I do think Covid forced people to ask questions they hadn’t before.
We have sent our kids to private, poor quality and top rated schools.
We saw a stark difference between the poor quality and higher cost options. No surprise.
But the reason we are considering home schooling our younger kids was surprising. It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or better.
That’s just education. The social situation in schools is ludicrous. Phones, social media, etc. what a terrible environment we adults have created for kids to learn both educationally and socially.
I suppose there are few talented, hard working people who want to teach, and they command a premium. Education is expensive and underfunded.
As a parent/carer you probably are much more motivated than an underpaid teacher who wanted to do something else anyway, and you don't have to motivate yourself with money.
By extension, IME, motivated and talented teachers in any school (good or bad) can do wonders. There just aren't that many. And as you say, school environment tends to be a race to the bottom - if Johnny can watch Tiktok during maths, I'll do the same.
No surprise hearing this & no disagreement (derogatory). Kids are super easy to corner into particular domineereed ways.
Being polite & respectful is a skill that's good to have for many reasons. Sure!
But generally it feels like a huge disadvantage to me, bordering abuse, to see kids that accept authority as such. Here on Hacker News I think especially the long old idea of "Question Authority" should be strong. Adults don't always earn their authority, and especially in home-schooled environments I think kids are super abused into forced arch forms of "respect" and behavior that aren't genuine, aren't earned, and which are detrimental to the human spirit that we ought be engendering.
Reciprocally sure there are a lot of bad behaviors kids can pick up too. It just seems so convenient and false to me to just suppress the inconvenient signals, to deny having to form judgement. To see adults doing that feels crazy beyond measure. Judgement & sense must be earned.
Homeschooling doesn't mean the kid stays at home all the time. We homeschool and my kid has classes and different activities all week, interacts with friends and teams. It has worked very well for us given our lifestyle. I would understand it's not for everyone.
My kids get more socialization than me. Our parish homeschool group has daily activities. Monday is two hour playgroup. Tuesday is extracurricular classes at the parish. Wednesday is catechesis and play time. Thursday is free. Friday she does a day long camp with an outdoor education program (not parish based). All added up, she spends more time with kids than I did and doing more interesting things
We homeschooled. When we wanted to socialize our kids, we shoved them into the restroom and beat them up for their lunch money.
I kid, but there's a real point: So much of the socialization is bad.
More: Kids aren't going to be kids forever. Does socialization with a bunch of other kids prepare them for the adult society that they're going to go into?
Well it should, yes, given that socialization is the result of shared social experiences.
Experiencing bullying is (unironically) one of those shared social experiences that create bonds with people (whether as victim, perpetrator, or witness)
These are real social dynamics that actually exist in adult life, and I suspect people who are totally blindsided by them are maladapted
> But the reason we are considering home schooling our younger kids was surprising. It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or better.
“And more importantly, we can provide a better environment for them to mature socially.”
Take it from someone who was homeschooled from pre-k through high school, you will absolutely not provide a better social environment.
I was so unprepared to handle the social dynamics in casual, educational or professional that it took years and years of active work to put myself in a position where it wasn’t an absolute detriment to my success. I have no doubt you can educate your children well, it’s every other aspect of humanity that is typically missed out on and can lead to unintended consequences.
Sounds like you had a hard time transitioning. Sorry for that.
I don't believe it's a magic pill by any means. But I've known many recently home schooled kids and they seem a lot more mature than their public school peers. So I think we have a decent shot at having similar results.
Seeming mature to an adult isn't the thing in question though, is it? Not feeling or appearing awkward when interacting on their own in their 20s is what is being criticized. The anecdotal evidence you present doesn't include home schooled children in their 20s as far as I can tell.
One could say this is where the free market of schooling comes into play. Does it make more economic sense for businesses to choose those with social skills learnt from home schooling, or ones who have not been home schooled? Definitely curious to see where this goes.
> And more importantly, we can provide a better environment for them to mature socially.
Citation needed.
Every perspective I've heard personally - and mirrored in comments here as well - from the non parent side of things, is quite negative in terms of learning how to behave and socialize with your peers. To you the children might seem polite and servile, and you might see this as something positive - as you state in another comment - but you are likely setting them up for life of social awkwardness and ostracization.
I was homeschooled and I got a fairly strong education.
What matters is your parents and how you nurture your kids and provide opportunities for them. It’s easy for homeschooling to be bad… if you don’t give a shit about your kids.
For socializing, the key part is making sure kids are involved in a lot of social activities. I never went to public school, but found my groove socially pretty quickly in college, because I had a lot of opportunities for strong friendships. I was working part time in high school too, so got some exposure to pop culture.
We can actually. It's called theory of probability and statistics, which is probably "forgotten" by these amazing self-appointed homeschoolers. A few rare successes of homeschoolers doesn't mean this practice is good on average, and vice versa the rare failures of the public education system doesn't mean that it is bad on average.
> It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or better.
6% of American think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight. That says absolutely nothing about the bear, and says a lot about how misinformed people are.
One of the key issues in school is classroom size. A teacher with 30 kids is handicapped as a teacher compared to one with a smaller class.
Let's say your family has four kids. As a family, that's large. But as a classroom size, it's really small. That gives you an advantage as a homeschooler over a public school teacher.
Lemme just question how home schooling is at all possible without one parent (statically more likely to be a woman) staying home to supervise the learning. I don’t think we’re talking about remote ranch situations where you either do online school or have to send them to boarding school.
So I’m genuinely wondering if there’s a corresponding exit from the workplace or other demographic trends allowing/pushing this boom in home schooling to happen?
Homeschooling is often (not always) correlated to sect participation, isolationism and "traditionalism". Meaning husband is likely forces wife to never work and socialize, while taking care of kids and all home cleaning and maintenance. This control mania is likely what causes homeschooling too, because it is obvious that one person can't teach 10-16 years worth of advanced studies, so the real motivation is to isolate his family and keep them to the house and sect congregation building. Rudimentary slavery basically.
We’ve homeschooled all our kids up to 8th grade. Our oldest is now a sophomore at the public high school but will start attending community college next year, paid for by the school district.
Most of the adults you see at the various group things are stay-at-home moms. Most. Some stay-at-home dads. Some of the moms have part-time jobs. I don’t recall any dads with part-time jobs. But many dads are present while also working full-time. You get into a rhythm, have a schedule, etc. and you can work it out. My wife is fairly unusual in that she runs her own full-time business. Many moms don’t like her, presumably because they gave up their careers to do this and are jealous that she does both.
It only requires that one parent has enough free hours to assign coursework. They don't have to exit the workforce, and don't necessarily need to directly supervise learning (but of course some of this is necessary for K-5).
I think a lot of how homeschooling can work, along with much of median/lower household income life in general, is misunderstood.
- Schools have stopped educating in favor of test metrics, making sure the worst students pass, and pushing borderline indoctrination of controversial, left-ish values.
- With remote education during the pandemic, people have more visibility into their school's day-to-day teaching.
It's hard to fix the US education system by political means. If you have the ability to do so, it's comparatively much easier to pull your kids out and homeschool them.
I expected this comment coming into the thread. I would just like to point out that there is a huge range of options between those two extremes!
If is entirely possible to teach up a child to be curious AND well rounded in the basics (see also concepts of Trivarium and Quadrivium, sorry can't link the references atm).
> When asked if they are satisfied with their children's education, public school parents consistently rank last after parents who choose private schools, homeschooling, and charter schools. Importantly, among all parents of school-age children, homeschooling enjoys a 70 percent favorability rating.
This is not surprising: homeschoolers are extremely confident in their own teaching abilities and extremely cynical about the abilities of others.
> Closures also gave parents a chance to experience public schools' competence with remote learning, and many were unimpressed. They have also been unhappy with the poor quality and often politicized lessons taught to their children that infuriatingly blend declining learning outcomes with indoctrination.
Why would a parent compare a novel learning environment to the pre-covid experience? Why would a parent think that their kid will never encounter political topics if they stay at home - do they use the internet at all?
Homeschooling is becoming an epidemic and a major reason is --- SPORTS. From my experience, it is growing for all the wrong reasons and I have not come across ONE family doing it properly and in a matter I would consider better for the kid.
I have a 15yo son who plays sports and for the past 5 years, homeschooling has been a way to "red-shirt" kids - hold them back a year or two then re-entering them into public schools into grades behind their age. Literally purposely holding back their kids so they can be older as freshman.
A major problem with boys because of puberty, size etc around this age. The difference between a 14yo and a 16yo, or 16/18yo can be quite large at times. My son had a freshman on his team last year that could drive and had a mustache playing vs these tiny incoming freshman, it was so comical. He was 16 1/2 as a freshman. And the parents were on the sideline acting like their kid was the next coming of Aaron Judge. It REALLY hurts the rest of us playing the rules and taking education seriously when our kids are trying to make a team.
I've known several of these parents and they all are the same. They haphazardly put them into the bare min online courses, still go to work all day and stick them in front of computers to expect them to self teach for a few years. The moms would be stay-home types that didn't seem much educated themselves. The kids are spoiled entitled types who think they are top athletes already and would jokingly be calling my son at 11a telling him they are done already for the day and headed to the gym and playing Fortnite.
Now this is just MY circle, I am not saying there aren't very serious and capable parents out there really homeschooling and giving their kids a better education than public school, but I haven't met any in maybe roughly 10 I know. Most of them seemed to also be MAGA types poo-pooing public education and how they are brainwashing kids. It is really despicable that this is most likely happening ALL across America.
Education and manipulation aside, I would also think this isn't good the kids mental and social health as well. They already are on devices doom-scrolling enough nowadays, do we really want them hermits too now?
I applaud anyone putting in huge effort to home school a kid properly and with true care and teaching. But the image of them at a desk being taught by a real smart/educated parent following a true curriculum all day and on a schedule I imagine is ultra rare. And we are going to pay a price for this in the long run. Or not, GPT will just help them along to properly write that email for them when they are adults in a corporate world.
homeschooled kids are literally competing against kids from other countries that are being schooled on calculus, geometry, statistics, algebra with practical chemistry, physics and biology lessons. This is not going to end well 15 yrs down the line
Lots of colleges offer laboratory science classes for homeschooled children. AOPS wipes the floor with any math education you’d get at a public school. Most US national laboratories have on-site programs for school-aged kids and homeschoolers have equal standing for attending.
Homeschool is great for parents who've turned against reality. You don't have to compete with facts. You can shape the kids reality according to your own delusions.
Well here is what the result was of public school for my 3 kids:
1 kid: one year behind but doing very well
1 kid: two years behind and not doing so well (in fact can't continue to academia unless things change drastically, in other words, will lose at least 1-2 more years if she does go to academia)
1 kid: two years behind and doing pretty well
This is the result of 9-11 years of public schooling. I feel like all 3 have very suboptimal outcomes, including the one doing very well.
I must say I am also getting very irritated by the "indoctrination". That was fine, if occasionally crazy, during the COVID years when the indoctrination was pretty progressive. Sometimes batshit insane, but let's say "well intentioned". Pro-climate claims ... that were bullshit, but at least pro-climate and generally positive and pro-humanity. Now one of their teachers is openly racist (in a class with 33% immigrants), and even though most keep it more subtle than him, this is a general trend.
So if someone can please suggest what is the suggestion here? Keep working with public school? To be honest, the damage was done by their previous public school where the situation deteriorated to the point I had a fight with the principal, and their current school (since 1.5 years) is actually undoing part of the damage done there.
I think the point is that part of having a functioning society (civic life, engagement, tolerance of others) is having people mix together. School is one of the prime places where that happens.
If you allow a lot of people to pull away from that "forced" engagement with others then you start to stress a lot of societal bonds.
I don't know a single homeschooler that sits at home all day long. They work in family businesses, participate in bands, sports, and co-ops. Many belong to churches where families come from all different strata: our church has surgeons, line cooks, programmers, self-employed handymen, disabled vets. They interact with everyone—including kids. They do things like "kid markets" where they have a business. They watch their parents learn how the house works and how to manage finances.
There is no forced engagement—in fact the peer pressure is often completely gone. They are in an environment (their family) where they are much freer to be themselves.
the purpose of education is largely opposite of indocrination (plus few other things). if your kid is being educated is such an environment you should move (or pay for private education).
I get where you're coming from but I think your statement is a bit naive.
Education systems as we know them today are absolutely about indoctrination in so many ways. Capitalism, love of country, views on family units, beauty and aaesthetics, what has cultural value and what does not etc etc. Not to mention many school systems just straight up having classes on religion, allowing armed forces into schools to recruit and the like.
Whether you're worried about left wing or right wing indoctrination, it still holds true. All kids are being indoctrinated every time they go to school same as every time they watch TV.
Exactly. Which history lessons get taught, which books get assigned as reading, which clubs are available, etc. Even if they are taught to be critical of the assignments they get, if the selection is limited enough, kids will not have the breadth of knowledge to even see the alternatives.
I pay a lot of money for my 12-year to not be in the system you are describing and am grateful I can provide this for her more than I am grateful for just about anything else
LLM's have revolutionized the way people learn and utilize what they have learned. The future is 8 year old material science lads doing chemistry in their step-mother's RV
I've had to re-learn math skills long forgotten to help my kids with their school work. It's been an interesting experience.
The expectations for home schooling are different and are, in some ways, aimed more towards reality. My son finishes the bulk of his work in an hour most days and then has time for 2 instruments, learning C++, Rust, and Python, community/church participation and more.
I do think Covid forced people to ask questions they hadn’t before.
We have sent our kids to private, poor quality and top rated schools.
We saw a stark difference between the poor quality and higher cost options. No surprise.
But the reason we are considering home schooling our younger kids was surprising. It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or better.
That’s just education. The social situation in schools is ludicrous. Phones, social media, etc. what a terrible environment we adults have created for kids to learn both educationally and socially.
Home schooling has answers for ALL of that.
I suppose there are few talented, hard working people who want to teach, and they command a premium. Education is expensive and underfunded.
As a parent/carer you probably are much more motivated than an underpaid teacher who wanted to do something else anyway, and you don't have to motivate yourself with money.
By extension, IME, motivated and talented teachers in any school (good or bad) can do wonders. There just aren't that many. And as you say, school environment tends to be a race to the bottom - if Johnny can watch Tiktok during maths, I'll do the same.
Poor kids :( . Hope the damage won't be lasting for them, at least they did went to proper schools previously and have some basics taught.
How are you thinking about the socialization aspects of homeschooling vs not?
I imagine part of the benefit of schooling is to socialize children with their peers so I’m curious how you thought about it.
Having put 2 kids (10th and 8th grade now) through a couple school options…the socialization in schools is pretty bad.
Kids from home schooling families we know are as polite or substantially more polite than those in the school system.
No surprise hearing this & no disagreement (derogatory). Kids are super easy to corner into particular domineereed ways.
Being polite & respectful is a skill that's good to have for many reasons. Sure!
But generally it feels like a huge disadvantage to me, bordering abuse, to see kids that accept authority as such. Here on Hacker News I think especially the long old idea of "Question Authority" should be strong. Adults don't always earn their authority, and especially in home-schooled environments I think kids are super abused into forced arch forms of "respect" and behavior that aren't genuine, aren't earned, and which are detrimental to the human spirit that we ought be engendering.
Reciprocally sure there are a lot of bad behaviors kids can pick up too. It just seems so convenient and false to me to just suppress the inconvenient signals, to deny having to form judgement. To see adults doing that feels crazy beyond measure. Judgement & sense must be earned.
Homeschooling doesn't mean the kid stays at home all the time. We homeschool and my kid has classes and different activities all week, interacts with friends and teams. It has worked very well for us given our lifestyle. I would understand it's not for everyone.
My kids get more socialization than me. Our parish homeschool group has daily activities. Monday is two hour playgroup. Tuesday is extracurricular classes at the parish. Wednesday is catechesis and play time. Thursday is free. Friday she does a day long camp with an outdoor education program (not parish based). All added up, she spends more time with kids than I did and doing more interesting things
Oh I see - I guess I hadn’t thought of homeschooling that way (in a group with extracurriculars).
I always thought of it as parent / tutor + kid = almost all interactions.
Thanks.
We homeschooled. When we wanted to socialize our kids, we shoved them into the restroom and beat them up for their lunch money.
I kid, but there's a real point: So much of the socialization is bad.
More: Kids aren't going to be kids forever. Does socialization with a bunch of other kids prepare them for the adult society that they're going to go into?
Well it should, yes, given that socialization is the result of shared social experiences.
Experiencing bullying is (unironically) one of those shared social experiences that create bonds with people (whether as victim, perpetrator, or witness)
These are real social dynamics that actually exist in adult life, and I suspect people who are totally blindsided by them are maladapted
> Experiencing bullying is (unironically) one of those shared social experiences
It also teaches you to deal with bullies. That said, we had homeschooled kids in my Boy Scouts troop. They learned how to deal with bullies just fine.
> But the reason we are considering home schooling our younger kids was surprising. It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or better.
What's the reason?
I think we could teach them as well as the school does. And more importantly, we can provide a better environment for them to mature socially.
“And more importantly, we can provide a better environment for them to mature socially.”
Take it from someone who was homeschooled from pre-k through high school, you will absolutely not provide a better social environment. I was so unprepared to handle the social dynamics in casual, educational or professional that it took years and years of active work to put myself in a position where it wasn’t an absolute detriment to my success. I have no doubt you can educate your children well, it’s every other aspect of humanity that is typically missed out on and can lead to unintended consequences.
Sounds like you had a hard time transitioning. Sorry for that.
I don't believe it's a magic pill by any means. But I've known many recently home schooled kids and they seem a lot more mature than their public school peers. So I think we have a decent shot at having similar results.
Seeming mature to an adult isn't the thing in question though, is it? Not feeling or appearing awkward when interacting on their own in their 20s is what is being criticized. The anecdotal evidence you present doesn't include home schooled children in their 20s as far as I can tell.
One could say this is where the free market of schooling comes into play. Does it make more economic sense for businesses to choose those with social skills learnt from home schooling, or ones who have not been home schooled? Definitely curious to see where this goes.
> And more importantly, we can provide a better environment for them to mature socially.
Citation needed.
Every perspective I've heard personally - and mirrored in comments here as well - from the non parent side of things, is quite negative in terms of learning how to behave and socialize with your peers. To you the children might seem polite and servile, and you might see this as something positive - as you state in another comment - but you are likely setting them up for life of social awkwardness and ostracization.
I was homeschooled and it affected me terribly. Please don’t do it.
I was homeschooled and I got a fairly strong education.
What matters is your parents and how you nurture your kids and provide opportunities for them. It’s easy for homeschooling to be bad… if you don’t give a shit about your kids.
For socializing, the key part is making sure kids are involved in a lot of social activities. I never went to public school, but found my groove socially pretty quickly in college, because I had a lot of opportunities for strong friendships. I was working part time in high school too, so got some exposure to pop culture.
What works for one might not work for another one. Can't generalize.
We can actually. It's called theory of probability and statistics, which is probably "forgotten" by these amazing self-appointed homeschoolers. A few rare successes of homeschoolers doesn't mean this practice is good on average, and vice versa the rare failures of the public education system doesn't mean that it is bad on average.
> It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or better.
6% of American think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight. That says absolutely nothing about the bear, and says a lot about how misinformed people are.
One of the key issues in school is classroom size. A teacher with 30 kids is handicapped as a teacher compared to one with a smaller class.
Let's say your family has four kids. As a family, that's large. But as a classroom size, it's really small. That gives you an advantage as a homeschooler over a public school teacher.
Lemme just question how home schooling is at all possible without one parent (statically more likely to be a woman) staying home to supervise the learning. I don’t think we’re talking about remote ranch situations where you either do online school or have to send them to boarding school.
So I’m genuinely wondering if there’s a corresponding exit from the workplace or other demographic trends allowing/pushing this boom in home schooling to happen?
Homeschooling is often (not always) correlated to sect participation, isolationism and "traditionalism". Meaning husband is likely forces wife to never work and socialize, while taking care of kids and all home cleaning and maintenance. This control mania is likely what causes homeschooling too, because it is obvious that one person can't teach 10-16 years worth of advanced studies, so the real motivation is to isolate his family and keep them to the house and sect congregation building. Rudimentary slavery basically.
We’ve homeschooled all our kids up to 8th grade. Our oldest is now a sophomore at the public high school but will start attending community college next year, paid for by the school district.
Most of the adults you see at the various group things are stay-at-home moms. Most. Some stay-at-home dads. Some of the moms have part-time jobs. I don’t recall any dads with part-time jobs. But many dads are present while also working full-time. You get into a rhythm, have a schedule, etc. and you can work it out. My wife is fairly unusual in that she runs her own full-time business. Many moms don’t like her, presumably because they gave up their careers to do this and are jealous that she does both.
It only requires that one parent has enough free hours to assign coursework. They don't have to exit the workforce, and don't necessarily need to directly supervise learning (but of course some of this is necessary for K-5).
I think a lot of how homeschooling can work, along with much of median/lower household income life in general, is misunderstood.
Source: Was homeschooled by a mom who worked.
Anecdotally, two factors at work here:
- Schools have stopped educating in favor of test metrics, making sure the worst students pass, and pushing borderline indoctrination of controversial, left-ish values.
- With remote education during the pandemic, people have more visibility into their school's day-to-day teaching.
It's hard to fix the US education system by political means. If you have the ability to do so, it's comparatively much easier to pull your kids out and homeschool them.
Parents side with their kids all the time in pass/fail battles; they're not objective.
Name the left values; don't beat around the bush.
Observing remote education is not good visibility into pre-covid teaching.
I think we have a responsibility to have educated citizens.
> pushing borderline indoctrination of controversial, left-ish values
Which values? I haven't gone to school in a long time.
> pushing borderline indoctrination of controversial, left-ish values
I wonder what sort of values they’re indoctrinating their kids with instead.
I expected this comment coming into the thread. I would just like to point out that there is a huge range of options between those two extremes!
If is entirely possible to teach up a child to be curious AND well rounded in the basics (see also concepts of Trivarium and Quadrivium, sorry can't link the references atm).
> there is a huge range of options between those two extremes!
Which two extremes would those be?
> When asked if they are satisfied with their children's education, public school parents consistently rank last after parents who choose private schools, homeschooling, and charter schools. Importantly, among all parents of school-age children, homeschooling enjoys a 70 percent favorability rating.
This is not surprising: homeschoolers are extremely confident in their own teaching abilities and extremely cynical about the abilities of others.
> Closures also gave parents a chance to experience public schools' competence with remote learning, and many were unimpressed. They have also been unhappy with the poor quality and often politicized lessons taught to their children that infuriatingly blend declining learning outcomes with indoctrination.
Why would a parent compare a novel learning environment to the pre-covid experience? Why would a parent think that their kid will never encounter political topics if they stay at home - do they use the internet at all?
Homeschooling is becoming an epidemic and a major reason is --- SPORTS. From my experience, it is growing for all the wrong reasons and I have not come across ONE family doing it properly and in a matter I would consider better for the kid.
I have a 15yo son who plays sports and for the past 5 years, homeschooling has been a way to "red-shirt" kids - hold them back a year or two then re-entering them into public schools into grades behind their age. Literally purposely holding back their kids so they can be older as freshman.
A major problem with boys because of puberty, size etc around this age. The difference between a 14yo and a 16yo, or 16/18yo can be quite large at times. My son had a freshman on his team last year that could drive and had a mustache playing vs these tiny incoming freshman, it was so comical. He was 16 1/2 as a freshman. And the parents were on the sideline acting like their kid was the next coming of Aaron Judge. It REALLY hurts the rest of us playing the rules and taking education seriously when our kids are trying to make a team.
I've known several of these parents and they all are the same. They haphazardly put them into the bare min online courses, still go to work all day and stick them in front of computers to expect them to self teach for a few years. The moms would be stay-home types that didn't seem much educated themselves. The kids are spoiled entitled types who think they are top athletes already and would jokingly be calling my son at 11a telling him they are done already for the day and headed to the gym and playing Fortnite.
Now this is just MY circle, I am not saying there aren't very serious and capable parents out there really homeschooling and giving their kids a better education than public school, but I haven't met any in maybe roughly 10 I know. Most of them seemed to also be MAGA types poo-pooing public education and how they are brainwashing kids. It is really despicable that this is most likely happening ALL across America.
Education and manipulation aside, I would also think this isn't good the kids mental and social health as well. They already are on devices doom-scrolling enough nowadays, do we really want them hermits too now?
I applaud anyone putting in huge effort to home school a kid properly and with true care and teaching. But the image of them at a desk being taught by a real smart/educated parent following a true curriculum all day and on a schedule I imagine is ultra rare. And we are going to pay a price for this in the long run. Or not, GPT will just help them along to properly write that email for them when they are adults in a corporate world.
Timmy’s job will be done by AI when he grows up, but at least he’ll have fun a social skills
homeschooled kids are literally competing against kids from other countries that are being schooled on calculus, geometry, statistics, algebra with practical chemistry, physics and biology lessons. This is not going to end well 15 yrs down the line
Lots of colleges offer laboratory science classes for homeschooled children. AOPS wipes the floor with any math education you’d get at a public school. Most US national laboratories have on-site programs for school-aged kids and homeschoolers have equal standing for attending.
Anyone who takes it seriously gives up nothing.
Homeschool is great for parents who've turned against reality. You don't have to compete with facts. You can shape the kids reality according to your own delusions.
Well here is what the result was of public school for my 3 kids:
1 kid: one year behind but doing very well
1 kid: two years behind and not doing so well (in fact can't continue to academia unless things change drastically, in other words, will lose at least 1-2 more years if she does go to academia)
1 kid: two years behind and doing pretty well
This is the result of 9-11 years of public schooling. I feel like all 3 have very suboptimal outcomes, including the one doing very well.
I must say I am also getting very irritated by the "indoctrination". That was fine, if occasionally crazy, during the COVID years when the indoctrination was pretty progressive. Sometimes batshit insane, but let's say "well intentioned". Pro-climate claims ... that were bullshit, but at least pro-climate and generally positive and pro-humanity. Now one of their teachers is openly racist (in a class with 33% immigrants), and even though most keep it more subtle than him, this is a general trend.
So if someone can please suggest what is the suggestion here? Keep working with public school? To be honest, the damage was done by their previous public school where the situation deteriorated to the point I had a fight with the principal, and their current school (since 1.5 years) is actually undoing part of the damage done there.
Keep them going to public school and give up?
This is how a significant portion of the population gets radicalized by their parents. It needs to be shut down.
All kids are indoctrinated. As parents do you want to have control of that or not?
With that attitude you might as well just tell parents that they shouldn't participate in society!
I think the point is that part of having a functioning society (civic life, engagement, tolerance of others) is having people mix together. School is one of the prime places where that happens.
If you allow a lot of people to pull away from that "forced" engagement with others then you start to stress a lot of societal bonds.
You're right. It's _one_ of the prime places.
I don't know a single homeschooler that sits at home all day long. They work in family businesses, participate in bands, sports, and co-ops. Many belong to churches where families come from all different strata: our church has surgeons, line cooks, programmers, self-employed handymen, disabled vets. They interact with everyone—including kids. They do things like "kid markets" where they have a business. They watch their parents learn how the house works and how to manage finances.
There is no forced engagement—in fact the peer pressure is often completely gone. They are in an environment (their family) where they are much freer to be themselves.
> I don't know a single homeschooler that sits at home all day long.
Well, you wouldn't, would you?
Sorry, not to detract from your other points, but I thought it was funny.
the purpose of education is largely opposite of indocrination (plus few other things). if your kid is being educated is such an environment you should move (or pay for private education).
I get where you're coming from but I think your statement is a bit naive.
Education systems as we know them today are absolutely about indoctrination in so many ways. Capitalism, love of country, views on family units, beauty and aaesthetics, what has cultural value and what does not etc etc. Not to mention many school systems just straight up having classes on religion, allowing armed forces into schools to recruit and the like.
Whether you're worried about left wing or right wing indoctrination, it still holds true. All kids are being indoctrinated every time they go to school same as every time they watch TV.
Exactly. Which history lessons get taught, which books get assigned as reading, which clubs are available, etc. Even if they are taught to be critical of the assignments they get, if the selection is limited enough, kids will not have the breadth of knowledge to even see the alternatives.
I pay a lot of money for my 12-year to not be in the system you are describing and am grateful I can provide this for her more than I am grateful for just about anything else
It's also how some of the population escapes getting broken by a one-size-fits-all education system. People need options.
Fantastic.
LLM's have revolutionized the way people learn and utilize what they have learned. The future is 8 year old material science lads doing chemistry in their step-mother's RV
More likely the future is a bunch of children not knowing jack shit and suffering other abuse.
I've had to re-learn math skills long forgotten to help my kids with their school work. It's been an interesting experience.
The expectations for home schooling are different and are, in some ways, aimed more towards reality. My son finishes the bulk of his work in an hour most days and then has time for 2 instruments, learning C++, Rust, and Python, community/church participation and more.
is "time for 2 instruments, learning C++, Rust, and Python" not schooling ?
He's still learning. Driven by what he loves. And this is on top of the "standard" stuff.
[dead]
You might be surprised. The studies say it's a primarily negative impact, especially in math and college attendance.
https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/the-test-score...