problems associated with many children in the school system has been well documented in recent years, and there is no firm evidence that simply attending school helps children develop social skills that will be valuable later on in life.

Most homeschooling parents realize the need for their children to interact with others of their own age as well as adults too, and so they often arrange for well supervised activities where their children can socialize with others of many different age levels. Quite often, there are even homeschool support groups in various areas that help supply social experiences for the families that take part in their group.

4. Homeschooling is only for the wealthy as it is very expensive.

The truth is that homeschooling can be as expensive as you wish to make it. There are expensive homeschooling materials and curriculums that are available complete with video instruction. However there is no evidence that such educational materials are any more effective overall than more simple and inexpensive ones. Many families who homeschool can find excellent used books and materials online, or even make use of those that are found at the local library. At any rate, the evidence seems to suggest that homeschooled children even from the poorest families often seem to be getting a quality education and scoring well on their test scores.

5. Homeschooling is not legal.

Actually, homeschooling is legal in every state in the United States, although there are different governing requirements set out by the individual states. Some states seem to be more homeschool friendly than others, but there are successful homeschoolers in every state in the country.

If you’re considering homeschooling your children, do not be surprised if you meet with opposition and resistance from family or friends who may bring up some of the misconceptions that are covered in this particular article. Hopefully the information provided here can help you better answer these misunderstandings when they arise.

Steadman Issenburg writes on many consumer related topics including education. You can find home school materials and homeschool programs and more by visiting our education website.

As a follow up to my article “The Magic of One Numbers Part I” I now continue with Part II in this fascinating series. For those who have not read the first article, please do so now so that you can better understand this one. Here I will show you a method to perform the multiplication of any two “one” numbers regardless of size. The result of such multiplication—once this method is studied and learned—can be obtained effortlessly and usually within seconds. So let’s get started.

In the first of this series, I showed how to square any number which consisted of a series of 1’s. Thus after learning this method, one could square 11 or 111. In this article, you will learn how to multiply two arbitrary “one” numbers together, such as 11 x 111. To do these multiplications, you need only learn a simple rule and the rest—well the rest—will be simply matter of fact. After thoroughly mastering these two techniques, you will be able to mesmerize people with your new-found math skill; and for those parents out there teaching these techniques to their kids, don’t be surprised if you get some phone calls from your kid’s math teachers, after your kid has demonstrated to them these powerful and novel methods.

This method is a little more involved than the squaring technique; however, with a little thought and practice, you will come to see that it really is no more difficult to master. Let us look at the example of multiplying 11 x 111. The result is 1221. The way we arrive at this result is by making some observations and then following a simple procedure. First we observe that the smaller “one” number, 11, has two 1’s. Both numbers have a total of five 1’s. The final answer will have a number of digits equal to 1 less than the total of 1’s in both numbers, or in this case 4 digits. The answer, 1221, is obtained by noticing that if we count from 1 consecutively up to the number of 1’s in the smaller “one” number and then down from that number without repeating it, we have 1 2 1, or only three digits. We need four in the answer so we insert another 2 between the 2 and 1 to get 1221. This is always the case and the number we use to “pad” the answer, so to speak, is the number which represents the number of 1’s in the smaller “one” number.

A few more examples should make this perfectly clear. Let’s look at 11 x 1,111. The total number of 1’s in both numbers is 6. So the answer will have 5 digits. Since 2 is the number of 1’s in the smaller “one” number, and if we count 1 2 1, we have only 3 digits; however, we need 2 more, so we pad the number with two more 2’s in the middle to get 1 2 2 2 1 or 12,221 as our final answer.

Take 111 x 1,111. A total of 7 1’s so our final answer will have 6 digits. Number of 1’s in the smaller number: 3. So count 1 2 3 2 1 and observe that this consumes 5 digits. We need 6 so we pad 1 more 3 in the middle to get 1 2 3 3 2 1 or 123,321. To wrap up, I’ll show one more example and then you can go off amazing your friends and family. Take 1,111 x 111,111 or one thousand one hundred eleven times one hundred eleven thousand one hundred eleven. How many total 1’s: 10. So the answer will have 9 digits. Number of 1’s in the smaller number: 4. So we count up to 4 and back from 4 to get 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 and observe that this uses 7 digits. We need 2 more so we pad with 2 more 4’s to get 1 2 3 4 4 4 3 2 1 or 123,444,321 or one hundred twenty-three million four hundred forty-four thousand three hundred twenty-one as our final answer.

What do you think now? Do you think that armed with these techniques your kids could get better math grades? I think that’s a rhetorical question. Good calculating.