Comment by joshkaufman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshkaufman | Hacker News Reader

My wife and I are expecting in December, and we're planning on some variation of unschooling for our children, starting at an early age. Based on the research we've done, it's a straightforward way to get better educational results for your kids if done properly.

We're planning on some variation of the "Robinson Curriculum" (http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/), which in essence is a simple daily structure of (1) a daily math lesson, from the Saxon math series or similar, (2) daily reading, based on their interest but with a few recommendations, and (3) daily writing about any topic that interests them, which is then proofread and corrected by the child.

"Socialization" is pretty much a non-issue, as far as I'm concerned. The above structure takes a few hours a day, so there's more than enough time for play and structured activities like sports or music if they're interested. As tommynazareth commented, the socialization in schools is mostly negative.

The key seems to be striking a balance between a clear and simple structure and letting your child follow their interests. It also requires some self-control by the parents - it's better to let your kids struggle at times when they find hard problems than immediately jump in and help them. The parent isn't doing the teaching - they're helping the child learn to self-educate, which is a major difference.

I want my children to be able to think clearly, learn essential skills, and be able to teach themselves anything they're interested in learning. I don't believe the public school system is capable of doing that, which is why we're looking to do it ourselves.

I spent my summers (as a child) doing more or less what you've described.

Looking back, my parents did a few major things that helped make this a successful venture (or so I like to think, given my belief that I can do the things you've outlined in your last paragraph):

1) So long as we were learning, they didn't mind too much what (though it was always grounds for discussion and debate). If I wanted to read about dinosaurs, that was valued just as much as reading about history or politics or engineering.

2) If we were struggling, they'd start by giving me a small hint, then a slightly larger one, and so on until I either understood it or asked for a demonstration. Nothing wrong with the latter, as there are a lot of things that aren't immediately intuitive, but better to build intuition first.

This is an extended way of me saying "I think what you are planning to do is fantastic, and would like to offer these two things I remember from my experience."

I also think it is a fantastic plan.

I like you're first point. If a teacher is resourceful enough, than any topic is worth exploring and there is no limit to the breadth or depth of the exploration. Also, any learning activity can be a valuable experience in developing transferable skills.

Steve Jobs made a similar point in a speech to a graduating university class. He mentioned how he popped into classes just because they looked interesting, even if they weren't part of his curriculum, and said it's a great thing to do. He gave one example: he went to a class on typography just cause it sounded fun. As he put it, the only reason Macs have decent typography is because of what he learned in that class.

FYI, it was actually a calligraphy class.

From the transcript of Jobs' speech (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html ):

"Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later."

I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward. I really hate the current education system, but I also recognize that the social skills developed there are almost as important as the formal education kids get.. perhaps even more so.

The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

Do you ask every non-awkward person you meet whether they were home-schooled? Do you ask every awkward person you meet whether they were home-schooled? Do you keep a running count?

Sounds like sample and/or confirmation bias.

>The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

I've seen this a few times. I assume you mean anecdotes told by liars? Surely a plurality of true statements constitutes data? The strength of that data for interpretation or prediction is limited by the number of data points, for sure, but I don't really get why this aphorism is supposed to be true.

It is, of course, literally true that data is composed of a collection of data points -- you could call them anecdotes if you wanted to. But the point of the aphorism is that you can't go the other direction.

Anecdotes are isolated instances, things people remember and tell because they are interesting. They lack any sort of statistical control or rigorous documentation. If you have a bunch of anecdotes about socially awkward homeschoolers, you don't have any actual data on the incidence of social awkwardness among homeschoolers. You just have have a bunch of anecdotes.

Because of the selection process. If you are trying to make a judgment about an entire population based on a small sample, the chance of getting a non-representative sample is already high. If the sample is selected on the basis of what sticks out in memory, the chance of it being representative is almost nil. Though an interesting anecdote or two can be considered data, they are notoriously unreliable as a basis for statistical judgments.

I think any reasonable approach realises that anecdotal evidence needs weighing appropriately. In the sibling comment for example if you merely wanted to establish if there are any incidences of children with "social awkwardness" that are home-educated (or if for example this is a product of a particular method of schooling) then you've got your tentative result off the bat. The fact that there are some such results allows you to hone your null-hypothesis and tune your approach to getting statistically significant data.

Anyway, I digress, anon.

My sister turned out just fine, and my brother also seems to be doing alright. I had a bit of trouble my first couple years away from home, but then since I supposedly had issues when I went to preschool it probably isn't attributable to the home-schooling.

We weren't just kept to ourselves, though. We had weekly get-togethers with other homeschool families in the area, and in the summer we all were in various Parks & Rec sports leagues. Those probably helped us a lot.

I think a child's social skills are very influenced by the type of environment at home.

Many families homeschool because they want to intentionally "protect"/isolate their children from the mainstream. This is very common with religious families that choose to homeschool so their kids (1) are exposed to the family's values and belief system to the exclusion of others, and (2) aren't corrupted by the evils of the outside world. That's a perfect recipe for social awkwardness.

Isolation is not a primary component of the homeschooling/unschooling approach. In fact, if your goal is to expose your kids to as many cool things and people as possible, more unstructured time doing things in the real world may actually make them more socially skilled than their peers.

This is just as unfair a characterization of home-schoolers as the GP.

What part do you think is an unfair characterization - that some parents prefer to isolate their children for religious/moral reasons, or that doing so can lead to social awkwardness?

According to a 2001 U.S. Census survey, 33% of homeschooling households cited religion as a factor in their choice, 14% objected to what the school teaches (i.e things like evolution), and 9% cited morality. (See data at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/... and http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/...)

In a 1999 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, only 48.9% of US homeschooling parents cited "Can give child better education at home" as the primary reason for homeschooling. That means 51.1% of homeschooling parents in the US think their kids would get a better education at school, but choose to homeschool for other reasons, which are primarily religious/moral in nature.

I'm not saying all homeschooling parents (which includes all religious homeschooling parents) want to isolate their children. The point is that, for a non-trivial percentage of parents, removing their children from the mainstream is a primary motivation for homeschooling.

> "That means 51.1% of homeschooling parents in the US think their kids would get a better education at school"

No, that's not what it means.

It means 48.9% thinks "better education" is their main reason for homeschooling. For the other 51.1%, "better education" is not the main reason, but may still be on the list.

It's true that a non-trivial percentage want to isolate their children from the mainstream, but please do not misrepresent the statistics to make your point.

That was what I thought at first too, until I double-checked the study. If you look at the data here (http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/...), the cumulative percentage is 214.2%. That means it wasn't a "multiple choice, pick one" question - it was a "mark one or more reasons" question.

That means that 51.1% of parents surveyed did not mark "quality of education" as a reason they chose to homeschool - it was on the list as an option they could have marked, and they chose not to pick it. That's pretty telling, IMO.

Parents can also believe that homeschooling does just as good a job as other schools.

Because they don't list that their motivation was that they can do better than a public school does not mean that they believe they will do worse.

Consider the case of someone sending their child to a French immersion school. Most would not say that the immersion school is better than all other schools, but that doesn't mean they believe they believe it is worse. Likely they are sending their children there because they want them to learn to speak French fluently, not because they believe other schools are worse.

Here's a more recent study from the US Department of Education:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/TableDisplay.asp?Tabl...

This 2003 study is considered to be far superior to the 1999 one cited for reasons discussed in this article:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/parentsreasons.asp

For example, on the 1999 study two flaws listed are "when faced with an open-ended question, parents may not have recalled or responded with all of the reasons for homeschooling that were applicable to their situation" and "parents were not specifically asked to report their primary reason for homeschooling".

As you can see the 2003 study addresses these procedural errors and breaks out factors cited at all separately from those cited as primary concern.

The most listed factor for both was environmental factors in other schools, meaning "safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure". This was a concern of 85.4% of families, and the most important factor for 31.2%.

Dissatisfaction with academic quality of other schools was a factor in 68.2% of families, but a primary reason in only 16.5%

Regarding the assumptions made previously that any included component of religious or moral instruction implies isolationism and a lack of socialization, that claim is not supported by studies.

Can you describe what you mean by socially awkward? I am not entirely convinced that what is considered social by most people is desirable.

Not being socially awkward is pretty basic stuff, like: making friends easily, making small talk with strangers (to pass the time or to be polite when meeting friends of friends), knowing what kinds of questions to ask to keep a conversation going, knowing what topics make people feel awkward or offended.

Edit: I'm not the one claiming that all home schooled kids are like this. I'm just answering what social awkwardness means.

I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward.

I guess you haven't met any of the hundreds of homeschooled kids I have met. To most parents who closely observe the social environment at many schools, it's easy to set up better situations for social learning through a family's own active social interaction with neighbors, friends, teammates, and colleagues in the community. Many homeschoolers, when they are asked, "What about socialization?" respond by saying, "It's one of the reasons I am happy I homeschool."

There are more social activities these days for home-schooled kids, shared co-ops, and chances for them to get together to socialize with peers. I'd wager for every awkward home-schooled kid there's one in school who is bullied or made fun of. Not all social skills kids learn in school are good ones.

As a point of comparison, I've met several hundred who are not in the least socially awkward.

For the record, parent is my cofounder, was unschooled, and is certainly no more awkward than I am.

In addition to what some other people have said, there is a certain percentage of kids who are homeschooled because they were socially awkward in school.

In theory, homeschooling allows these kids to develop their social skills in an environment with less risk of serious teasing/bullying. In practice, it depends on how the parents approach things.

Smells like confirmation bias to me.

Unless you go around asking people about where they went to school all the time, unless someone is so socially awkward that it causes you to question whether they had some sort of "different" upbringing, you'd never know whether someone was homeschooled.

It may be that a lot of socially awkward people were homeschooled, but that doesn't necessarily indicate that the other way is true. A kid who is struggling and obviously hating traditional school might be more likely to get pulled out and homeschooled by their parents, or families who are isolated for other reasons (politics, religion, etc.) may homeschool, but none of these demonstrate a causative link between homeschooling -> poor socialization.

>I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward.

The few I've met who are I've tended to find a bit autistic. I know kids from several families (I'm not in the USA) that homeschool and the kids tend to interact a lot better than state-school kids with different age groups - toddlers through to adults.

However, none of those I know are single children AFAIR.

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