[HN Gopher] For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing...
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For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
Author : pretext
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-08-26 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| mikhmha wrote:
| Why are people in the US so against public schools? I am someone
| who did not really enjoy "school" and found it anxiety inducing
| but I still see the benefits of it.
|
| In public school you are forced to mingle with the people of your
| generation. The ones who will inevitably go on to run the country
| in whatever big or small way.
|
| The objective of public school is to break down the regional
| identities of old and assimilate the youth into the "new"
| national identity. And what do we see in countries without
| functional public schools? Everything sucks. And there is no
| cohesion between peoples. I see it in the home country of my
| parents.
| et-al wrote:
| I think with any discussion of public schools, it's highly
| dependent of where you reside and what wacky choices the
| administrators make.
|
| The controversial "new math" here in California that delays
| algebra until 9th grade (~14 years of age) probably has caused
| a lot of parents with engineering backgrounds to reconsider.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The objective of public school is to break down the regional
| identities of old and assimilate the youth into the "new"
| national identity.
|
| No thanks.
|
| If it was sold as "the best education you're likely to be able
| to receive"... that'd be one thing. I might think that you were
| exaggerating and that the quality was lower than what's being
| sold, but I at least _want_ that for my kids.
|
| But I have zero interest for or against breaking down "regional
| identities". If it is just some social experiment, the
| government's attempt at engineering a culture, they can keep
| it.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Do you think we should do the same with adults? Many of these
| arguments are also used by proponents of military service.
|
| The funny thing about school is that almost no adults would be
| willing to be subjected to it. Confined to a building every day
| for the best years of your life, required to study what the
| government decides should fill your head, and a persistent risk
| of being beaten up. Delightful.
|
| Ultimately the main reason that schools exist in their present
| form is because they are economically useful. Parents need
| somewhere to park their kids, while they go to work. As a child
| I could never understand why adults would inflict the barbarism
| of school on their own children, were they not aware? As an
| adult it all makes a lot more sense.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Tell me you've never experienced manual labor without telling
| me you've never experience manual labor.
| mikhmha wrote:
| >Do you think we should do the same with adults? Many of
| these arguments are also used by proponents of military
| service.
|
| I'm well aware. There is an irony to the arguments I make,
| because I also detest the idea of forced erasure of identity.
|
| Military service? No. I would be in favor of some 1-yr
| mandatory civil service. I believe its important to interact
| with all classes of the society you inhabit. How else can you
| gain true perspective if you only live in a bubble? Life is
| about being uncomfortable.
|
| >The funny thing about school is that almost no adults would
| be willing to be subjected to it.
|
| Its interesting you say this, because at the same time we see
| adults also long for their school days as they grow to hate
| the 40 hour work week. Now it could be that what they really
| long for is childhood and youth, but people also long for
| their college days as well. They long for the environment
| where they freely mingled with people of their age, and the
| camaraderie they established in their "shared suffering".
| They miss structured periods like "recess" and "lunch" or
| "gym class", even though as an adult you can do these things
| freely.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > How else can you gain true perspective if you only live
| in a bubble? Life is about being uncomfortable.
|
| 95% of the country has to deal with being uncomfortable,
| without any mandatory civil service. What privileged
| background do you come from where you do not realize this?
| gnopgnip wrote:
| It's a small but vocal minority and not representative
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Why are people in the US so against public schools?
|
| The sentiment is not universal - perhaps not even close to a
| majority. Most people in the US value public schools.
|
| As to why people want to homeschool? The reasons are diverse
| and differ for everyone. Themes you'll see:
|
| - Religious parents who object to some aspect of the public
| school system (anti-coed, against some of the indoctrination
| kids get, etc).
|
| - Smart parents who realize public schools are very inefficient
| and cater to the worst students. They fear their kids will not
| get the quality education they themselves got, and feel they
| can teach at a more advanced level, in a more efficient manner.
| If you're very skilled in certain subjects (e.g. math), it is
| very scary to send your kids to an average school. The
| probability that they will be above average in whatever subject
| you are good at is fairly low.
|
| - Along the same lines, people from other countries who are
| great at certain subjects because their home countries valued
| them but the current one doesn't. That's why schools like
| "Russian School of Mathematics" exist. Not everyone lives in a
| city that has one, so ... homeschool.
|
| - Parents who believe schools are the source of anti-social
| behavior and vices, and don't want their kids to end up that
| way. Having seen kids who were home schooled, this really
| works.
|
| - Along the same lines, stuff like bullying. Especially for
| those who grew up elsewhere, it seems insane how normalized
| bullying in schools is in the US. A lot of Americans view it as
| a rite of passage: You go to school so you can learn skills to
| stand up to bullies. For immigrants, all of this means your kid
| learns less (whether successful against the bullies or not).
|
| - You have ideology X and simply value a lot of things not
| taught in school, and devalue what they do teach.
|
| - Culture: I had a great education, but as I have gotten older,
| I realized that the school/teachers alone are not sufficient -
| you need to be in a culture that values what you are learning.
| Many immigrants (and even Americans) see American culture as
| anti-intellectual, and that impedes what they retain (even when
| they learn it and get A's). They may feel the public school
| _teaches_ well enough, but fear their kids will be stunted
| because of the culture.
|
| I once tutored some kids, and they did not know "basic" things
| like number of days in a year. It's not that they were dumb, or
| had not been taught it. It was just a random useless piece of
| knowledge. They learned it, passed the test, and forgot it. And
| no matter how hard I tried to make it relevant for them, it
| wouldn't be because it wasn't relevant in their home
| environment or amongst their peers.
|
| Where I grew up, it was socially unacceptable not to know this,
| so _everyone_ knew it, whether a top student or a barely
| passing one.
|
| You can argue that this really isn't important to know, but now
| extend that to almost _everything_ they teach - including
| arithmetic and other parts of math. I would teach them, they
| could clearly understand and learn it, they 'd do their
| homework, and then forget it until they have to prepare for the
| tests. And then forget it again.
|
| You won't progress far in math if you learn that way. And those
| who are interested in math are often shunned. I've lived in
| countries where basic arithmetic (including multiplication) is
| a basic skill _everyone_ (who is literate), can do on paper.
| They may "suck" at math, have failed algebra, but even to
| their old age can do multiplication and other arithmetic with
| relative ease. Why? Because society will judge them as idiots
| if they can't. It doesn't matter that calculators are
| available.
|
| Someone from that country will suddenly be concerned when they
| see how what is unacceptable where they come from has been
| normalized, and what is a bare minimum back home will cause you
| to be shunned.
|
| Verizonmath[1] is very much a thing in the US. Verizon was
| definitely _not_ an outlier. Every since it blew up in 2006, I
| 've noticed it everywhere - I often take photos of proper ads
| from real companies advertising a price of 0.99 cents when they
| mean 99 cents. At yard sales, it's _very_ common to see things
| advertised as 0.50 cents. Outside of places like HN, when I 've
| pointed it out, I get push back - some percentage don't even
| see what is wrong, and the rest insist it's OK to list prices
| that way, even after acknowledging the mathematical error.
|
| If you come from Eastern Europe, you probably don't want your
| kids thinking it's OK. If the teacher teaches it properly but
| all their fellow students think it's OK, chances are your kid
| will think it's OK.
|
| [1] http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/
| sfRattan wrote:
| > The objective of public school is to break down the regional
| identities of old and assimilate the youth into the "new"
| national identity.
|
| Having read a bit of history about how many modern national
| identities were constructed over the last three centuries,
| that's a disturbing sentence to see written so casually.
| Phrases like 'breaking down regional identities' and
| 'assimilating the youth into the "new" national identity'
| remind me of the forced assimilation of Sami peoples in Norway
| and Sweden or the historical efforts of French governments,
| both republican and monarchist, to ruthlessly crush regional
| languages in the name of a 'right' to common language.
|
| A more accurate way to understand the purpose of public
| schooling might be: the objective of public school is to break
| down regional identities of old and forcibly assimilate the
| youth into the 'new' national identity _so that, as adults,
| they will become a more compliant, fungible labor supply which
| is more easily legible to the state and elites_.
|
| That deeper purpose, which you either left unspoken or weren't
| aware of, is what many people in the US have against public
| schools. There are a lot of regional identities in America that
| don't have much in common with mine, _but I 'll stand should to
| shoulder with them against attitudes like yours and against the
| policies that follow from those attitudes_. Doubly so in cases
| where their identities were crushed in the past, which is sadly
| common even in America.
| mikhmha wrote:
| I say it so casually because I also find it disturbing. Don't
| worry, we share similar views.
|
| And yet, I went through public schooling, learned the
| "national" identity but I still retained my own unique
| identity and cultural practices taught at home by parents.
| And in the process, I forged a new identity, much like the
| settlers who immigrated to this country before me.
|
| Is it because my parents did not embed the great insecurity
| into me? To reject everything taught from the onset because
| it may lead me astray? They did nothing like that. They told
| me to attend school, make friends, and learn new things. I
| learned both the good and the bad of the dominant society I
| lived in, simply by observing it for myself. And I became
| familiar with the archetypes of the elites and the poor.
| sfRattan wrote:
| > Why are people in the US so against public schools?
|
| > Don't worry, we share similar views.
|
| No, we clearly do not. If you held similar views to mine,
| _you would not have posed the question_ , nor followed it
| with a false dilemma between breaking down regional
| identities and, "everything sucks. And there is no cohesion
| between peoples."
|
| > And yet, I went through public schooling, learned the
| "national" identity but I still retained my own unique
| identity and cultural practices taught at home by parents.
|
| To the extent that an American national identity exists, it
| is rooted in shared ideals and beliefs. Those ideals
| predate the system of public schooling devised by Prussian
| officer-aristocrats in the mid nineteenth century. Our
| ideals have certainly taken a beating under that system.
| Hopefully, they will also postdate it.
|
| Given that you believe you learned the American national
| identity in a public school, I do wonder a bit about how
| well you understand that identity. Especially in light of
| your initial question, which implies a lack of
| understanding of why Americans might oppose a major
| institution.
| mikhmha wrote:
| You read too much into my initial post. I would not have
| been so blunt if it wasn't to point out the great irony
| of public schooling and its inception coinciding with
| modern nation states. I pose the hyperbole question
| because I see the greatest opposition to public schooling
| from Americans and religious peoples.
|
| "everything sucks. And there is no cohesion between
| peoples."
|
| Because at the same time I understand the brutal truth.
| The nations of today where this process of state
| centralization did not occur, or occurred under coercion
| from colonial powers are much worse off. And there people
| viewed as backwards or uncivilized unable to compete in
| the modern world, even though they admirably continue to
| resist modernity.
|
| >"Given that you believe you learned the American
| national identity in a public school..."
|
| I'm not American. I'm Canadian. And no I did not learn
| the national identity strictly through school, it was
| through the people I met at school. My peers, friends,
| etc. It was those interactions that were facilitated
| through the public school system.
| cumshitpiss wrote:
| [dead]
| scotty79 wrote:
| Because their schools are financed by local property taxes so
| if everybody around you isn't rich, your public school is poor
| and bad.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why are people in the US so against public schools?
|
| Mostly, even homeschoolers, aren't.
|
| They either (and the latter is, I guess, a special case of the
| former, but worth calling out separately) think the existing
| public schools available to them are a failure in general or
| for the specific needs of their children that is unresolvable
| in time to adequately serve their children without being
| "against public schools" more generally (I've known people who
| _work_ in public education and homeschool that are in this
| group with regard to their children's specific needs), or they
| are ideologically opposed to education that isn't guided by
| indoctrination in their particular religious /ideological
| beliefs and believe that the current public schools available
| to them are inadequate on those grounds.
| lotharbot wrote:
| For example:
|
| I previously worked in the public schools, and in a museum
| education program that worked 90% with public school classes.
| My mom was a public school teacher before I was born. My
| sister, who I'm quite close to, still works in the public
| schools. We all went to public schools in my neighborhood. My
| middle child goes to a public school that I can see from my
| living room. There's no opposition to public school in my
| family.
|
| When my oldest finished his public Montessori elementary
| school and went to the district's Highly Gifted school at age
| 12, it was a major step back for him. 40 minutes each way on
| the bus just to be at a school that was cookie-cutter and
| wasn't able to support his needs, particularly advanced math
| -- I don't think there's a single teacher in the building who
| even knows how to assess the gaps in his knowledge; they were
| trying to teach him what an exponent is when what he actually
| needed was to fill in gaps in calculus about techniques like
| Lagrange Multipliers. So he's home with me, because it's
| better _for him_. Public school was fine for him as a younger
| kid, and it 's still good for other kids, but it's not a good
| fit for him now.
| abnry wrote:
| I was homeschooled K-12. Even 15 years ago, my parents would say
| that they were like general contractors for my education. And it
| is really is true. I had a mix of co-op, community college,
| online, self-study, and parent-guided study for all my courses.
| This was more so for highschool and less so for primary or grade
| school, which was mostly directly taught by my mother. And as
| others have said, homeschooling is very, very time efficient.
| IIRC, during grade school I was done by lunch time (maybe one or
| two smaller things required).
| jkestner wrote:
| The reason we moved our kids from Montessori to public school is
| to throw our lot in with the majority of society. It's made me
| active in the PTA and school library because up close it's hard
| to ignore the challenges staff deal with, and with skin in the
| game, I don't have the time to wait for someone else to do it.
|
| Hopefully the work we put into the shared system raises the tide
| for all families, so my children grow up within a healthier
| community. (It already feels great working with other parents on
| it.) I recognize that it may not be academically ideal for my own
| kids, but studies (no time to cite) have noted that socioeconomic
| status is a top indicator of academic success. They'll be fine.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I don't really "get" homeschooling. How can parents be
| knowledgeable in all the subjects that school teachers teach?
| There are also cases of parents homeschooling for the purpose of
| religiously or otherwise ideologically indoctrinating their
| children, something that does not often happen in public schools,
| both due to the curricula as well as heterogeneity of thought via
| socializing and sharing information with many other students.
|
| I suppose the pro is that you can teach exactly what you want,
| but that's also a con, as above.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's not about what is taught to kids but about what kids
| retain.
|
| And it seems that primary role of school when the bottom line
| is considered is keeping kids busy so their parents can work in
| peace. So there's really no strong objection if some parents
| want to opt out of this because not many will.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > How can parents be knowledgeable in all the subjects that
| school teachers teach?
|
| Ask parents who home school. Also, just read the article.
|
| > There are also cases of parents homeschooling for the purpose
| of religiously or otherwise ideologically indoctrinating their
| children, something that does not often happen in public
| schools,
|
| At some level, it definitely happens in schools. People who
| deny it's happening have a worldview where what they teach is
| the "norm" or consider it "basic fact". Just ask any parent who
| has said something along the lines of "I don't want my school
| teaching my kids X. What does X have to do with education?" -
| replace X with anything in the social justice sphere.
| bigfryo wrote:
| Lol.. reading that article shows us how the establishment really
| wants to get rid of homeschooling and is afraid of it growing in
| one of the population.. they can hardly wait for some scandal in
| homeschooling so that they can exploit it as a crisis to shut
| down homeschooling
| Justsignedup wrote:
| This is giving me the worst of vibes:
|
| - options for people who don't want to expose their children to
| out-of-family ideas, to perpetuate family biases
|
| - a completely unregulated market for children to go to a
| "school" with a few other kids, giving them small classrooms,
| BUT, no teacher with specialization or educational background.
| Would be extremely hit or miss, with little resource if it isn't
| working out.
|
| - only for those who can afford it.
|
| It just feels... it feels like people have completely given up on
| society and said fuck it, we'll make our own.
|
| This is sad. The real solution is not to homeschool. It is to
| force ALL kids, regardless of age, location, and income to be
| forced into the same school system. Want to improve things? gotta
| make it better for everyone.
| jawns wrote:
| We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended
| private and public schools and grew up with typical biases
| against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got
| married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional
| schools.
|
| What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since
| we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of
| parents who chose to homeschool usually existed on the fringe
| (and probably lacked social skills themselves).
|
| Nowadays, there are a lot more "normal" families who choose to
| homeschool. Our family, and many others we've encountered, values
| and promotes social skills. Our kids attend co-ops, play sports,
| and do other activities with their peers.
|
| And because the demographics of homeschoolers have changed, so
| too have the ways that they homeschool. It's not very surprising
| that there is more collaborative teaching, where parents remain
| the primary educators, but certain subjects are outsourced to co-
| ops, online sessions on Outschool, etc.
| mythrwy wrote:
| The argument about lack of socialization from failure to attend
| public school might have some basis.
|
| But thinking back, I came out of the public schools with some
| pretty anti social behaviors and attitudes that I picked up
| there. Being cool is so important at that age in that setting.
|
| I often wonder what life would have been like had I been taken
| out say, age 12 or 13 and given a more solid education to match
| my natural inclinations away from the cruelty, the misbehavior
| and the general time wasting that characterizes much of public
| school in the US.
|
| Kuddos to you for putting in the effort to give your kids the
| best possible real education. It has to be a lot of work.
| foogazi wrote:
| > Being cool is so important at that age in that setting.
|
| is it ?
|
| Maybe it just comes down to personality
|
| In my mind I was so uncool that the only way to win was not
| to play
| bawolff wrote:
| > In my mind I was so uncool that the only way to win was
| not to play
|
| I mean, if you are thinking about it in those terms it
| sounds like it was pretty important.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Is public school really that cruel these days? I have a 10
| year old, and everyone in her class seems so wholesome and...
| exceedingly tolerant for lack of a better phrase. Compared to
| when I was a 10 year old where public school was a _Lord Of
| The Flies_ thunderdome with bullying, and shoving people into
| lockers, and fights, and in-groups and out-groups and nerds
| vs. jocks, all the cruel 80s stereotypes. Sure, there 's the
| occasional story of extreme bullying that happens to make the
| news, but it seems like these are far outliers these days.
|
| I see absolutely zero need to pull her out. The academics are
| ok--not what an expensive private school might offer, but
| they track well with what I was learning at that age. The
| social/institutional environment is much better than when I
| was a kid.
|
| The few parents I know who homeschool (admittedly, mostly
| from my wife's church group) do so for religious separatism
| reasons, not for educational outcome. They object to public
| school on ideological grounds and perceived "indoctrination,"
| not on the academics.
| ufmace wrote:
| It's probably impossible to generalize among all public
| schools. Some are and some aren't to various degrees
| depending on a thousand factors. The problem is more like,
| how do you realize if a particular public school class is
| bad and what are your practical options once you do.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Is public school really that cruel these days?
|
| This is a good question, but how am I supposed to find out
| the answer with any real certainty short of exposing my
| kids to it? Not really a sane option. "Hey, kiddo, go dance
| on the minefield and see if there are any left" isn't my
| style of parenting.
|
| > Sure, there's the occasional story of extreme bullying
| that happens to make the news, but it seems like these are
| far outliers these days.
|
| It's quite possible that the extremes are just the ones
| that make the news. The low-intensity torment is in my
| opinion just as traumatizing, but unless some parent raises
| a big stink about it then it usually doesn't even rise to
| the level of neighborhood gossip.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Still lots of problems (more in middle and high school) but
| it's easier to today to discover and move to where the
| schools are better. Homeschooling in areas with poor public
| schools tends to be focused on academics and a better
| environment although the desire to provide religious
| education exists everywhere. An area where few
| homeschooling families exist would probably have high
| graduation rates and low crime rates in its public schools.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I don't know about today and don't have kids. This was in
| the late 70's/ 80's. It was as you say, Lord of The Flies
| indeed. Good to hear maybe it has improved. Or maybe the
| bullying is all online now.
|
| I'd like to point out, 10 years old isn't really in the
| thick of it yet. Might rethink your statement say, Junior
| year of high school.
| jawns wrote:
| That argument held sway with me for a long time, but not
| anymore.
|
| Our kids get a decent amount of socialization through all the
| activities they're involved in, and when other kids find out
| they're homeschooled, their response is more often genuine
| surprise rather than "Oh, that figures."
|
| The idea that kids learn social skills best by being thrown
| into a rigid, institutional environment surrounded by
| hundreds of other kids whose social skills are also far from
| developed is kinda silly, though. It's like saying criminals
| will reform themselves best by surrounding themselves with
| lots of other criminals.
| zerbinxx wrote:
| One good thing about the rigid institutional environment,
| for better or worse, is that having exposure to that
| rigidity and institutional side of things can at least give
| kids some skills in the long run for navigating the anti-
| human organizations that form so much of our public and
| private sectors.
| tomp wrote:
| Almost all other societal structures are _way_ less rigid
| and tyrannical.
|
| Name another institution where inmates have to ask for
| permission to go to the toilet, besides _school_ and
| _jail_.
|
| Edit: or another institution where people can attack you
| and you can't call police to help you.
| acka wrote:
| > Name another institution where inmates have to ask for
| permission to go to the toilet, besides school and jail.
|
| Busy call centers, fast food restaurants. Factories:
| assembly line workers. Chemical plants: process
| operators.
|
| I don't mean to be snarky but I think you would be
| surprised at the percentage of the population working
| jobs where they cannot simply leave their station without
| permission.
|
| > Edit: or another institution where people can attack
| you and you can't call police to help you.
|
| The military: active duty personnel deployed to war
| zones.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| I think that's the primary benefit of the school system
| roughly wrote:
| A relative is homeschooling their kids, and they're not doing
| a great job of it academically, but those kids are some of
| the sweetest, most light hearted and caring kids I've ever
| been around.
|
| I learned some socialization at public school, sure. I also
| learned what it was to have a bureaucracy just roll over you
| because nobody involved cared enough to notice you were
| there. Those kids will have that experience eventually, but
| I'm all for delaying it.
| hackerlight wrote:
| The socialization argument is nonsense. Schools as factory
| farms came _first_ -- with no regard for socialization --
| then the socialization argument was made _later_ to
| rationalize it.
|
| Forcing kids (by constructing their environment in such a
| way) to have only relationships with kids that are precisely
| the same age as them is _weird_. Some healthy relationships
| with people who are a few years older in positive. Older kids
| /people need to be embedded in the social circle. You get
| less immature nonsense and less bullying. Homeschooling done
| right is more similar to how kids developed socially in our
| ancestral past (all the way up to a few hundred years ago).
| And I'm not saying that it's better because it's natural. It
| actually makes sense as to why it's better.
| enkid wrote:
| There is no and has never been any true evidence that home
| schooled kids are worse at socialization then the ones that
| go to a traditional school, at least as far as I can tell.
| It's a meme that people propagate because it is "common
| sense," but none of the studies I've looked at supports it.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| How much time does homeschooling take for you? Does it roughly
| equate to one full-time job? I have wanted to homeschool my
| kids but I am afraid I would have to quit my job or downshift
| to part-time.
|
| And since they are different ages, I worry that if I taught
| them all at the same time, the curriculum would average into
| something too challenging for the younger and not challenging
| enough for the elder. How do you manage to meet all their needs
| at once?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Motivated children can easily outpace public-schooled
| children with 3 or 4 days a week at 3 hours a day. They can
| be very self-directed, but the trouble with it is they go
| down rabbit holes and they'll excel at one or two subjects to
| the detriment of others.
|
| My daughter would want to spend 6-10 hours a day on art, but
| wouldn't want to do her French or math homework. My son just
| told me that alef (in the Hebrew alphabet) was the symbol for
| Graham's number, but balks when I try to get him to memorize
| his multiplication tables.
|
| > And since they are different ages, I worry that if I taught
| them all at the same time, the curriculum would average into
| something too challenging
|
| If there is a subject where that is the case, I do not know
| what it would be. Once they're past the age of 7 or 8, most
| or all children are capable of what they would be at older
| ages. I don't think, for instance, that an 8 yr old learning
| to read is slower at it than one learning that for the first
| time at age 14.
|
| For the record though, didn't get to teach my son to read.
| With his sister, I tried from age three on up... every few
| months I'd see if she was more agreeable to it, and she
| wanted nothing to do with it until sevenish. She could sound
| words out phonetically if I pushed from the start, but with a
| look on her face like I was pulling teeth with pliers. So I
| waited with my son until he was almost seven... and he could
| just read. I have no idea how. My wife claims she didn't, and
| his sister certainly didn't either.
|
| I think, really, that public schools doing age segregation
| has more to do with them trying to perfectly homogenize the
| product they crank off the assembly line, than it does with
| making sure each student gets enough learning opportunity.
| rolisz wrote:
| > If there is a subject where that is the case, I do not
| know what it would be. Once they're past the age of 7 or 8,
| most or all children are capable of what they would be at
| older ages. I don't think, for instance, that an 8 yr old
| learning to read is slower at it than one learning that for
| the first time at age 14.
|
| From personal experience: I first encountered differential
| equations in highschool, while preparing for physics
| Olympiad. I could solve basic equations, but I didn't
| understand what I was doing and for example the damped
| oscillator equation was mistifying. Fast forward to
| university, in the first diffential equation class,
| everything made perfect sense and I found it super easy.
| There was probably at least two years between the two
| stories.
| tomp wrote:
| It was the same for me with stochastic processes.
|
| Most likely has nothing to do with age, but simply the
| fact that it was the _second_ time you've encountered it.
| Your brain spent 2 years subconsciously processing it.
| ljlolel wrote:
| Yes it's going to be a lot easier for you than the people
| seeing it for the first time who have to spend a bunch of
| time cranking equations.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > How much time does homeschooling take for you? Does it
| roughly equate to one full-time job?
|
| It depends. I quit my job to homeschool my daughter so that
| she could practice and pursue her violin studies without the
| encumbrances of mainstream school. I suspect some could have
| done this and maintained some kind of a job; I couldn't. We
| spent much of the day either in school work, or practice, and
| then I'd prep tomorrow's material. Neither time nor energy
| was left at the end of the day.
| baryphonic wrote:
| I homeschool my two kids. I was worried about the time
| commitment at first, but it's honestly quite small. At most,
| I spend two hours in the morning for both kids. Typical
| mornings are an hour to an hour and a half. Some subjects
| like social studies we do together (my kids are two years
| apart). Others, like math or language arts, are per child (I
| usually have the other one read or practice piano when giving
| a one-on-one lesson). My wife does a lot of the supplemental
| activities like taking them to our co-op or to museums.
|
| A _lot_ of time in public schools is either wasted or simply
| a consequence of classes having ~30 students each. I also
| find that homeschool kids can be taught the discipline to
| work on their own after a lesson. I check the work in the
| evenings or before school starts in the morning.
|
| I can understand why many people might not want to
| homeschool, but I find it's been a blessing for my kids & our
| family.
| homeskool111 wrote:
| It's hilarious to me that people think they can replace formal
| education with the nonsense that is homeschool.
|
| Social skills is such a red-herring. People were social long
| before school. It's instinctual.
|
| Every homeschooler I met in college was just short of flunking
| out. College isn't "out school" or whatever we're calling the
| homeopathic education these days.
|
| The education system needs to be reformed, but every
| homeschooler is about as well equipped for the real world as
| the people in the poorest school-districts, of the poorest
| cities, of the poorest states.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This being HN, a site full of mostly successful folks, we are
| likely to only hear the anecdotal success stories of
| homeschooling posted here, and not the failure stories. For
| every gushing "I was homeschooled and I now run my own $50M
| company!" story, how many are not getting posted that amount
| to "I was homeschooled and the only book I read was the
| bible. I don't know 4th grade math, am unemployable and
| trapped as someone's housewife." Are there even published
| statistics about this?
| voisin wrote:
| The same could be said about regular public schools too,
| no? I know a number of people that went to a local
| religious school and they came out with excellent
| understanding of the bible and quickly married off and
| started having children rather than pursuing advanced
| education.
| BeetleB wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Research
|
| There is some good research, but be wary. A lot of the
| research is done by pro-homeschooling institutions.
| abnry wrote:
| Very, very wrong. I know numerous homeschooled peers who have
| advanced degrees, including PhDs.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I mean it greatly depends on the quality and dedication of
| the parents doing the homeschooling.
|
| I never considered it for my kids because our public schools
| are pretty good, and I did not feel I had the experience or
| resources or time to do any better. But some people have more
| of a passion for it and find answers to those issues.
|
| I'm sure there are kids who are poorly homeschooled, but your
| anecdote does not meany anything in the big picture. Shall I
| tell you about all the public-school kids I met who ended up
| flunking out of college?
| lieut_data wrote:
| Homeschooler here, from the era before this modern trend.
| Definitely grew up around students with poor social skills
| --- and even started out that way myself! --- but I graduated
| university with honours in computer science and have a
| successful career in software engineering.
|
| I could share lots of anecdotes in the reverse, but that's
| really all they are. Either way, homeschooling wasn't
| nonsense for me, and I'm choosing to continue that legacy
| with my children alongside this next generation of parents
| who believe homeschooling is the best option for their
| family.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Just as a counterpoint... I was homeschooled from 2nd grade
| until sophomore year of high school. I played sports the entire
| time (was the captain of various teams), had plenty of friends,
| and was pretty social. Even still, I felt like my social skills
| were significantly stunted when compared to others my age. It
| took a long time for me to feel comfortable just hanging out
| with others because most of my social time was spent doing
| activities.
|
| Was in high school ~10 years ago and the other homeschool
| families we knew were a mix of farm/ultra religious low social
| skill homeschoolers and fairly normal folks with decent social
| skills.
|
| TLDR: I think there is a social aspect of being in school that
| homeschool kids miss out on, regardless of how many
| extracurricular or sports they may do.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I was public schooled and also felt uncomfortable sitting
| around hanging out, without a purpose or a goal or activity.
| May not be home schooling that is the cause - people are just
| different.
| rayiner wrote:
| [delayed]
| NickM wrote:
| Speaking from experience, there were plenty of normal families
| who chose homeschooling decades ago. The problem is that the
| weird people make a lot of noise, and then homeschooling gets a
| reputation, which causes the self-aware normal folks to shy
| away from talking about homeschooling too publicly because they
| don't want to be associated with the negative stereotypes.
|
| The trouble is, this can become a feedback loop, because the
| only way to dispel the stereotypes is if more normal folks
| speak up.
|
| I've seen this same phenomenon affect other subcultures too,
| and I suspect there's probably a name for it, but I don't know
| what it is.
| cogman10 wrote:
| My main issue with homeschooling is mostly around the fact
| that it's generally done so parents can control and limit
| children's access to well accepted facts (such as evolution,
| age of the earth, or dinosaurs). But beyond that, I've known
| a fair number of homeschoolers that end up with illiterate
| children. That's because teaching kids is super hard and real
| easy to mess up.
|
| Homeschooling generally happens because parents don't like
| some aspect of public schooling and more often than not it's
| that general knowledge conflicts with a religious belief.
| rayiner wrote:
| [delayed]
| pierat wrote:
| Synposis: Shitty Silly-Con valley company is selling "teaching
| homeschoolers" under the guise of "microschooling" and "guides"
| instead of proper teachers. Reading in any of these scam
| companies, and you'll find quickly that they are not schools, and
| these are not accredited teachers. But again, deregulation and
| demolishment of public sector structures and laws to further
| private interests IS the point, as we'll see.
|
| And their payment model is bonkers....
| https://www.prenda.com/empowering-learners The
| Prenda Fee - "The Prenda fee for the 2023-2024 school year is
| $2,199." (As in, each student's family pays this to Prenda)
| The Guide Fee - "The guide fee is set by you as the guide and
| will vary from microschool to microschool." (AKA The Uber/AirBNB
| model of education, where the intermediates have no knowledge and
| all the risk.)
|
| And some states allow redirecting funds from state education
| money to pay for this new scam. And this goes back to a previous
| post I commented on,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37179921 . Now, we can add
| "Expensive Imaginary Scam Education".
|
| In reality, send your children to public school, and use the
| money you'd waste on this scam to visit museums, universities,
| libraries, historical sites, and the like. BE the enriching force
| in your child's life.
| zerbinxx wrote:
| Is it really a scam if it helps kids fit in and learn? I have a
| pretty strong baseline bias against homeschool, but a lot of
| the testimonials in the article are pretty positive. For every
| fear people have of homeschools being dangerous or inadequate,
| it's hard to look at public education as anything but that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Testimonials are as useful as Amazon five-star reviews, and
| the actual data on educational interventions/approaches takes
| decades to come back.
| Clent wrote:
| Testimonials are always positive.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I started the article with the same skeptical mindset as you,
| and to be frank, I was in support of these by the time I
| finished it.
|
| I can definitely see this being a disaster. I can also see it
| as becoming quite successful. Time will tell, but having more
| choices in education is better. Let those who can afford to
| experiment pay those fees. When I look at what people overpay
| for their cars, I'm going to guess this will have better
| returns than the vehicle will.
|
| > In reality, send your children to public school, and use the
| money you'd waste on this scam to visit museums, universities,
| libraries, historical sites, and the like. BE the enriching
| force in your child's life.
|
| A false dichotomy, don't you think? Someone sending their kids
| to these microschools are probably as likely to send their kids
| to museums, etc than those who send kids to public schools. In
| my anecdotal experience, they are _more_ likely. In the old
| days (i.e. 10-20 years ago), sending kids to museums, libraries
| and field trips for education was _heavily promoted_ by those
| advocating for homeschooling.
| treis wrote:
| This doesn't accurately reflect the reality of the situation.
| Atlanta Public Schools (my local district) spends $22k per
| student and average teacher pay is like $60k. Get 7 kids
| together and you can hire a teacher with 10s of thousand left
| over for other stuff. Or send your kid into a class room with
| 20-30 other kids.
|
| Some of this is cheating by not dealing with the added expense
| of special needs kids. But a lot more of it is the explosion of
| administration and expenses not directly related to education.
|
| It seems to be the trend in local government. Taxes get
| collected and the bureaucracy grabs the bulk of the dollars
| leading only a little of the value delivered back to the
| citizens. Schools are a prime example. 25 kids in a class room
| are consuming $1 million of tax dollars and less than 10% of
| that goes to the person educating them.
|
| Like you call $2k bonkers but what do you think APS is
| consuming in administration to educate my kid?
| ghotli wrote:
| I have family members who are homeschooling but it is clear to me
| that no one is actually teaching these children. They are sweet
| nice people but criminally undereducated for their age.
|
| It overall sours my opinion of any positive homeschooling
| comments here or otherwise just witnessing children that will be
| handicapped life long because their parents are conservative poor
| christian antivaxxer racists that are 'afraid' of the public
| school system.
|
| Surely there are positive outcomes in homeschooling and just as
| bad of outcomes in real schools. Just seems like an escape hatch
| for people like my family members that appear to be completely
| cool with how many years behind these children are. My heart
| bleeds for all the children in this situation, in real school or
| otherwise.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230826164333/https://www.washin...
|
| https://archive.ph/jY2ca
| iambateman wrote:
| A couple things to pull out...
|
| (1) sometimes alternative education is worse.
|
| There's no question that, in some cases, alternative school is
| worse for a child's development than standard public school. I've
| personally seen children who were falling behind because their
| parents were not equipped to teach them in high school.
|
| (2) it can sometimes be better.
|
| Alternative school is higher variance than public school - the
| children who do poorly probably do worse while it can be
| spectacular for some children.
|
| We shouldn't ignore that a relatively large percentage of
| homeschooled kids emerge at or near genius level. For kids for
| whom homeschooling works, it _really_ works.
|
| (3) policy should encourage choice.
|
| On average, the US public school system is mediocre by world
| standards and in some parts of the country it's an utter failure.
| Parents should be trusted with the care and education of their
| children because they're in the best position to know what their
| child needs. Certainly some regulation around that freedom is in
| order, but we should expect more competition to produce more
| growth from a policy standpoint.
|
| Just like capitalism is the best-bad economic system we have,
| parent-choice is the best-bad educational system. Some parents
| will fail at their job and others will not. But centrally planned
| educational systems have massive problems, and parents must be
| allowed to opt out of those problems as their only real form of
| accountability.
|
| (4) we should avoid drawing conclusions from individual stories.
|
| When something bad happens at a public school - kid fails,
| someone gets shot, drugs are found, some one gets pregnant,
| there's a fight - we accept those as being part of life, not a
| problem with public school. But when something bad happens to a
| homeschooler, we tend to wonder if the _system_ of homeschooling
| is broken. But the reality is that those stories are likely more
| surprising but probably not more common than the bad things which
| happen at a public high school.
|
| In the story, someone is quoted as saying "Eventually, something
| horrific is going to happen in one of these situations." Which
| may be true and I hope we can find a way to avoid anything bad
| happening to anyone. But let's not forget how many horrific
| things happen _every week_ in high schools across America. It is
| a false promise to say that simply going to a public high school
| would fix all the problems found in homeschooling.
|
| Finally, if a parent wants to outsource the teaching of their
| child to a person who is operating out of a house, we should let
| them. The parent is the person most able to accurately assess
| their child's needs, and it has to be their responsibility to
| make good choices for their children.
| snarf21 wrote:
| First, we need major educational reform in this country. That
| said, the problem is that school must (in order to scale) by
| definition teach at the middle kid of any and all classrooms.
| This means some are always lagging behind and some are always
| somewhat bored. At home, a dedicated parent can teach _any_
| child more effectively because they are getting individual
| attention and level setting. However, I 'd argue the point of
| school and college is far far greater than the acquisition of
| knowledge. I'm fine with parents having the right to choose but
| like most things in life there are pros and cons and one size
| doesn't fit all.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Home-schooled children have attended Ivy League schools and won
| national spelling bees. They have also been the victims of child
| abuse and severe neglect. Some are taught using the classics of
| ancient Greece, others with Nazi propaganda.
|
| So ... just like kids in public school?
|
| Somewhat orthogonal to the article: In my state a lot of people
| were forced to home-school during Covid, and a significant
| percentage of them continue to do so. They found the experience
| and outcomes a lot better than what they had been getting at the
| public school. I listened to their experiences on a local radio
| show, and was fairly disappointed with the home school curriculum
| - it was far more focused on alternative subjects not taught in
| schools, and quite a lot of the "usual" curriculum was omitted
| (very little math, for example, and if they did teach science, it
| was with a lot less rigor). It was almost 80-90% about
| "experiential learning" vs "book learning". I get the value of
| experiential learning and do agree public schools have too little
| of it, but I fear these kids are being cheated out of the
| possibility of getting into STEM - there's no way they can do
| anything in the hard sciences without some good foundations.
|
| The other thing that always confounds me: Virtually every study
| out there shows that on average, by a certain age, home school
| kids outperform public school kids in most/all arenas (social,
| academic, etc). At worst they perform at the same level. The
| parents are very happy with the outcomes. I've known homeschooled
| kids that are _easily_ 2 grades ahead of where they would be at a
| typical public school - and with no social shortcomings
| whatsoever, but they may be outliers as the parents were
| brilliant themselves.
|
| So, both anecdotal and research shows it to be superior. Yet most
| adults I've met who were home schooled as a kid are unhappy with
| their parents' choice.[1] I suspect it is akin to how most people
| overvalue what they don't have, seeing only the benefits of what
| they've been deprived and not the downsides.
|
| [1] Although as I write this, I realize I should account for the
| fact that many/most kids really _hate_ their school experience -
| particularly high school. So perhaps the home schooled kids aren
| 't any less satisfied with their education experience than
| typical public school kids.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| > I've known homeschooled kids that are easily 2 grades ahead
| of where they would be at a typical public school - and with no
| social shortcomings whatsoever, but they may be outliers as the
| parents were brilliant themselves.
|
| I've never met a single person like this. I _have_ met quite a
| few whose parents were dumber than stumps and had weird
| religious reasons for homeschooling their kids. The result was
| extremely poorly socialized, super-dumb kids who never
| progressed past the education level of their parents. They
| mostly moved to public school for high school because they
| wanted to play varsity sports, and they got their heads handed
| to them in class because they were several years behind their
| classmates. It 's hard to learn in a class when you don't
| understand anything that the class is being taught and everyone
| thinks you're stupid to boot. One of them moved out of state
| immediately out of high school because he was so embarrassed at
| people's perception of him.
| foogazi wrote:
| > I've known homeschooled kids that are easily 2 grades ahead
| of where they would be at a typical public school - and with no
| social shortcomings whatsoever
|
| For certain kids school is holding them up
|
| But that's the problem with a standardization. What are the
| odds that all kids need the same amount of time for all
| subjects
|
| Initially everyone was home schooled. The school system is a
| feature & bug of scaling up
| User23 wrote:
| Classroom instruction has to be at a pace that the slowest
| member of the class can follow. This inevitably leaves the
| brighter children frustrated, to say the least.
| varjag wrote:
| Initially everyone was illiterate, except the lucky few in
| position of wealth.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > But that's the problem with a standardization. What are the
| odds that all kids need the same amount of time for all
| subjects
|
| They acknowledge that, but it doesn't change the thought
| process, right? If I _know_ my kids can learn 70% more than
| they do in public schools, and have all the skills /tools to
| provide it to them, I don't care about the reason schools are
| inefficient.
|
| The sentiment that homeschooling parents has is that public
| schools time things to target below average students. That's
| wildly inefficient. Couple it with a reluctance to hold back
| students and it gets even more inefficient. I went to a
| private school. For certain key subjects (history, math,
| science, etc), if you failed just one subject you get held
| back and have to repeat the whole year. As a student, this
| was fantastic. It means if your class got stuck with a
| "troublemaker" who was poor academically and disruptive, you
| wouldn't have to put up with him for more than a year. He
| would either shape up eventually or keep failing till the
| parents pulled him out because it's too expensive.
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