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Comment by pklausler | Hacker News Reader

My public school education in the 70's taught me, among other things, French, physics, differential equations, music, Fortran, and an appreciation for reading great literature. My parents (who are wonderful people in every respect) could never have taught me any of these things. My later education and career and life as a mindful person would never have been possible had my parents not sent me to really good schools.

Home-schooling may be a right. Fine. But it's a parental right. What about the right of the child to a top-quality education?

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For gifted children such as yourself, a top-quality education is much more likely via homeschooling than public schools.

Everyone I know who homeschools thinks the same thing at first: "How will I teach my child subjects I don't understand?" There are many surprising answers, actually!

1. You will learn alongside your child. A rewarding part of homeschooling is that you continue your own education. You will learn many subjects more deeply than you would have otherwise.

2. You will provide resources for your child to teach themselves. As your children learn to learn, they will tackle many difficult subjects on their own using textbooks, pre-recorded courses, and other materials.

3. Others will help teach them. Successful homeschoolers don't do it alone. They find peers, form co-ops, and/or utilize tutors or community resources. Many homeschoolers take lots of college courses online or at local universities as they enter their early high school years.

Exactly this! All 3 points are true for our case.

We have such a large support system with the program we are in. Much larger than what we got with public school. It really was a nice surprise as a newcomer to see how supportive the community was.

I have even volunteered to teach a programming elective at my sons hybrid charter 1 day a week that he will help me with.

Maybe 1970's "educated" is the 2010's "gifted"; I hope not.

A well trained teacher who is an expert in the subject as well as in its pedagogy is always best.

With the resources available now, a student can get that top-quality education. There are tons of hybrid homeschool programs and in CA we have the k12 program (k12.com). It isn't totally left up to the parent like it was back in the 70's.

It is not right for everyone but your stereotype of homeschoolers not receiving top-quality education doesn't really hold much weight. Recent studies show that homeschoolers are actually outperforming public schools.

Some stats that may be of interest http://www.home-school.com/news/homeschool-vs-public-school....

You got a priviledged education (there are public schools and there are public schools), and assume one is available for every child, if not for their evil parent preventing them to attend to.

Also, you fail to take into account that with today's Internet, there's a miriad of resources that any reasonably intelligent parent can leverage to educate their kids in subjects outside of their are of expertise. It really would be easier for your parents to pull it off today, had they been so inclined (and been born 35 years later, of course)

I also learned critical thinking skills, such as being able to detect when somebody is claiming knowledge of my privileges or assumptions.

I think you make a mistake in assuming that a child can only learn what the parents can teach. Especially when you consider that our society calls us "children" even up to age 18 or 21, many years beyond the traditional coming of age at 13 or 14.

I'm not homeschooling yet, but have been researching it for some time and may start next year. A heck of a lot of the methodologies that I'm learning about have parents acting as "facilitators" more than teachers. Especially at the middle and high school ages, kids should be able to pick their own books to read, carry out projects, learn skills by self-teaching or by seeking out lessons, etc. The parents' job is to teach the children how to think and how to learn (and even in that regard there are resources to help).

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