Yes, it is; however, what was taught in the 1950s in math, English, history and much of science is, if the home teacher be competent, the curriculum be rigorous, and student masters that content, is more than adequate for the student to pass (earn a 4 or 5) the AP exams in those disciplines.
To be sure, it's a "heavy lift" for two people to deliver the level of rigor and content needed, but if a child is blessed with having parents who can do so, or who are willing and able to hire tutors to teach/supplement the child's instruction, being schooled at home isn't in and of itself a problem.
Add to that an online curriculum with teachers to head homework and available for advice and help, and there are very few limits to what a child can learn at home. Heck, their school day is done in 2 or 3 hours.
Heck, their school day is done in 2 or 3 hours.
???
There is a lot of time in the school day devoted to things other than learning. Homeschooling teachers don't have 30 kids to wrangle and can focus their entire attention on a very small number, so the actual learning gets done a lot faster. Think of how long the average kid sits bored in class waiting for slower kids to catch up and the class clown to shut up long enough for the teacher to teach. Then add in the time between classes.
Clearly your classroom experience differs from mine and all the kids of whose I'm aware. Additionally, three hours is about the bare minimum of studying I and my kids did after the formal classroom instruction period ended.
I'm sure that there are efficiencies to be gained from homeschooling; however, I'm equally sure that there are efficiency declines as well. How the gains and losses net, I cannot say. What I can do is apply some basic assumptions and "guess-timate" how much time an extremely efficient home instruction process would take at a minimum.
Assumptions and premises:
- Assumption on Quantity of Classes per day (student and teacher workload): Going off the "old school" model (schedule) under which I was taught -- I'm using that because the more "matrixed" approach some schools today use is just harder to "add up" -- I'll assume a student takes 7 classes each day, each lasting 50 minutes for a total of 5.8 hours of formal instruction (I realize that one could teach one subject all day each day, or use some other scheduling approach, but the pedagogical sagacity of doing so with young children is dubious at best):
- Math (up to precalculus)
- Science (biology, chemistry and physics)
- History (American and Western Civilization)
- English (composition and literature)
- Foreign language (modern; grammar and literature)
- Theology/comparative religion alternated with P.E.
- Some other class: classical language, computer science, art, music, shop, economics, second math, second science, second history, etc.
- Premise -- Instruction: College classes are conducted such that nearly the entirety of the lecture is used for formal instruction that, for the most part, happens without interruption by students asking questions.
- Assumption: For now, I'll assume a home instructor is able to achieve a "collegiate" degree of efficiency.
- Constraint: I realize the likelihood of doing that with a young child, to say nothing of doing it in a home setting with the interruptions attendant to it and expecting one can cover content at that pace and expect a child to master it, is somewhere between slim and none, and "slim's train has left the platform," but let's just go with it anyway, at least for now.
- Assumption: Because of the one-on-one setting, the instructor will be able to assign readings and problems targeted not only around what the student must learn, but s/he will be able to do so with greater efficiency whereby what s/he assigns is targeted at the areas where the student is weak and assign no or nearly no work that covers elements with which the student is strong.
- Constraint: For this assumption to hold true, the instructor must, among other things:
- Be prescient about the student's general and specific strengths and weaknesses (the child may not consistently make clear that they don't understand things, but for now I'll assume the kid does)
- Be aware of the specific learning objectives/achievement their state requires.
- For technical subject like math, science, computer science, economics, etc., know both the chosen textbooks and the subject matter to know what specific skill and techniques any given homework problem addresses.
- Premise -- Instruction: The objectives of home schooling is to provide the same degree of preparation as is conventional schooling:
- Prepare a child for college or a vocation.
- Teach a child so they master (i.e., get As) the content in a given course. (That a child legitimately earn anything other than As in a one-on-one teaching setting shouldn't even be possible, but for completeness sake, I've mentioned it.)
- Teach a child so the master the non-explicit "content"/learning objectives for a given course.
For example, math, along with teaching math operations also teaches structured logical thought processes (deductive reasoning and abductive solutioning). History teaches about wars, kings and queens, but it also builds a student's adroitness for analyzing events and forming strong arguments about cause and effect (inductive and abductive reasoning), along with supplementing writing skills.
- Develop sound critical thinking thinking skills with regard to linear (basic) dilemma analysis and solving. (K through junior high)
- Develop sound critical thinking skills with regard to non-linear (complex) dilemma analysis and solving. (high school)
- Develop collaboration skills.
- Develop leadership and "being led" skills.
- Premise -- Student workload: Home schooled students must read the chapters in their textbooks just as must any student.
- Assumption -- Student workload Homeschooled students have homework amounting to an average of at least 30 minutes per class per day, thus about 3.5 hours minimum per day. By the time they get to high school, that increases to something around 45 minutes to hour per class per day. That could be reading chapters in their texts, performing research for projects/papers, rehearsing a piece of music, solving assigned problems, reading supplemental materials/content, etc. (I'll grant that this level of workload doesn't come about until junior high. For younger students, I'd put it at about two hours every other day, or six hours per week.)
From my own experience, the 3.5 to 7 hours of daily outside-of-class studying, for a total of somewhere between about 18 hours and 35 hours per week, will be spread out over seven days. Regardless of how one apportions the workload, the work still must be done.
Though the above is but a very high-level take on what has to be accomplished, I think it's absurd to think homeschooling will produce enough efficiency for a school day to be done in two or three hours. Even teaching with the extreme efficiency, for a child, of a college course, one's going to need 3.5 hours to perform the formal instruction. The student's school day isn't, however, done after the explicit instruction is done.
Heck, their school day is done in 2 or 3 hours.
Even not considering your assertion with the structure I have above, anyone can tell you that one cannot teach a chapter of "whatever" in 25 minutes. Think about how much time it takes to teach a young child long division or to teach a junior high schooler a simple algebraic theorem. Some concepts don't need much discussion; few kids need more than a single mention of, say, the commutative property of addition and multiplication. Nevermind that part of teaching involves imbuing the child with the skill to know when to apply a given concept/tool and when not to, in other words, teaching the importance and application of context. That is what takes time, more than 25 minutes. (Judging by how often people I observe here, as well as among the general public, completely disregard context, I'd say some people need sixty-plus years to master the importance, role and application of context.)
