This.
I still can not understand how US citizens see home schooling as a good thing.
I still can not understand how US citizens see home schooling as a good thing.
She was a part of some homeschooling group where the kids would get together frequently and the parents would takes turns leading different activities, often leveraging different parents' professions or special expertise. She was both well-socialized and had much more deep and engaging experiences than you can get in school.
Though you still end up with the problem of when and how to rejoin the normal world since you're so far ahead.
How many people that homeschool are actually knowledgeable enough and have the free time to replace full time teachers.
And you wind up with a few kids that do really well and others that struggle with science and still others that just don't get the help they need with stuff. It is easy to overlook a learning disability at a young age when you aren't trained to look for it.
We don't even have a program to test parents on the material they are teaching. In a perfect world, parents would have to pass testing a level or two ahead of their lessons and we'd have more short, standardized tests to make sure kids were learning what they should (no skipping out on sex education or evolution, for example).
Short, meaning once or twice a month for 15-60 minutes, depending on a child's age in addition to something akin to finals for older students.
That said, having spent quite some time following families on the internet that have done this with their kids - including the Bucket List Family...
https://www.thebucketlistfamily.com/
and Logan LaPlante with his Hackschooling TED Talk...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY
To name just a couple of examples.
I have to say there are quite some advantages if it is done right, but not everyone is fortunate enough or has the background or passion to pursue this kind of schooling with their kids. It takes the kind of commitment that not many parents have.
Anyway, looking back I am sure that the outcome is based on what the student puts into it. My experience may not be common, but I do personally know many people from my homeschooler groups who have gone on to be very successful adults, engineers, parents, and more.
I strongly disagree with the idea that the outcome of child education depends on "what the student puts into it." A quality education shapes a child, instills a growth mindset, nurtures curiosity, encourages grit and perseverance, and meets the child where they're at. A barren garden is not the fault of the seeds.
This hits close to home for me as I am working with a child now who has been written off by his school and teachers as a "bad student." There is no such thing. He needs some extra support and coaching to learn some meta-strategies like asking for help when needed, planning, organization, and yes, diligence, but ultimately he wants to succeed and is capable of it, just like any other child. Children don't fail school. School fails children.
I was commenting on that my homeschooling experience was great. However, I have a small direct sample of myself and my siblings and some homeschooling group friends.
Why? Gang activity. In freaking elementary school. School rating is 4/10 if you are curious.
The amazing part is how much of a child (and the teacher's time) is wasted, especially as class sizes grow and resources are strained (https://greensboro.com/opinion/columns/christie-murphy-why-i...). Home schooling usually takes half the day to get through all the required curriculum, because of all the time saved not getting 30 students to be quiet, lack of interruptions, etc. So little is getting done now in schools kids are coming home with hours of homework. Not good at explaining a subject, or the kid is having trouble groking it from the material, pull up a video on Khan Academy, or Kurzgesagt, or even a presentation by an Ivy League professor (like CS50) or someone who is foremost in the field. Have a fellow homeschool parent whose an expert in a field, let them teach help. Want to teach your kid financial planning, investing, and how to do taxes, you can. One style or mode of learning isn't working, try another like Montessori, direct instruction, don't need to run it through an administration, school board, and state officials. In a school, few if any breaks are given with no concern for attention spans, or mental burnout, you have to DO THIS THING AT THIS TIME. If the kid wants to do his lesson in a fun way, like dress up as Batman, he can, as long as they're doing their lessons, etc.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/new-research-finds-th...
Are their parents who half ass it and their kid barely learns anything sure, but compared to the literacy rates most schools are producing they don't get to say much.
https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-number...
It turns out all RRR (reading/'riting/'rithmetics) and sciences can be squeezed into one or two days of intensive learning.
Having five free days a week is pretty awesome.
I was absolutely shocked at how quickly they cover all their subjects, homework, etc. every week. My kids get 10x the amount of play time I got at their age. It's great. Makes me regret all those years I spent in public school.
AMA.
What do you think about this?
While I’m definitely in the camp of “it’s none of the state’s business”, stating that and expecting it to change minds is... not a very well-informed approach.
Where I come from (Germany), (public) schooling is seen as a way to indoctrinate children to their government’s political agenda (call it a religion if you like).
So as always, it depends: good parents, good home schooling. Bad parents, bad home schooling. Replace “parents” with “government” and you get the same message.
Edit: As a German myself I’d like to add that your question reflects an attitude of the socialist/communist German Democratic Republic (you also know it as “DDR”): family is nothing, government is all. You leave all thinking and your responsibilities to the political agenda and world view of your political “leaders”. Is that a world you’d like to live in (again)?
For the record, I've seen you reference your username before and I still don't entirely understand what the word means, though I did look it up at one point.
The closest thing to an “Ancap society” that has been implemented was probably the Icelandic Commonwealth. It lasted for a bit over three centuries.
It's akin to me saying "Oh, such a lovely well-functioning government and society you have there that allows X-thousands of people to die of treatable medical issues every year and Y-thousands of people to be living on the streets homeless and without any assistance, and watches idly as millions die of malaria and hunger across the ocean".
If I’m correct, my conviction is that my ideas will win in the end. That will require them to be spread to a public as a whole, and “cheap/petty jabs” draw eyes. This discussion honestly rather unlikely to change any minds, but if it does, I doubt it it will happen through throwing insults.
“Extreme” only means that it’s outside what is currently in place and what is generally accepted. I’ve arrived at an extreme political position because that’s where logic has lead me, not because it is extreme. It gives me pause, but my position has been only reinforced by introspection and discussion with others.
> When designing a system always be sure to design from the perspective of the losers as well as the winners. Being a loser in an ancap world would be one of the shittiest lives one could imagine
I don’t disagree - but I would also point out that being a loser in our current system is no walk in the park, and that being poor isn’t the only way to lose. At least in the system I envision, there’s recourse against the dominant powers in more cases than there is today. If you have a serious dispute with the state... you’re pretty much out of luck.
Another one that confuses me to no end is how anarcho-capitalism isn't a paradox? Capitalism is inherently authoritarian while anarchism is libertarian. They are opposite ends of the same spectrum.
Capitalism is not in any way “inherently authoritarian”. That assertion is false on its face - it basically boils down to private ownership of property and voluntary exchange. The means through which those things are ensured is outside the scope of an economic system.
The key thing to implement a stateless society is to change the root expectation that a central authority is a necessity. That happens over generations, piece by piece.
I don’t want to overthrow governments - I want them to wither away due to lack of interest.
The idea that is shared is that individuals own themselves, and therefore own the product of themselves.
Have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Non-aggress...
The Non-Aggression Principle(NAP) is what it all boils down to. I would argue that a lot of the laws we have are just re-iterations or complex versions of the NAP.
This does mean some things "slip through" that we're used to as being laws/rules in our society, but I think that in the such a society, we would organize and solve them to a satisfactory degree using means that don't violate the basic rules as set down. There are huge volumes of people trying to solve them without violating the NAP and I think it's possible if we built a society slowly over time on such a framework that it would work.
Pragmatically, however, I know we won't be able to achieve it in the near future (or ever) without a "reset" or a "fresh start" that allows the idea to practice, be fleshed out, and hopefully flourish. It can't just be "slapped onto" our current society and hope things work out, that'll result in chaos and put us in apocalypse territory. This is also why I'm very disappointed with all the "outer-space" related laws and treaties that are basically disallowing the possibility for new societies to form without the old ways of doing things.
Consequentialist libertarians seek to maximize individual Liberty. Deontological libertarians seek to minimize immoral actions.
This doesn't mean it's a "less moral" system. As a counter-example: Would putting surveillance cameras inside every house to prevent domestic violence be a "more moral" system just because it reduces more suffering? Where do we draw the line for which rights we're okay with violating in order to stop suffering? I just put it at a very non-arbitrary spot, which is the NAP.
Now think about swapping the AIs with humans. How do you make sure you build a private police force that won't harm you? You cannot earn trust with money because a private police force can just point their guns at you and take your money.
At least in a private model, actors would care about reputation.
I'm not saying public schools are the non plus ultra, I'm just saying that they are a good way to meet people from different backgrounds early on.
Also, I didn't have the impression all of my teachers were very "pro government". They were a very diverse bunch politically speaking.
Or hate the people your government tells you to hate.
https://www.businessinsider.com/homeschooling-is-the-new-pat...
https://ideapod.com/born-creative-geniuses-education-system-...
In a home school, you can dress as Batman if you want. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/new-research-finds-th...
People post here all the time interesting new studies about child brain development, they put kids all in the same grade but studies show the brain develops vastly in 3-6 months at a young age and surprise, the kids that are born at the right time so they're the oldest in their class perform better on average. There are studies about the need for more sleep in adolescents, etc. Has schools adjusted to this new knowledge, assigning less homework, no, they run the same schedule they did 100 years ago.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/03/29/social-jetlag/
Instead of socializing in a Lord of the Flies environment, they're mostly socialized by and with adults. They've also become authoritarian environments closer to prisons.
https://reason.com/2020/09/07/zoom-nerf-gun-school-cops-kid-...
https://nypost.com/2018/01/30/teen-suspended-for-inciting-vi...
https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919951&bcid=25919951&r...
Studies are almost unanimous. Homeschooled kids are more successful in college, get almost an entire extra point of GPA on average and earn more money than other kids.
You do you, and let others do what they want.
Look at the data, and then consider that home-schooled kids in general comes from more stable homes with higher wealth and better educated parents.
https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/the-homeschool-math-gap...
And yes I agree that being able to homeschool your kids is definitely a privilege, unfortunately.
Maybe we can at least meet half way and say that homeschooling absolutely doesn't create these mythical, supposedly antisocial weirdos then, and it is completely possible to have healthy well functioning homeschoolers.
Perhaps the healthy, well functioning adults would have been so regardless of schooling. Perhaps the weirdos would have been so regardless of schooling. Perhaps schooling makes the difference for a proportion less than 100% of the students? How much less? Under what circumstances? Who could know with any confidence?
I honestly don't know how you could get clear evidence to say one way or the other as to schooling contribution to the causation of "weirdo-ness"
> Frost and Morris (1988) found in a study of 74 Illinois homeschoolers that, controlling for family background variables, homeschoolers scored above average in all subjects but math. Wartes, similarly, found that homeschoolers in Washington state scored well above average in reading and vocabulary but slightly below average in math computation (Ray & Wartes, 1991). The HSLDA-sponsored studies also found that homeschoolers do comparatively less well in math than in language-based subjects (Ray, 1997a; Rudner, 1999). Likewise Belfield (2005), in a well-designed study that controlled for family background variables, found that homeschooled seniors taking the SAT scored slightly better than predicted on the SAT verbal and slightly worse on the SAT math. A similar study of ACT mathematics scores likewise found a slight mathematical disadvantage for homeschoolers (Quaqish, 2007). Given this persistent corroboration across two decades we might conclude, tentatively, that there may be at least a modest homeschooling effect on academic achievement—namely that it tends to improve students’ verbal and weaken their math capacities.
Most notably, look at the last sentence:
> Given this persistent corroboration across two decades we might conclude, tentatively, that there may be at least a modest homeschooling effect on academic achievement—namely that it tends to improve students’ verbal and weaken their math capacities.
The homeschooling is only as good as you want to make it and are capable of making it. You can teach math and care about it? Might go great for your kids. You can't add but think it's ok if you just pray lots? Not so much. So many hard-to-identify confounding factors. Randomised trials these are not.
The correlations here just don't inform your decision.
You want something like: Probability of some particular kind of success given your reasons for doing it, resources and ability. This is an elusive thing to estimate even if the data were very much higher quality.
The other thing worth noting about these studies is they're old. 2007 is /ancient/ compared to the resources you have at your disposal now. The Khan Academy problem bank alone is likely to assist homeshcooling math score averages significantly. That one thing alone is a hell of a resource for homeschool teachers to learn what they need and for students. There are a stack of others too. Darwinian selection will likely pick a few winners that are just great too.
I have only pandemic homeschooled children. I have some reasons you don't care about for not doing it. People considering going that way can probably take a mountain of salt to the claim "Homeschooling is really bad for STEM..." made by username90. When dudul points out "The data ... [is] not super compelling" That seems like a very fair observation to me.
But nobody here is getting papers published, citatation metrics enhanced and so on.
In the absence of clear and compelling data, your prejudice about decisions concerning your family are better than those of some random stranger regardless of the robes of authority they wear.
I attended a charter STEM higher school which I toured in its first year of operation and entered as a first year during its second year of operation where there weren't yet any students in the 12th grade. A lot of the students who were part of the first batch and even the second batch were formerly homeschooled and were involved at hearings to provide arguments for why the school should get its charter. I myself was coming from a gap year as I saw that I wasn't learning anything beneficial by continuing my education at my district's middle school. Maybe it's because it was specifically a STEM school, but nobody was any worse because they were homeschooled. I'd argue that's why students were more driven to pursue their projects.
Tangent that I edited out: As the school's reputation grew and began intaking more students from traditional backgrounds, I must admit that many alumni feel like the quality of the students went down. It seems like those weird home schooled kids who were weird enough to pursue their interests were the key to building the school's reputation, and that kids who had gone to traditional schools where disrespectful behavior existed were bringing that behavior with them. At my high school every teacher, even if they were phds, was referred to by their first names. We had no detention, as we didn't have any bad actors. We were trusted to spend 20% of our school hours collaborating on moonshot projects and went out to restaurants and businesses everyday during our hour long lunch breaks to learn to behave with our community. I took for granted my 4 years there as I didn't realize how unique of an experience it is to be part of a school startup.
https://ideapod.com/born-creative-geniuses-education-system-...
Public school is bad for STEM.
If two college educated parents teach them STEM, they'll do great.
Personally, I don’t think it’s something government should try to “solve” - of _course_ parents want their children to share their views.
From a practical standpoint, it’s been difficult for us to find homeschooling communities that aren’t one of two extremes: new age/“hippie” or fundamentalist Christian. While my wife and I are Christian, it’s important to us for our children to get a thorough and well-rounded education. That entirely rules out a lot of resources for us, and we end up picking and choosing quite a bit. For instance, we’re using the Abeka math curriculum at the moment, but their science curriculum isn’t at all acceptable.
When it comes to data, the 2016 National Household Education Survey by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that 51% of parents selected "A desire to provide religious instruction" as an "important" reason for homeschooling their children, and 67% selected "A desire to provide moral instruction" as an "important" reason for homeschooling [0, in bar plot form; 1, original data].
[0] https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/summaries/reas... [1] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017102.pdf
"Don't do drugs." "Sex is great, but you need to wait until you're ready to handle it because it has serious emotional and physical consequences as well. If you do though, use a condom." "Don't treat people that way."
Its disingenuous that state run schools don't have their own moral instruction as well. Although I can't find it but I remember a post where a student got in an argument because the teacher failed them for saying ethics and morality were two different things and the teacher argued it was the same. So I don't exactly trust them to do it either. Ultimately it is up to the parents to teach kids their values, not the state's.
The parents have the most influence on a child's values anyway, short of removing them from the home, not much changes there.
No one is saying otherwise. The survey says that parents have a desire to provide moral instruction.
> Although I can't find it but I remember a post where a student got in an argument because the teacher failed them for saying ethics and morality were two different things and the teacher argued it was the same. So I don't exactly trust them to do it either.
Why generalize from what seems to be a single anecdote?
I get your point and in particular I understand Germany’s caution. But what is wrong with a parent teaching their child their morality through religion? Why is having the state control this less dangerous? Why is religion bad?
Take a look around this planet and oppression done in the name of religious superstition, but for a more charitable argument, even if religion is good, children deserve to have a diverse and secular upbringing if we care about the religious freedom of the child.
I'm also German, and here children are essentially mini-citizens, not some sort of property of their parents, with about as much autonomy as a mule. It's not about whether religion is good, it's about whether children have the right to be brought up, from an early age, in an impartial, dvierse and social environment, rather than being indoctrinated by their parents.
the US system doesn't treat children like citizens with autonomy and rights in their own right, but leaves them to the whim of their parents, regardless of what quality of education or values they can provide. That is incomprehensible to me,and I'd argue it actually harms the freedoms and rights of children and their autonomy. It's outright medieval to me to be honest.
I've sure you've heard the argument, but last century over a hundred million people were killed by atheist movements (Maoism, Stalinism), way more than were killed by any religion. And this century the most repressive governments (China, North Korea) are atheist too.
Religious people are also happier, statistically speaking (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religio...). So it can't be all bad if it's raising happier people.
Many modern home school curriculums are secular are taken from the same ones or follow the same standards/guidelines schools use. Majority of home schoolers I know are secular, and want better options, especially those to meet the learning needs or styles of learning they themselves or their kids thrived in. They don't believe either because their own experience or what they've seen with their kid that kids learn best in a very rigid, sit down, and be quiet and listen model of instruction that was designed for factory workers and has barely changed in 100 years.
Also, there's nothing stopping a parent from putting a kid a private Catholic/Jewish/Orthodox/etc school, etc that will do the same. Parents can indoctrinate their kids, home school or not, into a religion, they have them on evenings and weekends where the ultra religious just take the kids to their religious institution 4-5 times a week.
Prussian's realized when most conscripts were faced with war, they would pee their pants and run away.
"The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed."
This horrifies me. More so that we do it here in the United States.
https://www.forcedschool.com/post/69947261758/the-prussian-m...
Their should be no government run schools. Give parents a voucher and let them decide.
Let me put it another way, for the purposes of illustrating the principle: “Of course we should have a shared culture. Here it is - _my_ culture. If it’s in conflict with yours, too bad, we’re going to make sure your children are indoctrinated into it from an early age by taking them out of the home for eight hours each day, five days per week.”
We have homeschooling in CZ. Not many people use this option, but those who do usually do so because they see schools as inefficient. When I was a kid, at least a third, sometimes more than a half of every lesson was spent on various logistics, individual examination of pupils by the board, or simply disciplining the class. This is a very wasteful use of time, our most restricted life asset. In individual training, you can teach all the necessary stuff in three hours and then, for example, go for a hike.
In my experience homeschooled children are the most fit ones. They move around a lot, not being forced to sit (the worst position for a human body) for endless hours.
It is not just about money. Majority of guys here talking about home school as being money issue would not volunteered to leave their job to be stay at home parent long term. They just want somebody else to do it.
Because damn rules.
In good old times if a student told teacher to fuck off a teacher would've given a student a cuff on the nape and the conflict would've been resolved.
These days? Nope. You're not allowed to touch children. You're not allowed to yell at children. You can call parents at school and have another "he didn't do nothing" conversation.
So what you do? You introduce zero tolerance rules. You call the police. You turn school into prison where the same set of extremely strict rules is applied to each and every student.
And all of that could have been prevented by just one gentle slap!
There's a pretty wide spectrum between: "Can't discipline kids that act up" and "Beating kids"
Kids need boundaries. It's literally what they spend a good portion of their time testing for. If you aren't allowed to provide boundaries for them, then they will flounder, which turns into a self-reinforcing cycle.
I've heard from some teacher acquaintances that it's highly discouraged because the parents tend to complain a lot and the kids view it as a free vacation from school.
It sounds like "try to ignore them" is basically the only recourse teachers have in some districts against disruptive or worse students.
I think these punishments are commonly decided by administrators, not teachers. The teacher just reports them up the chain for misbehavior.
Suspension and expulsion are becoming embroiled in the anti-racism crusade due to some high-profile incidents, so blunt laws are being written to outlaw them altogether.
It wasn't a joke either, I remember a guy showing me his butt with a big nasty purple bruise on it the shape of a board. I got paddled once but the teacher took it pretty easy and I just had a little red. He was a weird old guy and I think he mostly liked hitting bent over young boys with boards.
They could pretty much do it for any reason and some kids not popular with teachers were paddled pretty regularly. Shortly after my time this was discontinued and I was not at all sorry to see the practice go, but now we have gone too far the other way in my opinion. Calling the police on kids for minor infractions is way over the top. But some semblance of order has to be enforced or no one can learn.
I feel like you learned more about life back then (maybe in sort of a "Lord Of The Flies" way to be fair). Most everyone could do what they wanted after school without worrying about stranger danger and having adults hovering over them the whole time and there was a lot of freedom to explore. If you fucked up though, you got paddled and you might get beat up by a fellow kid without a lot of recourse to authorities. It was just a rougher time, but more free as well which probably sort of describes the history of humanity also come to think of it.
I don't know which is worse, then or now. It seems kids were more self confident and self reliant and less neurotic back then. But there were a lot more physical fights and odd kids had a really tough time and kids who came from rough situations often really got beat down by the system. Literally.