Pandemic homeschoolers who are not going back
wired.com
wired.com
The first thing we did was nothing, for about 6 months. Getting the kids out of the routine and mindset that school had put them in was vital to being able to teach them. My 10y/o son had the idea that his teachers knew more than my wife and I did "because they're older". He could have only got that idea at school because that's the polar opposite of what we taught at home.
I worked full time, but my wife did not and she poured a lot of energy into teaching the kids. But we also did things that weren't schooling. We let the kids learn on their own the things they wanted to learn when they wanted to learn them. This was wonderful. My son picked up programming just for fun and didn't even tell me about it until after, when he had already lost interest and moved on. But that was okay, because I didn't expect him to be a programmer or anything else. I just wanted him to learn. Same for our daughter. They learned. They got GED's and that was that.
They're both extremely well rounded adults now and didn't go through the agonies of public schooling.
When you exit the system, the status and meaning it promises doesn't doesn't have the same value. If you got kids to the level of basic analysis / calculus, traveller level in a second language, and passable in the reasoning and comprehension skills of the LSAT, they would be smarter and more capable than most university undergrads. If you add physical competence hobbies to that where some of those skills get applied, you get even more differentiated. Teenagers get amateur pilot licenses, so they are plenty capable.
A way to match home schooled kids with structured team or olympic sports and orchestra or dance programs would be a big opportunity. Maybe we're at the cusp of an edu-tech boom?
Did you enforce discipline or did they have enough intellectual curiosity to learn stuff like calculus on their own?
The programming experience? Inside Minecraft with a mod called ComputerCraft that put an 8 bit computer that ran Lua inside of Minecraft.
There are those examples of families who treat it like they're on a deserted island. They're doing it wrong. Thankfully, they are a very, very small minority.
Although maybe you could. This talk has influenced my thinking since I saw it in Long Beach. https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the...
My biggest problem was the sudden lack of a social sphere. High school was terrible, but I dramatically underestimated how important the social environment was.
The thing I wish most was that there were people to teach me challenging subjects. Left to my own devices I naturally gravitated to things I was already good at.
I see the same thing in both my kids. They're both mentally engaged, skilled, perseverant problem solvers. . . except in the evenings after school. Then, they simply can't emotionally handle much beyond games/tv/youtube.
What worries me right now is that this situation may be setting up a bad psychological pattern that may stick with them for life: anything that takes work is, in some Pavlovian sense, associated with frustration and exhaustion, while pleasure is associated with brain candy. I don't think that that's their natural experience of life; it's something they're being taught by a regime that's dominated by report cards and standardized tests.
I'm personally not too keen on homeschooling. I did it for some time as a child, and I honestly think that the reduced social contact with my peers had consequences that also need to be considered. But I'd love to see schools become less bureaucratic. Teachers, in my experience, usually want to keep things fluid and engaging, and they know how to do it. What seems to get in their way are policies that the suits in office buildings develop, most of which are primarily designed to placate the anxieties of parents who are worried about their kids "falling behind" or whatever and want to see hard numbers proving that the school is doing a good job of producing kids that are all STEM and no roots, leaves or flowers.
Feynman is an example of somebody who practiced this. Done right play isn’t wasteful, it makes people want to dig deeper into something which is how discoveries are made.
Now, let's tax the living daylights out of everybody over USD$1M, cut the military budget and put all that money back into the educational system, so the rest of the kids can have the same experience as you, then re-introduce your kids to public schooling.
The argument that the US already spends a lot so nothing should be done feels loose at best.
The US education system is not there to accelerate students, to lift them up. It is model the population to suit the needs of the country. That's why nearly every aspect of a child's life revolves around school, from how and when they eat to who they socialize with. The system is there to reinforce national ideas. Some of that is noble ("try hard and get ahead") and some of it is not ("money counts"). When viewed from that perspective it works very well: little ever seems to change from one generation to the next. Freedom through social stability.
hmmmm
It may well be the case that US aggregate education spending is plenty high – but unless it were centrally collected and equitably distributed (taking into account differences in cost of living, cost of real-estate, etc.) to produce equivalent average outcomes, that's not really relevant.
Generally, the underperforming schools spend more per student. For example, Stuyvesant, the premier math/science high school in New York, is among other lowest of public high schools in spending per student.
Underperforming schools typically have higher costs, like ESL and special needs courses, free lunch, police presence, though.
>When critics insist that American teachers need to be held accountable for the poor performance of American school children, the teachers shoot back that they are being held accountable for the failure of American parents and taxpayers to take care of their children.
>When some of us point out that there has been no improvement in the performance of all high school students or of protected subgroups of students in the United States on NAEP measures of reading and mathematics in 30 years, they tell us we should consider ourselves lucky that we have teachers who have been able to hold student performance steady while the American people have been sending them students who get poorer and more isolated every year.
>…the U.S. spends much more per student on our schools than the countries with the best education performance. But it is also the case that other countries, with higher student performance and lower school spending per student, have smaller disparities in income between their wealthiest families and their poorest ones, and despite that, spend much more than we do on the support of families with young children on everything from child allowances to child care and early childhood education. From my vantage point, our budgets for children, families and schools, if you take everything into account, do very little about the enormous problems caused by concentrated poverty and racial segregation and then load all the problems that causes onto the schools.
>…It is a whole lot cheaper to do right by our children starting when mom is pregnant than it is to wait six years, when it is a whole lot harder to do what must be done to give these kids a chance in a world in which the skill threshold for earning a decent living is getting higher and higher.
-Marc Tucker
https://ncee.org/2019/12/child-poverty-and-its-impact-on-edu...
Hogwash. The industrial model of education can't be solved by throwing more money at it, and I'm suspicious of anyone who pretends there hasn't been enough money thrown already.
The government would audit these schools to ensure kids are adequately learning. Existing government school building could be leased to private teaching organizations.
However, the longer term results of kids who received vouchers show higher graduation rates and college admissions, albeit not always and and generally mild. But there's also evidence that voucher programs have improved public schools as they face competition.
I think we if we really committed to it and abolished government schools then we would see market based schooling improve the quality of education across the board. We could also expand what "qualified education" means and get away from a single standardized test for math, english, etc and begin to assist kids in placing them into academies that will benefit them. For example, by 14 it might make sense to have schools that focus less on academics and more on trade skills. Kids could begin to learn useful skills like carpentry, plumbing, small business operations, etc. that give them a real chance at building a life for themselves. A free market of education would allow people to setup these types of schools and for parents and kids to choose to place into them to set themselves up for success in life.
We can't do this in today's monolithic public school system. We have essentially a one-sized fits all approach with some schools offering AP classes, although even those are being removed in the name of "equity". Putting all our kids into the same system with the same goal of competing with each other to get into the best universities isn't good for most people.
Then you have the issue of accountability. Community-run schools are paid for via taxes - either income tax, property tax or a combination for both. Taxes demand representation - in the case of community-run schools the community votes for the school board members who in turn oversee the operations of the community schools. Where's my voice when my money is simply handed to someone to do with as they see fit? Good luck getting your school tax levies renewed in such an environment.
BTW, my state has been grappling with these issues for the past 15 years and it's a mess. A state law got passed saying the community funding must be made available to students for private schools and the results have been predictable. School levies are failing, and the private schools have been involved in scandal after scandal - the largest being a huge embezzlement scheme. A toss-out of the governor and key state legislators got the law reversed.
So we tried this alternative and it failed and failed hard.
And yes the local community sets the funding level and where I live, which is quite affluent, the funding is huge and the schools are nice. But in many other places where property values are smaller and people can't afford high property taxes to fund schools, they can't spend the same per student. Yes, some money gets recycled from affluent communities to less so through the state, but the money spent per student is still far less.
I think it's more fair that every kid gets the same amount of money spent on them so kids from poor communities can access quality education that isn't a function of where they grow up. That their parents can send their kids to a school that suits their needs and ambitions. So you have more than representation - you have actual choice and schools will compete for your money that is given to you.
Lastly, not every community votes for their school board. There are some places where they are appointed by the mayor. Teachers unions hate this idea because it cripples them, but actual teachers would thrive and do better in this environment.
Where does this money come from? The affluent communities don't mind the lion's share of their local taxes going to their community schools, but distribute it to everyone and they're not so interested in paying those taxes. They'd much rather reduce those taxes and invest the savings in their own children. So your problem isn't solved.
There are reasons these ideas have been volleyed about the past 20-30 years and we've made no progress. Add to that all the private charter school scandals we've endured and you have a big mess with no easy solutions in sight.
That's a disingenuous slight of hand when (as you admit) the curriculums are set at the sate level.
Being locally funded or managed means squat when the hours in the school year are limited and you have to teach to someone else's priorities.
To claim otherwise is equivalent to claiming every single business is government-run due to there being regulations.
That claim is a hell of a lot stronger than the one where the organizations run by municipal government employees executing on a state developed plan isn't a government run organization.
Are you going to tell us that USPS isn't government run because it's a privately chartered corporation that just to happens to be owned by the government and happens to have its product offerings highly regulated by government?
Public schools are government run for all practical purposes. Just not directly run on a day to day basis by the feds or state.
The government does audit schools, what do you think standardized tests are for? To assess whether or not the school is getting the students to the appropriate level.
And everything else sounds pretty much kind of like how it already is except with the conceit that what you're saying is in any way novel.
We need to stop focusing on students and start focusing on teachers and support staff. We all know the trope of the overworked teacher who does a shit ton of work off-hours, who buys supplies out of their own money.
That's the failure of the system right there. Classrooms don't need tablets as much as they need more bodies. Combine that with parent engagement is difficult in some communities due to all the poverty and what not. It's hard to get a parent working a night shift at their second job to a conference to explain to them what they already know, their child is failing and they need help with the material.
Help the school can't provide, because there's no one available to do it. Because everyone is overworked.
I highly recommend Dumbing Us Down, by John Taylor Gatto, a 3-time New York State teacher of the year, which presents a detailed analysis of this.
Second, you can't talk about school funding unless you talk about both administrative bloat and teacher's unions. As long as teachers can keep voting themselves raises and escaping even the most basic levels of accountability for their results, money will not solve the public school crises. And administrative employment has grown by 75% over less than a decade -- 10x the growth in teacher employment during the same time. [1]
So sure, you solve the bloat and local control issues, there's plenty of money for instruction and classroom resources.
0: https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/
1: https://www.educationnext.org/growth-administrative-staff-as...
I'm sure that it was. But good luck to them when they need to learn something important that isn't fun. There are times in every profession when you have to grind your way through something horrible. Want to be a lawyer? You will have to understand the rules of evidence regardless of what type of lawyer you want to be. Want to be a doctor? There will be anatomy that you will hate memorizing. There is something to be said for forcing kids to learn things they hate. It is necessary preparation for the important stuff that comes later, stuff they cannot learn from their parents. That's what advanced education is, learning something because an expert tells you to. Whether you enjoy every moment of it or not is beside the point. You can judge things once you become an expert.
I have to go away for a two-week training course on monday. It is going to be hell. Twelve days of memorizing stupid powerpoints about stuff I will probably never use. There will be tests at the end. I will pass them. My training at school/university, learning stuff I often hated, allows me to power through such things. I can sit in that chair hour after hour without drifting. Not everyone can do that. They work very different jobs. Their employer doesn't spend tens of thousands of dollars sending them to such courses.
Ivy League schools for example are really good at producing the kind of people who can pass McKinseys first year deathmarch, but most of us don’t work there and don’t want deathmarches in general.
Isn't that a decision that the children should be allowed to make for themselves once they are adults? School should give them sufficient resources for them to attack any profession, from soldier to priest, pilot to surgeon. Asking a child to make such choices, allowing them to forgo certain subjects, harms them in the long term. It limits their potential options.
A few years ago I read that "social media influencer" was a more desired trade amongst highschool kids than doctor/lawyer/fighter pilot. Such kids should not be allowed to make educational decisions.
To be a doctor, you need a 4 year college degree, then acceptance into a medical school, then pass the medical school courses and do N years of residency. The average medical school graduate has $200K of debt at that point.
To be a lawyer, you need blah blah blah law school, and then it turns out the USA has too many lawyers already... so the average entry-level lawyer makes $48K. Yes, really.
To be a social media influencer, you need about $2000 in startup costs and a lot of luck, as well as some degree of actual work. There are roughly a million people with 100,000+ followers on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok.
Interestingly, there are about a million lawyers and about a million doctors in the USA.
Finally, there are about 15,000 pilots in the US armed forces, but only about 2200 attack or fighter role aircraft.
In total: a kid with no particular educational affinity is making a reasonable immediate choice to pursue "social media influencer" over doctor/lawyer/fighter pilot. It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot.
It's not even that simple anymore. There's also the PGY1 year. There aren't nearly enough residencies to satisfy demand anymore. You might have to change specialties a few times before you land a residency. We're at the point where if you didn't go to medical school in the US, you're SOL. Even if you did, it's a struggle -- hope you went to a great medical school.
This at a time when we have higher demand for doctors than ever. Nobody wants to change the residency situation because the economics of it don't work out.
There are more kids wanting to be social media influencers than there are doctors, lawyers, or fighter pilots. The chances aren't purely based on how much demand there is for a given job, but also on how much supply. For that one million spots competition is fiercer.
If you're willing to accept the failure modes of non-fighter military pilot, non-pilot military officer, person with a college degree or person with some college (depending on when things go wrong) it's not a bad track. Lots of hedging. Then you can transition to a career in civilian aviation or management.
Compare that to something like enlisted Special Operations. Wash out of SEAL selection and you could be scraping barnacles off the side of a ship. Maybe you wash out of Special Forces selection and you end up in infantry. But then you decide you want to stop blowing stuff up, and the highlight of your resume is 4 years experience blowing stuff, with a minor in sweeping barracks. Failure modes aren't as nice.
I'll mention that to one. It is a perfectly valid career choice even if you don't make it to an F-16 cockpit. Unlike failed civilian pilots a failed military pilot has their choice of other officer trades, from lawyer/doctor to tank commander. And no company will fault someone for failing out as a military pilot. The fact you were accepted into pilot training in the first place puts you ahead of most.
Realistically, I don’t think all kids schooled in Montessori style “learn what you want when you want to learn” will fail at becoming doctors or lawyers if that’s their passion. It may detract from the number of people who make it through law school just because they heard lawyers make a lot of money.
But that’s realism, I was responding to the hypothetical of if this method of learning somehow destroys a human beings capacity to ever become a doctor or lawyer. That’s not very practical to say a schooling method will destroy all sense of delayed gratification. Personally, I think developing those life skills is orthogonal to intellectual education in the first place and are more akin to personal character which parents can build in their children without conjoining it with schoolwork.
You write that like everyone automatically has any idea what it is.
And infer they treat the new hires harshly?
There's a few blogs around about it; this one seems less hyperbolic than your average news headline but does mention the hours: https://managementconsulted.com/interview-first-year-mckinse...
There is also something to said for developing a kid’s sensitivity to and ownership of their individual intrinsic motivation. If using extrinsic motivation works for your kids, that’s great for you. Deciding on an approach for the child one rears out of concern for a lack of lawyers and doctors doesn’t sound like a sound decision process.
Someone wants to be a doctor? Great, soon they’ll realise that they need to learn anatomy, and they’ll do that if they’re sufficiently motivated! But most of school was, you have to learn something because an adult (and not very smart adult either ... most teachers aren’t experts, they just seem like that, to kids) said so.
I don’t care why Hamlet said something, I never did, I never will, I never needed that knowledge and never will, and to the extent that you can maybe learn some general life principles from such books, there are many other, better ways of learning that, including many better and more interesting books.
Even the employment course you’re taking, you want to take - you’re getting something out of it (a promotion, hopefully) - even though even in your reply there’s some amount of bitterness about having to learn it (“memorizing stupid powerpoints about stuff I will probably never use”) - now imagine being a child with much less independence and agency and multiply that feeling of dread by 1000x...
Shakespeare is taught...because Shakespeare has always been taught. It's recognized as important; to be fair, it is from an objective sense, but subjectively there is no reason to read it, nor even to watch it performed unless someone wants to.
You learn language by practicing language. You can read or watch anything and better understand the nuances of a language; even better to talk to people who speak it. English evolves because of the latter; Shakespeare doesn't.
Everyone who speaks a language other than English learned to do so without Shakespeare. I am unconvinced of the necessity of reading/watching Shakespeare unless someone wants to; it is but one means to an end.
> Everyone who speaks a language other than English learned to do so without Shakespeare
Well duh, they learn the masterpiece of whatever language they're learning. Be that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Victor Hugo, or Luís de Camões.
I place the blame here squarely on how it is presented in schools. First, it was dropped in abruptly, after years of focusing heavily on largely apoetic work like Old Yeller and Great Expectations. When poetry was introduced, it was typically dropped as part of some hermetically sealed unit, and all possibility of enjoyment was eradicated by analyzing each poem to death. [1] How are people supposed to learn to enjoy play on words when any hint of actual play has been surgically excised from the experience?
And then, since this is a class, there will be a test, and so you have to format the presentation in a manner that makes it more amenable to testing. This means that, if the play is a comedy, then you'll have to stop every few lines to have the teacher explain, in detail, why what you just read is funny.
Which it may not be, because performance comedy is all about presentation and timing, but we're not watching a performance, we're reading the text. Imagine encountering Spaceballs for the first time in script form, so that you're completely unable to associate any of the lines with the performances of John Candy or Rick Moranis. It won't be nearly as good. And having someone sitting over your shoulder repeatedly interrupting you to say, "Now, in the actual movie, this part is hilarious because..." only makes it less funny.
If the work being studied is a tragedy, well, it's a similar story, only in this case it is kind of funny because the tragedy has gone meta. Not that anyone sitting in the classroom is in a position to realize that. They're too focused on taking notes so they can remember details - especially details about the teacher's interpretation of the story - for the coming test. Because furiously scribbling in notebooks and trying to memorize every detail is an essential part of the way in which members of the groundling audience, literate and illiterate alike, experienced performances in the original Globe Theatre.
Ugh. It makes me irritated all over again just thinking about it. Primary and secondary education classes are seemingly predicated on the notion that the best place to study everyday human experience is in a cadaver lab. Largely only because the courses are being designed by people who sell scalpels and formaldehyde for a living.
[1] Exhibit A: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/...
I bet I would have liked it more in school (rather than much afterwards, when I became acquainted with the Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta, though props to the teachers who set up field trips there) if instead a teacher had said "Okay guys. We're watching a movie today. It's going to be a little hard to understand, but don't worry too much about it; it's less the words and more the performance. There won't be a test, but we will discuss it afterwards. I'll have subtitles on to help with understanding; it's kind of interesting to see how English has changed since this was made, but how it still has themes you'll recognize, and can still be emotionally charged even when you don't fully understand everything being said. It may be a little challenging given that, but I think you're up to it", and then put on Branagh's Hamlet.
They go to great lengths to ensure everyone in the audience understands e.g. that Romeo and Juliet has loads of raunchy humor. I’m confident I could attend a play I have never read and understand the emotional and plot bones of it at Shakespeare Tavern.
And in my experience their food only helps me in my understanding of the play! All for a quite modest price.
Oof. That's cold. Not necessarily wrong, but cold. I mean, most software developers are not actually good at developing software, they just seem like that because they've only been asked to write the same CRUD app over and over again.
Teachers may not be "experts" like a PhD in a topic is an expert, but they are educated (Bachelors minimum, many states require a Masters eventually) but they are often experts in education.
It turns out just knowing a lot about a topic does not qualify you to teach it (see: many college professors). Effective teaching is a skill that lots of people think they have, but few actually do.
It doesn't really matter what Hamlet said. Literature is a class where you learn to express yourself and are exposed to how other people/cultures/times express themselves in a structured way.
And how would you know that you don't care about Hamlet unless you were made to read it?
You could live a successful life without reading any books ever (you could even be President of the United States!) but it would be much richer if you were exposed to ideas/topics that challenge you. And who knows where you could use that information. Heck, Bob Dylan made an entire career as a musician off of the AP English curriculum.
When I was a kid, two different years, the teachers had us read/read to us "Where the Red Fern Grows". At the time, I was reading fantasy from the adult section at the library (and was teased for it; both the fact I was reading for fun, and the subject matter). Literally the only thing I remember about that book is how much I hated it.
It's one thing I have to give Harry Potter, despite J. K. Rowling. It popularized fantasy enough that kids read on their own, and normalized reading books for fun in schools.
Something to know about English classes in particular (but also History and other liberal arts/non-science classes) is that isn't not about "the books", but critical thinking and discussion. In fact, it's likely that the mandated standards don't specify specific books to read. It turns out, though, that in a class of 30+ kids, it's easiest (or even possible) to have a critical discussion if everyone reads the same books at the same time.
Also, if the kids think they are being "taught the book" but the teacher is trying to teach "literary literacy" using "the book" as an example, that's when you get arguments like "I didn't learn anything!" and "This is a waste of my time!" and "This other book is better!". Those arguments are besides the point. You should have been talking about why the author made the literary decisions they made, what were the themes? Whose point of view was it told from? How was the book impactful (or not)?
These are the standards in Texas. Other states should have this information publicly available and I assume they will be very similar.
https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/ch110c.pdf
For English II these are the skills a student should learn (notice no specific books are mentioned, but "traditional", "contemporary", "classical", and "diverse" are used to describe the books)
- The student develops oral language through listening, speaking, and discussion
- The student uses newly acquired vocabulary expressively
- The student reads grade-appropriate texts independently.
- The student is expected to self-select text and read independently for a sustained period of time.
- The student uses metacognitive skills to both develop and deepen comprehension of increasingly complex texts
- The student responds to an increasingly challenging variety of sources that are read, heard, or viewed
- The student recognizes and analyzes literary elements within and across increasingly complex traditional, contemporary, classical, and diverse literary texts
- The student recognizes and analyzes genre-specific characteristics, structures, and purposes within and across increasingly complex traditional, contemporary, classical, and diverse texts
- The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the authors' choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts.
- The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances.
- The student uses the writing process recursively to compose multiple texts that are legible and use appropriate conventions
- The student uses genre characteristics and craft to compose multiple texts that are meaningful
- The student engages in both short-term and sustained recursive inquiry processes for a variety of purposes
Much like learning a foreign language is about more than learning vocabulary, but you can't learn how to talk in a restaurant if you don't know the restaurant related vocabulary. English class is about more than reading books, but you can't have those discussions if you haven't read the books. Or, it would be much more difficult to effectively "analyze literary elements" in a classroom setting with 30 kids that all ready 30 different books.
Sure, teachers can be better or worse (or very, very bad) at teaching the material, or conveying what is being taught. But if you view English class as equivalent to "sitting under a tree and reading a book" (that was another commenter's words, not yours) then you're missing the forest for the tree and it won't matter how good the teacher is, you will be fighting them the whole way (which is maybe your point about not being able to challenge someone that doesn't want to be challenged)
How much of it is what the parents are saying it is, and how much of it is really motivated by a tacit belief that school is only legitimate when it's stodgy?
https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/ch110a.pdf
- The student uses metacognitive skills to both develop and deepen comprehension of increasingly complex texts
- The student recognizes and analyzes literary elements within and across increasingly complex traditional, contemporary, classical, and diverse literary texts
- The student recognizes and analyzes genre-specific characteristics, structures, and purposes within and across increasingly complex traditional, contemporary, classical, and diverse texts
- The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the authors' choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts.
- The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances
What 3rd grade you thought you were supposed to be learning and what the teacher was actually trying to teach you were not necessarily lined up.
Or, you went to a school with a particularly poor English department that just had you write book reports for books you didn't read for no reason other than that's what they always did. That's actually more likely than not.
I was a very, very bad math teacher at my first school (I was basically "playing school" and acting like I remembered my math teachers acted.. I had a CS/Math major, not an Education major. I knew the content, but not the pedagogy). The next school I taught at had structures in place that helped me understand what the actual goals of a teacher are and how to reach them. I improved drastically (and noticed the students and teachers at that school were better overall than my first school)
That is not the slam dunk argument you seem to think it is.
In my experience, most developers with “10 years of experience” (who have worked in enterprise, at least) actually have one year of experience ten times.
What signals do you find have helped you tease that out of something like a resume?
I have no idea what you mean by that, can you explain?
“ The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.” -Bob Dylan, 1985
Exposure to stories with a range of emotions is part of the point of English class.
However, now when I try to google for it I just find pages and pages of results about whether he deserved the Nobel prize or not.
As an anecdote, I've always been in tech roles; I dual-majored in History and Computer Science for reasons. Looking back at various roles I've had in my life's journey, the skill framework I learned studying and writing about Napoleonic warfare or the Silk Road, were just as essential as the framework in math and engineering on the CS part of my education, maybe more so.
And about "having to learn" stuff, I feel like it's more a justification the parent poster gave to themselves so they get over with it, not a real _need_ to learn something. What's the point of memorizing stuff you'll never use?
> There is something to be said for forcing kids to learn things they hate. It is necessary preparation for the important stuff that comes later, stuff they cannot learn from their parents. That's what advanced education is, learning something because an expert tells you to. Whether you enjoy every moment of it or not is beside the point. You can judge things once you become an expert.
I'm not sure what to make of this. How is "forcing" kids to learn things they hate "necessary" preparation for what comes later? Is it the only way to instill discipline?
I'd rather force my kids to do the productive, boring things like chores (washing and folding laundry, cleaning dishes, cleaning their room, cleaning their bathroom and playroom, taking care of the pets) which will instill the same discipline and delayed gratification without potentially making them hate learning and schooling at a young age when they are least emotionally prepared to handle it. Plus, if they're being challenged in school they'll have that experience of leaping into the unknown, which can be quite scary and requires discipline. I find it much more likely that homeschooling induces that challenge and discipline over public schools, where above-average kids are often bored and subject to authoritarian threats.
> I have to go away for a two-week training course on monday. It is going to be hell. Twelve days of memorizing stupid powerpoints about stuff I will probably never use. There will be tests at the end. I will pass them. My training at school/university, learning stuff I often hated, allows me to power through such things. I can sit in that chair hour after hour without drifting. Not everyone can do that. They work very different jobs. Their employer doesn't spend tens of thousands of dollars sending them to such courses.
I'm not sure why romanticizing or glorifying suffering and waste is somehow the raison d'être for public schooling. I've worked in toxic environments before where some of the employees, fully resigned to how toxic the place is, would make statements like, "not a lot of people could succeed in this environment." I got the hell out of each of those situations as soon as I could. In my opinion, I'd rather suffer for people like my kids or my wife or God or even to defend my community for which I am duty bound, but not for my employer.
Best of luck with that horrible upcoming training course.
Cognitive psychology has consistently refuted this theory again and again. Transfer of learning is virtually non-existent.[1] When a student learns a topic he learns the very specific skills related to that topic. There's no spillover or improvement to the ability to learn other, even closely related, topics.
[1]https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/08/low_transfer_of.htm...
At a later date, I studied Hungarian in a cram school. Two of us learned Hungarian much faster than our classmates- we both had studied Japanese. Most of the students had also studied other languages. Something about learning languages that were so grammatically different from English seemed to help with building mental models and stop "translating" things back and forth from English- which made the language much easier to pick up.
Developing learning techniques does help in learning other things. Learning boring things however, I think that's always going to be hard for me.
Grammars are largely described using the same system, with different languages using different parts of it (and more or less - Latin quite a lot; English quite little). Learning a second language (that's different enough) exposes you to more of the available grammatical constructs, so when you learn a third there's less that could possibly be new, and probably quite a bit of grammatical overlap with your first or second language.
Anecdotally, I agree that a good deal of teaching does not produce learning that is durable or transfers.
That doesn't mean it isn't possible.
Enter Scott Carrell and James West's study at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) [0]. The title and abstract bury the lede and actually misdirect. It talks about professor evaluations, tenure, and teacher quality. The key findings from this study are about the type of pedagogy that create durable and transferable learning.
They compared pedagogical styles of teachers in first year calculus classes compared to how durable and transferable the knowledge was that cadets gained in each class. It was a totally unique environment that allowed for it to be randomized, controlled, and to study effects beyond one year. I have never seen a better study in education.
The tl;dr is that pedagogy that forces students to engage in desirable difficulties [1] produces learning that is more durable and can transfer to different domains. The catch is two-fold. Students rate this type of teaching poorly. They also get worse grades at first even though the long-term payoff is much better.
[0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14081/w140...
[1] https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/...
For most normal kids, they just adapt. The problem is when kids have a problem that parents can't handle or don't understand. People miss this, because they (rightfully) have a tight emotional attachment to their children.
My kids go to a private school, and I'm a volunteer parent/peer advisor to help parents with various issues. One of the hardest conversations to have is when a child is struggling, and the right answer is for that child to be in public school where resources exist -- the financial model doesn't support having the support staff and specialist teachers. People feel strongly about small class sizes and other benefits of the private school, but that matters less if the child needs services.
That's fundamentally an issue with homeschooling. There's nobody to say "hey, we have a problem here" when Sally can't read, or Johnny doesn't understand geometry because Khan academy isn't working and mom can't explain it.
Three things:
1. There are lots of private options for this, at least in any major metro.
2. From my experience with homeschoolers, the sheer amount of parent attention they tend to get lends itself towards figuring these things out (especially with help from a homeschooling community or the aforementioned private options).
3. From my experience as a public school teacher, most of the kids who needed services didn't get them, and I saw very few situations where the services seemed to make a significant difference (though there were some). I've seen more success stories around learning disabilities from homeschoolers than I have from kids at public schools (and in fact often the learning disability was a key impetus for the switch to homeschool).
So the question is, "compared to what?" Kids with strong parent advocates are likely to get what they need in whatever environment they're in. Kids without them aren't likely to, but there's selection bias against that in homeschool. Yes, one can have a great result with public school, and sometimes that's the right call for a family, but after my stint in the public schools I'm much more confident in a well-meaning parent figuring out the solution with a kid they spend lots of time with than I am in that same parent spending much less time with the kid and rolling the dice with public school specialists and support services.
It depends. Some parents focus homeschooling on religion. Or skip schooling so their 11 year old can focus on his baseball career and 3 travel teams. Or have no clue.
I was homeschooled K-7 and again in 12th. I know lots of homeschool kids whose parents insulated them from the world (including mine, though less so than many) due to religion or just eccentricity. Almost all of us are successful, however, and very few stayed locked in that bubble. A key piece of that is because we became self-directed learners.
In her first year at school, the teacher was incredibly effusive about her. We were interested in maths because before she went to school we had always thought that she struggled with anything to do with numbers, but the teacher reassured us that everything was fine. But within a week of us sitting down with her to do maths, it became very clear that she had absolutely no idea of even the most basic concepts around numbers, sequences, addition, or anything else. We asked her how she had managed to do the material that the teacher had shown us, and she looked a little sheepish and said: "well, we do all that in groups..."
I don't know how long she could have kept faking it in the school system. But at least in our case, our daughter was perfectly capable of playing the system and slipping through the cracks, in a way that was completely impossible with us one on one. We're lucky that we're educated and have resources etc, but our daughter will absolutely be better off getting the help that we can organise for her and the personalisation in her learning that we can offer than she would be in the school system.
At the end of the comment he says his sons are well rounded adults.
> I have to go away for a two-week training course on monday. It is going to be hell. Twelve days of memorizing stupid powerpoints about stuff I will probably never use.
No offense, but that sounds pretty miserable. I'm on my forties, with two kids, and never had to subject myself to such things. Life is too short for that.
While they are likely doing fine, parents usually aren't the correct people to ask, the kids could be withholding how much they've been struggling and even if they aren't no parent would objectively say if their kids didn't turn out into "well rounded adults", unless the parent truly hated their kids.
Parents like making their kids look better than they are.
Many share this conception but it’s not a very useful model I would argue.
This is the problem. We force everyone through a meat grinder with this paternalistic bullshit about being well-rounded. If and when it becomes necessary to know something, you learn it with more motivation and so it becomes easier to learn and remember. We need to stop force feeding people things that aren’t directly relevant or that they have no interest in.
Source: am also a lawyer and would say easily 1/2 of what is taught in law school was never used again and promptly forgotten after the exam. I am certain the same apples to doctors, architects, etc etc etc.
What do they do? Did they get any schooling after the GED's?
That is just your opinion and bias. I can share my opinion and bias. My kids go to public schools and love it. We'd never even think about home schooling. Not that everything is perfect, but as long as they are happy, we're happy.
Your kids are probably fortunate or socially skilled enough to be outside of that group.
We did however save them from needlessly experiencing the problems they were already having.
So it's subjective. But isn't everything?
I don't believe the adult world provides as much torture. Aside from workplace backstabbing, people are much nicer as adults, even if it's all for show. And as an adult you can more easily remove yourself from relationships and surroundings that aren't working. Kids are more prone to social cruelty and you're mostly stuck in your environment without the ability to opt-out.
There's a group of people who were bullied at school, it's called "everyone". There are support groups for this, they meet every single day of the week at your local bar.
I want to buck the system too but not sure what the long term consequences would be for the kids.
I also want to mention that although we were/are a religious household, we did not do homeschooling at all because of religion. We did it so that the kids could get the best education possible.
And people might wonder about their ability, as a parent, to teach. Are they up to the task? The answer is simple: The person who has the most interest in a child is going to be the best teacher. And who has more interest than a parent who loves them?
If somebody wanting to do homeschooling is doing it because it's the "easy" way out, or because they are trying to "buck the system" for the sake of bucking the system, then DONT. Do it because it's what is best for your kids. It was best for ours, and the way we did it worked for them.
Before you decide anything at all, do tons of research. Talk to parents in your area who are homeschooling. Look for co-ops and home schooling groups on facebook etc. There are excellent resources available to you.
What about socialisation with peers? What about boring but necessary activities, if they only do what is fun? What about jobs?
Homeschooling doesn't mean living in a cage or away from others (well sometime it might, especially in some religious approach of it. Extreme cases are what people hear about and that might be the reason of those believes).
Kids can still go play with friends, do sports or any activity !
On a personal note, my wife and I homeschooled our kids between their 7 and 10 (mostly because we were traveling here and there), and now that they're back in the school system, they have no problem and have good marks.
It's way more easy to teach 2 kids (maybe we were lucky, as they're twins so are at the same class level) than 25 to 30. You can cover official curriculum pretty quick, and it leaves time to do other (fun) stuff.
About twenty percent of my students handled the transition to distance education just fine. Many of these students told me they missed friends/clubs/etc, but enjoyed having greater control over their time (my district encouraged, but did not require, synchronous learning).
The middle sixty percent were mixed, but generally plateaued in perceived achievement or struggled to keep motivated. Since going back to in-person about six weeks ago, the majority of these students are back on track. Achievement remains somewhat below a typical cohort, just a little less snappy and insightful with observations and arguments. So it goes.
The bottom twenty percent were various flavors of missing. They did not or could not cope with the transition to distance learning. Some of these students were struggling prior to going online, but the reduction in structure and support pulled a lot of kids into this group that wouldn’t typically fail.
No objective here. Just sharing.
It seems the challenge now is that the most prepared students have gotten further ahead while the least prepared students fell further behind. Managing the increased divergence in coming years will be a challenge.
We were sending staff door to door everyday, but it is unclear how much of an impact that (or any of our other interventions) really made. A lot of these kids were depressed, anxious, unmoored.
“It seems the challenge now is that the most prepared students have gotten further ahead while the least prepared students fell further behind. Managing the increased divergence in coming years will be a challenge.”
Anxiety over that divergence is already building amongst the teaching staff.
I think my daughter did ok, but we have a stay-at-home mom. Most aren't so lucky.
But there are kids in his class in pretty marginal home situations. One kid came back completely different, with a lot of rage and anger. She was getting into fights. It was her first time back to any school (virtual or otherwise) in more than a year. Another came back and falls asleep in class. She stays up till midnight watching TV.
I don't feel like public schools were truly weighing the risks to children's mental health when they kept schools closed. Childhood trauma has long term lasting health effects and can shorten lifespan by _decades_ (see the ACES study[1])
I had a similar experience with my kids. It's been a hard year for everyone. Your post focuses on the kids, but I don't think it's been any easier for teachers or parents.
> I don't feel like public schools were truly weighing the risks to children's mental health when they kept schools closed.
At least where I live, schools were never closed, we just switched to remote learning. And of course, that hand was initially forced and was constantly re-evaluated until in-person learning reached a level of acceptable risk again.
Ventilation and masks, plus shutting down school for a couple of weeks if there is a significant outbreak, and we would've managed this crisis so much better.
Instead you have half the country saying "fuck it" and sending kids to school no matter what, and the other half refusing to open schools at all but then letting kids playing with other kids in "pods" (when the also let kids be in multiple pods).
You didn't have to keep your child isolated - did you expect nothing bad to happen if you took this course of action?
Sorry to suggest this, but it really seems like you are the cause of your kid's difficulties.
> sending kids to school no matter what
Why is this not the default in your household? What is more important than your child's growth and mental development? They would have handled getting sick just fine, like kids always do every time there's a bad seasonal respiratory virus out there.
Later in the school year, public schools moved to a modal of 1/2 the class being in person and 1/2 the class being online for any given day except for Monday where all students were online only.
Finally, a few weeks before the end of the year, public schools allowed all students to return to class for the entire week.
Private schools did not see major outbreaks of Covid. Teachers at private schools were no more likely to get Covid than the general population.
This generation of kids will pay a heavy price for these school shutdowns.
Just walked into the 'teachers room' at lunch break and asked if I could use a microscope to inspect an UV-erasable EEPROM :
Sure, go ahead.
Wanted to write a program instead of doing the final physics experiment :
Uhhh, well, why not
The Netherlands school system is falling victim to the exact same controversies the USA and other systems around the world are facing... [0]
[0] https://nltimes.nl/2021/06/03/netherlands-slammed-prioritizi...
So what point am I making: I've read that schools are teaching creationism, others spend 80% of their time on sports, something with greeting the flag every morning with a speech?
A lot of time is spent on teaching how to make arguments (How to plead your case) instead of trying to work together in finding truth.
And most of all: do not criticise, but a "do as told" mentality.
Again: Sorry for that almost mean-spirited first comment of mine.
The difference between the America as portrayed in sensationalized news headlines and the America I live in is vast.
No, creationism isn't standard curriculum in high schools and no, students aren't spending 80% of their time on sports. When you see these things in news stories, their newsworthiness stems from the fact that it's abnormal, not because it's the norm.
America has half the population of all of Europe and a similar amount of landmass. It's a big enough country that if you go looking, you're going to find pockets of weird culture. The mistake is to assume that when journalists highlight the worst of these, that it's actually representative of the norm.
Judging the US by these stories would be similar to me judging your European education by some of the wild anecdotes my Romanian coworker relayed about his high school experience there.
I suspect his experience has nothing to do with yours, naturally. However, when people read horror stories about bad US schools, they assume it applies to every single high school in the entire country for some reason.
For some reason, the HN and Reddit bubbles seem to collect a lot of people who loathed high school education. Even in adulthood and traveling around the country I’ve never encountered as many negative stories about high school as I read on HN.
Take what you read here with a grain of salt. There appears to be some significant selection bias going on in the stories.
I built a potato gun and tested different fuels. It wasn't very scientifically rigorous (hard to measure how much fuel went into the firing chamber, distance measurements were sloppy, and we didn't take the weight of individual potato projectiles into account). But it was incredibly fun, and the report I produced earned me an A.
That was probably the best "scientific" experience I had in all my years of schooling including college. Having to think about all the different variables really helped me grok the scientific process. We thought up ways that we could start to control things like fuel load and projectile weight and just generally had a blast.
You're getting the wrong impression. The vast majority of people have a high school experience which is wholly unremarkable in the telling which you don't hear about. Those with horrific experiences -- they've got a story to tell.
You only hear about deviations from the norm. Most of the people I know (outside of my bipolar support group) don't have much to say about their childhood.
Compared to homeschooling in a class of one, school is a more social environment. Learning with only those your own age, taught almost exclusively by women between 25-50 (65 at most, but rarely)--is that not an odd way to structure a human environment?
In my anecdotal experience, put a school age kid with a young toddler, or a senior over the age of 70, and an empathy switch gets turned on. This kind of socialization is undervalued.
-- Noam Chomsky
https://www.salon.com/2012/06/17/when_chomsky_wept/
Call it a fluff piece, sure, there certainly isn't even an attempt of criticism in it, but it still matches all I ever witnessed from him.
It taught me that, while I had no idea what I wanted, I did not want the life I was seeing kids around me trapped in to. So I learned to give gatekeepers what they wanted and got out of that crappy little sinkhole.
Didn't learn much of anything academic, though.
I get that one should learn some basics, like that we had some famous writers like Ibsen, but I feel it should be sufficient for most people to know roughly which century he lived, not the exact years of his birth and death. If you want to become a historian you'll have plenty of time to memorize those details later.
I also realized later that we spent very little time at practical writing. I mean sure we wrote stories and such, but very little of it were practically oriented. Yet that's what most people end up needing. Like, writing a report, or heck a letter/email regarding a specific topic.
We also didn't spend much time on understanding and interpreting text. We had some poems we had to interpret, but I think we should have had more of it. And not just poems and such but also more technical texts. Again a very useful skill compared to knowing that Camilla Collett was the sister of Henrik Wergeland, and when exactly they lived.
This became clear when I had to write reports, participated in discussions in newsgroups and emails etc, and later assignments at uni.
Anyway, rant over.
His parents gave him a choice at 13 what he wanted to do -- high school or college and he selected college. Frankly, it's astonishing how much of a waste of time high school is.
I think you're processing your memories through an adult lens and forgetting that if you judge them by adult standards, teenagers are shallow, horrible people. Of course we shouldn't judge teenagers by adult standards, because it isn't fair (children of all ages are pretty shitty people by adult standards) but we have to keep in mind that our memories of high school are memories that were formed by teenagers. I have heard so many times adults saying to me "if only my teachers had taught me X, I would have been so shocked and engaged" where X is something that their long-suffering teachers did, in fact, teach year after year to generations of bored and indifferent students.
In the United States, classic examples are US imperial rule of the Philippines, the Sedition Acts, the Tuskeegee experiments, and the slaughter, subjugation, and displacement of Native Americans, all subjects that were covered in my high school history class to the complete indifference of just about everybody. I can't imagine the feelings of a teacher with an adult understanding of these things having to cope year after year with the dismissive reactions of teenagers. They can stand in front of a class as long as they want trying to explain how our involvement in the Philippines and our actions against democratically elected rulers in other countries complicate our image of ourselves as champions of freedom and self-determination, or how even a nation whose patriotic myths are cloaked in rhetoric about freedom has repeatedly struggled to reconcile patriotism with freedom of speech, but to a teenager it's going to be "ugggghhhhh stop talking about stuff we don't care about and just tell us what dumb factoid we have to remember for the test."
Why do you still remember that the ship was called the Mayflower? Well, for whatever reason that fact is pretty vivid to people of all ages and easy to remember, and so it is used as a reference point and an easy answer on tests. What your teachers really wanted you to remember was that the Pilgrims were deeply, devoutly religious even by the standards of their own time, and thought they had a covenant with God and a duty to create a society that would be a model for every other in the world (holy shit, how wild is that?) and this extremely early thread was woven into the myth of American exceptionalism that is part of the political rhetoric of every single presidential and congressional election to this day, with its significance still contested. But that's not what a teenager is going to take out of high school history class. What they're going to remember is 1) they didn't want to be there, and 2) it was stupid.
Again, not to be harsh on teenagers. It's normal for them to be that way, and it's not fair to judge them by adult standards. And maybe this is a strong argument for abolishing high school as we know it. If kids hate it and resent it, and they forget all of the good stuff and only remember the useless stuff anyway, then why bother with it? If people find things like the Tuskeegee experiment and the Triangle Shirtwaist fire utterly stupid and meaningless in their teens and revelatory in their twenties, why do we dedicate so much time and effort to teaching them in their teens? Maybe we can do better.
Neither of us recommend it; my sib is more antagonistic than I am. There are a number of conjoined factors, but it, as conventionally understood, is not a sufficient system for forming a child's development. People talk about "socialization" and "friends", those are subtly wrong. The key question is integration with society and understanding how it works.
As a parent now of a 4yo, I am passionately planning to put him in public schools. I would STILL have yanked him into homeschool for 2020-2021 school year and sucked it up. Local public school districts were a cluster. Zoom school seems to be a hilariously bad idea for people who aren't like, e.g., my sib, who is incredibly disciplined and great at self teaching.
Edit: Happy to answer questions; if it relates to things that might be disparaging to others or requires a very serious & thoughtful response, please just email me at my listed address in the profile.
As a 3rd party observer to colleagues who have been homeschooled, this is right on the money with regard to their deficiencies. However, I don't know if it's strictly due to homeschooling, or because they also tend to have been raised with extremely religious and conservative values.
What does this mean in particular? What does it mean to "integrate with society" and "understand how it works?"
That should give you the vector to look into - the question of assimilation and the other has been adequately discussed elsewhere.
As someone who was homeschooled, and would quite happily at least try to homeschool my own children in the future, I do agree with this statement.
Nonetheless, I don't necessarily see it as a strict negative. Yes, initially after finishing my secondary education there were some difficulties with integrating specifically with my peer group (but not with other age groups). This took at least a couple of years to overcome to a sufficient level that I "passed" as a normal person. A lot of this was not social ability per se, but more to do with using the right vernacular, dressing to match my peers better, and avoiding certain social faux pas.
However, positively as an "Other", I am advantaged in some ways.
1) I fit in better with other "Others", like immigrants and their children, racial minorities, odd and strange people, and so on. Because I was/am one, they are "my people", even if I can easily pass as not-Other.
2) Learning to assimilate means that I can easily assimilate into different cultural contexts more easily than those who never had to. I can fit in with a wider group of cultural contexts and adjust quickly and easily.
3) I have a different perspective on some aspects of society that is not necessarily better or worse, just different.
When you add that up to the other benefits of homeschooling, I'm not sure the negatives come near to discouraging homeschooling. However, my experience is not everyone's experience, and I understand that some people remain stuck as Other and suffer for it. I also can't say it felt particularly good to be Other and unable to pass as normal, in the interim. In the long term, I don't know that it mattered that much.
----
I feel compelled to note that the common idealisation of being a maverick, odd-ball, elite hacker on the edges of society and so on that is common enough in tech circles is not necessarily an advantage or something I am advocating for. There's nothing wrong with being ordinary, and being unusual often or typically works against you. I wouldn't homeschool my children to make them unusual, and I don't think we should glorify weirdness as superior. I don't consider my experience as being an odd-ball on society as something that makes me superior; if anything, it was for a time an inferiority to be overcome.
There are meaningful advantages. But on balance - again, it's been some twenty years since I was homeschooled - I've found that being an Other to be painful, repeatedly. I don't believe assimilation to have ever been finished for me. I think the alienation and lack of normality has repeatedly hampered my interactions with mainstream society, to some degree or other.
This has material consequences in all sorts of interactions in relation to "social fabric" things. Some of those consequences are trivial - preferring different media; some are profound - things relating to promotion and so forth WRT soft skills.
1. Homeschooling is an enormous investment both in time and money. Not every family can afford to do it.
2. Done incorrectly homeschooling can have an adverse effect on the child. (See point #1 about the investment). On the other hand done properly it an escape route for families who may have no other way out. I would not be where I am now without the advantages of my homeschool education.
To do it well you have need a few components:
1. You need at least one parent who is able to focus on the education. It takes planning and preparation. In many cases this could mean that a family loses all or part of one of the parents income.
2. You need a good support network. Your child will need interaction with both other children but also other adults who are not their parents.
3. To get the most out of it you need to tailor the education for each child.
The benefits can be huge but it's not a slam dunk for anyone. I'm glad the option exists for those who will get no other better outcome though. Not every public school is equal. And homeschooling can sometimes be an overall financial win compared with private schools.
I know a lot of people whose experience was not as good as mine though so I include a lot of caveats when someone asks me if it's a good idea for their family. It's not something to jump into blindly.
For example: I would homeschool my child if the right circuits close and he turns into a prodigy aiming at a PhD by 18. Similarly, I can imagine its the right choice for children with specific disabilities which the school district simply can't serve adequately.
I've chatted with a black gent who said if he had kids, he'd homeschool, because of the heavy racism in schools that he experienced. That's definitely a variable that has to be solved for too.
I would also homeschool (before moving to a new school district...) if the school district decided that Zoom school was appropriate for children barring specific acute crises. =)
There's probably a very nice PhD dissertation on the atomization of US society and how modern homeschooling both is an outcome of that social drift and, in combination with a sufficiently atomized poor socialization of the specific family, produces poor outcomes.
I reckon we had probably close to the best-case academic outcome. One thing I've noticed as I've matured and lived - it's been 20 years since my last time at the kitchen table doing school work - is that my conclusion regarding homeschooling has gotten more and more negative. I don't mean to say that public or private schools are de facto better. They are not. But homeschooling has very ugly and very easy failure modes, and it fails-unsafe.
One way I frame homeschooling is a simple question. From your experience weigh the value of even a single day sitting under a tree reading a great book vs the value of a week in in an english classroom. Personally this captures the difference they are fundamental, qualitative differences.
Homeschooling is an unfair advantage in a lot of ways. Not everyone can afford to do it. Society needs to provide universal education and when almost every family needs dual incomes schooling provides a secondary (arguably primary) service of child care. That however does not represent the only or best option for your kids. When I'm in a more negative mood I call schooling, of any sort, is a kind of institutionalization. That does not make it all bad, there are great social outcomes for submitting to that institutionalization. However there are other paths to just as good or better outcomes just not in a societally blanketing kind of way.
There are groups and storefronts here where you can send kids to get a chance to socialize and tinker, work with their hands, run around (play groups) etc. Shout out to Apple Academy Bklyn which started for homeschoolers to have a workshop type place but also all kinds of little places where kids can tinker with tech, board games etc for example along 7th Ave (I think a lot of these started as after school places but we’re adopted by homeschoolers).
Not saying it’s for everyone but it’s not the insular backwater I had subconsciously made it out to be in my head.
It acts as a shield because, no matter how useless the teacher is as an educator, any criticism of them becomes political criticism.
I definitely think that no single activism group or "area" should get an outsized influence in education. Certainly it would be irresponsible for teachers or school boards to simply take an given activists group's curriculum or material and apply them as is.
While I understand the hesitancy, especially in the early childhood context, I do wonder what you how educators should approach topical things like black lives matter?
I am from Brazil, and I don't intend to put my kids in school if I can (here it is illegal to homeschool, prison time for parents and all, I am hoping to get out of the country if the needed laws don't pass when I have kids).
And a good reason for it, is the amount of bullshit fed to me and my friends by the shovelfulls, when I was a teenager I believed all adults I knew except schoolteachers were evil, because they didn't like Mao, Stalin and Che Guevara, I was taught that Pol Pot was a hero, literally, only after I was out of the school system that I could finally learn what these people actaully did.
Then over the years I picked more and more on what sort of stuff school taught me wrong, there were a few things in harder sciences, but when it is social stuff, school was a disaster, lie after a lie, sadly some of theses lies remain pervasive in society (for example many people in my country believe the monarchy was pro-slavery, despite documents that exist that show that the monarchs themselves wanted slavery abolished, and that when they DID abolish slavery, the coup that ended monarchy was sponsored by the biggest former slaveowners).
I think you underestimate how often the kids are passing along political mantras and overestimate how often teachers are. Go look at GenZ TikTok and how it is massively political and in such a way that there is no chance teachers are driving it.
I assure you kids don’t care about the quietly muttered opinion of their social studies teacher but are much more informed by their siblings, peers, and parents. The opinions get shared at school and absorbed by developing minds that don’t handle politics with much nuance largely because the relevant history of politics is never taught to them in school, cutting off at Vietnam War at the latest. And why is recent history eschewed in favor of covering the 1780s in boring detail? The desire to keep politics out of schools. And to some extent, the desire of Texas purchasers of textbooks to promote a reactionary view of the country. Covering the AIDS epidemic just leads to complaints about making Reagan out to be a villain or that teachers are corrupting kids with homosexualism. If kids repeat dumb slogans, can we blame them when they don’t have a knowledge of any modern political history except what they’ve gleaned from their parents cable news of choice?
Examples:
(1) At one time, and maybe significantly still, a huge fraction of learning about computer programming, and computing more generally, was just self learning.
(2) At one time, the Web site of the math department at Princeton just stated that graduate courses were introductions to research by experts in their fields, that no courses were given for preparation for the Ph.D. qualifying exams, and that students were expected to prepare for the exams on their own.
(3) Teachers who need to keep up in their fields and researchers who need to push their fields forward have to do some to a lot of the work via self learning.
And it is easy to find more examples in owning a house, farm, etc.
Some classes were boring, sure, I slept through them. But for the most that was not the case and the load never seemed to be excessive. (studying in eastern, then western europe)
Severely underpaid teachers and a focus on testing leads to formulaic memorization of (what a lot of us thought) was drivel, just things to know and forget after the test. High school for me started very early (about 6:45/7 to catch the bus), so it was miserable. I did have some classes that were the exception, but for me all school did was try and beat the drive to learn out of me. In middle school I got punished for reading ahead in our assigned literature. We also had to deal with a powertripping principal for years.
And that's to say nothing of the completely whitewashed US "history" we learned.
I actually was homeschooled for a few years, so I have experience with both systems. The issues I had with homeschooling were the overly religious program my parents used, and the lack of socialization.
I will never put my kid in a public or private school system, provided that I find a community for us to engage socially in, that we find a good curriculum that's not religious, and that either myself or my partner engages in it full-time.
I'm not against homeschooling - I love it in theory. But people need to be prepared to adapt to the childrens' needs. What works for one person will not work for others, and you should know what you are getting into.
Work-from-home during the pandemic has yielded similar issues with motivating myself to do work for my job (but to a lesser degree, as I've learned skills to cope over the years).
If you homeschool, you can get back a couple thousand dollars to be used on educational expenses. I don't know where the rest of the money goes. But I imagine that there would be a lot more homeschoolers if parents could recoup the full amount instead of just ~10%.
You may be able to find copyleft books and materials - I suspect they probably exist - but I don't know any specifics.
If it came down to it I think Kahn would give them a wonderful education and everything I have seen is well executed and wraps in a lot of the sequencing that I have seen work with my kids, but I do like Saxon enough to pay for it and use it as the primary source.
The other piece is this thing called Institute for Excellence in Writing (https://iew.com/) it is honestly amazing. My kids know more about writing, and have a better grasp of the english language then I do thanks to that program.
That the first thought of public school issues is not writing to your representatives and voting for better schooling of future generations; instead, to isolate your children's education.
As a Frenchman, I noticed this feeling from USA citizens that the government is against you and there is nothing you can do about it. It was pernicious.
The second thought, to write to my representatives and improve education for everyone, is still there. I volunteer at a makerspace downtown that provides computing resources to inner-city kids that don't have anywhere near the same resources as my outlying, high-performing suburban district with our labs and awesome teachers. I have no delusion that a single letter to my representative would fix the underlying systemic issues like racist redlined housing districts, the inequality of property taxes for school funding, and the penalizing of 'underperforming' school districts, and give my child a good education.
Can I improve it? Sure! Fix it? Not for everyone, no, so I'll do what I can for my own child.
Any performance based comparison between school performance and life outcomes needs to include stats broken out by the homelife of the child. You could call it "Parental Responsibility" in most cases -- and that figure/statistic will represent most of the issues that everyone wants addressed. The thing is, it's the most impactful to the child, and it can't be meaningfully addressed without massive government control of family life.
Parents are responsible for their children's education. Success in anything is a mix of effort, knowledge, ability and luck (I consider timing part of luck).
I am going to give my children the best opportunities I can give them, within the bounds of my values and life experiences.
It's irrational to believe the outcome of an education should be identical between children. Unless you remove parents and have children raised by institutions, then parental involvement will always have a major impact on academic performance.
Strawman: If my child is interested in computers, and spends all their free time reading about and learning to program them, while their contemporaries choose to watch TV and play video games, should they be limited by what the "average" person in their class is able to do? Of course not!
It's akin to the school district that noticed that not enough black kids were in a gifted class, so their solution was to get rid of the gifted class. That's insanity.
Public schools should provide a solid education to children, and society needs to expect that the outcome of that will be based on the actual performance of the children and their circumstances. A school cannot fix everything that comes from single-parent households and broken families. It can (and should) try and help, but I think it's ridiculous to hold back other students that perform better because they have parental involvement that other children don't.
The worst schools in urban areas (just like the worst schools in rural and suburban areas) need to be dramatically improved, but you do not help the situation by claiming all urban schools are terrible.
EDIT - If you have a California-centric view, it might be a little more understandable. Look at that list and you see that Los Angeles and San Francisco have 1 school each on the list. New York City has 12, Miami-Dade has 6, Chicago has 5, Houston and Dallas 4 each.
[1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/national-...
It should also be noted that nearly all of them are "public" in name only. The BASIS schools, for instance, where my kids attend, are Charter schools, where parents are not technically required to, but shamed mercilessly into, "donating" what is effectively slightly discounted private school tuition.
As an example in New York annually about 30,000 kids take the specialized high school acceptance test, and about 800-850 are offered admission to Stuyvesant HS, one of the most elite. It is not the same experience of a neighborhood high school in a poor neighborhood.
Every time a parent who cares about their child’s education pulls them out of public school, that’s one less parent who might otherwise be involved enough to improve the public school situation. You end up with public schools containing only the children of parents who are unable to afford the time or money for other options, only the teachers who can’t get jobs at private schools/tutors, etc etc.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for everyone to think “public schools are bad, I’m going to send my kid somewhere else.” I really wish we’d focus that energy towards making public schools better.
* It would probably take an emperor to do this, because there’s no way such a law would pass in the US today.
There’s a similar reason why, in countries that have state-funded health care, you’re not allowed to seek out private doctors or private insurance. The point is to not allow the rich to siphon the best resources away from everyone else. (This is obviously very anti-capitalist, but I think for some institutions like medicine and education, it may make sense.)
It’s similar to the tragedy of the commons… people acting in their own self-interests (better education for my child) create a situation that is worse than if we had a collective strategy (we all get a decent education, and get to share a better, more educated society.)
Me spending more time with my child doesn't take away from what other children receive. If I wasn't working with my child, then I certainly wouldn't be working with all of them in place of that.
And if everyone pulled their kids out of public school, virtually all of those children would be better off, with very few exceptions. Punting one's offspring to daycare and public schools so that both parents can work is the real tragedy of the commons.
There are just many resources out there on the internet to have excellent course materials and information delivered straight to your home, together with all sorts of physical activities and clubs available for recreation and group events, and there are big advantages to being able to learn at your own pace in a safe and non-disruptive environment taught by someone with a strong commitment to your well-being. Given all these advantages, the bar is pretty low for when customized learning exceeds the factory-style and heavily politicized education given at schools, especially given the current dysfunctional state of educational pedagogy in the U.S and the fact that unlike in other nations, the U.S. tends to draw teachers from the lowest scoring college graduates. The situation is very different in other nations, but in the U.S., education majors tend to be selected from the bottom of the barrel of the college graduate pool.
That said, the reason why most homeschoolers are much better off today is because parents who care about education and have the wherewithal to tutor their child self-select to homeschool. If everyone did it, you would find that a lot of parents can't spend the time to do it and need the school as a babysitter. Or they don't have the wherewithal to do it due to their own lack of education. So homeschooling is generally done by parents with above average education and income which is why it's so successful in the U.S. Make everyone do it, and those outcomes would change quite a bit.
If you believe in the growth mindset, you necessarily have to reject this idea that homeschoolers are a gifted bunch whose success cannot be replicated.
Except for the children who aren’t able to be pulled out of public school. They would be far worse off.
If you’re advocating getting rid of public schools as an institution, what are you replacing it with? Just not educating kids at all if their parents can’t afford it? Do you view education as a right or a privilege? Would you at least agree that society is better off if everyone is educated, or do you think it’s just a perk that you can go without?
Your plan is just crab bucket mentality dressed up in egalitarianism's clothing.
By the way, to those who are saying that your first responsibility is to your own kids, I agree, even if you put them in public school. It's still your responsibility.
Pay attention to how they're doing in school. If they're struggling, help them. You may not know as much as the teacher, but you're a functioning adult with access to the internet, and you can work with them one-on-one. If they need it, do that.
Pay attention to how they're doing emotionally. If public school is destroying them, you should know. When your kid says something like "Every day when I get ready for school, my stomach hurts", listen. (In our case, it was getting ready for private school, but it still was a giant red flag.) Do what you have to to either get them out or to help them survive.
Pay attention to what they're being taught. If they're getting propaganda - from either side - then give them balance. Teach them how to examine positions critically, not just to swallow whatever they're told.
It's your responsibility as a parent. Don't just hand them to a school and walk away.
The most poignant example of the overwhelming benefit of homeschooling was when we found out that our son was really struggling with math. He was able to answer most problems, but was consistently getting basic things wrong. He never actually internalized the math he had learned and now in 5th grade he was struggling with not knowing things like math facts or order of operations, or anything of how to deal with fractions. In a traditional school he would likely be tracked into remedial math, and would spend the rest of his school time there. However by just spending more time on math each day he was able to quickly address his issues and start better understanding his new coursework.
Same thing with reading for my daughter, she was a prolific reader, and quickly advanced to books she saw her older brother reading, but when we had her do school work she couldn't complete basic comprehension work for the age level books we were assigning. Well it turns out it wasn't that she didn't comprehend them, it was that she never learned how to communicate details, we spent six months having her read and explain very simple books, and quickly she was back up to speed and excelling in both reading and comprehension tasks.
We wouldn't have been able to do either of these without dedicated and time consuming intervention. The exact kind of intervention you would never get in even the most dedicated public schools. The only place you can get that kind of prolonged dedicated attention is with parents at home. Add into this that we have been able to _vastly_ expand the scope and sequence of what our kids are learning because we can just firehose them as much new material as they can take and you quickly see that a child who is excited about learning, who is able to explore and discover, and isn't bound to an artificial school day, or school year, or school curriculum will learn so much more then their traditionally schooled counterparts.
After this last year we are 100% sold on never sending our kids back to traditional school, it would be unloving and would be doing them a disservice. We decided that if it came down to it, we would rather move away from the extremely high cost of living world we live in today so we could be a one income household and give our kids the attention they deserve rather then let someone else try and raise them for us.
Public school is big business though. Lots of unions, lots of public employees, lots of text book manufacturing, whoever makes the desks, fixes the school buses, HVAC systems, you name it.
Even if the education itself wasn't outright propaganda and otherwise dysfunctional, public schools are mental misery for many. Self-important, entitled, arrogant, but otherwise useless staff and teachers. Don't subject children to prison-like treatment.
> communist propaganda wards
I think you may not have an actually functional understanding of political theory.
I am pro-WFH and pro-public school. But my experience (public school student, public state university, 7 years public school teacher, 6 years in-office programmer, 4 years WFT programmer) is drastically different from many of the posts I read in these threads.
If school is a "prison" full of incapable/ineffectual/communist teachers indoctrinating the "inmates"... what is an office?
The routine of school is prison, but the routine of an office is good? Ineffectual teachers? What about ineffectual managers? Lefty teachers indoctrinating children? Corporations have convinced us that if the minimum wage increases or taxes go up then McDonalds and Apple will just close their doors and decide to go out of business rather than make a teeny bit less profit!