[HN Gopher] Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
___________________________________________________________________
Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
Author : forrestbrazeal
Score : 329 points
Date : 2025-01-14 15:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newsletter.goodtechthings.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsletter.goodtechthings.com)
| aurareturn wrote:
| Having gone through the San Francisco public schooling system, I
| would never send my kids there.
|
| I'd rather home school them if I lived in San Francisco, or if I
| have money, send them to private school.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > I would never send my kids there.
|
| Why not, what's wrong with it? What could you do better at
| home, or what could private schools do better?
| klooney wrote:
| The lottery is pretty rough on people, and a lot of the
| schools are not amazing.
| cratermoon wrote:
| What's "not amazing" about them?
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Don't know why this is downvoted, seems like a reasonable
| question. I don't know much about SF or public schools in the
| US. Are they all bad? do we have data comparing
| public/private schools in these areas?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Public and private schools don't take the same tests, so we
| don't have good days to compare the schools. Even if we
| did, it would be hard to disentangle the impact of
| selection bias.
|
| You could look at college acceptances or similar, but those
| aren't unbiased either, as colleges look at estimates of
| class rank, not just absolute performance.
| unstyledcontent wrote:
| I read thst San Francisco decided not to offer Algebra until
| high school so no one would feel left behind. One of those
| dystopian decisions that emerged from a well intentioned DEI
| initiative. A decision that defies logic and surprise didn't
| help. That would be enough of a red flag for me.
| https://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-
| stop-...
| zetazzed wrote:
| Algebra in 8th grade is back this year.
| https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-
| releases/....
|
| I have no other knowledge to vouch for SFUSD either way
| though.
| bluGill wrote:
| my son is in pre algebra in 6th grade. I assume that mean
| algebra next year. I'm glad his fifth grade teacher
| realized he knew it all early in the year and moved him
| to sixth grade math early.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It's not fully back. Read the fine print.
| nineplay wrote:
| I wonder the same thing, I have friends who send their kids
| there and are happy with it. Not surprisingly for SF, most of
| the parents are educated with good incomes and expect their
| kids to go to college. That has its own set of downsides of
| course, but you could do a lot worse.
| aurareturn wrote:
| You could literally live next to a school and there's a
| chance your kids can't go there.
|
| There are many kids from low income, broken families who are
| just really bad students. Bullies. Disruptive. Disrespectful
| to teachers. It was hell going through public schools in SF.
| cratermoon wrote:
| So it's "opt out of being around average people", then?
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| Average people aim to provide a good a start for their
| kids as possible; average aims to avoid public school if
| possible. You now only have a set of people defined by
| behaviour or ability too poor for private, parents who
| don't care, or ones with no options...
|
| Basically it's opting out of being around the dregs
| cratermoon wrote:
| Am I correct in reading this as you saying poor people
| and the ones with no options are "dregs"?
| aurareturn wrote:
| I wish they were average.
| resonious wrote:
| If the average student is a bully, disruptive, and
| disrespectful to teachers then I think I might actually
| opt out of being around average people if possible.
| cyberax wrote:
| And what's so bad about it? Mind you, it's not just
| 'being around', but "being stuck with them for 30% of
| your life for years in a situation out of your control".
| nradov wrote:
| This is one of the main reasons why there are more dogs than
| children in SF. There are _some_ good public schools but
| parents don 't want to deal with the vagaries of the lottery
| system so they move out to other school districts.
| loughnane wrote:
| Same thing in Boston.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The headline is somewhat begging the question, but the author's
| key observation is on point: People homeschooling their kids are
| implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, going for "opt out of being
| around average people".
| dingnuts wrote:
| I found this explanation extremely unsatisfying considering
| that you could make the same choice and put your child into
| private education if you're a successful tech person.
|
| I know families that homeschool and I like to read articles
| like this one to see if anyone "gets it." So far, no hits.
|
| They're opting out of mediocre instruction and government-
| mandated values enforcement ("DEI" in its public school
| curricula form); the other kids are irrelevant. The
| homeschoolers I know are average and have lots of social
| activities with average peers in their community.
| cratermoon wrote:
| If you look around and see "government-mandated values
| enforcement ("DEI" in its public school curricula form)", I
| already fear for your children, whether you home school them
| or not.
| superq wrote:
| You fear for other people's kids.. over politics?
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Increasing the quantity and quality of good influences on your
| children is just good parenting.
|
| If I know there's a kid down the street who seems like he will
| grow up to be a criminal, and another kid who seems like he'll
| grow up to be a kind, hard-working, well adjusted person, there
| is a 100% guarantee I will encourage my kids to play with the
| second kid, not the first.
| nineplay wrote:
| The poster above references the 'average person'. Do you
| think that the average person is not going to be a good
| influence?
| denismenace wrote:
| Depends if your kid is above or below average.
| theamk wrote:
| Average person _where_?
|
| If the school is bad enough, then an average student there
| (because there are many more students than teachers) might
| not be a good influence.
|
| There are schools in my state with <50% graduation rate,
| the average student there won't even finish the school.
| cratermoon wrote:
| So ability to graduate from high school determines the
| worth of a person?
| theamk wrote:
| I am not saying anything about "worth of a person", I
| don't believe it is even a thing.
|
| All I know that children (and many adults too) do similar
| thing that their peers do. So if I want to increase the
| chance that my child will graduate from high school, they
| should be around people who will graduate from high
| school. Similarly, if no one in their class will go to
| college, the chances they will go to college will be
| smaller.
|
| Note there are exception to the each rule, and I am
| talking about "chances", not certainties.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I thought this was a really bad article. "Suddenly"?? I've heard
| many tech parents go full bore into homeschooling for at least
| about 2 decades now.
|
| Also, for the particular issues she talks about (e.g. social
| isolation), essentially all of the tech parents I know that are
| into home schooling put a ton of effort into having a really rich
| social environment, e.g. either through "group schooling" or lots
| of outside activities.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Covid and the school shutdowns, did create a real boost in the
| homeschooling. Exacerbated by the particularly draconian
| shutdowns and masking in areas where there are a lot of tech
| workers like the Bay Area.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I think it merely made parents aware of what was already
| happening.
|
| My nephew texted my brother during his lunch break to ask for
| more credits for his switch account. My brother asked why
| play games instead of talking or hanging out with others. My
| nephew sent back a video of the lunch room: every single
| student had their eyes glued to a digital device of some
| sort.
|
| The experience kids have in schools isn't what we as adults
| went through - a common thing for every generation - but when
| you can get more interaction and socialization via home
| school networks and groups of motivated parents, it is hard
| to argue against it.
| vel0city wrote:
| Hearing accounts like this where apparently kids bring game
| consoles to school as a regular thing further makes me
| support schools having technology lockers.
| andyferris wrote:
| Does the US really not do that yet? That's crazy. My
| children have school laptops for work and need to lock
| their phones up upon arrival until departure. You
| couldn't bring in a Switch, period. Sometimes they look
| at YouTube videos or play web games etc at lunch time on
| the laptop, but AFAICT they've been discouraging that
| more and more.
| vel0city wrote:
| Some schools have moved to this model, but it definitely
| is not a standard. It is also not always popular with the
| families or students.
|
| https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2024/12/28/a-no
| rth...
| wink wrote:
| I'll let you in on a secret. If I had owned a GameBoy and
| not only a Super Nintendo I would have also brought it in
| in the 90s.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think trying to equate the situation in the 90s with
| what's going on is a mistake because it glosses over the
| huge differences and increased harm in today's world.
|
| I also had a Gameboy in the 90s. I played with it quite a
| bit, but nowhere near the average amount of time spent on
| screens by kids today. And I don't think there is any
| school in the US in the 90s where you'd see every kid
| glued to a digital device at lunch.
|
| I think it's like saying "hey, I smoked weed in the 60s"
| and comparing that to someone freebasing cocaine today -
| or heck, even smoking weed today, as today's weed has
| about 10-100 times the amount of THC as most 60s weed.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'll let you in on a secret. I did own a GameBoy while in
| elementary school. I did bring it to school a few times
| against my parent's wishes. When teachers saw me playing
| with it, it was confiscated and held at the front office
| only to be released at the end of the day. After a few
| times of that happening the confiscation also resulted in
| a parental phone call.
|
| The same went with cell phones. I had a cell phone in
| high school. If it was being used during a class or even
| chirped a single sound it would be confiscated to be
| released at the end of the day at the front office. They
| were not to be used during school time.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > My nephew sent back a video of the lunch room: every
| single student had their eyes glued to a digital device of
| some sort.
|
| Wow, this just makes me intensely sad. We are ruining a
| generation of humans with these digital narcotics. Say what
| you want about being a Chicken Little, or that every
| generation looks at the next generation's behavior with
| some amount of trepidation ("MTV will corrupt your mind!"),
| but this feels pretty different to me. Humans are social
| creatures, and human children need lots of unstructured
| social play, and they need to be allowed to get bored, and
| we're killing all that.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Which is why so many districts are pushing for no mobile
| devices during the school day.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Completely agree, but it's not really like "tech
| homeschooling is a new thing" vs. the fact that public
| schools (I'd argue especially in the Bay Area, e.g. see the
| school board recall) got so bad during the pandemic that
| parents had huge motivation to find an alternative.
|
| And the fact of the pandemic makes this article even worse in
| my opinion: "Gee, why would parents with means want to find
| an alternative when public schools had to go all remote for
| extended periods and were a shit show in general?"
| dang wrote:
| It's really a blog post and if you read it that way (i.e. a
| personal story / take on the topic) then it's fine.
|
| I've replaced the title with a somewhat more neutral question
| from the article. If there's a better title (i.e. more accurate
| and neutral, and preferably using representative language from
| the article), we can change it again.
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| big right wing swing for tech?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There's nothing inherently right-wing about homeschooling. You
| could just as easily homeschool as left-wing parents who don't
| want your kids immersed in an environment where other kids
| judge them by what brands they're wearing, and where the
| teachers all subscribe to the capitalist view of how society
| should function.
|
| It's true that homeschooling has been _more_ prevalent among
| the right wing, but there are lots of people who do it for lots
| of reasons. We did it when our local elementary school was
| bottom third in the state. My wife called up the vice
| principal, and asked why we should put our kids in their
| school. He said that their school could toughen up our kids. We
| decided that "tough" wasn't our main goal for our daughters,
| and we noped out of that school.
| kristianbrigman wrote:
| Alvin Toffler called it back in the 70s (in Future Shock); in
| there, he thought educated elites would move towards
| homeschooling, nothing political on his analysis at least (that
| may match current trend?)
| ausbah wrote:
| I have no idea how common this, I hadn't much of this trend among
| tech weirdos before this article.
|
| The one thought that I imagine is being told you're "above
| average" and "destined to do great things" your whole life by
| your socially-deemed successful parents is just another set of
| probably unrealistic expectations placed on kids.
| sitkack wrote:
| I try and homeschool my kid when they are home (from school). I
| say some of those things, but I also say, when we are fixing a
| clogged drain by disassembling the plumbing. "You could be a
| plumber, lots of hard problem solving and you are not afraid to
| get dirty". You can have high expectations that they live an
| actualized life w/o projecting your own life-arc desires on
| them.
|
| If my kid turns out thoughtful, kind and a whole actualized
| person, then they are successful no matter what.
|
| The problem with homeschooling is that rarely is someone so
| well rounded that they can supply the full spectrum of
| education that a child needs. Blackbody vs an RGB source
| emulating a full spectrum. We all have cognitive blindspots.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > The problem with homeschooling is that rarely is someone so
| well rounded that they can supply the full spectrum of
| education that a child needs. Blackbody vs an RGB source
| emulating a full spectrum. We all have cognitive blindspots.
|
| While this is true, it's not like schools are teaching kids a
| full spectrum of knowledge either. In particular, a lot of
| practical skills are often not taught in modern schools -
| personal finance, cooking, basic home maintenance and
| construction ("shop class"), etc. How valuable some of this
| stuff is will depend on the child of course.
| vel0city wrote:
| I agree with this, but IMO the more correct solution is to
| look for the gaps in learning from all sources and look to
| fill those instead of removing a massive chunk of education
| assuming one can do all of it better.
| sitkack wrote:
| Well said. Heavy aside coming.
|
| I think is another example of monotheistic cultures
| favoring linear narratives, rigid taxonomies and 1 to 1
| causal chains. This is the world that we live, that we
| seek The Reason (singular) that something is the way it
| is. And if it isn't it the way we want, what ever is
| closer to the root of the taxonomy needs to get replaced.
| sitkack wrote:
| My comment falls for the same reductionist trap it aims
| to expose.
| vel0city wrote:
| I appreciate the try and the self-reflection my friend.
| To hope we can both appreciate truths we see in each
| other.
| carlosdp wrote:
| > Here are some things I struggle with at age 32:
|
| > - Social awkwardness and anxiety
|
| > - Difficulty in forming IRL friendships
|
| > - Impatience with the idea of connecting on a meaningful level
| with other people: who needs 'em?
|
| > - An abiding sense of detachment from reality
|
| I'm the same age and have the same things, and I went to
| traditional school K through university. Idk if that has much to
| do with how you were schooled, or at least not being home
| schooled doesn't just magically fix that.
| sitkack wrote:
| Those are all symptoms of ADHD. I am reluctant to point that
| out, but I see this a lot. I'd like to respond with a small
| footnote. Or wait until the comment drops below the fold. Alas,
| I cannot. :)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Also schizotypy which maybe 5% of people have and gets DXed
| basically 0% of the time. It's a developmental disability
| which will make you a target for relentless bullying which
| will screw you up much more than you need to be screwed up.
|
| You should be reluctant to DX ADHD, everybody seems to have
| it because it's promoted by an addictive pill industry, it's
| almost as fashionable as gluten intolerance used to be or
| autism is these days. #notactuallyautistic
| sitkack wrote:
| Interesting. I read the wiki article and the mayo clinic
| page on it. School uniforms are not uniformly a bad idea I
| think. We as a civilization should really focus on removing
| bullying as memetic virus. It has knock on effects that are
| larger than we realize, like most forms of harm.
|
| I think most people seem to have it, because I think most
| people do to some degree, most things are a spectrum. We
| simply aren't prepared for the world we have accidentally
| created for ourselves. I personally don't find the pills
| addictive. Speaking of which, this quite long video,
| "Dopamine Expert: <clickbait redacted>" is quite good, esp
| if you are a fan of neurology and neuropsychology.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6xbXOp7wDA
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Whether schizotypy is dimensional (you have more or less
| of it) or taxonic (you have it or you don't) is a primary
| controversy. One fact is that the 'schizogene' postulated
| by Meehl which would make it taxonic certainly does not
| exist or efforts to find it would have born fruit in the
| genomic age.
|
| The dimensional view is personified by Gordon Claridge
| who edited a few conference proceedings which may be
| closer to the truth but fail to tell a compelling story.
| You might read these and walk away thinking "nothing more
| to see here folks"
|
| This monograph
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-
| Experim...
|
| by Mark Lenzenweger tells a compelling story that might
| be less true. My life made 100% more sense the day it
| fell into my hands after decades of looking for answers.
|
| I don't really like the DSM definition of STPD; today I
| could mark up my first psych eval with a highlighter and
| add a few symptoms I've experience sense and satisfy it,
| but as a person who reads about psychodiagnosis for fun I
| read it and missed it numerous times. (Also despite my
| condition causing me a lot of trouble, I don't feel like
| I'm really that ill.) If Lenzenweger is right, it could
| be diagnosed by an eye tracking test.
|
| As for school uniforms I think they have some good points
| and some bad points. As a kid they might have done me
| some good but I probably would have been resistant, as I
| was to many things. And for bullying I'll share
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Bullying-Social-Destruction-Laura-
| Mar...
|
| and also
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Honor-Bluejacket-
| Books/dp/15575...
|
| written by USMC officer, journalist, novelist and US
| Senator Jim Webb which is a compelling but even-handed
| account of the role of hazing in promoting group cohesion
| that was recommended to me by one of his classmates from
| the Naval Academy one day when I was giving blood.
| sitkack wrote:
| Reading it now, I am reminded of the importance of sleep.
| The only time I have experience "visual aberrations" is
| when I have been very sleep deprived. Items in my
| periphery would rotate, like my mind was attempting to
| dream. And then there is this description of one of the
| cases
|
| > single male who works for the U.S. Postal Service,
| typically during the midnight shift.
|
| People should be very very cautious about working swing
| shifts or night shifts.
|
| https://time.com/3657434/night-work-early-death/
|
| I am not that far in, but it looks to me like STPD is a
| precursor to full Schizophrenia, and that if caught early
| could avoid it entirely. This might be what the book
| says.
|
| Oh the DSM, it seems chock full of ... spicey illinformed
| kinda right by accident correlation isn't causation kind
| things. After reading enough of it, I don't even see it
| anymore. I am sure there is still some phrenology in
| there.
|
| Hazing as a bonding exercise is barbaric. I have seen
| scrapbooks of USN sailors that have crossed the Tropic of
| Cancer and Equator. Yeah, no.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Meehl's hypothesis is that some fraction of schizotypes,
| maybe 5-10% develop schizophrenia in early adulthood. I'm
| too old for that now.
|
| It could be that I've compensated because my verbal
| intelligence is too high to measure. I got 800 verbal/760
| math on the SAT and probably gave up 40 points to the
| line noise in my brain. I struggled to get more than 90%
| on math quizzes in high school because of that line noise
| but as my education progressed (physics PhD) I got better
| at not making mistakes on math. I've maxxed every verbal
| test and subscale I've taken.
|
| I am worried that I won't be able to compensate so well
| when I am older; psychotic dementia would be a terrible
| burden on the people around me. I've seen people who aged
| well because they had good emotional habits, I can only
| hope I've got enough time to improve mine.
| paulpauper wrote:
| This is due the author presumably having a really high IQ, not
| homeschooling. He would feel the same way with regular
| schooling.
| tolerance wrote:
| One commenter proposed ADHD, the other high IQ.
|
| My proposal: Forrest is just an average person guy, those who
| know him (but not how he feels about himself) may describe him
| as "well adjusted". How Forrest feels is a reasonable response
| to a culture that rewards and incentivizes maladjustment.
|
| Signed on behalf of
|
| _Los milenaristas milenarios de militante_
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Probably correlates with remote work.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Another thought is the rise in school shootings.
| bitcoin_anon wrote:
| School is the industrialization of childhood.
| greesil wrote:
| Help help I'm being repressed
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| civilization is the industrialization of society
| attila-lendvai wrote:
| yeah, and child labor was not banned, but made mandatory and
| pointless.
| x187463 wrote:
| Anecdotally, those around me that are homeschooling are doing it
| for one of two reasons:
|
| 1) Right-wing disgust over woke issues.
|
| 2) Fear of school shootings.
|
| That's coming from a non-tech middle/lower-middle class setting.
| 20-30 years ago, when I was in school, most of the homeschoolers
| seemed (again anecdotally) to be based on religion or some other
| idiosyncratic reasoning rather than the reasons I cited above.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > 2) Fear of school shootings.
|
| I would add:
|
| 3) Fear of fear of school shootings.
|
| The active shooter drills and other security measures that
| American kids go through in some schools are positively
| dystopian. Even if the chances of a school shooting are
| statistically very low, the measures put in place to prevent
| them are probably not good for kids' psychological well being.
| Validark wrote:
| Honestly a school shooting drill was probably near the bottom
| of the causes of psychological problems when I was in school.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I have some friends who are Christian but left wing (their kids
| would come over to play and draw pictures about helping poor
| people.) The dad teaches CS at a small Catholic college, mom
| stayed home and educated their kids.
|
| The "disgust over woke issues" existed in some form 30 years
| ago when people were homeschooling but it had not hardened into
| the constellation it is in now. Back then you could get folks
| like that to talk articulately about how they disagreed with
| secular values, introduce a word like "woke" and now people
| talk past each other, at best, if they talk at all.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I miss the days when young earth fundamentalist Christianity
| tinged with racism was my most compelling ideological
| opponent.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Personally I see it as bad theology as much or more so than
| bad science.
|
| I mean, how do you reconcile the idea that "God is great"
| (Muslim slogan but how you can not believe that as a
| theist?) with the idea that the world is just 6000 years
| old and he sits on the throne and is obsessed with Jewish
| people as opposed to the scientific picture that the world
| is at least 13 billion years old, 'his image' is inscribed
| into the molecular structure of our cells, which implies
| God is a lot bigger than that.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| I live in a good area and have friends who work in a few
| different schools out here. Kids are throwing chairs at teachers.
| There are elementary school classrooms where ~1/4 students don't
| speak English. The reading/math skills are so dismal, any student
| who learns at home is bored as hell.
|
| Private schools are outrageously expensive.
|
| Homeschooling is becoming the pragmatic choice.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a situation like
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty_Model
|
| where "voice" never works.
| disqard wrote:
| TIL, thank you for sharing that.
|
| Btw, I'm trying hard to think of places (today) where "Voice"
| works. For instance, in a corporate setting, I can personally
| attest that it does not.
|
| Perhaps there are some "small-scale" contexts where it does
| work (HOA?)
| msluyter wrote:
| | Private schools are outrageously expensive.
|
| Yes, and... In states where property taxes fund schools, there
| are basically two ways to pay for a good school: a) go to a
| private school, b) live in a school zone with high real estate
| values. At various points my wife and I calculated that 8 years
| at ~25k/yr tuition would work out to about the same as the
| ~200k house price delta we'd have to pay to move to a better
| school zone.
|
| And I suppose option #3 is rationing, which is how some schools
| do it (our daughter is in a gifted academy where admission is
| limited via lottery.)
| cloverich wrote:
| I did the same math comparing portland with suburb schools
| (around portland and seattle) and came to the same
| conclusion. But one other thought is when the money goes to
| the mortgage, you get to keep the wealth after (assuming you
| sell to downsize at some point).
| vel0city wrote:
| More money in the mortgage principal you theoretically keep
| when you later downsize housing, but you also will probably
| spend a good bit more in taxes as well.
| cloverich wrote:
| Yes, good to do the calculation properly before making
| the decision if its motivated primarily by finances;
| sometimes the outcome can be surprising. Ironically
| speaking specifically about Portland, you'll pay _less_
| in taxes moving to e.g. Washington schools in addition to
| getting better schools. But I think this is likely a
| special case.
| vel0city wrote:
| Yes, I definitely agree, YMMV, tax situations and school
| district quality vary greatly depending on specifics.
| Yoric wrote:
| Yeah, I moved house recently. The #1 factor for picking the
| house was the good high school 500m away.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >In states where property taxes fund schools, ... b) live in
| a school zone with high real estate values
|
| Here's some tangential anecdata.
|
| I'm in Oregon, the county I live in pays for the local
| schools through property taxes. More than half of the tax
| goes to the schools if I recall.
|
| Anyway, that's not the fun part. The fun part is one of the
| schools needs(wants?) a new roof. Sounds reasonable, here are
| the unreasonable parts: They want to raise funds with
| _additional_ taxes, because they refuse to budget and earmark
| money for it. They also said they need(want?) _several
| million dollars_ to do it. The taxes would also be used by
| the county to buy school-issued bonds from the school to fund
| the new roof, rather than directly using the tax dollars.
|
| Unsurprisingly, the county measure to introduce that new tax
| failed during the election in November with a resounding
| laugh.
|
| The _entire_ way our schools are operated begs some very hard
| questions.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| Our local schools, like many around the country, spooled up
| new permanent programs in response to the influx of COVID
| funding which they always knew to be temporary.
|
| Now that the funding has gone away, they say they have a
| funding crisis, and will have to cut other things unless
| they can get the state to "adequately fund" them.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| What you're describing is the completely normal way of
| funding capital projects... they presumably need to fund
| the improvements at once (the roofing contractors aren't
| going to be paid over the next 15 years) and tax payers
| won't want a huge spike in taxes so the district will sell
| bonds with a ~15 year horizon, taxpayers can have slightly
| higher taxes for 15 years, and the funds are available for
| improvements on day one.
|
| You seem to be under the impression that the school
| district has enough extra funding that they could just put
| tens of millions of dollars aside and complete the
| improvements as they come up, but can you imagine the
| shrieking that would erupt if they had a school board
| meeting and disclosed a capital improvement fund with
| millions of dollars in it? People would demand that their
| taxes be lowered post haste since it's clear the schools
| don't need all the money they're being given.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Something like a new roof is an expense known literally
| years in advance. You know when something will be due for
| repair or replacement due to reaching the end of design
| and/or useful life. The proper way to handle that kind of
| expense is to set aside some money every year in the
| budget toward an earmarked fund until you have enough
| when time comes to buy a new roof.
|
| So no, I (and clearly most of the voters) heartily
| rejected the new tax proposal. Fiscal discipline before
| any more or new taxes.
|
| Also: There is no reasonable, commonly understandable way
| a new roof costs _several million dollars_. Forget where
| the money could come from, the demand itself is
| questionable. As a taxpayer I want to see the school 's
| entire fiscal records, including data that might not be
| public, if they want that kind of money for what should
| be a regular maintenance job.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Lol never worked construction for government gigs? I was
| once hired on as a laborer for a city government funded
| arts building. The construction boss had to buy a very
| expensive and gawdy table from the mayor's kids. The
| government was paying themselves. It's likely 30% roof
| and 70% old boys network of hiring select people for
| favors.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I'm quite aware what the several million buckeroos are
| _actually_ "needed" for, and I'm all the more vindicated
| in telling the school and county to get fucking bent.
|
| Unfortunate that kids have to indirectly get caught in
| the crossfire, but such is life.
| tzs wrote:
| So basically you think taxes should have been set higher
| a long time ago so they would have a yearly surplus that
| could have been saved up to pay for a new roof?
|
| I don't see why this is preferable to lower taxes that
| just cover operations and short term maintenance, with
| separate bond issues to play for things like new roofs
| which are expensive but only come up ever 20 to 30 years.
|
| There is quite a bit of variability in how long a roof
| lasts, because it can be greatly affected by weather and
| climate and accidents. With the "save for it out of a
| surplus" approach you'd need enough surplus so that
| you'll be ready if it turns out your current roof needs
| replacing on the low side of the roof lifetime range.
|
| But then what happens when you reach that and the roof
| turns out to actually still be fine? Do you just keep
| adding each years surplus to the roof fund? I bet
| taxpayers wouldn't like that. They'd want taxes to be
| lowered to get rid of the surplus.
|
| But then when you do replace the roof you'd have to raise
| taxes back to what they were to start building the fund
| for the next roof. So you still end up with the pattern
| being higher taxes for several years after a roof is
| installed and then lower taxes from then until it is time
| for the next new roof.
|
| That's the same pattern you end up with under the "use a
| bond issue to pay for a roof when needed" approach.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >So basically you think taxes should have been set higher
| a long time ago so they would have a yearly surplus that
| could have been saved up to pay for a new roof?
|
| Yes.
|
| Simply put: If you can't or won't budget+save for a known
| future expense, I'm not giving you money to pay for it
| when it comes knocking.
|
| >But then what happens when you reach that and the roof
| turns out to actually still be fine?
|
| Save what's in there for when the roof really hits end of
| usable life and either: A) Keep adding to the fund if
| it's justifiable, or B) Remove the line item from the
| budget and reduce or reallocate the budget accordingly.
|
| We're not talking about RNGesus throwing down a randomass
| thunderbolt at the school and blasting a randomass hole
| through it on a randomass Thursday. We know reasonably
| when the roof will need replacing for an absolute fact,
| and at least a ballpark estimate how much it will cost.
|
| Fiscal discipline goes a long way to convincing me to pay
| (more) taxes.
| thayne wrote:
| IME private schools also tend to be in more expensive areas,
| so you will either still have to pay more for housing, or
| spend a lot of time and transportation costs to get between
| home and school. Plus friends from school will live further
| away.
|
| And of course many people don't have enough money for private
| school or to move to a good school district.
| 9991 wrote:
| > And of course many people don't have enough money for
| private school or to move to a good school district.
|
| That's the whole point. Keeps out the riff-raff.
| cootsnuck wrote:
| No need to hide behind euphemism. Just say what you mean.
| brightball wrote:
| This seems to reflect a lot of what I hear about as well.
| Everything is too entrenched from a decision making standpoint
| for any one person to make a difference in reforms.
|
| A free market fixes anything where people have the ability to
| "vote with their wallet" and simply stop paying for services
| which aren't meeting expectations when they find another that
| does. Things like employer sponsored health insurance are
| insulated from you choosing a different option for yourself and
| we get the situation that we currently have because of it.
|
| Education is the same way but the only ways to vote with your
| wallet are...
|
| 1. Buy a house zoned for the school that you want.
|
| 2. Pay for private school.
|
| 3. Home school.
|
| 4. In some areas, school choice where you can choose from
| another of the available public options may be viable too.
|
| The only long term solution here that has potential to fix
| things legislatively is a true school voucher program that
| would let you take the tax money assigned for your kids
| education and put it into whatever option you believed was
| actually best for their education.
|
| This _should_ lead to a start-up like small business ecosystem
| with lots of small Montessori style schools especially for
| younger kids. Most likely a "neighborhood schools" model would
| pop up and parents would end up walking their kids to school
| again, even in suburban areas.
|
| Most likely you would still see bigger options for high school
| still as teenagers crave more socialization. Sports would
| likely revolve more around communities than individual schools
| too.
|
| You'd of course see some specialties. Schools advertising why
| they were the best option for your kids and then having to
| prove it in order to keep them. Yes, there would definitely be
| religious schools as there already are now.
|
| My guess is that a lot of the current home school co-ops that
| are popular in my area would simply become suddenly funded
| because the parents involved as pretty happy with the model. I
| had a lot of biases against home schooling until I saw how
| these co-ops work and it's really effective. Basically just
| like a normal school small school with parents teaching
| different lessons on different days. Each parent's commitment
| is a half day a week to teach and they still do school plays,
| etc.
| vel0city wrote:
| Voucher programs are just going to flood the "education
| market" with substandard schools teaching things like humans
| walked with dinosaurs a few thousand years ago before the
| great flood. They're going to extract profits from our tax
| dollars to give us a worse quality service.
|
| We'll see a lot of new schools open up, spend a few years
| collecting profits, then get shut down for substandard
| quality after effectively failing to teach kids for those few
| years. Meanwhile the public schools which can't be choosy
| will end up with fewer resources and have worse outcomes for
| the kids who have parents who can't afford private
| transportation to the few nicer, choosier voucher schools.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Why would it give people worse education? Besides who are
| you or any of us to decide what is and isnt a good
| education for someone elses kids? It's not your job to
| police ideas.
| vel0city wrote:
| Are you really arguing schools getting taxpayer money to
| teach kids humans walked with dinosaurs and all modern
| biology is a lie a good educational outcome?
|
| Do you really not see how that's a bad outcome?
|
| Do you not see that removing the funding from the regular
| public schools to go to teach that nonsense will lead to
| worse outcomes for those kids who can't leave those
| regular public schools?
|
| Sure, maybe some students will potentially have some
| better outcomes if they manage to go to a good private
| charter school with their voucher that happens to be a
| decent one. For everyone else it's a worse outcome,
| unless you think it's a good thing to teach every animal
| alive today are direct descendants of the ark that was
| just a few thousand years ago.
|
| Also, kiss special education funding goodbye. It won't be
| profitable to handle these students. They'll be trapped
| in those even more underfunded public schools. Hooray,
| great outcomes!
| from-nibly wrote:
| But those kids who are "being left behind" are good to
| have vouchers too. You don't think there will be small
| schools who want to take them?
|
| I had a bunch of random teachers teach really dumb stuff
| while I was in public school. I don't believe those
| things, because I had parents who were involved in my
| education. It's never a good idea to leave your kids
| education to the whims of someone else.
|
| Public school doesn't have some magic monopoly on good
| ideas. And private/voucher schools aren't going to have a
| monopoly on bad ones.
|
| Why would the kids not be able to leave public schools?
| They will all have vouchers?
| vel0city wrote:
| > You don't think there will be small schools who want to
| take them?
|
| Spending a second of logic on it and thinking critically,
| there won't. Why would a school empowered to be choosy
| and subject to profit motivations choose the pricier
| students to specialize that reduce their rankings?
|
| And why do you think a flood of schools arguing germ
| theory is a lie be a public good?
|
| I went to religious private school and too had teachers
| who taught some bullshit things. Dinosaurs were fakes
| buried in the soil by the devil to test believers.
| Evolution is a lie by the government. And yet by personal
| experience I'm more learned than the average public
| school peer I know. I'm a somewhat special person though;
| I know many in my class that still believe without
| question. It's not a good thing for society overall to
| have such _" knowledge"_.
|
| As for why kids wouldn't be able to leave the public
| schools, some schools will be required to provide
| transportation. Others won't. Some will be able to be
| choosy, some won't. You see where this goes? Those
| schools which are choosey and don't provide
| transportation will end up selecting the most well off
| while those unable to be choosy and/or forced to provide
| transportation will be forced to shoulder those who
| aren't good performers who don't get into the choosy
| schools with a transit scholarship.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| > I went to religious private school and too had teachers
| who taught some bullshit things... And yet by personal
| experience I'm more learned than the average public
| school peer I know.
|
| Should that not give you pause about the general quality
| of the schools you're defending? Do you not see where
| parents might see you in fundie school learning about how
| man rode the dinosaurs alongside a public school kid that
| somehow knows _even less_ than you about history or
| biology, and think "hmm maybe I'd like to find something
| else"?
| vel0city wrote:
| > Should that not give you pause about the general
| quality of the schools you're defending?
|
| No, because I've seen the average of the extremist
| schools which will grow with the voucher program and
| they're far worse than the negatives I experienced.
| Education like Eve gives Adam two apples, how many apples
| does Adam have; it doesn't matter Jesus will come soon
| here's another chapter of the KJV.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Except there's no reason to believe extremist schools
| should grow significantly. Most people aren't extremists
| (pretty much by definition). In fact, good schools are a
| usual top tier concern when looking at housing. Your
| worry about fly-by-night schools extracting profits and
| fleeing is also not particularly hard to solve: hold them
| liable for damages/a return of n years of voucher funds
| if the school fails to meet standards and require them to
| carry insurance or post a bond to prove they can meet
| their liability. High performing schools or new schools
| associated to people/organizations with a previous
| success record will have cheap premiums. Dodgy schools
| will have expensive premiums or will be uninsurable. Your
| worry about special ed is also not that complex: give
| higher funds for those kids to offset their higher cost.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Ok, so... you went to some self-described example a
| school you are complaining about, turned out great, and
| are upset that kids might not keep going to known-failing
| schools?
|
| Maybe... there is more to school than facts? Maybe it's
| about order and discipline and shared values too?
| lmm wrote:
| > Maybe... there is more to school than facts? Maybe it's
| about order and discipline and shared values too?
|
| Maybe status-quo bias is so powerful that people will see
| an institution that fails at literally everything it
| tries to do and instead of concluding that it's a failing
| institution they will pick some other random thing and
| decide the institution must actually be about that,
| because the idea that the institution is actually
| pointless is too horrible to contemplate.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > Are you really arguing schools getting taxpayer money
| to teach kids humans walked with dinosaurs and all modern
| biology is a lie a good educational outcome?
|
| I'll say yes. Most people I've seen who have gone through
| that type of schooling are good members of society. They
| work jobs, they pay taxes, they have friends, they often
| go on to higher education, they raise families, and they
| may be happier than the average person. The outcome is
| perfectly fine.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| I went to a young earth creationist Christian school and
| it messed me up. Most of us had a hard time adjusting to
| life outside the Evangelical Christian bubble. It's
| really hard to connect to others when your identity is
| tied up in believing a lot of outlandish things and it's
| hard to love yourself because you're given a long list of
| crazy rules to follow. I was told that kissing someone
| before I was married would taint my soul and whoever I
| married would be disgusted by me if I did so. Most people
| I've kept in touch with regret going to that school and
| every queer person I know has been absolutely traumatized
| by the experience. I'm happy, and by your criteria, a
| good member of society but that was despite my school. It
| took a lot of therapy, personal growth, and finding a
| community of people who actually care about me to be
| happy.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| You are ignoring the externalities. We end up with an
| ignorant society that ultimately harms all of us. I hate
| to use a movie trope here, but we're barely a step above
| Idiocracy when it comes to the ability of the average
| American to function and make decisions. This ultimately
| becomes self destructive.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| 87% of kids attend public k-12, and secular and Catholic
| schools together make up the majority of private, so if
| we're barely a step above Idiocracy, it seems a bit silly
| to point at the "man rode the dinosaurs" people.
| rayiner wrote:
| I don't think supporters of the existing American public
| school are in any position to lecture anyone about
| "outcomes."
| nradov wrote:
| Come on, be serious. In a huge country with 50M students
| attending primary/secondary school you can always dredge up
| a few horror stories but those are far from the typical
| case. On the scale of ways that schools damage kids,
| teaching them the unscientific mythology of certain
| Christian sects is hardly the worst. The Catholic church,
| which is one of the largest private school operators, has
| no official position on paleontology or evolution through
| natural selection.
| vel0city wrote:
| I am serious. If you're thinking most of the families are
| chomping at the bit to repurpose tax dollars to Catholic
| schools you've clearly never interviewed the average
| homeschool family South of the Mason-Dixon. They don't
| even think Catholics are Christian; many would align a
| priest with Satan!
|
| Most families I know who currently home school do so so
| to avoid vaccine requirements because germ theory/biology
| is a lie or because they're worried their kids will be
| exposed to the idea of the fossil record or that gay
| people exist in the world or put thoughts like dinosaurs
| died before humans into kids heads.
|
| You're delusional if you think of these aren't major
| homeschooling points in the US. Willingly holding your
| nose to ignore the _extreme_ stench of the anti-
| intellectualism the rest of the movement massively
| embodies.
|
| This _will_ be the outcome in an extreme majority of
| school districts. If anything, this recent election shows
| _fundies vote_. To them it 's even more than life or
| death, it's _eternal death_ to miss voting.
| brightball wrote:
| This would all be a solid argument if home schooled kids
| didn't significantly outperform public school kids.
|
| https://nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/
| vel0city wrote:
| This isn't pure statistics though. This dataset is
| _massively_ biased. And out performed on what, that 2+2=4
| or that 2+2=Who know what except that God gives us our
| provision despite what our eyes see and logic tells us
| brightball wrote:
| Standardized testing
| gedpeck wrote:
| That's a meaningless statistic. What matters is how each
| group respectively would do in the other format versus
| what they do in their present format.
| 9991 wrote:
| > The Catholic church ... has no official position on
| paleontology or evolution through natural selection.
|
| That's certainly an indictment.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or private equity owned schools. Imagine how bad product
| they could effectively deliver. The would not even teach
| humans walking with dinosaurs... As they would do bare
| minimum of teaching anything at all...
| pjscott wrote:
| Why would parents send their children to those schools?
| Never mind who owns them; I would expect the kind of
| hypothetical schools you're describing to go bankrupt
| quickly. Private equity is not in the business of losing
| money in predictable ways.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Same reason parents send their kids to public schools:
| because the price is right. Since we're importing legions
| of indentured servants, wages aren't rising, and parents
| have to make tough decisions in order to pay for basic
| necessities.
|
| A thriving education system is an indicator of a
| prosperous society, not a cause.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > As they would do bare minimum of teaching anything at
| all...
|
| As compared to what again? Remind me how good government
| has been doing.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Schools are a state and local matter. So just because you
| might be frustrated with the government in your area
| ain't my effing problem. To chastise all public schools
| is a false narrative.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| For one, you mean local government.
|
| Two, then you wouldn't be opposed to eliminating the dept
| of education then, right? I hope Trump follows through on
| his promise you seem to agree with.
| rayiner wrote:
| Being able to read the Bible would be a big improvement on
| say the Baltimore school system, which spends $22,500 per
| year per student: https://www.city-journal.org/article/are-
| baltimore-students-... ("According to the 2022 NAEP test,
| only 10 percent of fourth-graders and 15 percent of eighth-
| graders in Baltimore's public schools are proficient in
| reading.")
|
| Literally, madrassas in Pakistan that just teach the kids
| to read the Quran would be an upgrade.
| lthornberry wrote:
| Those numbers do not mean what you seem to think. 1st,
| proficiency on that test is a pretty high bar. There are
| kids making perfectly adequate progress who don't score
| proficient. Second, average per-pupil costs are
| meaningless. Baltimore city pays for two of my kids'
| educations. One costs the city about $8k (the money that
| a school gets for a kid with no extra needs). The other
| costs well over $100k, due to significant disabilities.
| Baltimore has a disproportionate number of kids with
| significant needs of some sort, including learning
| disabilities, extreme family poverty, and ESL learners.
| Those kids need extra resources. A voucher system isn't
| going to change that.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Those numbers do not mean what you seem to think
|
| Those numbers are actually painting a rosier picture of
| what is actually happening in Baltimore and other cities.
| In 23 out of 150 school, zero students - none! - were
| proficient in math. Not a single student. There is simply
| no way to put lipstick on that pig.
|
| >The Maryland State Department of Education recently
| released the 2022 state test results known as MCAP,
| Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program.
|
| >Baltimore City's math scores were the lowest in the
| state. Just 7% of third through eighth graders tested
| proficient in math, which means 93% could not do math at
| grade level.
|
| >But that's not all. WBFF combed through the scores at
| all 150 City Schools where the state math test was given.
| In 23 Baltimore City schools, there were zero students
| who tested proficient in math.
|
| https://katv.com/news/nation-world/23-baltimore-schools-
| have...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Not saying they are useless but standardized tests only
| work for kids who take them seriously.
|
| I recall taking these as a kid, and there were kids who
| would just fill in the bubbles. They would not even read
| the questions. They thought it was funny.
| msrenee wrote:
| In the other 127 schools, what percentage of students
| were proficient in math? How about other schools given
| the same test? It's hard to draw conclusions without
| context as to what an average or above average school
| scores in these tests.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >In the other 127 schools, what percentage of students
| were proficient in math?
|
| Citywide the number was 7%. Better than 0 I suppose but
| still awful.
|
| >Just 7% of third through eighth graders tested
| proficient in math, which means 93% could not do math at
| grade level.
| msrenee wrote:
| How about outside the city? This is a statewide test, how
| are other areas doing?
| zo1 wrote:
| So when we have anecdotes, we get told to look at the
| stats for objective facts. Alternatively, when we do have
| stats, we get told "no those numbers do not mean what you
| think they mean" as a way to dismiss the abysmal numbers.
| So which is it.
|
| Let's face it, we all know it, just some of us are too
| scared to say it publicly. In large urban areas in
| America, there is a (large / huge / significant) portion
| of the school population that is illiterate, speaks non-
| functional english in the form of black-culture slang,
| the rest don't even speak english in an english-speaking
| country, and practically none of them are going to be
| functional adults that don't require assistance and
| handouts to survive.
| floxy wrote:
| >madrassas in Pakistan that just teach the kids to read
| the Quran
|
| I thought they were just teaching the sounds of the
| Quran. Like the Pakistani kids don't know any Arabic, and
| they don't learn to read or understand Arabic. They just
| memorize and recite the Arabic sounds of the Quran that
| they've been taught.
| faizan-ali wrote:
| They usually do teach you to read Arabic, which is mostly
| the same script as Urdu. But you don't understand what
| you're reading which doesn't really make it any better.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I tend to see big per student spending in public schools
| as suggestive that they've been loaded up with a
| disproportionate share of the kids with IEPs.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| They better not teach that. We all know dinosaurs aren't
| real!
|
| I joke but religious education isn't all bad. One of my
| smartest friends in High School went to Santa Clara
| University and really liked it.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Many Catholic high schools are also among the highest
| performing in the country.
|
| The claims around religious education are one of the
| biggest remaining examples of socially acceptable
| bigotry.
| vel0city wrote:
| Catholics aren't generally young-Earth creationists, and
| overall the Church argues the age of the earth is a
| scientific not a religious question.
|
| I totally agree there are many religious schools which
| are extremely high quality. Despite a few strange views
| at the school I went to, the general quality of education
| was quite high. However, I refuse to ignore the many
| other examples of schools which are not high quality.
| They should be called out, and there's no way I want my
| tax dollars going to teach their nonsense.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| The thing is - the average school is terrible. NAEP
| scores show less than 25% reach "basic" proficiency in
| math, and reading is even worse.
|
| I can't find any comparable stats on just religious
| schools, but I strongly suspect they are, on average,
| performing substantially better than non-religious
| schools. The reasons for that are more to do with the
| students than the schools, but the exact reason is
| inconsequential - the point is that people are targeting
| them because of the religious aspect and not the quality
| of education.
|
| The typical claim of evolution is illogical. Even if a
| religious school solely and exclusively taught
| creationism while not even paying lip service to the
| controversy (which few to none do), it's not at all like
| a child's education would be permanently crippled. As the
| most important things learned in basic education are not
| facts, but skills - reading, writing, and arithmetic in
| particular.
| vel0city wrote:
| A school which can be choosy in admissions will likely
| have students with better proficiencies. It's easy to
| have only top scoring students when you can kick out the
| bottom scoring ones.
|
| > the point is that people are targeting them because of
| the religious aspect and not the quality of education
|
| This is the point I'm making. Many people aren't going to
| end up choosing the school because of the quality of the
| education, they'll be choosing it because it aligns with
| their world view. That germ theory is a lie, the Earth is
| 5,000 years old, scientists are liars out to eliminate
| Christ from society, and that the only things you need to
| know is what is in the Bible.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > A free market fixes anything
|
| https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
| brightball wrote:
| Nothing magical about it. It's pure economics and rational
| decision making. The institutions we complain about in this
| country every day are completely insulated from it.
| Everything else survives or fails on its own merits.
|
| Supply and demand. It's a natural law.
| ubertaco wrote:
| Pure economics and rational decision making are the exact
| reasons for engaging in regulatory capture, bribery, and
| oligarchy.
|
| Why on earth would democracy (or any other form of shared
| power) be a rational choice for you, from an economic
| standpoint, if you already are wealthy enough to neuter
| it to the point where nearly all profits and decision-
| making authority are allocated to you?
|
| Dictatorship is the ultimate in rational decision-making
| for a rational self-interested actor. Philanthropy and
| benevolence are not rational for the wealthy and
| powerful.
|
| Income inequality and regulatory capture are _features_
| of the free market, not bugs. They are baked in by
| design.
|
| Most countries in the world "patch" those bugs by
| regulation that moves them _away_ from being pure "free
| market" economies. Antitrust regulation is a well-known
| example of this.
| cratermoon wrote:
| According to Saint Frederick Von Hayek as popularized by
| J. Howard Pew and his crew.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V_AZRZfu9I
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Even if there were more ways to "vote with your wallet" is
| abundantly clear that a lot of parents, respectively, (a)
| couldn't care less anyway, and (b) can't actually tell a good
| charter or voucher school from a bad one.
|
| When the purpose of schooling is ensuring a civic floor
| amongst citizens the effectiveness of things like the home
| school co-ops mentioned can't come at the expense of
| population at large unless we wish to surrender the
| republican form of government for something else.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| You need to contrast suggested ideas to the current
| systems, not an idealized standard that the current system
| is nowhere near achieving.
|
| For instance NAEP scores consistently demonstrate only
| about 25% of students achieve "basic" proficiency in math,
| reading is even worse. Its going to be difficult to do
| worse.
|
| And I mean that very literally - some percent of people
| would become competent in e.g. basic math with 0 public
| education due to family or personal interests. I can't
| imagine it's "that" far from 25%.
| demosthanos wrote:
| There's also rising awareness among parents of neurodiversity
| while many schools are still stagnant and failing to correct.
|
| I have ADHD. My wife doesn't, but most of her siblings do. Our
| kids do. Our kids love reading and love learning new things,
| and I know from my own experience that the fastest way to kill
| that love would be to send them to a public school that doesn't
| know how to work with ADHD brains.
|
| There's a saying that if you gave a scientist the job of
| designing a system to completely derail an ADHD brain, they'd
| come back with the typical public school classroom. This
| matches my experience, and I want better for my kids.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| ADD/ADHD was over-diagnosed for a long time. Why are you so
| sure all the people you mention have it vs other
| explanations? What is it you think makes ADHD brains special?
| from-nibly wrote:
| Why are you so confident that they shouldn't be confident?
| ruthmarx wrote:
| Were you the downvote I got instantly after commenting,
| lol? I'm simply curious and that should be sufficient,
| I'm not really sure what it has to do with you though.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| As someone with this condition, I think it may be helpful
| to note that while your comment may not be intended to be
| disparaging, it can be interpreted in such a way. A lot of
| neurodivergent folks or people experiencing mental health
| issues are commonly told their problems are imaginary, or
| aren't a big deal. [0] It's a pretty big sore spot.
|
| It's also debatable how over diagnosed ADHD is. The
| diagnosis criteria has certainly changed, but current
| literature estimates about 6% adults are believed to some
| degree of ADHD [1]--though many are high functioning and
| find ways to cope with varying degrees of success and
| difficulty.
|
| 0. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fj
| ourn...
|
| 1. https://chadd.org/about-adhd/general-prevalence-adults/
| ruthmarx wrote:
| > As someone with this condition, I think it may be
| helpful to note that while your comment may not be
| intended to be disparaging, it can be interpreted in such
| a way. A lot of neurodivergent folks or people
| experiencing mental health issues are commonly told their
| problems are imaginary, or aren't a big deal. [0] It's a
| pretty big sore spot.
|
| Not my intention, but I was diagnosed as a kid when over-
| diagnosing did seem to be a trend, and I've become
| skeptical in these times of self IDing.
|
| When I mentioned over-diagnosing it was more referring to
| the 90s, but I think a lot of adults who were diagnosed
| then may have been misdiagnosed and never checked.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Both me and my little brother were diagnosed as kids
| also. Neither of us have it--we were just little shits.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Me and my friends were in the wrong side of the culture
| (tabletop RPGs, video games and heavy metal) and I can
| bet we would all be diagnosed back then as it felt it was
| mostly "feisty kids that don't fit".
| d4mi3n wrote:
| My heart goes out to you. Misdiagnosis is just as bad
| (and sometimes worse) than not being diagnosed. I've
| known people who were diagnosed with ADHD with very bad
| outcomes because it later turned out that they had
| bipolar disorder; the wrong medical treatment literally
| ruined their life. At the same time, I've had periods in
| my life where I couldn't focus on important conversations
| with my partner because of a noisy bird nearby.
|
| If you suspect you have a condition or someone is
| advocating for you to seek treatment, please seek a
| qualified psychiatrist who's specifically trained in
| diagnosis. Better yet, make sure they're in touch with
| your primary care provider [1]. Psychiatric assessment
| and diagnosis its own psychiatric specialty for a reason,
| but doctors with these qualifications are criminally
| difficult to get time with for a variety of reasons.
|
| 1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10669410/
| frereubu wrote:
| Totally on board with your comments on disparagement, but
| there's been a rash of autism diagnoses in my daughter's
| school to the point where in some classes 20% of students
| have been diagnosed as autistic. I feel at that point
| people are diagnosing personality, and it's using the
| (UK) special educational needs system to force schools to
| pay attention to different learning styles. (My
| daughter's school is actually pretty good on that front
| if you point it out to the staff, so I'm not sure what's
| triggering it particularly in her school, but it may be
| to do with releasing government funding for extra
| classroom assistants).
| troupe wrote:
| ADHD and autism are diagnosed based on behaviors. This
| might work for cases at the more extreme end of the
| spectrum, but when it comes to trying to identify more
| mild cases, you are going to start seeing a lot of
| overlap in behaviors of the larger population. Couple
| that with extra funding for kids who can be said to have
| ADHD and autism, and you get a recipe for overdiagnosis.
|
| Maybe it is worth it to try to make sure fewer kids with
| the issue slip through the cracks at the expense of
| diagnosing kids who don't actually have it. Maybe it's
| not, but it makes sense why it can happen.
| demosthanos wrote:
| There are many volumes on the subject, but I'm honestly
| tired of debating this with people who doubt ADHD is a
| thing. If you're legitimately curious, there are myriad
| sources out there about the differences in ADHD brains.
|
| Suffice it to say that I'm sure. All of the adults I'm
| thinking of have had serious interference with their daily
| lives in ways that rise to the level of a disability. I'm
| the only one of the set that has been able to build a
| steady career, and that's due to a lot of luck and due to
| developing an anxiety disorder that, while not at all fun,
| at least allows me to keep track of things that I used to
| miss.
|
| "Special" makes it sound like you think I think we're
| better. I don't. I just know that we don't work in the way
| that the world expects us to.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| Thank you for answering.
|
| I don't doubt the research, it's more I doubt how many
| diagnoses were accurate.
|
| I was diagnosed with ADD as well, so I'm not being
| entrely dismissive. In this age of self ID I think there
| can be reason to be.
|
| > All of the adults I'm thinking of have had serious
| interference with their daily lives in ways that rise to
| the level of a disability. I'm the only one of the set
| that has been able to build a steady career, and that's
| due to a lot of luck and due to developing an anxiety
| disorder that, while not at all fun, at least allows me
| to keep track of things that I used to miss.
|
| If I may ask on this point, how would you distinguish
| ADHD from possibly being on the spectrum?
|
| > "Special" makes it sound like you think I think we're
| better. I don't.
|
| Not my intention, I should have said unique or
| significantly different in the contexts you mentioned or
| something.
| demosthanos wrote:
| > If I may ask on this point, how would you distinguish
| ADHD from possibly being on the spectrum?
|
| There's a lot of overlap there and my personal feeling is
| that they likely share similar causes--there's too much
| similarity and too many people with both to be a
| coincidence. But in the case of my family, most of us do
| just fine in reading social cues... when we're paying
| attention. Where we struggle is maintaining attention on
| things that don't interest us for long enough to meet
| employer or school expectations.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| > Where we struggle is maintaining attention on things
| that don't interest us for long enough to meet employer
| or school expectations.
|
| Yes, this is something I deal with as well.
|
| It's interesting because as a kid I got diagnosed with
| ADD, and my sibling who was more physically hyperactive
| got diagnosed with ADHD. My parents thought, and thus I
| did also for a long time that the 'h' difference was due
| to his physical energy, but it seems unrelated.
|
| I've wondered if I am on the spectrum also but I don't
| match a lot of the base/core traits, although I feel ADHD
| or ADD alone doesn't explain some of my, ahem, quirks
| either.
|
| I want to again stress there was no malice behind my
| question, just interest in trying to relate through my
| own experiences. Thank you again for answering.
| demosthanos wrote:
| > It's interesting because as a kid I got diagnosed with
| ADD, and my sibling who was more physically hyperactive
| got diagnosed with ADHD. My parents thought, and thus I
| did also for a long time that the 'h' difference was due
| to his physical energy, but it seems unrelated.
|
| These days they don't draw a distinction any more. There
| are different presentations of ADHD, but it's all the
| same disorder.
|
| > I want to again stress there was no malice behind my
| question, just interest in trying to relate through my
| own experiences. Thank you again for answering.
|
| No worries, sorry for reacting negatively! I've had a lot
| of people assume that ADHD is not a thing at all, and it
| gets exhausting having to explain it. I pattern matched
| on your comment too aggressively.
| cootsnuck wrote:
| Look into AuDHD, PDA, and monotropism. See if any of it
| resonates. Definitely feels like our current diagnosis
| paradigm is in dire need of changes.
| elcritch wrote:
| > There's a lot of overlap there and my personal feeling
| is that they likely share similar causes
|
| Autism and adhd definitely appear to share traits, and I
| suspect there's a shared cluster of genes affecting
| certain aspects of neural linking between regions of the
| brain. Even without shared genes it makes sense that a
| "networked system" of core brain functions would share
| similar behaviors if the parameters were tweaked in
| similar ways.
| tombert wrote:
| > There's a saying that if you gave a scientist the job of
| designing a system to completely derail an ADHD brain, they'd
| come back with the typical public school classroom.
|
| Doctors aren't sure if I have ADHD or Major Depression or
| Bipolar II (I've been diagnosed and attempted to be treated
| for all three), but this fits into my experience.
|
| I was consistently frustrating to my high school teachers,
| because I was clearly _learning_ the material, but I wouldn
| 't do my homework, and I'd get bored during class, and as a
| result I would get bad grades. I don't think the teachers
| took any joy in giving me a bad grade, but they were kind of
| forced into it because I didn't really fit into the
| bureaucratic mold that they needed me to fit in.
|
| This eventually led to me almost flunking out, and eventually
| dropping out of my first attempt at university. I did
| eventually finish my bachelors, but it was at Western
| Governors University (WGU), which feels almost tailor-made
| for the ADHD-brained people.
|
| I'm not sure what the solution is, but the American GPA
| system still kind of gives me anxiety when I think about it.
| abtinf wrote:
| > Western Governors University (WGU), which feels almost
| tailor-made for the ADHD-brained people
|
| I would very much appreciate it if you could expand on this
| point a bit. What makes WGU particularly suited for folks
| with ADHD?
| tombert wrote:
| You pay per-term, not per class, and you can take as many
| classes as you'd like per term. You take one class at a
| time, and many classes can be finished after taking a
| test and/or completing a project.
|
| I say it feels tailor-made for ADHD because it feels
| almost "gamified". It's addictive to see how many classes
| you can knock out in a week, and you can work at whatever
| pace you'd like.
|
| Part of the reason I always did poorly in school is that
| I didn't like how slow everything went, but with WGU I
| can go whatever pace I want, and the faster I go, the
| more money I save. Since I'm an extremely impatient
| person, the fact that I was able to quickly go through
| the material while only having to focus on one course at
| a time was kind of game-changing to me.
|
| I already had a decade of software engineering experience
| when I did WGU, so when I did the Computer Science degree
| on there I finished the entirety of it (having to start
| from scratch) in six months, for a grand total cost of
| around ~$4600.
|
| WGU is hardly the fanciest school, but it's good enough,
| inexpensive, and most importantly it _is_ fully
| accredited. If you always struggled with traditional
| universities, I recommend giving it a look.
| brightball wrote:
| I have always loved the idea of a one class at a time
| model. I think Cornell has a program like this that I
| read about too.
| tombert wrote:
| I think that there's a reasonably good chance that if
| school were like that by default, I probably would have
| done better. It's hard to juggle six classes at a time
| like you're expected to in American high schools.
|
| If I had a magic wand and could make the education system
| however I'd like, I'd make it so every student spends the
| exact same amount of time on the subject, but I'd make it
| so you only ever manage a single class at once, instead
| of trying to interleave everything.
|
| This isn't even _that_ weird of a concept, even in the
| US; American summer schools will often do exactly this.
| Instead of doing an hour per day over the course of 180
| days, you do roughly thirty six-hour days. That 's how I
| took gym in high school, and how I retook calculus (even
| though I passed the AP exam first-try).
| brightball wrote:
| That's pretty much what Cornell does. It's basically 3
| weeks on, all day, one class, a week off, then repeat.
|
| https://www.cornellcollege.edu/one-course-at-a-time/
| tombert wrote:
| Interesting. I'm afraid I hadn't heard of Cornell College
| (apparently not related to Cornell University), but it
| seems legit.
| brightball wrote:
| I hadn't either. I just saw the program years ago and it
| stuck with me as a great model.
| stewarts wrote:
| Honestly, I'd bet there are a variety of delivery models
| that would be most effective for each person. Having
| choice in that would really be amazing. Unfortunately,
| its also very hard to organize and measure.
| pbmonster wrote:
| > you can take as many classes as you'd like per term.
| You take one class at a time, and many classes can be
| finished after taking a test and/or completing a project.
|
| Is it all based on self-guided learning? Because I can't
| see how this system could work with the classic system of
| bottom-up lectures accompanied by tutorials and exercise
| classes?
| tombert wrote:
| It's self-guided. There aren't lectures or anything. They
| have reading stuff they recommend, and there are course
| instructors you can reach out to if you need help.
|
| Some courses do have recorded lectures, but nothing live.
| thirdtruck wrote:
| Oh damn, xe really want to look into WGU after this.
| tombert wrote:
| It's definitely not for everyone, and to be honest I'd
| recommend a trying a traditional university first if
| that's an option.
|
| The reason I liked it is because I have always just been
| better at teaching myself stuff than being taught. I like
| working at my own (usually faster) pace and I really hate
| waiting to make progress. WGU is a perfect system for
| someone with that mentality, particularly since it's
| inexpensive.
|
| I think the quality of the education is "ok". I think
| you'll leave with a good enough education in computer
| science to be "useful", but I will acknowledge that the
| fast-pace does make it easier to get away with skipping
| the boring stuff than it would be with a traditional
| school.
|
| If you already have a lot of experience with software,
| WGU can work as a "legitimizer" if nothing else, though.
| I had a bit of a complex about dropping out and not
| having a bachelors. That pretty much went away once I got
| my bachelors from WGU.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Ah, so you just opt out of being around average people. OK.
| rayiner wrote:
| Private schools isn't much better. Kids don't learn much more,
| everything is just less chaotic because they can counsel out
| the ones who can't behave.
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| I've known people who were going to some of the top private
| schools in the U.S. who were still paying for weekend math
| classes because the schools weren't reaching them at their
| level.
|
| Unfortunately, most educators simply don't seem to care much
| about high performing students, and they're fine with them not
| learning anything in the class as long as as the teachers are
| hitting their goals. I imagine the same attitude is harming the
| other students as well, but it's especially easier to see with
| high performing students where their needs are often openly
| ignored.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >Unfortunately, most educators simply don't seem to care much
| about high performing students
|
| If you really believe this, then sue your school district. In
| my area, there was a district where parents believed high
| performers were not getting the necessary resources and
| through a combination of legal pressure and partnership with
| the school district, made it a priority in the same way that
| district had prioritized education for other specialized
| needs. Don't blame the average teacher though - they are
| doing what they have budget for and what they've been
| directed from administration.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| If you really believe this, then sue your school district.
|
| AIUI, California school districts are under no obligation
| to meet kids where they're at, i.e. if a kid is ahead they
| don't have to be offered differentiated content or
| acceleration.
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| > Don't blame the average teacher though - they are doing
| what they have budget for and what they've been directed
| from administration.
|
| It's worth discussing the administrators and the budget
| (though our budget is much higher than the national
| average), but why should we reflexively dismiss concerns
| about the teachers? There are advanced students who only
| get acknowledged as such when the teachers tell them "don't
| do that, we haven't learned it yet."
|
| There's a large difference between trying to engage
| advanced students with limited resources, and not trying to
| engage or even acknowledge advanced students at all.
| jmb99 wrote:
| > If you really believe this, then sue your school
| district.
|
| It's very funny (in a depressing way) reading this sentence
| as a non-American.
| kenjackson wrote:
| It's easier to see with kids who have stronger behavioral or
| learning needs.
|
| I was a 3rd grade teachers aide and I saw the distinction
| first hand. A gifted child was given advanced textbooks and
| space to work at his own pace. The teacher didn't really
| teach much, but the child was learning.
|
| Conversely there was another kid who just got headphones to
| watch videos in the back of the room. I guess learn st his
| own pace, except the videos didn't actually seem educational
| to me. I think it was mostly just done to keep him
| preoccupied.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Kids are throwing chairs at teachers.
|
| I don't know where you live, but kids (plural!) assaulting
| teachers like that would be very unusual. I have a lot of
| family and friends in elementary education and management.
| Stories like that are the kind of thing that get talked about
| for years if they happen, not something that happens enough to
| be referred to in the plural.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Yeah, I know one kid that threw a chair in school. We use
| public education because I think it's good for kids to be
| independent at an early age. It can't be healthy to spend 16
| years within bluetooth range of your parents at all times.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| A family member who taught at a title 1 elementary schools
| encountered chair/desk throwing multiple times in the short
| time she was there. I think unfortunately YMMV greatly
| depending on the area where you live
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| Very expensive suburb of Seattle. I was shocked to hear this
| as well. Reported to me by my friend who is the school
| counselor and had to deal with these kids (plural) herself.
| eduction wrote:
| It's good they had access to counseling and I hope she was
| able to help some of them. I don't imagine most kids are
| born wanting to throw chairs at people. Something is going
| on at home.
| ty6853 wrote:
| The girl in the math class before me would beat the shit
| out of my desk like clockwork. She hated math, was
| violent, and very autistic, no apparent other issues nor
| even hate towards humans. Nothing could be done, just
| wait for the tantrum to end then take my seat.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Room destroyers are pretty common, but they usually have
| IEPs.
|
| TBH there's no good choices for many - big mental health
| issues and trauma, no home or family support, and no real
| options: kids have to go somewhere, self contained classrooms
| are at capacity, there are worse kids in line to get put in
| facilities, and often you can't really do that unless parents
| push for it anyway.
| windexh8er wrote:
| I'm curious where you live. My spouse and I selected the area
| we live in based on the school district when our kids were
| around pre-K age. We live in a district that isn't overly
| expensive to live, but has the best public schools in the state
| and are some of the top in the nation.
|
| Throwing chairs? That's a parent problem. Not sure why the
| district would put up with that. Expulsion works. I've never
| heard a story like this and we've been in the district for 8+
| years.
|
| As for skills, my kids are probably 3 years ahead of where I
| was at the same age. Devices are not a huge component of their
| schooling, although I am on a parent board that's pushing back
| on SaaS creep. They're forced to have Google accounts which I'm
| proposing to remove and/or minimize. Math and reading programs
| are fantastic. Teachers are great. There have been one or two
| mediocre teachers but nothing to really complain about.
|
| We also have great private options, but again, we moved to this
| district to take advantage of the public schools.
|
| As an observation the homeschooled kids that participate in
| extracurricular activities along with the public school kids
| are definitely behind. Not only from a traditional education
| standpoint, but also social skills. It's always an awkward
| conversation when those parents engage in a conversation asking
| where our kids are at with respect to reading, math or science.
|
| Our goal is to have our kids be the best version of them that
| they can be. If they're happier, healthier and better equipped
| than we were then I'll be happy. I look at a lot of parents who
| want their kids to be stars and it's painful. Modern day
| parenting has lost its way in US society on so many levels.
| UltraSane wrote:
| "Expulsion works."
|
| There really seems to be two kinds of public schools. One is
| willing to expel students who are violent and disruptive and
| this allows the students who are willing and able to learn to
| do so. The other refuses to expel violent and disruptive
| students and they make it nearly impossible for the willing
| and motivated students to actually learn.
| protocolture wrote:
| When I was in high school there was a local school that was
| notorious. Apparently here the public schools were not
| allowed to expel kids if they would no longer have local
| options. This was the worst school, and thus the last place
| the kids would end up. So it was basically just a prison.
| smogcutter wrote:
| There are some rotten incentives at work here, as well as
| constraints that aren't obvious from a parent or student's
| point of view.
|
| For example, CA schools have to publish statistics on
| suspensions and expulsions. So there's an incentive for
| administrators to minimize them. In practice, this means
| that expelling a student (short of some extreme situations)
| is a lengthy process of ass-covering. Even when
| administrators are doing the right thing, from the outside
| it can look like nothing is being done. Think HR putting
| you on a PIP.
|
| Meanwhile, the "right thing" isn't always so obvious. The
| "violent and disruptive" student is also a child with a
| right to an education. And for what it's worth, usually a
| child in crisis. For school staff, your role as an adult is
| to teach the child to participate in society with whatever
| limited influence you have. As a parent or classmate, of
| course, you have no reason to give a shit about some
| asshole kid, but the teacher has to.
|
| And then, what does "violent and disruptive" actually mean?
| How much violence? No tolerance? What about a bullying
| victim who sticks up for themselves? Playground scuffle? At
| what point does the dial turn from teaching a child not to
| hit, to teaching a child that they are bad and do not
| belong? What about non (physically) violent bullying? What
| about children who are disruptive, but not violent (surely
| including a lot of those posting here about how their ADHD
| was misunderstood)?
|
| Sometimes expulsion is the answer, even keeping in mind
| that every student expelled before 16 is just going to
| school _someplace else_. But the problems are more complex
| than people often realize.
| UltraSane wrote:
| The "violent and disruptive" student is also a child with
| a right to an education.
|
| See here's the thing. Not they don't. They forfeit that
| right by being violent and disruptive.
| autoexec wrote:
| Literal children are incapable of forfeiting their rights
| by being "violent and disruptive", and it would be insane
| if they could because they can't possibly begin to
| understand what they'd be giving up. Clearly that right
| is sometimes taken from them anyway, but that's neither
| the fault or a failure of the child.
|
| Often kids who get their right to education taken from
| them are failed by their parents and/or by the schools,
| but the blame cannot be placed on the child for that.
| Every child, excepting those with significant mental
| illness or intellectual limitation, can and should be
| successfully educated. Any educational system that is
| incapable of handling a child's tantrum or helping a
| child in crisis is a failed system.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Literal children are incapable of forfeiting their
| rights by being "violent and disruptive"
|
| They can. And do. We have 12-year-old "children"
| literally robbing stores around here.
|
| If this happens, they should exercise their right to
| education from inside a locked institution.
| gunian wrote:
| sometimes i think im sheltered and i am but then i see
| stuff like this and feel good
| UltraSane wrote:
| What about the other children's right to education this
| being impinged by the disruptive students?
| frereubu wrote:
| It isn't an either / or. Expelled children have to go
| _somewhere_. So you provide education / rehabilitation
| facilities where they hopefully manage to get their
| behaviour under control and can be brought back into
| mainstream education or stay in those institutions where
| they can at least get a bit of an education rather than
| just being left to roam the streets. Whether there's the
| appetite to fund that kind of institution properly is
| another matter.
| Clubber wrote:
| This is what they did in my school district when I was
| growing up. You had 3 tiers. First tier is regular
| school. If you get expelled, you go to tier 2 which is a
| school for people who got expelled. If you get expelled
| from there, you go to tier 3 school, which is where all
| the really bad kids go. This worked pretty well, keeping
| in mind _all_ the students ' needs in mind.
|
| They did away with that since I was young and now they
| just let the disruptive kids run rampant.
|
| Keep in mind, you only have one chance really to get an
| education. If your learning is impeded by uncontrollable
| children, you now have a greater risk of life failure
| because you weren't able to learn the fundamentals,
| because a class of 30 was always being disrupted by one
| or two people. Say you didn't learn pre-Algebra well
| because of disruption; now you're behind when it comes to
| the higher level math for the rest of your school tenure
| and ultimately, life. These disruptions could have major
| long term consequences for other kids trying to learn.
|
| Finally, teachers' average turnaround is 4 years last
| time I checked. That means there are very few veteran
| teachers available to show new teachers the ropes and how
| to manage a classroom full of teenage kids. Not that it
| matters, the new teachers will look for other careers
| within 4 years on average. The cycle continues.
| munificent wrote:
| _> If you get expelled, you go to tier 2 which is a
| school for people who got expelled._
|
| So if you're a kid who's already struggling, you get sent
| to be surrounded by other kids who are already
| struggling.
|
| _> you only have one chance really to get an education._
|
| That's true for the bad kids too.
|
| I 100% get where you're coming from. My kids come home
| from school and tell stories about disruptive stuff other
| kids do and how much it gets in the way of the school
| functioning effectively.
|
| At the same time... what are we supposed to do with those
| kids? The kids that have behavioral problems are _much_
| more likely to be that way because they have a bad home
| life. So if you expel them, they 're missing out on
| education and they're spending more time in a bad
| environment. They're not going to get any better after
| that. Then what? Now they're a year behind academically
| and have the shame of being expelled. Their behavior is
| likely even worse because they spent a year not being
| socialized in a bad environment. So they're even worse
| next year, and they get expelled again.
|
| Eventually, they stop going to school entirely. But at
| least here in the US, the number of jobs available to
| people without any kind of school degree gets smaller
| every year. So now they can't find work.
|
| What do desperate people do? Commit crimes. So now we
| have a system that effectively just produces uneducated
| mentally unhealthy criminals.
| UltraSane wrote:
| "So if you're a kid who's already struggling,"
|
| Do you really want to force good students to have to be
| in the same classroom as the kind of students who get
| expelled from public schools? Do you understand just how
| bad your behavior has to be to actually get expelled?
|
| "At the same time... what are we supposed to do with
| those kids? "
|
| The most important thing is to NOT allow them to prevent
| other kids from getting an a good education.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Do you really want to force good students to have to
| be in the same classroom as the kind of students who get
| expelled from public schools?_
|
| Where _precisely_ do you think "the kind of kids who get
| expelled from public schools" should be? I mean that
| literally, concretely.
|
| Do we send them home where they are statistically much
| more likely to be abused and not have access to reliable
| nutrition? Imprison them? Ship them to some sort of Lord
| of the Flies island?
|
| Do I want disruptive kids in the same room as my kids?
| Not really. Is it the least bad place I can think of to
| put them? Unfortunately, yes.
|
| This is a deeply hard problem. Sure, if you only care
| about well-behaved kids it's easy: kick out the bad eggs
| and forget they ever existed. But if you consider that
| those bad kids _are actual people who will still
| participate in your society_ , you need _some_ solution
| for how to help them.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Thank you for demonstrating the point that there are
| constraints and complications that are difficult to
| appreciate from the outside. The law generally disagrees
| with you.
| UltraSane wrote:
| And that really hasn't turned out very well. Letting the
| most disruptive students ruin the education of other
| students isn't fair at all to those students AND is
| pretty damn stupid when you consider how much tax money
| is spent educating those students and the harm to society
| from not educating them.
| arkey wrote:
| To be clear, I am not about to justify any sort of
| violence anywhere. That said...
|
| Many violent and disruptive students were just kids with
| special needs. And I don't mean mental conditions or
| anything like that.
|
| I mean a kid that would do WAY better if he was in a
| trade class doing something that motivates them, rather
| than being frustrated and forced to endure a rubbish
| secondary education, several hours crammed into a small
| room with other people and getting nowhere.
|
| But of course that's more difficult to implement than a
| generic standardising/equalising pipeline of norm-
| conforming average citizen production.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| >Meanwhile, the "right thing" isn't always so obvious.
| The "violent and disruptive" student is also a child with
| a right to an education.
|
| They may have a right to an education, but they need to
| be at an alternative school with teachers equipped to
| handle their behavior and classmates who are in similar
| situations. If they're going to ruin their classes for
| their classmates, those classmates shouldn't be innocent,
| well-behaved students.
| ty6853 wrote:
| They have a right to education much like one has the
| right to bear arms or publish a book. You can have it,
| but your rights end where you demand someone else give it
| to you involuntarily, particularly with violence.
| lazide wrote:
| Notably, the courts say children don't have those rights.
|
| Also, essentially not 'the right to an education' but
| rather a legal mandate to be educated. The specifics of
| which vary by state.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Which is where an expulsion often leads, similar to how
| adults unable to function in society are channeled into
| SSDI, homelessness, or prison in some combination.
|
| There are unlikely to be many caring and constructive
| adults there though, for reasons that should be obvious.
| hilux wrote:
| > For example, CA schools have to publish statistics on
| suspensions and expulsions. So there's an incentive for
| administrators to minimize them.
|
| Are you sure administrators care? I live in Oakland,
| where some of the public schools have absolutely abysmal
| (academic) statistics. I haven't checked the expulsion
| statistics. I'm not sure anyone cares.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| In my experience, they start caring if the racial
| composition of the expulsions (or other discipline) does
| not match the study body.
| tlonny wrote:
| > For example, CA schools have to publish statistics on
| suspensions and expulsions.
|
| Are there actionable consequences if these numbers get
| too high? If they're merely published, as a parent, I
| would see high numbers as a positive signal if
| anything...
| windexh8er wrote:
| > The "violent and disruptive" student is also a child
| with a right to an education. And for what it's worth,
| usually a child in crisis. For school staff, your role as
| an adult is to teach the child to participate in society
| with whatever limited influence you have. As a parent or
| classmate, of course, you have no reason to give a shit
| about some asshole kid, but the teacher has to.
|
| This is where I wholeheartedly disagree with you.
| Education is not a right if you can't comply with simple
| rules. I'd also like to see where you're correlating
| "violent and disruptive" with a "child in crisis". I'm
| not saying it's not there, but I am saying I don't
| believe those two components are exclusive.
|
| These games of "what if" and "what is" must be fun for
| some people - because they seem to be played quite often.
| Rules are rules, they can be cut and dry - even in this
| case. The excuses are played out, the fallback on so many
| "disorders" is rampant. Either society is essentially
| fucked, or people are abusing the exceptions. I do agree,
| there should be some exceptions, but those should be few
| and far between to avoid slipping through the cracks.
|
| Finally, the implication that a teacher "has to" give a
| shit has got to be the worst idea Americans have
| embraced. No, they don't. If my kid was asshole in school
| - I would handle the situation and apologize. Parents who
| go at districts for not "giving a shit" about their kid
| when their kid has been taught there are no repercussions
| _by their parents_ don 't have a right to anything in my
| opinion.
| camgunz wrote:
| A couple things are true here:
|
| - The kid's behavior isn't their fault. They might have a
| medical condition or a home situation causing them to act
| this way. It's tempting to write kids like this off, but
| we shouldn't punish kids for their parents' failings.
|
| - No matter what, this represents a problem we have to
| solve. Either family can solve it at home, educators can
| solve it at school, or some LEO can solve it in the
| carceral system, but you burn more money and suffer worse
| outcomes the further down the pipeline you solve it (not
| unlike bugs in software engineering).
|
| ---
|
| I have a hot take that school is so frustrating because
| it's one of the very few things in the US money and
| status don't readily fix. Your household income might be
| $250k a year, but your kid's playing kickball with...
| people who make less, and there's really nothing anyone
| can do about it. The US isn't good at these kinds of
| "let's make society as a whole healthier so we avoid the
| worst outcomes" type problems, preferring to use those
| bad outcomes to motivate people to not be
| poor/lazy/unlucky.
|
| Unfortunately the resources required to create some kind
| of middle tier education are truly bonkers (it's also de
| facto racist: 30% of Black kids and 20% of Hispanic kids
| are impoverished, so if you're saying "poor kids with all
| their problems not welcome here" you're kind of also
| saying Black/Hispanic kids with all their problems not
| welcome here--which also doesn't super work because of de
| facto segregation, so you're also saying "no middle tier
| schools here"). There are around 70m kids in the US.
| Let's take the top 2/3 (they're in households making >
| 199% of the poverty line) and assume ideal class size of
| 12. That's $229,000,000,000 a year just in salary
| (current median teacher salary is $58,950), which is more
| than 2/3 the current DoE budget, plus you'd have to
| dramatically increase salary and benefits if you wanted
| to hire that many new teachers anyway.
|
| But, yeah overall my point is it's really hard to
| appreciate the scale of the problem both like, logically
| (can it really cost this much money?), emotionally (my
| kid got hit with a chair today), and culturally (I
| honestly thought making a quarter of a million dollars a
| year ensured my kid would never be hit by a chair in
| school; who do I see about this). But, it really is just
| the case we are going have to spend money like crazy and
| hire a shitload of professional educators. It might seem
| expensive, but you'll pay 10x if kids slide to the end of
| the pipeline--to say nothing of the moral cost.
| kajumix wrote:
| In neighborhoods with better school districts, home
| prices and rents are higher in proportion to the demand
| people have for better schools, creating de facto
| segregation based on income, and by your logic, by race
| too.
| camgunz wrote:
| Absolutely yeah, it's like the "ZIP code is destiny" is
| also some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| There's a big difference between someone with an IEP
| (usually massive trauma and mental illness also) doing
| things and a "regular" student doing them. Expelling a kid
| usually just means they move to a different school, and all
| expulsion is doing is moving the burden down the chain,
| usually from more affluent places where parents are
| equipped to complain, to less affluent ones. Particularly
| if the room destroying-violence kiddo's family don't have
| lawyers.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| A big difference to whom?
|
| When I judge an educational institution I could not care
| less _why_ some child being significantly disruptive is
| tolerated, even slightly. That institution simply becomes
| a non starter for a place I might send my children.
|
| Of course parents who don't care about such things, or
| don't have the luxury of being able to choose, would
| accept such things. As would those who themselves have
| 'problem children.' Now think about what this does to the
| quality of that institution over time.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I do think it's totally fair to put pressure on the
| school to reduce mainstreaming of kids with major
| behavior issues. But it's really not about "tolerating"
| or "not tolerating"- you're witness a system failure and
| responding by making the problems worse for everyone but
| the wealthy in a society where governance is premised on
| the population at large being well educated.
|
| * Tossing around hot potato kids doesn't resolve things
| in a good for society way.
|
| * Concentrating the proportion of kids interfering with
| normal income families by removing all the high-income
| kids from the school doesn't resolve things in a good for
| society way.
|
| * Letting people choose to send their kids to charters
| while all the kids of low-involvement parents are still
| stuck in a situation with a concentrated proportion of
| problems doesn't either.
|
| Unfortunately there are a several things at play:
|
| * Increased availability of specialized, non-mainstream
| resources for moderate+ (moderate is pretty severe most
| of the time IMO) kiddos, gen pop behavior interventions,
| etc.
|
| * Better general welfare for parents (often unstable/low
| income ones).
|
| * More push back from districts when parents w/ lawyers
| demand stuff that's bad for the rest of the classroom.
|
| * Teachers quality needs improving. (Many reasons.)
|
| IMO institutional quality is purposefully damaged by
| people who hate paying taxes or supporting the general
| welfare - public schools are basically being purposefully
| doomed in much the same way that Republicans say
| "government always bad" and then set out to make it fail
| on purpose to prove their point, only with a wider
| variety of motives at play. "I'm sending my kids to
| private school, why should I pay taxes for public
| schools?" is not an uncommon strain of thought.
|
| It's a doom loop leading to societal regression into a
| stratified society unable to properly self-govern IMO.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Kids with major behavioral issues should be getting a
| bootcamp-style education, where their tendencies can be
| held in check by adequate physical supervision. This is
| not about denying anyone an education - if anything, it's
| doing the exact opposite and addressing their unique
| educational needs in the most effective way.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| While I certainly agree that specialized care and
| instruction is needed, it is unfortunately not that case
| that "bootcamp-style" is actually universally fitting.
| Autistic kids need autism specific early intervention.
| Many kids with extreme behaviors or mood disorders will
| respond better to reward structures than they will to
| heavy-handed discipline. Appropriate settings with
| professionals trained in behaviors (IE the management and
| alterations of) can have substantial success,
| _especially_ if the home environment is not antagonistic
| /trauma inducing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > ...unfortunately not that case that "bootcamp-style" is
| actually universally fitting. Autistic kids need autism
| specific early intervention. Many kids with extreme
| behaviors or mood disorders will respond better to reward
| structures...
|
| These things are not mutually incompatible. Kids with
| autism who actually have _major_ behavioral issues will
| clearly benefit from some physical supervision, in
| addition to whatever autism-specific intervention may be
| most appropriate for them. Similarly, rewards for good
| behavior can often go hand-in-hand with some sort of more
| rigorous discipline for those who persist in damaging and
| harmful conduct - these things will hopefully be
| complementary.
| UltraSane wrote:
| It hardly matters to other students WHY a particular
| student is making it very hard for them to learn and
| using up all the teacher's time. Only that they ARE.
| anon291 wrote:
| Why would a school expel students? They get money for each
| person sitting in the desk.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I have friends who were teachers in San Francisco unified
| School district who quit because students were literally
| attacking and breaking the bones of teachers and not being
| expelled.
|
| It was a really hard choice for them because they were a
| bleeding heart liberal and wanted to use their PHD to help
| the underprivileged
| cyberax wrote:
| > Throwing chairs? That's a parent problem. Not sure why the
| district would put up with that. Expulsion works.
|
| Our local education superintendant _in_ _his_ _program_
| _document_ is saying that he will go after any teacher
| attempting to impose discipline in a "community inappropriate
| manner".
|
| So basically, nobody gets expelled.
| WillyWonkaJr wrote:
| After spending some time on the teachers subreddit I
| completely understand why so many people are choosing to
| homeschool. The amount of in-classroom abuse -- verbal and
| physical -- in addition to the entitled parents is shocking.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > a district that isn't overly expensive to live, but has the
| best public schools in the state and are some of the top in
| the nation
|
| To have a great school district where housing isn't overly
| expensive is rare these days. I would have to guess it is
| hard to find a house in such a district unless you waive
| inpections and pay in cash.
| trentnix wrote:
| > _Throwing chairs? That 's a parent problem._
|
| I don't care whose problem it is, I'm not subjecting my kids
| to that kind of nonsense.
| dani__german wrote:
| Administrators are constantly castigated for disciplinary
| actions, as the "throwing chairs" behavior is not evenly
| spread among the different cultures that students come from.
|
| Different rates of suspensions leads to accusations of
| racism, and said accusations lead to Hail Mary attempts to
| make unequal rates equal, including forbidding any meaningful
| type of punishment for certain varieties of students.
|
| If this sounds far fetched, public officials in Rotherham
| became objectively evil in their attempts to avoid racism
| accusations, "1400 children betrayed" is a extremely
| understated headline, if you want to learn more.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Homeschooling parents are divided into two separate groups. One
| is secular with college degrees who really want to give their
| children a better education than they could get in a school AND
| are able to do so.
|
| The other group are very religious who don't want their
| children learning about evolution or many other secular things.
|
| The only real issue I have with homeschooling in the US is that
| regulations vary wildly by state. Some states have so little
| enforcement that it is possible to teach a child essentially
| NOTHING by the time they are 18 and face no punishment for
| ruining that child's life.
| thelock85 wrote:
| A few weeks ago while giving a talk to some business school
| students, I was shocked to find most of the students and
| children of the faculty were homeschooled for K-12. This was
| a Baptist-affiliated university. I really had no clue this
| was so prevalent amongst evangelicals.
| randerson wrote:
| I'd add at least a 3rd group: Parents of kids with sensory
| (e.g. autism) or behavioral issues that are incompatible with
| learning at a school.
| UltraSane wrote:
| That still falls under option 1.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I'd broaden the group to "kids who parents feel have been
| done wrong or failed by the local school and see home
| schooling as the best choice available." I don't think
| this group is quite as consistently college educated as
| group 1.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| The way this is written seems to imply that religious people
| don't have similar (or the same) reasons as secular people.
| UltraSane wrote:
| I suppose from their perspective they do but from my
| perspective they are just going to raise scientifically
| ignorant people. I was raised young earth creationist
| Lutheran and understand this world quite well.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| To be fair most high school graduates might recite the
| "right scientific facts" while having no basis for
| supporting them. The earth is 4 billion years old.
| Survival of the fittest drives evolution. Why? How do you
| know?
|
| Basically just another form of indoctrination. Children
| are not taught science so much as science appreciation.
| UltraSane wrote:
| How old is the earth then? The Universe?
| roenxi wrote:
| Under what circumstances would it matter? As long as
| people believe the earth is older than around 3,000 years
| they are going to have more of a problem with general
| background ignorance than their misconceptions about that
| specific fact.
|
| If a group of people believing a random untrue fact is a
| threat, there are a vast number of threats out there. Far
| more than the school system can possibly deal with.
| Misidentifying the age of the earth is harmless compared
| to things like economic misconceptions and there aren't
| many school systems making a credible effort to correct
| those.
| UltraSane wrote:
| The neat thing about science is that all the explanations
| have to fit together. The explanation for why the sun
| shines so bright for so long can't contradict the
| explanation for why birds can fly. When you reject an
| explanation as fundamental as evolution and the ages of
| the earth you really put yourself at a disadvantage in
| understanding many other things.
|
| I actually had a young earth creationist say that the sun
| doesn't use fusion and thus its lifespan is more in line
| with the creationist worldview and I responded with
| neutrinos emitted from the fusion reactions in the sun.
| arkey wrote:
| On the other hand, my sister is a firm Creationist
| Christian, has a PhD and had a brilliant career in
| research (albeit nothing directly related to 'The
| Beginning of All Things').
|
| Chances are she is less "scientifically ignorant" than
| many people around here, myself included.
|
| Just like my sister's, yours is a specific case. It's sad
| that they didn't teach you Creation in a way that
| wouldn't cancel out Science, as Science itself is
| something profoundly Christian as well.
|
| "O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after
| Thee!..." - Johannes Kepler
| UltraSane wrote:
| Are we talking young-earth creationist or "God triggered
| the big bang and guided evolution" creationist? Because
| there is a huge difference between them!
|
| Young earth creationists are scientifically ignorant by
| definition.
| arkey wrote:
| Young-earth creationist, as in "God created everything
| from scratch in 7 days".
|
| There are many scientists out there that believe in that.
| They are not scientifically ignorant, they just believe
| different stuff from you, which, mind you, unless you've
| seen all proof and understand everything about it to the
| very last detail, you just hold a faith-based belief of
| what you're told about by a specific bunch of
| people/books.
|
| People forget that we often know a lot about stuff, but
| then we discover more stuff which totally changes the
| stuff we knew and so on.
|
| Not intending to start a flamewar here or anything, but
| the fact is that even if there's a lot of evidence for
| many claims about it, the THEORY of Evolution is not
| failsafe let alone definitely proven.
|
| You can choose to go with it until we have something
| better, that's your choice.
|
| Allow that same choice for the rest of the people out
| there.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| So you're suggesting that religious people who home
| school have some sort of intrinsic characteristic that
| causes them to raise scientifically ignorant people? It
| just seems a bit far-fetched to me for someone who claims
| to be pro-science, especially given the number of
| respected religious scientists in the world.
| thallium205 wrote:
| Are you arguing that religious people are scientifically
| ignorant?
|
| Such religious people like Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo
| Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle,
| Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Rene Descartes,
| Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaitre?
| elcritch wrote:
| Certainly a biased view of religious home schoolers. Most of
| my religious friends who homeschool are college educated and
| many have postgraduate degrees. Some do disbelieve evolution,
| or at least disdain it a bit. Pretty much all of them are
| motivated people however. Of course that's just my little
| bubble.
| brightball wrote:
| The hard thing for a lot of people to accept is that belief
| or lack thereof of evolution has no impact on daily life at
| all. It always comes up in these discussions as a boogeyman
| anyway.
| UltraSane wrote:
| "The hard thing for a lot of people to accept is that
| belief or lack thereof of evolution has no impact on
| daily life at all. "
|
| Not accepting it leads to a profoundly WRONG worldview
| that bleeds into everyday life in many ways.
| arkey wrote:
| Such as? I'm honestly and genuinely curious.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Antibiotic resistance
|
| Existence of vestigial structures in organism. Why do
| humans get goosebumps when we don't have enough hair to
| insulate us? Because it's an evolutionary leftover from
| our hairy ancestors when the reflex would actually cause
| hair to trap more air for better insulation.
|
| Understanding evolution is crucial for crop management.
| The development of pesticide resistance in insects
| follows the same principles as antibiotic resistance.
| Farmers who don't understand evolutionary principles
| might not recognize the importance of rotating pesticides
| or implementing refuge areas to prevent resistance from
| developing.
|
| Medical research often relies on animal models because of
| shared evolutionary history. Our biological similarities
| with other mammals exist because of common ancestry.
| Without this framework, it becomes harder to understand
| why medicines tested on mice or primates might work in
| humans, or why certain diseases affect multiple species
| similarly.
|
| Human susceptibility to back and knee pain is a
| consequence of how recent bipedalism is in our evolution.
| Same for why humans are so prone to chocking, our larynx
| evolved to enable speech at the cost of making it easier
| for food to enter it.
| ubertaco wrote:
| To play the devil's advocate here, as someone who grew up
| homeschooled and in a culture of "micro-scale evolution
| exists, but macro-scale evolution has not been
| demonstrated":
|
| >Antibiotic resistance
|
| ...is a micro-scale adaptation, like an organism's immune
| response. Recognizing it does not require belief in a
| prehistoric common ancestor for all organisms; it just
| requires observing changes that happen on a much smaller
| and more rapid scale.
|
| >Existence of vestigial structures in organism. Why do
| humans get goosebumps when we don't have enough hair to
| insulate us? Because it's an evolutionary leftover from
| our hairy ancestors when the reflex would actually cause
| hair to trap more air for better insulation.
|
| This is non-falsifiable conjecture about a pre-historic
| past based on observation of present structures. It is
| equivalent to "we obviously know that dinosaurs did not
| have feathers, because their skeletons do not have
| feathers, and feathers would have made them more visible
| to predators, so they wouldn't have had feathers."
|
| >Understanding evolution is crucial for crop management.
| The development of pesticide resistance in insects
| follows the same principles as antibiotic resistance.
|
| ...which, again, is a micro-scale adaptation, like an
| organism's immune response. You can notice pesticide
| resistance occurring in pests and rotate your pesticides
| without having to sign on to the unverifiable claim that
| this happens because all life derives from a single
| organism.
|
| >Medical research often relies on animal models because
| of shared evolutionary history. Our biological
| similarities with other mammals exist because of common
| ancestry. Without this framework, it becomes harder to
| understand why medicines tested on mice or primates might
| work in humans, or why certain diseases affect multiple
| species similarly.
|
| This is more non-falsifiable distant-past conjecture
| based on observation of current structures. Is it
| necessary to believe a particular set of conjectures
| about the origins of mammals' biological similarities in
| order to recognize the fact in front of you that the
| mammals _are_ biologically similar, and thus some
| mechanisms of action may apply across species, provided
| those similarities are retained?
|
| >Human susceptibility to back and knee pain is a
| consequence of how recent bipedalism is in our evolution.
| Same for why humans are so prone to chocking, our larynx
| evolved to enable speech at the cost of making it easier
| for food to enter it.
|
| ...which, again, is non-falsifiable distant-past
| conjecture that has no bearing on recognizing the
| existence of the verifiable current-day reality in front
| of you: humans have back and knee pain. Is it necessary
| to accept a particular set of unprovable conjectures
| about the distant-past origins of this particular
| skeletal structure in order to make decisions about how
| best to treat a symptom that exists today resulting from
| the skeletal structure that you see immediately in front
| of you?
| UltraSane wrote:
| OK, for falsifiable how about evolution predicts patterns
| of genetic similarity between species that match their
| apparent morphological relationships - a correlation that
| didn't have to exist but does.
| ubertaco wrote:
| That's not what falsifiable means. It's not
| experimentally verifiable. There is no way to conduct a
| test that would negate it if it were untrue.
|
| It is why, being intellectually honest, the theory of
| evolution as the origin of species is called a "theory"
| in the academic sense: it's a proposed model that fits
| the data available on hand, but which has not been
| experimentally verified in its premise. Short of time-
| travel, I'm not sure how it can be experimentally
| verified.
|
| "Falsifiable" means "I can construct an experiment that
| could yield an outcome that directly demonstrates this
| idea as false." This is sort of like the difficulty that
| exists with the four-color theorem [1]: yes, you can run
| a lot of examples using computer-assisted proof tech, but
| at best what that tells you is "we haven't found a
| counterexample _yet_. "
|
| Except, for non-falsifiable claims like the theory of
| evolution as the origin of species, there is no
| experiment you can run to provide a counterexample. The
| theory covers any possible counterexamples by simply
| saying "that form of life must have evolved from a
| different origin point and/or under different conditions
| (regardless of whether we can recreate those
| conditions)", and tucks any counterexample in neatly into
| itself without feeling threatened by falsifiability. It
| is "total" by having an "escape hatch" for any
| counterexamples.
|
| That stacks it up alongside "a deity made everything, and
| designed an ordered universe with certain mechanics,
| including giving organisms the ability to adapt"; both
| are explanations that fit the available data, but neither
| can be experimentally verified. Similarly, that theory is
| "total" by having an escape hatch: "well, maybe the deity
| did something different in that case." Young-earth
| Creationists do this with visible starlight that is a
| million or more lightyears away: "maybe God just
| accelerated that starlight so that humans would have a
| pretty night sky."
|
| That tendency is similar to "maybe the [hypothetical]
| organisms on Mars adapted from a different common
| ancestor that maybe was made of non-living substances
| that are similar to the non-living substances that
| comprised Earth's first organism." Boom, done, no need to
| re-examine the premise, you just fold it in with "maybe
| the same magic worked a little differently over there,"
| just like saying "maybe God made starlight go faster in
| the direction of Earth."
|
| As long as you don't engage in denial of the available
| data _because of_ your theory, then I don 't understand
| why holding a particular non-falsifiable theory is
| mandatory.
|
| It doesn't matter if I hold to the theory that the
| universe began as an origin-less hypercompressed single
| point of matter suddenly and rapidly decompressing...if
| I'm in the lab next to you claiming that vaccines cause
| autism. The problem is not which non-verifiable theory I
| hold about an unrelated subject, but rather my denial of
| the available data on hand.
|
| Similarly, it doesn't matter that Louis Pasteur was a
| Creationist when discussing the mechanisms he discovered
| by which vaccines work. What matters is his recognition
| of the reality of the data at hand, and his work to
| explore and build on it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem
| thirdtruck wrote:
| Xir father used to argue the same thing.
|
| But the micro vs. macro distinction is only one of time
| and scale and that's the whole point: species aren't
| "real," even fish aren't "real" in any ontological sense,
| but the countless organisms that we categorize as such
| existed, exist, and will continue to exist regardless of
| how we conceive of them.
|
| The ask of evolution and science in general is to accept
| the incredibly narrow capacity of human cognition as a
| _starting_ point for an even deeper understanding rather
| than an end goal to rationalize towards.
| ubertaco wrote:
| >But the micro vs. macro distinction is only one of time
| and scale and that's the whole point: species aren't
| "real," even fish aren't "real" in any ontological sense,
| but the countless organisms that we categorize as such
| existed, exist, and will continue to exist regardless of
| how we conceive of them.
|
| This is an excellent rebuttal to the micro/macro
| distinction, because it's working in the correct
| direction, which you've stated well:
|
| >to accept the incredibly narrow capacity of human
| cognition as a starting point for an even deeper
| understanding rather than an end goal to rationalize
| towards.
|
| Using the notion of "species" as a "ground truth", as
| though it were some biological law, is a self-defeating
| point _precisely because_ the definition of "species" is
| "a somewhat-arbitrary taxonomy developed by people to try
| to group organisms together based on observed common
| traits."
| thirdtruck wrote:
| Want to have your mind blown? The creationist fallacy of
| "irreducible complexity" isn't just wrong for eyeballs
| and flagellum but for upward complexity as well. And
| lateral complexity.
| arkey wrote:
| Thanks to ubertaco for the neat response point by point,
| but I don't think any of your points are relevant, even
| if they are true.
|
| I know a couple of big-scale farmers in the US. They are
| Christian, and believe in Creation. That doesn't stop
| them from using the necessary pesticides, or choosing the
| adequate strain of corn seeds, etc.
|
| Believing in Creation doesn't turn you into an illiterate
| moron. Believing God created everything according to a
| design and purpose is not incompatible with acknowledging
| the presence of similarities and design patterns
| throughout all of Creation, and believing that doesn't
| suddenly _poof_ take away your rational capabilities to
| think and understand things.
|
| Either way, I was asking for is a real situation in which
| someone will be negatively impacted because they hold a
| Creationist belief.
|
| Will a Creationist live a sad life without fully
| embracing the misteries of goose-bumps? Will a farmer not
| use pesticides, or choose the wrong one because
| Creationism? Will Advil won't work on a Christian because
| they don't understand that rats and rabbits are our
| cousins? Will their knees hurt more (or maybe less?)
| because they think humans were standing up from the
| beginning?
| UltraSane wrote:
| More generally all of modern technology is a result of
| the exact same processes that led to the theory of
| evolution. If you reject it where do you draw the line?
|
| "Believing in Creation doesn't turn you into an
| illiterate moron"
|
| You kinda do have to be a moron to be a true young earth
| creationist. I went to Lutheran schools that taught me
| that the earth was created by god 6000 years ago and
| evolution was an evil plot created by Satan. By the time
| I was 15 I realized how stupid this was and how the
| theory of evolution fits the evidence and is self-
| consistent. One of the biggest realizations I had is that
| the theory of evolution, due to requiring such VAST
| amounts of time for evolution to occur, actually has
| nuclear fusion embedded in it as a dependency because
| nothing else could allow a star to shine for so long.
| When Darwin first proposed the theory a major and
| reasonable objection was the timescales needed because at
| the time it was thought that the Sun was powered only by
| gravitational collapse which would last less than 20
| million years. Then this utterly absurd source of power
| for stars was discovered that could allow them to last
| for almost 1000 times as long.
| thirdtruck wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| Not to mention the tens of thousands of people who were
| killed in the witch trials (medieval and _contemporary_
| ), among so very many other examples.
|
| Few things are more personally relevant than _not getting
| tortured and executed by your neighbors_ because you were
| granted no defense against spectral evidence.
| arkey wrote:
| What about the tens of millions of people who have been
| killed because atheism?
|
| But how about this: the first time that any relevant
| powers decided that slavery was wrong at a global level
| was due to Christian beliefs, fancy that. And luckily
| they went on to impose that moral belief to the rest of
| the world. (England, France vs. Slavery)
|
| It's true that a lot of evil has been done in the name of
| Christianity, but that's not of Christianity. If I came
| to your home and punched you in the face in the name of
| your mother, would you blame your mother?
|
| But Christianity and the Bible have been abused very
| wrongly by evil powers as tools for control, something
| possible through deceiving illiterate, uneducated people.
|
| As some other comments mention, Protestant Evangelicals
| made a big push for literacy precisely so people could
| read and interpret the Bible themselves, without
| depending on interested third parties.
|
| Anyone taking a little time to read the Bible will see
| and understand that the Crusades were wrong, racism is
| wrong, oppressing women is wrong, and so on.
| pesus wrote:
| It's not necessarily just the idea of evolution itself,
| but rather that it's indicative of someone's willingness
| to continuously and actively reject all evidence in order
| to maintain the beliefs they've decided are true.
| rayiner wrote:
| But highly educated people believe this too. There's lots
| of wacky and unscientific, ideas out there that people
| believe because they come from Columbia University social
| science professors instead of the Bible. After the last
| several years I take back everything I said when I was
| younger and an atheist about religious people and not
| believing in evolution.
| thirdtruck wrote:
| The trick here is that we can reject OP's unnecessarily
| binary categorization as a premise and focus on the
| illogical and under-developed personal systems for
| testing reality and challenging beliefs that represent a
| far greater concern than the particulars of categorically
| unexamined beliefs.
| thirdtruck wrote:
| Precisely this.
|
| Xe were raised young earth creationist and that requires
| gaslighting your own child on established science, going
| so far as to regularly test them on their willing to
| believe or lie about believing patent untruths. Oh, plus
| the constant repression of one's identity, the lack of
| exposure to a wider range of perspectives and
| experiences, and the panopticon of surveillance by people
| with near total control of your socializing, especially
| in the suburbs. That _really fucks a child up_.
|
| That kind of homeschooling is a cult, no matter how much
| our wider culture has normalized the literal insanity.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Most of the disagreements are fundamentally metaphysical
| (would God make fossils?), so debates about evidence,
| expertise, and scientific consensus are beside the point.
| dmonitor wrote:
| It's directly correlated with young earth creationism and
| climate change denial. A significant portion of the
| population being taught "don't trust scientists they're
| lying on behalf of the literal devil" has done terrible
| things to American politics.
| standardUser wrote:
| > Some do disbelieve evolution, or at least disdain it a
| bit.
|
| That's an absurd belief and any system of education that
| results in that level of ignorance in science has failed.
| hilux wrote:
| There is another issue. Kids in the first group can get an
| incredible academic intellectual education, AND be
| emotionally and socially stunted. I have directly observed
| this, unfortunately. It also happens in very liberal, high-
| end, private schools.
| watwut wrote:
| There is also abusive parents who want their kids to be
| isolated and do not want social services to get involved.
| arkey wrote:
| Those groups do overlap.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Schools shouldn't teach neither evolution, nor creationism,
| nor any other origin story. Because it is something that
| doesn't matter at all - knowledge without value.
|
| Worse is that the majority pupils around the world will be
| taught both the Abrahamic creation story, the origin of man
| according to evolution, and usually a third or even fourth
| creation story from local pre-Abrahamic mythology. In the
| same school and from the same teacher. Talk about confusion
| of the highest order!
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >There are elementary school classrooms where ~1/4 students
| don't speak English.
|
| This really gets my hackles up, because my kids grew up in
| schools with a 50% Spanish speaking population and my partner
| is a dual-language teacher in a district where Spanish,
| Russian, and I believe Vietnamese are all taught as first-
| languages in specialized classrooms. Your assertion around
| English is misguided. This isn't to say that we don't need to
| get our kids proficient in English (it is the lingua franca
| after all), but there's more here than meets the eye. In my
| area we are headed toward universal bilingual education, which
| I see as only a good thing. That means that it may take longer
| to reach full proficiency, but the overall outcome is more
| capable and prepared students.
| encoderer wrote:
| This is exactly the point of the article.
|
| I don't want my kid in a classroom where everything has to be
| repeated in Spanish. It's already this way for school
| meetings and it slows information sharing down to a crawl.
|
| If there was mandatory English and Spanish in elementary
| school classrooms I would consider home schooling.
|
| Outside of certain fields (skilled trades primarily) my
| children will not need to be proficient in Spanish to be
| successful in the United States. It's a nice to have and
| should not slow down everything else.
| wat10000 wrote:
| My kid is in a program where they spend half the day, and
| learn half the subjects, in a language that most of the
| students didn't initially speak at all. They pick it up and
| do quite well.
| propernoun wrote:
| I think you missed the point of the parent, which is that
| ~1/4 of the students are dead weight at the cost of the rest
| of the class. It isn't "misguided" if their experience is
| different than yours.
|
| If your outcome is students that are more capable at
| languages but less capable in virtually every other subject,
| is the result really "more capable and prepared students"?
| I'm not opposed to bilingualism but you're lying to yourself
| if you think this comes at zero cost to at least some
| students.
| thatcat wrote:
| for kids in early development, their skill level in all the
| other subjects later will be essentially determined by
| their linguistic ability. math is a language. there is
| research that shows benefit to bilingual programs, but
| there has to more structure than just dumping esl kids in
| there with everyone else.
| williamtrask wrote:
| Forgive me, but with machine translation becoming nearly a
| solved problem -- why would kids spend years of their lives
| learning new languages anymore? By the time they grow up,
| won't that be a rather useless skill -- except perhaps in
| very nuanced contract negotiations?
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| Well, within 30 years or so AI will be better than humans
| at everything, so...
| seattle_spring wrote:
| You think it's useless to be able to communicate to someone
| directly without the use of an intermediary translation
| device?
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| The teachers in this school don't speak Spanish. The Spanish
| speaking children are struggling, and the rest of the kids
| cannot proceed at the same rate.
|
| I'm not pretending to have solutions, and I'm certainly
| empathetic for all involved. Just stating the reality that
| this is a suboptimal learning environment.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| this is the experience i see at our local schools. english
| as first language kids are bored and not challenged. the
| class is moving slower because half the kids are only
| learning english for the first time at school. "modern"
| progress ideology is to not separate the students by
| ability anymore and there's less accelerated tracks
| troupe wrote:
| There is a very big difference between a bilingual school and
| a school where half the kids don't understand the language
| that math is being taught in.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| So homeschooling is not just an ideological choice anymore
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Private schools are outrageously expensive.
|
| I have observed that any two-tier system accentuates
| inequality, be it health, education, security, or anything.
| When one group pays to have a system better than a universally
| provided one, the differences between both tend to increase, as
| the incentive to keep the universal system only as a fall-back
| to the private one by investing less on it (or by receiving
| generous donations from the private sector) is tempting to
| politicians.
|
| A former colleague of mine, who grew up in communist
| Yugoslavia, remembered how he cherished summer vacations when
| kids from different schools went together to state-operated
| summer camps. I thought this was an excellent way to build
| inter-group bonds between kids that would never have met in
| other circumstances, learning to work together in team-building
| and educational activities. It didn't turn out well for the
| country, or, at least, it wasn't sufficient to prevent the
| breakup and the disaster that happened because of it, but still
| seems like a good idea.
|
| Over time, my opinion changed from a strong supporter of free
| market economics to more deliberate models. I would support
| banning homeschooling along private schools completely. If a
| country wants to build a society that sees itself as a group of
| individuals with equal rights and obligations, you need to
| start early.
|
| Of course, this would never pass any legislative body in the
| US.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| A slightly different perspective: schools are mass produced
| education. Mass produced in the sense that they are the lower
| cost in terms of person hours to produce an educated child.
| Like all mass produced products, it's better than 1/2 hearted
| solo attempts to do the same thing, but a parent that can
| afford to put a huge amount of time into it can do better job
| as lots of comments here attest.
|
| If true, that also provides an explanation for the rise home
| schooling: more people can afford to do it.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Homeschooling is seeing a surge in popularity, its not just tech
| people or high status people.
|
| IME it's a lack of trust, sending your kids to be raised by
| strangers. I grew up in a small town and some of my teachers were
| basically neighbors.
|
| For some reason outside my understanding, a lot of small towns
| have shuttered the school in walking distance and moved to
| "consolidated" schools which might serve a thousand students from
| 4 different towns it's placed somewhat equidistant to, ie, in the
| middle of nowhere
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| The irony of this is that you rely on strangers for critical
| stuff like ensuring you don't get electrocuted or burned at
| home or even ensuring that the water that you drink won't make
| you ill or that your car is a good enough condition to not lead
| you to a fatal crash. Any of these affects your close
| relatives. What makes education different?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think there's a broad perception that education
| professionals are ideologically captured by the left. It's
| hard to know how true this is, but individuals like
| "libsoftiktok" have made a career out of stoking that fire.
|
| Also, unlike your other examples of strangers working on
| things, there's not really a feedback loop of review and
| rework where mistakes can be corrected. If your child gets a
| bad education, that's time lost that's really hard to recover
| and can set them back for life.
|
| Edit: To add, the "ideological capture" perception is
| important because of what education _is_. When you 're
| dealing with an electrician, it doesn't matter who they vote
| for because electricity works the same way regardless.
| Teachers don't just regurgitate information but promote a set
| of values and expectations in their classroom so their
| personal opinions can matter a lot. And that's not even
| getting into teachers who explicitly try to teach students
| their worldview.
| brightball wrote:
| It's not different.
|
| If the water you drink is having problems, you'd have
| campaigns over it, protests, people trying to get it resolved
| and potentially lawsuits. People would band together to do
| whatever they could to fix the problem that they see.
|
| Education is seeing the exact same thing. Parents see a lot
| of problems. They are going to school board and council
| meetings, people are campaigning on solving the issue and
| people are taking whatever measures are in their power to fix
| it...like home schooling.
|
| When people see problems, they want to fix them. It's exactly
| the same thing.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Exactly right. Plenty of people have in-home systems to
| bring their municipal water to the quality that they want
| (e.g. filters, softeners). Many more even have wells
| because there is no municipal water.
|
| Many people research safety ratings before purchasing a car
| as a proxy for how reliable a given manufacturer is at
| ensuring good outcomes in a crash.
| theamk wrote:
| It's really not that different.
|
| I have some friends who live in area with the bad water
| quality... They end up drinking/cooking with store-bought
| water, instead of city-provided one from the tap.
|
| When I need electrician/plumber/general contractor/etc..., I
| choose one based on recommendations and reviews.
|
| If you know (say from conversations with other parents) that
| your local school is bad, why would you send your kids there?
| It is like choosing an electrician with bad reviews only
| because their office is next door to you, or living in bad-
| water area, drinking city water and getting sick every week.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| The cost and timeline to evaluate quality is completely
| different; I can get multiple opinions for my possessions,
| and utilities are fairly objective to evaluate (and the cost
| to do so is small relative to the scale of the operation).
|
| Schools are limited for choice, expert evaluation is limited,
| outcomes are potentially unclear... That's before you get
| into issues with the politics of a teacher or problem
| students.
| croes wrote:
| > outcomes are potentially unclear
|
| Same is true for home schooling
| chii wrote:
| some people feel better when they think they're in
| control, despite the fact that the outcome could be even
| worse. The ability to have control gives the reassurance
| that the outcome is going to be acceptable (without
| evidence).
| pbh101 wrote:
| Even further than that, individual evaluations of
| 'better' can meaningfully vary. Not everyone has the same
| metric of success here and I think there are many
| reasonable yet distinct evaluation criteria.
| vel0city wrote:
| I know in my area they're doing consolidation of schools
| because there are fewer kids enrolled than when the schools
| were originally constructed. Even after some consolidation many
| schools are barely over 60% of their enrollment capacity which
| is estimated to go down almost another 10% in the next five
| years.
|
| People haven't been having nearly as many kids for a while.
| Fewer kids means fewer students. Revenue to operate the
| building is tied to number of students; fewer students means
| less revenue to keep things operating satisfactorily.
|
| When the majority of the homes surrounding the elementary are
| filled with retirees whose kids have moved elsewhere instead of
| young families it is no surprise the school closes.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _For some reason outside my understanding, a lot of small
| towns have shuttered the school in walking distance and moved
| to "consolidated" schools_
|
| In my experience it's because schools are being treated as a
| business, and businesses are usually more efficient when
| there's consolidation of expenses. Why pay for 3 schools with
| 10 teachers each when you could instead consolidate classes and
| pay for 1 school with 15 teachers? To a business, the decision
| is purely made out of cost. Alas, a lot of governments have
| such tight budgets (for many legitimate and illegitimate
| reasons) that cost benefits outweigh the human benefits.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Not sure if I agree with this. Schools are not exactly run by
| the government, rather local school districts.
|
| My (not data based) impression of school levies is that they
| nearly always get approved by voters, even in tax-averse
| areas, so if there is a lack of funding, it is usually real,
| rather than through a misplaced need to be "efficient".
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Schools are not exactly run by the government, rather
| local school districts._
|
| What gets approved by voters? Ahh, right, government
| services. How are those paid? By taxes. Who collects taxes?
| Governments, of course.
|
| I don't know where you are in the world. In the US, public
| schools are funded by government money counted by number of
| students and their test scores. So more students = more
| funding, better scores = more funding. There are other
| kinds of schools, private schools and charter schools come
| to mind, with different funding types. But often those
| include additional costs to the parent on top of the taxes
| they already pay.
|
| How do public schools get managed by the district? Again
| I'm not sure where you are, but here the public school
| administration gets voted in during government elections.
| The public education system's requirements are defined by
| law and, above the district level, managed by county or
| state education services.
|
| > _if there is a lack of funding, it is usually real,
| rather than through a misplaced need to be "efficient"_
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think efficiency has its place. But I
| think it is extremely easy for school administrators to end
| up in a business-first mindset instead of a serve-people-
| by-educating-them mindset.
| cloverich wrote:
| Depends on area. Portland schools have plenty of money but
| still struggle. Administration and retirement perks eat up
| most of the budget. In a sense its that they are not a
| business that leads to that kind of issue.
|
| But ultimately its a complex issue. eg voucher systems would
| resolve the above issues, but create entirely new sets of
| problems which may be worse along the way.
| fatbird wrote:
| It's pure economics. One large facility is cheaper in fixed
| cost terms than four smaller facilities. It's also cheaper in
| variable costs of staffing and other economies of scale like
| consumables. Lastly, the size of the large school means the
| cost of special features like a wood shop, kitchen, large
| theatre, art facilities, etc., are relatively smaller and thus
| more easily included in the whole package.
|
| You're right that something is definitely lost. It's an
| externality that's forced on you and your children. There are
| compensations, but it's not an unambiguous win.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| Well, I went through through the public school system from rural
| (hamlet) kindergarten till big city university and I say ... it's
| OK as a default baseline but if one wants some resemblance of
| competitiveness and performance from their kids, one cannot avoid
| private tutoring.
|
| If that is done by the parents / family, then it's almost like
| home schooling. But I don't like home schooling because the kid
| is left out of the system and the studies are not recognized. At
| some point they will have to take traumatizing equivalence tests,
| which can be entirely avoided by playing along - go to a public
| school, or in my kid's case, a private school which follows the
| same curricula.
|
| But I stress again, even with private school, there's no
| replacement for private tutoring if you want your kid to succeed
| in life.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Great point about private tutoring, I agree.
|
| The equivalence tests are going to be country/US-state specific
| though. Many do not require such tests at all.
| unstyledcontent wrote:
| I think as a professional in tech, it's frightening and obvious
| how behind schools are in keeping up with the modern world. I'm
| not talking about having ipads. AI will be he most significant
| technology humanity has experiences. We need to pivot toward an
| educational model that enhances creativity and cooperative
| communication but I just don't see that happening. It's still the
| bucket model of learn this don't ask questions, kids are a bucket
| and they need to be filled up by knowledge. It's outdated NOW,
| with absolutely no indication there will be significant changes.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Circumstances can drag you into it.
|
| I had trouble in the public schools because of bullying linked to
| my schizotypy (then undiagnosed despite what I'm told later was
| an exceptionally good psych eval for the late 1970s) They were
| going to drug me so my parents took me out for two years, I
| skipped three and was successful in high school. (In the single
| year my parents were able private school I was treated as I had
| some rights and dignity)
|
| My son struggled in elementary school in a different way. Our
| school got labeled as a "persistently dangerous school" because
| we had an principal who, unlike others in the district, filled
| out the paperwork honestly (and got fired for it.) I lost faith
| in the superintendent when he first words in a meeting were
| "we're going to appeal it" as opposed to something like "we're
| going to do everything in our power to make this school safe".
|
| I was active in the PTA (maybe the only dude; that same
| superintendent was dismissive of my wanting to be active in my
| son's education at the same time he welcomed the mother of a
| 'special' child who could call the state and light a fire under
| his ass to do so) and was very impressed with the teachers for
| one year, but the next year they seemed disorganized and the
| precipitating incident was when my son made a horribly violent
| doodle and the teacher wrote "Great!" with an underline on it. We
| didn't take him back the next day and kept him out for two years.
| We couldn't get him on a good reading program but we got him far
| above grade level on math with Kahn Academy. (As an adult
| circumstances got him interested in reading, now he's reading
| _The Economist_ every week, books on chess openings, psych
| textbooks I loan him, etc.)
|
| We never quite filled out the paperwork but two years later we
| slotted him into middle school where he was successful.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| We are in an age where people who watch a youtube video think
| they know more than the experts. Being a good teacher is a skill
| and understanding childhood development is something that
| requires proper education. I'm not saying there is never a good
| reason to home-school your kid, but most people who do it are
| unqualified and from my limited experience the kids who are home
| schooled have huge holes in their education. Surprisingly, they
| do seem to be fine socially which is what you hear many people
| worry about.
| hokumguru wrote:
| I'm so worried for those parents raising children outside of
| school without degrees in childhood development! Think of all
| the unqualified parenting time happening without skilled
| teachers to supervise!
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Teachers are mostly very uneducated and ineffective at
| teaching itself and the subjects they teach. I don't think
| spending time to get an education degree or certification
| means much. Parents care for their children more than any
| random teacher, especially ones that resist performance
| measurements to judge their effectiveness. I would expect the
| average parent to be FAR more effective just based on that
| care.
| presentation wrote:
| But good teachers can make a huge difference, it's a shame
| identifying them is a black art and so few people get that
| access.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I went to a rural public school, underfunded as they come,
| and my HS math teacher is still in the top 3 of all
| teachers / instructors I've had throughout my life. If my
| parents were to teach me math, I simply wouldn't be working
| in a STEM-field today.
|
| The majority of my teachers were good. The dynamic was
| completely different compared to being around my parents.
|
| Leave the teaching to the professionals.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| What do you consider the "proper education"?
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Studying the subject academically in any real capacity. Also,
| in the US, every teaching degree requires time in a classroom
| as a student teacher with an experienced teacher as your
| mentor.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Studying the subject academically in any real capacity.
|
| What do you mean by "in any real capacity"? I have read
| many books and academic papers about education. And I have
| experimented with some of the things I've learned. Does
| that count?
|
| Among current K-12 teachers in the United States, what
| would you estimate is the median number of
| academic/research papers related to education or adjacent
| fields that they have read in the past 24 months?
| in the US, every teaching degree requires
|
| A teaching degree is neither necessary not sufficient for
| effective teaching. There are thousands of ineffective
| teachers with US teaching degrees. There are thousands of
| effective teachers without teaching degrees.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Personally, I have high functioning autism. I would do terrible
| at interpersonal relationships, but then get near perfect scores
| on all the tests.
|
| Teachers would anticipate that I would be terrible and then when
| I got perfect scores on all the tests, they would be pissed off.
|
| I think there are a lot of tech people that are neurodivergent
| and had terrible experiences in school and would love to avoid my
| child having that experience.
|
| Also, I'm not super happy about the extreme views on race, sex
| and religion that are going through the school system. I would
| like the opportunity to teach a more moderate view. I feel like
| people who don't have kids who make comments about this trully
| don't understand many parents perspectives on this.
|
| Also, when you are a parent, you find that you have to move to
| specific areas to get good schooling and homeschooling would
| allow you to live where you want to and not pay and go through
| the application for private school.
|
| It's interesting that everything in this article that's anti-
| homeschool relies on the parents not doing something correctly,
| which I think most people just assume they correct for that. I'm
| not worried about abusing my own kids, because I'm not going to
| abuse them. Honestly, my mom was a teacher and she was anti-
| homeschool and many of the anti-homeschool bullet points were
| provided by the union and I think she just wanted to get full
| funding for the school and the state wouldn't provide funding to
| the school when the homeschoolers didn't show up and wasn't
| really caught up in those arguments.
|
| However, my wife is never going to homeschool our kids or allow
| me to do it, so it's just not going to happen.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My son's district has a black superintendent and at least one
| black principal but otherwise black (and other) kids don't get
| to see the example of black teachers (and learn school is a
| "white thing you wouldn't understand" the same way that boys
| come to the conclusion that school is for girls when they don't
| see any male teachers -- the problem here is representation-ism
| that stops at the very top, if they do get a black teacher they
| get promoted out of the ranks immediately)
|
| When my son was in middle school he was quite inspired by a
| curriculum unit on the Harlem Renaissance and liked the
| school's black principal.
|
| Later on he felt the attitude about gender (man vs women as
| opposed to something else) was very oppressive and that it
| contributed to him and other students falling victim to incel
| ideology and sometimes body dysmorphia. Today he struggles to
| talk to girls not because he's afraid of being rejected but
| because he's afraid of being reported.
| squigz wrote:
| > Today he struggles to talk to girls not because he's afraid
| of being rejected but because he's afraid of being reported.
|
| Why would anyone be reported to any authority figure for
| speaking to girls?
| tbrownaw wrote:
| I believe there is an SNL skit on this topic.
| csande17 wrote:
| It's pretty standard for middle schools to hold assemblies
| discussing sexual harassment and healthy relationships, but
| they don't always do a great job communicating those
| concepts.
|
| Back when I was in middle school about a decade ago, the
| principal got up on stage with a police officer and
| explained that sexual harassment is when you talk to a girl
| and she feels uncomfortable. He then went on to assert that
| the school had zero tolerance for sexual harassment,
| describe various authorities to whom victims could report
| instances of sexual harassment, and implore students not to
| risk their future by engaging in sexual harassment.
|
| If you weren't super confident in your ability to predict
| or control other people's feelings, probably your takeaway
| from that assembly was that talking to girls was a risky
| thing to do.
| squigz wrote:
| "Don't make people uncomfortable" and your takeaway is
| you shouldn't talk to them at all. I don't think the
| problem there lies with the sexual harassment narrative.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Many young people are vulnerable.
|
| I was bullied in elementary school and graduated the same
| way Ender Wiggin did.
|
| I was out two years and skipped three, started in the
| middle of freshman year.
|
| I had no idea how I was going to find a mate. The world
| my parents grew up in, where my mom was introduced to my
| dad by his sister, was long gone. I knew I couldn't trust
| anything I saw on TV or in the movies. Adults, including
| my parents, were completely dismissive of my concerns.
| Might have made a difference if I had a sister, but she
| was born premature and I never saw her before she died.
|
| I sat next to a beautiful girl in English who left me
| feeling entirely outclassed. [1] I came home crying from
| school about this every day for most of a year until I
| met the new physics teacher who let me hang out in the
| lab during study breaks, which gave me some meaning in my
| life and led me to get a PhD in the field. I still was
| afraid I'd wind up alone forever and went to a "tech"
| school which had an unfavorable gender ratio; I did find
| a girlfriend in my senior year, then was lonely and
| miserable in grad school. I found someone who was a
| friend of a friend and I've been involved in a love
| triangle ever since which he lost out in. My partner is a
| 100% reliable person from the same culturally Catholic
| background of myself (my parents did not involved me with
| the Church, she did all the things and has a positive
| orientation towards religion but doesn't take communion
| because she doesn't believe it literally.)
|
| Boys today don't have it any easier. My immediate
| reaction is to be sympathetic towards "incels" but as an
| organized group they teach boys self-loathing which is
| primary to the 50% attraction-50% hate that they express
| towards women (hmmm... something a lot of people who are
| more or less healthy feel towards their parents because
| the conflicts that come out of being dependent on people)
|
| [1] She was traumatized by her parents going through a
| nasty divorce. She teaches the Quechua language in Hawaii
| now. There's a photo of her next to a huge dog, no sign
| of any human relations. I probably did better at love
| than she did in the end.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| The support of trans ideology is destroying the progressive
| movement. What a shame because they're driving people
| straight into the arms of fascists.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| If support of trans folk is "Too far" for someone, they
| were already running towards fascism. There's nothing
| progressive about denying folks their gender identity, and
| to the extent that "Progressivism" is a force in America,
| it is better off without the Anti-trans contingent.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No it isn't. The vast majority of progressive people
| don't buy into any of the gender/trans discussion. It's
| definitely not a core tenet of being a progressive, but a
| very vocal minority is definitely trying to make it so.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| I disagree, and I find an even more vocal, even smaller
| group seems very invested in making sure people know who
| exactly we need to throw to the fascists to make them
| finally stop being fascists.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I write about my experience here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682305#42688501
|
| My best friend in college was _transsexual_ , knew who
| she was in childhood, couldn't be talked in or out of it.
| She was kicked out of the Air Force Academy which was my
| gain but our nation's loss. I was proud of my country
| when I heard this policy changed, not just for the
| individuals but because the US struggles to attract
| officers to match the quality of our enlisted
| warfighters.
|
| I've cross-dressed at times (high heels, fishnets, all
| that) such as for Halloween and I also know the
| undercurrents of violence you can feel from ignorant
| people. Sometimes I bum around the house wearing a long
| skirt.
|
| I was inclined to be supportive of the modern transgender
| movement when I first heard about it and when my exposure
| was through the media. It is their own speech that has
| alienated me from them.
|
| Once I met people affected and after I joined Mastodon
| where I've had to add rules to completely block out their
| continuous hateful spew which frequently gets reposted by
| people who should know better. I'd be glad to hear "I'm
| so happy I found a new way to put on makeup that makes me
| feel like myself" or "I'm really inspired by electronic
| music pioneer Wendy Carlos" or "Thank Lynn Conway for
| that phone in your pocket".
|
| I can't deal with large volumes of negativity from
| strangers and on leftie corners on the web people from
| that community are the worst. [1] Whether or not they
| should exist is beyond my pay grade but I don't want them
| in my feed at all.
|
| For that matter I feel less safe and not more safe
| expressing non-conformant gender characteristics because:
| (1) so many people have gotten inflamed, and (2) I don't
| buy into the politics.
|
| [1] I just plain couldn't stand the MAGA nuts on Twitter,
| never mind all the equally hateful people who spew hate
| against transgender people (who I suspect want people to
| spew hate at them to justify their world view as much as
| Benjamin Netanyahu likes Palestinian attacks that justify
| his world view.)
| alxjrvs wrote:
| I'm sorry you experienced that, and that kind of hate has
| not been my experience - though that kind of negativity
| in other online cultures certainly has been.
|
| Trans people behaving badly does not make me want them to
| cease existing, or make me feel less for their cause.
| "Trans people want hate spewn at them to justify their
| worldview" feels like a hilariously backwards belief
| outside of a few professional activists, who I am not
| particularly inclined in listening to in the first place.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| > Also, I'm not super happy about the extreme views on race,
| sex and religion that are going through the school system.
|
| Maybe I'm living under a rock; what extreme views are going
| through the school system?
| protonbob wrote:
| You might be being facetious and trying to imply that the
| political views taught in school are actually moderate, but
| I'm going to take the question literally anyway.
|
| One example is the idea that a bio man should and must be
| called a woman if they declare themselves to be so.
| Regardless of whether or not you agree, it is an extreme
| viewpoint that has only just now become acceptable to believe
| in terms of history.
| csa wrote:
| > Maybe I'm living under a rock; what extreme views are going
| through the school system?
|
| Not op and not taking a stance on any of these here, but:
|
| 1. Critical race theory (CRT)
|
| 2. Gender fluidity
|
| 3. Endorsement and use of Christianity/Bible in public
| schools
|
| These are all hot-button issues in education today, at least
| in some states and districts.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| No one is learning about Critical Race Theory anywhere
| other than law school (or possibly undergraduate sociology
| classes that pre-law students would be likely to take).
| It's a heterodox thread in legal scholarship. Whatever you
| think primary schoolers are learning about race, it's not
| Critical Race Theory.
| csa wrote:
| > No one is learning about Critical Race Theory anywhere
| other than law school (or possibly undergraduate
| sociology classes that pre-law students would be likely
| to take).
|
| Yes and no.
|
| You are correct that almost no one is learning full CRT
| legal theory in K-12.
|
| That said, CRT principles have expanded beyond legal
| studies, and they have certainly made their way into
| classrooms. Here is an example of an article that makes a
| case for it:
|
| https://www.uclalawreview.org/yes-critical-race-theory-
| shoul...
|
| I'm not sure if you know many education academics, but I
| assure you that CRT and derivatives thereof have been
| some low-hanging fruit in education research for over two
| decades (i.e., relatively easy to get published).
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| There were two definitions of Critical Race Theory. In
| 2021, the National Education Association adopted a
| Business Item [1] to "Share and publicize, through
| existing channels, information already available on
| critical race theory (CRT) -- what it is and what it is
| not; [...] and share information with other NEA members
| as well as their community members."
|
| This included "Provide an already-created, in-depth,
| study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-
| Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy,
| cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism,
| anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression
| at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose
| attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619
| Project." [1]
|
| Which is pretty wild, because that's a great summary of
| everything conservatives were objecting to in social
| studies classes, and provides a good wording for
| Christopher Rufo's redefinition of CRT.
|
| However, I agree with you that this was a very recent
| redefinition of the term Critical Race Theory: As far as
| I can tell, the application of legal scholarship's CRT to
| education scholarship in the late 1990s was focused on
| the Critical analysis of teaching outcomes [2, 3, 4],
| especially racial discrimination in school districts.
| This seems to have been focused on administrative things
| rather than course content. There was a subsequent
| movement around 2016 to bring "Critical Race Praxis" into
| school districts, which again seems to be focused on
| removing inequities from school administration and
| teaching counter-narratives to "K-12 leaders". So I think
| that this is where conservatives found the term and
| decided to repurpose it to label the antiracist content
| which was being incorporated into social studies courses.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210705234008/https://ra
| .nea.or...
|
| [2] https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/22/02/state-
| critica...
|
| [3] https://thrive.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/Just%2
| 0what%2...
|
| [4] https://ed.fullerton.edu/lift/_resources/pdfs/multicu
| ltural_...
|
| [5] https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Envisioning-a-
| Critical-R...
| dyauspitr wrote:
| CRT is a boogeyman. It's not "taught" anywhere.
| protonbob wrote:
| Its principles are most certainly taught. They were 10
| years ago in my high school. Come to find out these were
| from CRT sources.
| vodou wrote:
| One thing I've never understood with homeschooling: How come
| parents think they have the competence to be a teacher? Just
| because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good
| (pedagogical) educator.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I had numerous teachers that won local and regional teacher of
| the year awards that were, too put it bluntly, terrible at
| teaching. The actual pedagogical education that teachers
| receive is not good, and when you look at the rigor in their
| degree programs it would be found extremely wanting compared to
| just about any hard science degree program. There are numerous
| examples of pedagogical research being neglected to be included
| in programs for dogmatic reasons, and the usage of such methods
| like whole word reading over phonics would indicate large scale
| failure.
|
| Anecdotally, if I were to stack rank my education in k-12 based
| on quality of teacher, it would essentially be all professors
| followed by k-12 teachers, with those receiving more teacher
| instruction being lower on the list. I was once instructed by a
| history teacher, to not use examples on a history essay that we
| didn't learn in class, because she had to look them up.
|
| I find it incredibly easy to believe that I can teach my
| children better than the average teacher.
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| Hundred percent. They vastly underestimate teaching in the same
| way that people resorting to homeopaths for serious illnesses
| underestimates the training and knowledge doctors go through.
| demosthanos wrote:
| We don't think we have the competence to be a teacher. We would
| never presume to teach someone else's kids.
|
| We think we have a relationship with our own child that allows
| us to understand what they need and how to communicate with
| them in a way that works for them. We think we have the time
| (assuming one parent is full time parenting) to give our child
| the attention they need to excel. And we believe that a
| combination of relationship and individual attention goes
| further in K-12 than any amount of formal training in
| education.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| You can do all that on top of a normal education.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| If you do that, the normal education is redundant. You
| wouldn't put a university student in class to learn
| multiplication; it's an insulting waste of their time. Why
| would you do the same to a 10 year old who mastered it
| years ago?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Not really. There are only so many hours in the day. The
| time between school and bedtime is extremely limited and
| involves other time consuming activities such as after
| school sports and eating dinner.
|
| I work on homework with my kid every day and after all
| those things it's not like we have time (or she has energy)
| to fill in holes in her at-school learning
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| I teach my kids valuable lessons in the car, during
| dinner and on evening walks. But I'm not in a country
| that is starving their education system.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| This is asinine.
|
| Next time you're in the car, try teaching your kid about
| solving systems of equations where both are linear vs one
| is linear and the other is parabolic. It's a lot easier
| to sketch it out on scratch paper than to pontificate
| from the driver's seat.
| esafak wrote:
| Try talking about history, philosophy, literature,
| religion, sociology, or physics while driving. Audio
| books exist, after all.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| that's not germane to this conversation. it's about
| parents without formal teaching certs working with their
| children to given them what they need to excel.
|
| Sure those things (history/philosphy/etc) matter but in
| our society you still have to do well on math tests to do
| well in life.
|
| As a parent you can teach them directly (homeschool) or
| augment a public school education, but the augmentation
| route needs to be done in slack time, which is tough.
| demosthanos wrote:
| Not really--public school takes up 6+ hours of every day,
| and I'd like my kids to have self-directed time as well. If
| we tried to do some sort of after-school tutoring with mom
| that would deprive them of valuable time to choose their
| own stuff to work on.
|
| And what would be the point? If we're right that their mom
| is better equipped to teach them than a teacher is (because
| of time to dedicate to them and a personal relationship and
| understanding) then what do we gain by having a teacher do
| it too?
|
| (This isn't the thread for the socializing argument,
| because OP started with teacher qualifications. I'll just
| add that we are aware of that concern and have strong
| mitigations in place.)
| ubertaco wrote:
| >We don't think we have the competence to be a teacher. We
| would never presume to teach someone else's kids.
|
| While this is a good and rational awareness of one's own
| capabilities, as someone who grew up in Bible-belt
| homeschooling circles and saw a _wide_ variance in approaches
| and effectiveness, the "homeschool co-op"/"homeschool group"
| model where one parent teaches one subject to many kids,
| classroom-style, is _super_ common. See, for example,
| "Classical Conversations" [1], a pretty common one in my
| area, that leans on "parent as classroom teacher to many
| kids", without much in the way of prerequisite
| qualifications.
|
| [1] https://classicalconversations.com/
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| >Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good
| (pedagogical) educator.
|
| 100%. But this also applies to people with degrees in
| education, teaching certs, and employment at your local school.
|
| How do parents judge the ability of local teachers to be a good
| (pedagogical) teacher? If they discover a bad teacher, what is
| their recourse?
| s0kr8s wrote:
| Agreed. Titles and credentials do not mean what they used to,
| in education and a lot of other fields.
|
| Sufficient erosion in the meaning and value of 3rd party
| teaching credentials then diminishes the relative value of
| outsourcing the process vs. doing it in-house: literally.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Educators are trained to teach _any_ kid effectively. Parents
| have the much easier problem of teaching a handful of specific
| kids, who they 've spent their entire lives with and share half
| their DNA.
| nataliste wrote:
| One thing I've never understood with public schooling: How come
| teachers think they have the competence to be _in loco
| parentis_? Just because you are educated doesn 't mean you are
| a good (pedagogical) educator.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > How come teachers think they have the competence to be in
| loco parentis?
|
| Multiple members of my wife's family are teachers in the
| local public school system. From what they have told me: they
| _don 't_ want to be in that place. Parents demand it of them,
| despite their strong attempts to push back and say "hey this
| one is your job as the parent to solve". So that's the reason
| in at least some cases, although probably not all.
| defrost wrote:
| Here in this country it's not teachers that assess their own
| compentence to be educators, it's _their_ mentors that guide
| and grade them through a university Bachelor of Education
| Course and their first year trials of "live" teaching in the
| wild.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I'm generally not a fan of home schooling in a lot of cases,
| part of what school does is expose you to a vertical slice of
| humanity, and you will almost certainly be dealing with that
| for the rest of your life.
|
| HOWEVER... remember that "home schooled" doesn't mean "as a
| parent you are the only teacher" right? You can hire tutors,
| you can form teaching groups with other parents, you can use
| online resources, etc. If done WELL and with a sense of one's
| own limitations, and the need to socialize your child,
| homeschooling can work.
|
| It's just unfortunate that so often homeschooling is used as a
| way to ensure that no outside influences interrupt a parent's
| particular brand of ideological indoctrination... although in
| the narrow case of tech parents, I suspect that's less of a
| driving force.
| hilux wrote:
| > part of what school does is expose you to a vertical slice
| of humanity
|
| I love that phrasing! I think I'm going to use it - thank
| you.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| The USA hasn't had a healthy education system for decades, so
| parents who have gone through that system are a) not very well
| educated and b) think they can do better.
| rmk wrote:
| This is a weak argument. The US has a patchy K-12 system
| whose quality varies from abysmal to world-beating, depending
| on many factors. It has, indisputably, one of the world's
| best universities. Lots of people who have gone through the
| former but are also products of the latter. They can be very
| well educated, and do better than credentialed teachers
| (let's face it, the only difference is that; also a known
| fact that brighter, higher-IQ people do not gravitate toward
| K-12 teaching).
| cloverich wrote:
| The same logic applies to teachers, and can be applied against
| your own question.
|
| As an example i once lost a mark on a math test because when
| rounding to the nearest whole number, i put 3.0 as the answer.
| Wrong. 3 is a whole number, 3.0 is not i was told, and
| threatened with suspension on protest. That kind of thing
| sticks with you.
|
| I agree with your sentiment however, i just dont think its a
| powerful retort.
| NDizzle wrote:
| Well, you were technically wrong. Which is wrong. var
| wholeNumber = 3.0; - what type will be assumed for that
| value?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| The class is mathematics. In mathematics, numbers do not
| have types.
|
| You also shouldn't try to mention INT_MAX, negative zero,
| rounding error, or other computer science topics which do
| not exist in mathematics.
| bluGill wrote:
| Type theory comes from math. Numbers in math do in fact
| have types. Most of the time we ignore it but numbers in
| math have types. math also has the concept of max number
| rolling back to zero ogain something anyone who has
| studied types in math would know. Rounding error is
| studied in several different math fields.
|
| negative zero isn't in any math I know of. It is only in
| obsolete computer science though.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Mathematicians generally work with sets, not types. The
| first thing you do after defining the reals is agree that
| the naturals, integers, and rationals are subsets. From a
| type theory perspective, they are all type R, and,
| roughly, the naturals satisfy the proposition "n:R is a
| natural number".
| bluGill wrote:
| Mathematics has a lot of different theories and some
| small branches have different rules. I've done mod math
| for example (it was maybe one week of classes) where you
| don't get an infinite set of possible numbers. It isn't
| nearly as interesting as far as mathematicians are
| concerned (for good reason) so it isn't looked at much
| but those theories exist.
| anon291 wrote:
| Contemporary mathematics is duck typed.
| vel0city wrote:
| >>> a = 3.0 >>> b = 3 >>> type(a) == type(b)
| False
|
| The right answer they were looking for was 3, not 3.0. Adding
| that .0 implies a precision which is not correct. They
| weren't looking to see if you knew the arithmetic with that
| question, they wanted you to show you understood what they
| meant by "whole number" and understand you can't just leave
| arbitrary precision after rounding. You didn't give the right
| answer and apparently kept complaining about it instead of
| trying to figure out why you were wrong to the point they
| threatened suspension. I imagine your complaints based on
| your assumption you couldn't be wrong were causing quite a
| distraction.
|
| For example, 10 / 3 = 3.333... right? We're then asked to
| round to the nearest whole number, and the answer should be
| 10 / 3 = 3. It is not correct to then say 10 / 3 = 3.0,
| because that is just wrong.
|
| I'd end up siding with the teacher on this one. Just
| acknowledge you didn't understand what they were looking for
| and do better next time.
| cloverich wrote:
| > adding that .0 implies a precision which is not correct.
| They weren't looking to see if you knew the arithmetic with
| that question, they wanted you to show you understood what
| they meant by "whole number" and understand you can't just
| leave arbitrary precision after rounding.
|
| If you round 3.05 down to 3, 3.00 is not arbitrary
| precision, its explicit precision that's reflective of the
| rounding operation you did. I wasn't claiming that
| `type(3.0) == type(3)`. I was claiming that:
| >>> round(3.0) == 3 True
|
| And that such a representation was valid within the context
| of the question. This was long before I was wise enough to
| understand that sir, this is a public school, just do what
| the book says and don't make me talk with the students more
| than I need do.
| vel0city wrote:
| It's incredible despite multiple additional individuals
| telling you that you're wrong you continue doubling down
| on it.
|
| 10 / 3 != 3.000000000000000000000000 no matter how many
| times you refute it. You should really learn to accept it
| and continue on and look deeper inside yourself into
| this. It's sad you still haven't learned this lesson from
| elementary education. Maybe they should have suspended
| you.
|
| In no world does 10 / 3 = 3.0. This is just a falsehood
| as much as 2 + 2. = 5. I don't care about your large
| values of 2.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| '10/3 = 3' is also false, and is something you put
| forward as true. Meanwhile, '10/3 [?] 3' and '10/3 [?]
| 3.0' are both equally true, as is '10/3 [?] p' if you're
| in a pinch. Also true is that math is full of
| conventions, and it makes sense to use the conventions
| you feel are appropriate for what you're doing. Sometimes
| that might be significant figures, which I suppose you're
| alluding to. Other times, it might be propagation of
| uncertainty. Other times error tracking is not even
| relevant; you might just round the thing but also want to
| have all of your expressions be of the same type. For
| that matter, you may have 3: R = 3.0: R by definition.
| The other poster never gave any indication of whether or
| why some particular convention should apply.
|
| Teachers not having the time to muse about such ideas and
| instead needing to package everything into a presentation
| appropriate for an entire room full of children is one of
| the more obvious failure modes of industrialized
| education.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| "Whole number" means that the mantissa is 0, and is not
| related to what some random programming language asserts in
| its representational type system.
|
| Math terms like "whole number" are not defined in terms of
| the behavior of computer programming languages.
|
| In math, not only are 3.0 and 3 the same thing, but also,
| so is 2.9999999...
|
| .
|
| > They weren't looking to see if you knew the arithmetic
| with that question, they wanted you to show you understood
| what they meant by "whole number" and understand you can't
| just leave arbitrary precision after rounding.
|
| Can you show any math reference that supports this
| viewpoint? This goes against my college mathematics
| training.
|
| .
|
| > You didn't give the right answer
|
| According to mathematics, 3.0 and 3 are the same thing (and
| so is the Roman numeral III, and so on.) So is 6/2.
|
| It is deeply and profoundly incorrect to treat an answer as
| incorrect because the mantissa was written out.
|
| The teacher is simply incorrect, as are you.
|
| .
|
| > Just acknowledge you didn't understand what they were
| looking for and do better next time.
|
| If a teacher asks "what is the country north of Austria,"
| in an English speaking school, and you write "Germany," and
| the teacher says "no, it's Allemande," they're just
| incorrect. It doesn't matter if the teacher is French.
| There are only two ways to look at this: either the correct
| answer is in the language of the school, or any
| international answer is acceptable.
|
| A normal person would say "oh, ha ha, Germany and Allemande
| are the same place, let's just move forwards."
|
| A person interested in defeating and winning, instead of
| teaching, might demand that the answer come in in some
| arbitrary incorrect format that they expected. That's a bad
| teacher who doesn't need to be listened to.
|
| Yes, we know there's also some kid who is explaining to
| just do as teacher instructs, but no, we're there to learn
| information, not to learn to obey.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Can you show any math reference that supports this
| viewpoint? This goes against my college mathematics
| training.
|
| > The word integer comes from the Latin integer meaning
| "whole" or (literally) "untouched", from in ("not") plus
| tangere ("to touch"). "Entire" derives from the same
| origin via the French word entier, which means both
| entire and integer.[9] Historically the term was used for
| a number that was a multiple of 1,[10][11] or to the
| whole part of a mixed number.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer
|
| The question was to understand the idea of a "whole
| number" aka an integer.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| It's very clear you're out of your element on this, and
| you have multiple people with an actual math background
| telling you the objection is somewhere between
| meaningless and wrong.
|
| The takeaway from trying to really nail down a definition
| of "integers" (or anything, really) is going to be
| something along the lines of "if it quacks like a duck up
| to unique isomorphism, it's a duck". The encoding is not
| important and one frequently swaps among encodings when
| convenient. In any case, no one who knows any math is
| going to say to a child that 3 and 3.0 aren't
| interchangable outside of some extremely specific
| contexts. In fact that's not even encoding: it's
| notation. They can be literally equal, not just
| equivalent. Those particular contexts aren't ordained,
| and e.g. propagation of uncertainty is "better" than
| significant figures if you're doing engineering anyway.
|
| Writing something like '10/3=3' _is_ likely to trigger
| the mathematicians because lots of people get confused
| about what '=' is supposed to mean (and often use it to
| mean something like "next step indicator"). '3=3.0' not
| so much.
| vel0city wrote:
| > outside of some extremely specific contexts.
|
| The exact context _was_ given. They wanted only whole
| numbers.
|
| > Writing something like '10/3=3' is likely to trigger
| the mathematicians
|
| Sure, when lacking the context of all answers should be
| rounded to the nearest whole number. But that was the
| context, and it's astounding so many people with alleged
| math backgrounds arguing things like intergers aren't a
| thing to understand.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Assuming you want to be able to make statements like
| N[?]Q[?]R (as one normally does), 3.0 is a whole number,
| 3 is a real number, and 3.0=3=2.9999999...
|
| Being equal to 3, 2.9999... is also a whole number.
|
| Teaching to use '=' in a statement like '10/3=3' is an
| example of where teachers don't know math in depth and
| make errors about details that are actually
| important/later cause confusion. 10/3 is not equal to 3.
| '=' doesn't mean "answer". Then not accepting 3.0 which
| _is_ equal to 3 just layers on that confusion. '=' is
| transitive. If a=b and b=c, then a=c.
|
| Saying 3.0[?]3 is a subtlety you really only get into in
| math when defining these things, and then you immediately
| redefine them so that 3.0=3 and you don't have to think
| about it again.
| vel0city wrote:
| You're continuing to focus on the functional similarities
| and functional equivalences of 3, 3.0, 6/2, 2.999... etc.
| You're right, from an arithmetic standpoint, these are
| all the same value. I've definitely always agreed with
| this and fully understand it.
|
| But the question wasn't testing that you knew how to
| divide and round. The question was testing if you
| understood what the teacher was trying to teach about
| whole numbers, integers, rational numbers, real numbers,
| etc.
|
| 6/2 as written is not an integer. It is not a whole
| number. The value it represents _can be_ written as a
| whole number, I fully agree, but as written it itself is
| not a whole number. Whole numbers are the set of numbers
| Z including -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4,... I doubt any
| math teacher, upon teaching "what is a whole number",
| draws a number line and proceeds to label it -3.999,
| -6/2, -12/6, -5/5, 0, 5/5, 12/6, 6/2, 3.999..., and on.
|
| The notation was the key part of the question and was a
| key part of the answer.
|
| The teacher wasn't looking for a value (which is what
| you're so focused on looking at), they were looking for a
| notation, a format.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Then the teacher is teaching something that someone more
| knowledgeable in the subject will later have to _un_
| teach. I'm focusing on functional equivalences because
| _that 's how math works as practiced by mathematicians_.
| The functional equivalences are the point, and you may
| not notice it, but you're _also_ relying on those
| equivalences, which is why you can write "6/2" in the
| first place. Integers are already equivalence classes of
| pairs of natural numbers (which is why 2-3=3-4).
| Rationals are equivalence classes of pairs of integers
| (which is why 3/1 = 6/2). If you actually try to define
| any of this stuff in a coherent way, you're _immediately_
| forced to deal with equivalence as a central idea.
|
| 6/2 is a whole number. 6/2 = 3. 3 is a whole number. They
| are equal. Usually, they are the _exact_ same
| mathematical object. It is not merely that they share
| properties. They are literally definitionally the exact
| same thing (the same set in ZFC). "n is a whole number"
| is a proposition. It is true for n=6/2.
|
| If a teacher is teaching that 6/2 is not an integer,
| unless they are in the middle of constructing the
| rationals and need to make a distinction between integers
| and equivalence classes of pairs of integers, then they
| are _wrong_. The very first thing you do after you 're
| forced to make that distinction is you make it go away.
| They shouldn't _be_ teaching the student to hyperfocus on
| a specific notation or format. That 's a bad lesson to
| teach, and is something a real teacher will need to fix
| later. Actual mathematics professors are happy to let you
| write "let <christmas tree>[?]R". An intro proofs
| professor will _definitely_ put something like
| "-3.999..., -6/2, -12/6, -5/5, 0, 5/5, 12/6, 6/2,
| 3.999..." on a number line to illustrate the point that
| these are just different ways to write the same thing.
| Fluidity in switching through and following different
| notations without getting distracted is a centrally
| important mathematical skill.
| vel0city wrote:
| > unless they are in the middle of constructing the
| rationals and need to make a distinction between integers
| and equivalence classes of pairs of integers
|
| Finally, you're starting to understand the context of the
| question at hand.
|
| I'm also happy you're starting to show you do understand
| there's a _notational_ difference between 6 /2 and 3.
| That the values are the same the notation is quite
| different, thus _there are some differences_. Not
| functionally, true, but notationally.
|
| The notational difference _was the point_ of this lesson.
| You may think it 'll only be a barrier in the future to
| point it out like that (maybe it is!), but the notational
| difference was the lesson.
|
| > Fluidity in switching through and following different
| notations
|
| If you don't really have an understanding of the
| notations, you're going to have a hard time being fluid
| switching between them.
|
| > An intro proofs professor
|
| An intro proofs professor wasn't leading the lesson, it
| was probably an elementary or middle school math teacher.
| The point of the lesson is different, the context of the
| lesson is different.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Given that most math teachers haven't studied
| algebra/likely haven't seen the definition of any of
| these things, and the distinction is not relevant when
| discussing rounding, I highly doubt that the teacher was
| making that distinction, or even aware it exists. More
| likely, the teacher was making a distinction _that does
| not exist_ , which only confuses students.
|
| In any context that a child is working in, 6/2 and 3.0
| are a whole numbers. If the teacher says otherwise, they
| are _wrong_. Just because the teacher wants to teach a
| lesson doesn 't mean that lesson is actually correct. The
| teacher is just confused.
|
| If they weren't confused, it would be highly
| inappropriate to go into that level of detail with anyone
| other than a curious gifted kid that's asking questions
| that are years ahead of a normal curriculum. So much so
| that it's beyond the level of knowledge expected of a
| schoolteacher.
|
| You also wouldn't mark it wrong because _the entire
| point_ is to define things in a way that makes the
| distinction go away. Even after that distinction _has_
| been presented and is front-of-mind, you _still_
| generally write down whatever representative is
| convenient.
|
| It's either literally wrong,
| philosophically/pedagogically wrong, or both.
| vel0city wrote:
| > most math teachers haven't studied algebra
|
| Pretty sure all teachers I had even in elementary school
| studied _at least_ high school level algebra. In middle
| school and above they all had masters or better in
| mathematics.
|
| > the distinction _is not relevant_
|
| > I highly doubt that the teacher was making that
| distinction, or even aware _it exists_
|
| > the teacher was making a distinction _that does not
| exist_
|
| The distinction both exists and does not exist.
| Incredible.
|
| > it would be highly inappropriate to go into that level
| of detail
|
| The detail of a thing that does not exist, right?
|
| > it's beyond the level of knowledge expected of a
| schoolteacher.
|
| Right, the teacher is wrong because you wouldn't expect
| the schoolteacher to be smart enough to be right about
| it.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Yes, the distinction both exists and it doesn't. _When
| defining things_ , you might start off by saying "the
| natural numbers are von Neumann ordinals". Then you
| construct the integers as certain infinite sets of pairs
| of natural numbers, and you say "actually when I say
| natural numbers I mean integers that contain a pair where
| the 2nd number is 0". Then you define rationals as
| certain infinite sets of pairs of integers, and say
| "actually when I say integers I mean rationals that
| contain a pair where the 2nd number is 1", and so on. So
| for a brief moment during the construction of the next
| step, there is a distinction. Then you immediately retcon
| your definition and get rid of it. No one ever uses the
| intermediate definitions again.
|
| There's similar logical snags when trying to define real
| numbers because technically you'll need distances which
| have to be rational because you don't have real numbers
| yet, but really you'd like distances to be real. It's not
| actually an issue though, and as far as everyone is
| concerned, distances are real.
|
| Or you define things only up to unique isomorphism by
| their properties and wash your hands of the whole ordeal.
| The construction is merely to show that _some_ object
| with those properties exists.
|
| The teacher is wrong because if they are being pedantic
| about it to a child, they're a bad teacher. And they're
| missing the point.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| As someone who (almost!) has a PhD in mathematics I'm going
| to have to call you out on this point. You are thinking
| like an engineer and talking about precision, but this is
| mathematics, not engineering. We make no distinction
| between the "real" number 3, the "complex" number 3, and
| the "whole" number 3. The number 3 lives in each of these
| universes as the same object (so to speak) because these
| sets (whole, real, complex) numbers are included in one
| another. Writing 3.0 is a representation for 3 just as
| 2.9999... is a representation of 3. Perhaps the bigger
| question we should be asking here is what was the purpose
| of all of this discussion? I've seen such petty treatment
| by teachers all the time and it always discouraged me from
| pursuing math until I met professors in university who
| actually tried to teach us something interesting and
| beautiful about math. This question could have led in that
| direction actually with a discussion of different kinds of
| numbers but unfortunately many math teachers in the US are
| not capable of this, or are too discouraged by the other
| craziness in schools to have the energy for such
| conversations.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > As an example i once lost a mark on a math test because
| when rounding to the nearest whole number, i put 3.0 as the
| answer. Wrong. 3 is a whole number, 3.0 is not i was told,
| and threatened with suspension on protest. That kind of thing
| sticks with you.
|
| I got threatened with suspension on protest once. It was
| about the meaning of a word, but still.
|
| Luckily, I'm a university brat, so I just waited a couple
| days until my dad was keeping me at his office, then I
| wandered down the hall, and I asked some professors for a
| detailed and referenced way to push back. I brought candy and
| tums, because that's what professors want from children who
| can't bring beer.
|
| About a week later, I went in with a 30 page computer printed
| essay. As a nine year old. It had six phone numbers in the
| back, four to PhDs, which could be called for further detail
| if needed. It was addressed to both the teacher and the
| principal.
|
| An opening note was "please look into how Marilyn vos Savant
| was treated when she explained the Monty Hall problem, when
| considering whether teachers are permitted to threaten
| students for disagreeing politely. Are you really so afraid
| of being incorrect?," written by an internationally renowned
| mathematician.
|
| I was carrying an etymological breakdown that to this day I
| can barely read, stretching all the way back to the
| hypothetical proto-indo-european roots.
|
| Professors don't like kids being threatened.
|
| I did not hear about that teacher doing that again while I
| was in that school.
| wrenky wrote:
| I was homeschooled from 2nd - 8th grade. My elementary school
| was trying to put my brother on adderall and my class had
| sorted me into the "blue" group of readers (colors of the
| rainbow for reading ability). I apparently came home talking
| about how I was slow and it was okay because we all learn at
| our own pace.
|
| Definitely not a great school! both my brother and I ended up
| going to college and getting engineering degrees, and had zero
| issues with academics in high school. My mom did a pretty okay
| job but it was absolute hell on her, I entered high school
| ahead on mathematics/history but pretty behind on writing and
| science. The science I dont blame my mom for, all the
| curriculum at the time was insanely religious, so the ones we
| could find were very dry.
| from-nibly wrote:
| That's like half your job as a parent: teaching your kids stuff
| ( the other half being: keeping them alive). You are THE most
| qualified person on the planet to teach your own kids anything.
| esafak wrote:
| Alas, not every parent is well educated.
| from-nibly wrote:
| So?
| esafak wrote:
| So they're not the most qualified person to teach
| children, contrary to the claim.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| This is exactly why I dislike the push to erode parental
| rights or attack homeschooling, which is happening in many
| blue states. Parents know best, not a civil worker (teachers)
| or bureaucrat or the "state".
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Well, maybe not best, but it's also not something I would
| advocate for taking away from parents. It's silly to pretend
| parents need a degree to teach their kids something when
| teaching their kids how to live life is half of the job.
| vel0city wrote:
| I am absolutely not the most qualified person on the planet
| to teach my kids quantum physics. I'm also absolutely not the
| most qualified person on the planet to teach them geology.
| Probably also not the most qualified person to teach them
| advanced biochemistry.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| We haven't really decided what we're going to do with our kids.
| I personally think I'd enjoy homeschooling them, but I don't
| know what their preferences will be. Their mom would appreciate
| the break. That said,
|
| 1. Teachers develop skills in managing rooms of ~30 kids. I
| believe this is completely different from tutoring someone 1:1
| and likely has very little overlap.
|
| 2. Part of my day job is already mentoring/teaching. I enjoy
| that part of my work. I've received feedback that I'm good at
| it. Actually when I was younger I thought I'd switch into
| teaching after building up some savings with programming. I've
| since heard/read enough about the realities of being a teacher
| that I can't imagine doing that job (especially with public
| school). Homeschooling or teaching a homeschool pod seems like
| the best way to actually be able to teach if that's your
| inclination.
|
| 3. The k-12 curriculum is not really much to cover. Schools
| move at a pace appropriate for the slower kids in the room. It
| doesn't seem like a high bar to beat, and most of what I've
| found looking into it indicates that homeschool parents
| generally _do_ outperform schools with a fraction of the time
| spent.
|
| 3a. I've already been teaching my 3 year old phonics and
| reading when she's in the mood. She doesn't really have the
| attention to sit and focus for more than ~5 minutes, but that's
| okay, and it's still going alright. I expect she'll already be
| years ahead of the school curriculum before it's even time to
| start. So initial results have been promising and suggest I am
| indeed capable of teaching a child.
|
| 4. When it comes to more advanced/in-depth understanding, I
| don't expect teachers to have the background. Like just looking
| at the math education program at my alma mater, there's no
| requirement for real analysis or algebra. There's no
| requirement for science courses (physics, chemistry, etc.). All
| of the options in the math department _except_ education
| require at least a minor in another STEM subject. It 's no
| surprise that a common trope is that teachers (particularly
| math) don't know how to answer how something gets used in the
| real world, but that's insane to me as a status quo. There are
| _tons_ of applications of pretty much any math you might learn
| before graduate level in pretty much any field you examine
| (conic sections stand out to me as a niche thing that we
| covered in high school. Not that they don 't have applications
| to e.g. orbits, but they don't seem to apply to other fields,
| and I don't believe the connection to physics was made in my
| high school class anyway (presumably because math teachers
| where I grew up aren't required to learn physics)).
|
| Honestly I think school is mostly more useful for socializing
| and something like arts/crafts that entail mess and require a
| bunch of energy to do at home, especially before high school/AP
| classes. The academic part seems trivial. Once you've reached
| that conclusion, it makes sense to ask whether there are
| alternatives that are better suited/are more aware of and
| aligned to their purpose as enrichment.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Good points. Your last paragraph suggests we really need a
| drastic rethink of how education works and where funding
| goes. Right now a one size fits all solution with no
| competition is what gets funded.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good
| (pedagogical) educator.
|
| This applies equally to paid teachers, along with numerous
| downsides that don't apply to parents (i.e. being able to
| tailor education to a single individual, developing a
| relationship that lasts close to two decades, ability to slow
| down and speed up course material where necessary, and more).
| Paid teachers, contrary to semi-popular mythology, are not
| special and don't do anything that an average person couldn't
| do (they are not extra-"competent"). In the natural course of
| being a parent you learn how to interact, guide, and teach your
| children.
|
| This argument also fails in many concrete situations. For
| example, where I grew up there is a decent homeschooling
| community made up of people with average levels of education,
| low to average income, and yet the kids perform very well
| academically and are well socialized. Saying that these parents
| are not competent because didn't get a badge (education-related
| degree) is absurd considering they do as well as the people who
| did get that badge.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Great, I'm sure you'll have no problem using the services of
| a self-taught doctor, lawyer, or engineer then. After all,
| why would they need to be taught by a professional?
|
| Go spend some time in a classroom and get a fucking clue how
| much more there is to teaching than what your layman's view
| entails. You, and this disrespect for our educators and the
| potential of what we could be offering in our public schools
| is why we are the laughing stock of the developed world.
| theamk wrote:
| Teaching twenty kids of wildly different levels is always
| going to be harder that teaching a single kid, so parents
| have a great advantage by default.
|
| Yes, there are educators who are so great they can teach
| all 20 kids amazingly well, but those are super rare. Most
| likely kids who are learn much faster or much slower than
| the rest will be left behind. If you child is in this
| group, it's better off to stay away from public school.
|
| (It could have been much better if there were advanced
| classes, "magnet" schools, etc.. but in many states those
| programs are being cancelled and everyone is being forced
| into rigid programs.)
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| If you are blindly relying on certified professionals in
| soft fields such as general medicine and law you are in for
| a bad time.
|
| At a minimum you need to use your judgement to vet good
| from bad practitioners in those fields.
|
| Also "disrespect our educators" is so funny. Sorry, they're
| not that serious, mostly dumb. And we're not the
| laughingstock of the developed world, we are the rulers of
| the developed and undeveloped world
| hilux wrote:
| It is an objectively measurable fact (e.g. by test scores)
| that K-12 teaching, in the US, pays poorly, lacks prestige,
| and attracts far from the best and the brightest.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Depends on the parents because a lot of them are more than
| qualified. The typical education major isn't exactly a scholar,
| but that is also true of most people.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| When I was in school for my master's degree some years ago,
| several of my classes were heavily populated by teachers (New
| York State requires teachers to have or get a master's degree
| within 5 years of being certified). All were humanities
| teachers (English, Social Studies, ect - no STEM). At least
| half of them had great difficulty simply writing a one page
| essay. With one or two exceptions, reading comprehension was
| absolutely abysmal. At least two of them were functionally
| illiterate (in a master's program!). All were certified
| teachers who were actively working in schools.
|
| The fact is that in many places school standards have been so
| low and social promotion has been going on for so long that we
| now have people coming out of high school and college that have
| never achieved anything academically. Many of these people go
| into teaching (even when schools were academically rigorous,
| majoring in education was always regarded as one of the least
| challenging areas of study).
|
| That isn't to say that there aren't good teachers, or that
| there aren't smart teachers - there certainly are. It is to say
| that having an education degree or a teacher's certificate does
| not mean that one is qualified to do anything.
|
| Does this mean every parent is smart enough or cut out to
| properly home school their child? Of course not! What it means
| is that (many) schools have effectively failed as institutions
| and until they are improved many people are going to look for
| alternatives.
| defrost wrote:
| > It is to say that having an education degree or a teacher's
| certificate does not mean that one is qualified to do
| anything.
|
| It absolutely does in Finland. It absolutely carried meaning
| when I was educated in my (non Finnish, non US) country.
|
| What is revealed here is that a New York State teachers
| certificate doesn't mean much.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| I'm a former public school teacher -- maybe I can explain.
|
| There's a lot of competence necessary to teach two dozen kids
| with different backgrounds and mastery levels, even in the rare
| moments when 2-4 of them aren't actively trying to derail the
| entire class.
|
| The base level of competence necessary to go through a
| curriculum with one/a few of your own children is much, much
| lower. Could I do better with one/a few of your children given
| as much time and attention? Pretty definitely. Can I do better
| if your kid is in my classroom? In most cases, no.
|
| Sure, there are things I could explain or guide a kid through
| because of my background and skills that homeschooling parents
| can't (though it mostly just takes more time and effort), but
| there's a huge amount they can do because of their
| relationship, access, and ability to devote time and attention
| that I couldn't hope to. And with modern homeschooling
| resources, tutors/group microschooling, online courses and
| group study, etc., the deficits have never been easier to
| overcome.
|
| Also, two underdiscussed points: 1. An untrained, literate
| adult probably needs less than two hours to help a kid through
| what they'd learn in an eight-hour day at school. That time can
| go to other things. If they're productive, great. If they're
| not, no huge loss.
|
| 2. People significantly overestimate the level of care and
| competence average teachers have. You remember some fantastic
| ones. If fantastic and caring was the norm, you were quite
| lucky.
| logicchains wrote:
| The average public school teacher is somewhere in the average
| top 40-30% in intelligence/academic achievement. Anyone who's a
| top performer academically is going to be much more competent
| than the average public school teacher.
| purplethinking wrote:
| Teachers in most countries are, at best, mid-wits with no
| practical or real world experience. I know teachers who barely
| passed math in high school who are now match teachers. It's
| like a basketball teacher who went to "Basketball Teaching
| School", who's never played basketball in his life, teaching
| kids how to play basketball.
| anon291 wrote:
| I dunno... what qualifies them to be a parent?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| They watched Aella interviewed by Friedman?
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| The USA is going backwards in many, many areas and is no longer
| in the top of any important indices so this fits the bill.
| morkalork wrote:
| Public school education is a shit show in many western
| countries. I'm not in the USA but all the talk about private
| schools and lotteries is very real. The only thing we don't
| have is charter schools leaching public funds.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| The USA is ranked below most other western public school
| systems so I don't think you can conclude "the US are doing
| bad because all western countries are". It's just a matter of
| priorities and the US prioritizes defense over education.
| morkalork wrote:
| Wasn't there a time in the 70s/80s when the USA prioritized
| education and STEM specifically for the MIC and the cold
| war?
| nradov wrote:
| Are those education metrics even measuring the correct
| things? Many other countries have higher scores of
| educational achievement, and yet on average we ignorant
| Americans go on to be more productive and more innovative
| than any other major developed country. Just to pick one
| example, the USA develops about 80% of the new prescription
| drugs every year. Does it really matter if we can't
| integrate a function or remember when the Civil War
| started?
| lyu07282 wrote:
| American exceptionalism is one hell of a drug, I think
| this denial is one of the reasons why you are impotent to
| fixing any one of your numerous glaring issues like
| education, health care, housing, infrastructure, etc.
| xnx wrote:
| No one seems to have mentioned AI/LLMs yet. Between Khan Academy,
| Wikipedia, and LLMs, if your child has curiosity, the resources
| to tutor have never been better.
| cloverich wrote:
| We get weekly summaries of our childrens curriculum from the
| school. I run it through chatgpt and get quality weekly study
| guides for reinforcement at home, its awesome.
| wrenky wrote:
| Those are sources, and while curiosity is great most kids are
| focused on specific things not everything. Kids need direction
| and somebody them to focus on things they dont want to learn-
| like a kid who loves animals isnt going to learn math or how to
| write well, and a kid whos interested in history might not care
| at all about science.
|
| Parents are no better at this unless they are incredible
| focused on utilizing a curriculum and addressing their own
| issues along the way- And even then, learning with other kids
| is incredibly helpful. Talking to a computer is not a
| replacement for a teacher (yet).
| xnx wrote:
| > Talking to a computer is not a replacement for a teacher
| (yet).
|
| I agree. The limitless patience and non-judgement of a
| computer is very valuable in a learning context. LLMs won't
| be better than the best private tutors, but its very likely
| they'll be better than 80% of junior high through college
| teachers.
| lif wrote:
| interesting take. Heard of Synthesis? (hint: DARPA funded).
|
| At the local elementary school, we are told the kids are being
| kept safer now thanks to being tracked by AI cameras.
|
| Some parents, maybe especially those with insight into tech
| fact vs. tech marketing, may have reservations about "tutors"
| whose services (perhaps for free) come with the stipulation
| that they are free to record every bit of data about your kid
| and do with it as they please.
|
| The're being silly, right? Because?
|
| As everyone on HN knows: software is super safe, and the
| entities/corps controlling it, so, so benign. Data doubly so --
| hacks basically never happen, am I right? No one cares about
| your kid?
|
| Or?
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| LLMs hallucinate and often provide incorrect answers. They're a
| fabulous tool if you're not necessarily looking a specific,
| correct, answer. But I'm not sure I would want my kids to use
| them as a tutor, without someone to vet the output.
| xnx wrote:
| That's a very good concern to have. Grounding[0] helps a lot
| with this and will continue to improve. I'll also add that
| I've had human teachers who were confidently wrong about
| things.
|
| [0] https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/facts-grounding-a-
| new-...
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| Nice, thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of this, but
| certainly anticipated we'd continue to see improvement in
| this area. And I completely agree on teachers being wrong,
| usually without realizing it, but not always. :)
| ohm wrote:
| Most of the people I know that homeschool their kids do it
| because they don't want their kids to get vaccines that schools
| require them to have.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| At least in the US the education system is so incredibly bad for
| anyone reasonably intelligent where homeschooling is an option it
| should be the clear preference. At least until high school.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| * smart tech folks who value education not seeing education value
| in local schools * chronically underfunded public schools based
| on local property taxes, fewer programs, etc. * good private
| schools aren't cheap * political axes to grind esp. by the right
| to defund the Dept. of Education, and create curriculums that
| don't sell well (e.g. bibles in school, pro-oil & gas slants,
| etc.)
| formerphotoj wrote:
| This "shouldn't" be surprising. Smart people seeing a wider
| perspective, seeing the limits of mass-schooling and top-down
| curricula, seeing other social challenges, and seeing a better
| option? I live in Seattle; there's a reason it's one of the top
| metros with per capita private school enrollment and if it
| weren't for tech incomes, I'd expect homeschooling and
| homeschooling collectives to thrive. Comments here about
| neurodiversity needs are also on point.
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| I live in the Seattle metro, and tomorrow morning is the first
| day of class for our homeschool co-op, where I'm teaching
| software engineering to high schoolers.
| cosmic_quanta wrote:
| I'd love to read about your experience doing this!
| teddyh wrote:
| Note: Quotation marks are not suitable for marking emphasis.
|
| <https://old.reddit.com/r/suspiciousquotes/>
| kkfx wrote:
| Since most schools are designed to craft meat-based robots, like
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-usef...
| those who try to be humans try to give their progeny a human
| future...
| prakashrj wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXhsutNKhec
|
| Following is recent video of my homeschooled son that this
| community might appreciate. It gives an opportunity to tailor
| education and challenge kids potential.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Because I want my kids to succeed in reading, history, math, and
| science, and schools instead give them iPads and teach them <rest
| of answer self-censored in self-preservation, but you know
| exactly what goes here>
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The actual title of the article is: "Why are tech people suddenly
| so into homeschooling?" which is not exactly the same as
| "becoming fashionable". Why not use the original title?
| j16sdiz wrote:
| dang edited it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42706248
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Economics plays into this too. Housing in good school districts
| is often much more expensive, and private schools are
| ridiculously expensive.
|
| COVID is another factor. Anecdotal of course, but I've only met
| two home schooled families since moving to our present city 3
| years ago, and one of them started out of necessity during the
| pandemic and found that it worked well and so never went back --
| but they're a one income family so one parent has the time (the
| only way it works, IMO, unless you co-op with another family or
| two, which can work if you're friends). I must say I was very
| impressed with their kids.
| bluGill wrote:
| Where I live all the districts have the same funding per
| student across the entire MSA. The inner city schools still do
| much worse.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The economic situation of the parents is a greater factor
| than the funding of the school IMO
| bluGill wrote:
| I agree but many keep claiming that inner city schools just
| lack money despite evidence otherwise.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| In Seattle schools have double the budget compared to the years
| ago, and spend more than 25K per student each year. The schools
| are worse than ever, which has convinced me that funding isn't
| the problem. This might be a local issue though, with a very
| ideological school district that has ignored the basics of
| education.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| SF: 27k
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| OK, but the issue I was bringing up has nothing to do with
| funding for schools.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I was responding to the part about housing being expensive
| near good schools, and the idea of good schools in general.
| Expensive housing and associated taxes often affect local
| school budgets, and those budgets are often stated as the
| reason the school is good. But my experience has been that
| the budgets don't change school quality, it must be other
| factors. Sorry it may have been somewhat unrelated.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yeah, fair point.
|
| I don't know whether budgets change school quality, but
| there is a marked difference in most cities between
| schools with high and low performance outcomes as
| measured by test scores, graduation rates, etc. (not that
| test scores are the best measure of life in general, but
| they're what's available in terms of academic
| understanding). And if you look at the schools with high
| ratings and where they are located, you'll find that it
| correlates greatly with income, and even more so you'll
| find that schools with the lowest performance correlate
| greatly with low income. (These are averages; there are
| brilliant students at all these schools.)
|
| Families with higher income have more resources and more
| ability to support their child's education (after school
| activities, tutoring, a more academically-oriented
| environment, and most importantly, the absence of
| financial stress on the family unit which can greatly
| affect children especially if the parents (or in many
| cases a single parent household) has to work multiple
| jobs just to put food on the table much less be able to
| handle much else.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I think it's really housing is expensive near good
| schools because people (with kids) want to live near good
| schools so it drives up the price.
|
| I guess also people who buy their house based on
| education probably have a positive effect of the
| education in that area but I think it's more of a market
| effect of the school already being above average.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I tend to agree.
|
| As a parent with young kids moving to a new city a few
| years ago, we based our house hunting process on being
| near the best public schools (based on academic
| achievements; not much else to go by), and paid quite a
| bit more for our house than we would have otherwise. I
| know it sounds selfish, but our concern is that if our
| kids are mostly surrounded by other kids who don't have
| high academic standards (through no fault of their own,
| just their environment doesn't support that or it's not
| even a goal), then they will have a hard time bucking the
| tide, so to speak.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| This sort of aligns with some other comments here.
| Parents want their kids to be around other kids that are
| better than the average. So like kids who behave well,
| aren't violent, care about grades, have attentive
| parents, etc. I completely support that way of thinking
| given what school can be like when you don't have that,
| which I did not like or benefit from in any way (even
| though some claim that mixing with other types of people
| is somehow positive).
| cryptonector wrote:
| Masking children was fucking cruel.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not really. If you've grown up in Asia you're used to wearing
| a mask whenever you are feeling unwell or have a cold. We do
| that out of courtesy to others, and it makes a lot of sense
| (which is why the practice has continued at hospitals since
| COVID). My kids were both in elementary school during COVID
| and got used to it quickly and were just fine.
| cryptonector wrote:
| No sorry, this was full time whether sick or not. And if
| you're sick you just skip school. It was fucking cruel and
| wrong.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Many American parents did not consider masking their
| children to be OK. If you want to know one reason many more
| are homeschooling now: that's one reason. There's other
| related reasons too. All the covid reasons to homeschool:
| - schools were closed for too long - remote learning
| wasn't working - forced masking of children when
| schools reopened, both against the children's and
| parents' will - politicization of all things health
| ArtemZ wrote:
| Are private schools all that ridiculously expensive though? I'm
| enrolling my kid into University School (a private boys only
| school in Cleveland) and the tuition is like 30k$ per year.
| rayiner wrote:
| American schools just aren't very good. I remember when I was in
| third or fourth grade, my mom flipping out about why we were
| spending so much time learning about native Americans and so
| little time learning math. To this day, my mom, who grew up in
| Bangladesh but got a classic British education from a tutor, is
| more well read in western literature than I am (Tolstoy, Jules
| Verne, Socrates, Plato, etc.)
|
| As far as I can tell, private school doesn't even fix the
| problem. My kids go to a pretty expensive private school and it's
| not rigorous or challenging--the main benefit is that the kids
| are better behaved so there is less chaos and distraction.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > spending so much time learning about native Americans and so
| little time learning math
|
| After a bunch of years overseas, I returned to the US to
| complete my last two years of high school.
|
| I was shocked and dismayed by how much time (and stupid
| memorization-minutiae) was dedicated solely to the 4 years of
| the US Civil War.
| braincat31415 wrote:
| My daughter's middle school science class spent a month and a
| half chewing through water and rock cycle. I don't think
| geology is in her future.
| rayiner wrote:
| The remarkable thing is that Americans don't understand their
| own civilization. They don't learn anything substantive about
| the founding U.S. cultures (big differences between Puritans
| and Jamestown settlers). They don't study European history as
| a required course so they know almost nothing about how the
| modern world came to be (Westphalian nation states, etc). And
| they learn almost no world history beyond ancient
| civilizations (native Americans, ancient Egyptians, etc).
|
| I spend $33,000 a year on my daughter's education and she was
| telling me about some supposed connection between the
| Constitution and some Indian tribe--but she has no idea what
| the Magna Carta is, or what the political structure was of
| the UK that we declared independence from, who Plato is, etc.
| My mom was more educated as a girl in a desperately poor
| Muslim country in the 1950s than my daughter in an affluent
| DC region private school.
| miek wrote:
| I attended the best school district in my state, and the
| history education was absolutely miserable. Didn't cover
| either World War, but covered and re-covered early American
| history in a very boring, unrevealing way.
| wink wrote:
| Not sure how it is today but in the late 90s it felt like
| we had a section about Nazis and WW2 every year in high
| school (in Germany). Yes, I get it, it's important - but
| it's not important to rehash it every year for 9 years.
|
| That said, overall I was pretty happy with history class.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >The remarkable thing is that Americans don't understand
| their own civilization... some supposed connection between
| the Constitution and some Indian tribe.
|
| The Iroquois Confederacy. Irony.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > some supposed connection between the Constitution and
| some Indian tribe
|
| Do you mean the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee [1]? I.e.,
| the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy? The place
| where the founding fathers of the US got the idea of
| separation of powers? The form of government of one of the
| major regional powers at the time the US was formed? Don't
| know why your daughter's teachers would bother teaching her
| about that. Sure, it's awful if they were neglecting all
| those other things, but seriously, anyone learning American
| colonial-era history needs to learn about the Iroquois
| Confederacy.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace
| bombis wrote:
| > The place where the founding fathers of the US got the
| idea of separation of powers?
|
| This reads a bit more like spinning a noble savages tale
| rather than the much more obvious explanation being that
| the founders were building on the proven greco-roman
| models and various Enlightmentment figures - as they
| directly state in a number of federalist papers.
| ch71r22 wrote:
| I don't think the "noble savage" idea applies in this
| case. The problem of the noble savage idea is that it
| portrays indigenous people as simple, pure, and
| uncorrupted, while overlooking that indigenous people are
| complex just like non-indigenous people.
|
| It's no myth that the Haudenosaunee and other indigenous
| people had sophisticated governments that could have
| inspired the writers of the US Constitution. The
| Haudenosaunee's democracy-ish form of government extends
| back probably a thousand years. The people who wrote the
| US Constitution had contact with these people. The exact
| extent to which this shaped the Constitution is up for
| debate, of course.
|
| Yes, the US government draws from European roots too. I
| hope my kids learn about both the Magna Carta and the
| Great Law of Peace.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > I was shocked and dismayed by how much time (and stupid
| memorization-minutiae) was dedicated solely to the 4 years of
| the US Civil War.
|
| Really? I remember the Civil War being a unit (significantly
| less than a semester) in US History, which was one class in
| my sophomore year of high school.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > dedicated solely to the 4 years of the US Civil War.
|
| And don't even start on how little is dedicated to explain
| slavery and the social and economic ramifications until the
| late 20th century. Or how the native people were actively
| suppressed during the expansion to the West, and how all that
| lead to some of the current social and economic structures
| around predominantly Native American groups.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I think that Native American history, the Civil War, and
| Geology are all reasonable subjects to cover in school.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I don't think OP disagrees, or their mother. I think it's
| more the time spent on such things. They might be worth a
| semester or two, but the world would be a much better place
| if we learnt a little about a lot, because to functionally
| understand one thing means to understand the links between
| things. I person would have a much deeper understanding of
| the American Civil war if they understood the British Empire
| at the time their competition with France to dominate the
| world stage, and how the US fits within that. Instead, the US
| seems to teach about the Civil War as if it were an
| independent conflict when not much happened before or after.
| readdit wrote:
| I believe early grade schools should be relatively broad in the
| subjects they teach. Not every child will be interested in math
| or science. And there's nothing wrong with that. I feel many
| parents don't agree, especially those from a technical
| background. A healthy society should have a diverse set of
| skills across many disciplines. Though I do believe if children
| are interested in furthering their study on a particular
| subject (not just math), there should ideally be opportunities
| from schools.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's shameful to not be interested in math and science--
| that's like saying you're not interested in reading. But
| putting that aside, the other subjects should be educational.
|
| I remember what triggered my mom was us spending an
| inordinate amount of time making clay models of Native
| American villages. American kids shouldn't graduate high
| school knowing more about the shapes of Native American
| houses than the conceptual underpinnings and history of their
| own civilization.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > It's shameful to not be interested in math and science
|
| What? Don't you know anyone who is not a nerd? I know many
| very fine people with no interest in either, and they have
| nothing to be ashamed of
| myheartisinohio wrote:
| Western literature is bad because it was written by cis white
| men. Native Americans lived here and had an advanced society
| that was way better and it didn't have capitalism. /s
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > the main benefit is that the kids are better behaved so there
| is less chaos and distraction.
|
| This is such a scam, unreal.
|
| Private schools have a market with one of their distinguishing
| features being "kids don't openly flail around instead of
| paying attention"
|
| They're only able to get away with "only" being marginally
| better cause the bar is so, so low.
|
| (I'm not condemning you, it's just obscene the amount of effort
| and time required for kids to get even something that
| approaches a decent education)
| woodruffw wrote:
| > These tech parents are hackers by nature, and I think they're
| convinced that in homeschooling they've happened on the ultimate
| life hack: just opt out of being around average people.
|
| It's difficult to feel optimistic about a society that thinks
| this way, much less has a cultural and economic elite that is
| seemingly _emboldened_ to think this way. "Average" people are
| the norm, the reality that "not average" people _will_ have to
| deal with for the rest of their lives.
|
| Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a
| universally valuable experience, especially for people who would
| fashion themselves as "not average."
| bdangubic wrote:
| _" Average" people are the norm, the reality that "not average"
| people will have to deal with for the rest of their lives._
|
| if by "deal with" you mean serving them fries on their way to a
| ski trip, perhaps :)
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| I like to think you mean that the so-called "elites" end up
| studying some useless degree and only can get jobs as trust-
| fund burger stand employees, serving fries to the "dummies"
| who chose to work hard and become wealthy the old-fashioned
| way
| briHass wrote:
| It was a reference to 'Good Will Hunting'. Ben Affleck and
| Matt Damon's first movie.
| riffraff wrote:
| Both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon had movies before that.
| It was Damon's breakthrough for sure tho.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > who chose to work hard and become wealthy the old-
| fashioned way
|
| That's so last century. Now about as real as Santa. Now you
| can only get wealthy by inheritance or gambling. Even if it
| means gambling with you health you still need to win for it
| to amount to anything. There's absolutely no way to earn
| wealth now. I'm not sure if there ever was.
| alvah wrote:
| If you really think this way, you're absolutely correct
| you will never build wealth. It is definitely possible
| though.
| smilebot wrote:
| > It's difficult to feel optimistic about a society that thinks
| this way.
|
| Maybe that's not how society thinks? That's one person's
| opinion.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The well known adage of "buy the cheapest house you can
| afford in the most expensive neighborhood" is a sign that is
| what many think. The rat race to make sure your kids are in
| league with other parents of similar or higher stature is a
| huge contributor to home price dynamics.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Lol what? I've never heard that adage and it seems like
| really bad advice. Your neighbors aren't going to cut you a
| check at any point so what even is this.
| gnkyfrg wrote:
| It's about exposure to the way richer people think and
| access to the same community resources. Property taxes
| pay for schools. The best schools are in the richest
| communities.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Your local private school also isn't going to cut you a
| check, and I've yet to meet anyone with money that had a
| hard time sniffing out aspirational neighbors. Not buying
| it.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| The assumption is that upper class kids are more likely
| to have the types of behaviors and attitudes that you'd
| like your kids to adopt (e.g. getting a C or even a B is
| embarrassing/shameful, AP classes are table stakes, drug
| use bad, video games/tv limited, more likely to have
| intact households, expected to be polite/treat others
| respectfully) while lower class kids are more likely to
| have the types of behaviors and attitudes you'd like your
| kids to avoid (e.g. no point in applying yourself,
| parents have no idea what you're up to or how you're
| doing in school anyway, drug use normal or cool, kids
| raised by tv/computer/phone, family tree is more of a
| chain with random links sticking out, family yells at
| each other so loud the neighbors hear it). It's an
| attempt to manipulate the Overton window that your kid
| will encounter interacting with peers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| A related adage to present this succinctly, "you are the
| company you keep".
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| 100% of the individuals that I've known who ended up
| either shot dead in the street or caught serious charges
| were from upper middle class, outright wealthy
| neighborhoods, or were keeping company with rich kids.
| Maybe my sample is badly skewed but around these parts
| all the wealthy are known for is buying their lunatic
| children out of trouble.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| https://opportunityatlas.org
| nicolas_t wrote:
| In my experience, the positive attributes you list tend
| to be more associated with middle class than upper
| classes. At a certain amount of wealth, you can see very
| problematic behaviour.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Property taxes pay for schools.
|
| I know this is true for the US. The vast majority of
| public school budgets are paid from local property taxes.
| This gives wealthy communities a significant advantage.
| Princeton, New Jersey is famous for its high property
| taxes and excellent public schools.
|
| Are there any other countries that use a local-tax
| funding model for public schools? Most other nations that
| I know use a national funding model.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Baltimore is famous for its high per student funding of
| public schools ($21,000 per student in 2023). It's also
| famous for the terrible outcomes of its public school
| students.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| Yeah but how is that funding actually applied?
|
| You could throw an extreme amount of money at schools but
| require it be spent on specific initiatives. Things like
| resource officers, hiring someone with specific
| qualifications, and boatloads of staff training.
|
| You can average that out to a per student basis and say
| "look we're spending so much on education" but if the
| money is going to train teachers how to deal with crisis
| situations like school shooters, it's not really being
| spent on educating the student. How that money actually
| gets allocated matters.
| jkolio wrote:
| This is a common misconception. The high per capita
| funding is partially due to required emergency funding of
| repairs resulting from deferred maintenance - both in the
| literal sense, and in reference to the hollowing out of
| the city's industry and, therefore, capacity for stable
| community and family life. Baltimore is a Rust Belt city
| smack dab in the middle of a region that happily moved on
| to the service economy; poorer Baltimore residents are
| surrounded by people who can bid up the rates of goods in
| the area (and they do).
|
| Other jurisdictions don't have to put so much into
| student funding directly.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| This doesn't pass a smell test. You are saying that
| maintenance spend is significant fraction of school
| fundings. Let's say that that fraction is 20% of funding
| (if it was much lower, your argument doesn't make sense,
| because it would make the maintenance spend irrelevant).
| That's over $2M/school/year. This is enough to entirely
| rebuild a school from the ground up every 10 years.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| My country uses a national funding model but most people
| would still strongly prefer to go to a public school in
| an affluent neighborhood. Even if the funding is exactly
| the same, you are still much more likely to get more
| "desirable" classmates (fewer chance of migrants, drug
| use, etc. as well higher overall academic motivation,
| more involved parents who contribute to the school
| community, etc.).
| HelloNurse wrote:
| I went to public schools near the city center and/or with
| a good reputation and I got a retrospectively insane
| proportion of wealthy schoolmates mixed with a few lower
| class ones. And an even more insane number of serious
| crimes: bribery (multiples), manslaughter, contraband,
| murder.
| vel0city wrote:
| Note in some European contexts (like UK) "public school"
| means something more along the lines of "private school"
| in the US. They have selective admissions, there's
| usually tuition, etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingd
| om)
|
| > The schools are "public" from a historical schooling
| context in the sense of being open to pupils irrespective
| of locality, denomination or paternal trade or profession
| or family affiliation with governing or military service,
| and also not being run for the profit of a private owner.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Exactly. Most private schools were meant for weak
| students, wealthy but pathetically snob families, or
| often both; a specific high school, run by nuns and now
| disbanded, distinguished itself with even greater
| occurrences of newsworthy criminals and psychopaths.
| rayiner wrote:
| This is not true. Only half of public school spending
| comes from local taxes. The other half comes from state
| funds and offsets the local property tax differences.
|
| Here is the breakdown for Maryland: https://dls.maryland.
| gov/pubs/prod/NoPblTabPDF/2024PubSchool.... My county,
| Anne Arundel, received half the state funding of poorer
| counties. In terms of total funding, it's below the
| median, but has above average schools for the state
| because school quality is more a function of the types of
| kids in the school moreso than funding.
| dismalaf wrote:
| > Are there any other countries that use a local-tax
| funding model for public schools?
|
| Doubt it. In my province of Canada (Alberta), school is
| paid for by provincial taxes and money is distributed
| based on the amount of students.
|
| That being said, since kids are assigned to schools based
| on proximity, it's still worthwhile being in a nicer
| neighbourhood since the kids will come from more affluent
| families...
| pokerface_86 wrote:
| it's to make sure your kids go to the best school
| possible, and are surrounded by as many future successful
| people as possible. considering schools are funded based
| on tax revenue, it's not the worst idea
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Tax revenue is spread across all schools, at least in
| California.
|
| Poor schools actually get more government funding per
| student.
|
| This is why good school districts California usually have
| ties to non-governmental chairty parents associations
| that parents contribute directly.
|
| It is also a huge part of why California passed prop 13.
| After property taxes we're separated from funding local
| schools, homeowners were simply much less willing to pay
| for taxes that won't go to their kid or community.
| pokerface_86 wrote:
| i doubt the adage is california specific, and likely came
| about before prop 13.
|
| as an outsider, i think cali's schooling system is beyond
| fucked, mostly due to the focus on the bottom 25% of
| students. the middle and high achieving students are
| being neglected and leaving. positive feedback loop.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I frequently hear people, mostly online, arguing that we
| should eliminate opportunities for smart children as a
| means to close the performance gap.
| erikerikson wrote:
| It's related to "it's all about who you know"
| wisty wrote:
| If you buy a cheap house in a good neighbourhood, you
| spend as little as possible on the building, and are
| mostly buying land. You are presumably buying a house
| because you think the land will increase in value.
| matrix87 wrote:
| > Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a
| universally valuable experience, especially for people who
| would fashion themselves as "not average."
|
| If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less
| educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it?
|
| Seems like there's only something to lose from adjusting to
| their shittiness. Like Harrison Bergeron
|
| And seeing the state of California trying to push math classes
| later because of "equity", seeing public schools dissolving
| gifted programs, it makes me think that privatization is the
| only way forward instead of trying to make amends with the
| current progressive stupidity
| woodruffw wrote:
| > If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less
| educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it?
|
| This is prejudice in the most basic sense: you _literally_
| don 't know any of these things about the people you're
| surrounded by in a society. The person who rides the bus next
| to you could be a couch potato, or a talented artist, or
| something entirely different that _simply isn 't legible to
| you_.
|
| I don't know anything about California's math classes. I'm
| saying that, on a basic level, anybody who thinks this way
| about _people they don 't know_ is demonstrating the exact
| traits they're smugly claiming to be above.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I feel like you and the parents post are compatible views
| of the world that could be simultaneously held in the same
| brain without dissonance.
|
| Reading your comment, it seems to focus on the individual.
| "The person" you know nothing about.
|
| The parent comment seems to be Bayesian, the probability of
| "the person" being something.
|
| I do think it's possible to simultaneously believe that:
|
| * every single person you meet in every possible
| circumstance might be an exceptional human
|
| * your are more likely to encounter exceptional humans in
| specific circumstances and you can optimize for that
|
| I believe this holds true regardless of your definition of
| exceptional.
|
| A (maybe) obvious example: if you believe exceptional
| humans want to grow their own food and live on communes,
| you probably don't want to live in the financial district
| of Manhattan. That would be a bad way to optimize for
| finding people who share your values.
|
| Similarly you're unlikely to find a thriving software
| developer community in Springfield Illinois. If you go to
| Springfield and assume everyone you meet can't program,
| you're going to be wrong - there are good programmers
| there. But if you want to live around people who know how
| to code, you don't move to Springfield Illinois.
| svnt wrote:
| I feel like you both got and missed the point, and it
| relies on your misuse of exceptional that doesn't escape
| the original discussion:
|
| Society needs and has exceptional people living in
| communes, in the financial district, in software
| development communities, and yes even in Springfield,
| Illinois.
|
| Sharing your values or not does generally not correlate
| with exceptional.
|
| If you are just looking for someone in your field to
| learn a trade from, well, great, but that is hardly the
| intent of primary education.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > you can optimize for that
|
| I think that this is the core problem - you can't.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > But if you want to live around people who know how to
| code, you don't move to Springfield Illinois.
|
| And if you want to find the best mathematician you stay
| in academic circles. But the best mathematician of your
| era might be in a random district in India. So you
| shouldn't immediately exclude everywhere else, or your
| 'optimisation' may be a relatively low local maximum.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less
| educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it?
|
| learning how to be patient and tolerant regarding situations
| / people / things i do not like or think of as "beneath me".
|
| tends to lead to better decision making as one can respond,
| rather than knee jerk react to everything.
|
| edit -- also, i tend to find i can learn a lot more useful
| lessons from beginners.
|
| in the beginners mind there are a lot of possibilities. in
| the expert's mind (especially self proclaimed ones) there are
| few possibilities.
|
| children are a great example of this.
| watwut wrote:
| Well, one reason is that your assumption that they are all or
| mostly inferior is wrong.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Suppose you have a kid that you have reason to believe is
| at the 90th percentile. This isn't uncommon; it's one in
| ten kids.
|
| The average kid at the average school is at the 50th
| percentile. Moreover, the speed of the class isn't even the
| speed of the average kid because then the 40th and 20th
| percentile kids would get left behind. To get out of this
| you'd need a school with a gifted program and enough 90th
| percentile kids to fill it, and many of them don't have
| one.
| defrost wrote:
| Which seems to be an argument to move the child to a
| school with a gifted program rather than homeschool.
|
| Many homes also lack numerous gifted children and
| specialist programs.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Which seems to be an argument to move the child to a
| school with a gifted program rather than homeschool.
|
| What if there isn't one within a reasonable distance, or
| your locality doesn't have school choice?
|
| > Many homes also lack numerous gifted children and
| specialist programs.
|
| The issue is that you need the absence of children who
| would hold back the class, not necessarily that you need
| the presence of other gifted children except insofar as
| you need to fill out the class, which is not an issue
| when the class size is one.
| defrost wrote:
| There are boarding schools, schools of the air, etc.
| Serious parents can move house for catchments, etc.
|
| I grew some 1,500km north of the nearest city and got by
| .. still managed to hook up with Terrence Tao and Paul
| Erdos when I got to university and ran a math club. When
| one of my kids was ready for high school we got a house
| in the catchment of the only public school with an
| aviation program so they could build and fly a light
| aircraft.
|
| > The issue is that you need the absence of children who
| would hold back the class,
|
| I enjoyed going to school with hunter gathers in the
| Kimberley .. I don't feel they held me back, I did get to
| learn how to fish, to hunt, to swear in several
| languages.
|
| Despite a lot fighting at high school, on and off the
| fooball field, I managed to pick up enough abstract
| algebra to work on CAYLEY/MAGMA which cracked a few
| quantum encryption candidates recently, enough linear
| algebra and calculas to author a geophysical processing
| suite, etc.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > There are boarding schools, schools of the air, etc.
| Serious parents can move house for catchments, etc.
|
| Those all sound expensive. Not everyone can afford that.
|
| > I enjoyed going to school with hunter gathers in the
| Kimberley .. I don't feel they held me back, I did get to
| learn how to fish, to hunt, to swear in several
| languages.
|
| Is this something you'd expect to experience in the
| median US public school?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I did learn how to swear in several languages in US
| public school. I'd expect that's somewhat universal.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| the 90th percentile of what?
|
| sport?
|
| english lit?
|
| maths?
|
| music?
|
| socialising?
|
| being the mother hen?
|
| being a jock?
|
| teaching everyone else things in the library?
|
| class clown?
|
| being the wacky one?
|
| skateboarding?
|
| acting?
|
| rebelling?
|
| looking after someone who has just been picked on by all
| the other kids?
|
| schools introduce us to a wide range of children who are
| representative of the people we're going to have to deal
| with later on in life.
|
| not saying there aren't alternatives.
|
| but specialising for only the 90th percentile of one
| thing seems like a way to isolate someone later in life
| because they may not have learned how to deal with people
| who aren't in the 90th percentile of that one thing.
|
| and i say that as someone who _hated_ my time at school
| and has struggled with the repercussions in later life.
|
| i still learned a lot _near_ the classroom tho.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > the 90th percentile of what?
|
| It could be the 90th percentile of science and the 60th
| percentile of literature and the 40th percentile of
| music. But if they throw you in with the 50th percentile
| kids in all cases then you're being held back in science
| and literature and you're holding back the other kids in
| music.
|
| > schools introduce us to a wide range of children who
| are representative of the people we're going to have to
| deal with later on in life.
|
| This is why home school families come together so their
| kids can socialize with one another.
| taeric wrote:
| I find your statistic mistake rather amusing in light of
| the point you are making. :D
|
| Distributions aren't all normal, for one. And skill
| levels are often quantized in a way that majority of
| people will be above a 50% level on it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're being pedantic. Average in common usage means
| "middle" as much as "arithmetic mean", and it doesn't
| really matter to the point whether the mean is above or
| below the median because all that is necessary to the
| point is for the 50th percentile to be below the 90th.
| taeric wrote:
| Ish? Even the common usage of "middle" doesn't
| necessarily describe where the average student is with
| regards to any skill they are learning in school. You can
| argue that we are using a common usage of "average" here,
| akin to how many fingers does the average human have.
| But, in a discussion on education, I confess leaning to
| pedantry seems rather apropos?
|
| My gripe here is the parent post is an appeal to how
| "average" students are quite bad. But, there is no
| substantiation to that point. It is, instead, taken as a
| given in what is essentially a culture war talking point.
|
| It would help if I wasn't exposed to so many parents that
| are convinced their kids are somehow gifted among gifted
| kids.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > My gripe here is the parent post is an appeal to how
| "average" students are quite bad. But, there is no
| substantiation to that point. It is, instead, taken as a
| given in what is essentially a culture war talking point.
|
| The point isn't that average is bad, it's that your kid
| probably isn't exactly average.
|
| You could also want to home school them if they're
| _below_ average, to keep them from getting left behind.
| The way a lot of public schools treat kids with
| developmental disabilities is sadly a lot like the way
| corporations treat cost centers.
|
| > It would help if I wasn't exposed to so many parents
| that are convinced their kids are somehow gifted among
| gifted kids.
|
| Everyone thinks they're above average. Around half of
| them are right.
| taeric wrote:
| I have yet to see this line pushed by anyone that doesn't
| view dysfunctional classrooms as indicative of what the
| average student would do. So, fair that I am maybe
| letting my experience there color my thoughts here.
|
| And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea of homeschooling
| not being an automatic terrible thing. Sold a Story went
| a long way to convincing me that some really bad choices
| were made in how to teach reading.
|
| My main nitpick is that that wity quip at the end is not
| even wrong. Not all values are population weighted, such
| that you can certainly have some skills where over half
| of the population is over what you would call average
| ability.
| jkolio wrote:
| As someone who was in the 90th percentile, I can confirm
| that it wasn't a universal quality about my entire being.
| I got to be in higher-level courses where I excelled.
| Those are generally available, even in public school
| systems.
|
| And just because I was good at math and writing didn't
| mean that I "deserved" to be in some separate system
| where I got the "best" of everything (with diminishing
| returns). When I eventually encountered people who were
| afforded just such a deal ("elite" private school in a
| wealthy area), they were far less impressive than the top
| college-level facilities they enjoyed as grade schoolers;
| it seemed like a waste of money that could have been put
| to more efficient use, as far as society writ large might
| be concerned.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Who is talking about "deserved" or anything like that?
| Parents want their kids to excel, if they think they can
| provide that themselves better than what the school is
| offering then they make the best choice available to
| them.
|
| > When I eventually encountered people who were afforded
| just such a deal ("elite" private school in a wealthy
| area), they were far less impressive than the top
| college-level facilities they enjoyed as grade schoolers
|
| This is exactly the argument in favor of home schooling.
| If you just throw money at it but pay little attention to
| it then you get a beautiful campus with expensive
| landscaping and not necessarily the highest quality
| education, because it's easier for parents to judge the
| quality of the facilities than the quality of the
| instruction. Whereas if you actually care and you want
| something done right you have to do it yourself.
| crabbone wrote:
| > what is there to gain from it?
|
| Humility.
| __loam wrote:
| I hate this fucking site lol
| gm678 wrote:
| > Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
| jkolio wrote:
| When my car broke down in the middle of a DoorDash run, I
| walked to a nearby park and sat next to a homeless guy who
| was about my age. He was deaf; we talked via text on our
| phones about how we'd ended up on the same bench, and I
| shared some of my food. I learned from him how resilient
| someone can be, even under incredibly unfair circumstances,
| but more importantly, he got something to eat.
|
| It's not all about you.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I think a better question is: How did the median get so much
| better over 150 years, and why can't it keep getting better?
|
| 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate, poorer (in
| all senses of the word) and less connected to the world around
| them. Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all that. Why
| can't it keep going? So the outlier, super special "phenom"
| today is the median of tomorrow.
| Arainach wrote:
| >Why can't it keep going?
|
| Because an educated populace is harder for the ultrarich to
| control and abuse, because an educated populace with free
| time can revolt against those in power, and because as a
| consequence of those two things ultrarich conservatives have
| consolidated ownership of media and used it to defund
| education and convince the population that funding education
| is bad.
| rnd0 wrote:
| >Because an educated populace is harder for the ultrarich
| to control and abuse,
|
| This is the bottom line; this right here.
|
| We're being led to a second dark age ON PURPOSE.
| arkey wrote:
| I agree with this and that's why I think social media, mass
| media and so on exist.
|
| However I'm curious as to why you attribute or limit this
| to 'conservatives' only. Is this really something exclusive
| or characteristic of the conservative side? At least where
| I am from it's the left that's more interventionist in
| regards to education rather than the right, that
| interventionism being used to make education more rigid and
| controlled by a biased government.
|
| And the media is definitely not consolidated, you've got
| clearly two sides competing at a pretty equal level.
| jmb99 wrote:
| At least where I'm from, the majority of homeschooled
| children are in conservative Christian (or Mormon)
| families, with a minority (but still notable) in super-
| left-wing hippy families. Very, very few in non-extreme
| families.
| arkey wrote:
| And that actually makes sense from a strictly logical
| point of view. The extremes are the ones who precisely
| don't want to conform to the status quo imposed by the
| alleged controlling higher powers.
|
| As purely anecdotical data, where I'm from it's actually
| the opposite, majority hippies, vegan, alternative/free
| education advocates, etc, and a minority of mostly
| morally-concerned non-left-leaning (mainly religious)
| people, as well as specific cases of children with
| special needs that simply can't adapt to public education
| because of external reasons (bullies).
|
| As a matter of fact, the hardcore religious right in my
| country have their own private education institutions,
| which are quite powerful themselves.
|
| So even the (non-catholic) Christians who homeschool
| because of religious and moral convictions end up being
| moderate/center people trying to move away from both
| extremes.
| Arainach wrote:
| Establishing standards for education and defunding public
| schools to siphon the funds to churches are not the same
| thing. Conservatives have been attacking and defunding
| educational standards and attacking the educated and the
| concept of education - hence the repeated claims of
| "liberal bias", the artificial cultural war against
| university, etc.
|
| And two sides at equal levels? Are you living in 1979?
| Local media is nearly all Sinclair. All the cable
| networks are owned by conservatives. Even traditionally
| liberal newspapers like the Washington Post are owned by
| rich assholes taking over the editorial board. And social
| media in the US is now dominated by two literal fascists.
| arkey wrote:
| My apologies for not being from (or exclusively referring
| to) the US of A.
|
| From where I'm from I'd say yes, both sides at equal
| levels more or less, fairly favoured toward the left, but
| now changing a wee bit because the left went waaaaay too
| left.
|
| Europe would now seem to be shifting towards the right at
| some levels, but from historically (recently at least)
| being fairly leftist.
|
| Anyway, aren't CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian... overtly left-
| leaning?
| Arainach wrote:
| >Anyway, aren't CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian... overtly left-
| leaning
|
| For CNN and MSNBC, no. Neither was every truly liberal in
| the global sense (like the Democratic Party, closer to
| centrist than anything else) and both have started
| drifting rightward in the last 4 years such that they're
| now roughly "American Centrist" with a slight left lean
| i.e. conservative in most of the rest of the world.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| You're delusional. Revolt always came from people with an
| empty stomach, not from the comfortable leisure class.
|
| Plus, an "educated" populace is as easy or maybe even
| easier to control, it's willpower against all odds that
| characterizes the truly ungovernable.
| arkey wrote:
| So the best you can hope for, if mass control is what you
| want, is the combination of comfortably and leisurely
| uneducated people, isn't it?
| rayiner wrote:
| The irony of saying that while being uneducated enough to
| think anyone ever "defunded education."
| https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/02/do-we-
| shortch...
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| This isn't the slam dunk you think it is. The article
| indicates that money isn't evenly distributed, which
| explains the conservatives goal with vouchers and charter
| / private schools.
|
| My SO taught at all 3 kinds of the school in the US, in
| urban and suburban areas. The pay is bad everywhere, but
| worst at the non-union schools. Only teachers left have
| no better options or believe in the religion or cause of
| teaching, and even they tend to leave such schools the
| moment they have enough experience or better options.
| None of this is good for the kids at such schools.
|
| The more affluent schools can afford to hire experts and
| keep them. I went to a rich(er) high school and had my
| choice among many specialty electives and advanced
| placement. My SO attended a highschool that was something
| between prison and daycare. My friend's private school
| was a religious indoctrination factory. Home schooled
| friends were often academical average to great, all
| socially awkward well into adulthood, and many were
| taught conspiracies or outright lies as long as it fit
| their parents "biblical worldview".
|
| Public school was an escape from a cult-like community
| for me. I'm grateful my parents were too poor to force me
| into an alternative until I was old enough to refuse.
| rayiner wrote:
| Incorrect, in most states poor districts receive slightly
| more funding than affluent ones: https://www.urban.org/si
| tes/default/files/publication/90586/...
|
| It sounds like you have a beef with how citizens
| socialize their children into the dominant religion of
| the society--which is literally considered a human
| right[1]--and less so with how schools are funded in the
| U.S.
|
| See Article 18.4 of the International Covenant on Civil
| and Political Rights:
| https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-
| mechanisms/instruments/... ("The States Parties to the
| present Covenant undertake to have respect for the
| liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians
| to ensure the religious and moral education of their
| children in conformity with their own convictions.")
|
| American subgroups that socialize their children into
| community religious norms are among the most successful.
| For example, Mormons:
| https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/11/utahs-
| economic-ex....
|
| Prohibitions on religious education in public schools--
| which don't exist in many developed countries, such as
| Germany and Sweden--hurts the majority of people who
| would do better under that system.
| purplethinking wrote:
| The fact that you believe the ultra rich conspire to
| control and abuse the uneducated shows that you are part of
| that group of average people parents want their kids to
| stay away from.
| liontwist wrote:
| 150 years ago people could absolutely read.
|
| > schooling fixed all that
|
| Not globalization, industrialization, and urbanization?
| pastage wrote:
| I can not talk for the US, but in Sweden it was schooling.
| I think Sweden has better literacy rates earlier than the
| US, but I guess I really should compare this on a state
| level considering how the US works. I am pretty sure that
| it is a political goal not an economic one, this is obvious
| considering US black literacy levels took until 1979 to be
| comparable to whites. I would like to point out that the
| Danish nobility discussed but decided against keeping poor
| and oppressed farmers illiterate in the 18th century, so it
| is not really an issue of globalization.
| jkolio wrote:
| >I am pretty sure that it is a political goal not an
| economic one, this is obvious considering US black
| literacy levels took until 1979 to be comparable to
| whites.
|
| I don't follow. 1979 would have been a high point in
| closing the black/white economic gap in America (partly
| because of the falling economic prospects of white
| Americans at the time).
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate
|
| Not true in the case of the US, which famously adopted a
| culture of universal literacy earlier than the rest of the
| world. By the mid-19th century, literacy rates among whites
| were not much different than they are today. It is one of the
| bright spots of American history; they took literacy very
| seriously for complicated historical reasons. Their book
| consumption per capita was also the highest in the world by a
| very large margin back in those days, which lends evidence.
|
| It may or may not be relevant to your point, but at least in
| the US the idea that the average person was illiterate is
| ahistorical. They were the best read population in the world
| 150 years ago, and took some pride in that.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| My read of history is that the puritans basically had
| universal literacy not that long after the printing press
| hit Europe. I believe America and Israel are unique among
| modern countries in being founded by people whose ancestors
| had achieved universal literacy in the 1500s.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I don't think that's particularly accurate for the US.
| Perhaps some of the Protestant settler communities were
| very literate, but I'm quite certain literacy would have
| been far lower by the time the country was actually
| founded, as slaves were imported and immigration from
| other communities picked up.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Something like that. They believed it was important that
| everyone was literate enough to read and understand the
| Bible themselves, without it being filtered through a
| historically corrupt Church that engaged in selective
| representation and interpretation of the Bible for their
| own manipulative purposes. Basically, they wanted
| everyone to be able to go to the source to determine what
| was and wasn't moral and Christian, instead of relying on
| assertions by self-interested third parties.
|
| Regardless of if they achieved their religious
| objectives, that earnest mission to make every human soul
| capable of reading the Bible for themselves produced the
| social good of a literate population capable of reading
| prodigious amounts of non-Bible content.
|
| It is an interesting consequence of how the religious
| wars in Europe spilled over into in the early Americas.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Like most social breakthroughs, this was coincident with
| a major technological breakthrough: the invention of the
| printing press.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you very firmly
| identify as an american christian. Your persistent denial
| of empathy and your insistence on your individual
| language being presented as generally meaningful screams
| american christian.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I would argue the downside was that this perspective got
| secularized and morphed into the particularly American
| paranoid distrust of institutions that has caused at
| least as many problems as it has solved. In fact, I think
| the American obsession with homeschooling has those same
| Puritan roots.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I think you can more readily and correctly connect the
| American distrust of institutions first to the treatment
| of the colonists by the British Empire, and later to
| immigration of people fleeing authoritarian countries.
| One also cannot dismiss the distrust in authority among
| put upon minorities. The British Empire was no less
| brutal in its American colonies than in other places.
|
| The Puritans were always few in number and were
| demographically displaced by later immigration around the
| fishing industry in New England.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Displaced in terms of total population, but the
| aristocracy of the US was mostly Mayflower types will
| into the 20th Century.
|
| I think some overstate the influence of Radical
| Protestants on American ideology with offhand references
| to Max Weber or by calling whatever their pet cause is a
| fight against "secular puritanism." On the other hand, I
| do think there are some interesting parallels.
|
| For example, one could argue that the mistreatment of
| colonists by the mother country was overstated by a
| population already distrustful of the Crown. I'm no
| expert, but it would be interesting to read more about
| that dynamic.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I don't disagree, but the descendants of the Puritans
| stopped being Puritans pretty quickly. The Halfway
| Covenant was only about 40 years after they landed in
| Plymouth and there were virtually no Puritans by 1740.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| IANAH but I'm not sure one can really separate "treatment
| of the colonists by the British Empire" from the struggle
| between Dissenters and the Established Church. Yes,
| Puritans were relatively few in number but they were
| influential. Later colonists would have had to fit
| themselves into the society created by the Puritans, if
| nothing else by constituting their own power base in
| opposition to the Puritan one. They are still part of our
| foundational myth and buckle-shoe-wearing caricatures of
| them /still/ go up all over the country every single
| November.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Yes, Puritans were relatively few in number but they
| were influential
|
| They were influential in a narrow geography of the
| Massachusetts Bay Colony for about 50 years. Their own
| children and grandchildren largely rejected Puritanism
| resulting in the Half-Way Covenant and the eventual
| demise of Puritanism. I agree that they're part of the
| foundational myth, but it's just that myth.
| jkolio wrote:
| This seems like a suspiciously bold statement. Both in
| the assertion that these groups had achieved universal
| literacy, and in that other groups hadn't been at least
| as literate. Japan comes to mind, wrt the latter.
| Literacy, if not universal, was also widespread across
| the Muslim world.
| elcritch wrote:
| > and less connected to the world around them.
|
| Sounds like Americans were literate back then. I also
| suspect that most were _more_ connected to the world around
| them. Not the broader world, but the immediate world around
| them.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I was surprised to read this post. Thank you to share. From
| Wiki, I found:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
| > By 1875, the U.S. literacy rate was approximately 80
| percent.
|
| And: > By 1900, the situation had
| improved somewhat, but 44% of black people remained
| illiterate.
|
| And: > The gap in illiteracy between
| white and black adults continued to narrow through the 20th
| century, and in 1979, the rates were approximately equal.
| mzi wrote:
| > By the mid-19th century, literacy rates among whites were
| not much different than they are today
|
| But the states does have among the lowest literacy rate in
| the west. Less than 80% was considered literate in 2024,
| compared to almost 99% in the EU (with a range from 94% to
| almost 100%).
| asimpletune wrote:
| Success itself could be to blame for the recent
| reversion.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Of the 20% of US adults who don't have a level of
| literacy necessary to be considered "literate", 40+% are
| from other countries with low levels of literacy.
| ToDougie wrote:
| Wrong signal. The problem is demographic. Not being mean,
| just a fact that a lot of people are illiterate live in
| the US, but were not born and raised here.
| happymellon wrote:
| No offence, but your comment is quite racist.
|
| > literacy rates among whites were not much different than
| they are today. It is one of the bright spots of American
| history;
|
| The rates only looked okay if you cut out at least 20% of
| thr population?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethni
| c...
|
| Yeah, it was okay in New England but many states had laws
| preventing slave education.
| intuitionist wrote:
| It's racist to break out statistics along what was
| literally the single most determinative factor for life
| outcomes in antebellum America?
| happymellon wrote:
| No its racist to claim that literacy rates in the States
| were the highest in the world.
|
| As long as you ignore all those pesky non-whites.
| quacked wrote:
| Unless the original commenters sneak-edited their
| comment, they included the word "whites" specifically to
| not ignore the non-whites and point out that universal
| literacy was not "universal" in the early US.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all that. Why
| can't it keep going?
|
| Schooling _has_ fixed all that, and still works just fine.
| Just not in America, because that country is rapidly self-
| destructing. Schooling is still working fine in the rest of
| the world.
| chongli wrote:
| _Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all that. Why can
| 't it keep going?_
|
| Schooling didn't fix all that. There have been major advances
| throughout society in every area: medicine, nutrition,
| sanitation, manufacturing, electricity, refrigeration,
| printing, computing, telecommunications... the list goes on
| and on and on. Some of these things contributed major
| improvements to the average person.
|
| Advances in medicine and nutrition, for example, contributed
| to sharp declines in early childhood mortality and morbidity.
| Advances in reproductive health care (along with everything
| else) led to huge declines in birth rates. Smaller families
| have more resources and attention available for each child.
|
| Other advances had less of an impact but still add up when
| combined. Widespread access to refrigeration improved
| nutrition and reduced spoilage, allowing increased
| consumption of meat. More meat means taller, stronger,
| healthier children.
|
| On the other hand, schooling hasn't improved all that much in
| 150 years. You can find lots of writing samples and old exams
| for schools from back then. The bigger difference is that
| children stay in school much longer and have less need to
| rapidly enter the workforce in order to support the family.
| This last factor is a product of many of the advances listed
| above.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _There have been major advances throughout society in
| every area: medicine, nutrition, sanitation, manufacturing,
| electricity, refrigeration, printing, computing,
| telecommunications..._
|
| You might say that's also a success of the schooling (and
| higher education) system - unless the people who produced
| these advances were all home schooled, which I somehow
| doubt...
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Some were. Some would have made major advances whether
| they'd had a lot of formal schooling or not.
|
| And many who had a lot of schooling learned to repeat,
| obey and sit still for 12-16 years.
|
| And maybe had less initiative than they were born with.
| Maybe they learned to not question what they were told.
|
| 1. Thomas Edison Minimal formal education; mostly
| homeschooled by his mother. Edison was a voracious reader
| and learned through experimentation.
|
| 2. The Wright Brothers (Orville and Wilbur Wright)
| Neither completed high school. They learned through self-
| study, practical work, and their experiences running a
| bicycle repair shop.
|
| 3. Henry Ford Left school at 15 years old. Ford learned
| engineering and mechanics by working as an apprentice.
|
| 4. Michael Faraday Minimal formal schooling. Faraday
| worked as a bookbinder and educated himself through books
| and observation.
|
| 5. Benjamin Franklin Left school at age 10 due to
| financial constraints. Franklin was self-taught,
| primarily through reading and experimentation.
|
| 6. George Eastman Dropped out of school at age 14.
| Eastman learned accounting and photography on his own.
|
| 7. Elisha Otis Had little formal education and learned
| mechanics and engineering through work experience.
|
| 8. R. G. LeTourneau Dropped out of school in the sixth
| grade. He learned engineering through hands-on work and
| experimentation.
|
| 9. John D. Rockefeller Dropped out of high school to take
| a business course and learned through practical
| experience.
|
| 10. Philo Farnsworth Learned electronics and physics by
| reading and tinkering, despite being unable to afford
| college.
| chongli wrote:
| Most scientific advances throughout history prior to
| about the 1950s were made by people whose education was
| either informal or private (including apprenticeship).
| Private tutoring was the predominant mode of formal
| education (below university level) throughout history.
| hattmall wrote:
| >less connected to the world around them
|
| In what way do you mean this?
| vjk800 wrote:
| > 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate, poorer
| (in all senses of the word) and less connected to the world
| around them. Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all
| that.
|
| Illiterate, yes, but likely better at other skills like
| milking cows and knowing which plants in the forest were
| edible. Less connected to the global world and culture, yes,
| but more connected to the hyper local environment around
| them. I don't know if the schooling "fixed" anything, it just
| created a new, national or global template for what a human
| being should be like.
| LanceH wrote:
| I have this discussion with my wife who works at a school.
|
| Children are required to be there. The school has to provide
| them with all manner of opportunities.
|
| On the flip side, the school can't expect anything from the
| kids other than attendance. They don't really get to expect a
| certain level of behavior or performance. They can't relegate
| the bad actors (behavior or performance) away from those who
| wish to participate fully. Everyone has to be mixed together.
|
| So you give a certain vocal minority that don't care about
| the education a heckler's veto. They are regularly disruptive
| and can't be removed.
|
| Nobody has a solution for actually improving that group of
| student, but there are enough people involved in public
| education that demand these students be included in the
| process that they are trying to wreck.
| jcarrano wrote:
| It took way less than 100 years to eradicate illiteracy, and
| further improvement followed. However, as soon as a system is
| established, the forces that corrupt that system start
| acting, finding ways to exploit it to their own advantage.
| Then, as special interests (politics, unions) take over, the
| quality stagnates and then decays.
| chii wrote:
| > "Average" people are the norm
|
| society has always been this way, from the hunter gatherer
| days, to middle ages - that's why people want to become part of
| the elite.
|
| It's only recently that the average people have had the chance
| to become elites, rather than be born into it. But the desire
| to be elites, molded by evolutionary/darwinian pressure, is not
| gone, nor different, than in the past. Another word for it is
| "the human condition".
| autoexec wrote:
| > It's only recently that the average people have had the
| chance to become elites, rather than be born into it.
|
| It still mostly depends on being born into it. In the US your
| odds of going from impoverished to wealthy are extremely slim
| and socioeconomic mobility is among the worst compared to
| other developed countries. The US falls behind South Korea,
| Lithuania, Estonia, Singapore, Malta, and Slovenia, while the
| Nordic countries top the list.
|
| Depending on the study, socioeconomic mobility in the US has
| either stagnated since the 1970s or actually declined.
| Average people have little hope of substantially improving
| the situation they were born into while the percentage of
| people born into wealth (but not the 1%) who slide downward
| in socioeconomic status grows. Wealth inequality continues to
| accelerate at an insane pace. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| File:1962-_Net_personal_wealth...)
|
| Just about everyone would like to be one of the "elites" but
| most people would be happy with a fair chance to meaningfully
| improve their lifestyle.
| ty6853 wrote:
| I know an extended family of third world impoverished
| immigrants who became middle class by basically all going
| to nursing school. It is almost a joke that all Filipinos
| become nurses, it's almost fool proof way to have at least
| a car, shitty apartment and decent food to eat. It's worth
| looking into for anyone who is stuck, none of it is
| particularly difficult to learn although it is hard work.
| autoexec wrote:
| I'm going to guess that only a small number of
| impoverished immigrants manage to legally move to a
| developed country at all, but I wouldn't doubt that those
| who do could see their situation improve.
|
| There's a lot of need for nurses which has made the job
| attractive, but it's worth noting that wages have been
| going down (https://www.incrediblehealth.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/01/...), they aren't especially
| higher than the money other workers make, and the actual
| working conditions for nurses have gotten worse.
| Telehealth also threatens to reduce both their wages and
| the number of (US) nurses we'll need in the future.
|
| If people just want work, elder care seems like it'd be a
| safe bet for a while, but those wages and working
| conditions can be even worse.
| gunian wrote:
| lol
| hilux wrote:
| Nursing can also pay extremely well, at least in
| California, and for those willing to travel.
| gunian wrote:
| some days i get sad and then i log into HN to read about
| their take on eugenics and history and that cheers me up
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| In the US your odds of going from impoverished to wealthy
| are extraordinarily good. I personally know dozens of
| examples, even excluding tech entirely. Social mobility is
| a term of art in economics and only weakly correlated with
| the ease of becoming wealthy. It doesn't mean economic
| mobility.
|
| Social mobility is a measure of _relative_ rank change. In
| countries with compressed wage ranges, such as those you
| mention, "social mobility" is an artifact of the
| mathematics, it doesn't mean you are meaningfully wealthier
| than the average person. You can double your household
| income in the US to above average and still not be
| "socially mobile". Social mobility is not a meaningful
| measure for continent-sized economically diverse countries.
|
| A person can go from the trailer park to being upper middle
| class in a place like Mississippi and it doesn't count as
| socially mobile because you are being ranked against the
| household income of someone in Seattle, 3,000 km away. As
| far as the person in Mississippi is concerned, they are
| living the dream.
|
| The opportunity to improve your standard of living in e.g.
| Europe pales in comparison to the opportunity to do so in
| the US. It won't be classified as "socially mobile" in the
| US as an artifact of how the math works, but no one in the
| US cares.
| watwut wrote:
| If US had many people "going from impoverished to
| wealthy", its social mobility stats would be better. You
| are seeing few outliers, that is it.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| You are demonstrating that you have no idea what "social
| mobility" means. It is a term of art in economics, it
| doesn't mean what you think it means. Being "socially
| mobile" has nothing to do with your ability to change
| your standard of living.
|
| In countries like the US, you can achieve enormous gains
| in income and still not be socially mobile _by
| definition_. Specifically, it has nothing to do with how
| easy it is to become wealthy, which is what most people
| incorrectly intuit it means.
|
| High "social mobility" is worthless if it doesn't come
| with a high standard of living.
| watwut wrote:
| > In countries like the US, you can achieve enormous
| gains in income and still not be socially mobile by
| definition.
|
| No, mass of people cant. The thing you describe can
| happen and not affect the global stats only because it
| happens to few people in one relatively small location.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Thoroughly disagree, and I can draw on my experience of meeting
| average people to know that it wasn't a universally valuable
| experience and I much prefer spending time around people that
| are more like myself. Perhaps that is what you meant by the
| valuable experience, to be disabused of my illusion that
| meeting average people was a good idea. Having learned that
| lesson I shouldn't have to repeat it.
|
| Also, I don't have to deal with average people, I have apps
| that do that for me.
|
| Having said that, two things can be true, I can prefer not to
| be around average people and I can be concerned for their lack
| of flourishing as I do prefer to live in more egalitarian
| society, especially one that can have better averages.
| gunian wrote:
| people pretend to be this welcoming learned creatures but in
| reality it's still referral by people, who you know, like
| working with people that look like us etc
|
| no better place to see that than in tech and HN
| alexashka wrote:
| > It's difficult to feel optimistic about a society that thinks
| this way, much less has a cultural and economic elite that is
| seemingly emboldened to think this way
|
| Optimism is the default state of non-broken children.
|
| Sober realism is what's needed and required from adults.
|
| Time to graduate - we have enough optimistic children running
| around with scissors already :)
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Not to forget that "Average" people are, in many ways, the
| foundation of any functioning society.
| endofreach wrote:
| > These tech parents are hackers by nature
|
| Why? Being in tech doesn't make you a hacker. Most people, even
| very talented engineers, are still happy to follow boss, do a 9
| to 5, and don't really bend or break the rules... they don't go
| against the elite. They see themselves as the elite.
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| > Being in tech doesn't make you a hacker.
|
| Agreed. "Tech" includes a lot of people who are not hackers.
|
| It's worth pointing out though that the "hacker" types who go
| with the flow are in many cases doing so motivated by
| pragmatism and cynicism. They don't really believe in
| management or in the company or the product, but they gotta
| stick around until their shares vest or whatever.
|
| Speaking for a friend.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > they don't go against the elite. They see themselves as the
| elite.
|
| These are not the only two options. Deciding some people are
| "the elite" and defining people as being either part of that
| group or in opposition to it is your choice, but it is not
| the only choice.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Deciding some people are "the elite" and defining people
| as being either part of that group or in opposition to it
| is your choice, but it is not the only choice.
|
| This process is typically called "politics". Thankfully
| we're mostly aligned that society mostly organizes itself
| by wealth, so you should sleep easily knowing the "elite"
| refers to rich assholes.
| lmm wrote:
| > Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a
| universally valuable experience, especially for people who
| would fashion themselves as "not average."
|
| Nope. For some people it may be valuable. For me it was
| miserable, almost to the point of being deadly. It does not
| prepare you for adulthood or life or what have you in any
| meaningful sense (think about what would happen in your
| everyday life if someone e.g. decided you had insulted them
| somehow, and punched you. Think about how different your
| experience of that probably is to the average person. And then
| think about what that experience is like for a schoolkid). It's
| just a whole load of unnecessary suffering.
| crabbone wrote:
| Your argument is similar to burning the house down, once you
| discover that you don't like the couch in the living room.
| Or, more realistically, arguing against taxation based on the
| idea that rich people avoid being taxed anyways, and it's
| only poor people who will get the short end of the stick. The
| school system isn't perfect, and is hard to improve due to
| many reasons, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It has
| a purpose which is much more important than the suffering of
| any individual who goes through it. It's a shared good that
| can only be made better if everyone participates. When people
| who can contribute the most are allowed to be excluded, the
| whole thing becomes worthless. But, guess what, those who
| thought that they may be exempt from contributing to the
| public pool will inevitably find out that the public who was
| in this way deprived of a public good hates them, and will
| eventually come after them with pitchforks and torches.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a
| universally valuable experience
|
| While true, it is true as like a side quest. Just because
| something is valuable doesn't mean you should revolve your life
| around it.
| Sam6late wrote:
| Exposure to Diverse Perspectives: Diverse classrooms can expose
| students to different viewpoints, problem-solving approaches,
| and ways of thinking. 1 This can broaden their understanding
| and enhance their critical thinking skills. 2
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262420245_Effects_o...
| Gurin (1999,college is significantly linked to
| hackernoops wrote:
| Average people aren't the problem. It's the below average. And
| that low getting lower is indulged for some reason.
| scotty79 wrote:
| "Average" does a lot of heavy lifiting here. People who
| affluent try to avoid are dangerous, mentally scarred and
| physically sick people. And if that's who you call average then
| it's a testament to failure of society and our systems. That's
| what the affluent are trying to check out of. They are the only
| ones who can try.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| For me, it wasn't the "stay away from average people" but
| "remove the bottom percenters", and that made schooling much
| better.
|
| Out here, in my schooling, the first stage of schooling was an
| elementary school, from ~7-15yo (8 years), and by default,
| you're enrolled into the nearest school to your home. Sometimes
| there are ways to choose other schools, but all the other
| pupils there, are there, because it's their nearest school.
|
| What that means is, that you have, in a same class group (~25
| people) a wide distribution of capabilities but also mental
| states, behaviours, etc. From geniuses that contribute to the
| whole schooling experience, to kids who somehow manage to stay
| basically illiterate even after 8 years of schooling, and just
| cause problems for everyone else. What that means is, that many
| of the lectures are based around trying to get the lower
| percentiles to learn at least enough for a minimum passing
| grade, and the top percentiles are either bored or lose
| interest. + all the behavioural issues.
|
| After you finished elementary school, your grades of the last
| few years (2? i forgot) are calculated, you do some
| standardized testing, the numbers are calculated by some
| formula, and you get a numeric score, that is then used to
| enroll into high schools (and in most cases, the top X
| candidates by that score get accepted to a school, depending on
| how many apply, and how many open spots (X) there are.
|
| There are many high school options, but most of the smarter
| kids enroll to 'general' high schools (gymansiums) for the next
| 4 years (and then college), and even those have reputations for
| some being better, and others worse, even though they
| technically teach by the same teaching programme (same courses,
| same subjects,...). Why are some better? Because smarter kids
| apply, and you get a high school where ALL of the students are
| from the "top 20%" of elementary schoolers. That means that
| teachers don't have to waste their time on "illiterate" kids,
| there are less behaviour problems, if everyone in class
| understands the lecture relatively quickly, the teacher can add
| some extra "college level" lectures, etc. This, for better
| students, is a much better learning experience, both from
| school lecture experience, to general interactions with
| classmates (where you're not the only smart one in the class
| and have noone to help).
|
| Add to this that smarter kids usually have smarter, more
| involved parents, and that means that also the teachers have to
| bring out their A-game, and not just bare minimum to get the
| kids a passing grade, because the grades and (another)
| standardized testing is then used to apply to colleges.
|
| So yeah... some separation is not a bad thing.
|
| TLDR: "staying away from averages" might sound stupid, but
| "removing the 'worst' students lets others perform better" is
| IMHO true.
| tomp wrote:
| > "Average" people are the norm, the reality that "not average"
| people will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.
|
| What are you talking about?!
|
| I'm a highly educated, "high class" (professional career)
| person, and I've been socially segregated from "average" people
| since high school (so, since I was 15). Literally primary
| school was the last time I ever interacted with "average"
| people in a meaningful way (beyond "hi, thanks" to the
| supermarket cashier/bank teller).
|
| Society truly does segregate you by social class, and unless
| you truly seek different classes (which I don't really, I'm a
| geek so my interests are quite niche) you don't "normally"
| interact.
|
| No wonder that "elitist" politicians are so removed from the
| "average" people (hint: Brexit, Trunmp). Thank god for Twitter,
| allowing to break social bubbles at least a little bit!
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Trump isn't in any way "average". He's been more separated
| from "average" people than you have.
| tomp wrote:
| No, the point is that the preferences of "average" people
| (Brexit, Trump) are surprising for the "elites".
| crabbone wrote:
| The fact that you don't personally meet with "average" people
| isn't the point. The point is that they exist, and they
| affect your existence, and they will not and cannot be made
| to disappear. The "average" people have to share resources
| with you, and in a way the resources cannot be segregated...
| unless we start building colonies in space, and send "non-
| average" people there or some similar dystopian project.
| dani__german wrote:
| Exclusion of "average people" is fundamentally required for
| private property to exist, one of Humanity's best inventions.
| Few people enjoy private aspects of their life out in public.
| It is a completely natural and morally good thing to want your
| own space and to raise your kids your own way.
|
| Your kids don't need to be exposed to the often violent whims
| of society's bottom quartile for 8 hours a day for more than a
| decade. It doesn't need to happen. It would be better if it did
| not. It is a net negative experience, whose main lesson is:
| avoid these people. That can be taught pretty quickly by a
| parent.
| crabbone wrote:
| You missed the point: if you don't like how school work
| today, you need to improve the schools. If you are saving
| yourself, especially before helping others (because you have
| the means that others probably don't), you are the bad person
| in this situation, and you should reflect on your ethical
| position some time, preferably soon.
| dani__german wrote:
| Your suggestion that the educational system, any meaningful
| part of it, is welcoming of constructive criticism of any
| kind is not compelling. The US government has put such
| enterprising parents on terrorist watch lists for speaking
| up at school board meetings.
|
| If a system is specifically set up against you, runs
| poorly, and in a real sense hates you, you have the option
| to let it fail without you. It is the polite, and least
| conflict path to leave it to its failure, and to forge your
| own way.
|
| On the other hand, listening to people who tell you that
| you are unethical, guilty of an *ism of some kind, or bad,
| does not have a good track record of success. The path to
| hell is paved with good intentions. What you suggest is
| specifically not going to happen on my part.
| crabbone wrote:
| > Your suggestion that the educational system, any
| meaningful part of it, is welcoming of constructive
| criticism of any kind is not compelling.
|
| Then you, as a conscientious citizen, need to put
| pressure back on the US government. Instead, you are
| trying to save yourself at the expense of others, who
| cannot save themselves. You are like a grown-up man,
| who's trying to escape a sinking ship by pushing women
| and children off the deck to make way to the lifeboat.
|
| I don't think your attitude warrants any kind of
| niceties. You should be treated like any other
| narcissistic egotist. It's not important to convince you,
| it's more important to either isolate you, or to prevent
| you from acting in the way you want by other means. Same
| way how it's not important to convince criminals to do
| good: it would've been nice if it was possible, but
| humans don't live long enough, and often lack capacity to
| reform, while the rest of the society usually lacks the
| resources to reform the offenders.
| dani__german wrote:
| Don't forget that I am saving my own children at the
| """expense""" of other, usually very disruptive if not
| outright violent children. Make sure to add that to the
| list of grievances.
|
| A nice bit of irony is that the same top down,
| authoritarian control your comment strives for is the
| same sort of control that prevents schools from improving
| themselves. Massive government control enacted to fix
| some social ill or another hobbles admins and teachers,
| preventing them from punishing disruptive kids, and thus
| ruining the teaching environment.
|
| The idea that the government owns or in anyway deserves
| control over our children must be opposed, with arms if
| necessary.
|
| "Improving" a system your opponents control by
| sacrificing your children's safety and education is a bad
| idea. The United States has several good options for
| parents to avoid the hell that modern antiracist
| educational doctrine has created.
| emtel wrote:
| Your duty as a parent is to your own children first. Not to
| other people's children or to the state.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a
| universally valuable experience, especially for people who
| would fashion themselves as "not average."
|
| Yet it's not worth the cost of a slowed curriculum.
| gmm1990 wrote:
| I'd argue social skills are more valuable than improved
| curriculum. Not saying you couldn't learn social skills
| outside of the school system too, but seems to me that
| curriculum is easier to learn outside of the system than
| social skills.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you
|
| A billion times this. School is not to train you on Math,
| English or Science. It's also to teach you how to cooperate,
| how to reach consensus, how to make decisions as a group, and
| so on.
|
| These soft skills are absolutely critical to maintain a
| properly functioning society.
| volkk wrote:
| why can't homeschooling involve the same attributes? genuine
| question. from what i've been seeing in modern trends,
| homeschooling doesn't literally mean you sit and your mother
| teaches you all day and then you "go home" by migrating to
| your bedroom. you're still in a small group with other
| children, all of whom likely still share characteristics
| where disagreements will naturally happen, and cooperation
| will need to occur to move forward. the way I see
| homeschooling is simply a parallel to the traditional public
| school path, but in smaller, more focused groups with a far
| more controlled environment. not seeing how this is
| inherently bad
| rbanffy wrote:
| > far more controlled environment
|
| They risk being able to function better in highly
| controlled environments with other kids that share the same
| background as them. Not optimal.
| arccy wrote:
| they risk being totally unprepared for less controlled
| environments later in life when it's harder to change
| habits, like in uni or in the workplace.
| volkk wrote:
| yeah i see the argument, and its an important skillset to
| be able to deal with chaos/bullies but this other part of
| me wonders whether dealing with bullying early on is
| healthy at all?
|
| to be clear, i do believe that tough personalities that
| aren't straight up bullying can still happen inside of a
| group homeschooled environment.
| quacked wrote:
| > less controlled environments later in life when it's
| harder to change habits, like in uni or in the workplace.
|
| You're right on pointing out the environments in which
| homeschoolers often perform poorly, but you used the
| wrong word. Homeschoolers are bad at _more_ controlled
| environments, where you must work within the confines of
| bureaucratic systems run by people who didn 't design
| them. Timesheets, changing place when the bell rings,
| studying only what's on the test and reproducing at the
| correct time, speaking differently to people based on how
| much authority they hold over you according to a system
| of record--that is difficult for people who are used to a
| lot of freedom in terms of how they spend their time, and
| how they interact with other people.
| Miraste wrote:
| Schools used to do this, but the push for risk reduction,
| metrics, and rules has become so great that it no longer
| happens. There used to be thousands of student-run
| organizations in schools across the country. That wasn't a
| euphemism like it is now-there were no teachers or other
| adults involved. The kids running them did have to learn to
| cooperate and make decisions in a responsible way, or face
| the natural consequences of the group falling apart and
| social failure.
|
| Now, such organizations are banned. The closest analogue is a
| "student" council, run by an adult, that might get to choose
| the color of the wallpaper at prom.
| LanceH wrote:
| I've tutored literally hundreds of homeschoolers at this
| point, mostly in the high school ages as their parents ran
| out of math ability. As a whole, they are far better socially
| adapted than the average teenager.
|
| Sure, there is selection bias among those who get that far in
| math, and those who would seek out tutoring. But I had 9th
| graders coming to me already behaving well as adults. More
| often than not they were in charge of working things out with
| me, not their parents.
|
| Every time one of these threads comes up I cringe, because
| virtually nobody here has worked with a large number of these
| kids. They just remember the one weird kid who stood out. If
| homeschoolers were to put forth the same arguments based on
| the one weird kid from public school, homeschooling would win
| by a landslide.
|
| People say it's about socialization, but homeschoolers are
| out there doing it in a normal way _all the time_. Parent
| needs to go to the post office -- there is a class on that,
| and why. Everything can turn into a lesson and not just
| something taken care of by parents. They come out of this
| experience with far more _adult level_ socialization and
| civic knowledge than the average kid, by a wide margin.
|
| Who are kids in high school getting their social queues from?
| The drug dealers? The bully? The good kids in high school are
| typically well adjusted because of things taught to them not
| by their peers, but by their family and community outside of
| school.
|
| Yes, homeschooling can be done poorly. But it is not
| inherently a poor education, and in my experience is far
| superior to the average experience at a public school. Some
| exceptions apply for those things which a large school may be
| able to have by aggregating sufficient students and resources
| toward (marching band, science classes, AP level courses).
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >It's also to teach you how to cooperate,
|
| Cooperation requires shared goals. I can't cooperate with
| someone when we're not sharing goals. Young students don't
| have shared goals other than "survive in this classroom for
| 11 months out of a calendar year". So there's no lessons in
| cooperation.
|
| >how to reach consensus,
|
| Of what use is consensus, without shared goals? Sounds more
| like indoctrination.
|
| >how to make decisions as a group,
|
| Same as above.
|
| >These soft skills are absolutely critical to maintain a
| properly functioning society.
|
| These skills are actually being used to murder
| civilization/society, even as we speak. The current fertility
| rate is sub-replacement, but the children being indoctrinated
| in public schools are being indoctrinated to be even less
| fertile than that. Many will grow up to be and remain
| childless as adults, and as that happens, society will not
| replace those people who are dying of old age. Society then
| dies itself just decades later. Your society, such as it is,
| is absurdly dysfunctional. I suppose if one were to define
| "properly functioning" as "polite to a fault" or "as peaceful
| as cattle trudging down the slaughterhouse chute"...
| ToDougie wrote:
| I don't want my children to have to learn at the pace of the
| bottom quintile. Obviously average and less-than-average people
| exist. But I will _not_ be hamstringing my kids to placate the
| whims of the state or some "modern" moral standard. I know how
| harmful it is because I went through it.
| tomrod wrote:
| I am a strong supporter of public school, to the point I
| volunteer often and advocate for them.
|
| "Whims of the state" -- I'd recommend you make sure to
| advocate for a strong department of education, which for its
| many activities is a facilitator of credentialing. It's
| fundamentally societal and operated politically and
| bureaucratically.
|
| '"modern" moral standard" -- I agree, we should target
| humanist ideals only as they are sourced from naturalism,
| otherwise we have neomodern or otherwise misaligned religious
| tenets creep in as "values" when they're really misplaced.
| Some folks advocating pro-religious values in schooling are
| quite insidious -- using religious freedom (where people have
| a right to practice in their homes and even the public
| square) as an injection to favor their religion as the
| majority in an area, to the exclusion of people who do not
| believe as they do. It's quite sad to see the Constitution,
| written fundamentally by Deists who were motivated more by
| motives closer to religious existentialism than current
| triumphalism, be run so roughshod over!
|
| If you meant something else by modern moral standard, my
| apologies, I simply see this common thought-terminating
| cliche in a lot of places and it falls apart with 2 seconds
| of introspection.
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| At Least in the northeast US, there are advanced courses or
| tracts a student can be placed in if they're above their
| peers. Is that not the case in your schools?
| aalimov_ wrote:
| Your perspective is valid, but I think its worth
| reconsidering some of the assumptions youre making. Assuming
| your child is above average may not always reflect reality.
| Being above average at a thing does not make you above
| average at all things. The public education system provides
| resources like gifted programs, AP courses, and
| extracurricular activities to challenge / engage students at
| all levels of above/below average. So if your kid is an
| advanced learner they can still thrive without being
| "hamstrung." I think using terms like "hamstring" dismisses
| the value public education provides in fostering diversity of
| experiences, social skills, and engagement with peers..
| things that cant be replicated in a homeschooling
| environment.
| et-al wrote:
| > _The public education system provides resources like
| gifted programs, AP courses, and extracurricular activities
| to challenge / engage students at all levels of above/below
| average. So if your kid is an advanced learner they can
| still thrive without being "hamstrung."_
|
| The issue is that some liberal schools of thought are
| pushing towards _detracking_ in hopes of reducing
| inequality in a Harrison Bergeron sort of way. So public
| schools are not offering those advanced courses. E.g.
| California was going to remove 8th grade Algebra as an
| option, but thankfully there was enough backlash to stop
| this.
| tristor wrote:
| >"Average" people are the norm, the reality that "not average"
| people will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.
|
| > Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a
| universally valuable experience, especially for people who
| would fashion themselves as "not average."
|
| Context is /everything/.
|
| Dealing with "average" people as an adult means dealing with
| them under the boundaries, strictures, customs, and etiquette
| of adults in your society enforced, in some sense at least, by
| laws, and with people are are, at least in theory, bound to
| serve and protect who will come to your aid when those
| boundaries are broken.
|
| Dealing with "average" people (really just the lowest quintile
| cause all the problems) for me in school resulted in multiple
| fractures, trips for stitches, and ultimately /my expulsion/
| from one school district because I had the gall to hit back
| rather than just let some kid beat me to death while a teacher
| watched and did nothing.
|
| I've been accused of all manner of things in other comment
| threads for my ardent desire to protect my children from what
| you think of as "average", and I'll happily take your words and
| savor them because it means my children will never be beaten,
| robbed, see a dead body at a bus stop on their way home for
| school, or any of the other horrible shit that happened to me
| because I had to be surrounded by the "average".
|
| The entire point of my own economic mobility and gaining wealth
| was to create a better future for my children, and that /very
| much/ includes their education. You can take your exposure to
| the "average" a.k.a. unnecessary torture and shove it.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Because public education has become a vector for propaganda.
|
| Because we spend more per student but with awful results.
|
| Because our brightest don't become schoolteachers.
|
| Because education is years if not decades behind the skills
| curve.
|
| Because big, powerful teachers unions make change impossible.
|
| Because parents have spared the rod and spoiled the child.
| aappleby wrote:
| I don't think I've ever heard "big powerful unions" and
| "teachers" in the same sentence before.
| 23B1 wrote:
| The NEA is the largest union in the United States.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| But also not functionally a union. Teachers are actually
| represented by their state affiliate, and whether or not
| they can collectively bargain (the sine qua non of being a
| union) varies from state to state. Personally, I've lived
| in several states, but none in which the state Education
| Association was able to collectively bargain for its
| members.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Every K-12 teacher I've known (male and female) has had
| times when they've come home crying from the stress.
| (workload, the kids you care about and can't help, ...)
|
| The NEA does something about pay and tenure but when it
| comes to protecting teachers emotionally forget about it.
| Roughly half of the people who get a teaching certificate
| at their own expense discover it is a job that they can't
| stand to do.
| 23B1 wrote:
| State affiliates acting at the behest of a national union
| is a functional union, and have been effective in
| collectively bargaining for members since the 1970s.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Not when the state affiliates are not allowed to
| collectively bargain.
| 23B1 wrote:
| I recommend looking into the many things that NEA (and
| other national unions like it) do to enact their agendas
| regardless of their ability to bargain within a given
| state. For example the U.S. Department of Ed basically
| exists _because_ of the NEA 's lobbying efforts.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| As someone who once heard, in 11th grade pre-calculus, that pi is
| a rational number equal to 22/7, I cannot be so surprised that
| many parents would choose to homeschool their children. Most
| parents have no idea what is going on in their childrens'
| schools.
| yowayb wrote:
| Somewhat tangential, but a big part of math proficiency is varied
| repetition (eg, Kumon's practice sheets where you repeat the same
| operation with different numbers) and you can almost just make
| these yourself now.
| giarc wrote:
| I feel like there should be a different word for those that "home
| school" their child by hiring a private teacher and they learn in
| the house. For me, homeschooling means one of the parents (often
| the mother) teaches the child(ren) in their home.
|
| I know many teachers, and they have a very specific set of skills
| on how to teach. I wouldn't expect any old parent to know this
| and I suspect home school kids are worse off for it? But I'm
| happy to be pointed to evidence on the contrary.
| jordanpg wrote:
| Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Who is physically doing
| the homeschooling? The rich tech people? Their spouses?
|
| It sounds like what he is criticizing is just extra-private
| private schooling or something like that. As distinct from
| homeschooling by parents, which is the more... eclectic version
| the author grew up with.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Because the education system is garbage;
|
| because the parents are idiots;
|
| because of the paranoid delusions about Them and What They Are
| Doing;
|
| because the kids (and in many cases the teachers) are awful human
| beings that people (idiots or not) don't want their kids to be
| around several hours a day every day;
|
| because of school shootings and other forms of violence;
|
| because the value in this is no longer clear to anyone;
|
| because the only people demonstrating "leadership" in this matter
| are leading outraged mobs around to prop up themselves and their
| power structures rather than anything productive.
|
| Or, in our case, our youngest has autism and ADHD and was unable
| to be successful in the "not homeschool" environment (for
| numerous reasons), so we removed him from it.
| tonymet wrote:
| My school district in south WA is a representative example.
| Outcomes in math & English have been poor and continue declining.
| Attendance has dropped by > 30% despite mild population growth.
| Cost / student are among the highest, and due to the lacking
| attendance, deficits have led to staff cuts, leading to worsening
| outcomes. A death spiral.
|
| To many, schools are perceived to be costly, unsafe
| indoctrination centers that push left-leaning agendas. Extended
| covid lockdowns were a huge betrayal.
|
| You only have one chance to raise your kids, and the competition
| is getting tougher every year. Homeschooling in the area has
| tripled.
|
| Some of the criticism is justified, some isn't. But with failures
| on the academic outcomes, safety, and subjective failures on the
| ideology - the onus is on public schools to win back trust.
|
| You can shame the homeschoolers , but that won't bring them back.
| Time will tell if they succeed, but compared to public schools,
| the bar is so low that odds are in the homeschoolers favor.
| Especially if their parents care enough to do it.
| s0kr8s wrote:
| The author's thesis is that the rise in home-schooling is driven
| by a desire to "opt out of being around average people," and he
| implies that he is not home-schooling his own children in part
| because he himself was home-schooled and believes that may have
| contributed to his own struggles with social stress.
|
| However, given his self-description, it seems there is a decent
| chance he would have struggled with social stressors regardless
| of what education setting he was in, possibly even more so if he
| had been exposed to bullying or excessive social stressors in a
| more traditional public education setting.
|
| Exposing oneself to just the right dose of poison in order to
| develop immunity is a delicate science.
|
| When I was younger, I was also taught to believe that nurture
| always triumphs over nature, but as I got older and eventually
| had my own kids, I found out that nature was winning way more of
| those battles than I first realized.
| bjt wrote:
| Judging by the name and picture, I'm pretty sure Forrest
| Brazeal is a he.
| s0kr8s wrote:
| Excellent point. Comment updated for accuracy.
| pkkkzip wrote:
| We live in a social climate where we can't even assert
| ourselves of someone's gender based on their name out of fear
| from a very local special interest group that has far reaches
| into public education system and this is another big reason
| why parents who can't afford private school opt for home
| schooling.
|
| The fact that parent had to edit their comment and could not
| call a man a he answers the article's question very well.
| tdeck wrote:
| This is word salad. What does it mean to "assert yourself"
| of someone else's gender?
| defrost wrote:
| It means the user, a relatively recent account, is
| trawling for bites. The KKK in the username and the slant
| of many of their comments might hint at a touch of bad
| faith edge lording.
| pkkkzip wrote:
| _" Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| and no, I'm not part of the KKK I wish people would focus
| on the content of my arguments not my username.
|
| pkzip was taken so I chose something easier to remember.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I find this somewhat hypocritical given that you've
| recently made suggestive statements about users comments
| being posted and mocked on other forums, along with vague
| threats of their real identities being uncovered e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pkkkzip
| tdeck wrote:
| It's funny how I rarely think to look at someone's
| username.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Mostly religious fanaticism.
|
| It sucks, my sons went to catholic schools, and now an
| independent Catholic high school. The new breed of "evangelical
| style" Catholics are starting to appear. They are more political
| and reactionary in terms of religious politics/practice.
|
| Where infrastructure doesn't exist, homeschools and stuff like
| "classical education" are gaining traction.
| knighthack wrote:
| Answer to question: because public schooling is becoming a place
| of indoctrination/brainwashing (particularly of woke mentality),
| rather than a place of learning. This is very apparent in
| America, but even happens in outside places like England - kids
| as young as 7 are being taught and groomed with unnecessary sex
| and sexual ideas, when that age is meant for innocent play and
| exploration.
|
| I know a few parents who've taken objection to this. They would
| rather have their children be properly taught, rather than be
| taken advantage of for their high impressionableness.
| protocolture wrote:
| I have been looking at homeschooling because of the 2 Sigma
| Problem.
|
| But a lot of the resources to help people homeschooling are weird
| christian nonsense.
| dartharva wrote:
| The moment I read the title I knew exactly how the comment
| section was going to look like. I was not disappointed.
|
| I wonder if typical HNers ever get aware of what a spectacle they
| make of themselves and their self-important narcissistic
| tomfoolery.
| pixxel wrote:
| /Captain Hypocrisy enters the chat
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Yeah, big "I don't know how to explain to you that you should
| care about other people" vibes, as expected.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| This piece makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims.
|
| Just because you are putting a child in a siloed environment
| doesn't mean you're teaching them that everyone else is beneath
| them.
|
| If you are homeschooling and not teaching humility, kindness, etc
| then you're doing it wrong.
|
| - parent of 6 homeschooled kids
| tetris11 wrote:
| There is still an implicit "othering" of other children. They
| are in one camp and yours are in another. If they have any
| semblance of imagination as kids do, they will dream up reasons
| beyond the one you gave them
| synecdoche wrote:
| In what way is the "othering" different than what children
| otherwise do, apart from being in different kind of schools?
| As you wrote children (or more generally) people can make up
| all sorts of reasons for that.
| elpatokamo wrote:
| Our two kids are homeschooled and are generally equally
| excited to play with _all_ their friends (some homeschooled,
| some in regular public school, some in private school).
|
| I have yet to see or hear any "othering" of their friends. In
| fact, I'd say the breadth of different social situations they
| are exposed to makes the "othering" _less_ likely.
| nprateem wrote:
| Ever thought it might be the other way round?
|
| I'd send my kids private, but no way would I isolate them
| with home schooling. You're meant to do that on evenings
| and weekends anyway.
| elpatokamo wrote:
| Yeah, the whole "maladjusted home school kid" is a thing
| we were cognizant of when making this decision.
|
| To your second point: I think the best predictor of
| success in _any_ education setting is intentionality and
| involvement from the parents. That said, with home school
| you get nights and weekends AND days to spend in whatever
| way is most optimal for your kids.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| >Pro-homeschooling: At school, you're in danger of physical,
| emotional, and sexual abuse.
|
| Anti-homeschooling: Statistically, you're in greater danger of
| all those things at home. And the risk gets bigger if you
| eliminate outside influences that might notice when something's
| wrong.
|
| You'd have to be an idiot to think that this argument could be
| used in a conversation about homeschooling with any particular
| potential homeschooler.
| nopmike wrote:
| wtf is going on here? This is one of the most toxic comment
| sections I've ever seen. Do people really think this way?
| dismalaf wrote:
| Homeschooling is becoming fashionable because school systems have
| become shittier... Teachers are unable to discipline kids,
| there's zero consequences for kids who are disruptive, instead of
| failing kids school systems are dumbing down the curriculum,
| there's also massive institutional biases...
|
| Plus it's more or less a golden age for homeschooling: there's
| more resources available than ever.
| nelox wrote:
| I'm not sure why it is becoming fashionable, but the reality of
| parents homeschooling children, who are functionally illiterate
| and never finished high school, is a recipe for disaster.
| anovikov wrote:
| Homeschooling doesn't scale, this is why it's not a solution for
| everyone. I can't see a fundamental drawback to it, like there
| are none in say, private jets: only problem is that neither can
| be applied to any sizeable minority, let alone not to the
| majority, of people. But if you can do it, do it.
|
| The need for socialisation and being able to get along with the
| average had any meaning for as long as we had any hope for the
| "society" thing. Now it is obvious that there is no society (and
| it is arguable whether one really ever existed, maybe only for
| short periods in times of grave crises).
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| Not sure about fashionable, but rather:
|
| 1) Private school is expensive as hell.
|
| 2) Yet, public school sucks. Most normies don't wanna learn and
| the system doesn't reward nor incentivize the smart, initiated
| students who want to excel. There are many normies that teachers
| just gotta essentially ... just babysit. And God forbid that a
| teacher stands up for themselves. Then some Karen has go and
| destroy that teacher and their career.
| jstoiko wrote:
| Homeschooling often gets confused with self-directed education,
| aka "unschooling". These are not the same.
|
| The former tends to replicate school and requires a teacher,
| usually a parent. It's basically school with
| added/paced/altered/enriched curriculum at the cost of
| socialization, although that can be compensated with other forms
| of peer groups, especially in urban area. Comparing this method
| versus school A or school B is pretty much like comparing school
| A and B as two schools can be as different as any given school
| and homeschool.
|
| The latter is what John Holt referred to as homeschooling but is
| based on self-determination theory and has an abundance of
| science to support it. Neuroscience backs this theory too, I
| think the rate at which active learning learns is somewhere
| around x20 faster than passive learning (ie "teaching"). Very
| serious folks like John Holt, Peter Gray, or Akilah Richards to
| name a few have dedicated their life work to supporting self-
| directed education as a superior form of education. What Peter
| Gray's research shows shows is that outcomes are basically the
| same except for life satisfaction and psychological outcomes. In
| essence, it leads to same rates of secondary education, jobs and
| socio-economical outcomes, except an unschooled child makes for a
| much happier adult later on.
|
| Sadly, because the majority of people went through contemporary
| schooling or some version of it, people's biases makes people not
| want to hear this.
|
| I'm not sure what the OP's circle looks like but I would be
| surprised if none of those so called "techs pro-homeschooling"
| are only doing the school at home version without having stumbled
| upon any of the science around self-directed.
| presentation wrote:
| Can you cite some of these claims, to guide someone like myself
| who has never heard of any of these things?
| jstoiko wrote:
| https://www.self-directed.org/resources/research
| whyenot wrote:
| > abundance of science to support it
|
| A few citations would be helpful.
| graemep wrote:
| have a read through peter Gray's articles on the Psychology
| Today website. They cite quite a lot of research.
| graemep wrote:
| > Homeschooling often gets confused with self-directed
| education, aka "unschooling". These are not the same.
|
| There are also a lot of other approaches. Home education is a
| blanket term for every approach to education other than schools
| with class rooms.
|
| I think my own approach was a hybrid. I expected academic
| progress (especially in English and maths, which are enablers
| for studying other things), but let the kids follow their
| interests too.
| jstoiko wrote:
| That's right. And at the other end of that spectrum, there is
| what some refer to as "radical unschooling" which gives total
| agency to the child over the material they'll learn. I know
| some radical unschoolers who've even ended-up in conventional
| schools because it was their decision. It may sound like a
| paradox but it happens, usually not more than a few years
| though, but again, depends on what's available to them
| wherever they live, and also the friends/peers and what they
| are doing too. I think these choices come down to the child,
| parenting style and the environment in which the child
| evolves. There is no right or wrong in my opinion.
|
| In his 2017 paper[1], Peter Gray goes in depth on all the
| different self-directed education approaches including some
| of the well-known self-directed "schools", from Summerhill in
| the UK to Sudbury Valley in the U.S.
|
| [1] https://cdn2.psychologytoday.com/assets/self-
| directed_ed.-pu...
| wisty wrote:
| People are getting disillusioned by education; partly because of
| politics, but also because there's a good reason not to trust the
| experts.
|
| Phonics and memorising times tables in schools should be as
| controversial as hand washing in hospitals, but they aren't, and
| that's just the tip of the iceberg that a very average layperson
| can see.
|
| If a doctor or nurse or scientist says something is "evidence
| based", it works (most of the time). If a teacher or teaching
| academic says "evidence based", they mean they have some kind of
| evidence behind it, like in that Simpson's episode ('Well, your
| honor, we've got plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are
| 'kinds' of evidence.')
|
| Teaching as an academic discipline has been basically spun out of
| whole cloth. Universities didn't (really) study education until
| governments told them to teach it, so they got a ragtag bunch of
| PhD thesis done, and the best way to do this is to use a very
| "philosophical" approach, and a very thin actual evidence base.
| Then they have to teach this to student teachers, most of whom
| are not really equipped to assess evidence. Then the student
| teachers who are great at the kind of essays that any student
| teacher can "engage with" will end up being the next generation
| of professors.
|
| Schools are run by teachers (who are badly trained) and
| politicians the public service (which generally defers to the
| universities). Yes there is a more conservative "evidence based"
| movement, but even it is nowhere near good enough.
| miningape wrote:
| Exactly, this kind of BS "eduction" the teachers receive
| doesn't really equip teachers with the knowledge to teach
| anything beyond 12 years old.
|
| I believe any subject teacher (i.e. mathematics, physics,
| english, etc.) should hold at least a bachelors in that subject
| alongside with a teaching/pedagogy degree. Every bad teacher
| I've had only had the teaching degree, the best teachers I've
| had only had a PhD in their subject. Not bad as in dislike -
| there were plenty of good, competent teachers whom I disliked.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| > because there's a good reason not to trust the experts
|
| I hate this. Where else do we get knowledge from if not experts
| and academics in their fields? That's how humans grow our
| collective knowledge. People learn, gather evidence, build
| knowledge and then share it. The people who have done the
| learning over many years are called "experts". Those are the
| people I want to learn from, no?
|
| > conservative "evidence based" movement
|
| Evidence should not be political. You can either prove
| something, or you cannot. It is neither conservative, nor
| liberal.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| When the experts say that algebra should not be taught in 8th
| grade, and the experts say that guessing at words instead of
| sounding them out is a better way to learn to read, and the
| experts say that calc can be replaced with 'data science'
| which is actually just data literacy, and so on and so forth,
| I'm not really interested in how the precise definition of
| 'experts' actually refers to something about 'growing our
| collective knowledge'. I'm more interested in staying away
| from all that. It's a fun gotcha to say things like 'well
| evidence either is or isn't', but it doesn't change the
| material reality of who's doing what and what they're likely
| to be doing in the near future. Public schooling is fucked,
| the group of people saying 'listen to the experts' is the
| group of people making it worse, a lot of it is explicitly
| political, and your best options for guaranteeing that you
| avoid it are homeschooling or parochial school, _regardless_
| of what words and rhetoric can be said about it.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| > your best options for guaranteeing that you avoid it are
| homeschooling
|
| Accepting your premise that "public schooling is fucked" (I
| disagree) there's absolutely zero guarantee that
| homeschooling is any better for any particular child. It's
| a completely random chance whether your parent, or
| whichever potentially untrained person, is going to provide
| you with an education that sets you up for society, work
| and the wider world.
|
| Public schools at least have defined curricula, governance
| structures, complaints procedures, _accountability_ in some
| form.
| dani__german wrote:
| 1 untrained parent teaching <4 kids is better than an
| expert with 25 kids to teach.
|
| Public schools have terrible curricula, procedures, and
| accountability. Go look at any school in Detroit and see
| how effective schooling is. They have all the things you
| mention, and they are ABYSMAL. Truly a terrible option,
| every one of them. They are also VERY well funded.
|
| Homeschooling doesnt have a guarantee of success. Public
| school does come with a guarantee of failure.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| > Public school does come with a guarantee of failure.
|
| I disagree, because it's demonstrably false, but I don't
| think there's a reasonable point of debate here. I'm
| sorry you feel that the state has failed so badly here.
| dani__german wrote:
| https://www.niche.com/k12/cass-technical-high-school-
| detroit...
|
| One of detroit's best schools. 58% are proficient in
| reading at their level. 20% (!) Are proficient in math.
| That is a failing grade. The other schools are not
| better.
|
| Enrolling a student at a school like this is a bad idea.
| Perhaps "guaranteed failure" is hyperbolic, but reality
| is not far enough from that statement for any sort of
| comfort.
|
| These are badly functioning systems that need a major
| overhaul.
| wisty wrote:
| If the parents cared and were well educated then those
| numbers would be much better, simply by them helping kids
| with homework etc. But schools shouldn't require that.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Don't forget the we can't teach the 4 operations in first
| year of primary school. Meanwhile, all the books from 1950
| have them by lesson 2 and school was mandatory at that
| time.
|
| We homeschooled our kid for a few months due to her
| marvelous classmates, teacher and director, she wrote and
| learnt more than 4 years worth of study in Switzerland.
| Unfortunately she is highly sociable and we couldn't give
| her the constant "stream of kids" all day long.
| darknavi wrote:
| Wouldn't the best of both worlds be a mixed approach? Let
| her socialize at school and learn some things and teach
| her extra at home? Sort of home school lite?
| protonbob wrote:
| I believe op meant conservative as in less radical and more
| willing to acknowledge that their ideas have flaws rather
| than the GOP.
| wisty wrote:
| Education theory is divided among educational progressive
| and conservatives, it doesn't entirely align with political
| parties.
|
| Educational progressivism is actually more antiquated than
| conservatism - the classic progressives were 19th century
| while the conservatives were 20t century.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_education
| felizuno wrote:
| There is a very simple rebuttal to this: In almost every high
| $$ trial the defense and prosecution will both call expert
| witnesses. These experts will then directly contradict and
| disagree with each other. Which of these experts should be
| trusted? It was an expert who testified that cigarettes are
| good for you, an expert who testified that Iraq had weapons
| of mass destruction, and an expert who verified that
| Oxycontin is not addictive. Those are not the people you want
| to learn from, no.
|
| We celebrate countless outsiders like Galileo and Darwin who
| have disrupted the consensus of "experts" and were considered
| highly political at the time. History simply does not defend
| the infallibility of "experts", and does support the idea
| that you should not blindly trust a person who claims
| expertise.
|
| Everybody should look into the work of Philip Tetlock and
| consider reading his book Superforecasters. There is a
| mountain of scientific evidence to show that the more a
| person considers themselves an expert in a topic the more
| vulnerable they are to making assumptions and being proven
| wrong as time progresses.
| wisty wrote:
| Large groups of experts in a non-science can be wrong. Either
| the Vatican University theology department, or a Baptist
| theology department would be at least one example.
| e12e wrote:
| > Phonics and memorising times tables in schools should be as
| controversial as hand washing in hospitals, but they aren't,
| and that's just the tip of the iceberg that a very average
| layperson can see.
|
| Hand washing at hospitals is controversial (again)?
| wisty wrote:
| Neither should be controversial.
| solfox wrote:
| One important function that public school offers to society is
| protection for children. Teachers are mandatory reporters, and so
| are many school staff. Parents are not.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Comment I was replying to was deleted so I will repost as a top
| level comment without additional context:
|
| ----
|
| I agree this is probably the biggest tradeoff, but attention all
| parents, there's a cunning and affordable solution to the
| challenge of spoiling versus opportunity. It's guaranteed to
| work, anecdotally, at least sometimes:
|
| Live in a big house and send your kids to a nice school, but
| roster them on truly hood (n.b. I mean real deal heart of the
| ghetto) travel sports teams. Only two requirements are as
| follows:
|
| (1) that the team must be decently coached and
|
| (2) practice field and home field must be in a genuinely scary
| neighborhood. Please don't assume I mean a run-of-the-mill bad
| neighborhood.
|
| Ideally Pop Warner when younger and AAU BB by high school, but
| really anything other than lacrosse or fencing works. I
| personally was raised on hood travel baseball, and I am being 80%
| serious about this suggestion. Go Hurricanes.
| almostgotcaught wrote:
| Ain't no one gonna take this advice seriously on here. hn is
| the most NIMBY place on the internet especially when it comes
| to their own kids. MMW pearl clutching is imminent.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| It's true that there has always been a sizeable chunk of religion
| motivated home schoolers, historically there was a long tail with
| motivations and efficacy that was all over the map.
|
| One thing that's really common is for parents to try it when they
| feel that the local system is failing their kids in some way and
| the family economics supporting are acceptable.
|
| There are also many permutations - it wasn't uncommon when I was
| younger for parents to do it through middle school, but have
| their kids attend high school because they felt that it was the
| point where socialization became important in a way that couldn't
| be handled effectively with home school.
|
| Obviously there's a huge range of efficacy, too.
|
| That said, I think you have to ask why are charter schools and
| vouchers (not just home school) becoming even more fashionable
| despite there being little to no evidence that they generate any
| broad improvements in the base level of education in the
| population at large? And a lot of it is because society has
| gotten more and more zero sum and it's going to increasingly self
| cannibalize.
|
| Which is not that far off from the writer's premise.
| derektank wrote:
| >despite there being little to no evidence that they generate
| any broad improvements in the base level of education in the
| population at large?
|
| You don't find the experience of New Orleans following their
| conversion to a complete charter system in 2005 (10 percentage
| point gain in college acceptance rates, improvements on
| standardized tests by about a third of a standard deviation) to
| be meaningful evidence?
|
| https://news.tulane.edu/news/new-orleans-reforms-boost-stude...
| Glyptodon wrote:
| What you see with that result is way more complicated than
| just "charter schools working."
| ubertaco wrote:
| Congratulations to Louisiana on improving from 50th-ranked
| state in education to...50th-ranked state in education?
| derektank wrote:
| The population of New Orleans is less than 10% of the
| population of Louisiana. Also, I'm not aware of a single
| metric by which Louisiana is considered to be last place in
| K-12 education in 2024. State PISA scores are basically on
| par with California, spending per student is higher than
| Nevada. It's certainly no Massachusetts, I've seen it
| ranked around 40th out of 50 on different metrics, but I
| think you're revealing some ignorance in assuming
| Louisiana's school system is ranked last in the nation.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > That said, I think you have to ask why are charter schools
| and vouchers (not just home school) becoming even more
| fashionable despite there being little to no evidence that they
| generate any broad improvements in the base level of education
| in the population at large?
|
| People demanding it is evidence that political public education
| should adapt to that demand. It may or may not pay off, but
| this is how politics works, and education is politicized.
|
| There is NO WAY that voters are going to see commentary like
| yours and be dissuaded -- that's just not how politics works.
| Have you ever changed someone's mind _really_ on politics?
|
| It would be much better to look at what's been motivating
| voters to demand vouchers / whatever else you don't approve of
| and see if you can satisfy their demands in some other way,
| such as reducing the politicization of education in other ways.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Homeschooling is fashionable because public schools are terrible,
| and private schools are expensive.
|
| No tech bro theories of exceptionalism and "anti-mediocrity"
| necessary.
|
| Occam would be proud.
| froh wrote:
| I find looking beyond the rim of your own plate such an inspiring
| thing when it comes to schooling.
|
| Germany for example prohibits home schooling. don't breed
| detached extremists. however Germany thinks binning kids into
| handcrafts, simple office jobs and academia at age nine (!) is a
| brilliant idea o-O. but then on the upside again, you will go to
| school for at least 13 years if you get _any_ kind of qualified
| professional education.
|
| China has one (1) math text book for 1.4bn people.
|
| France has competitive cognitive Tests (Concours) to enter
| highest education.
|
| maybe a problem is that everybody went to school so everyone
| thinks they are experts. it's hard to evolve schooling. like
| steering a super tanker. slooow. too slow for four year election
| cycles.
| notTooFarGone wrote:
| >however Germany thinks binning kids into handcrafts, simple
| office jobs and academia at age nine (!) is a brilliant idea
| o-O
|
| As a German that's the first time I hear that. Do you mean
| Schulerpraktikum? That's usually at age 14. Never heard anyone
| doing that at age 9.
| qdl wrote:
| I guess he is talking about the three school types you can go
| to after elementary
| froh wrote:
| or four (adding Gesamtschule) but yes, the what she's
| talking about.
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| They're talking about the division between Gymnasium,
| Realschule, and Hauptschule. It's actually state to state
| nowadays whether they have separate schools or Gesamtschulen,
| but I understand even in Gesamtschulen, in many Bundeslander
| there's some internal separation.
|
| Where are you in DE, that this is unknown to you? In Koln
| just 15 years ago I knew parents who had the horror scenario:
| a 4th grade teacher who quietly believed that girls shouldn't
| go to university. They switched their daughter schools that
| year.
| froh wrote:
| as others said: Schullaufbahnentscheidung vierte Klasse (at
| the age of 9 years for most Students)
| vasco wrote:
| Also a lot of countries have different goals, and most people
| when they think of optimization of schooling think of better
| outcomes at the top end, whereas administrators think of better
| outcomes at the bottom end. The difference between stimulating
| your smartest people enough that they become leading beacons of
| their field vs minimizing the amount of people that get left
| behind. In some places there's a mixed approach with magnet
| schools but there's many countries where that doesn't exist.
| _petronius wrote:
| On the flip side, a long history of multiple paths through
| public education has led to Germany being a country where there
| is no universal expectation that everyone should/must get at
| least an undergraduate degree, and so inflation (in terms of
| both price and dilution of value) of degrees is lower than in
| countries like the UK or especially the US.
|
| An acknowledged, well-designed, and state-supported path to
| vocational education is very good; social mobility is important
| within such a system, and a lack of social mobility doesn't
| _have_ to be baked in.
| froh wrote:
| oh, I agree "Landerhoheit", state level control of curricula,
| was one of the weaker ideas in German education. East Germany
| got that that much better. Finland had sent envoys to East
| Germany and copied their system (not the curricula, mind
| you), to create their Pisa winning system in the 1980s...
| triyambakam wrote:
| > don't breed detached extremists.
|
| There are plenty... Who's that Nazi kid with the face tattoos?
| I don't remember his name.
| froh wrote:
| yah, Prof. TikTok (and Dr. FB before that), personally
| targeting political views, that's magic. can't blame
| schooling for that. it's rather _despite_ schooling. and it
| happens worldwide (thus my wild guess about TikTok and
| similar media products)
| triyambakam wrote:
| I'm saying your thesis is wrong. Public schooling doesn't
| prevent extremists and homeschooling doesn't breed
| extremists.
| synecdoche wrote:
| "don't breed detached extremists"
|
| This doesn't follow. In addition, there are plenty who fit that
| description who did go to a state school.
| froh wrote:
| well, the German constitutional court thinks it does follow,
| indeed, and they are much smarter than I am in their
| argument:
|
| https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rk200.
| ..
|
| In a nutshell, only schooling forces you to confront other
| beliefs in a way preparing you for life in a pluralistic
| society and thus schooling as such is a cornerstone in
| education.
|
| private schools German flavor are okay because their
| curriculum has to comply and their final exams are state
| controlled.
|
| So for example even if you went to some evangelical
| creationist belief system school, you'd have to understand
| and know evolution. And every student gets sex ed no matter
| if the parents think that's a bad idea, including
| contraceptives, abortion rights and all.
|
| And likewise every student is confronted with the Hollerith
| machine planned systematic mass deportation and mass murder
| of 6 Mio Humans for having a "wrong" birth certificate, using
| scheduled, planned trains and scheduled, planned mass murder
| factories. And every student learns how that came to be and
| how a weak democracy was overturned into a mind control
| oppression state.
|
| And that makes a _lot_ of sense.
| geye1234 wrote:
| Two points here:
|
| 1. Government schooling won't force you to confront other
| beliefs: it will deliver you a particular set of beliefs.
| Example: sex ed (which must, logically, be delivered from
| one or another moral perspective; there is no neutrality).
| Or history, which in many Anglo countries used to whitewash
| 19th-century crimes, and now goes to the other extreme of
| ignoring anything good.
|
| Empirically, it is pretty clear that government schools do
| not produce, and are not designed to produce, children who
| are capable of examining things from multiple points of
| view.
|
| 2. Ultimately it's a philosophical question: who is
| ultimately responsible for the child's development? And,
| therefore, who has the right to make the final decision on
| this? The parents, or the state? That's obviously a much
| bigger question, but it will determine one's attitude to
| homeschooling.
| froh wrote:
| do you see the difference of "government schools" in
| contrast to curricula elaborated by democratically
| elected boards? especially in a country with proportional
| representation, which reflects into said boards?
|
| also the controversy is built into the curricula. "these
| are the positions, discuss"
|
| and yes my top comment is exactly addressing the top
| point. and how it may be a good idea to think about how
| other cultures approach education and why.
| geye1234 wrote:
| > do you see the difference of "government schools" in
| contrast to curricula elaborated by democratically
| elected boards? especially in a country with proportional
| representation, which reflects into said boards?
|
| I don't think it makes much difference. Even if we grant
| for argument's sake that the people elected to school
| boards are likely to represent the majority of the people
| entitled to elect them, why should my children be fed the
| majority view just because it's the majority?
|
| > also the controversy is built into the curricula.
| "these are the positions, discuss"
|
| Presumably that doesn't happen with every topic. _What_
| is presented as factual, and _what_ is presented as
| opinion, is significant and necessarily reflects a
| worldview.
|
| By saying "here is the pro-X argument, here is the anti-X
| argument, discuss", _and then stopping there_ , you are
| necessarily teaching that X is something opinion-based
| and non-factual, or at least too trivial to matter. And
| I, as a parent, may think that X is factual and
| important. So somebody's views have to win out - mine or
| someone else's. There is no neutrality anywhere in
| reality.
| wink wrote:
| Not sure inspiring is the word I would hve picked :D
|
| Overall it sounds a tad better than the US, but far from
| perfect.
|
| Especially not accounting for different developmental speed of
| kids annoys me, although from what I heard it'd a bit better
| these days than in the 90s - e.g. even if they sent you to the
| Realschule instead of Gymnasium and at age 15 you decided you
| wanted to go to university they wouldn't make your life extra
| hard.
| froh wrote:
| hehe, yes I absolutely agree partitioning schooling is a bad
| idea. It's much smarter to have shared learning and make a
| difference inside a class "Binnendifferenzierung" and it's
| also much smarter to create GATE gifted and talented programs
| (Hochbegabtenforderung) as enrichment and _maybe_ after grade
| 8 or 9 as dedicated boarding schools.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > too slow for four year election cycles.
|
| Maybe that's the problem: that education is so politicized. Yet
| another reason people opt to homeschool.
|
| (For those of you who object so strenuously here to
| homeschooling, suppose MAGA were to remake public education
| they way they want it to be. Would you then not seriously
| consider homeschooling? I bet y'all would.)
| lbrito wrote:
| >don't breed detached extremists.
|
| That seems not to be working out well for Germany.
| froh wrote:
| could be worse, much worse. do you have something specific in
| mind?
| lbrito wrote:
| Well, things can always be worse. That's a tautology.
|
| I was implying the growth and "mainstreaming" of afd.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Why are tech people suddenly so into homeschooling?
|
| Are they? I mean statistically. Or is that just an observation
| from some random articles about a handful of freaks?
|
| > and let me tell you, at no time were my six siblings and I
| considered the cool kids on the block.
|
| I don't want to defend homeschooling but in my experience, _the
| cool kids on the block_ tend to end badly. These are the girls
| that end up pregnant at 16 or in relationships with abuse
| partners, the boys that end up in addiction and a career of
| jumping from shitty jobs to shitty jobs.
|
| Having said that it is nice to be able to develop social skills.
| I used to be super shy and had to force myself to grow a more
| sociable person and I am glad I had to force myself doing that by
| going to school.
| yosito wrote:
| I don't have kids, but if I did, there's not a snowball's chance
| in hell I'd let a state educate them, with the possible exception
| of the Nordic countries.
| techterrier wrote:
| My 9 y/o getting shot at school isnt something I want on my risk
| register.
| irjustin wrote:
| that's the primary reason you homeschool? isn't there easier
| ways to manage this particular risk?
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Suggest some?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| You might want to calculate the probabilities on that. The
| majority of kids are shot in or around their home, not school.
| dijit wrote:
| OK I guess I'm going to go against the deluge of comments here;
| And give an appreciable reason instead of denigrating those who
| might choose this.
|
| The context, though, I am British. I grew up in Britain. I went
| to British school.
|
| I can't speak universally about my experience, (even within all
| of Britain), because it's my experience which is in one small
| area of the country.
|
| However, school, for me, was by far the single worst mandatory
| system I have been exposed to in my life. For the entirety of my
| young life, school was a prison. With inmates who would beat you,
| Emotionally abuse you, the "wardens" did not want to be there
| either, and did not care how the other inmates treated you...
| sometimes doubling down on the behaviour themselves. - The
| comparison is further solidified by 6-foot galvanised steel bars
| surrounding the complex, and that I visited an actual psychiatric
| prison not long after and the cafeteria, recreational grounds,
| rooms, etc; were _identical_ to those of my school.
|
| Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You
| likely mean memorisation? That's not education.
|
| It took becoming an adult to learn for myself that I _enjoyed
| learning_. My school was not learning, Everything that got me
| through school was things that my mother taught me- And as a
| consequence, I was always top of my class.
|
| I find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced
| internment for children while their parents go to work, with
| exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a
| functional understanding. I would not be surprised if this
| feeling is shared among many of my generation and social class,
| the endless chasing of metrics has made even the tiniest amount
| of joy that could exist in school- Non-existent.
|
| and for those saying it was good for socialisation with other
| children- The ostracised, are learning to be helpless and to be
| victims- They are not learning to "socialise" more. If anything
| it is probably more harmful for those people to be exposed to
| more people until they've had time to form on their own.
| Nursie wrote:
| I think you're right to start by saying this isn't universal
| worldwide, or even within Britain.
|
| You describe hell. But I don't believe that your experience is
| dominant or even that common in the UK. Which generation are
| you from?
| dijit wrote:
| I'm 35 now, so, millennial; for additional context I was
| brought up in a city called Coventry which is a city that was
| in decline during that period. (just like most of the north
| of the UK following Thatcher's closing of the mines).
|
| As a consequence of this experience, though, I saw that I
| wasn't exactly entirely unique either, as there were other
| children treated as I was and we sought each other out. So I
| know that while my experience is not universal: that it is at
| least shared by a handful of people within my schools alone.
| - I would hazard to guess more outside of my school have
| these experiences too.
| Nursie wrote:
| I'm around 11 years older than you.
|
| I know my experience isn't especially portable as I went to
| a public school in the home counties, but not all of my
| friends did, and while I understand they experienced
| teachers with varying levels of competence and interest,
| none of them has described it in as harrowing terms as
| yours, and all came away with friends and a fairly decent
| education, albeit one that they probably had to have a bit
| more determination to get than I did.
|
| My mum worked in various UK state schools as an assistant
| from around 2000-2010 and described serious budgetary
| problems throughout the system, and teachers trying their
| best in adversity. She also described the many obstacles in
| the way of getting the bad kids out of classrooms so they
| couldn't disrupt things so much. I have a friend who
| teaches at a grammar school, who is fairly intelligent and
| interested in his subject, and seems to teach well to kids
| who are interested, though again there seems to be little
| money to achieve anything.
|
| I'm not claiming shitty, prison-like schools don't exist or
| trying to invalidate your experience, it was clearly
| terrible, but I'd be wary of drawing too many wide-ranging
| conclusions about school education as a whole from it.
| mrcsd wrote:
| I am often left confused by responses like this. I think
| it would be fair to suggest that some significant
| percentage of chidren suffer in schools or have harrowing
| experiences that they are going to carry with them
| through life until dealt with. If this is the case, why
| on earth should a conclusion about school _not_ be drawn?
| I don't believe you are meaning to suggests that the
| situation as it stands doesn't need change, but that is
| nonetheless implicit in your statements.
|
| From my position, saying: "I'd be wary of drawing too
| many wide-ranging conclusions about school education as a
| whole from it." Comes close to invalidating the
| experience of another.
| Nursie wrote:
| The author paints a picture of schools as literal prison,
| as a place where children are forced to go to waste their
| time and be tortured. They invite the reader to conclude
| that the entire exercise is worthless and should be
| abandoned -
|
| "Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in
| rote? You likely mean memorisation? That's not
| education."
|
| "I find it hard to think of school as anything more than
| forced internment for children while their parents go to
| work, with exercises designed to keep you busy more than
| to give a functional understanding. "
|
| > why on earth should a conclusion about school _not_ be
| drawn?
|
| It depends on the conclusion. If the conclusion is
| "school as a concept is so irredeemably bad that we
| should scrap schools entirely because of my experiences",
| I'm not sure it's supportable because of the lack of
| universality.
|
| If the conclusion is "some schools have been run so
| poorly that students are left with lifelong emotional
| scars and little education to show for it, we need to do
| something about that", I'm all onboard.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Yet another person here who agrees with OP. I think
| you're vastly underestimating how common our experiences
| were. Vastly.
| computerdork wrote:
| Feel (some) of your pain - was bullied some in school,
| and actually had terrible compressed nerve problems that
| made sitting in high school all day terrible. But think
| what this person is saying is that this probably isn't
| the experience of most students. And in all humbleness,
| would have to agree, don't think me and my friends
| wouldn't say it's was an extremely abuse experience.
|
| Not saying it doesn't need to be fixed, but that like
| most systems handling large volumes, for better or worse,
| it caters to the majority:(
| simiones wrote:
| Whether school is a net benefit (that can stand to be
| improved) or a net detriment (a system that needs to be
| uprooted and upended entirely) depends significantly on
| that "some significant percentage".
|
| If the percentage is 10% of children suffering through
| school, that's a horrendous number, but still leaves
| school as an overall positive experience for the vast
| majority, even though significant work needs to be put it
| to fix its problems.
|
| If the percentage is 50% of children suffering, then it's
| a crapshoot if your child will benefit or be deeply
| disturbed by school, and the whole system needs to be
| torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
|
| One anecdotal experience can't help one decide which of
| these is the right approach. I'd venture a guess that,
| since most people are not clamoring for fundamental
| school system reforms, the experience of most voting
| adults has been largely positive or at least neutral in
| school.
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| Like you, I'm older than dijit and went to school in the
| home counties, but my experiences were also unpleasant
| enough for me to question the value of my time at school.
| I went to non-selective "state" (i.e. public-sector)
| schools in a middle-class area where nearly all of the
| other pupils presented as working class. Somehow I
| managed to pick up a combination of working, middle and
| upper class mannerisms, which seemed to attract more
| bullying from authority figures than from my peers. I
| suspect many of my teachers were bitterly resentful about
| the (then recent) banning of corporal punishment in the
| state sector. My secondary school seemed to model itself
| on "public" (i.e. private) schools, where corporal
| punishment was still legal. The saving graces of my
| school days included:
|
| 1) My primary school clearly took children's advancement
| seriously (more in things like handwriting, bladder
| control and cycling proficiency than in subject-matter
| knowledge or understanding), so it wasn't all pain and no
| gain, but that mostly stopped at secondary school.
|
| 2) Secondary-school maths lessons were (usually)
| something of a haven because maths teachers were willing
| to engage in unplanned reasoned argument and for almost
| three years we worked independently, at our own pace,
| from booklets while the teacher gave us each in turn one-
| on-one tuition (for only one or two minutes per lesson,
| but it did mean that I escaped being uncomfortably
| pressured to speed up or slow down both when I was
| working independently and when I had the teacher's
| attention for a non-punitive reason).
|
| I think British education would be better if secondary
| schools had a clearer purpose and treated pupils as
| stakeholders. My experience was that my formal education
| started at primary school and resumed at university after
| a seven-year gap. I never really found out how my
| secondary school was meant to benefit pupils. Pupils
| ought to not only benefit from school, but understand how
| it benefits them.
|
| I think schools should reflect clearer thinking about
| ability-based selection. If pupils are grouped by age and
| location only, and not at all by ability, then requiring
| the whole class to work through the same material, in the
| same way, at the same pace risks seriously inhibiting
| subject-matter learning. On the other hand, grouping
| pupils by "general ability" risks putting pupils in some
| classes more or less advanced than those that would
| benefit them most, and permanently disadvantaging those
| who are rejected from the more prestigious academic path
| at an early age.
|
| Pupils also ought to lead lives they have reason to
| value. Corporal punishment even for bullies is a net
| negative, and there should be meaningful protections
| against teachers using loopholes, such as turning a blind
| eye to bullying or perpetrating emotional abuse
| themselves. We had many teachers like that at my
| secondary school, and one of them was found to have
| assaulted a pupil while I was there.
|
| Edit:
|
| I think some important points aren't really clear above.
| I agree with dijit that school can provide pupils with
| very poor value for the burdens it places on them, but I
| consider this a missed opportunity, rather than a lost
| cause. I also suspect some teachers' toxic attitudes
| about class and violence contribute to the bullying
| problem, so we should be careful not to let cognitive
| biases lead us into doubling down on "discipline" in
| schools, unless there's good reason to believe that isn't
| part of the problem. I left school many years ago, but
| before I did, authority figures bemoaned the "end of
| discipline" and the coddling of pupils, which was at odds
| with my experience then, so I'm sceptical of any claims
| that the problem has since been solved.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| I have some friends who teach in Cov, there are some
| particularly bad schools in the city sadly. Sorry to hear
| you went through one of them. The effective postcode
| lottery of schools has an awful affect on how the part of
| our lives plays out.
| gadders wrote:
| Yeah, Coventry is rough. This is a good anecdotal overview
| for anyone interested: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Watch-My-
| Back-Geoff-Thompson-ebook/...
|
| Having said that, your experiences weren't a million miles
| from mine in the 80's in the crap end of Hampshire. Most of
| the violence there though was from other pupils, rather
| than teachers.
|
| However, speaking to my daughter schools these days do tend
| to be kinder, gentler places than when I grew up. Fights
| seem to happen never rather than on a daily basis.
| teamonkey wrote:
| As a parent with kids in the UK state school system, I've
| noticed a considerable attitude change in terms of reducing
| bullying, acknowledging and supporting learning
| difficulties (dyslexia, ADHD, autism), and on trying to
| keep kids happy and engaged, in a way that simply didn't
| exist during my time in the '80s and '90s.
|
| In the same way, my own experiences at school were a
| significant attitude change compared to the learn-by-rote
| and corporal punishment era of my parents.
|
| I couldn't claim that it works for every student or that
| every school is like that - plus the entire school system
| is now stretched financially to breaking point in a way
| that it wasn't when I was there, and there are additional
| new problems such as social media - but I do feel that in
| general things have moved in the right direction.
| mrcsd wrote:
| I'm 34, grew up in London, went to state primary school and
| private secondary school. dijit's account of schooling
| ressonates strongly with me.
| GordonS wrote:
| 40's, male, had a horrible experience at state secondary
| school in semi-rural Scotland. I now have young kids in
| primary, and I can see how _shit_ the education aspect in
| particular is - my kids constantly complain about how
| boring it is, and one finds everything ridiculously easy.
| For example, he 's been doing addition and subtraction up
| to _ten_ at school for _3 years_!?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| It sounds like he is just describing being bullied in school
| and teachers not being great about it. Far from universal but
| also far from uncommon, in the UK or any country I have heard
| of. Bullying is a very common and documented problem in
| schools.
| gswdh wrote:
| I think it's very area specific - how prosperous the area
| is. Reading that post was like he was at my school, word
| for word. I was on the "not bullied end" of that
| arrangement and life was still hell as you had to
| constantly watch over your shoulder, align with factions
| for fear of real violence if you weren't in the right place
| at the right time. A lot fo the older kids were linked to
| serious crime in the local area at the ages of 15 and 16
| only. All in all I would say the goths got the most amount
| of abuse on a day to day basis.
| simiones wrote:
| Even if bullying is common (say, every school or even every
| class experiences some bullying), that doesn't necessarily
| make it a very common experience for those who go through
| school (the majority of children in a class will neither be
| bullies nor bullied).
| martindbp wrote:
| Even if it's not hell, it could be so much better. It could
| be a place that kids actually look forward to going every
| day. Instead, we put them through 12 years of mandatory low
| grade torture where nothing they do is connected to the real
| world, their interest or curiosity, and when they're done
| they're launched into a world of AGI and ASI where none of
| what they learned is remotely enough for them to contribute
| to society in any way.
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| > forced internment for children
|
| Where I live (U.S.), new schools are literally built like
| prisons... each wing is laid out from a central "observation
| area" for the administrators. It's just a panopticon design
| modeled after penitentiaries.
|
| I was with my family in our new local high school. My dad and I
| were the only two who noticed the layout.
| thih9 wrote:
| The panopticon design was originally intended for schools
| too, as well as other institutions:
|
| > Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally
| applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums.
| He devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a
| panopticon prison, so the term now usually refers to that.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
|
| Whether it's friendly and encourages healthy development is
| another question.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The criticism section of the Wikipedia article focuses on
| political aspects, but to me, the very idea of keeping
| someone feeling like they're always watched sounds like
| _psychological torture_.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| In fairness if you've ever been bullied and corned out of
| view of the teachers, having someone seeing you may feel
| like a relief.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| That assumes they'll do anything instead of turn a blind
| eye.
|
| In my school experience they turned a blind eye _unless_
| you fought back in which case they would punish you for
| fighting back.
| whythre wrote:
| Many of the bullying stories on here involve either a do-
| nothing response by authorities or both sides being
| punished. I do not see how constant monitoring ensures
| any kind of protection or justice.
| kristianbrigman wrote:
| And yet, I bet when you make a trade on craigslist
| (showing my age :), you meet in a public place where
| people can see you. Why?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Key word is _always_. It 's not just about being observed
| (with or without knowing when and by whom), but also
| having no control over it.
|
| Craiglist-mediated exchange is a choice. School, prison
| or workplace is not - not in any practical sense.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I don't think I've ever met in a public place for
| Craigslist trades. I've always gone to the seller's
| house. I don't think we've ever sold anything, but when
| we put something up for free online we just leave it
| outside and tell them to come get it.
| 20after4 wrote:
| In Missouri, high-school buildings use the same blueprints as
| state prisons. Why bother designing something custom? They
| serve the same purpose. They literally are prisons.
|
| If a teenager fails to show up for school, a police officer
| will eventually show up to arrest their parents and place the
| teenager in the custody of a "foster family." Now both parent
| and teenager are imprisoned. And we are told this is freedom.
|
| To make matters much much worse, children in state custody
| with the foster system are routinely exposed to all kinds of
| abuse. Many foster families operate like a profitable
| business where costs are minimized and care is entirely
| absent.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| > And we are told this is freedom.
|
| I think we pretty much universally agree that mandatory
| schooling is preferable to the alternative, do you really
| think an illiterate populous is preferable? So yes actually
| that is freedom. Society guarantees that you will not be
| illiterate just because your parents were crack addicts, I
| think that's a good thing.
| greentxt wrote:
| I don't think an illiterate populous is the alternative
| unless you think most people lack intrinsic motivation
| and also have families that don't value education. Seems
| extremely unlikely. Maybe you wouldn't have gone to
| school if you had a choice but most people would, if
| nothing else for free childcare.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| > most people would
|
| You are missing the point, "most" is not all, I don't
| think most people/families are like this at all, we don't
| do this for most people. I think you would be surprised
| about the number of low-income children in the US who
| will never see a classroom if we abandoned compulsory
| education. It is also an effective measure to increase
| equality and class mobility.
|
| 14 million children in the US are food insecure. 43
| million people live in poverty, 12.9% [1]
|
| You know how many people in the US are illiterate? 21%
| [2]
|
| Do you think that number will increase or decrease if we
| got rid of compulsory education?
|
| [1] https://www.nokidhungry.org/who-we-are/hunger-facts
| [2] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/lit
| eracy-s...
| 9rx wrote:
| _> You know how many people in the US are illiterate? 21%
| [2] Do you think that number will increase or decrease if
| we got rid of compulsory education?_
|
| Just 20% in 1875[1], despite the primitive education
| system of the time. Is the answer no change, it being
| limited by the innate capabilities of the people, not
| limited by what they do?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_
| States
| Miraste wrote:
| The source above yours and the one on Wikipedia are using
| different metrics for literacy. These are generally not
| comparable. Measuring literacy in a useful way,
| especially over historic timescales, is harder than it
| sounds.
| tigeba wrote:
| I feel I must point out that education buildings in
| Missouri do not share designs with prisons as a norm. Maybe
| this is true somewhere in the state but not here.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Yeah I didn't mean all of them. A couple of examples that
| I am aware of are Ozark High School and Waynesville High
| School.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| There is no way this is true.
|
| People look at ugly schools, and they look like prisons,
| and the kids are captive in the ugly buildings, so it
| invites the prison metaphor. But makes no sense. Schools
| are a series of classrooms, prisons are a series of small
| cells. The designs would not be reusable at a fundamental
| level, or any practical level.
| treis wrote:
| I can't believe people think this is true. There are no
| school room sized cells in any prison. At least not in
| this country.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| There are in fact a great many school room sized cells in
| the United States. "Dormitory" housing is the norm for a
| significant percentage of inmates in jails, prisons, and
| immigration detention centers (imagine a school gym
| filled with bunks and you're often not far off). To add
| to the school-prison linkage, many facilities have
| lockers as well, replete with padlocks that make dandy
| weapons.
|
| That said, I am still doubtful there are 1:1 copies of
| jails being used as schools, regardless of visible
| similarities. I don't see any of these supposed jail/high
| schools with secured rec yards for instance, which
| generally make up part of the structure of the facilities
| that look most like the examples given.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's security checkpoints and police officers in
| bulletproof vests and carrying guns as well in some cases,
| because what if a school shooter shows up? Of course, when
| one does show up a hundred militarized police will show up
| and... do nothing, because what will the union do if one gets
| shot?
| globular-toast wrote:
| I hated school too, but I'm not sure I would have learnt much
| at home. My parents both lack higher education and frankly
| haven't been able to keep up with me past the age of 12 or so.
| Home schooling might work for children of smart people to be
| accelerated into the exact same field as them. But it won't
| work for kids like me or those who just aren't good at whatever
| their parents do.
| troupe wrote:
| That may be less true than it was 20 years ago. Even free
| resources like Khan Academy can go a long ways in helping
| parents educate their kids beyond what they know themselves.
| And for parents willing to spend even a fraction of what the
| public school would spent on education, they can pick and
| choose curriculum, tutors, or even online live classes with
| teachers well beyond what they would have in their local high
| school.
|
| That said, parents without much of an education themselves
| may tend to set the bar too low for their children, but that
| often appears to be an issue in the public school as well.
| globalise83 wrote:
| The kind of school you went to sounds very different from the
| grammar school that my working-class father went to in the
| 1960s and that helped him escape a life of asbestos-breathing
| drudgery in moribund shipyards.
| dijit wrote:
| For non-british readers; state-funded Grammar schools
| famously, were abolished.
|
| (I'm being downvoted, but this just objective fact, and
| something my grandfather brings up commonly).
|
| EDIT: according to a lot of HN comments; they still seem to
| exist but they aren't evenly distributed.
|
| There certainly were none in my city.
|
| Despite one being named a grammar school, it does not follow
| a grammar school curriculum:
| https://www.coventrypublicschools.org/schools/cgs
|
| How messy.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| No they weren't. There are still many (163 according to a
| very quick google search) selective schools in the UK with
| entrance based on taking the 11+ exam.
|
| Edit to clarify they are state funded and not private.
| dijit wrote:
| This is just incorrect information.
|
| > By the end of the 1980s, all of the grammar schools in
| Wales and most of those in England had closed or
| converted to comprehensive schools. Selection also
| disappeared from state-funded schools in Scotland in the
| same period.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school
|
| There are private schools that call themselves grammar
| schools (paid schools, not state funded) and some grammar
| schools still exist in Northern Ireland.
|
| But the system that defined what a grammar school is -
| has long since been abolished, and all free-access
| grammar schools were completely gone from my area before
| I was even born.
|
| ---
|
| EDIT: seems like the some state funded selective grammar
| schools exist but they are not exactly distributed
| evenly.
|
| So, I am wrong; and this situation is actually
| significantly more class-enforcing than it used to be.
| Amazing.
| Nursie wrote:
| I have a friend who teaches at a state funded grammar,
| and that wikipedia article includes a whole section on
| Current British grammar schools, which are selective and
| state funded o_O
| gadders wrote:
| They are mostly gone from the UK, but Kent has a fully
| functioning, state-funded grammar school system.
| bagnus wrote:
| As does Northern Ireland.
| andmikey wrote:
| Some counties in England still have _state_ grammar
| schools and still follow the 11+ process. The 163 that
| the poster above you is referring to are state,
| selective, schools, rather than private grammar schools.
| There 's a list linked in the Wikipedia page you linked:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammar_schools_in_
| Eng...
| gjhr wrote:
| Key word being "most". I attended a state funded grammar
| school in the 2000s.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammar_school
| s_in_Eng...
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| My neighbours kid took the 11+ two years ago to go to a
| state funded selective school in Warwickshire. 4 of my
| friends went to a grammar school (slate funded) in the
| 2000s and that school still exists in the same form it
| did back then.
|
| Most grammar schools are gone but there are far from
| none.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > all free-access grammar schools were completely gone
| from my area before I was even born.
|
| That's because you lived in an area that didn't have the
| 11+ exam. I did, and I went to a state-funded grammar
| school in the 1990s. It's still there, famously.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I went to a state grammar school, graduating in 2012.
| They still exist. There's a map of them here:
| https://www.theexamcoach.tv/grammar-and-independent-
| schools/...
| illwrks wrote:
| There are plenty free non-fee-paying Grammar schools all
| around London. There are some private fee paying schools
| that were historical Grammar schools and still have it in
| their name.
|
| The only issue is that Grammar schools are super
| selective these days, based on my own experience there
| are at least 10 applicants for every single place, as
| well as multiple rounds of tests to filter out children.
| In the end it's a lottery of sort too as local councils
| decide who is awarded a place.
| jibbit wrote:
| this, for example, is a state grammar school
|
| https://www.queenelizabeths.derbyshire.sch.uk
| b800h wrote:
| The vast bulk of councils in the UK abolished the 11+
| system. It does still exist in some places.
| Unfortunately, the system was ditched by the Labour
| government of 1976. Our current Labour lot are trying to
| do the same thing to our private schooling system.
| jvvw wrote:
| Just to confuse things, some former grammar schools
| turned into private schools but kept 'grammar' in their
| name.
|
| But to confirm, there are still areas that have state
| grammar schools and have the 11 plus: Buckinghamshire,
| Essex and Kent spring to mind as the obvious ones in the
| South East.
| MrJohz wrote:
| Birmingham also had a grammar school system that is state
| funded, although most are supported by a charitable
| foundation as well.
|
| This all became more complex again with the introduction
| of academies (twice, with different goals and subtly
| different setups) and free schools (although are those
| really a thing any more?) and I'm sure New New Labour
| will at some point add another category if school in the
| interests of simplicity...
| _joel wrote:
| There's one just down the road from me.
| NVHacker wrote:
| One of the past Labour governments decided that there
| should be no new grammar schools created. So the existing
| ones continued to function but, as some closed down, their
| number diminished.
| rgblambda wrote:
| There were problems with the grammar school system as well.
|
| They were created to provide a pathway to the middle class
| for bright children from working class families. But the
| entrance exam was heavily biased in favour of children from
| middle class backgrounds.
|
| Famously the first 11+ tests had questions like "Name the
| various types of servants in a household and what they do".
|
| In later years, getting out of school tuition was the main
| way to prep for the 11+, which put grammar schools
| financially out of reach for a lot of working class families.
| It had basically become a parallel state funded education
| system for the middle class.
| piokoch wrote:
| "Name the various types of servants in a household and what
| they do"
|
| This is incredible...
| jvvw wrote:
| My parents were both grammar school kids with working class
| parents, who didn't get any special prep for the 11+ beyond
| what their state primary school gave them. Both were the
| first people in their families to go to university and both
| managed to get into Oxford (where they met!). There was
| definitely a sweet point period when the system did what it
| intended in that sense, but there was obviously the
| drawback that if you ended up in the comprehensive system,
| you were stuck there and you had a situation where children
| got labelled at a young age.
|
| Obviously some areas still have grammar schools and the
| impression I get from people living in those areas is that
| to stand a fighting chance with the 11+, you need out of
| school tuition or for your parents to be educated enough
| and have time to tutor you yourself. House prices are also
| obviously high in grammar school areas too! I've seen
| recent 11+ papers and having bright children at state
| schools around that age who are at the top of their year
| academically, I think they would struggle with them without
| any preparation or tuition.
| physicsguy wrote:
| > In later years, getting out of school tuition was the
| main way to prep for the 11+, which put grammar schools
| financially out of reach for a lot of working class
| families. It had basically become a parallel state funded
| education system for the middle class.
|
| But given most schools now in the country (given only a
| small subset still have grammar schools) are done by
| catchment area, much of this still exists in comprehensive
| education too. Now, if you're well off you just buy a house
| in the right area so your kids get in to the good school.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Yeah, that's the new problem.
|
| I suspect in the past, people were less mobile, there
| wasn't the same disparity in wealth between different
| localities in the same general area, and school league
| tables weren't published. So the idea of moving to an
| area for (among other things) better education for their
| children wasn't something that was done.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > But the entrance exam was heavily biased in favour of
| children from middle class backgrounds.
|
| > Famously the first 11+ tests had questions like "Name the
| various types of servants in a household and what they do".
|
| That doesn't sound like a question a _middle class_ kid
| would know anything about - not unless your definition of
| "middle class" is _far_ different from mine.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| British "middle class" is a higher class than US "middle
| class", and servants were relatively cheaper back then.
| b800h wrote:
| Think in terms of the family in Mary Poppins. That's
| Middle Class.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Can confirm.
|
| My kid got in, and it turns out everyone else used a tutor
| (I stupidly took the advice not to do so from his teacher,
| who thought he'd get in just fine). This is in fact why
| playdates seemed to die out in the year or two before the
| test, the kids were being tutored but for some reason
| nobody would admit it.
|
| When I went for the intro evening, the parents were simply
| the same kinds of people (often the same actual people) as
| the private primary where my kid went. Essentially, it is a
| private school where you don't pay fees. Same parents, with
| PS30K more in the bank each year. The kids get into the top
| unis at a similar rate to the local fancy private school,
| which takes in all the classmates who didn't get in.
|
| I have to say, they are a good bunch of kids. There's none
| of the bullying problems that everyone else is reporting in
| my kid's year. They have an environment where they have
| other quite nerdy kids doing nerdy kid stuff, without
| judgement.
|
| But they are not a socially diverse bunch of kids. I'm not
| seeing any social mobility at all. Where are the kids whose
| parents are in the trades? Parents who aren't working? How
| come everyone I meet works in finance, law, accounting,
| medicine, or other white collar work?
|
| I think it's the tutoring. It lets the marginal white
| collar kids win over the marginal "other social class"
| kids.
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| This does prepare you to life though. More likely than not you
| will go to office. You will find yourselves with bullies, and
| again you can become a victim. Rather than feeling sorry about
| yourself, school prepares you to fight with bullies, to find
| inmates, to find friends. I think you could have not understand
| the life lessons.
|
| You will also enter other communities, where again, you will
| find bullies.
|
| God how I hate idea of "safe spaces".
| woodpanel wrote:
| Good grief, if the lack of caring for the kids, the
| indifference of the educators is now reframed as a virtue and
| core function of the failing school system I guess we are in
| deep trouble.
|
| Nope, if I have to share an office with an ethnic gang that
| attacks co-workers because of their different ethnicity I
| will certainly not "deal with bullies" but leave the place.
| abc-1 wrote:
| I don't know if this is satire or not, but all research shows
| bullying to be extremely harmful to youth.
| rvense wrote:
| Yes, and I think silly "tough guy" posturing and a lack of
| empathy as in that comment is one of the common
| consequences...
| logicchains wrote:
| >You will find yourselves with bullies, and again you can
| become a victim.
|
| I don't know what kind of places you've worked at, but
| everywhere I've worked if anyone behaved even 10% like the
| average high school bully they'd have been fired on the spot.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Adult bullies tend to be smarter about it. There are
| unfortunately plenty of ways to bully someone, without
| explicitly breaking any workplace rule.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| I can agree with that, it's the best counter argument, at
| least. Though it's a weak one.
|
| Cause there is certainly better ways to prepare a kid to the
| real tough life than having him to go through a prison. I can
| certainly see what the OP went through by relating to my own
| experience. I managed better, I was more often than not in
| the neutral ignored camp but I really see how bullies made
| life miserable to others, and how it could have been very
| different. These tensions didn't help me, it was just an
| issue I had to deal with, more or less successfully. But I
| really felt a liberation when I started my first job, though
| I've no rights to complain about my childhood.
|
| Regular teaching is a thing of the past. Specific lessons
| tailored to a kid capacity through AI (let's give it a few
| more years) is the future. Most modern countries will
| certainly start swapping regular teaching within the 10 next
| years, the rest of the world will follow.
| mrcsd wrote:
| This is abhorrent. The feeling of safety underpins emotional
| well-being. What you advocate is only the repetition of past
| suffering. Without safety, what is left but fear?
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Reality? And those safe spaces are built upon and upheld by
| others - who bully the other mean bullies to keep it that
| way. Every part of civilization is a energetic effort and
| if the civilization runs low on energy/supplybribery - the
| space closes with a thunderclap as the structure giveth.
| jv981 wrote:
| spending precious studying time on fighting and searching for
| transient "friendship"... yeah, that'll teach you about life.
| Nobody needs eggheads, boxers are in trend!
| concordDance wrote:
| This is completely wrong as far as I can tell.
|
| I have worked in 5 different companies, not one had any
| bullying. (Technically there was a one-off event involving a
| colleague and it was dealt with severely enough that it never
| happened again)
| arkey wrote:
| Lucky you. I've seen quite a bunch of the opposite. But
| then you do whatever you can to move on and find another
| job with a better atmosphere.
|
| Sadly, it wasn't so easy as that with school.
| arkey wrote:
| So... you're either predator or prey?
|
| In a way you're right, I worked in a consulting firm that
| seemed to have that mentality, and I did find bullies, and it
| seemed the only way to go forward was to become a bullying,
| lying cheat yourself.
|
| Then I went on to work for a more civilised company that
| believed in people being decent and such, and discovered that
| you can actually coexist with people and foster growth
| without stepping on other people on your way.
|
| If you think one can just "fight with bullies, find inmates,
| find friends" and everything will be alright, you're quite
| clueless to some experiences many people have gone through.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| While I hate to admit that you are not inaccurate, we are
| humans and should be able to find a way to raise the youth
| without resorting to storing them in prisons while they
| explore how to physically and emotionally torture one
| another. The fact that we accept this as a mere expression of
| nature is beyond horrifying, because schools are anything,
| but nature. I would sooner accept gangs of free roaming kids
| across the neighborhood, but you can't have that, because
| that would impede private property and businesses.
|
| << God how I hate idea of "safe spaces".
|
| It is not a question of safe space. It is a question of what
| you are teaching. Because of the people like you, who think
| it is perfectly fine education, I can accurately pinpoint
| 'troublemakers' and 'danger' as I walk down the street and
| avoid the place. That is explicitly NOT what early education
| should be.
| Simplex66 wrote:
| I went to a state school in the North of England with a GCSE
| pass rate between 30-40% and this is a fair description of what
| it was like. At the time the performance of all schools was
| based on the percentage of students achieving at least a C
| including Maths and English, and as Goodhart's law suggests
| this inevitably meant the school's resources were optimised for
| getting students around the C grade borderline to pass while
| all other students didn't get an education suited to their
| ability. The Gove reforms included changing how schools are
| assessed to a value-added measure, that I believe is commonly
| used in the United States, which has created the incentive for
| schools to focus on all students rather than just those near an
| arbitrary passing grade. The deeper underlying issue that's
| harder to solve is the anti-aspirational culture that pervades
| through a lot of schools in deprived areas, in my experience
| most students didn't really get the value a good education
| could bring to their lives and like the original comment
| treated it like internment rather than a route out of poverty.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Frustratingly, under pressure, Bridget Phillipson looks set
| to roll back most of those reforms.
| timomaxgalvin wrote:
| It's not always anti aspiration. It's knowledge that the
| school system isn't doing anything for them.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| This was exactly my experience in the South too.
|
| It's funny that society has the same issue - refusing to
| expel disruptive students, refusing to imprison or deport
| criminals, it's all the same.
| JohnCClarke wrote:
| I've always assumed that the babies grown in test tubes and
| graded into alphas to epsilons in Huxley's "Brave New World"
| are simply a metaphor for children going throught the UK school
| system.
|
| In that case the homeschooled are akin to the "savage" in the
| story.
|
| EDIT: corrected spelling!
| jamiedumont wrote:
| I've not encountered "Brave New World" but I love (and can
| see) the metaphor!
| dgfitz wrote:
| I read it when I was a kid... a homeschooled kid!
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It was required reading in my school.
| jamiedumont wrote:
| 34 year old who grew up on Guernsey (small island south and
| independent of Britain but with very much the same values) and
| went to a state-funded Grammar school for secondary and can't
| relate to all of this, but certainly most. The details are
| different but I agree that the education offered is subpar and
| the "socialisation" argument is bullshit. School left me
| feeling more isolated and alone than I've ever been.
| sirodoht wrote:
| "Chapter 1: Letters from Prison"
|
| https://laniakeabooks.org/books/letters-from-prison/part-1/#...
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| I grew up in the US, we're about the same age, and I went to a
| public school where I had a similar experience. More than
| anything else, I remember the crushing boredom and the feeling
| that time had slowed to a crawl. I wasn't beaten or abused, but
| I felt trapped in amber, and the school really was prison-like,
| just as you describe it. I've never hated anything so much in
| my life as I hated school.
|
| So I escaped the prison. I dropped out at age 14 and went to
| work in a book warehouse at the age of 16. Everybody was
| screaming about how much I'd regret it, but to this day I
| consider it among the best decisions I've ever made.
|
| Now I have young children of my own, and I'm not sure how I'm
| going to handle their education, but home schooling -- /w
| private professional tutoring and organized athletic activities
| -- looks like the best option. There's no way I'd subject them
| to public school.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Everybody was screaming about how much I'd regret it, but
| ...
|
| In a really healthy society, with really good schools,
| dropping out would (99%) be quite regrettable.
|
| _Some_ of those screaming people probably cared about you
| and your future. Most of them just resented you, for
| highlighting the actual state of their society and schools.
| And perhaps making them doubt their own choices.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> In a really healthy society, with really good schools,
| dropping out would (99%) be quite regrettable._
|
| That depends.
|
| Those who drop out because they can't hack it will find
| misplaced regret, blaming future woes on dropping out when
| in reality the problem is a continuation of the
| deficiencies that lead them to dropping out.
|
| Those who drop out because they have bigger and better
| plans won't think about it again.
| petsfed wrote:
| I think there are two assumptions embedded in the parent
| comment that I think you're ignoring:
|
| 1) The people who are on to bigger and better things are
| in fact vanishingly rare. Like, yes, Bill Gates dropped
| out of college, but he dropped out of _Harvard_ , not
| Evergreen Community College. He wouldn't have been there
| in the first place if he wasn't already capable of some
| big things.
|
| 2) A really healthy society, with really good schools,
| _would_ provide a path for those who can 't hack it. Its
| almost definitionally _not_ a good school if the process
| exposes some deficiencies, then just gives up. Like
| "well, it turns out your dyslexic, here's your cardboard
| box and begging pan" sounds like a _bad_ school.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> The people who are on to bigger and better things are
| in fact vanishingly rare._
|
| Dropouts are rare full stop, and those that do drop out
| overwhelmingly have life issues that causes them to drop
| out. The well rounded people who do okay in school aren't
| the ones dropping out, it is those with things like
| mental disabilities. It is not the act of dropping out
| that is impactful, it is the problems that lead to
| dropping out that continue after dropping out. It is a
| misconception that continuing in school would have cured
| what ailed them.
|
| _> A really healthy society, with really good schools,
| would provide a path for those who can 't hack it._
|
| You severely underestimate just how challenging life is
| for some people. If dyslexia was the biggest challenge to
| overcome, we'd have nothing to speak of. Some of these
| kids are, to be blunt, effectively vegetables. They are
| accepted into school for the sake of relieving the
| parents/primary caregivers, offering what is a
| babysitting service, but there is no academic value in
| them being there. They will not continue in school for
| prolonged periods of their life and there is no reason
| for them to.
|
| I guess in your imagined "really healthy" society, all
| people are perfectly equal. That's impossible. But if we
| did somehow live in your made up world then we can say
| that we already have "really good schools". Nobody in our
| schools we have drops out without a good reason.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Dropouts are rare full stop, ...
|
| From a quick search, the State of Michigan has roughly an
| 8% dropout rate. Whatever your criteria for the term
| "rare", that is a huge number of kids.
|
| If you are trying to run a really healthy society (vs. a
| Social Darwinism dystopia), then putting all the kids who
| don't do well in academic classroom settings on a "things
| like mental disabilities" - "effectively vegetables"
| spectrum seems extremely counterproductive.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Whatever your criteria for the term "rare", that is a
| huge number of kids._
|
| It is! When I go to the school to pick up my child, it is
| shocking how many have overtly visible challenges, never
| mind those who don't present to someone just casually
| walking in the door. It is rare, but rare is still a lot
| of people in large populations.
|
| I live next door to Michigan and 3% of the students have
| their own personal assistant in school for the schools to
| be able to cope to their severe challenges, and, by
| accounts of family who work in that industry, that many
| more _should_ have an assistant but there isn 't a
| sufficient workforce to fill those roles. So that is
| around 6% of the students, give or take, right there who
| aren't really a good fit for being in schools. Used to be
| that they would have been dumped into institutions and
| never step foot in school, but that's not socially
| acceptable anymore.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Hey guys, I just wanted to butt in to clarify that I'm
| not mentally disabled or dyslexic. I'm basically
| neurotypical... well... more or less.
|
| I dropped out simply because I found school insufferably
| boring and an almost complete waste of time. Some of my
| earliest memories are of myself thinking _" oh man, it's
| still just Wednesday -- two more days to go until the
| weekend?!"_ (Fast forward to today, and I find myself
| looking forward to Monday!)
|
| Just about everything else I found myself doing with my
| time -- including actual hard labor -- felt more
| rewarding and productive. (At least I was making money
| that I could use to buy 3dfx cards and RAM chips.) In
| truth, past phonics, don't think that I even learned
| anything in school; I was always ahead of the class just
| by reading books at home and at the library.
|
| My parents shed many tears, but they came to terms with
| my dropping out, because I had exhibited depressive
| symptoms from about the age of 9 or 10, and _those
| symptoms entirely vanished when I didn 't have to go to
| school._
|
| I'm sure that there are many others like me. Public
| school often tries to shove round pegs into square holes.
| There are better ways to learn, of that I'm certain.
| petsfed wrote:
| And this is sort of the case that I was gesturing
| towards. A good school system is not one that just pounds
| on you to sit in class until you can regurgitate some
| fact. Its one that lets students figure out what they're
| good at _before_ they have to be on their own.
|
| Montessori, vocational programs, self-directed learning
| on and on and on.
|
| Nobody should have to pick between "follow this specific
| concept of schooling" or "be institutionalized". That's
| not good schooling.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Its one that lets students figure out what they 're
| good at before they have to be on their own._
|
| The best way to figure out what you are good at is to do
| it. That is not the role of school and will never best be
| served by school.
|
| I know we've gotten caught up in a society that dreads
| children doing anything other than academics and sports,
| but it needn't be that way. In this hypothetical ideal
| society, it is most definitely not that way. Be careful
| to not let a poorly considered status quo cloud your
| judgement.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> I dropped out simply because I found school
| insufferably boring and an almost complete waste of
| time._
|
| That's having a bigger vision. Never fear, you are
| already well accounted for.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| It also says something about the quality of the "education"
| that you were able to (presumably) manage some sort of
| technical aspirations and career without the "required
| education".
|
| I know the feeling.
| f1shy wrote:
| This is the first comment in the page, the first I read, and I
| can also say, I learned nothing (if anything lies, bad science
| and nonsense) in school. Coming from a very different country,
| lived in many others I know is not better in those places. I do
| not have time to really teach my kids, but I will be all the
| way by their side, as they go through the brain washing machine
| of school.
|
| I will send them to the school just because I want them to
| interact with other people of same age, and also learn how much
| stupid people is around, and show them it won't get any better
| later in life. But I do not expect, at all, that they will
| learn something useful.
| knicholes wrote:
| How did you learn to write this paragraph?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's like all the people that insist "School never taught
| me anything useful like how to balance a check book" when
| you learned how to balance a checkbook in the math class
| that person never paid attention to.
|
| I'm sick and tired of being told what school is good and
| bad for by the very people who never paid attention. A
| school cannot magically make you motivated to learn things
| for 16 years. It's drudgery to most humans and always be,
| because we aren't naturally """meant""" to learn
| complicated and robust concepts for 16 years.
|
| Our options are deal with that and help kids who don't want
| to learn do things they don't want to do, or have a general
| populace that knows nearly nothing about the world around
| them.
| farrelle25 wrote:
| I'm early 50s and went to school in the Republic of Ireland -
| late 70s, 80s. I really feel the same as the OP here. It felt
| like a daily prison, combined with huge amounts of memorisation
| for exams. (promptly forgotten)
|
| Maybe a child could put up with the incarceration if it wasn't
| for the bullying on top of that too. No escape.
|
| Aside: In the 70s the Headmaster had a cane that was used
| occasionally but at least that died out later.
|
| But on a more optimistic note, I think there's some
| 'alternative schools' becoming more popular in Ireland now,
| like 'Forest School Ireland' etc... sounds more healthy anyway!
| wccrawford wrote:
| I went to a school that had a _lot_ of good teachers, and I
| learned a lot from them.
|
| But when it came to bullies, the school was just as you
| described. Worse, the punishment for _being in a fight_ was the
| same whether you started it or you were just beaten up. If you
| made the fight get noticed, you got punished. It was quite
| clear that they had no interest in stopping the fights, just in
| making sure they didn 't get reported.
|
| And on the bus, the driver didn't like my family because she
| once turned the bus around on our grass, tearing up a bunch of
| it, and my father was angry about that. In retaliation, she let
| bullies beat me up _on the bus_ for years and turned a blind
| eye.
|
| My education would probably have suffered if I was home
| schooled because both my parents were forced to work to make
| enough money to survive. And I'd be even more introverted than
| I am now.
|
| But man, the bullying was bad.
| dijit wrote:
| I'm sorry you went through that.
|
| I hope life has been kinder to you following this. :(
| wccrawford wrote:
| Generally speaking, yeah. Someone else mentioned the system
| preparing you for life later, and I can see where the
| bullies made me stronger as well.
|
| I definitely don't condone all that as a way to get
| stronger, but at least I got _something_ from it. Silver
| linings and all.
| foobarian wrote:
| Wish I could say the same. I often wonder how things
| would turn out if I didn't have the insecurities/other
| mental handicaps stemming from that period. And fantasize
| about rewinding time with the current brain and leaving a
| trail of broken bones in my wake :-D
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Worse, the punishment for being in a fight was the same
| whether you started it or you were just beaten up. If you
| made the fight get noticed, you got punished.
|
| I'm not saying that this is anything close to _optimal_ , but
| it should be noted that under this system (which is
| reminiscent of the way ancient Chinese criminal law worked,
| per _Legal Systems Very Different from Ours_ [0]) people who
| get beat up should still report and take the punishment.
| Sure, you'll get punished for it _once_ but you 'll also
| build a solid reputation for not letting things slide, so
| it's highly unlikely that anyone will want to beat you up
| again.
|
| [0] Except that the punishment back then for being involved
| in a crime (generally a theft or a swindle of some sort) was,
| guess what-- you got beat up.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > [...] so it's highly unlikely that anyone will want to
| beat you up again.
|
| That is, unfortunately, not how this works. The only ways
| to stop bullying are to be able to stand up to the bullies,
| which usually is not a realistic proposition (you wouldn't
| get bullied in the first place if you could) and can lead
| to further escalation (right on up to shootings or
| stabbings); to have a very, very empathic teacher who will
| put their foot down; or to have solid anti-bullying
| programs which use effective, proven methods to stamp out
| bullying.
|
| Mind that nothing will deter a really determined bully, and
| getting punished because your victim spoke up instead of
| accepting the bully's power will escalate things from
| 'bullying just because you are available' to 'bullying
| because I now want you, and specifically, you, as miserable
| as you can be, all the time'.
| strken wrote:
| From my experience with school bullying it was an
| entirely social problem. If the rest of the classroom
| agreed that you shouldn't be bullied then there were few
| ways for a handful of kids to go against that consensus,
| and most of them would backfire on the would-be bully.
|
| Of course, if you're young and you have no friends, good
| luck getting your peers to think you're worth defending.
| Verdex wrote:
| This is what happened to me, I suspect.
|
| The one time I got attacked, one of the top three popular
| guys in the class went berserk on my attacker. This
| happened in grade school and the next aborted attempt at
| bullying wasn't until the end of middle school by someone
| who had transferred in later on.
| 63stack wrote:
| Let's call this what this is, it is "below terrible"
| instead of "anything close to optimal". It's an interesting
| tidbit from a game theory perspective, but telling your
| child who is getting beaten up to not worry and play the
| long game is 1) horrible, 2) only works if everyone else in
| the game is rational. I don't remember bullies getting into
| trouble and stopping.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| > you'll also build a solid reputation for not letting
| things slide
|
| This is a terrible idea that was obviously flown as a butt-
| covering excuse by administrators who, like the school
| administrators, have discovered that it is much easier to
| fight reporting of crime than it is to fight crime.
|
| I am deeply disappointed to see it treated as some sort of
| deep truth, when in fact it is a shallow lie that anyone
| with the slightest understanding of bureaucracy ought to
| have seen through in no time at all.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| The only true advice I could give to a child with bullying
| issues is physical violence - as fast as possible. It is sad.
| It doesn't take many humans to make school/life/work
| miserable.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I saw one of my bullies after high school, and I asked him
| why he stopped hitting me. He looked me in the eyes and
| just said, "You got big."
|
| He was only scared that I'd hit him back, and nothing else.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Not being supported by the adults who pretend to be
| trustworthy is nearly as damaging as the bullying itself.
| Like you, I would be punished alongside the perpetrator even
| if I _didn 't throw a single punch or insult_. This is
| extremely toxic because it completely breaks trust and causes
| children to lose faith in the system they're in, and they
| shut down. I know I did. I stopped telling anyone my problems
| because experience told me saying anything only lead to more
| shame.
| cfn wrote:
| If there's one thing I was surprised when I moved to the UK
| from Portugal were the number of stories work colleagues told
| about bullying in school. Although there were fights and stupid
| games in the schools I went to in Portugal there was never
| systematic bullying.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I live in the UK now, but grew up in the US. My own experience
| is pretty similar.
|
| I was also a highly sensitive kid so took the abuse pretty
| hard. I was bullied by both other kids _and_ by teachers. I
| still remember one teacher openly calling me weird in class and
| picking on me (I was very introverted and shy due to years of
| bullying/anxiety, which I guess made me "weird"). Both physical
| and mental abuse from other kids. One "highlight" was being
| openly sexually assaulted in PE class and the teacher didn't
| even care.
|
| I was messed up psychologically for a very long time after my
| school experience. Extreme social anxiety, hyper sensitivity to
| criticism, constant feelings of anxiety and depression. It took
| a failed marriage and years of therapy until I was able to
| overcome most of this trauma and kind of start to live normally
| (in my 40s).
|
| As a result, like you, I am incredibly cynical of schooling
| systems. I see my kids suffering in British schools (in
| secondary), and it really pains me. They loved primary where
| there were small classes and secondary just has completely
| sucked out the joy of school for them. I wish I could just
| retire from work and full time home school them.
| rayiner wrote:
| I had a good experience in public K-8 (I went to a specialized
| STEM high school so I'll leave that aside) but I didn't learn
| anything. Public school is day care. My kids' expensive private
| school is day care with better food.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > I find it hard to think of school as anything more than
| forced internment for children while their parents go to work
|
| Open an history book and look how it was before schooling was
| free and mandatory.
|
| I do agree that the most recent spin on it is far from ideal
| and that the underlying goals seem to have shifted, but I can
| clearly and easily imagine an alternative way that doesn't
| involve home schooling.
|
| The problem is the same as in many other industries, once you
| optimise everything to please the capitalistic beast we created
| you're set for personal hell
| wink wrote:
| That sucks and I really don't mean to well actually here.. but
| in that scenario - which doesn't sound like the default outcome
| of going to a public school anywhere - would this not be "just"
| a reason to go for homeschooling later, only after the system
| has provably failed (long-term).
|
| Also maybe I have a false impression but I always thought
| people decided about homeschooling long before the kid(s) get
| to normal school age.
|
| That said, I don't have a strong opinion here and I can see how
| it's useful in certain situations, but I guess might have hated
| it even more than I hated school (after a certain age, I liked
| it when I was little) - but also none of my parents went to
| university or something, so I was on my own in math etc after a
| certain point, so not sure how they would have even managed to
| get me to finishing.
| dijit wrote:
| My argument is that school experiences vary drastically, that
| everyone commenting before me was saying that homeschooling
| their children was egotistical, stupid and harmful.
|
| When I, have a good reason why I might consider not sending
| _my own kids_ to state school, because my experiences were so
| bad.
| nickd2001 wrote:
| Just because your own school was sadly, terrible, doesn't
| necessarily mean your kids' would be similar, though? A
| formula that's worked for us, is - find a school with nice
| staff, be wary of huge academy chains (UK specific) and
| above all, seek peers that are very diverse - in terms of
| class, education level, wealth, race, nationality etc. That
| way your kids avoid being bullied for being "weird" because
| there's no such concept of "weird"-ness, kids in such a
| group have many different perspectives. To me, that's a far
| better environment for kids to develop and flourish, than
| siloed in a homeschooling situation.
| dijit wrote:
| Kids are excellent at pattern matching, and "weird"
| doesn't go across racial lines, weird is the kid who's a
| little on the spectrum, or not emotionally mature enough
| their first year to deal with circumstances- and instead
| shuts down.
|
| It's easy to be pigeon-holed by the class, and it's self-
| reinforcing.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I hated school as well but I would still disagree on almost all
| points with you.
|
| But I was lucky enough to go to a good public school, found
| many lifelong friends there, learned a ton of aside skills that
| help me now in my personal and professional life.
|
| I think it's really sad that more and more people opt out of
| society, either in school or elsewhere. I can understand it to
| some extent but I think everyone will come of poorer in the end
| if we all sit in our separate boxes, only thinking about
| ourselves and how we can profit more.
|
| I'm usually optimistic about the future but this is a hella
| depressing trend.
| Kubuxu wrote:
| A lot of people don't opt-out themselves, but the society
| opts them out. Be it a bully or stigma in school, not fitting
| in high-school or uni.
| viraptor wrote:
| To be fair to home schooling - a lot of it involves groups
| and organised activities. It's not really a separation in
| practice, but opting out if the default system. (There are
| those that separate too)
| geye1234 wrote:
| I went to grammar school (UK) in the 1990s, and also absolutely
| loathed it. I think it set me up horribly for life and
| (especially) for my career. People use the phrase "PTSD" too
| lightly, but I think it gave me something like it that I often
| feel in an office full of people, and especially during in-
| person meetings. Years of CBT and ERP have helped a lot, and
| now I'm middle-aged I think I've put the worst of it behind me.
| I remember that horrible feeling that both the bigger kids and
| the teachers were against you, and the sense of utter
| helplessness and despair.
|
| A few times my parents hired tutors for subjects I was
| struggling in, and I remember that suddenly I found myself
| enjoying them. I think I would have benefited greatly from
| being homeschooled, but of course at that time it was unheard
| of in the UK. I know it's not for everyone. There's no perfect
| answer. What's certain is that there's nothing 'normal' about
| sitting in a room with 30 people who are exactly the same age
| as you, plus one official authority figure.
|
| So school certainly 'socialized' me, but not in a good way.
|
| It wasn't entirely bad. I got a reasonably good education, and
| some of the teachers have left a positive impression. Overall
| though it was horrible.
| philk10 wrote:
| Also Grammar school (in the 1980s), I got lucky as I got in
| the 'express track' and did O-levels after 4 years not 5 so I
| went to uni at 17. Probably a good thing as some kids were
| total sh*ts and 5 years of them would have been awful
| ravenstine wrote:
| PTSD is misapplied quite a bit these days, though CPTSD (the
| C stands for complex) seems to be the most appropriate
| clinical definition for the kind of scattered traumatic
| damage people experience, especially from childhood.
|
| Glad to know you've received the help that you needed and
| have been able to move on. I compartmentalized and put off
| working on my traumas for far longer than I should have.
| People underestimate how much a dysfunctional school
| environment can mess someone up even when the home
| environment is mostly healthy. I screwed up great
| relationships in large part because I still had trust issues
| and CPTSD triggers that I didn't even realize at the time.
|
| No joke, I'd rather have only known the neighborhood kids
| growing up than have thousands of kids to socialize with
| while having fucked up things happen to me. So what if I
| wouldn't experience prom night? If it's not the right
| environment for me, then it's not worth it.
| geye1234 wrote:
| Thanks. Yes, CPTSD would be more accurate -- the result of
| a state of near-constant low-level fear. I had, and
| continue to have, massive trust issues, particularly at
| work. I struggle to think everyone doesn't secretly hate me
| and that I'm not constantly on the verge of getting fired,
| even though I can see it's not logical. Steadily getting
| better now thanks to CBT and similar techniques.
|
| But I have lost many friends and career opportunities as a
| result of my time at school. I had a basically healthy and
| happy home environment, but as you say, school can still
| screw you up badly.
| computerdork wrote:
| Wow, it seems like the UK education system is a very severe
| environment. Remember Anthony Hopkins saying the same thing
| about it being brutal, having received abuse from both the
| teachers and the other students.
|
| Yeah, just from my perspective having gone through the US
| public schools, the schools here seem to be a lot more open
| and friendly (following the American stereotype). But at the
| same time, we probably have a lot lower standards in terms of
| learning, and also the US has a lot of variation in school
| quality.
| sakex wrote:
| Such an accurate description of what I went through in
| Switzerland. Kids are mean, and I had to be mean to survive
| too. It stained my character in ways I am still trying to
| overcome more than a decade later.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Thank you. I get irrationally angry, when I hear the
| 'socialization' argument, precisely because of the experience
| you described. To be fair, it does, in a weird way, prepare you
| for some areas of adulthood, but I think those areas are
| thankfully somewhat avoidable.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It prepares you as much as it desensitizes you to accept bad
| environments because that's all the "adults" can do for you.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Agreed. If I ever have kids, I'm signing them up for MMA
| classes from the second they have to step onto school grounds.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I'm both glad and dismayed to hear that I'm not the only one
| who likens public school to prison.
|
| I went to school in California, and I would say my school
| experience became prison-like between grades 4 and 11. In
| fairness, I can now look back at my child self and realize that
| I was delayed in terms of emotional maturity, which contributed
| to my social problems, but the kind of environment I was in was
| the wrong one for helping me overcome that delay. Any slight
| difference about myself, whether it be my body, or my clothes,
| or my interests, was a target of daily ridicule. The majority
| of teachers were entirely self serving and didn't give a damn,
| even when I was being victimized out in the open. Oh yeah, and
| my property was repeatedly stolen and my belongings destroyed
| in front of me.
|
| Having gone through all that, there is no way I'm ever putting
| my future children in such a system.
|
| The way I think about the socialization argument against home
| schooling is this: Is it better to be highly socialized but
| traumatized or modestly socialized by not traumatized?
|
| I think it's more valuable for children to be socialized with a
| smaller number of other children while being in a safe
| environment. Tossing children into an ocean of other children
| that is poorly controlled with callous teachers, creating an
| unsafe environment, has a rapidly diminishing returns on
| socialization and a greater chance of being counterproductive.
| geye1234 wrote:
| This is a major reason (but far from the only reason) that we
| homeschool. Knowing what I know about the school system,
| about my own experience thereof, and about my kids'
| personalities, it would be grossly immoral for me to put them
| through it. The risk of long-term trauma would be too high.
|
| There is some risk of their being isolated (but very low,
| since they are with other kids three days a week), and a
| slightly higher risk of missing chunks of learning (which we
| aim to mitigate in the obvious ways). But ultimately I'd
| rather my kids have a few gaps in their knowledge than be
| traumatized by the school system.
| honzabe wrote:
| > I'd rather my kids have a few gaps in their knowledge
| than be traumatized by the school system
|
| I went through a normal school system (the first 8 years
| still during the communist regime in my country, so take
| that "normal" with a grain of salt), and the gaps in my
| knowledge are enormous, in some cases subject-wide. I know
| literally nothing about chemistry, except the bits you
| learn here and there from TV shows and such. I vaguely
| remember some kind of equations, but nothing stuck. Biology
| - everything I know I know from somewhere else, mostly from
| that TV show with talking blood cells [1]. Surprisingly, I
| had pretty good grades, but it had nothing to do with
| knowledge - I was able to quickly scan the textbook before
| an exam and somehow it was sufficient, but there was no
| retention, I forgot everything after the exam. I was forced
| to learn Russian for 4 years and I remember literally
| nothing, not even the alphabet.
|
| Those are mostly just anecdotes - I am sure that modern
| schooling can do better than rote memorization in a toxic
| environment. What I want to say is that motivation, a
| friendly environment, and fun learning are a lot more
| important than how well the teacher knows, say, chemistry.
| It is entirely possible that your kids will retain more
| knowledge, not less.
|
| I am only talking about elementary school, college was
| different - I loved it and learned a lot.
|
| [1] Il etait une fois... la vie -
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284735/
| geye1234 wrote:
| Agree, there are plenty of kids who go to government
| schools and have enormous gaps in their knowledge, in the
| west as well.
|
| I'm saying that, all things being equal, I'd rather my
| kids be homeschooled with a few gaps, than go to a
| government school (and be traumatized) and have no gaps.
| dijit wrote:
| I forgot about the lack of personal property.
|
| You couldn't really own anything and had to prepare for
| anything nice to be stolen, or anything they looked dear to
| you (even if not nice) to be destroyed.
|
| I heard of kids having their shoes stolen, but I never had
| that.
|
| I'm sorry that happened to you, I hope you are doing better
| now. :(
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The principal always told me "just walk away" and I said,
| "You fool, the bullies have legs".
|
| The key thing that enables bullying is your being confined in
| a space with them. Bullying can leave scars that last a
| lifetime that will affect your employment, your
| relationships, your children, everything. Not least hearing
| complete crap from authorities primes you to distrust
| authorities unconditionally.
| Retric wrote:
| Having the emotional maturity to deal with things you don't
| like happening has a major influence on how tough being
| bullied feels like. It's rarely much time or physical pain,
| but some kids obsess over it even if they aren't the major
| target they often feel extremely persecuted.
|
| Adults can watch something happening and think nothing
| particularly significant is going on while some kids are
| experiencing extreme internal distress.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The typical case of physical bullying is not just "things
| happening that you don't like"; it's wanton, unprovoked
| assault and battery. Even lesser forms of bullying
| generally involve some kind of unambiguous threatening,
| menacing or intimidation. The "emotionally mature" way of
| dealing with such things in any sane society is not to
| just walk away, but rather to acknowledge that such
| actions are inherently an outrage to their fellow
| students' basic human dignity, and demand that those
| responsible face meaningful consequences. The fact that
| "it's rarely much physical pain" (and that merely because
| kids are involved as opposed to adults) is completely
| irrelevant.
| Retric wrote:
| That may be your memory, but in the typical day it's
| intimidation and emotional abuse. Especially in terms of
| girls who make up half the population, they rarely get
| punched in the face but arguably have larger issues to
| deal with.
|
| I'm not accusing you of misrepresenting the situation,
| just trying to convey what's objectively going on can
| feel very different from what people's lived experience
| is. Someone with older siblings can barely register being
| bullied in some situations that really are traumatic to
| others.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Certainly it was the most common for me (also California
| public school). That does not mean I would not bring up
| the physical violence as the first item in the list! It's
| the one least open to interpretation.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| In elementary school I had a girl in class who the other
| girls made fun of. There was nothing physical. Boys kind
| of made fun of her as well, but what really stuck to her
| was the other girls. She did therapy, but even her
| therapist told her that she is a hopeless case. Which is
| obviously extremely unprofessional and terrible. She
| ended up taking her life in her 20s. It was just mental
| bullying by peers. It is very sad to think back at the
| time. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her to
| deserve this bullying, and peers did it as some sort of
| self esteem popularity type of thing.
|
| I do remember school being this survival of the fittest
| type of thing as well. Some were naturally good at it,
| others not so much, different people handled it
| differently.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >The "emotionally mature" way of dealing with such things
| in any sane society
|
| If my children lived in a war zone and were suffering
| constant (high risk) of being killed or mutilated, the
| mature way of dealing with that wouldn't be to teach them
| to take cover, or survival skills, or medical triage and
| first aid... it'd be to just leave and never go back. Get
| one million miles away from it. Normalizing it, saying
| "what are you gonna do, we live in a war zone" is
| strange. But it's just as bizarre to say "you should
| become an anti-war activist and demand that the diplomats
| make a lasting peace".
|
| No, just get the fuck out as quickly as is humanly
| possible, and never look back. Later, when you're
| someplace safe, maybe you do therapy for the PTSD (I have
| my doubts that it works), but the first and most
| important step is to put distance between yourself (or
| your children) and the threat, enough distance that makes
| it impossible for the threat to follow.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| A lot of adults have the same experience. They are
| perpetually persecuted.
| graemep wrote:
| > Adults can watch something happening and think nothing
| particularly significant is going on while some kids are
| experiencing extreme internal distress.
|
| I think because that is also often because they regard it
| as normal for kids. A lot of people say things like
| "bullying toughens them up".
|
| They would not think its OK for the same things to be
| done to adults. I wonder what the toughens them up lot
| would think if I showed up at their house with a few
| friends and gave them a light beating - I think calling
| the police would be a more likely outcome than thanking
| me for teaching them to be tough!
| brightball wrote:
| There are levels to this stuff too.
|
| I got picked on all the time as a kid in school. I did
| not like it, but it did develop several traits that I
| learned to appreciate later in life. First and foremost,
| I am not the slightest bit bothered by anyone mocking me
| anymore. I don't get easily embarrassed at all.
|
| At the same time, I also learned to fit in a lot better.
| Getting picked on for things I said or did create some
| social conditioning about what was and wasn't acceptable.
|
| This type of bullying was helpful in hindsight.
|
| Physical bullying is different ballgame and I don't
| understand anyone that thinks it's acceptable.
|
| Cyberbullying is on a whole other level of publicly
| humiliating a developing child in front of everybody they
| know, often by anonymous people who will take steps to
| make sure it never goes away if they want to.
|
| The latter 2 are totally unacceptable and dangerous.
|
| The first getting lumped in with bullying creates
| bullying apologists I think, because there can be
| beneficial side effects of helping kids learn social
| norms.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I can see why an adult who's never dealt with these
| difficulties in childhood would give that sort of advice,
| but it's bewildering how school administrators weren't (and
| probably still aren't) trained on the reality that "just
| walk away" is a platitude in the context of an environment
| where bullies have a captive audience.
|
| It reminds me of how we were told "stick and stones will
| break my bones but words will never hurt me", which is easy
| to say as an adult with autonomy and other sources of
| fulfillment; in reality, words not only hurt, but have
| lasting _social consequences_. If some turd of a kid has
| the charisma to humiliate you in front of everyone, even
| when only verbally, that can lead to a permanently damaged
| sense of self and lack of respect from peers.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is more than one kind of charisma.
|
| Some people have a positive charisma that comes out of
| treating people well. I'd expect this from the captain of
| a sports team.
|
| I knew someone who had a negative charisma, who was
| criminally minded. He was popular among drug users at my
| school because he would take more chances and thus have
| the best supply. He got caught on tape selling 3 kilo of
| cocaine to a cop after I'd graduate. He had a talent to
| motivate other people into criminal activity and became
| the leader of a gay bashing gang that seemed to mainly
| target straight allies because this was the 1980s and
| folks like that were probably scared about getting AIDS.
|
| I don't picture the elementary school bully as being
| particularly popular, but he certainly gets deference
| from the other students. I think of the popular kids in
| school as being genuinely likeable even if they didn't
| take a stand against bullies.
| paxiongmap wrote:
| XKCD is universal... https://xkcd.com/1216/
| conductr wrote:
| We pay for a private school, it's expensive yes and I know
| not accessible for all, but it's kind of the best of both
| worlds. You get to choose the school and it's a community
| vibe. It helps when the other kids, potential bullies, know
| your kid and know their parents talk to your parents. It also
| helps as the staff is acutely tuned in to things like this,
| and they have amazing ways of conflict resolutions. It's not
| difficult, it just requires some attention and thought. They
| reinforce golden rule type actions/behaviors/leading by
| example/etc. As an example, if one kid picks on another one,
| instead of detention - they will both be given a 'private
| talk' and then paired up on some activity. The result is,
| they were constructively scolded then had a chance to bond
| and become friends - and it works. It's never going to be
| fully eradicated, but it's amazing just how little there is
| and how supportive everyone is in trying to develop good
| humans.
|
| They also assess the kids emotional maturity early on. Those
| that they feel are not ready to go from Kinder to 1st get a
| 'Primer' year. It's basically holding them back in Kinder but
| with a positive twist.
|
| Tons of other benefits as the parents hold a lot of power
| (since we pay). But also, the quality of staff/teachers, and
| low ratios are quite a perk compared to our area's public
| schools which are poorly rated.
|
| I went to public school myself, and while I was never
| bullied, I do think I was a target of bullies at some time.
| Any time I felt like someone was bullying me, I fought back
| and would often be disciplined under zero tolerance rules.
| That's how my parents taught me to deal with it, 'stand up
| for yourself boy' kind of thing. We've taught our kid not to
| hit and to be kind and he is, but that's exactly what I think
| would make him a huge target in a public school environment.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| This is why introducing a degree of school choice is
| becoming a popular policy among parents in both parties,
| but I think bringing back rapid expulsion to disciplinary
| boys/girls schools would be even more impactful.
| Unfortunately, recent social justice activism has stymied
| that possibility in progressive areas. Either restore
| unfettered power of self-curation to the environment and
| ensure it is wielded effectively, or parents will demand
| more flexibility in choosing from non-monopoly options.
| pempem wrote:
| I'm sorry - you're following all the comments about
| public schools being like a prison and you're suggesting
| people get expelled _faster_ or disciplined _more_ to
| improve schools?
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| yeah, in what world would that not help? they're not
| getting kicked out of the school _system_ , just the
| _school_. lowest-common-denominator idealism like you are
| espousing here is one of the primary reasons why schools
| have gotten so terrible.
| bdangubic wrote:
| my kid goes to private school. expelled students by
| grade:
|
| 1st: 2
|
| 2nd: 4
|
| 3rd: 4
|
| 4th: 3
|
| 5th: 5
|
| 6th: 3 (so far)
|
| why am I saying this? we pay tens of thousands of dollars
| per year for having access to this kind of environment.
| if there is a kid who is fucking up everyone else, the
| "everyone else" should not have to suffer through it. I
| would pay double what I pay now for this priviledge for
| my kid. so yes, 100%, more expelling and more discipline
| is needed
| quacked wrote:
| Prisons would be a lot safer if the dangerous inmates got
| kicked out of prison and left behind the ones who didn't
| attack other inmates.
|
| If you want to improve schools quickly, expelling problem
| kids is the easiest way to do it. But that would cause
| consequences to the expelled kids, as well as society.
| jcarrano wrote:
| I find it appalling that parent who can afford a private
| school, even with much sacrifice, would instead send their
| children to a a public school.
|
| It is the equivalent of eating soup at a homeless shelter
| when you can go to the store and buy something better, made
| worse by the fact that you are making the decision for
| someone else that cannot decide on their own.
| FlyingAvatar wrote:
| You have a choice of what public school your child goes
| to based on where you live. Many parents "shop" for their
| schools in this way.
| nothercastle wrote:
| There is an assumption that private is better always and
| that's not true. Top 10-20% of private is better but it's
| expensive and not available to most. There is a lot of
| poor and low quality private too.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| I attended a private school for a couple of years, and I
| have to say it was worse than the public ones.
|
| Now obviously this is going to be neighbourhood, country,
| and community specific, but the problem I had with
| observing private schools was that now the school had an
| additional incentive not to expel students, rich and
| influential parents had extra influence over whether their
| child could be disciplined and how the school should do
| things, and half of the time the problematic behaved people
| were... the rich people and their children. Having and
| paying money isn't exactly a free ticket to well-adjusted
| children especially if the children are mimicking the
| culture they see at home and the society awards bullying
| and various behaviours with more money... Which most of
| ours do.
|
| And this was on top of the downsides of private schools:
| being image obsessed over academics and intellectual
| investigation, surrounded by non egalitarian private school
| twats, and bunches of arbitrary private school rules. Now
| obviously this is not all private schools, but in the same
| way it's not all public schools either.
|
| I think in this system it's a roll of the die. In my
| country, neighbourhood and in my life, my kid is currently
| going to public school and, touch wood... thriving for now.
| The other private schools around here have too much woo
| like Waldorf and Steiner and they steer away from evidence
| based methods in literacy and numeracy.
|
| But I don't know if that's going to hold off into the older
| ages, and I can't promise, much to my wife's chagrin, not
| to consider homeschooling considering my own experience of
| high school also approaching that of a dysfunctional prison
| and a poor educational environment.
|
| PS: there was plenty of interpersonal violence at the
| private schools when I grew up.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| The book Lord Of The Flies made a lot more sense when I
| realized it was a satire of British elite schools, rather than
| a real exploration of what cast away young people would actual
| do in that situation.
| endoblast wrote:
| What six real castaway boys did in 1966:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/real-lord-flies-true-story-boys-
| isl...
|
| > _The boys had set up a small commune with food garden,
| hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with
| curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a
| permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and
| much determination_
| greenthrow wrote:
| I grew up in the US and I hated every single day of school. I
| don't have a favorite teacher I remember fondly, I don't have
| friends from school, etc. I absolutely hated it.
|
| But I still am against home schooling. I still got social
| skills from going to public school that homeschooled kids lack.
| I still don't think your average parent is equipped to give
| their children a good education.
|
| I have people I know who have homeschooled their kids. Without
| exception these people are narcissists with insane views who
| are using it as a way to indoctrinate their children into
| having the same worldview that they hold.
|
| Homeschooling should be illegal. It is child abuse.
| dijit wrote:
| Because what I was literally forced by the state to endure,
| is not child abuse.
|
| Come one.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Yes some kids face abusive situations in public schools.
| But all kids are by definition facing abuse when home
| schooled imho.
| dijit wrote:
| > by definition
|
| My mum never punched me in my face, followed me around
| the playground trying to put dog shit in my backpack,
| steal my books and piss on them or make rumours about me
| to ensure I was ostracised by the other children. All the
| while the adults were helpless and continually told me to
| be a man- and worse, the adults leaning in on it being my
| problem. A true hopeless feeling.
|
| You will never know how much I can despise you for your
| presumption that my home-life could possibly be
| correlated with my school life.
|
| "by definition". Honestly, go fuck yourself.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Lots of kids home lives are worse than your school life.
| But that's not the point I was making. You are letting
| your personal horrible experience define the whole
| discussion for you. But that is completely beside the
| point I was making. Yes some kids are physically abused
| even tortured at school, some kids are physically abused
| even tortured at home. You don't make policy decision
| based on outlier cases that are already illegal.
| dijit wrote:
| "all kids are facing abuse by definition when home
| schooled" is still ringing.
|
| By your own words here you should be agreeing with me,
| that homeschooling should be a legal choice.
|
| That making a policy decision based on an outlier (home
| abuse) that affects everyone is bad.
| greenthrow wrote:
| As I explained in my initial comment, the problem is
| average parents are not equipped to be good teachers and
| homeschooled kids are being denied the variety of
| experiences that kids going to an actual school are
| getting. That's why I said all homeschooled kids are
| being abused by definition. Not the same type of abuse
| you got at school or I got at home. But they are being
| denied a proper education. They are being denied the
| opportunity to learn to make friends and socialize with
| different people. When it's time for them to finally go
| out into the world they will be poorly equipped to do so.
|
| If I thought home schooling was a sure fire way to avoid
| violent abuse for any kids, maybe it would be worth the
| trade off. But we both know if anything abusive parents
| are also going to abuse their kids via home schooling.
|
| I honestly think on the whole homeschooling is doing more
| damage to the kids being put through it and should be
| illegal. Obviously before actually doing that we should
| do scientific studies and surveys of adults who went
| through it and make a decision based on that rather than
| just my opinion. But right now we let parents do it just
| because extremist parents insist on it. And I think we
| are failing those kids.
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| If it weren't for homeschooling my autistic daughter would be
| spending her day in the headteachers office shaking and
| crying due to her cripping anxiety.
| greenthrow wrote:
| I'm glad that you have a way to help your daughter. But
| there are many kids with similar issues and homeschooling
| can't be our solution for all of them. Instead we need to
| figure out how to accomodate them at schools.
| otikik wrote:
| I'm sorry you had a bad time at school.
|
| > give an appreciable reason
|
| You might not have succeeded at that. You did a very good job
| at denigrating school though :)
|
| Let me try to tell you my view: both homeschooling and schools
| have risks. A child can suffer mistreatment both at school and
| at home.
|
| School however offers something that homeschooling can't:
| options. If you have a bad teacher, you will have another 4
| which are average, and 1 or 2 which are actually decent. There
| will be bullies, yes, but you also have opportunities to make
| friends.
|
| At home, all you have is a single adult. If that adult happens
| to be a psycho, there's no escape.
|
| I say this as someone who suffered at school. My ADHD got
| completely unnoticed, being of the inattentive kind. I didn't
| know how to relate with others, I had no friends. I would pick
| up a book and read in a corner during recess. I got bullied.
| For me school was something I "endured", not something I
| enjoyed.
|
| I also happen to be the elder of 4 children. My younger
| brothers and sister went to the same school I went to. They had
| different teachers, different co-students. All of them were
| happy at school, and they turned up just alright.
|
| Now, my parents. My mum is ok (for someone who has raised 4
| people) but my dad is a self-absorbed narcissist. My brothers
| and sister stopped talking to him 20 years ago. He doesn't know
| his own grandchildren. I still talk with him, but out of pity.
| There's no love left.
|
| So yeah. I suffered at school. It happens. My siblings didn't.
| I think homeschooling with my mum would have been ok, she's
| decent. But homeschooling with my dad? I would be way worse
| than I am now.
|
| So, there. Options.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Bullying is not just something that one does to another
| person. It's the social destruction of self that is mediated
| by a group:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Bullying-Social-Destruction-Laura-
| Mar...
|
| Bullies couldn't do what they do if they did not have the
| support of the other students, teachers, administration, etc.
| As late as college I was harassed by criminally minded person
| who led a criminal gang that was not held in check until they
| finally smashed somebody in the face with a rock in front of
| many witnesses. Two people were driven to suicide.
|
| The leader has been to prison and if he got out and went
| straight I could forgive him, even celebrate him, because it
| is so hard to get out of being justice involved. I'm still
| angry at the college administrator who told me "my hands are
| tied" who many see as a hero because he really did a lot of
| great things for our school -- but I wonder who else was
| driven to suicide and I fantasize about going to his funeral
| and dumping over his casket. An apology from him would go a
| long way, I've asked for it, I never expect to get it.
|
| If you're being bullied in elementary school _you don 't get
| friends_. It could be that the bullying drives away friends,
| or if you had friends you wouldn't get bullied, or the same
| deficits that cause you to get bullied also cause you not to
| get friends. Just being in a safe environment is a basic
| human right.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Wow, that is tremendously messed up! I'm sorry you had to
| experience that. Kind of makes my young adult life sound
| like a cake walk.
|
| Ironically, it was the jocks and the gang affiliated kids
| who always left me alone. I don't know exactly why, though
| I figured the jocks were popular enough to not waste their
| energy tormenting someone socially beneath them.
|
| Anyway, I completely agree with what you've said. Whenever
| I experienced bullying, it was in close correlation to how
| callously indifferent the overall system was. The couple of
| schools I went to where I didn't experience trouble had
| empathetic teachers and administrators whom actually built
| trust with the students. The earlier schools I went to were
| mostly run by selfish teachers (whom I later learned were
| even more selfish than I realized at the time!) and
| administrators who would punish the bully and the victim
| equally out of laziness/callousness/stupidity; or look the
| other way entirely! Guess which ones I suffered under and
| which ones I didn't.
|
| > If you're being bullied in elementary school you don't
| get friends. It could be that the bullying drives away
| friends, or if you had friends you wouldn't get bullied, or
| the same deficits that cause you to get bullied also cause
| you not to get friends. Just being in a safe environment is
| a basic human right.
|
| I know you're referring to elementary school here, but I
| think this dynamic you're describing also explains why so
| many kids have a rotten time in middle school. Usually,
| middle school lasts only a few years, and can easily mean
| being separated from any sort of peer group you have for
| multiple reasons. If your friends are even slightly older
| or younger than you are, then one will have to face a year
| of middle school without them. Depending on where your
| friends live, they might end up in a different middle
| school even though you both went to the same elementary
| school.
|
| Even though I did have one good friend in elementary school
| (we are still best friends today), he is a year older than
| I am, and even though we went to the same middle school I
| had to spend at least 1 year in elementary school without
| him and then another during my second year in middle
| school. And I know he had the same problem in reverse. When
| you're seen as having "no friends", even though you
| _actually do_ , everyone treats you like you have the stink
| of death. Those were some of the worst years of my life.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I hate the stereotype in movies that jocks are bad.
|
| There must be some bad apples but mostly they are focused
| on their sport and the team and don't have time or energy
| to make trouble, and if they do make trouble, they are
| off the team.
|
| The time some people attacked me at my dorm I ducked into
| the room of the captain of the rugby team and that was
| the last time they came to my dorm. The captain of the
| football team at my high school was popular because he
| treated everybody well, I'd say the same about kids who
| were stars in youth soccer. In fact, even though I didn't
| feel terribly engaged with it at the time, youth soccer
| is a precious memory to me because it was one place where
| I was never mistreated (a group photo shows me standing
| next to the coach who probably gave me just a little
| extra attention because of my neurodivergence.)
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yup, I agree. I'm sure there's bad apples out there, but
| I had the least issues with jocks and popular people.
| Even in America, they didn't pick on me, and I was always
| confused by how vilified they were in popular media.
| Looking back, it was always these sort of middle of the
| road kids who were the problem; neither particularly
| popular nor at the bottom of the totem pole. Completely
| unremarkable, and with incredibly fragile egos.
|
| Your analysis is on point. With some exceptions, popular
| people are usually popular for a valid reason.
|
| There was this one guy I remember who wasn't exactly a
| jock, but sort of overlapped with them I guess. I'm
| pretty sure he played rugby. He had a great physique for
| a high schooler, was charming to everyone, and had the
| sort of look about him like he would become a "dreamboat
| doctor" as an adult. Anyway, I was doing miserably in
| chemistry class, not necessarily because I was bad at
| science but I was just having a tough time in school in
| general which made me unfocused. Without even asking him,
| he offered to help me study for my exams, and I took him
| up on it even though I did feel ashamed for needing help.
| With his help, I passed that class with what was the
| equivalent of a C grade in New Zealand. He became class
| president, and I know he was the one to deserve it. I'm
| grateful to this day that he was one of the few people
| during my school career who actually cared. And yeah, he
| was probably the most popular student there.
| otikik wrote:
| I guess you are answering to the "you also get friends"
| part of my comment.
|
| What you suffered was horrifying, I hope you have
| recovered. There's degrees in bullying. Mine was not that
| bad in comparison to yours. The kid who was a bane of my
| existence would not attack me every single day, at every
| single hour. I was not important enough or "fun enough to
| mess with", I suppose. It was more like a "once per week"
| kind of thing.
|
| I was not very successful at making friends. But I did make
| a couple. The first one was the other guy who was also
| regularly bullied. He had clear developmental issues, I
| don't think teachers could turn a blind eye on them like
| they could on mine. We talked about videogames, almost
| exclusively. It helped, somewhat. Then he (I think) became
| romantically interested in me and I had to cut it off.
|
| Then there was another kid who regularly came to my house.
| We played with legos, which I had many. Then he stopped
| liking Legos. (Children...)
|
| My school _did_ give me many more opportunities to make
| friends. Retrospectively, I know I could have made more. I
| just didn 't know how to. In my case it would be "the same
| deficits that cause you to get bullied also cause you to
| not get friends". I only managed to make real friends in
| highschool (and even then it was just 2 or 3). And that was
| after I decided to make a conscious effort to understand
| the social rules that seemed to come naturally to others.
|
| I think my problem was more a "me" issue. The bullying
| didn't help but I suspect I would have made very few
| friends independently of it.
|
| > Just being in a safe environment is a basic human right.
|
| I do agree. Unfortunately many children's homes are not
| safe environments. Homeschooling for them is worse than
| bullying can ever be at school. Imagine 24-7 with your
| bully, who is way bigger than you and from whom you also
| depend for food, water and shelter.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I find it hard to think of school as anything more than
| forced internment for children while their parents go to work,
| with exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a
| functional understanding. I would not be surprised if this
| feeling is shared among many of my generation and social class,
| the endless chasing of metrics has made even the tiniest amount
| of joy that could exist in school- Non-existent.
|
| The problem is, when you allow homeschooling, a non-
| insignificant number of children will have to endure the same,
| just the wardens and torturers will be their own parents. There
| have been more than enough cults who actually promote that
| parents keep their children from "outside influence", and on
| top of that come the pedophiles, again especially in religious
| circles. Even private schools suffer from such issues, again
| mostly religious ones, but there also have been a fair share of
| scandals surrounding "ordinary" esoteric schools.
|
| I would rather fight for government-run schools to have proper
| budgets for a high quality learning experience, adequate staff,
| modern curricula and teaching methods and actually sensible
| policies against bullying of all kinds than to allow systems to
| thrive that are _even worse_ than what you went through.
| drdude wrote:
| I agree with you. This is coming from Saudi.
|
| I don't have any friend from my school times. Bullying was the
| norm back in late 80's and the 90's till I am in college on
| '99.
|
| The real friends? the real education? started at college.
| School was a 12 years full of non sense useless stuff to
| someone's practical life and improvement (to me and many of
| people around me. The most I remember of these days were math
| and science lessons that were beneficial and my father alone
| was more than capable teaching me that... other than language
| lessons, religious teaching that were just a formality for us
| (we learn religion the best from home, our extended family) etc
| etc. At the end? We lost most of 12 years that are the best for
| internalizing more engineering and professional education. Yes
| we are capable of that at that age, I and my younger brother at
| the least built some robots and actual cars with suspension and
| steering etc although using old Lego collections (since we grew
| poor we couldn't afford actual tools) and that was ALL on our
| own at home and we didn't have internet or anything. We
| modified RC cars to go faster by soldering capacitors to give
| that boost to the motor (at the expense of battery life and
| potentially burning the motor) when we were in middle school.
|
| Programming you say? my love for computers and computer games?
| all at home too, with some help from my older cousin (that I
| will visit in 30 minutes, he is 67 years old now and without
| him I wouldn't even dream of getting a PhD in CS, and of course
| my professors who I revere and respect).
|
| Nearly all my useful skills, other than math and science as I
| mentioned), I and my brother learned on our own... at home. It
| all started at home. The school? was torture and a formality we
| had to go through or no one will hire us.
|
| I am for minimal formal schooling with specialization starting
| from day 1, each one can choose a MUCH shorter path and more
| focused on what they want to do... switching between
| specializations and/or profession shouldn't be like collapsing
| a sky scraper we have built with hay (like it is now the case).
| wasting people's lives, causing them trauma for whatever miss
| function (e.g. students being beaten for silly missed homeworks
| etc). This system is age old and not effective, and there are
| more effective ways. Most of those who changed the world were
| school drop outs for a reason... they focused on what really
| matters and connected it to reality.
| scarmig wrote:
| The people who say "it's to make you interact with normal
| people!" miss a key point. In the real world, you meet a
| person, and if they treat you like shit, you walk away. If they
| physically assault you in the workplace, you can report them to
| HR, and there's a good chance you'll never have to see them
| again. In school, you get told you need to have empathy for
| their propensity to beat you, get subtly or not-so-subtly
| victim blamed, and you still have to interact with them for at
| least a year, and maybe years.
|
| Exit is probably the most powerful strategy to dealing with
| certain kinds of situations, and schools deny you that.
| sanitycheck wrote:
| This was my reaction upon seeing the question in the post
| title, too.
|
| I've chosen not to have kids (my childhood experience of other
| kids being one contributing factor) but if I did I would not
| want them to be anywhere near a UK state school.
| teeray wrote:
| > Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You
| likely mean memorisation? That's not education.
|
| There's so many classes that I want a refund on my wasted
| childhood time. Reading the "classics" in English, studying
| foreign language, Theology (Catholic schools), History (yes,
| History). I hated all these classes, didn't learn much from
| them beyond what it took to pass the tests, then quickly forgot
| what they taught. Anything useful that would have come from
| those subjects I learned later, through alternate more
| enjoyable means (e.g. Assassin's Creed was way more effective
| in teaching me the history those games covered).
| gabruoy wrote:
| I never read pretty much any book written before 1970, never
| learned a foreign language beyond a single semester of
| Spanish, and certainly had no Theology in a US Public school.
| Now as an adult, I do want to learn all those things (to some
| degree) and feel like I missed out on it; "If only I had a
| better education." But I probably would have been more like
| you, uninterested and equally as dismissive of my childhood
| education if I were forced to learn all of those things at
| that age. Is it a problem with educators, families, or just
| the children themselves that they will grow up and realize
| the opportunities they've lost?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You
| likely mean memorisation? That's not education.
|
| I hear your overall point, but treating this issue as a
| dichotomy undermines your point. Critics of homeschooling
| aren't claiming that schools are perfect, or that schools
| educate ideally. The claim is that, as poorly as our teachers
| are equipped to educate students, parents are, on average,
| _worse_ equipped.
|
| You're insinuating here that you were not educated in school.
| You're making that claim in a text-based format. How did you
| learn to read and write? Are you making the claim that your
| mother taught you how to read and write, and the school had
| _nothing_ to do with it?
|
| Here's the problem with what you're saying: a lot of
| homeschooled children _don 't_ know how to read and write. Or
| add, subtract, multiply, and divide. And contrary to your
| theory of education, memorisation _is_ useful in learning these
| skills. A kid who has memorized how to do addition and
| subtraction can make change at a cash register, and a lot of
| homeschooled adults _can 't do that_.
|
| There are outliers in both schoolchild and homeschooled child
| experiences. I am one myself: my mom homeschooled me for
| kindergarten and first grade, and did a great job, but she had
| the advantage that she was a schoolteacher. And maybe your
| experience was an outlier in that you really did learn nothing
| in school. But the _averages_ , at a systemic level, are that
| homeschooled children are at a _large_ disadvantage compared to
| children educated in a school.
| barbazoo wrote:
| This shows how vastly different people's experiences are with
| their school system at their location. It's probably either
| extremes we hear most about.
| lbrito wrote:
| >I find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced
| internment for children while their parents go to work, with
| exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a
| functional understanding.
|
| Institutional childcare in general is mostly this; a necessity
| driven by an economic imperative. Both parents must work.
| School is a continuation of that logic, although as the kids
| get older and more independent this becomes less important.
| adamc wrote:
| I didn't enjoy my (US) public school experience, but it gave me
| a lot of skills for interacting with other people, including
| people I disliked. Based on the people I've met who were home-
| schooled, they lacked a lot of those skills.
| computerdork wrote:
| I agree with this (as the bloggers seems to too). Yeah,
| dealing with all the different personalities you see at
| school is an important skill, as is dealing with difficult
| situations. Yeah, would like to think I was in general a nice
| kid, but had some share of being bullied, and unfortunately
| have also bullied another kid (neither were common in my
| life, but you had to learn how to handle these situations,
| and also make mistakes to learn from them). Yeah, this
| understanding of people is super useful, and for me at least,
| the corporate world can be just as ruthless as a school
| playground. Need to know how to navigate all those egos.
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| To heavily paraphrase a short of stature comedian: Childhood
| and School is basically jail. You're confined with a bunch of
| violent sociopaths, have minimal agency over what you do
| everyday, spend most of your free time trying to smoke weed out
| of improvised pipes, and the greatest reward you can obtain is
| like a bag of Doritos.
| graemep wrote:
| Also British, although i was living abroad when I started home
| educating (the correct term in UK law, and more accurate
| because the whole point is that its not HE).
|
| > It took becoming an adult to learn for myself that I enjoyed
| learning. My school was not learning
|
| This is why I stuck with home educating up to GCSEs. I wanted
| my kids to enjoy learning and they do. They have a very wide
| range of interests and good academic results and IMO are better
| prepared for A levels and university than they would have been
| at school (even really good schools).
|
| > find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced
| internment for children while their parents go to work,
|
| This is why we have so much after school stuff and breakfast
| clubs. Yes, it means some kids get fed in the morning, but a
| lot of them seem to get given junk food.
|
| > for those saying it was good for socialisation with other
| children
|
| IMO home education is better for socialisation. What skills do
| you learn from meeting the same group of people your own age in
| the same place everyday? My kids had more time to do things by
| themselves (anything from going to a shop to taking a bus to
| meet up with a friend). They did (between them) guides, dance,
| sea cadets, sailing, D & D, art classes, singing classes piano
| classes, drama, stage fighting and more. They had both remote
| (which develops a useful skill set these days) and face to face
| tutors at for some GCSE subjects. it would be really hard for
| kids tied by school hours plus home work to do as much.
|
| > the endless chasing of metrics has made even the tiniest
| amount of joy that could exist in school- Non-existent.
|
| The chasing of metrics has been a disaster. My younger daughter
| is at sixth form college for A levels and it has deteriorated
| since her older sister went there. it is still good but they
| have become a lot more rigid and I feel they are less focused
| on students best interests and more on the metrics.
|
| I went to one of the best schools in the UK (consistently top
| 10 academically), with no bullying problems, no corporal
| punishment (it had abolished it in Victorian times IIRC),
| excellent facilities - and I still think my kids had a better
| education than I did
| cbsmith wrote:
| I hear everything you are saying, but...
|
| Now imagine that all that is true, except it's your home.
| paxiongmap wrote:
| As another product of the British 'education' system, this is
| all very familiar.
|
| If you're interested in some content that really helped me
| understand why I hated school so completely, I recommend
| "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory
| Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto, and "Free to Learn" by Peter
| Gray. Peter Gray also has a very nice blog called "Play Makes
| Us Human" at https://petergray.substack.com/
|
| As a parent of a toddler, deciding on schooling options is one
| of the most serious decisions I'll have to make with my partner
| over the coming years and it terrifies me. Home schooling is a
| very attractive option from my perspective, but only due to
| lack of alternatives that offer the sort of nurturing and
| positive environment that I want my child to have.
| briffle wrote:
| > Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You
| likely mean memorisation? That's not education.
|
| Funny enough, in the US, most states changed their methods of
| teaching (especially math) 10-20 years ago. And facebook is
| still filled with parents (although probably mostly
| grandparents) bitching about not understanding "common core
| math" without trying to understand it, and expressing how they
| learned via rote memorization and that is what we should use
| instead.
| boringg wrote:
| To be fair - the US changing their mathematics education
| system has been worse for the mathematics program. The kids
| learning math now who don't learn from outside networks will
| be significantly worse off in mathematics by far.
|
| Also there is no other way for people to learn mathematics
| then without doing the work to learn. This utopian idea
| that's bled into the education stream that we can teach math
| without significant amount of problems to practice on is kind
| of nuts.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >I can't speak universally about my experience, (even within
| all of Britain), because it's my experience which is in one
| small area of the country. >However, school, for me, was by far
| the single worst mandatory system I have been exposed to in my
| life.
|
| Hey this is more or less the universal experience world over.
| Be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise.
| graycat wrote:
| In one word, yup. My solution: In class put head down and just
| ignore the teacher. I DID want to learn the good material (math
| and science) so DID that in the one hour of daily 'study hall'
| and when I got home. And, with this approach, in math and
| science did quite well in aptitude tests and achievement tests.
| Those test results, and NOT what the teachers said about me,
| got some higher-ups to send me to summer advanced math/science
| programs.
|
| That _self-learning_ approach served me well in school, work,
| and life to the present.
|
| The plane geometry teacher was one of the worst. We had a
| _disagreement:_ She thought that in her subject she was
| superior, a lot better than the students were (actually, not
| for long!), regarded the students as _subordinates_ , and tried
| to intimidate us. So, I communicated with her only a few times
| but then was showing that I was better in the subject than she
| was. I.e., one reason I worked hard and DID learn well was to
| show up the teachers, show that they were NOT better, even in
| their own subject, and keep them from being nasty to me, trying
| to _subordinate_ me.
|
| Since my brother wanted me to go for the football team, I did.
| The coach was no help at all and treated me with contempt. I
| was not any good at football, didn't try _self-learning_ , but
| the coach was no help. As part of dumping on me, the coach gave
| me an old helmet, not effective, unique on the team. One day
| another player gave his elbow to my head, and I hit the ground
| maybe a little hurt. In one word, the coach was a bully. To
| heck with that: I quit the team.
| polski-g wrote:
| Youth polling consistently ranks public schooling middle-high
| school as the _literal worst time in their life_. However, I
| still think they should do it as it gives them exposure to the
| bottom quartile of the population. It gives them motivation and
| reason to structure the rest of their life to do anything and
| everything to never have to interact said population group
| again.
| Fricken wrote:
| I became progressively more withdrawn throughout my school
| years and for most of high school I was a ghost. I talked to no
| one and hid in the library during lunch hours, and for all the
| kinds of reasons that have already been mentioned here.
|
| My experience in school contrasts dramatically with my
| experience going through the scout movement. We had an active
| and healthy group. we would do 10 weekend camps a year and on
| those weekends I would hit the ground running when we arrived
| on friday evening and wouldn't stop until I was back in the van
| to go home on Sunday afternoon. I rose to the rank of troop
| leader, I won the youth of the year award, I would lead the
| campfires on the group weekends for 150 kids and their parents.
| I'm 49 and still in touch with the core group I went through
| the scout movement with, we're all lifelong friends. I probably
| would have killed myself if I didn't have Scouts.
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| > Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
|
| When I hear a question like this, I think: "Seriously?"
|
| If it's not obvious to you why no one wants to to go a typical
| modern public school you probably haven't been in one in a while.
| moktonar wrote:
| The school system has long stopped being effective and is being
| replaced by better systems that are evolving spontaneously
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Come from a family of teachers.
|
| From what I hear, it really feels like parents are more willing
| to homeschool than to be engaged with their children's education.
|
| You thinking your kid needs some additional sauce to not be
| "average". Rad, teach them that at home. What about sending your
| kid to school prevents you from doing that?
|
| I'm not saying school is perfect. But lately Parents care more
| than students about getting an "A" and if not it's the "Damn
| Teacher's" fault.
|
| They want to protect their kids from the discomfort of not doing
| well in school. When they should be working with their student to
| help develop their talents.
| woodpanel wrote:
| It's becoming fashionable outside the US as well. And the core
| reason is that public schools deteriorate.
|
| Public school systems sucks at diversity. It demands parents and
| students to endure diversity (i.e. putting kids from all walks of
| life into a single class), while it delivers zero itself, i.e.
| refusing to diversify its offerings as affluent kids from high-iq
| parents need different schooling than the fresh foreign refugee-
| arrival from a war-torn country.
|
| Teachers Unions make sure to deflct any "market pressure" from
| teachers and these unions' political arms (i.e. left-leaning
| progressive parties) rake in extra profits because they can cry
| wolf about the bad state of education or worsening abilities for
| poorer people to rise through the ranks via merit. Crocodile
| Tears.
| entropyneur wrote:
| I think the author is simply wrong is their assumption. I'm pro-
| homeschooling, more or less fit the described profile and I don't
| see a slightest problem with my kid interacting with average
| people nor do I have contempt for them. The problem I see though
| is with putting the child into a non-voluntary community. Those
| tend to be toxic and prison-like.
|
| Also, the school education is not crap because it's done by
| average or designed for the average. It's crap because it
| objectively can't adapt to an individual kid's pace. There's just
| no way around teaching kids in huge groups that doesn't involve
| everyone working as a teacher. Maybe AI will help here.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I loved public school (class of 99). I still miss the style of
| learning. Can you imagine going deep on a topic for 50 minutes
| then switching? AP classes got double periods. I found it so
| refreshing and I learned a ton.
|
| Eg, science, math, study hall, lunch, Spanish, History, Art,
| English... in a single day?
|
| I loved it. What worked for me was studying for tests -- and the
| harder the classes you took, the less homework there was (or it
| wasn't required). I had a great history teacher, occasionally
| good math & English teachers, a great art teacher, and mediocre
| science teachers. The science TEXTBOOKS were fabulous -- you
| could just read through those things and become a genius.
|
| No more textbooks these days -- it's all some pdf segment to
| download. Bummer for my kids.
|
| These days, there are way fewer tests, so my kids always freak
| when they have tests. I thought tests were great! Just one
| focused period to perform and then move on. Homework and projects
| were a big problem for me, because I could never start early
| enough -- it was always a last minute dash. Maybe that trained me
| to produce fast output, though.
|
| Kids were sometimes awful, but there was no way I was going to be
| popular so I just did my nerd thing. There were enough of us.
|
| They had a great drama program which I loved -- I did every play
| and musical I could. And they even had a speech and debate club
| -- so I competed at "extemporaneous" speech--when I went to state
| competitions, they got the students all together to clap me out
| like they'd do for the football team. That was unnecessary and
| funny for the nerd.
|
| My kids don't get these kinds of opportunities, I fear. I was
| pretty lucky.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I turned out OK in public school, but I was held back at
| different points, particularly in math, because I (and a few
| others) were too far ahead of the other kids. We literally had to
| repeat an entire year of content at one point. Kudos to the
| teachers who enabled & fostered that, but shame on the school
| system for not continuing to support. I'm pretty sure one of my
| classmates gave up on academics at that moment (he never really
| excelled again like he used to).
|
| I'd like my kids to be free to follow their curiosities. It's
| definitely work to homeschool but for us, it may be worth it.
| gadders wrote:
| I think a lot of home schooling is a culture war issue as well. A
| quick look at Libs of TikTok will show some of the teachers that
| some parents would like to avoid.
| karles wrote:
| Do you think Tiktok reflect reality?
|
| Then we need to ban social media altogether...
| logicchains wrote:
| It absolutely reflects reality in that school teachers are
| statistically way more liberal than the population average:
| https://www.pacificresearch.org/why-are-teachers-mostly-
| libe... .
| gadders wrote:
| These are actual videos that teachers have put on tiktok
| themselves. Some of it may be performative, but even the fact
| that they think putting something like that on tiktok is a
| good idea, speaks to their professional qualities.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I think it reflects the reality that specific groupthink is
| both tolerated and encouraged in school while other
| groupthink is harshly penalised.
|
| When the allowed groupthink in question only has support
| among a minority of the population you can't be too surprised
| when the rest try to avoid it.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Especially the ones who keep sneaking furry propaganda into
| elementary school.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| Schools where I live is a race to the bottom where the best
| pupils are limited by the worst. No wonder homeschooling is
| becoming fashionable.
| ensocode wrote:
| Thanks for the interesting discussion. I think as parents we have
| many possibilities to teach values to our kids without
| homeschooling them. In my view they should learn how to integrate
| in average society no matter if it is a perfect public schooling
| system or not. When it comes to values, parents still have a lot
| space to guide them through live without having full control. As
| long as the public school system only bends and doesn't break
| them I think it is a good way to show them how average society
| works. If they decide not to be high-end tech people later on, it
| will be much easier for them to flow with the average masses.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| "Social awkwardness and anxiety Difficulty in forming IRL
| friendships Impatience with the idea of connecting on a
| meaningful level with other people: who needs 'em? An abiding
| sense of detachment from reality"
|
| I can tell you from personal experience, going to school doesn't
| prevent this.
| racl101 wrote:
| Certainly doesn't guarantee a better outcome that's for sure.
| This seems more like something that needs to come from good
| parenting.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Because no one's ever heard of a
|
| "Home-school Shooting"
| Havoc wrote:
| Classrooms need to cater to lowest common denominator by
| necessity so can kinda see a desire to do this.
|
| But not convinced it's possible to emulate the social interaction
| part diy
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It's difficult to understand the hostility some people have
| toward homeschooling. Even if someone doesn't care for it, it is
| bizarre to _insist_ on others not doing it (in some cases,
| governments insist so much that it is illegal to homeschool). Of
| course, _parents are the primary educators of the their own
| children_. They may delegate that responsibility to others for
| certain subjects, domains, or scope, but the authority rests with
| them. The decision of how to educate is also a prudential one.
| For the rest of this post, I will use "education" in the
| narrower sense of what would fall within the scope of the school.
|
| That being said, you cannot categorically judge either
| homeschooling or "institutionalized" education, as the quality
| entirely depends on the concrete situation. Both can be done
| poorly or done well. There may be aspects here and there that set
| them apart, where one is better than the other, but on the whole,
| in principle, both can be done well or poorly. Both can fail or
| harm the child.
|
| Of course, to be able to evaluate the quality of education
| requires that we first have at least a sense, if not a
| definition, of what education _is_ and what it is _for_.
| Immediately, this is where the trouble starts.
|
| If you ask most people today what education is about, the most
| common answer I would expect is "to prepare you for a job".
| Primary education is to prepare you for university, and
| university is for preparing you for a job. Interestingly, this is
| _not_ the traditional mission of education, which is perhaps best
| embodied by the classical liberal arts taught in the trivium and
| quadrivium. Their aim was to free the human person _as a human
| person_ , and a human person is a rational animal. The classical
| notion of freedom is the ability to be what you are -- human,
| i.e., a rational animal -- which is quite different from the
| modern notion of being able to do whatever you want. This
| classical notion of freedom is the reason for the _liberal_ in
| _liberal_ arts. Now, the modern concept of rationality also
| differs from the classical, so even here we have divergence.
|
| The point is that the liberal arts were distinguished from the
| servile arts. It is the teaching of the servile arts that would
| prepare you for the job. While the gains of a liberal arts
| education translate into benefits in all things, they were not
| per se for the sake of specialized work. Their value was not
| instrumental, even if they do have downstream benefits for the
| instrumental. This is like the difference between theory and
| practice. One seeks understanding, the other seeks to achieve
| some kind of subordinate or secondary good.
|
| Now, as to why homeschooling is becoming more attractive, we need
| to consider the reality of education as it actually is today. I
| don't want to turn this into an essay, but a few big motivations
| are:
|
| * the poor quality of education
|
| * the alienating and hostile nature of many schools
|
| * the hostile ideological presuppositions of an education system,
| often insinuated rather than explicitly commanded
|
| As to how effective homeschooling is at correcting for these
| faults, that will depend on the particular situation, more or
| less. From what I understand, homeschooling parents will often
| meet with other homeschooling parents and draw from curricula
| that already exist for this purpose. Sometimes these parents
| decide to found school themselves (as we are seeing in some cases
| with the rising interest in classical education).
| attila-lendvai wrote:
| the mandatory part of mandatory education is the very source that
| rots this society. what's happening in schools run by the
| "western enlightened democratic" powers that be is outrageous.
|
| liberating education would be a major blow to the social
| engineers running the matrix -- or at least that's what i think
| when i'm optimistic... maybe these days they could easily
| compensate through the screens.
|
| and if you have an urge to argue with this, then first read John
| Taylor Gatto's essays to understand what's going on. after that
| we can discuss the specifics.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Many reasons.
|
| Bad influence from other students
|
| Bad policies for phone use
|
| Bad teachers
|
| Strange curricula influenced by ideology
|
| Aggressive low performing immigrants from other cultures (Europe)
|
| The last point will get me downvoted from people who can not
| handle the truth.
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| >Aggressive low performing immigrants from other cultures
| (Europe)
|
| Elaborate?
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...
|
| USA is 18th and eight of the countries above it are European.
| The fifteen below it have a comparable score to the USA. That
| is 23 European countries that are either above or around the
| same performance (or slightly lower) as the USA. Unless you
| mean Eastern Europe, which seems like a strange thing to single
| out
| Beijinger wrote:
| I am not so much worried, what position you are in. I am more
| worried if you are rising or sinking. The countries I was
| thinking in Europe are...sinking in the school rankings.
|
| Feel free to use google translate for this example:
| https://weltwoche.ch/daily/wiener-schulleiter-provoziert-
| mit...
|
| The problem: There are cultures that highly value education.
| Chinese for example. And then there are cultures where
| education either has much less value, or a different
| definition (e.g. considered highly educated if a person has
| memorized the complete Quran).
|
| DEI. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
|
| The "inclusion" is a problem with some cultures. They bluntly
| reject being "included". They considered their culture as
| highly superior and want to include you into their culture.
| At the same time, they are not able to understand why their
| countries are shitholes and believe that the wealth and
| success of Western countries is just by chance and luck and
| culture has no play in that.
|
| For starters:
|
| * Rule of law
|
| * open society
|
| * women rights
|
| * Democracy
|
| * Market Economy
|
| * strict separation of church and state
|
| * No tribal culture
|
| * Freedom is speech.
|
| * And don't marry your cousin. Your cousin may be good-
| looking but trust me, inbreeding won't make you smarter.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I know quite a few people who have started homeschooling their
| kids in recent years, including one who stopped homeschooling
| their kiss last year and will be pulling their kids back out of
| school this spring.
|
| The most common reasons I hear are either that the public schools
| they are zoned for are terrible, mainly complaints over safety
| and/or drugs. The other common reason is just not seeing the
| value in the education being provided, often complaining of
| teacher quality or the design of a school system modelled after a
| program meant to churn out good factory workers.
| neilv wrote:
| > _How do you expect to change the world for the better when
| you've been taught from an early age, subconsciously or not, to
| hold most of the people around you in contempt? 4_
|
| Not everyone would recognize this, and be willing to call it out.
|
| I wonder whether that came from the writer's religious
| homeschooling, and if so, whether it came from learning from
| decent people who taught and embodied the better Christian
| values? Or from a reaction to the distancing that can kinda be
| implicit (e.g., hints that people not in the religious group are
| a less-enlightened Other)? Or both?
| naasking wrote:
| > Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
|
| Because public education has gotten progressively worse.
| infecto wrote:
| I did not catch any data that quantified if this is truly
| becoming fashionable. From what I know in US stats, homeschooling
| definitely had a run during covid but its already going down and
| even at its peak was barely measurable compared to students in
| public/private. It would be nice if he quantified where this idea
| comes from before going into the rant.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Most parents are worse teachers than the average teacher. Most
| parents can't afford the time/money to teach their kids. This is
| a passion project for the 1%.
|
| And no, educational videos on YouTube are not a replacement for a
| curriculum. We saw that during COVID where the attainment of
| children worsened.
|
| There are bad schools and bad teachers. The solution is not
| bulldozing the entire system and replacing it with something
| worse.
|
| This is like saying people should self-diagnose and medicate
| because there's a few dodgy hospitals and doctors.
| habosa wrote:
| Educational merits aside, this is part of a broader trend of
| losing or dismantling the few "public" parts of our society we
| have left. People simply don't want to be forced to interact with
| others in the physical world, especially others not like them.
| They certainly don't want to be asked to trust a stranger for any
| reason, unless there's an app to mediate the trust.
|
| The bad news is that there are 8 billion of us and more every
| day. There's not enough space or resources for us to isolate
| ourselves. It can't end well.
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| Thankfully I live in a country with one of the best public school
| systems in the world leveraging its Catholic history, but it is
| something I have looked into, mainly because I think children are
| capable of so much more than what they learn in school and also
| the 'conditioning' aspect of schooling.
|
| From what I know of the USA, all students are placed together in
| classrooms. Now I'm not sure if that's on the federal level or
| state level, but I cannot imagine the brightest students being
| held back by the weakest/misbehaving ones. Where I live we are
| placed into different grades, where students are grouped by their
| academic performance. There is no prejudice or
| superiority/inferiority associated with it and it just works.
|
| I've only heard anecdotes from the Teachers sub on Reddit, but if
| that was my child in the USA I would homeschool 100%.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I grew up overseas. My K-12 was a hodgepodge of schools and
| tutors all over the world.
|
| I am also "on the spectrum," which means that I'm a bully magnet
| (much better, these days, but it lasted far beyond grade school).
|
| Had a number of other issues, that came to a head, when I was 18.
|
| Dropped out of school, basically, in 11th grade, and got my GED,
| a bit before I would have graduated, if I had stayed.
|
| Most of my education after that, was a redneck tech school, OJT,
| home experimenting, and a whole bunch of seminars and focused
| tech classes. Couple of math classes in college.
|
| I did OK, but a hell of a lot of others, with similar
| backgrounds, did not.
|
| I am ambivalent about homeschooling. I think it may do well, for
| some people, and not, for others. I know that there's a "Little
| Nazi" homeschooling program that's popular with the bedsheets-as-
| a-uniform crowd, but it might be possible to get a far better
| education, at home, than the best prep school could give you.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| arguments from article - >Pro-homeschooling: At school, you're in
| danger of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
|
| >Anti-homeschooling: Statistically, you're in greater danger of
| all those things at home.
|
| Sure, but the parents choosing to homeschool are either the ones
| abusing or not (obviously they could have an abusive uncle but
| the parents tend not to think of this) if Not, then its not a
| counter-argument because they know it's not and they do not know
| about the school. If abusing the know it and they might prefer to
| homeschool for that reason.
|
| >Pro-homeschooling: Kids learn faster one-on-one; Bloom's 2-sigma
| problem is undefeated.
|
| >Anti-homeschooling: Kids with learning disabilities and
| neurodivergence can fall through the cracks without professional
| involvement.
|
| many kids with learning disabilities and neurodivergence need
| more 1 on 1, and will also be more likely to get all the other
| negative school interactions that are arguments against schools.
|
| >Here's what I think is really going on.
|
| I heard Elon Musk homeschooled his kids, anyway if you have the
| money, it's a status symbol.
|
| Also about lousy school environment anecdotes going around here -
| I went to high school in Utah, where I heard a teacher tell the
| class that A.D meant After Noah, and B.C meant Before Christ. I
| WIN! Oh wait...
| nedt wrote:
| My kid has a really hard time learning from me. It's resistance
| and stress for both of us. After all my role is to be a parent so
| naturally I'm a friend and a foe. Much more than a teacher. But I
| also don't have a big problem with that.
|
| Obviously he also has his challenges in school. It's a public
| school but in Austria, so it ain't that bad. But there is also
| the saying that you aren't learning for school, you are learning
| for life.
|
| So you aren't just learning for your subject, you are also
| learning to get along with people, how to avoid conflicts, how to
| manipulate a bit and how to trick some of the systems. All of
| that is not so much possible in homeschooling.
|
| People do know that around here and it's more of a distrust into
| the system that might parents want to get their kids not taught
| in school in recent years, while their thinking behind the
| distrust does make them very bad teachers overall.
| zaphar wrote:
| I can't really know nor do I care to speculate on why it's
| becoming fashionable. But I'm a successful, well adjusted,
| homeschooled child from when it wasn't fashionable. This comment
| stood out to me: "Opt out of interacting with average people."
|
| And my immediate thought was: "I can't imagine a less effective
| or worse way teach kids how to deal with people, average or not,
| than to throw them into a pool of similarly untrained people and
| telling them to just "figure it out". Which is essentially what
| public school does. Teachers can't be expected to help 30+
| children work through that. They don't distribute across the pool
| of students in a way that can be effective for that.
| Homeschooling I firmly believe can be a more effective way to get
| exposure and learn how to deal with other people than a public
| school.
|
| Public schools are training grounds for poor social skills.
| spandrew wrote:
| This doesn't make sense to me.
|
| We all get better at a talent by practicing it. We make
| mistake. We watch others. We determine our own preferences for
| what we like/don't like. We learn, grow. Kids figure it out.
|
| How does staying at home with just your sibs fair better? You
| wouldn't get same exposure to the buttload of social
| interaction and scenarios in a closed system like that.
| zaphar wrote:
| Practice, with guidance is superior to practice without
| guidance. Homeschooling doesn't mean isolation in the average
| case. You get a _lot_ of practice as a homeschooler. The
| primary difference is that your practice is both with other
| adults and children while supervised and also modeled
| directly to you in homeschooling by other adults while public
| school is primarily unsupervised and lacking in a modeled
| behavior to observe.
|
| The number one thing people would comment to my parents about
| me was that I was so comfortable socially in adult
| conversations and environments. I wasn't even in high school
| yet. I had adult level social skills by age 12. I didn't
| learn how to interact with people from other kids who had no
| idea how to either. I learned it from my parents and
| practiced what I learned with both other children and also
| adults. I'm only anecdotal evidence but a number of studies
| have backed up my own experience. A few links I had on hand
| can be found here.
|
| * Medlin, R. G. (2013). Homeschooling and the question of
| socialization revisited. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(3),
| 284-297.
| https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-
| socia...
|
| * Shyers, L. E. (1992). A comparison of social adjustment
| between home and traditionally schooled students. Home School
| Researcher https://archive.org/details/comparisonofsoci00shye
|
| * Taylor, J. W. (1986). Self-concept in home-schooling
| children. (Doctoral Dissertation). Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
| Dissertation Services.
| https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/726/
| throw4847285 wrote:
| No offense, but the idea of having adult level social
| skills as a child is terrifying to me. Most of the people
| who I've encountered who describe themselves that way also
| talk about the burden of from a young age totally
| internalizing the idea of every interaction being a
| performance. Every interaction is a new opportunity to try
| and convince adults that you are worldly and smarter than
| other kids. That tends to mess you up. Of course, this is
| purely anecdotal.
| zaphar wrote:
| It didn't mess me up and I didn't treat any interaction
| as a peformance. They were just fun conversations.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Yeah, that's not fair to you at all, I'm sorry.
| zaphar wrote:
| No apologies necessary. You were just sharing your own
| personal experiences. I wasn't offended or hurt.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| To be honest, I just saw a really phenomenal dark comedy
| routine about somebody who was adept at socializing with
| adults at 6 or 7 and I've been thinking a lot about that
| dynamic and the dark side of being a precocious kid. I
| wasn't that extreme, but I related to some of it, and
| then I ended up projecting that onto your description of
| home school kids. And yet, this guy wasn't home schooled.
| I think those are totally separate issues. Would be an
| interesting separate topic, though.
| quacked wrote:
| "Adult-level social skills" for children was historically
| normal, and it's only in the past century that children
| are assumed to be incapable of speaking plainly and
| intelligently to adults, or vice versa.
|
| You might want to do some looking into the "invention of
| childhood"; what we understand as "children, teenagers,
| young adults, adults" is a fairly modern way to look at
| "stages of development". In the distant past, children
| participated far more comfortably and fluently in adult
| society than they do today, when they're sequestered
| away.
|
| It is very difficult to see any representations of this
| in the US, where most children are in school, so I'll
| point to examples in fiction: fictional novels or movies
| where the protagonist is taken confidently through an
| unfamiliar city by a child who seems to know every
| location, has a sleeping place, weapons, a method of
| finding money, and a network of friends. In these works
| of fiction, the child is almost always a semi-homeless
| "urchin"; but this is mostly because modern writers can't
| conceive of a child that capable without also assuming
| that the child's parents must not be involved in their
| life, because modern people equate "parenting and raising
| children" with "making sure children only ever do child-
| appropriate things".
|
| My question to you: what do you think it would look like
| if two loving, attentive parents tried to raise a kid
| with the confidence and skills of those fictional street
| children, but also actually fed them and gave them a
| place to live?
|
| It is very likely that the answer to that question is far
| closer to the way that children used to behave and live
| than the way that children are today.
|
| I also recommend looking at old tests and study material
| (pre-1900, ideally pre-1800) for young children. Children
| can read, figure, write, and remember at a level far
| superior than they're assumed to be able to today, and
| that goes for adult socialization as well.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| You don't just stay home with your siblings. A major factor
| of how homeschooling works is homeschoolers have local
| organizations or co-ops where they do things together.
|
| And, yes, this is just reinventing some aspects of the public
| school system in the private sphere. But that is because
| parents, rightly or wrongly, feel they have zero influence
| over how the public school works, so they just sideload their
| own version.
|
| (I would say that the parents are right about having zero
| influence, as quite a lot of American public schools are so
| big and so bureaucratized that parents do not have a real
| voice without herculean effort.)
| zaphar wrote:
| The big difference about that reinvention is that there are
| _way_ more parents present in those environments than the
| typical public school variant. So both good behaviors to
| observe are more visible and also interventions are
| significantly more frequent.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| It takes more effort to homeschool than farming it out to
| public schools, so you're naturally selecting for
| involved parents. To the detriment of public schools, it
| should be noted.
|
| It also skews the perspectives of homeschool parents into
| thinking "this is the best system, why doesn't everybody
| do it?" The answer is, of course, to take the good
| aspects of each system and make the public school system
| more viable again, but there are too many entrenched
| interests on both sides for this to be easy.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > To the detriment of public schools, it should be noted.
|
| Yes, but what means of violence do you possess to be able
| to force these parents to be involved in the education of
| other people's children?
| geye1234 wrote:
| There's also a variety of kids' ages at these events, so
| the younger can learn from the older (and parents can
| easily intervene if this isn't going well). And you know
| who your kids are interacting with: you know something
| about the families, or at least know someone who knows
| them, so the odds of malign influences are much lower.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I really take issue with the position that parents have
| zero influence. Our children attend a "mediocre" public
| school in our US city. We simply talk to the teachers and
| administrators, and you would not believe the results. I
| always go into it thinking that we are whiny parents
| talking to an overworked staff, and the results are
| incredible.
|
| For anyone who is considering homeschooling but isn't sure,
| there is a real middle ground: actually engage with your
| huge staff at the public school who are hungry for parent
| involvement because it seems like the parents don't care
| and the kids are just there for the babysitting.
|
| Public schools work great, but you do have to remain
| engaged and be ready to problem solve. It's like
| homeschooling but you get a whole publicly funded (somewhat
| overworked but enthusiastic) support staff to accomplish
| educational goals for your child.
|
| Yes of course schools vary but if approach ANYONE with a
| combative attitude they are likely to fight back, even if
| you're on the same side. Approach with sympathy, open
| communication, and the occasional set of hands in the
| classroom, and you can get the best for your child.
| spydum wrote:
| I can attest to this exact same scenario with my children
| and their schools. I observed both types: the parents who
| immediately entered the school combative towards
| administration (not looking to collaborate on a solution,
| just shouting loudly to "fix it"), and parents who spent
| time engaging with administration towards a description
| of the problem and ideas for resolving them.
|
| That being said, there are and were definitely limits to
| what public schools can do. They are resource strapped,
| procedurally constrained, often fighting their own
| political bureaucratic battles within the school
| districts, and even within the academic departments.
|
| We ended up leaving the public school for those reasons,
| and could not be happier.
|
| My observation was: public schools have become much like
| enterprises, and private schools tend to be more like
| startups. The public school has so much inertia and tends
| to have "guardrails" and policies to keep even bad
| administrations functioning, but at the cost of
| exceptionalism and performance. Private schools have less
| of this, and more direct accountability.
|
| You absolutely can have a private school that doesn't
| educate better than a public school, but I'd argue at
| least one of two things happen: 1) the school fails to
| attract student, and closes.. or 2) the school focus
| shifts away from education to other priorities (e.g.,
| social status, culture, or sports), relegating academics
| to a secondary role.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >We simply talk to the teachers and administrators, and
| you would not believe the results.
|
| It would depend on what you're asking for. It depends on
| the school district/state, but anything that gets close
| to the curriculum isn't easy or simple to change.
|
| For example, one of my kids who went to public school had
| to use this program (I forget the name) for algebra that
| the school paid for. You used a weird toolbar to input
| your equations that appeared to be some monstrous
| Javascript nightmare. It more or less worked, but it
| wasn't great. To my mind it would have been simpler to
| teach them LaTeX or something, but whatever.
|
| As a parent, you can't go in and say "why don't you just
| let them write the answers on paper like everybody else
| did until 9 minutes ago?" The teachers loved this
| program, because it did all the teacher work for them.
| The school administration already paid for it, plus
| paying for the computers for the kids to use, plus the IT
| overhead to keep the computers running.
|
| That's a fundamental structural problem that no parent
| can surmount. "What do you mean use a screwdriver? We
| paid for all these hammers!"
|
| The incentives that drive public education are often
| orthogonal to actually teaching the public. It's not a
| mystery, any trough where money collects will get snouts
| rooting for some of it. The parents don't have much say
| in how all this money must be spent because they don't
| have any say about the money at all, other than moving to
| a different district or writing off what they pay in
| property taxes and paying again to do something else.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think it isn't that unusual for homeschooling parents to
| form groups, you can do an art class together (otherwise hard
| to afford), start up some recurring social events, that sort
| of thing.
|
| K-12 school is sort of a weird social situation, right? You
| are mandated to be there (you can't even quit or find a new
| job), your manager has the right/responsibility of in loco
| parentis, your co-workers can't be fired and their only
| punishment for goofing off is that they might get nagged a
| bit, and your worst peers don't care about that at all. I
| don't think it is obviously good practice of grown up social
| skills. You can see the maladaptive behavior that sticks
| around after--office gossips, bullying, that sort of thing (I
| mean, that sort of behavior is present everywhere, but I'm
| pretty sure it is enhanced by the fact that these are
| strategies to win in the pressure cooker).
| csa wrote:
| > How does staying at home with just your sibs fair better?
|
| This is a very reductionist view of homeschooling.
|
| While some folks certainly do have this experience when
| homeschooled, a well-designed home schooling experience will
| have an abundance of social interactions with non-family
| members.
|
| Sports is an obvious one, but there are also many homeschool
| groups that engage in learning activities together.
| flustercan wrote:
| You get better at _what you practice_.
|
| If you practice unproductive social interactions and
| unhealthy coping skills all day, you will get better at
| unproductive social interactions and unhealthy coping skills.
| arkh wrote:
| > Teachers can't be expected to help 30+ children work through
| that.
|
| The big mystery is: how did teachers manage this miracle 50 or
| 80 years ago?
| zaphar wrote:
| Did they?
| simonsarris wrote:
| If you read something like Annie Dillard's An American
| Childhood, you realize that teachers didn't. In the middle+
| class at least, the children's parents did that work by
| organizing specific extra-curriculars, such as dances, from a
| very young age. These ensured that the children learned
| manners, dated people of acceptable character or class, etc.
|
| That social infra is simply gone today. Parents don't have
| much of an interest, or are erroneously(!) assuming that
| teachers are supposed to do it, or used to do it. We are less
| class focused* today, which may be good, but certainly less
| manners and etiquette focused as well.
|
| * by that I mean like, if you are an American of German
| descent, you are not particularly worried if you child is
| dating an American of Irish descent, whereas you _might_ have
| been in 1940. Similarly (and overlappingly) for Protestant
| /catholic etc etc. Not even what we typically think of as
| class today! We're so blind to a lot of that stuff now, we
| forget it existed, just like the other social infrastructure.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > That social infra is simply gone today. Parents don't
| have much of an interest, or are erroneously(!) assuming
| that teachers are supposed to do it, or used to do it.
|
| You might be missing the fact that back in the day there
| often used to be one parent working and one parent staying
| at home. Nowadays both parents need at least one job.
| Wealth inequality at it again.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Which is essentially what public school does.
|
| The school I went to had, luckily, excellent teachers. One of
| them, not sure if as a coordinated effort or not, was big on
| letting the class decide things and helping us form the social
| structures needed for that - structuring discussions, votes,
| rules, and so on. I suspect it was a reaction to the
| dictatorship time requirement of studying an idealized version
| of Brazil's political organization.
| zaphar wrote:
| There are definitely hero teachers and administrations in
| public schools. They aren't the norm though and it's a bit of
| a lottery whether your child will end up with one.
| rbanffy wrote:
| A first step is to properly fund public schools. Then one
| would need to better select teachers (which becomes an
| option if teaching pays better) and train them. Teachers
| need to be trained in teaching, not only their subject
| matters, and need to be kept updated.
| zaphar wrote:
| There are a lot of schools that get funded quite well and
| perform very poorly. It matters how you spend that money.
| The data on this is hard to properly interpret too since
| higher income parents tend to live in higher income areas
| which means better funded schools and those parents also
| tend to be more involved in their childrens academic and
| social success than lower income so the correlated
| variables get confusing.
|
| However I do agree that spending funds in ways that help
| a public school compete with private and/or homeschooling
| is a worthy goal. That means you need:
|
| 1. more teachers per student in the school. (More admin
| doesn't solve this. You need smaller class sizes). You'll
| never be able to afford the one-on-one ratio a homeschool
| family can achieve but you can certainly close the gap.
|
| 2. more focus on actually proven approaches to the basics
| of reading, writing, and arithmetic. (phonics, essay
| writing, literature analysis, and "old math") A lot of
| pseudo science has entered the class room over that last
| few decades.
|
| 3. fostering more parental involvement in their child's
| education. This is extremely difficult to improve but has
| the highest impact. One of the reasons homeschooling on
| average does better is because the parents are self
| selected for involvement.
|
| 4. holding kids to real standards and having consequences
| for not meeting those standards. Tricky to do politically
| but essential for kids to learn both social skills and
| academic skills.
| karaterobot wrote:
| That actually sounds like a good way to teach kids how to deal
| with others. Just figure it out, in a safe environment with
| minimal consequences and some guard rails. I wouldn't expect a
| teacher to teach kids how to socialize, especially on an
| individual level, but rather to step in when necessary. Being
| in a big group of people you may not like is pretty much a
| description of life, and the goal is to learn to function and
| even thrive in that environment. I support home schooling too,
| but I don't think there's anything about it that naturally
| lends itself to learning this skill. Many homeschoolers manage
| it, but it takes extra work, whereas being in 'gen pop' teaches
| it as a side effect.
| zaphar wrote:
| Except the literature from studies on the subject suggest
| that homeschoolers on average do slightly better than public
| schoolers on this specific metric. The data suggests public
| school has worse outcomes.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I didn't say that home schooling produced poor social
| skills, and in fact said something like the opposite. My
| point was that traditional schooling was a perfectly fine
| way to learn social skills, as a side effect of being
| forced to socialize. If home schooled kids and
| traditionally-schooled kids have somewhat similar social
| skills, and (as you say) teachers in public schools aren't
| teaching these skills directly, how do you suppose kids are
| learning them?
| tristor wrote:
| > in a safe environment with minimal consequences and some
| guard rails
|
| The problem is that a public school, at least in the US, is
| /not/ a safe environment with minimal consequences, and it
| has effectively no guard rails. Your idea is a nice one, but
| it's not realistic, and reality is exactly why people are
| opting out of public schooling for their children.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The way kids learn to "deal with people" is by becoming more
| and more like them until they fit in. This can be a good thing
| or a bad thing, depending on the people in question.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| So we chose private school over home schooling, for both time
| reasons, educational reasons, and social reasons.
|
| But the important thing is we choose to take our kids out of
| public school. The trigger was Covid, but what really happened
| was suddenly millions of parents could directly see what their
| schools and teachers were like because we watched our kids work
| remotely all day for a year.
|
| We did not like what we saw. A few teachers were really good.
| Many never bothered to show up, "class" was a note to do homework
| or something. Others were just plain terrible teachers who didn't
| know their subjects well and couldn't really teach.
|
| More and more our district was also relying on computers and
| software to make tactically replace books and teachers, and not
| surprisingly that did not work so well.
|
| Yes, remote learning and covid and all that was a shock to
| everyone, and all schools took a hit during that time. But this
| was a window directly into schools, and seeing how well yours did
| in the face of adversity.
|
| The truth is, at least for our school district here in NJ in the
| US, schools suck in massive amounts of money, give them to
| largely incompetent people (to whit, our school superintendent
| started his career as a gym teacher), who unsurprisingly waste a
| lot of it.
|
| There has also been the constant creep over the years to turn
| schools into social welfare systems. This is well intentioned,
| but in reality is just another bureaucratic money suck.
|
| I could go on. But in short, home schooling and private schools
| both have risen in popularity because Covid revealed just how bad
| many public schools in the US have become.
| e12e wrote:
| > give them to largely incompetent people (to whit, our school
| superintendent started his career as a gym teacher), who
| unsurprisingly waste a lot of it.
|
| Seems like a bit of a non sequitur? If anything one could hope
| that a gym teacher would value play and movement over chaining
| kids to a desk all day?
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| In NJ, the School Superintendent is effectively the CEO of
| the district.
|
| Many of them had advanced degrees in education, management,
| and finance. They control tens or hundreds of millions of
| dollars.
|
| Ours has a BA in health, was a gym teacher then an admin
| person, eventually a principal and then we hired him out of
| desperation when covid hit and our superintendent was
| retiring.
|
| He has been a total disaster because he lacks leadership
| skills, does not understand finance and hides behind the
| hodgepodge of technical jargon that public education has
| become.
| huehehue wrote:
| My old gym teacher also taught science because we just
| couldn't find another teacher, and was genuinely surprised
| to learn there were forms of matter smaller than atoms.
|
| My health teacher was a "permanent substitute" situation
| where we just watched movies the whole semester and got
| A's.
|
| One of my math teachers died and we just...never hired a
| replacement, so nobody learned anything that semester.
|
| Bonus: my driver's education teacher was arrested for a DUI
| (but not terminated)
|
| These situations were all in different schools in different
| US states, so the lack of quality control in admin that you
| describe definitely resonates.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I know a large number of teachers who have been
| campaigning for years to eliminate all forms of teacher
| evaluations, with the claim that "you can't measure what
| we do!".
|
| Which is utter horse shit, but it's where we are today.
|
| The result is that many schools don't really track
| teacher performance, and as you indicate you can get wild
| inconsistencies.
|
| The best parents can do (other than leaving) is to
| aggressively direct kids into the better teachers'
| classrooms. We see that all the time - one class has kids
| who's parents are "in the know" and gets the good
| teacher, the other class is where the kids get dumped
| who's parents don't complain. The district knows who is
| bad and who is not, but is afraid to anger the union, so
| anything short of actual violence by a teacher against a
| student won't have any consequences.
|
| Our school district local enrollment as a result has
| declined from around 900 kids to just 650 in just a few
| years as a result. The kids left are those too poor to go
| private or home school, those not lucky or connected
| enough to go to a "choice" school, and a small number of
| die hard loyalists reliving their glory days through
| their kids at the same school they went to.
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| > but is afraid to anger the union, so anything short of
| actual violence by a teacher against a student won't have
| any consequences
|
| Everyone should watch the fantastic documentary "Waiting
| for Superman" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/)
| that highlighted just how problematic the teacher's
| unions have become and how much of an impediment to
| education they are.
|
| Even in cases of gross negligence (showing up to school
| drunk, completely failing to teach, etc) bad teachers
| just get bounced to another school. Teachers who
| physically assault or sexually abuse a student might
| remain on the payroll for years while the bureaucracy
| slowly reviews their case.
|
| The unions have also prevented any form of incentivizing
| teachers to perform well or rewarding good teachers. In
| fact, the union leaders prevented the teachers from even
| voting on changes (that the majority of teachers wanted)
| that would have allowed good teachers to be rewarded and
| bad teachers to be removed from the classroom.
|
| There are a lot of problems with education in America,
| but the teachers unions have to be right at the very top
| of the list.
| nick__m wrote:
| In fact, the union leaders prevented the teachers from
| even voting on changes (that the majority of teachers
| wanted
|
| How is this possible, aren't union supposed to be
| democratic ? If the leadership oppose the majority, why
| can't they be voted out ?
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Amusingly I had the exact inverse of this experience. My
| senior year I signed up for the AP Bio course, but we
| only got 22 students signed up out of the 25 required to
| allow the class to happen (a very stupid system in of
| itself). Because the class was canceled, and the very
| competent well educated biology teacher had a slot free
| in his schedule, he was forced into teaching the gym
| class (which I also had to take since I'd been avoiding
| PE for the last few years). He knew the situation, and
| after the first week handed me the advanced bio textbook
| after class one day, and then turned a blind eye to me
| sitting on the bleachers reading instead of running laps
| for the rest of the semester (dont come at me for
| physical fitness, I was a skateboarder and in better
| shape than 90% of the kids already).
| potato3732842 wrote:
| My best history teacher was the gym teacher who was
| really hired as loophole because they couldn't hire a
| basketball coach which is what he really was.
|
| Anyway, he didn't give a crap about teaching to the
| curriculum and he taught us how to think critically and
| read between the lines of history.
| e12e wrote:
| > (...) then we hired him out of desperation when covid hit
| and our superintendent was retiring.
|
| I guess the board is at fault here?
| plussed_reader wrote:
| "The trigger was Covid, but what really happened was suddenly
| millions of parents could directly see what their schools and
| teachers were like because we watched our kids work remotely
| all day for a year."
|
| This kind of myopyic outlook that conflates the then-
| traditional instruction period to the remote instruction
| paradigm greatly cheapens every other point of your argument.
|
| None of the teaching staff that had to adapt to that period of
| time were trained to make that experience 1:1 for the prior
| expectations and to use that as a basis to judge their entire
| ability is petty as fuck.
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| I think you are seeing through the trend that many people
| disagree with you.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| "millions of parents", "their schools" should be "me", "my
| school."
|
| If your school isn't good, I recommend improving if for every
| other kid, who didn't pull the lottery ticket of affluent
| parents with flexible jobs.
|
| School boards benefit from parents who care and are competent.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is nonsensical advice. In San Francisco, the school
| board wants to delay learning algebra to 9th grade. I can't
| "improve" this place because it's not that the place just
| needs advice. It's because they have "experts" with "years of
| experience" that want to do different things. And I'm just a
| techie who thinks he knows everything.
|
| No thanks. Not interested in spending years of my life
| arguing with morons who rejected the only gay guy applying to
| help because he was a White male (this isn't some right wing
| thing - it was real and explicitly the reason).
|
| When people say "we don't need your help; we know what we're
| doing" then not helping is doing the right thing.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > When people say "we don't need your help; we know what
| we're doing" then not helping is doing the right thing.
|
| Not helping is doing the only thing they allow you to do.
| But also, removing yourself from the consequences of their
| folly is a wise thing to do.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I had to rewrite my response a few time to remove all the
| curse words.
|
| At least in NJ, you have no idea what you are talking about.
| Our school laws are completely broken. Just so you know I
| have spent about 300 hours a year for the past three years
| fighting with, dealing with, trying to improve our district.
| dani__german wrote:
| The Hard-core History podcast had a very similar exchange.
|
| American: well if your communist government is mistreating
| you, simply vote for a different president!
|
| Cue a million responses just like yours showing how it just
| isn't possible.
| foobarian wrote:
| How did you choose the private school? There are so many
| choices around us but it seems hard to figure out their quality
| without actually sending a child there, or having close
| connections. Wish there was a review forum of some sort.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| We live in western central NJ so the options are pretty
| limited. There were only a handful to pick from, and there
| were roughly two price tiers: tier "A" was around $15,000 a
| year per student, tier "b" elite schools were $50,000 and up
| per student per year. Our choices were down to only three
| schools, one was out because it was all-boys, and we chose
| out of the other two based on meeting teachers and staff.
| munificent wrote:
| _> what really happened was suddenly millions of parents could
| directly see what their schools and teachers were like_
|
| Well, you got to see what they were really like while they were
| in the midst of dealing with a traumatic global pandemic in
| their own personal lives while also trying to deal with an
| essential job that looked nothing like what they had trained
| for while trying to support a virtual classroom full of
| children who were also in the middle of a traumatic global
| pandemic.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| And many made it work in the face of adversity.
|
| Many others did not make it work just due to bad luck or
| timing.
|
| But districts like ours completely failed at it because the
| entire leadership is incompetent and teachers never got the
| support they needed from the administration to make it work
| (including monitoring teachers to ensure they were actually
| working).
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| My family has lived in 4 states and 3 countries and the only
| time we ever homeschooled...was in NJ back in the early 2000s.
| mitch-crn wrote:
| "He climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the
| Year after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three
| occasions. He quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street
| Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year,
| claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children. Later
| that year he was the subject of a show at Carnegie Hall called
| "An Evening With John Taylor Gatto," which launched a career of
| public speaking in the area of school reform, which has taken
| Gatto over a million and a half miles in all fifty states and
| seven foreign countries." http://crn.hopto.org/archives/john-t-
| gatto/
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Tech people were bullied in school. It wasn't worth it.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| In conversations like this, I often find it clarifying to ask if
| your interlocutors have children. Nothing strips away ideology
| like a screaming baby.
| jppope wrote:
| Underrated comment here
| snickmy wrote:
| I have a theory that is grounded on no-scientific evidence whats-
| so-ever. This applies only to the 2-5y population.
|
| 1) kids in nursery get sick a whole lot, and is not always just
| 'building up their immunitary system', it really is a one-two
| punch of constant illness that drugs for months on, with little
| to no recovery mechanisms. This is truer in bigger city with a
| higher turnover of the class cohort
|
| 2) a lot of the socialization aspect of nursery is overrated.
| Parallel play is a thing, and the need for socialization doesn't
| require a whole 8 hours. There are plenty of other opportunities
| to socialize. Especially in higher density areas, where
| institutions are more involved in creating moments for kids to
| socialize.
|
| 3) the cost of central group based nursery has skyrocket. (just
| empiric evidence), at the same time there is an increasing supply
| of 20-something-y-old that don't want a nursery job, but are
| happy to do a more flexible working hour in a less 'stressful'
| enviroment (aka less children, more home based).
|
| The combination of the 3 things has made homeschooling a lot more
| interesting for parents.
| hersko wrote:
| As someone who sends their kids to private school for religious
| reasons, the idea of public school is wild to me. You have to
| send to a specific school based on location? Teacher's unions who
| strong arm schools into not being able to fire bad teachers?
|
| I really don't understand why school vouchers aren't more
| popular. Parents need to have the ability to choose where to send
| their kids. They have much more agency in private schools where
| they are the people paying salaries.
|
| I think the best way to fix the education system would be a
| voucher based system where the vouchers would be X dollars which
| would cover public and some private schools, but parents would
| have the option of choosing where to send their kids and if they
| want to spend more to send to better schools. Make schools
| compete for students.
|
| There should also be some standard homeschooling kit or some sort
| of national resources that enabled parents to homeschool more
| easily.
| pokstad wrote:
| I send my kids to a public school which I love, but I agree
| about vouchers. Giving more control to parents is important as
| these school districts become more monolithic and unions become
| more powerful.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| We are not able to homeschool our son. Two problems: 1) we don't
| have time - we both work so there is little time to prepare the
| material; 2) it is very difficult to teach one's own kids. It's a
| LOT easier for a teacher to do that at school.
|
| But I do sit with him every night for 30 mins to go over alphabet
| and Math. I think I'll extend it to maybe 45 mins when he goes to
| primary, but anything longer than 1 hour is going to be harmful.
| raintrees wrote:
| For those who are not happy with the current state of social
| systems:
|
| "We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their
| education and be surprised when they come home as Romans."
|
| - Voddie T. Baucham Jr. (possibly among others)
|
| One of the tenants of collectivism seems to be to replace the
| parent-child relationship with a society-child relationship "for
| the good of society"
| frogpelt wrote:
| Homeschooling is another way to protect your kids from social
| media. If they aren't subjected to forced hang outs with kids who
| are all on social media, it becomes much easier to control their
| access to it (or rather its access to them).
| dkhenry wrote:
| I don't think this article is a good faith analysis of
| Homeschooling. Clearly the author was home schooled and had some
| concerns with how they were instructed. With that in mind the
| arguments that are brought up are very much ignoring the breath
| of options that are all covered under "homeschool". There is far
| more diversity in the home school world beyond academic
| overachiever and religious fundamentalist.
|
| Fundamentally home school allows children to be taught in a way
| that is appropriate for them, and with the speed and oversight
| they require. Something that you can't really do in a corporate
| school setting. All three of my children learn at different
| paces, and require different amounts of involvement. They all
| require much more involvement then they ever got at traditional
| schools, and they have at times progressed through their
| coursework much faster or much slower then the "average" pace.
|
| It is true that if you have a child that is a academic prodigy
| they will greatly benefit from homeschooling, and its true that
| keeping your children in your home can allow you to be the
| greatest influence in their moral and social instruction, but its
| also true that even "average" students will probably do better
| with 1-1 instruction from a parent who is well equipped then they
| will with a teacher who might be better trained, but is ill
| equipped to actually instruct each individual pupil.
|
| As for the main point that somehow this is some form of elitism
| where homeschool families don't want their kids around the common
| rabble. The homeschool families I know range from households
| where both parents hold post secondary degree's, to ones where
| the parents got GED's, and the career expectations are suitably
| broad for the kids being schooled. This stands in stark contrast
| to traditional school which ranks its self on how many kids go to
| 4 year colleges, and looks down on anyone who would join a trade,
| or be a home maker. This is literally my biggest complaint with
| school in the Bay Area. If your kid didn't get into Berkeley or
| Stanford your household was perceived to be a failure, and if
| they had any desire to do something other then be a Product
| Manager at a FAANG then they were going to be forced to live at
| home forever or move to another state.
| shw1n wrote:
| As someone who had both good and really bad times in schools,
| works in tech, and is considering it for our kids, some thoughts:
|
| Never once did I want my kid to "not be around mediocre", it's
| the extremes I want to filter.
|
| Part of the reason we're considering private school is to avoid
| the bullies/wannabe gangbangers who don't care if they end up in
| jail that made my own life miserable.
|
| Similarly, our concern is with the other extreme, anxiety-ridden,
| high-expectations "has to change the world" is not what we want
| his social culture to be.
|
| A group of kids that enjoy learning, understand the
| employee/entrepreneurial trade-off but may still opt for a 9-5 is
| what we're after.
|
| A friend of mine half-jokingly suggested "the cheapest private
| school" to balance this out, and actually seems like a half-
| decent solution.
|
| Like with general life consequences, we want them to experience
| as much variance on their own while avoiding extreme swings with
| long-term negative repercussions (horrific injury, jail,
| dangerous drugs). This is just one facet among many for us.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| There are private schools which have more and less competitive
| environments, it just depends. I'm not convinced that filtering
| by tuition cost will necessarily get you what you want, you'd
| want to research the individual school and talk to families and
| so on.
| shw1n wrote:
| This makes sense and is probably what we'd do.
|
| The "cheapest private school" suggestion was also a response
| to avoiding another culture we wanted to avoid: entitled rich
| kid
|
| The idea was that a tuition filter might help here, but that
| was purely off my friend's experience as I have none with
| private school.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Common core math? ?
|
| Training kids to sabotage their mathematical ability to "level
| the playing field" is the most asinine thing I've ever seen and
| I'm disgusted it's still being taught.
| exabrial wrote:
| Loaded question: in order to answer you have to agree with the
| premise. Homeschooling is not "fashionable", it's out of
| necessity.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| We all now are getting bullied every hour by a near 80 year old
| sociopath
|
| I'm glad I learned in school how to deal with bullies
| bluecalm wrote:
| Because public school system sucks, invites abuse from both other
| children and the teachers and is designed for the lowest common
| denominator.
|
| It's not rocket science that parents who have means to give their
| kids something better do so.
|
| It's like asking why rich people eat better food, do sports, go
| to better schools and are healthier: it's because they can afford
| a better services.
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| We are homeschooling our two teenagers. We live in Ireland which
| has a pretty decent education system and has a high percentage of
| students going on to third level education.
|
| The problem is that it is really bad at handling children who are
| neurodivergent. My daughter is autistic and my son has ADHD and
| they just stuggled to fit in at school. They were filled with
| anxiety and the supports for them just weren't there. Spending on
| special needs supports is pitifully low despite Ireland being so
| cash rich right now.
|
| So now we homeschool them and they are doing grand learning at
| their own pace.
|
| But it's not just that that makes me favour home schooling. For
| me one of the biggest issues with state education pretty much
| everywhere the world over is the idea that at a certain age a
| child should have reached a certain academic standard and if they
| haven't then that is seen as a failure or at the very least a
| problem. This is complete and utter nonsense. We all learn at
| different speeds, some pick up knowledge early, some pick it up
| later. What matters is that by the time they leave school they
| are in possession of most of the life skills they need.
|
| I also have issue with what is taught and how it is taught. Most
| subjects are taught with a focus on rote. Children are told to
| learn things, but aren't really told WHY they should learn
| things. That why bit is so important to help a childs mind
| develop.
|
| For me there is also a bit of a morality issue. If you go an look
| at a school curriculum there will nearly always be something that
| you as a parent do not agree with. For me its the idea of
| teaching children that there only option in life after education
| is to get a job, be a good worker and keep going until
| retirement. I don't subscribe to that idea, I believe there are
| alternative life pathways. The problem is that if I send my
| children to a state school they will be forced to learn and
| accept things I fundamentally disagree with and that to me is
| morally dubious.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| IME, poor quality of education at a shocking number of schools,
| even in "good areas".
|
| Granted, I grew up in a rural place, and from a social
| perspective my school years were pretty good (high school was
| great, it was literally like movies that were popular at the time
| in the 2000s). I have many friends that I still talk to very
| often that I've known for the better part of 20-30 years.
|
| Seems like this experience isn't the norm here. I suspect my
| experience is both a function of time and place.
|
| Those positives aside, the "education" I received through high-
| school was incredibly poor.
|
| I'm absolutely blown away when I see kids today taking
| programming classes in high school or calculus or "AP Stats" or
| any of this stuff.
|
| I'd not even heard of "Mechanical Engineering" until some friends
| picked that as a college major my senior year, to say nothing of
| programming as a vocation.
|
| Granted this was 20-odd years ago, but considering the low
| quality, any parent that wants their kids to aspire to "more" in
| an equivalent position today would have to either: - pay loads
| for a private school - spend substantial time giving their kids
| supplementary education outside of school (barring the naturally
| curious and ambitious). Given time and energy constraints, such a
| proposal doesn't even seem feasible)
|
| It's pretty obvious to me why you'd want to homeschool today,
| given experiences like this and the boundless high-quality
| material instantly available online and elsewhere.
|
| Socialization is the other concern.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| America hasn't really taken public education seriously in a
| long time. That's funding for schools, serious academic
| standards, building more schools so class sizes stay
| reasonable, _and_ insisting on having rules in place to make
| sure classes are not disrupted. People either just want to
| throw money at the problem _or_ lower standards _or_ make sure
| rich communities have good schools and poorer communities get
| what they "deserve" (ie. "you don't make enough/your house is
| not worth enough, so your school's quality will/should suck").
|
| The way that civic pride, communities, and public education,
| were all tied together has withered away in the last 4-5
| decades. Now, access to good, serious, education is a zero-sum
| game.
| seitgeist wrote:
| _These tech parents are hackers by nature, and I think they're
| convinced that in homeschooling they've happened on the ultimate
| life hack: just opt out of being around average people._
|
| I agree in part and disagree in part:
|
| Agree - they're absolutely "hacking" education for their kids.
| The 1:1 student/teacher ratio and the ability to custom tailor
| almost every part of the curriculum are the biggest selling
| points--and that's true whether it comes from a desire to give
| their kids the best they can, or a desire to micromanage and
| control every aspect of their lives.
|
| Disagree - I think it's less about "average people" overall and
| more about opting out of _learning from and being trained by_
| what can feel like a gachapon of teachers and administrators in
| public (and to a lesser extent, private) schools. It probably
| seems to them like, "If I wouldn't hire this person to work at
| my company, why would I 'hire' them to do the much more critical
| task of preparing my child for their future?"
|
| _None of the arguments convince anyone. Homeschooling remains
| what it was in the creationism-and-spelling-bee days: an
| ideological choice._
|
| In other words... Windows = public school
| Mac = private school Linux = homeschool
| racl101 wrote:
| And TempleOS?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The problem with homeschooling is it's pretty much a crapshoot
| whether you end up in a weird religious environment or an abusive
| environment, with a long-shot chance of ending up in a fun
| constructive environment with lots of personalised attention and
| the opportunity to travel the world.
|
| Of course, this is pretty much the same set of dice you roll when
| you spawn into a traditional school system, except you roll with
| disadvantage when it comes to the long-shot.
|
| I don't know, I was fortunate enough to roll the long shot, and
| it worked out pretty well for me. Though I will echo the
| article's note that forming emotional attachments continues to be
| a bitch if you didn't have a large peer group at a young age...
| kajumix wrote:
| Why do you imply that the fun, constructive environment for
| homeschooling a long shot, but the weird religious or abusive
| environment is more of the norm?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Well, normal, boring people tend to send their kids to
| school, so your chances of a normal, boring homeschooling
| experience are pretty slim. And even the most well-
| intentioned of counter cultural folks don't always excel at
| parenting, never mind educating.
|
| I've met a fair number of other homeschooled folks over the
| years who had a great childhood, but I've met more for whom
| the lack of community/government oversight meant their
| parents could get away with things we wouldn't generally
| countenance (be that actual abuse, various forms of religious
| indoctrination, or just plain old "unschooling" - aka "ignore
| the kids till they go away").
| graemep wrote:
| > Well, normal, boring people tend to send their kids to
| school, so your chances of a normal, boring homeschooling
| experience are pretty slim.
|
| Depends what you mean by normal. My experience is kids get
| more freedom, meet a wide range of people, and generally
| get a much better education. Maybe it is different here in
| the UK.
|
| > And even the most well-intentioned of counter cultural
| folks don't always excel at parenting, never mind
| educating.
|
| The home ed community in the UK does have a lot of hippie
| types in it, but even if I do not see eye to eye with them
| I think their kids are mostly a lot better educated than
| the average school child.
|
| > hings we wouldn't generally countenance (be that actual
| abuse,
|
| which also happens to school going kids. it happens more
| often to school going kids (and as far as I can see from
| stats, home ed kids are at lower risk - more likely to be
| investigated, less likely to have action taken). On top of
| that there is a fair amount of abuse in schools.
|
| > just plain old "unschooling" - aka "ignore the kids till
| they go away").
|
| that is not what unschooling is. Unschorling parents can
| make a great deal of effort, its just that they let kids
| decide what they want to learn and facilitate it.
| petsfed wrote:
| My kids are enrolled in a homeschool parent partnership
| program (because its one of the few public montessori
| programs within an easy before-school-drive for our kids). My
| experience has been that the families attracted to that
| school fall into one of two categories:
|
| 1) Families who are skeptical of standard American public
| school methods and/or families who have recognized that
| standard public school methods don't work for their
| children's peculiarities. They treat the program (and
| especially the Montessori program) as like a school
| acceleration program.
|
| 2) Families who do not want the government dictating the
| terms of their children's education in any way shape or form.
| Within this latter category, the minority are active
| participants in their children's education, and the majority
| are the weirdly religious and/or abusive sorts.
|
| The school's administration seems to cater to category 2, and
| expend a lot of time and effort to try to communicate that
| whatever requirement they're enforcing (like "your child must
| actually talk to, in-person, on the phone, or via video call,
| a teacher holding a state-issued teaching certificate at
| least once per 2 school weeks") is not a _school_
| requirement, but a _state_ requirement, and failing to meet
| these minimum requirements will trigger a _state_
| investigation, not a _school_ investigation. Its sort of
| unsettling to hear them belabor the point, but then, during
| the parent orientation where I was hearing that sort of
| thing, it seemed like most of the audience was not at all
| interested in suspending whatever they were doing
| (conversations, watching youtube videos, etc) while the
| principal was talking through that stuff. Like, its telling
| that the administration goes to great pains to say " _we_
| aren 't holding you to the rules designed specifically to
| prevent child abuse and neglect, so don't send _us_ your
| death threats or whatever ", and most of the audience to that
| actual message of how to comply with those rules are
| themselves completely disengaged from the presentation of
| them.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I'm going to hazard a guess with zero grounding in data to
| attempt to answer that, caveat emptor. Please also note that
| even though these are my guesses, these assertions do not
| really reflect where I personally land on this. I'm not
| really sure what the breakdown is, but I think I can
| understand how someone gets to this point of view.
|
| --
|
| In order for parents to _choose_ homeschooling, some (but not
| all) must be present in the parents:
|
| - a conviction that the herd choice of sending a child to
| school is wrong, and not just a little bit - the belief that
| you know education better than expert educators with many
| years of hard earned experience - relatedly, the belief that
| you are fully qualified to teach anything of importance, and
| that anything you can't teach is not of important - the
| ability to forgo the opportunity cost of an in-home full time
| tutor
|
| Add these up and you will skew towards parents who either
| have extremely strong convictions (faith related or
| otherwise) and a mentality that presupposes that the parent
| is "right."
|
| In the best case scenario, this is an extremely well
| educated/informed parent who knows enough to keep their pride
| at check and can handle their emotions well in the face of at
| times extremely frustrating circumstances, all well being
| under more financial strain than they would be if they
| weren't showing up every day to school. These people
| definitely exist, and I think _most_ parents strive to be
| this for their children regardless of how they educate their
| child.
|
| But the "average" human is not well informed, often makes
| rash and/or emotional decisions, and is struggling to make
| ends meet. Thus, the "average" parent that chooses
| homeschooling skews towards dogmatic thinking and/or a
| presumption of "I'm right and you're wrong" that over a
| period of a childhood easily leads to abuse, especially if
| the parents are struggling to make ends meet.
|
| I guess there is a counter argument that people who choose to
| homeschool can "afford" to do so and thus are well resourced
| enough (financially or socially) to have a good shot of
| success, but even among the top 10% of earners you will be
| hard pressed to find parents that believe they can afford
| homeschooling.
| lolinder wrote:
| > it's pretty much a crapshoot whether you end up in a weird
| religious environment or an abusive environment, with a long-
| shot chance of ending up in a fun constructive environment with
| lots of personalised attention and the opportunity to travel
| the world.
|
| It's a crapshoot for the kid, but a parent who's considering
| homeschooling knows pretty well whether they are going to be
| the fundamentalist type or not. If they are, they likely aren't
| here reading this discussion.
| railsgirls112 wrote:
| mind sharing some of your experience regarding emotional
| attachments / social groups?
| sequoia wrote:
| I went to public school as did my wife. That's why we homeschool.
| It was a terrible experience overall; all these kids in a totally
| unnatural environment wasting time. I say unnatural, because
| generally if someone is tormenting you daily you can get away
| from that person. Even at a job, you could quit and find another
| job. In school, you are trapped with your tormentor(s) and
| constantly forced to take part in social hierarchies you have no
| interest in being part of. I was a loser through middle school
| which was not fun, then in high school I was not engaged so I
| became bored and lazy. When I had an engaging class (like mens
| choir, german, spanish or woodshop; even though another kid did
| intentionally burn me with a hot bit off the drill press among
| other antics) or I was able to be creative, I put a lot of effort
| in and it felt rewarding. But mostly I look back and say "what a
| massing f*cking waste of time that was." Not only did I not spend
| my time doing something better, it destroyed much of my natural
| curiosity and creativity.
|
| We homeschooled our two older kids, the eldest is now in their
| second year of an extremely competitive engineering university
| program. She wanted to go to Uni so she took some online classes
| to prep then enrolled in school in grade 9. That was completely
| different from my experience in large part because she _chose_ to
| go to school, so she had no one to blame for "why do I have to
| be here?" like I did. She owned her own choices & succeeded.
|
| As for "what about socialization" that is the most laughable part
| to me. Sure I learned "socialization" in school: kill or be
| killed. I learned to be a mean, cynical, jaded child who could
| survive in that institutional environment. My children were free
| to spend full days socializing with other kids when we got
| together, and met frequently at libraries & parks with other
| homeschool kids, as well as engaging in extracurriculars. And if
| they're having a spat with another kid? That's fine, they can
| take a break for a bit then reconnect with them later; no need to
| force them together daily.
|
| The funniest thing to me about "what about socialization" is that
| when I was in school & chatted with a friend in class, guess what
| I was always told? "Do that on your own time, _you don 't come to
| school to socialize._" Ha. But seriously, avoiding the
| maladaptive "socialization" of what I think can fairly be called
| "industrial schooling" is one of the biggest perks of
| homeschooling.
|
| The extracurriculars were easier too because they were not
| already tired from an early wakeup and full day of school! My
| younger kids who are now in regular school now are absolutely
| fried after a day at school + extracurriculars.
|
| The amount of energy I spend now supporting school for my younger
| kids is crazy. Stressful mornings harrying sleepy kids out of bed
| and out the door, kids upset over bullying and inequity in the
| classroom, begging for designer clothes (where did that come
| from?), getting them to do their homework, oh and then there's
| "teaching my kids shit they were supposed to learn in school but
| the teacher didn't teach them" i.e. I'm having to "homeschool"
| them _in addition_ to school. Sooo many conflicts spring from
| school. Having my kids in school often feels like _more_ work
| that homeschooling rather than less.
|
| Academics are easy. Tons of free online resources + Outschool
| where you can pay a teacher for one-off classes. My older kids
| took the 8 week essay writing class then breezed through high
| school english. When younger, if they wanted to play iPad I'd say
| "do 30m khan academy then you can do 30m iPad." Regular trips to
| the library & read to them... it's really not hard to cover
| academics through middle school, then if they want to go to high
| school, go ahead. Or apprentice, or focus on something else.
|
| If you have any questions about homeschooling from a veteran
| parent who's also had kids in public school, let me know.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Well, all of my kids went to school and they basically learned
| how to read and write and that's it. Everything interesting they
| learned talking to me or watching dumb YouTube videos I suppose.
| I would have happily homeschooled my children, but I have to pay
| rent.
| apeescape wrote:
| I'm a native Finn and went to a public school here in Finland in
| the 00s. My overall experience was good, though of course I
| didn't always enjoy it. I liked some teachers more than others. I
| learned a lot and was bored a lot. I was subjected to the
| occasional bullying (who wasn't?) but I never felt truly unsafe.
| I also got along well with most people most of the time. I had to
| overcome my shyness to give presentations to my classmates. I got
| to know people from different socio-economic backgrounds. While
| navigating through childhood and puberty I made a lot of
| mistakes, as did all other kids, but ultimately it was a good
| childhood, and in hindsight I am really glad I wasn't
| homeschooled (not that it's common here anyway). Without the
| social connections I made and social skills I learned, I
| undoubtedly would've had a very different kind of life, and not
| in a better way I think.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Maybe I'm a crappy adult, but I lack the patience, empathy,
| emotion regulation skills that I feel good teachers have.
|
| I would rather send my kids to a private school than try to
| homeschool them myself. Thankfully, the public schools in the the
| area I choose to live in are excellent. We do augment at home
| with tutors and extracurricular learning.
| madhadron wrote:
| As usual, it depends. My time in public schools (K through 7th
| grade in various places in the southeast US) was a mixed bag.
| Newport News, VA with all the kids of engineers and naval
| officers? Awesome. I loved school. Most other places? Meh. Rural
| western Virginia? Terrible. Bullied until I finally snapped and
| left someone half conscious on the playground (and the football
| coaches watched as I handed out that beating). I was homeschooled
| from 8th grade until I left for college at the suggestion of the
| teachers in the school because they were running out of classes
| at the high school for me when I was in 7th grade.
|
| I was fortunate to have parents that are extremely well educated
| and my homeschooling gave me an education that is simply
| unavailable in a school. Not many kids have sat on the back deck
| in the Appalachians with their father, learning how to read
| Virgil in Latin.
|
| There were lots of other homeschoolers in our county who were all
| religious nuts. Fortunately Virginia requires you to come in and
| take standardized tests every couple years to see if you're at
| grade level if you're homeschooling, so the worst cases got
| corrected. The school district also proctored my AP tests for me,
| even though they weren't classes the school offered.
|
| My kids are in public school. The public schools where I live are
| excellent and actually deal with bullying. My kids would rather
| not go to school, but they're not being traumatized and they're
| getting a good education and have lots of friends. There's a
| major emphasis on social-emotional learning, which turns out to
| be heavily correlated with later performance. Our biggest problem
| is in high school with parents pressure cooking their kids to try
| to go to places like Harvard or Yale. I do what I can to counsel
| the kids and get them off that path. My own kids are firmly
| convinced that they're going to guaranteed admission state
| schools, and don't have to try to build a ridiculous resume in
| high school.
|
| Schools don't have to be horrible. They just have a history of
| being poorly run in many places.
| graemep wrote:
| I think one factor is that technology makes it a lot easier to
| do.
|
| There are lots of online resources, online courses, tutors who do
| remote tutoring (I do not think i could have found my daughter a
| Latin teacher locally very easily, for example), lots of courses
| both for conventional qualifications (my kids did (I)GCSEs - just
| as kids do in British schools, (except at schools they do them at
| 16, we spread them out with my older daughter doing her first
| when she was 11) and just to learn (e.g. MOOCs).
| cogman10 wrote:
| I'm a huge supporter of public education. I think it's one of the
| most important things for the government to fund.
|
| And, unfortunately, that's part of what's moving me towards
| homeschooling my child. We've not 100% decided on it yet.
| However, we are on the brink.
|
| The issue we have is our school is underfunded and our child has
| special needs. Their day in class, from what we've observed, is
| primarily just daycare with no actual schooling. Even though they
| are on the border of being severe, they have no interaction with
| their peers which is a major reason we wanted them in school in
| the first place. The end result is they are spending a very large
| amount of time watching youtube or sitting in a corner.
|
| The issue is our school district and our state does not want to
| fund public schools. They want to find ways to send money to
| private schools. The end result is the salaries for everyone
| involved are pitiful. Everyone that deals with my kid at school
| works 2 jobs. Some of them are making more money at mcdonalds
| than at school. And, surprise, the end result is even if they
| want to find staffers they can't find them.
|
| Our district further bans parents from volunteering. So even
| though my wife is a SAHM, she can't lend a hand in my child's
| school to make up the staffing problem and improve my kid's
| education.
|
| All of this has pushed us towards wanting to homeschool. Which
| really sucks because I don't think that's the ideal education for
| my child. I worry that we'll have gaps in the education we try to
| give them. I worry that they won't get to socialize with any
| peers. I worry that they will ultimately get left behind. But
| school isn't providing what we want.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, I don't claim to have Big Data on this, but I homeschooled my
| child, and one of the most common things in homeschooling I saw
| was that people used co-ops. Thus, the kids are around other
| kids, and the parent doesn't have to know everything.
|
| In my case, I chose it because the public schools in my part of
| town (low income) were low achieving, and proto-fascist in their
| policies on being able to control your own appearance. They had
| both state level (Texas, conservative) and city-level (Austin,
| progressive) political influences, the worst elements of both.
|
| Just my own experience, but it doesn't much match what the
| article describes.
| w1 wrote:
| Most people here would be good homeschooling parents.
|
| This site doesn't represent the world at large.
|
| I was personally homeschooled, and while I ended up with a
| positive outcome, I cannot say the same thing for any of my peers
| (other kids I met through homeschooling groups.) There were many
| children that, in retrospect, were suffering from abuse or
| neglect that the structure of school could have prevented, or at
| least a mandatory reporter could have caught.
|
| For more anecdotes, take a look at r/homeschoolrecovery (which is
| nearly 1/6th the size of r/homeschooling.) Many of the stories
| there are so gut-wrenchingly bleak. Any margin improvement in
| educational outcomes hardly seems worth it given some of the pain
| described there.
| mdip wrote:
| Both of my children were Home Schooled until High School
| (technically 7th and 9th grade). They've been students at a
| private school and now one attends an excellent private High
| School and one attends the 4th best High School in my state.
|
| They are straight-A students (lowest grade: 94%; History -- my
| Daughter). They are _shocked_ that they attend school for 7 hours
| a day and there are kids who "struggle" while they finish their
| homework on the ride home, don't study, and get the grades they
| get. They are in advanced classes and both have had a perfect
| score in Math all three years. Mom and I are also _divorced_ and
| have been since they were 2 and 4. They make friends easily but
| struggled when they were Home Schooled because they have less
| exposure to kids their age. They were given the choice when my
| son hit 9th grade "continue or attend Public School or a school
| we can afford). They didn't want to miss out on "The High School
| Experience" but both, enthusiastically, want to Home School their
| own kids one day.
|
| They aren't unique/gifted. There are plenty of students at their
| schools who do as well as they do and were not Home Schooled. The
| difference, though, is they "did school" in a given weekday for
| never longer than 1.5 hours. Most days were 30 minutes.
| September-April with summers off and that was it.
|
| Religion was not a factor in our choice. My son's ASD Type 1
| diagnosis played a role, the way Math was taught to me played a
| role, the arrogant belief that I could do better and the fact
| that my ex-wife didn't work played a role. Mostly, talking to
| other Home Schooling parents and their children and "wanting my
| kids to be like _that_ " was the primary factor. Watching a
| 13-year-old speak intelligently and with confidence about a
| subject they understand and actually _expect_ an adult to listen
| to them is kind of crazy, especially when they really _are_
| intelligent and _should_ be listened to.
|
| In a decade of Home Schooling, I have talked at length with
| hundreds of families and their children who took that path
| (various conferences, Home School events at local businesses, and
| extra-curricular activities done "during the school day" for Home
| School kids). I've observed a few things: All of them teach as
| much as we did. None of them will admit to it until their kids
| are in college or they decide to send them to traditional schools
| and "their child's education is validated by someone else."
| Nobody who is actively Home Schooling will admit to an outsider
| that their children get 1-1.5 hours of education a week day
| because you'll call CPS on us. All of their children are about a
| year or two ahead of children "their grade" despite this minimal
| amount of lesson time.
|
| I read over and over and over again about how Home Schooled
| children are ignorant, don't believe in evolution, believe the
| world is flat, their parents don't actually "teach them" -- I
| have no doubt those children exist and I haven't seen them
| because the Home Schooled families I encounter attend
| conferences, belong to groups (we didn't), and _care_ about their
| child 's education. I live in a state that, at one point, had the
| largest number of practicing Home School families (not sure where
| it is, today) and the most liberal rules around it -- literally
| "take them out of school"; that's it.
|
| Everybody seems "to know some invented Home Schooled child" who
| had some kind of major life problem. I usually challenge for
| specifics and it's always turned out the kid doesn't exist.
| Knowing _any_ child who is Home Schooled is unusual. But knowing
| the _one child_ validates your choice to NOT Home School, the
| statistics of which make them _extremely_ rare, and you find they
| 're parroting some anecdote they heard. My daughter's school[0]
| has about 1,700 students in it. Her last had about 500. I have
| asked every single one of her teachers, her counselors and
| several teachers they _don 't_ have "have you ever had a Home
| Schooled kid in your class, before?" I'd guess 40 educators and
| some staff/administrators. There's exactly _one_ who had exactly
| _one_ child in her class at her _last_ job who was Home Schooled.
| He was an excellent student. And this in a state that has a lot
| of Home Schooled students. Judging by Facebook, you 'd think
| there's one hiding around every corner peeing in people's
| Cheerios.
|
| I suspect it's people feeling (needlessly) insecure about the
| choices they made for their own child and feeling threatened by
| the fact that I chose differently. I don't encourage people to
| choose to Home School. It's not for everyone -- for starters, you
| can't do it with two full-time working parents and that means
| it's simply not an option for most people. However, this topic
| very rarely came up without judgement from _everyone_ who didn 't
| Home School about what a dangerous choice _I_ made when I was
| still Home Schooling. It 's a lot more fun, now, since I can
| point to their success.
|
| Yes, some Home Schooled kids struggle/drop out of college or
| can't hold down a job. Certainly none of us have met a kid who
| drank his way through Freshman year of College, or was ill-
| prepared by their _public_ school and failed out. And we came
| from High Schools where _everyone_ received a degree, too.
| Studies continually affirm the success of Home Schooled students,
| yet "everyone knows some Flat Earther child from Home Schooled
| parents." Children fail in every type of education. They fail
| less in Private schools and Home Schools. They fail more in
| Public school (largely because of "everyone goes there, including
| children in extremely difficult life circumstances"). The problem
| is that these wrong impressions of Home Schooled kids turn into
| laws that ban or curtail the freedom to _have_ the choice of Home
| Education.
|
| I know if I had chosen a more traditional route, my kids would
| have had the same probability of success. I would have been
| deeply involved in their education whether or _not_ I was the one
| teaching them and that 's how you get successful students in
| traditional education, too. While it might be nice to stand on
| some high horse, claim that "I just love my children more than
| you did", pretend that all of this was some massive sacrifice and
| I'm some super-parent by comparison to all of you who went the
| traditional route, that would be a self-aggrandizing lie. I paid
| for and followed curriculum. It was easy. The only challenging
| part of it is that "your kids will argue, yell and cry at you
| when they struggle"; they won't do that with a stranger.
|
| With all of the extra non-lesson time they had, it was probably
| _easier_ for them to excel. But I don 't look down on people for
| not making that choice. Quite the opposite, everyone looked down
| on me for the entire duration that I was a Home Schooling Dad.
| It's silly.
|
| And I'd do it all over again if given the choice for one reason
| alone: My kids are _incredible_ self-learners and that was the
| _one thing_ that I was _very_ intentional about. Both of them
| have the confidence that "nothing is beyond their ability to
| learn" and that it's a simple matter of finding the right
| information, studying and practicing. My daughter is a shining
| example of this: She has learned to plays Guitar, Drums, Bass,
| and Piano (some proficiently, some she's well on her way). She
| has never had a lesson. She can read music and tabs and she can
| sit down and compose as well as learn to play anything she wants
| to learn to play on Guitar, Bass and Drums. She's getting there
| with Piano, but it's a much more difficult instrument and she
| just started last Summer with that one; she's got a few years
| behind her on the others. But I bought her a full sized weighted-
| key MIDI piano last summer and I had 15 years of lessons,
| competitions and study in that instrument as a child/teenager, so
| I have a good understanding of typical progress in learning it.
| She took it to Mom's and decided she didn't want to take it back
| and forth but brought it back here over Christmas break. I
| listened to her practicing and had to walk into her room to make
| sure it was actually her _playing_ rather than the computer
| playing back some MIDI file. In three months she 's as far along
| as I was after 5-6 years of lessons. She doesn't even _realize_
| how well she 's playing; nobody told her it was unusual for her
| to be able to play some of the things she's playing at her skill
| level. A teacher would have never had her _playing_ those things.
| She just went ahead blissfully unaware of the fact that it 's
| extremely hard to play some of the things she's learned to play
| and that probably made the biggest difference of all. She wanted
| to play it, so she sat down and learned how to play it, never
| getting discouraged over the fact that "you don't learn something
| like that until year 5." Her _technique_ (fingering ... stop
| snickering) is even correct.
|
| Both of my children _love_ to learn new things, just like me.
| Except, I didn 't learn that about myself until formal education
| was over. They have _always_ known that about themselves.
|
| [0] My son attends a private school that is very small and the
| results were the same but less surprising to me.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| A book "Free to learn" by Peter Gray help us wit decision of
| homeschoolong our kids.
|
| Our education system is broken.
| koinedad wrote:
| This blog takes a very narrow view on the subject... more people
| are realizing how the school systems are and that education can
| be done in different and even sometimes better ways.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| This is my take as well. A huge burst of new tooling appeared
| during covid because the traditional school system essentially
| disappeared.
|
| That tooling isn't going to disappear just because schools are
| finally open again, and some of it is actually fairly
| compelling.
|
| I'm in a large metro, and the schools near me are _terrible_. 1
| /10 and 2/10 scores are typical. All the traditional schools
| we're zoned for fall well into the bottom 10% of my state. We
| attended lots of public engagement meetings for these districts
| (everything from guided tours to district superintendent
| interviews to parent-teacher nights). My takeaway? These
| schools are struggling with kids who don't have housing, don't
| regularly eat, can't get transportation, and have parents who
| utterly disengaged or downright abusive.
|
| They aren't trying to excel at education, they're trying to
| literally keep 20% of the kids alive and fed, and then scrape
| them over the failing line so they don't get their funding cut.
|
| I have nothing but respect for the educators placed into those
| circumstances - seriously, it's an impossible job and they get
| paid peanuts for it.
|
| But I also absolutely refuse to put my kids into that system.
| Full fucking stop. It's not a place to provide enrichment and
| growth.
|
| But... that leaves us the spot where
|
| 1. We win a lotto and get placed into a charter school (which
| only rate marginally better than the default schools - 4/10
| instead of 2/10).
|
| 2. We pay for private schools to the tune of $30k/kid/year, or
| nearly half a million US for our family over the course of my
| kids education.
|
| 3. We move.
|
| 4. We home school.
|
| Prior to covid, I had basically already picked "move" as the
| answer when all my kids hit schooling age, but there's actually
| enough tooling now that we will likely consider group based
| (pod) home schooling first. Home schooling doesn't have the
| same reputation that it did prior to covid, and it's not just
| "religious fundies" or "anti-gov whackos" anymore. Those groups
| definitely still exist, but with online tooling - we have much
| better options to filter out the crazy folks and spread the
| load out so that kids get social interactions, have a real
| teacher (often with better credentials than the school
| teachers) and get 1 on 1 interactions from adults.
| jcarrano wrote:
| For most of history, homeschooling was the norm for those who
| could afford private tutors. We know how our current mass-
| production type education appeared, but what needs to be
| explained is how it surviving into the 21st century.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I can't help but notice that history's richest and most
| successful people have raised some pretty unpleasant kids.
|
| Could that be because newspapers like to report on those and
| people like to read stories about how awful rich kids are?
|
| There are plenty of unpleasant kids from modest backgrounds. It's
| just that their tales are boring.
| pempem wrote:
| While I appreciate the author's perspective, esp as someone who
| experienced homeschooling, I think here in the US we often forget
| what these efforts have cost, their real value and who is
| lobbying against them.
|
| Universal education, for all children in a nation, is an
| incredibly recent thing. Its also essential for real
| participation in a democracy which requires, at minimum, an
| understanding of the governing body and at maximum whatever we're
| slogging through now. Could the curriculum be better? Definitely.
| You know who is stopping that? Shit politicians. We need better
| ones because no matter what you think, they aren't going away,
|
| Education has also continuously and purposefully been underfunded
| and politicized by the political right and intermittently
| eviscerated by corrupt players on the left and right. This is on
| purpose. The rise of homeschooling is directly correlated with
| how much funding public schools have lost, the lack of safety and
| how difficult it is to operate successfully. You now send the kid
| to school and get cut with a thousand small asks for cash when we
| could just revise how taxes are collected and distributed. Put
| out a gun ban. We don't need metal detectors, and cops and clear
| backpacks and active shooter drills and teacher trainings and and
| and. We need LESS GUNS and most americans agree but _private
| industry_ is limiting us.
|
| The rise of homeschooling is correlated with how many people are
| concerned about the _politicization_ of schools, their libraries,
| their teachers, their cirruculum.
|
| We keep having presidents who appoint leaders to the department
| of education who _do not believe in education being available for
| all citizens_. Schools continue to expand their mission to
| feeding kids who can 't be fed. To programs for kids who can't be
| home. No one seems as focused on fixing _why_ there are so many
| hungry kids instead focusing on a 'lunch account' and the debt
| of middle schoolers.
|
| This is all intensely documented and yet another example of
| cutting a public good. A public good by the way, that made
| America a place that everyone in the world wanted to go. Yes, I
| got picked on in school and was bored in my classroom. Yes it
| could have been better. This though, this is a concerted effort
| to get us to divest once again, just like we are from net
| neutrality, the post office, the EEOC etc.
| sequoia wrote:
| This is such a narrow view of homeschooling as to be idiotic.
|
| > That voice likes to say: You should just homeschool them. Opt
| out of interacting with average people, because average people
| will only damage your kids.
|
| The author makes a statement about why they think people prefer
| homeschooling, and yet they _do not mention having spoken to a
| single currently homeschooling parent to ask why they
| homeschool._ This is like me writing an article about some group
| I 'm not a part of (say, farmers) and saying "why don't they all
| get organic certified? As far as I can tell it's because most
| farmers don't like nature."
|
| tl;dr: this is a completely uninformed tirade from someone who
| unfortunately had a bad experience with their _religious_
| upbringing, which involved homeschooling, and is generalizing the
| negative emotions towards all homeschoolers whatever their reason
| for opting out of school. Ironically this article that 's
| ostensibly criticizing homeschooling parents as snobs is dripping
| with disdain and condescension.
|
| The reductive & random assumption that people opt out of school
| they object to the _students_ is baffling to me. Does it not
| occur to the author that people take issue with
| _institutionalization_ of their kids in school? It 's not the
| other children, it's the one-size-fits-all meat grinder of school
| most secular homeschool parents object to.
|
| Bonus: The footnotes are hilarious. The footnote to their
| argument that people homeschool because they're snobs is:
|
| > I don't think I'm straw-manning, because I'm pretty sure
| someone is going to highlight the "opt out of interacting with
| average people" quote on Twitter/X and say "this, but
| unironically."
|
| "I don't think I'm inventing a weak interlocutor to argue against
| because I've invented _another_ imaginary person on twitter who
| agrees with the first imaginary person I created " I'm honestly
| laughing reading this.
| anarticle wrote:
| Join the military! :D
|
| I'm a product of department of defense school system. My parents
| were lower class, I received a world class education. My mom
| taught me to read and count before kindergarten, mostly via
| playing card games with her. I was in NC at that time, and they
| thought I was a savant!
|
| Overall, my experience was good, some bullying of course, but at
| that time administrators held the ultimate key which was we will
| first tell your parents, and then subsequently your parents
| commanding officer, which would result in work disciplinary
| action. When I lived in Japan, there were a couple kids that were
| bad enough to get that to trigger. Stupid stuff like huffing air
| freshener, or just beating the hell out of people.
|
| My short stint in NJ public school was ok, but it lacked the
| rigor/structure of the DoDDs school. I ended up at a good
| engineering university, but had a good amount of debt.
|
| In Philadelphia, public schools are essentially DMZs, with
| private schools for kids that want to do things with their lives.
| This sounds harsh, but our tax system reflects this, as well as
| our disrepair of public school buildings (lead, abestos).
|
| My Dad gave up his best years to the military and his body
| suffered, but it was certainly not for nothing. He retired at 42,
| with a pension after 20y in USMC. Healthcare is taken care of.
|
| It's hard to say whether it is the escalating cost of schools
| which are commodifying it "It's so expensive I shouldn't have to
| xyz", leading to low parental involvement (maybe that is
| normal?), or continuous concierge service for helicopter parents
| as well. My friend who is a teacher has an entire class of
| students exploiting the IEP system to get extra time on exams,
| less choices in multiple choice, less reading, landscape rather
| than portrait tests (yes this is real), and other things that
| absolutely blow up her ability to be efficient at anything in the
| class room. I'm sure there is an argument to be made in favor of
| this, but it cannot operate in this way. At her school
| (Allentown, PA) the inmates are running the asylum due to
| administrators treating parents as "customers" and the parents as
| "the service provider". It is a sad state of affairs. In my
| world, parents ALWAYS sided with the teacher no matter what,
| which meant you had no chance at causing a problem in that way.
|
| I don't know if there is a good solution on the horizon. I think
| the overwork of parents, combined with the exploitation of the
| school for better marks is a sick system. Only private systems
| seem to be able to surf this in a meaningful way because they can
| remove bad actors.
|
| cite: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-
| defen...
| causi wrote:
| I have many teachers in both my immediate and extended family.
| All of the ones who aren't retired say the same thing: the
| quality of parents is in the absolute shitter in two major
| aspects: parents don't want to teach their children anything they
| see as "the school's job" such as how to read or work on anything
| with their children at home. The second way is discipline. They
| instill no values of discipline or respect for the rights of
| others in their children. The "back of the room peanut gallery"
| that was one in ten or one in twenty children when I was young
| has grown to one in three. These are kids who've never seen
| negative consequences for anything they've ever done and
| steadfastly believe that will continue into their adulthood.
| anonfordays wrote:
| When math is racist, acronyms are White supremacy culture, and
| classics like Shakespeare are ditched due to "misogyny", it's no
| secret why homeschooling is becoming fashionable.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I've considered homeschooling but ultimately decided against it
| because:
|
| A - It's illegal where I live, you have to jump hoops to do it B
| - I think an extra opportunity for socialising with kids is worth
| a bit of pain - we wouldn't have the energy for organising
| alternatives and also take care of the kids education C - By
| sending kids to a nice private school you get rid of a lot of
| problems of public school: unmotivated / openly hostile and
| punishing teachers, classmates with bad behaviour disrupting
| class, immigrant classmates who don't speak the language and / or
| create gang of people from the same country to gang up on kids
| (exactly like in prison)
|
| When I went to school things weren't as bad as today and kids
| were not getting stabbed in public school, still it felt like a
| prison because of the slow learning pace and because everyone
| learns at a different pace and wants to learn about different
| things. School is simply the wrong idea for the majority of boys,
| it's just a silly machine that print mindless employees.
|
| The strongest reason for not sending them to school is the latest
| EU mandatory gender theory / sexual education propaganda being
| taught to kids in school since last year.
|
| Ultimately I decided that years of socialisation with peers
| trumps a few lessons about political BS; I'm confident I can
| teach them to distrust authority and teach them that they cannot
| trust blindly everything they hear in school or on the newspaper.
|
| My friends who pursued illegal homeschooling are quite happy,
| they even found a teacher who is teaching kids illegally in
| someone's home, and by grouping the kids together across multiple
| families they have a soft school experience.
| TinkersW wrote:
| I went to a public school and regarded it as prison, no bullying
| went on, but the system is not designed to educate, it is
| designed to instill obedience, and the pace of learning is
| dictated primarily by mediocrity of the teachers(I had a rare
| great 5th grade teacher so this is why I think the the teachers
| more so than the students abilities dictates the results).
|
| People recommending private school: these do not exist in all
| locations, try finding a good one in a rural area
|
| It seems standards in public schools have only fallen since I
| attended, and based on how social media is trending, we seem to
| be getting dumber and less informed.
|
| I could never force a child to attend public school in the US,
| unless it happened to be one of the rare good ones I hear exist.
|
| If we ever get something like what is described in "The Diamond
| Age" perhaps that will help solve the school problem.
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