Homeschooled from K–12, Ohio Man Starting Exciting New Career Reviews Pros and Cons of Home Classes

Meshach Malley and his wife, Grace (L). Starting in 2005, Malley was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. Courtesy of Meshach Malley

As soon as Meshach Malley arrived at Denison University, he felt, by his own admission, socially shortchanged. The lunch table was “tough” as the then-19-year-old freshman from Columbus, Ohio, struggled to mingle with fellow students swapping high school stories. Malley had no “capital for conversation” to begin building friendships, he says, for he had never attended high school.

Malley had been homeschooled since kindergarten.

“I had no ability to connect,“ Malley, now 25 and already graduated, told The Epoch Times. ”If I spent every day around a bunch of people, I would be much better at small talk, I would be much better at conversing.”

Despite his awkwardness, though, he obtained his BA in cinema before going on to start his own video production company, Gentle Embers Media. He recently shot his first indie film, “I'll see you at Thanksgiving,” after being inspired by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and the 1983 cult classic “The Big Chill.” His homeschooling background, he says, gave him the drive to achieve that dream.

Meshach Malley as a homeschool student and his dad on the move near their home in Columbus, Ohio. Courtesy of Ali Malley

A recent photo of Malley enjoying a musical pastime. Courtesy of Meshach Malley

While Malley thrived learning at home, he knows that homeschooling isn’t for everyone. Reviewing his journey, he sees its strengths and weaknesses and knows that some personalities can whither in that setting.

“My personality—I happen to do really well in that environment,” he said. “To my younger siblings, it went moderately well, and I know people that it was bad. They ended up going to [public] school and that was a much better place for them.”

Homeschooling has pros and cons, according to Malley, and they look something like the following.

Con: Socialization

Malley says many homeschooled students will not spend much time around kids their age and so won’t gather “shared experiences” like attending high school prom or co-ed gym class. This may be reason enough to choose public school for children who are suited for it.

When asked if homeschooling made him unsocialized, he responded, “I think it did.” But he added, “There were a lot of advantages that I received through homeschooling that offset a lot of those costs.”

Pro: Leadership

Homeschooling “produces leaders” and “independent thinkers,” Malley said. It helped him take the lead in making amateur movies in the 2000s when he gathered together some of his homeschool friends in his garage to be actors in his remake of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” He shot the movie using his parents’ stone-age JVC tape recorder.

He developed the drive to lead, but not all kids are born to call the shots.

“Not everyone wants to be a leader,” he says. “They want to be told what to do.”

A recent photo of Meshach Malley filming a podcast. Courtesy of Meshach Malley

Con: Group Aversion

For Malley, the flipside of leadership means he’s less of a team player. “I was given so much freedom to do whatever I wanted to do,“ he said. ”I work very well independently and running my own ship. On graduating, I wanted to work in film and video production, and I had zero interest in working for anybody else." 

Cooperation is valued in many company jobs, and public school might forge relationship-building skills more solidly than at home.

Pro: He Found His Career

Malley grew up with no media in his home—the family didn’t have cable and watched few movies. His rebellion was to make his own movies for homeschool projects.

“Throughout high school, I made multiple seasons of TV shows and movies,“ he said. ”So I knew at 18, I was like, ‘This is what I’m going to do. This is how I’m going to spend my life.’“

He started his own business making indie films and internal videos for university campuses. Homeschooling sparked a childhood dream that became a career.

Malley collaborated with fellow homeschool students to produce amateur film projects for his classes. Courtesy of Ali Malley

Pro: Confidence Building

Alone, free, and tackling projects in his room, Malley was pushed by his parents to discover things himself. He gained an “enormous amount of confidence” to face problems other kids might find daunting, he said, such as installing a circuit board or hard drive. He mastered the art of reading instruction manuals.

“Nothing is really that difficult,“ he said. ”The skill homeschool gave me was just this huge degree of confidence and the intellectual capacity to think about things from first principles and delineate down—what are the steps we need to do?”

Pro: Dodging Public School Agendas?

In recent years, more outspoken right-wing homeschoolers have been accusing public schools of injecting ideological agendas into education. Some parents want to seize control over what values their kids are taught, believing public schools are overstepping their role. It’s become a huge motivation to homeschool.

Malley, who recently married a public school teacher of disabled kids and who also taught as an adjunct professor, is aware of these motives but believes they’re unfounded.

From his own experience, he says claims of public school propaganda are greatly exaggerated. But public schools do face issues, he says, which is “largely a problem in terms of resources.” Teachers are overloaded with massive class sizes and overworked.

“If you’re around certain type of people, there’s going to be certain ideas that come through,” he said. But propaganda? “The claim is absurd,” he said.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Malley’s early studies began in 2005 when homeschooling was still widely considered “weird.” Less trendy back then—before COVID lockdowns made it mainstream—homeschooling was less of a right-wing thing than it is now. His parents were neither conservative nor distrustful of public schools.

“They’re tough to pin down,” Malley said of his parents. “They’re certainly not far-left today by any standard.” They are left-leaning, he added, kindhearted “hippies” and averse to money and materialism.

Their choice to homeschool Malley reflected times when parents shouldered different worries. Malley’s older sister—12 years his senior—did go to public school, and that experience tainted his parents’ vision of how kids are altered in that milieu.

Malley and his siblings during his homeschool years. Courtesy of Ali Malley

“I don’t think it was as much the actual school work,“ Malley said. ”One of the things my dad told me recently was that he felt, with my older sister, he was often getting in arguments with her that he felt were arguments with the culture.”

Swayed by her peers, she started to talk back, refusing do the dishes or chores on a Saturday because her friends didn’t have to do them in their homes. It was how she dressed, how she spoke. So, as former teachers, his parents changed their approach for Malley, who was just entering kindergarten.

Homeschooling in the 2000s was more “tactile,” he says. The internet was in its early days back then. He drew a lot, read real books, cut construction paper, and measured the circumference of a tree under the open sky rather than on a chalkboard.

Malley behind the camera during a movie shoot. Courtesy of Ali Malley

“My parents wanted us to have this very hands-on experience,“ he said. ”They had this goal of putting us out into the world.” Nature was a big part of that.

“In the early years, they weren’t as concerned about the academics,” he said. “They wanted to make sure that we stayed excited about learning.” They knew reading, writing, and math would come with time.

As “weird” as homeschooling was in the 2000s, Malley wasn’t alone. Though isolated from public school, he went to a K–12 “homeschool gymnasium” in Columbus where hundreds of homeschool families converged to play sports.

But as the years passed he saw lots of his friends shift to public school, particularly in high school. Many parents felt ill-equipped to teach advanced grades.

Not Malley, though. He told his parents, “No, I’m good,” and stayed home with plans to attend college. But no longer did they sit beside him at the kitchen table to do math together.

“It became a lot more independent homeschooling,” he said. They said things like “Look at all the wonderful resources that exist online to do math!” and “You’re going to go through Khan Academy.”

(Left) Malley and his wife, Grace; (Right) Malley now runs his own video production company, producing internal content for post-secondary institutions. Courtesy of Meshach Malley

Although Malley felt unprepared for college socially, he battled his way through. Several years later, he proved he was socialized enough to become a husband, as he met his wife, Grace, on a dating app in 2022. They tied the knot last summer.

“I had spent a lot of resources in my early 20s, really trying to kind of shape myself into somebody that someone would want to marry,“ he said. ”I was able to go out into the world and find someone who has the same values and has the same kind of perspective and wanted to move forward in the world in the same way that I did.”

Lately, they’ve been weighing the pros and cons to decide if they'll homeschool their own kids one day.