That's a potentially big difference.
Remote learning seems like a good tool in the mix. It does lend to being more hybrid than pure "home school".
Experience for school is that remote learning was nearly worthless for little ones. Improving for each grade level. School refuses to use remote leaning because of this.
Our own experience was same. Older the kids the better it worked. We hired private tutors to keep youngest on target. The school was a waste.
+ Would it have been better if remote sessions were smaller? Eg 1 on 1 or groups of 3?
+ How much did the remote software itself become a problem? Latency, tech issues, bad resolution?
+ Did you feel the content was suitable and tailored for remote learning?
The number of ways the kid can turn off wifi, disable the mouse or change computer language is amazing.
Mute button took class a month to figure out. Headphones have their own mic button.
Did I mention the kids can’t read, yet are expected to open the correct application or website.
Plus, homeschool coops give the kids more social interaction, which many families prefer.
I think the big difference about "remote schooling" is that once you're doing that, it raises the question of "is my public school the one that is best at this, or should I use someone else?" In some cases they may be, but often they are not.
I am German and thus have very different experiences. AFAIK home schooling in Germany is still illegal (as in "not being enrolled in a school at all") because it is (edit: in the opinion of the German state, not necessarily mine) basically essential to a child's development to be part of a social classroom experience.
Seeing how (a vast majority of) schools are also free and ~good, my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them.
Anecdotally, this is incorrect. Source: we have homeschooled our child in the past (though we are not right now), and we do not have extreme opinions that we want to foist upon them.
I realize I am a sample size of one, but you did say only.
Homeschooling a child pretty much involves taking the state to court for your right to do so.
German Wikipedia estimates the number of such cases (I assume before Covid) to below 3000 (Germany has 83m inhabitants).
Apart from that, it is seemingly indeed left to each state if and how to enforce compulsory schooling - they just all do it. They only differ in the ages/durations required [1].
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Dau...
Hey, we’ve all done it at some point in our lives so no worries, mate.
Thanks for answering though. I’m always curious how other Federal systems tend to function compared to the one I live in.
In my anecdotal experience it is actually the opposite. Parents are concerned about political activist teachers forcing their beliefs onto children.
Recent examples are teachers in the US who have been captured on video in the classroom bullying children or telling them that any parents who disagree with the teacher’s beliefs are “stupid”, “anti-science”, etc.
Again, in my own experience there is some truth to this and some percentage of teachers purposely bring their politics (left or right) into the classroom with the intent to indoctrinate.
Interestingly, this behavior is completely out in the open in US higher education classrooms. Many teachers proudly and aggressively mix their personal political beliefs into their instruction. I suppose we just accept this as the students are technically no longer “children”?
Assuming you were educated in the US, can you honestly say that you never witnesses a teacher/professor infuse their political beliefs into their instruction (even if you agreed)? If so, awesome, but that isn’t the experience almost everyone else has.
Frankly, it is reprehensible behavior carried out by teachers who are at best, pitiful adults who are just seeking attention from children. Or, at worst, trying to groom children for their own political purposes.
i was required to take one class to become a resident assistant that you would probably consider as being mostly designed to shove political beliefs down my throat but in my opinion an understanding of those topics was relevant and necessary to being able to serve a diverse group of residents.
I suspect home schooling will be more of a thing amongst the well off. The institution of schooling, like many of our other institutions, isn’t a wild success. It’s okay, but certainly you can do better if you desire to.
Edit: Home schooling or tutoring is an existential threat in China.
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2021/8/23/china-crackd...
These kids are in danger (smirk) of not being nationalists.
2nd generation homeschooler here. Of the hundreds of home school families I've known over the last 30-ish years I don't know any that don't have their children take classes together in some form or another.
The question is how much do children need to be in a "social classroom experience."
The homeschooling ban has been challenged, but has most recently been upheld as valid by the European Court of Human Rights [0, unfortunately German only].
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland
This is assuming a good faith argument (steel-manning) on homeschooling as normally practiced.
I.e. I expect new education models to arise from parallel experiments like you see in America versus a monolith.
I was homeschooled K-12 from mid-80s to late 90s, part of the first generation of the modern homeschooling movement.
I'd say 80% of the families matched your description, but I'd guess it's lower today as it seems to be more mainstream. But I bet a least half still match.
The flip side of this is that school system itself is highly political in the USA and the curriculum is often a battleground between the parties for what is mandatory to advocate. Couple that with children in public school being trash pretty often and you don't lose much by homeschooling. Especially if you're a parent who's willing to put in the work to select good resources and groups for your child.
What I don't understand is this comment "essential to a child's development to be part of a social classroom experience" but it is a very common view. Ignoring online schools, the largest public high school in the US has over 8,000 students and high schools with 3,000-4,000 student are common. When in human history has it been the norm for children to gather daily in such large numbers everyday away from their families, with only high level supervision from adults who aren't their parents nor have much depth of insight into their lives? It's more akin to Lord of the Flies with the occasional adult commentary than a way to learn good social skills. What they learn is the law of jungle and many people are scared for life by the experience. Even at the elementary and middle school levels, enrollment of 1,000 students in a single school is common. There's absolutely nothing natural about this. It's an absurd artificial construct and it's amazing so many people think it is somehow a good thing.
Another common question is how will children make friends if not at school? For myself, most of my friends were those I met at school but about a quarter were from meeting in the neighborhood, through youth group at church, or through family or friend-of-a-friend connections. Just because someone lived in my neighborhood didn't mean they went to my public school. Some went to religious or private secular schools. Some kids at church also attended private secular schools (our church didn't have a school) or a different public school. If I had been homeschooled, I still would have met about a quarter of my friends outside of school, and probably would have met many of the same in-school friend through those friends due to common interests and geography. All of this was without me being into sports, which is another way children meet friends, even if it wasn't one of the ways I met them.
On the flip side, many homeschoolers have encountered public school teachers with extreme views. Extreme views may be fairly well distributed throughout society.
You have to keep in mind a critical difference between Germany and the US in this regard. The German Basic Law requires religious education to be available to children in public schools. If you’re a Muslim your kid can get instruction in Islamic morality. If you’re atheist you can choose a secular ethics course.
In America, any sort of religious education is illegal in public schools. So everyone effectively gets the secular ethnics course (because you can’t really teach kids without teaching some sort of moral framework). This material often contradicts even mainstream (not “extreme”) Christian or Muslim tenants.
I think the German system is far preferable to the American system, and many of the religious “extremists” you talk about would like such a system.
I think you're being optimistic.
One, muslim classes in state schools are extremely rare, and those students get dispensation so they can miss those class hours and go to the local mosque for instruction instead. Only that in several cases those mosques were actually teaching rather extremist and violent things. The state tries to build up more "own" muslim classes (in cooperation with muslim organisations).
Two, all those state school run classes are certainly too "mild" for extremists. I mean, the students of evangelical families (and I don't mean protestant, I mean the extreme strains of protestantism that are rampant in southern Germany) certainly send their kids to protestant classes, but at home they teach the opposite in many cases. You cannot reconcile a state school religion class with and "you need to read the bible literally, all those theological stuff at universities is baloney".
My point is that in the United States, even the “mild” Protestant or Muslim stuff is off limits in public schools. Everyone is taught secular humanist morality, often of a highly individualistic variety. So unlike in Germany, even religious people who aren’t “extremists” may want to home school their children.
I’m a liberal Protestant, but I’d still consider home schooling my kids. I just want them socialized in the basics of their religion. That’s an option in public schools in much of Europe but isn’t in the United States.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/rura...