Comment by s0rce | Hacker News Reader

Comment by s0rce | Hacker News Reader

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This was my experience in most of my primary and secondary education (K-12) in Canada. If you were good at something right away, math, science, 2nd language, art, even gym class, you basically got some instruction and were able to learn a bit more and maybe even excel. This was my experience in Math and Science (I'm a Scientist/Engineer now). However, learning French, I struggled and rapidly fell behind. If you didn't excel you didn't really get enough teaching or attention to learn. Basically, as you say, you were expected to already just be good at stuff even from a young age and the system appeared to be designed around this idea. Learning (and critically practice) takes a lot of time for most things and everyone isn't good at it right away.

I had a similiar experience with driving lessons, I didn't take naturally to it and the limited number of lessons and the relative ease by which you can pass the test means I never really learned adequately during the "learning period" before you are granted a full license. In this case my mom forced me to continue and I continued to practice and eventually became competent and mostly comfortable. Many other activities I just gave up, no one wanted me on their T-ball team.

"the system appeared to be designed around this idea"

It is. If you have a bunch of people tied together by chronological age, who only in extreme circumstances can be held back or advanced early, in a 20th century classroom environment all sitting together listening to one person "teach", then structurally, an environment is created that can handle only one speed of learning. There is no good choice for that one speed, because the standard deviation is too large. In the worst cases, since neither the teaching pace nor the learning pace is itself a constant, you end up with a situation that serves no one at all a good chunk of the time.

I'm not saying this was or is the deliberate intent; it's just what the structure inevitably produces. It's not clear how to structure it any other way with 20th century technology in a cost-effective manner (e.g., "classrooms of 3 people" was never on the table). I'm hoping we'll start cracking this nut in the next few years, though. The tech is increasingly there and it's the social inertia about what school has "always been" holding us back now.

Homeschooling is a simple, effective way to achieve "classrooms of three people".

It is brutally difficult, as you have to sacrifice many of the things you want to do in favor of things your kids want to learn and do, but it is worth every ounce of that sacrifice.

It's also a very costly method that many people cannot afford. Doubly so if it'll impact the long-term career prospects of the parent that spends their time teaching.

Is it?

If one of you stays at home with kids, all the costs of childcare and that partner's potential commute are removed.

Anecdotally, I've met people who homeschooled because they thought it was cheaper than their other options.

If you're in an expensive school district, then you receive little benefit from your relatively high school taxes, but so it goes.

Again anecdotally, one of the poorest persons I've ever personally known pulled her kids out of public school to homeschool them.

I thought she was unqualified (despite my pro-homeschooling bias), but she got them from remedial classes to gifted status in two years, IIRC (when she put them back in school).

Some of my assumptions changed after that.

> Anecdotally, I've met people who homeschooled because they thought it was cheaper than their other options.

This almost, but not quite, matches my anecdotal experience. Basically, from what I've seen, it's not that it's cheaper[1] to homeschool, it's two things:

1. They don't trust the childcare they can afford. You can hire a 16 year old to care for your kid for minimum wage, but a trustworthy adult costs more.

2. The work they could be doing does gain them some net income, but the net income isn't worth the effort. I.e. if you can work for $30/hour for 8 hours with a 2 hour commute, and childcare is $20/hour, that's $30 * 8 = $240, $20 * 10 = $200, $240 - $200 = $40, $40 / 10 = a whopping $4/hour. It's not cheaper to homeschool, but it's not worth it to work for $4/hour.

[1] I'm interpreting "cheaper" to mean "cheaper in terms of money"--if that's not what you meant, my apologies.

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