Comment by notdonspaulding | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notdonspaulding | Hacker News Reader

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notdonspaulding

I went to public school through grade 7, and my parents pulled me out to home-school me through high school.

It worked out really, really well for me. Most immediately, it relieved a bunch of social pressure to "fit in". My curriculum was self-paced so I was able to work through the material I already knew at a fast clip. I did grades 9-12 in 3 years instead of the typical 4, and was able graduate the same year as my then-girlfriend, now-wife (hold the jokes please, she's not my sister).

Beyond my personal experience being home-schooled, I'm now a father of 5, and I think the biggest thing missing from the other comments in this discussion is the concept that the education of children is just one of the many responsibilities of parents.

As a parent, it's your personal job to make sure your children are fed, clothed, bathed, socialized, educated, moralized, understood, and secured. Everyone worries about the "socialization" of home-schooled kids. But the parent who is taking an active interest in the education of their child is almost certainly also taking an active interest in their child's social development.

I think it's rather more likely that parents today are all too happy to abdicate and outsource those responsibilities to whatever institution is willing to take them on.

Don't get me wrong. That we have freely available public education is undoubtedly a great thing. The capacity to read and write effectively and to think critically is an amazing economic mobilizer. There's a reason slave-owners in the deep south wanted to keep their slaves from learning to read. But having that education available is supremely preferable to having it mandated by the state.

> I think it's rather more likely that parents today are all too happy to abdicate and outsource those responsibilities to whatever institution is willing to take them on.

s/too happy/required to/

Try to get by with a high-earning single income in the south bay area or a median income in any metro. Housing prices and health costs force families to move to dual income.

You're right, I shouldn't have imported motive to those parents. And I can empathize with parents in this situation. I don't think it's necessarily easy to go the single-income route.

Still, in my calculus, the benefits outweigh the risks. Here's another anecdote:

Once a week my kids get together with several other home-schooled families. In one of those families, the father is a math professor at the local community college. He's smart. He could work at any of a number of universities and make better money, but he's chosen to work at a community college because it gives him a more flexible schedule to be around to raise/educate his children.

His family of 7 lives in an 1000 sqft home. His decision to take an active role in educating his children required sacrifices, and he's chosen to trade off the career benefits for home life benefits.

(BTW, when people talk about "diversity", this is the kind I think that matters most. Diversity of viewpoints on how to live your life and raise your children. I'm glad in the US we don't have to all agree on the best way to do these things.)

s/imported/imputed/

The answer to that is, "get out of the metro". Cities are designed for singles and DINKs. There's a reason people talk about moving to the country, building a little house, starting a garden, etc... it's a better life for a family, and sustainable.

Living in the country is in no way more sustainable. It's far less sustainable for the environment as people must drive everywhere. Infrastructure for water, sewer, trash, etc. all cost more (regardless of whether the homeowner pays the increased cost) and cause more environmental impact as they're less efficient due to lower density.

You might find it to be a better life (I don't) but it's not more sustainable.

The driving isn't the same at all.

Small town with car: go a few blocks, never stopping for traffic, going the direction you like and stopping where you please

Big city with car: go many blocks, constantly stopping in traffic, route around 1-way streets, and then slowly loop around looking for a place to park

Big city with bus: go many blocks, constantly stopping in traffic, route around 1-way streets, often going kind of the wrong direction, spewing diesel soot all the way -- and often the bus runs nearly empty, a big soot-spewing vehicle with almost no people

Big city driving is often not driving at all. Want to grab some milk? Walk to the store. Want to go to a restaurant? Walk.

That's obviously not all city transit but it's a much larger part. Also lots of grocery stores still have parking lots (actually garages) in the city. If you're going somewhere like that you can still park easily. Depends on the location I'm sure.

I'm not sure what your dislike of buses is. They are far more efficient than personal transit from a fuel perspective. A bus can be "nearly empty" and still replace a half dozen cars. And at peak times a bus will replace dozens. There are issues with buses but "soot-spewing" isn't one of them, at least not relative to cars.

Small town is also not really country. If you can drive a few blocks to the grocery store, you don't live in the country. In fact, if your house is near blocks, you don't live in the country. Small towns are of course also less sustainable than cities as small towns are basically built like suburbs.

> people must drive everywhere

You're assuming city life and country life are largely the same. In the country you don't pop down to the market 3-4 times a week when you run out of milk or want to grab a sandwich -- you buy a deep freeze and go "big shopping" once every week or two.

I lived in the country for years. Yes, you buy a deep freeze. You also drive 20 minutes to the grocery store and 20 minutes to drop off your kids and 45 minutes to work. Yes, you optimize for bigger grocery trips, but the fact is that you still drive everywhere and you drive further because nothing is close.

Nah, you just plan better and around a life that doesn't involve a ton of time in the car. Drop off the kids and then shop right after, or hit the store on the way home from work, or let the kids take the bus. Fewer extracurriculars for them but I assume since it's the country there's plenty of other stuff to do.

What IS nice is that the car time tends to be long like you said, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, which is more efficient energy-wise and for wear and tear than a bunch of little 5 minute trips.

You have to live a place that's right for you. I'm perfectly fine not leaving the house for days on end, there's plenty to do around here. Some of my friends would go crazy if they didn't have someplace to go every night. If you're the latter kind of person, country living is probably not going to agree with you! The same is true vice versa -- how do I go to Costco on my bike!? ;)

I've got bad news for you--you're not going to escape wallet-crushing Bay Area housing prices by moving to Walnut Creek or Pleasanton.

How about Idaho or Nebraska...?

Unfortunately, it also results in a lack of structured activities, social groups, etc etc. Unless you're willing to spend half your life driving, of course.

Nothing in your comment is even remotely close to a universal truth or fact.

You'd do better to gather more information on the topic.

According to United States census data, more than half of homeschooling families have two working parents, compared to half of non-homeschooling families having one working parent and one non-working parent [1]. This data was collected in 2007, so it may differ from today's distribution. I'm not sure how these families pull it off, but academic scores indicate that they apparently do.

It's possible that when the data refers to two parents in the labor force it means that both parents are employable, as opposed to employed. That doesn't make sense to me, however, as it would indicate that half of non-homeschooled families have only one employable parent. Unfortunately, I don't currently have the time to drill down into the raw data to investigate the definition they used.

https://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/12statab/educ.pdf (Table 240)

Is that just an all-day nanny/private tutor? So what does dual-income homeschooling mean?

Seems like a stretch of the terminology to call it "homeschooling".

With only a third of homeschooling households making over $75,000 per year, I can't imagine that a significant portion have a nanny. Then again, having never hired a nanny, I have no clue what they cost. Perhaps one parent works at night, or one parent works from home. Either way, it's definitely a curious statistic.

> As a parent, it's your personal job to make sure your children are fed, clothed, bathed, socialized, educated, moralized, understood, and secured.

Focusing in specifically on "educated": That means more than handing them off to the school system, even if they go there. That means that you have to pay enough attention to know when they're not getting it, when the school's failing to teach them, or whatever. You can't just put them in public school and wash your hands of your responsibility for their education.

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