What happens when you skip high school and go to community college to fulfill your high school classes? Can you even skip high school? Well, not all good things happen when you decide to skip or partially skip high school. We knew that we were going to go the community college route with our children and anticipated sending them to community college during high school either in addition to high school or in lieu of high school.

https://youtu.be/Rvf6iRX0RJM

At first, it seemed like a brilliant idea, and so far it’s been great except for one major flaw and a few unfortunate things. First, the small things. I didn’t mind that my first son went to college at 15 and was surrounded by students who ranged in age from their teens into their 20’s. As a homeschooler, most functions, activities and even some classes are designed for mixed ages. I actually love that about the homeschooling option. Kids don’t feel territorial about their grade/age group. Young play with old and vice versa. For me it was a beautiful thing to see. However, the students who were in their late teens and 20’s were taking classes with my 15 year old which were designed for students in 8th or 9th grade. Very quickly my son saw that many of these students either didn’t know how to learn, didn’t care about learning or their academic future or were just passing the time in college. Few were dedicated students out to transfer to university. In fact, many of the friends he made, are still dawdling after three years.

The major problem or loophole we encountered was the following. As a high schooler who is college bound, most likely your education will be well-rounded and include English , literature, math through pre-calculus or at least algebra and trigonometry, biology, chemistry and physics and world and US history. As a college student, all those classes may not be required depending on your major. Your general educational requirements may include film study, anthropology and environmental studies to fulfill your humanities or science requirements. And while those classes are good in and of themselves, they are not literature, biology and world history. The biggest loophole was expecting that classes I had intended to do in high school were not necessary with the route we chose. How could he not take biology in college! How is it not a requirement. Certainly it would if you majored in a health care profession, but I was disappointed that he didn’t have to take some subjects. Certainly he could have stayed an extra year for me to do those classes, but that was unlikely. We didn’t want to prolong his community college experience and lose the momentum.

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