If I were to homeschool, it isn't about the learning, that is easy, it is about providing an environment where children can learn to co-exist with others. That can still be done with homeschool, but it will need to be intentional with daily activities that involve being in relationship with others, in physical form.
So - I agree that it is good for kids to learn how to coexist with others, I also think there are lots of ways to accomplish that and that we might all give school credit for social outcomes that aren't a reality.
A hurriedly-googled link: https://www.tcscholars.org/social-success/
And I would also argue you need excellent social skills to reach your potential academically.
So, yes, your kids did better academically when they were at home, and that's great. But that's not the point of school.
Actually, I think we're both wrong. During the time in my local PTA what stood out to me was the amount of time and money we spent on providing basic social services to kids - think providing meals, clothes, filtering for home and family problems etc. I would argue that in modern America, public schools are there to provide day care for working parents and to provide a modicum of social services, with education being an overarching hope and dream.
https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/schoolchoicel...
I would agree though that most school districts do not spend money with academics as the priority.
How much socialization do kids really get in school anyway?
They get 5 minute hallway breaks (if they are lucky) between 7 to 9 periods of classes per day. Maybe the bus ride in/out for 20-30 minutes. Lunch or recess. So how much time is that, again?
Maybe 2-3 hours/day?
oh and also how to sell drugs. public schools are great for learning that.
total cheap shot. s/public //
drugs follow money
at private schools what do you think you see? more expensive drug habits.
It's neither. The point is propaganda and brainwashing, any other benefits are ancillary at best.
It isn't a coincidence that widespread schooling came about in a time where propaganda, nationalism and centralization and expansion of state power were on a high note, and such trends have only expanded since with the help of the propaganda and brainwashing conducted in those schools.
> Those who do best on their own
With respect, you said it yourself.
Additionally, I don’t know that I’d ever feel qualified to act as a teacher in as wide of a range of subjects as a child needs education in.
Negative interactions can sometimes be a help, or a part of life, or whatever is the right phrase. In Jr High one day after school some kids beat me and a friend up (for no reason that I could figure out). Of course, I won't say "it made me who I am today" or any baloney like that but it certainly helped cement a resolve to not be them.
> nearly non-verbal
Yes, for sure the individual kid is the prime thing a person worries about. I am glad to hear he does well.
Just for the record, it's also common for people who attended school to not be really socially functional adults until their 20s-30s (hi!), and many people also never really even manage to realize this about themselves, so you're not necessarily worse off than an average non-homeschooled kid here.
I always blamed my dad, and my raising for my problems. My problems started being solved when I forgave my dad, and all the people that hurt me in the past.
I had to take responsibility and stop blaming others for my problems.
For homeschooled people I believe it is very tempting to blame homeschooling for their problems. It is too convenient. I don't know how to speak to women, homeschool problem. I don't know how to socialize, homeschool problem. I am alone, homeschool problem. Beware its not your case. Regards.
I recommended the following: 1. Understand that you are a sinner and that you wrong people very bad. In other words, recognize that you need forgiveness yourself. 2. Recognize that the other person is sinful as well. 3. Re-live the moment and recognize that it hurts. 4. Realize that the other person fucked up really bad. Don't apologize for them. 5. Forgive them. Thinking that if you don't, the problem will hunt you (not the other person).
Repeat this process several times during several years and you will be able to do it.
Of course, I'm slightly biased, as we're probably going to end up going the homeschooling route. We were 50/50 before, but with COVID, we joined our church's homeschool coop, and because of that both our daughters are better socialized than peers their age. They meet every day. Older kids even meet up without their parents there (although there's always someone watching). Parents also hire tutors as groups, more like a 'pod' than traditional homeschooling. I think it'll work for us
There's absolutely no way sending a kid to school is better for their social life in any way.
Do you know who your child is spending time with at school? I hope so, because they will likely have more influence over your child’s development than you.
If your children aren’t going to a highly selective, highly supervised school, good luck. It’s a crapshoot. Maybe they befriend “good” kids…maybe not.
For example, my nephew is 6 and was playing with a female classmate who (for whatever reason) is already using sexual language and her play is inappropriate. Should my young nephew just “learn to deal” with that?
I am a silicon valley executive making mid six figures. They're ... not, and not because they didn't have the same opportunities. Because of terrible life choices that I could easily have made myself, but, by the grace of God, did not. Amongst my classmates there's premarital pregnancies, domestic violence, lots of unemployment, prison time, etc.
The same is true of my brother and sister-in-law. She comes from an extremely poor family, but managed to make something of herself by going into accounting. Yet, her family is filled with pre-marital pregnancy, deadbeat men, and even some violence. This stuff also existed in her schools. She managed to escape by keeping her head down and avoiding trouble.
Honestly, any of us could have ended up in this 'socialized' group, but didn't. That was because we resisted peer pressure. All of us were extremely awkward kids. You'd consider us poorly socialized. Yet, we've 'made it', and the popular kids didn't.
Of course, then I think of my now-wife, who grew up in much more privilege than we did. Her parents were highly educated (post-graduate) and were extremely deliberate in her schooling, her peer group, etc. While not technically homeschooling, my mother in law carefully crafted my wife's friend group and even took her out of classes if she didn't like the kids or thought the teacher was bad. She didn't have to put up with half the crap my brother, myself, or my sister-in-law had to put up with.
I'm choosing the latter method for our kids, even if that means homeschooling them and using the public schools as a backup.
EDIT: since I've seen religion come up here. My mother-in-law was and is a staunch atheist. My parents and sister-in-laws family are devoutly religious. Not all homeschoolers are religious. While I am religious, that is not the reason we are considering home schooling our daughters
Home schooling works better when kids have at least had elementary schooling. High school I would argue is where things break down a lot, and for some students there isn't a social experience outside of constant bullying and stress over things that don't matter.
It's age-segregated, usually monitored by adults, extremely regimented, and often very hostile.
There are a million different contexts where kids can learn better, more useful social skills, like at church events, youth athletics, with kids in the neighborhood, etc.
My parochial school was poor working class. I learned how to talk crassly, 'shoot the shit', be prematurely sexual, to accept fate, etc. I did not learn how to speak properly, be diplomatic, set goals for life, better myself. Those I learned in college when I went to school with much better off kids and realized that all these things were things I could deliberately aim for and accomplish.
So, while attending school gave me a leg up in understanding the typical American 'everyman' (a skill which is severely lacking in silicon valley and in 'elite' circles in society), it did absolutely nothing to help me achieve becoming part of that elite. In many ways it hindered me. It taught me a worldview where everyone was coming to get me, to put me in my place, etc.
Do most schools do this effectively? Kids are pretty terrible to each other and abuse is pretty much the norm from my experience. Of course its not crippling for most kids, but I remember getting made fun of, and making fun of other kids and everything in between. School is also one of the only places in life where you're likely to experience violence. It's basically a daycare.
I don't know if there's an alternative. Maybe play dates in small groups?
Everything in life is better when you’re a team player.
In a leadership role, being exasperated by half the team? Not motivating.
Also, the premise is that you are ahead of the bunch. It's also feasible that you are below the local average, and have no experience dealing with that situation. Takes guts to persist in that situation, but that's where you learn a lot.
Sounds like the home-schooled may have a leg up for some tasks that require ignoring the training to fall in line with the team or authority. Their niche in life may simply be different.
(I was traditionally schooled)
I haven’t seen the things you’re describing.
One of the most common things I saw in homeschoolers was a strong “intellectual hobby.”
They had curriculum bashed around them, so if there was a topic they liked, they could study it after year in increasing depth.
Of course, this is homeschoolers who go to college. Not necessarily representative.
http://www.we-aggregate.org/piece/schools-and-prisons https://sputniksteve.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/schools-prison...
(Excuse the relatively, "non-scholar" links; I'll dig into the literature at a further date. It's worth exploring.)
It seems that human culture closely follows power laws; it might be possible that, "elites" are a natural consequence of human existence. The question is how this will be managed in a world where elites have near absolute technical powers. It's worth thinking about I thinking about.
Humiliated by teachers.
Bullied by some people.
Small circle of friends.
Adults as the enemy.
All the homeschooled kids I've met seem pleasant, polite, comfortable around other kids and around adults. Of course this is Northern California so elsewhere the story may be different.
Oh, and homeschooling is forbidden in Germany, under a 1938 law.
1938. Get it? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, elbow in the ribs.
Just to see who doesn't like homeschooling.
The subtext being that homeschooled children grow up into worse citizens than schooled children? What is the basis for that?
Another reason is that if you're not participating in common institutions you have no stake in them. If everyone goes to the same schools (in Germany the idea of the Volksschule), everyone has to participate in civic discourse about what to teach, how to fund education, and how to maintain equal standards. There is a common fabric and shared reality because everyone shares the same space.
That's obviously not to say that literally every homeschooled person is disinterested in public life, or vice versa but I think it's hard to see many other motivations for homeschooling other than to withdraw for one reason or another.
In the US, secularists have made a concerted effort to scrub every trace of religion out of public life and impose French-style secularism on a country that’s as religious as Poland. And they did that not in the 21st century, but in the 1960s and 1970s, when both Germany and the United States were vastly more religious.
Folks who want to homeschool their kids for religious reasons aren’t the nuts that American media makes them out to be. They’re people who in Germany or Sweden or the Netherlands or many other places would be able to avail themselves of public options that those countries include in the mainstream.
[1] Germany appears much more content to let social mores evolve organically rather than tearing up the social fabric by rushing change. Germany is a much more liberal country than America, but the laws are much more conservative in many ways. A subset of Americans are besides themselves because the Supreme Court overturned a case recognizing a right to abortion until viability (22 weeks). Meanwhile, Schwangerschaftsabbruch I (deeming abortion to be a violation of the Basic Law’s right to life) is still the law in Germany, and decriminalized abortion is permissible only to 12 weeks. Nobody called Angela Merkel a fascist for voting against same sex marriage. Bavaria requires crosses in public buildings and hasn’t been kicked out of the country. Etc.
(It doesn't work out great for Birmingham!)
Crucially, South Asian people are endogamous, meaning that they generally prefer to marry within their communities and moreover within the family: cousin marriage is common. So there has been consistent secondary immigration from the subcontinent as South Asians marry spouses from their communities from their countries of origin and bring them to the UK.
The average Bangladeshi or Pakistani citizen's religious views are about as welcome in Britain as the average Briton's secular views would be welcome in Bangladesh. Which is to say that they are disjoint and cannot be reconciled much at all.
What's wrong with disassociation as a motivation? In a borderless world I don't see a reason for forced participation in a place that one might not even like. So long as everyone pay their financial debts, how they live their life shouldn't be anyone's business.
As if that happens in American public schools lol.
More seriously the Prussian system was created after the Napoleonic Wars to ensure that Prussia had a large reasonably well educated population suitable for warfare and for industry.
That system was enforced in the USA later in the 19th Century.
So it's better if they stay their kids at home.
What other part of life do you interact with only people who were born in the same year as you were (and, in the case of some schools, only your sex)?
Homeschooled children (in my experience) learn to make friends with kids a lot older and younger than they are. They also learn to look after and teach younger ones, and learn from older ones.
I went to public school myself, my wife was homeschooled (for all but two high school years), and we homeschool our five kids. There’s pretty much no reason I’d consider sending them to school, unless they want to in their high school years (so far our oldest doesn’t).
In the neighborhood I lived - had some friends who were 3-4 years older. Maybe my experience is unusual, but those were great times!
I don’t think we should strive to socialize kids in school. The ones who do okay could probably still do better.
Here in North America it seems like our communities are too fragmented and fractured to facilitate socializing without something like schools, though. No idea how to address and resolve this issue, but I’m not convinced our teachers and the socializing model are anything like ideal for kids.
Not bashing teachers here either. I think they’re often doing their best but are working in the confines of a non-ideal system with limited resources.
I was very keen to get my kids into a private school which had an education model and teachers I was impressed by, but it’s incredibly hard to get in. My kids are eligible to enter, but there’s no space for years. No idea what to do. I’m happy to spend a lot to address this, but even private tutors don’t seem like a viable option here.
I’m just venting at this point. This is a hard problem. My kids are getting a bad education here in Canada and it’s upsetting. I try to do what I can to get them ahead, but I’m a nerd, not a teacher.
Most people were. But unfortunately you will get treated pretty terribly throughout your life.
And so you need to develop those social skills at some point.
My sister is a year older and more evidently disabled, and we were obvious targets for the kids we grew up with.
You’re right though. I lived through it fine, I’ve done okay, and the experience informed me about life and people in truly useful ways that I’ve come to value.
Ideally I’d like my kids to avoid the worst of what I experienced, but I don’t want to shelter them by any means. I think there are some forms of prolonged cruelty from peers that risks being very destructive, in particular.
What i learned in school was how awful people can be. The extremes where we humiliate and torment others. The mindless churn to be in a clique and simply fly under the radar.
Slight tangent, but: In my view a parents jobs is to let children fail with a safety net. To be there and help them recover after failures are experienced together, to grow from them.
Public School, in my view, does none of this. It attempts to educate, sure, but not in socialization. Likewise parents, even the well executing ones (by my definition) cannot share the experiences. Parents can only see the aftermath and try to mend some wounds.. but the growth is up to the child, in isolation.
I don't know the better solution. I don't have the answer. All i know is that in the context of how i judge parenting, school fails entirely on. School is lord of the flies. Many prosper. Many drown. Many could grow, if only a guiding hand existed.
Clearly i'm a pessimist here. I'm also not having children, which may not surprise you. Hah.
Making social mistakes, learning the consequences of those mistakes, and experiencing hurt when others make mistakes in interacting with you are all important life lessons.
Part of the reason “the real world” after school is so much better is because those people have already made mistakes and learned their lessons earlier in life. Of course, school isn’t the only way to learn these lessons, and many well adjusted homeschooled kids are those who are exposed to social situations in other ways.
There are many social situations that would never happen in the home, and kids have to learn about them somehow. i.e developing new relationships, dealing with unexpected conflict, meeting someone new, romance, etc.
You would be negligent to let a child experience their first steps on the roof of a building.
A couple of hurt feelings in elementary school is likewise a low risk introduction to the world of social interaction.
I live in a community full of them. Social interaction has not been a problem for them. As adults they're some of the most well adjusted I know. As teens some of the happiest I've ever met.
Academically they vary but I'd say it works better than school for most.
> many well adjusted homeschooled kids are those who are exposed to social situations in other ways.
I was criticizing the idea the school is a bad place to learn socialization.
It is quite common for home schooled kids to be part of co-ops and other groups, where they may take classes together or have other activities together.
In addition, don't underestimate how important it is for children to socialize with trusted adults. Many children don't get adequate socialization even from their parents.
https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/13-baltimore...
Now imagine trying to kill that program, or even taking your own children out unilaterally: "But walking is so important! How could you be opposed to children learning how to walk?"
Your reaction to that is my reaction to the idea that a state apparatus is necessary for children to learn how to make friends and play.
Funny how this argument always comes out wrt. voluntary homeschooling, and not about shelter-in-place policies impacting K-12 and college students...
Homeschooled kids, of course, can learn social skills because they exist in societies and communities. Our neighbor’s kids are homeschooled. They’re over at our house right now. They play with the neighborhood kids, go to church, and engage in other social activities in mixed-age groups of kids.
Isn't that what after-school recreation (both supervised and unsupervised) is for?
I always thought that after school (not to mention summer vacation!) was much better than school for interacting with friends, because we weren't stuck in classrooms where we were usually prevented from talking to each other.
I asked to be pulled out and be put in private school because I knew that the public school system I was in was harming me. Social dynamics can be stunted with bullying, being denied experiences or progression or just thought of as a misfit due to demographic reasons e.g. being different.
In my experience (and ours are all different), school taught me a lot of lessons that had nothing to do with academics. There are good teachers and there are bad teachers (just like bosses). Sometimes you have to do work that is dumb or pointless just because that is the rule (just like work). I met kids richer than me and kids poorer than me. I met kids of other races and religions. You learn how to handle people calling you names and you learn heartbreak. Constant time together with friends you've had for years and shared lots of up/downs can't be quantified. I don't think you get the same exposure at a club that is likely socio-economically grouped and a couple of hours per week.
This is what I tell friends thinking they'll take their kids out of school to give them a better education: they'll be socially unprepared in life.
Even if their social needs are supplemented, other kids will ask: what school do you go to school? And not having an answer can cause great embarrassment (I know, I've felt it myself).
Can’t that be achieved with activities outside of school like a sports club, the scouts, or whatever else the kid is actually interested in?
Now the 'default' has shifted, from home to classroom schooling, for various reasons, but you seem to confuse this with some 'natural' state.
In my experience, homeschooling can create well-rounded, upright people at a ratio above traditional schooling. It insulates kids from many of the extreme elements and moores of society. Homeschooling is an excellent tool to pass on values from one generation to the next.
Lack of socialization is indeed a problem. Homeschooling parents need to make a big effort to get their kids in homeschooling groups and co-ops, youth sports, etc.
I have three kids myself now, but we send our them to private school rather than homeschool. What stops us from homeschooling is, my wife didn't feel like she had the skills to homeschool. She's not a teacher and feels she doesn't have the patience for it.
Sorry, you talk about your own positive experience with homeschooling (which is great!), but that’s clearly not an experience that would give insight into predicting aggregate outcomes more generally.
What experience are you referring to here? Did you end pursuing a career studying it or something?
Those do not sound positive at all. It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents, which matches with my preconceptions of homeschooling.
On the other hand, many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand.
Studying many different philosophies leads some to conclude relativism is correct. But I disagree, as do many philosophers and ethicists. Why? There is a simple answer that captures the essence of it: start by letting in all ways of life and worldviews into a pluralistic society. Treat this as an experiment and see which philosophies do not respect the others. It is abundantly clear that some ways of life are incompatible with pluralism -- e.g. some are authoritarian, some are unnecessarily violent, some restrict freedom of thought, etc.
P.S. Homeschooling has a demonstrated connection to religious conservatives.
Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling.
No.
This seems like an attempt at a wise phrase unfortunately mechanistically generated from some recursion and word substitution.
Please try to support the claim if you actually believe it.
Research classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics, almost any field of study; they are not dogmatic in the same way that religion is.
You should read about the history of the homeschooling movement especially in the American south such as Georgia. It has been a sustained effort by conservatives to opt out of the educational system.
Perhaps you have some interesting angle on how state education is somehow parallel? But I highly doubt it. I see a computer scientist's mind at work trying to find a pattern -- a meta pattern perhaps -- to claim understanding. The problem is that I don't see any evidence that the claim has been examined up close. I don't see awareness of historical or educational context.
Tell me if I'm wrong. I see it very often here: Overconfidence without a grounded understanding.
Consider a simpler and rational explanation (for the USA at least): State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society. An effective education in democracy does not shelter people from the idea of religion but instead puts it in a context so that we can live together even though we may not have the same fundamental beliefs.
For modern western nations, that does means encouraging kids to think in terms of specific liberal, secular humanist values like universal human rights, pluralist nation-states, global interdependency, democratic government, capitalist economics, etc — and there are many communities throughout the world and throughout the US who have not actually bought into those values and instead value other, sometimes incompatible things.
There is a real and legitimate tension between state education vs homeschooling (regardless of the particular politics/culture at home).
I personally think too much such value fragmentation will damn us all and that a common education is necessary to keep a relatively peaceful order in what’s a constitutionally and inescapably diverse nation, but I get the complaint and worry that these other commenters are airing.
I don't know you mean by they, but I agree that a role of education is a kind of induction.
Thank you for your comment. I would like to see more people building bridges of understanding.
> classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics
when our conversation was about
> Liberalism and pluralism
(your words)?
> State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society
This is not an even approximately correct model for why the state bankrolls public education in the US.
Not trying to diss you here, but you very clearly have the fully-indoctrinated understanding of someone who's been inducted into the western state-secular religion and isn't even aware of it (same as most of its adherents).
> I don't see awareness of historical or educational context.
This is deeply ironic, although I don't expect you to be able to notice why.
I suggest reading Albion's Seed and A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations.
>> classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics
> when our conversation was about
>> Liberalism and pluralism > (your words)?
I'm going to make a few points in different threads to ease replies.
First, let's step back. We are different people having a conversation. I often see people claiming the other person is off topic. Such a claim assumes that one person gets to define what on topic is. One person is not granted that power here. Not you, not me.
I have hope that better discussion is possible with a better tone. I'll do what I can to help.
I'm not trying to police the topic of your commentary; I'm just not letting you swap out "liberalism and pluralism" with "classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics". I don't know if you did this intentionally or subconsciously, but this is an extremely common (and dishonest) rhetorical strategy used by your religion. Don't expect me to let it slide.
Thanks for sharing that. I can relate, but I do it in a more targeted fashion. As I get to know someone better, I adjust my communication style. This is an ongoing process. For example, I can increase my "bluntness factor" or rely on shared understandings to skip over lengthy explanations.
Paying attention to tone and emotions in communication is tremendously important. Relatively intelligent people still have emotions, and they still underly what is being said, particularly around topics close to home like religion and philosophy.
Also, paying attention to tone doesn't have to degrade the quality of information conveyed. It might require a few more words -- or a bit more clarity, such as being careful who you are addressing. (See your other comments, where your intended recipient wasn't clear.) It does require more energy and skill to pay attention to emotion and content. I happen to think it is worth it.
> This is not an even approximately correct model for why the state bankrolls public education in the US.
I'd be interested to hear about your model. Please tell me what kind of model you mean.
Are you familiar with the phrase: "All models are wrong, but some are useful?" In what ways is your model useful? In what ways is my model useful?
Are you irritated? What are some ways to make this a kinder discussion? I'm sorry if I insulted you somehow.
And no, I'm not irritated - I don't think there's an efficient way to have a worthwhile discussion about someone's religious beliefs over the internet without coming across as slightly hostile. Apologies.
Thanks.
Yes, it is hard without knowing much about the cultures and communication style of the other people. But I think there are some simple things that help: write, then wait a few minutes before posting. Re-read and edit if you think the tone can be fixed. Etc.
Don't worry, I'm not insulted.
In any case, your assessment of me -- which you talk about as if it is binary (i.e. pass/fail) -- is way off the mark.
Let me suggest a productive direction. How about you tell me in more detail what this kind of indoctrination means to you. If you make a list of sub-points (perhaps questions) that roll up into some kind of indoctrination score, I'll take a look.
We have not using the word religion in the same way. But I know what you mean.
I can appreciate a similarity, of course. But a person can hold a belief / value a worldview (e.g. representative democracy) without believing in a supernatural power.
Conflating similar words is often an intentional rhetorical strategy. Perhaps you are trying it because you hope to conflate political philosophy with religion? But to do so glosses over key differences between them ... e.g Which are descriptive? Which are normative? What is the nature of truth? How does one seek, find, and assess truth?
Are you trying to insult me?
If not, I'd suggest leaving out "although I don't expect you to be able to notice why."
pa·ro·chi·al | pəˈrōkēəl | adjective
relating to a church parish: the parochial church council.
• having a limited or narrow outlook or scope: this worldview seems incredibly naive and parochial.Yes, ignorant people do sometimes accuse others of ignorance.
Consider this: If I tell someone their shoe is untied, even though my shoe was untied sometime last week, does that make me a hypocrite? No.
It is also true that people can be ignorant about different things. Minh might tell Alex he is ignorant about some topic. Alex might tell Minh she is ignorant about some other topic. No problem there. Neither is being hypocritical.
P.S. Telling someone else they are ignorant tends to not go well, but if it is done carefully and kindly, it doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Isn’t that what you just did?
> Isn’t that what you just did?
The key is understanding what I mean by "deny".
First, I'll define liberalism and pluralism as I'm using them (from Wikipedia):
> Pluralism as a political philosophy is the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which is seen to permit the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions, and lifestyles.
> Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy.
I'm going to abbreviate liberalism as L and pluralism as P from here on.
With this said, you can see that both L and P recognize diversity and individual freedoms to a large degree. But this is not an unfettered, unbounded, nor uncritical viewpoint. Some worldviews cannot coexist together. For example, a philosophy claiming that one group is superior and therefore may inflict suffering on others is not showing respect for the ideas of P or L.
So, it is clear that neither P nor L are compatible with authoritarian philosophies.
If you want to say "P and L deny authoritarian philosophies" I suppose that is fair enough. But I don't think deny captures what is going on very well. P and L go to great length to allow many worldviews -- hopefully to celebrate them if possible and at least tolerate them to whatever extent possible. This is quite different than dogmatic religions, many of whom claim to have absolute truth.
If you want to see a more detailed articulation of why one can accept pluralism and liberalism without resorting to moral relativism, read "Through the Moral Maze" by Robert Kane. I'd expect there are other philosophers that hold similar views. His lecture series "The Quest for Meaning" is quite good -- roughly at the level of an introductory philosophy class at the US undergraduate level, more or less.
The context is right there in the comment:
> It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents
It is better to read the whole comment in context and reply charitably. See HN guidelines.
There's nothing charitable about it at all.
Yes, that is what I was implying. Now I will state it more explicitly: those values are each at odds with either secularism or liberalism.
> unquantified assumptions about how the person was raised
I'm not entirely sure what an unquantified assumption is, but I clearly qualified that I was making a guess about the person. Making and confirming guesses about others based on what you know about them so far is normal behavior. I am by no means certain about the accuracy of my guess, but presented it as a starting point for further discussion.
If philosophies claiming absolute truth are imposed on a pluralist society there will be conflict. In this sense, I agree they are incompatible in some cases.
However, they are not necessarily incompatible. There are religious leaders who recommend that followers live by a religious philosophy without imposing it via strict laws.
A philosopher named Robert Kane describes his views which distinguish between public morality and private morality. Pluralism as a public morality is compatible to a very large extent with most private moralities. You only get incompatibilities when the private morality tramples on the rights of other private moralities. This is a useful distinction.
But I also acknowledge that not all humans are like me and that not everyone has a liberal mindset. They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all.
May I recommend Haidt's The Righteous Mind? It snapped me out of my "only liberalism/secularism is right" mindset.
Can you spell out your logic?
When I think about the relative merits of forms of government, I consider a large range of factors: human nature, philosophy, morality, ethics, technology, and more.
If your utility function is "optimize for the life outcomes of my children", experimental evidence suggests this is a good thing. If your utility function is "optimize for outcomes that are in accord with my state-secular religious beliefs at the expense of my child's life outcomes", it's not.
Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts.
Perhaps something about the organizational setup of religious-based and funded programs is counterproductive for skeptical minds who might otherwise be curious.
But also it seems to be assumed contradictorily to imply each secular and not?
You do not understand why it was mentioned. Then you claim you do. Then you write words that many would consider insulting. You can do better. Try.
Saying that someone brought something up "for no particular reason" is not respectful. Just because you don't understand the reason is not a valid justification for being dismissive.
I'm flabbergasted by your words. I don't know your life circumstances, your age, where you live, what you've been through, etc. I do wonder if you are having a particularly bad day or week or month.
I don't mean this as an insult: if you need support, please seek it out.
Perhaps (like many) you lack some important communication skills or emotional awareness. These can be learned.
> We were talking about liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are not universally religious and liberals are not universally irreligious. What is more disrespectful is attempting to change the subject to take the discussion in a direction that, if it were headed there to begin with, I would not have engaged.
1. I've said this before -- not sure if I did on this thread -- so I'll say it again: you seem to think that you get to define what is on topic and isn't. No, you don't. People are free to discuss as they see fit.
2. Logic isn't the whole story. Your words are coming across as self-important. That will not serve you well. It repels people, including me. I'm only writing in the hopes that this will get through to you or someone else that reads it. There are too many people here lacking fundamental discussion skills.
3. Invite feedback and learn. Ask 10 wise people to read your sentence. Do not pre-bias them. Ask for their unvarnished feedback. Discuss and actively listen without defending yourself.
4. What you wrote looks like a justification to make you feel better about yourself. Almost everyone does it. Some people become aware of it. Some people learn to do better.
Speaking for myself, when I say 'liberalism' I usually mean (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism)
"""Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy."""
But again, religion is not conservatism, whether political or even social (Stoicism is a 'conservative' philosophy, despite not being religious and perhaps even anti-religious).
It wasn't until I was older that I began studying these topics in any great detail.
> Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts.
That's not really germaine. Did you learn it in a public school? Because if not, I think my point stands.
> That's not really germaine. Did you learn it in a public school? Because if not, I think my point stands.
I took classes in history, philosophy, and ethics at a public university (one with considerable public funding). My public high school, on the other hand, had very limited capabilities or structure for teaching liberal arts well.
American public schools are a religious-based and funded program; you just don't notice it because you don't even know what your own religion is.
Please explain. To whom are you referring with "your"? Me, whom you don't know? Someone in general?
I don't need to know you at a personal level to know what your religion is; it's clear from your comments.
Have you read enough of my writing to characterize my worldview with any degree of accuracy or precision? I doubt it.
But you are not alone -- large chunks of people use confirmation bias to judge people based on a small number of cherry-picked words.
Secularism is good for politics, because religions are a dime a dozen and any choice of which one should be the dominant is irrational and arbitrary. It was never meant to be a catch all "No religion plz" rule. Liberalism, unless you define it as anything other than the good old "Live And Let Live" of Mill and Locke, is not in obvious contradiction with any of the traditional values GP states.
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Most importantly, Tradition is about Family. Family is important. This is the single biggest understatement I made in a long long time. The cheapness of the Fast-and-Furious style "muh family" sentiments hides the radicalism of this shattering realization : the only force in this entire universe that is invested in your success without any direct expectation of something in return is your family.
I'm a techno-primitivist, I believe political units should be extremely small, extremely numerous, with an emphasis on blood ties as the ultimate guarantee of group cohesion and loyalty. I have a burning hatred for and deep distrust of any political unit with more than 1000 persons. There is no way to make a social organization of >1000 persons consistently fair, the rules are always arbitrary and ad hoc, a few assholes always play the meta-game and find ways around them, and somebody is always oppressed and bullied and consistently given the shorter end without a way to be heard.
Family is different, affinity for genetic similarity is deeply hardwired into your lowest level circuits, very few assholes can find their way around the rules evolution built. Every single social organization is a prisoner's dilemma come alive, why cooperate with that stranger you're never going to see again? The answers are always arbitrary and subject to abuse and evasion : Because God, Because Emperor, Because CEO, Because General. Family is the only social unit where the rules stem from your very being : Because Evolution, the very factory that built you, that encoded your love and respect for your own flesh and blood as deep inside as it encoded your liver and kidneys.
In another, and better, universe, we never built nations or states or parliaments or public school systems, every family is an autonomous unit under the leadership of its bread winner, and federations of families handle cross-cutting concerns in a way that leaves as much power to the families as possible.
Placing inherent value in tradition impedes progress. All tradition should be examined critically. Traditions that continue to provide value should be kept, harmless traditions are unimportant, and harmful traditions should be stopped.
Valuing morality means something completely different to everyone, and as such is close to a meaningless statement. Morality is a web of biologically-borne and cultural-imparted values. By definition each person values their personal morality. That said, usually when people in the US publicly declare the importance of morality, it's code for Christian (usually Protestant) teachings, which are themselves a mixed bag of commonly-held values like community and giving and some heinous views on various marginalized groups, depending on who you ask.
As you may be able to guess, I do not value spirituality. I view any time spent seriously contemplating the supernatural past early developmental years as indicative of a loose grasp on reality.
Honor is something that people earn through their actions. If parents act honorably then they should be treated as such. If they fail to earn their child's respect then they are not entitled to it. The fact that they spawned a child is worthy of little to no honor. The manner in which they provide for and nurture the child may be deserving of honor, or it may not be. I do not view respect of one's parents as inherently good, and blind respect or honor of anyone or anything is certainly bad.
The common thread here is that these values all indicate to me an abdication of critical thought. Blind trust in tradition, an assumption of universal morality, belief in the supernatural, and unquestioning adherence to authority figures. Am I certain that these describe OP? No, but it's definitely what this collection of values sounds like to me in the context of his post.
It's true there is some sheltering with homeschooling. But it's not airtight or longlasting. Homeschooled kids, especially teens, will get exposed to outside influences.
I'm nearly 40 years old now, and I can look back confidently and say that homeschooling helped create the environment in which I could critically evaluate ideas, including secular and liberal ones.
Since you were homeschooled yourself, wouldn't you have been the better parent for the job anyway?
When my wife and I had kids, she wanted to quit her job as a nurse and be a stay-at-home mom. We agreed this was a good solution, even though she's not cut out to homeschool them.
I mean, it could be the classic layman "oh, I could do that!" stance, and since everybody has been to school themselves they have a vague idea what the job of a teacher is like (which, of course, is in all likelihood a fallacy). That, paired with a certain cynicism about the job of a teacher in the first place (here, they've got super-safe jobs, almost no accountability, a strong lobby, lots of days off, and are mostly done work after half a day if they're so inclined) and less than stellar results of our educational system when compared internationally, gives us a certain "we couldn't do it much worse" feeling. As a matter of fact, as a homeschooler, you've only got your own kids to focus on, not a whole class of 30 children with a wide spectrum of different prerequisites.
But then again, maybe we couldn't do it very well at all. It's such a long-term commitment, one that requires consistency over years. And the relation between children and parent is different from a student-teacher relationship, there wouldn't be such a sharp distinction between what happens inside the school and the home.
Topics like bullying and other negative forms of social pressure are omnipresent in school settings, but withdrawing our children completely from such realities might turn out to be less good of a preparation for their later lives.
And lastly, without a doubt school teachings are colored by certain political world views, and they might not always be ones you agree with. But when you send your kids to school, you give up control over what they are actually taught. Of course, it is recommended to keep a close eye on that at any point in time, and also challenge contents where you think things are going wrong. But I also think it will become increasingly difficult to do this as your kids get rooted deeper and deeper in the school system, where the political and worlds views of the teachers will play as much of a role as those of the political parties that are in charge of your country's educational system.
So, whether or not to homeschool is a really tricky question - but as I said above, it does not even present itself in our case, because we have no right to homeschool where we currently live.
https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/parentsarethebestteache...
Take that, and think about it, before you start. If you have unexamined issues like anger problems, fixations, avoidances, fears - those will have an impact on your child, and a bigger impact if you homeschool your child - purely on the basis of much more time spent together.
If you’re going to do it, i would strongly encourage you to start therapy asap. Because the more of those things you crack open and deal with, the less your child will have to deal with the consequences of them.
The school system has a ton of problems. So does home schooling. There is no magic bullet. Just choices.
Edit: this[0] is not the study but shows something similar
> Adopted children resemble their adoptive parents slightly in early childhood but not at all in middle childhood or adolescence In contrast, during childhood and adolescence, adopted children become more like their biological parents, and to the same degree as children and parents in control families
[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.199...
Twin studies show that nurture has little impact on personality or IQ, excepting things like serious abuse.
But, they do show huge correlation between parental income and child income.
So it seems nurture can affect life outcomes a lot but not much intrinsic to who you are.
I don't know anything about personality, but I do know that for IQ this is an awfully contentious topic, for a multitude of reasons. Whether that's ignoring maternal effects, the implicit assumption of independence between genetics and environment in twins reared apart, or just plain old questioning of how to interpret heritability as a statistic, it's REALLY unclear what to think. You will find serious academics in field with vastly different beliefs.
I spent an inappropriately large amount of time researching this recently, and my conclusion is that it's a lot harder to measure than people think, and that the commonly cited numbers of 0.7-0.8 for heritability should be viewed with a significant deal of skepticism. It might be right, but it's a number that I have very low confidence in. I would also say that even if those numbers are correct, that does imply a very substantial effect due to environment.
What I will say is that you have to more or less ignore the Wikipedia article on the subject. It's too political a topic for Wikipedia to perform well.
At this point, about all I'd say based on the science is that it clearly isn't 0% or 100% of either, but the data to make any grand pronouncements based on science beyond that in any direction just isn't solid enough. I'd be comfortable saying "it's more complicated" but I'm not convinced enough of any particular summary of the "more complicated" to bank on it.
Along with respite, school gave me access to countless alternatives perspectives, influences, and people that would become part of my coping strategies.
I’m absolutely certain that home schooling is great for certain parents and certain children, but some kids are better off not being around their parents quite so much.
As far as I know we’re stuck in anecdote and personal opinion territory, until we have a better way of quantifying the kind of low-level trauma of a non-abusive-but-still-damaging childhood.
See e.g. this study: https://elifesciences.org/articles/39725 (and that's for height, which is vastly lower-dimensional than emotional health or IQ)
Or an easier to read article: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-turmoil-over-predicting-t...
Can also see this thread: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1163435285193076737 and this tweet: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1476173796323246082. Nature-über-alles studies rely on relatively basic misunderstandings of the required math.
Of course if you want to read studies by biologists too, there's quite a few addressing the problems with twin studies (especially with high-dimensional outcomes like intelligence and emotional health). But to be clear, the problem with the nature-matters-a-lot studies isn't a biology problem; it's a math problem.
And the wider problem is that the "mostly nature not nurture" idea disincentivizes conscientious, careful parenting (since "it doesn't matter in the long run anyway").
https://www.modulo.app/learning/parent-engagement
With regards to therapy - wholeheartedly agree. We’ve got to put on those oxygen masks before we assist our kids! A parent who practices self-care, is grounded and calm will be a better parent for sure hands down
That’s a pleasing statement that seems true, but ignores the millions of ways that parents can be a bad influence. Over pressuring, taking away agency, just being bad study partners, biasing data as it arrives, etc etc etc.
Everyone wants to believe they will be a good parent. But everyone will fuck it up in some way. One of the *good* things about traditional schooling is exposure to a lot of different influences. Bad and good. The bad teaches you to value the good, the good teaches you all the different ways that you can learn.
I don't want to minimize your point about mental health though. If you're struggling you have to help yourself before you can pour into your children.
If you have the time, getting involved in your child's education is probably a huge win. Fill in some gaps you see, correct some biases. Help them get ahead in areas they are doing well in, help them catch up in areas they are not doing so well in. But just because those things are helpful doesn't mean that replacing their education entirely is going to be an improvement.
To be clear I think this applies to people who aren’t struggling, or don’t believe they are struggling. We all have a lifetime of accumulated damage. I hate the “therapy is for people with problems” idea. It’s not about struggling or not, it’s about repeating unhealthy patterns to a next generation - or the swinging pendulum of overcorrecting our parents mistakes. If you have or are going to have kids, please, do at least 6 sessions with a therapist you like. Worst case it does nothing, best case you save your self and your kids a lot of pain.
edit: Upon further reflection, I disagree with the premise. I'm a product of the decade and environment I grew up in. Alot of my values probably aren't relevant to growing up today, and the types of experiences kids will be exposed to. Some things I just haven't had exposure to. Kids should be a combination of their parents values and have the opportunity to experience life such that they can develop their own values. My values are very different from that of my parents, and I suspect will be different from that of my children.
If you actually believe that your values and world view are correct, then you shouldn't be worried about your child encountering other world views. As long as you teach your child to think for themself, they should ultimately recognize your values are better.
Personally, I want my child to think I'm a terrible person, because I want them to be better than me. Our ancestors made loads of mistakes, and I want my children to recognize mine.
Such as?
So eventually you grow tired of it, you've worked out a bit, and now you beat the kid up. Now... you get suspended/expelled, instead of the bully. That's a zero-tolerance policy.
My wife's cousin was suspended for a few weeks for standing up to her bully. My in-laws and her family decided to reward her and she got two weeks of a fun family vacation. But the school was trying to punish her, and if her parents and grandparents weren't more sensible, perhaps they would have succeeded.
The other reason is I don’t have direct experience of the pathologies of the school system - so if someone is going to speak about them it shouldn’t be me.
Some of the best parenting advice I ever got was, before you try to raise a kid, you need to get your own shit together.
For homeschoolers, it's probably a good idea to check if your child displays secure attachment first (since insecure attachment in the child is generally caused by the parents, and schooling your child at home might just make it worse).
And on a final note: why the hell don't we systematically test all children for attachment styles? They: a) can be detected very early, b) are much easier to correct when caught early, and c) have vast impacts for the child's whole life. You don't need any equipment except a trained psychologist!
See also a link between insecure attachment and addiction: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.0072...
This policy would have incredibly positive repercussions throughout society; in that sense, it would be very cheap.
I also don't buy your notion that neuroses are directly transferable by contact. If anything, your kid will probably be so annoyed by them that they'll be exactly the opposite.
Fortunately if you are homeschooling you can seek out specific teachers to help expand on things and choose those that are excellent. (Many homeschooler start taking community college classes in highschool if there are good options available.)
This is a sampling question.
Consider that you may be looking at a bunch of well-educated parents choosing homeschooling over extra income.
I bet they're not choosing to homeschool kids with whom they have a bad relationship, don't understand, can't motivate...
Increasing the sample could produce much different results.
Admittedly salaries for public school teachers are pretty bad. There's no FAANG school with tricky interview questions and starting salaries double of what other schools are paying. I wish there were. Then you might see those 10x teachers choosing "teacher" as their profession.
Now I'm part of an ex-homeschooler support group where most of us had a similar story. In my own case, the "homeschooling" was a political choice by parents who were deeply paranoid about the US government. They lacked the education to even understand what all we were missing and relied on a popular curriculum program to guide them without any supplemental counseling or outside tutoring.
Academically I'm sure some more educated parents could do better and understand they need to get information from a variety of sources, but socially it would be very difficult to replicate the opportunities that school provides most kids.
The only situation in which I'd consider homeschooling my child is if it was in the daily, sustained company of other families and involved parents. Skill-building aside: seeing other kids at the playground once a week doesn't even begin to take the edge off the loneliness.
I love my parents, they tried their best, but there are very few scenarios in which I would encourage someone to homeschool their kids, if for no other reason than most parents aren’t trained teachers who actually know how to educate properly.
Have you considered reaching out to SEA homeschoolers for connecting w families near you ?
https://m.facebook.com/seahomeschoolers
I know a bunch of secular homeschoolers around the world and am happy to help you forge connections if you like :)
On top of that, the language we speak at home is not the language used by the school, or the rest of the country. There are a million problems that come with this: they would force us to use our language, which they're more comfortable with, they would be learning our broken accents, we're not super familiar with the local language so our ability to teach it would be worse, etc, etc.
A cohort within 12 months in age, typically from the same neighborhood, is not a "broader group of people".
I think you'll find that is not actually the case.
Also, I would argue that the distorted "society" produced by public schools is more harmful than beneficial.
Church? That's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to social distortion.
Homeschooled peer groups? There's no way that's a broader population than the school in 99.9% of homeschooling scenarios.
I can’t speak for everywhere or every time, but in the 90s in my city, those groups were diverse in some dimensions (age, economic, political beliefs, homeschooling method, schooling exposure, weird parents) and un-diverse in some dimensions (race, immigrants and 1st generation children of immigrants).
It’s important to note that I don’t think every school would get a checkmark on all of those boxes either. But where it differs the most would probably be numbers. Small schools exist in rural settings, but a peer group of 40 kids only about 5-10 of similar age to you is pretty different from most people’s school experience.
And anyway, schooled kids do all of those things as well. Where's the advantage?
There's a reason I don't consider those activities when talking about school socialization. All of the activities you mentioned are part-time and/or self-selected. School is full-time and you don't get to choose your kids' peers. You can't pull them out easily if you don't like the other kids. Like the rest of the world, kids will need to learn how to deal with it, away from you, all day, every day. They will need to learn how to deal with bullies and spurned crushes and tribal politics and bad teachers and all the rest. And yes, that can be harsh. Yes, some kids will have a difficult time. Most will learn invaluable social skills about how to integrate themselves into society, and they will be practicing those social skills full-time at school.
Spanish class? Get out of here.
Seriously dude, what’s the difference? What do you think “socialization” means? It is about being exposed to others, interacting with them, and learning social norms. Sitting quietly at desks listening to a teacher is objectively less effective than something like swimming lessons, or really anything I mentioned in my list, and that description describes the bulk of time at school.
Everything else you described makes me wonder why you think those things are essential to the human experience. Are you regularly bullied as an adult, because if so I suggest you make some life changes. Bad teachers are different from bad managers - you can’t easily quit and go elsewhere, or complain to HR.
Also, spurned crushes exist well beyond education for many people! Not sure why you suggest education is a key component of this.
> Where’s the advantage?
I am not saying there is an advantage in these elements. I am saying socialization is not a disadvantage to homeschoolers and this is really a myth.
I think we agree on this subject, but as a 3rd party in this back and forth I have to say that this is not appropriate discourse for this site. Please try to interpret others comments as charitably as possible. There is never a justification for saying something snarky and rude like "Get out of here" or "Try reading".
My contribution to civility here was to just stop responding.
Yes, you are not the only one using unkind words.
Still, most of the time, each of us (and therefore all of us as an online community) can do better. You have various options. It is tempting to fall into the attack/counter-attack posture. But instead of counter attacking, you can say something like "That was unkind" and leave it there.
> My contribution to civility here was to just stop responding.
A fair point. Doing so is preferable to adding fuel to the fire. Even better IMO is to reassert the community norms firmly without insulting the other person.
Can't you say the same thing of parochial schools? Given the general success of parochial schools, I would find it difficult to imagine how one would argue against their model.
Out in the real world, as opposed to an artificial environment designed to produce obedient factory workers.
Well, no, not exclusively designed for that -- or any one thing. There are many stakeholders and it is fairly difficult to use the word design. I'd suggest evolved might serve as a better metaphor.
(People cite historic factors connecting school to factory workers. I tend to agree, but probably only because people have told me this; I haven't read primary sources on this. Anyhow, I'll grant it for sake of argument.)
Schools in the USA, as I understand them, attempt (with widely divergent success) to prepare students for a mixture of futures: perhaps college, perhaps trade schools, and perhaps general background for citizenship.
I found that school is an effective way for people to be pigeonholed with labels and expectations that make it more difficult for people to explore and change. Once labelled the class clown, or the athlete, or the brainiac, or whatever, it is very hard to do or try other things so long as you are in a fixed environment. This is why, in my opinion, going to college or university is such a profound life event for people - suddenly new environments and opportunities to explore being something other than your fixed adolescent self.
This may be true, if one is raising a philosopher-king or something. In life I'm thrown into situations where I'm jammed together with people in an "ineffective" manner all the time. If extra-curricular programs are more effective they can deal with both environments. Personally I had some effective, good teachers in school as well as some ineffective team coaches.
I would rather -- and do -- support the public school system in my (medium sized) city.
We could always--always--tell which kids were the homeschooled kids.
I was homeschooled for several years, and have known a variety of other homeschooled people.
For me personally, I was impacted in my ability to socialize with people in my own group, and did not develop any rebellious tendencies until I re-entered public school and realized there were other options.
For some homeschooled people I know, they can't read at above a first grade level.
Others can read/write at a higher than average level, may be average or better at math, and have little capability to interact with others.
Still others are some of the smartest, most well rounded people I know.
Unfortunately, most homeschooled people in my experience sit somewhere between the first and second groups - which then means that gatherings of home-schooled families will also tend that direction.
What we are seeing now is a seismic shift that will result in a much more mainstream population of homeschooled kids. I doubt it will be as easy to tell which kids were homeschooled in a decade.
from https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-01-24/8-t...
There are many other articles about the growth of homeschooling during the pandemic, and the likely causes. As the author of the LA Times article notes, the data is still being gathered so experts' theories have yet to be validated with certainty.
But I've not seen anyone question the notion that the people who have recently started homeschooling are not demographically the same as those who homeschooled pre-pandemic. If you have seen such claims, I would be interested to see them!
With 100% accuracy in which direction? You noticed every homeschooled kid, or every kid you thought was homeschooled was actually homeschooled? Because those have very different implications.
In my experience, the relationship developed with non-family adults at school is a narrow, one-sided relationship, where non-family adults are authority figures, rather than say, mentors, strangers, or even friends. Having this skill is still important but the one-sidedness can warp a kid's perception of what adults "are", so it's important to develop adult relationships outside of the school setting.
Also, your first sentence seems true to me, but I assume home-schoolers aren't always at home -- they can meet with other groups of home-schooled kids, or join groups related to sports, activities, etc. This, of course, largely depends on the parents.
As far as I know, that kind of "society" is not replicated anywhere, with the possible exception of military boot camp.
Real societies have a mixture of people from infancy to old age. Real workplaces have a mixture of people from entry level to retirement age. Even prison has a mixture of ages!
The model of education used in most of the United States was designed in the 19th century with the purpose of cranking out factory workers who would remain on-task until a bell rang -- so even its original purpose is largely obsolete.
Firstly I think that simple exposure is very important. Going to school tends to just force you to interact with a lot of different people. That could probably be replicated in other environments, just with more difficulty.
Second, I think that one of the most important facets of socialization is shared experience. Even if traditional schooling isn't an ideal setting for socialization, it is still what most experience. I think removing a child from that sets them up for a significantly more challenging time when it comes to relating to others.
So yeah I think I agree that school isn't really ideal for socialization, but I'm not sure there is a better option out there at the moment.
A huge number of families opt out of public school because of racism and bullying.
Just like families can design their child’s education, they can design their social experiences.
School is a socially engineered environment with little opportunity for organic play.
In traditional school, kids sit in rows or at tables in same age classrooms (often not very diverse ones since they are segregated by neighborhood in public school or parent ability to pay in private school)and they get 30 minute of highly chaotic recess a day if they’re lucky.
In homeschool , families participate in highly diverse, eclectic group of children of different ages. They engage in playgroups and community gatherings, field trips, classes, collaborative projects and have plenty of time for play.
The idea that homeschooling is less social is a myth - and as the homeschool population grows increasing opportunities for organic social interactions and true community emerge.
Here’s some more that I’ve written on this topic https://manisharoses.medium.com/highly-social-homeschooling-...
Watching my own kids thrive in school with lots of friends and social interaction has reaffirmed my thinking that building social skills is as much a part of schooling as the education itself.
I feel the same way about college. I understand the arguments that college is not often worth the excessive cost if you look at it in terms of financial outcomes. But I didn't go to college for financial outcomes. I went because it was going to be (and was) a uniquely amazing adventure that I could never replicate at any other time in my life. I think going to grade school is the same thing.
Nothing can replace acting awkward around your crush in the hall, learning to navigate around the bully, bonding after class with a favorite teacher, enduring the horrors of PE or the excitement of a bomb threat, to name a few nostalgic examples.
And life without a little horror is not much of a life if you ask me.
I moved towns and my main issues were 1. Lack of a like minded community who were willing to invest time and energy like I was. It's a demanding journey and not one that's easy (or even possible) to do alone. 2. Lack of insight into what the future holds esp. from the POV of higher studies. I can experiment with my own life but was scared of doing it with my kids'.
The added factor is that my wife was home schooled, and my view of homeschooling is somewhat tainted by that. The homeschooling community she came from isn't exactly a strong advertisement for homeschooling, but I recognize there are also bad schools out there.
The strongest part of her education seems to have been the co-op classes, but those classes are really just like sending your kids to a private school. At that point I'm not sure why you wouldn't just send your kids to school outside of an ideological commitment to homeschooling.
my wife and I (with combined degrees in literature, molecular biology and computer science) would have seriously considered homeschooling. But we live in Germany, and it is absolutely illegal here.
e.g. a monoculture is easier to abuse by corrupt leaders. Increased diversity of thought may have prevented Germany from systematically becoming entirely reliant on Russia.
So we moved from Europe to Idaho, where it's supported. (I'm American.) She's been doing a hybrid model of two classes a day at the local school and the rest on her own, and it's been incredibly successful. She's going into her senior year now and is looking at top universities like Harvard, Oxford and Yale. We couldn't be happier with the experience.
Why is it illegal?
If I have children and they are like me (i.e on the spectrum) then I will homeschool them.
School was by far the worst time of my life and also contributed the least to my success. I succeeded in spite of traditional schooling, mostly due to the great nature of my parents (who unfortunately just didn't have the capacity or economical means to homeschool me.) Enduring my schooling years didn't make me stronger it just left me with deep emotional scars that took years to come to terms with.
My partner has early age teaching experience and we are equipped to school our children if that is how things turn out.
Socialization is definitely a concern but I think it can be adequately addressed through sports, activity groups and extended family.
Of course if my children are normal then maybe none of this will be necessary and a normal school will be what is best for them.
What I mean by this is simply wearing two hats in the household is a tricky business and can be overwhelming especially when our young students have younger siblings that must be cared for. I have enormous respect for my wife but handling these responsibilities is no easy feat!
Of course my kids are very young. I have other concerns beyond elementary, mostly around an increasing need for expertise in sciences/math and properly rigorous testing ensuring mastery over subjects without access to a realistic grade curve.
My personal experience was very good but a bit unrealistic - I was taught to read by my mom who has taught kindergarten for decades. Not everyone has a professional educator as their homeschool teacher!
While I'm sure you mom had a lot of experience she brought to the table, it isn't uncommon to have kids reading at 3 or 4 taught by parents who didn't have a background in education and simply did some research to find the best way to do it. True it might be harder than it was for your mom, but it isn't like a parent has to just guess. There are plenty of people like your mom making information available about what seems to work and what doesn't so you can find the best thing for your kids.
I thought about what you said quite a bit and wrote a blog about why I feel that parents are the best teachers for their child.
We are teaching our kids many "non-academic" skills all the time but don't see that as stepping into a specific role. I don't think that this needs to be the case either in homeschooling.
I've also included some resources which I think will address your concerns about expertise in certain speciality areas like math/science.
I didn't directly address assessment here, but there are some great ones you can use such as mobymax, cogat and others - as well as mastery-based digital learning apps that have built in assessment.
Here is the blog: https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/parentsarethebestteache...
Edit: I have 3 kids, and they all learn in quite different ways. I can't really give one presentation to all 3 on something. The pandemic gave me a little glimpse into what home schooling would be like.
Also as bad as kids are with learning with teachers, it's usually a lot worse with parents. It's very stressful to, say, teach a child math. I think being in a group of others doing it gives them a little more grit.
1) If you are non-religious, the canned curriculum, trade shows, support groups are very few and far between. You will be much more lonely than your religious home-schooling counterparts.
2) As your kids get older, it is harder and harder to give them a proper education. By the time your kids are in middle-school, subjects get harder for a parent (or pairs of parents) to cover in a way that does each subject justice.
In the end, most of my friends who home-schooled eventually sent their kids to middle-school and or high-school... and that timing seemed about right.
I agree. My cousin's daughter was not home-schooled, but she was having trouble with high school math so I tutored her. At the time I was going to college for computer science. We did algebra for a year and that went fine. I still remembered it from high school. Then we got to trigonometry. The year I was supposed to learn trigonometry in high school was disruptive so I never learned it properly. So I studied the lesson and learn it myself before I would go see her. I'm supposed to be the math/CS guy too. It worked out and she passed trigonometry too - I did have to spend much more time preparing to teach trigonometry than algebra as I had never learned trigonometry. I can imagine one parent having to teach trigonometry, biology, physics, chemistry, the themes of the Scarlet Letter, French, Medieval history etc.
As a kid, I attended mostly private school, but when public school-educated parents express concern that they wouldn't be able to competently teach standard middle school subjects, that sounds much more like an indictment of public schooling than of the at-home variety.
We do have relatives that have successfully homeschooled and I have seen groups that do their homeschooling together (homeschooling isn't necessarily about sitting at home by yourselves). So it's resources/support targeted to delivering a well-rounded homeschooled education, it's finding sufficiently like-minded others with whom to share the effort in a small group setting. With sufficient resources I could likely solve the time problem.
Absent that, we're looking at private schools for our kid. We'd probably just do this, but it's not a cheap alternative.
Over the past three years, I’ve poured over thousands of resources in 50 different subjects to help families learn at home with kids. From these, I selected the best resources that were secular, accurate and mastery-based. I’ve also conducted dozens of intake interviews with parents helping them choose the best digital app, workbook, or nature-based curriculum for learning at home, that their child would love and fit their family’s needs. With our curriculum planner, you can answer a few questions about your child’s interests and your preferences around screen time, budget, etc and it will recommend core curriculum, math and literacy tools to support your child’s education
I’ve been iterating on it and find most people find it to be a helpful starting place
A lot of the after school/summer school in person offerings are pretty expensive and usually pretty sports centric.
Full home schooling I feel could easily burn out even the most hard working parent - as there's little time for getting groceries, etc. done. And lack of socialization in the childs cohort is an issue.
I think more online tools for prepping for science fairs and other academic competitions would be great.
More tools like Khan academy would be great - I'd love it if there were resources that were able to introduce real biology, chemistry, physics prior to high school.
Actually I think about homeschooling more as a movement and ideology of greater involvement in education than a replacement to school. In fact, I call it “modular learning” where families can choose a variety of modules to compose their child’s education including school !
The burnout factor is real but I think that when you give yourself freedom to optimize on academics , social and childcare, you might find it’s lesss of a burnout than the grind of early morning wake-up’s, after school pickups , homework and pta meetings.
I’ve written a lot about curriculum tools to support learning at home.
With regards to physics and chemistry, it depends on your kid’s ages … some of my favorites off the top of my head are mystery science, blossom and roots science curriculum, quantum camp , mel science, Steve Spangler science
The average after school math tutor probably nets $90-$120 per hour, where the average school teacher probably nets $50 per hour.
And this is true doubly so for kids.
It'd be interesting to what extent the fees that normally would be spend on tutoring expenses could be spent on prizes or some other reward - without cheapening the experience (i.e. taking away their intrinsic love for learning by making it transactional and based on extrinsic rewards, etc.).
Motivating your children to do things that are good for them in the long run (brushing their teeth, not hitting other people, etc.) is very much in the wheel house of parenting.
I also think our 3 kids would struggle with the lack of separation between Teacher and Parent. Similar to how some adults struggle with working at home and separating work and home life appropriately. I know several folks who do it well and love the freedom and flexibility. But I feel it would take a lot of effort to really stay on top of it and not let things slide when it gets tough.
Not going to lie, the "babysitting" aspect of school is very nice too.
I’m mostly interested because of the fact that private tutoring performs at roughly the 98th percentile compared to classroom teaching. I think that’s a big enough gap that I consider education an unsolved problem. Plenty of kids would be capable of going to university at sixteen instead of nineteen if they got an individually tailored education instead of being put through one-size fits all programs.
She is back in school now because it’s a great school, but if we didn’t have options we would definitely teach at home, there has never been more tools available to make it easy.
Truth is the U.S. economy is entirely built around the assumption that both parents are working full time now so there is less time to be at home to help kids learn, so we send them off to giant prison-looking buildings and hope for the best.
She's still kinda involved with homeschooling. From various comments on what that is like these days (post-1990's), there are a huge number of resources already on the web to support homeschooling.
Probably most importantly, I'm fairly confident in the competence in my local public elementary (great teachers and lots of parent volunteers)
I'd would consider co-op, but most groups are too small or unorganized.
Being exposed to different education styles is far better than just having one teacher (the parent).
There's no way for a parent to have sufficient breadth and depth across a range of topics, never mind generic pedagogical expertise.
Then we joined a church with an active homeschooling group. The kids meet up multiple times a week, with and without parents. They even take classes together (parents hire tutors for a group of kids, or one parent takes a group of kids for a class).
This has alleviated our fears. I think our daughter will get more socializing here and not just in the classroom. The group regularly (>1 / month) takes field trips, goes on outings, and we're even going camping with them this summer.
So anything you can do to replicate that... would be great
My recommendation is to put some focus into helping parents identify which camp their children fall into before trying it out, to avoid kids crashing and burning as they discover it is not for them.
I think the major component of it being a great experience is the motivation of the parents for doing homeschooling. Teaching kids at home to intentionally keep them from society and indoctrinate them in some specific ideology, usually religious, can be very damaging, not necessarily because of the religion itself but because sooner or later the kid/adolescent/adult will meet the wider society and have no tools to deal with the diversity found in it. This, btw, doesn’t only happen in homeschooling but is how root of racism/sexism/etc are planted.
In my experience, and what I hope to accomplish when/if I get to homeschool is to create an space where the child can pursue her interests, nourish/encourage curiosity and use it to teach instead of ignoring it an teaching some other boring thing the kid has no interest in as sadly is often done in school just from the fact that a teacher can’t pursued the interest/curiosity of 30 students at the same time in one classroom.
Regarding the social aspect, there’s soccers, orchestra, martial arts, ymca swimming, inviting friends over often, 4h, Boy Scouts, and so many more opportunities to provide a place for the kid to socialize while hopefully minimizing the toxicity usually found in public schools.
This is by no means a critique of public schools, I think is a sad reality of our society that all we can afford for our kids is an assembly line education with very little space for diversity and with one size fits all measurements of success.
Kids need time and attention and space. Teaching is not compatible with holding down a full-time job, because it is a full-time job. Teaching one or two or three kids is not significantly less work than teaching 20.
Here’s some more I wrote on the topic of homeschooling on a budget https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/budget
I think homeschooling is often cruel to children. However I think tools to help make it better for those who will choose it anyway are a good thing. Best of luck to you.
On a more serious note, I like how you asked the question with "what's stopping you?".
That would probably be a good reason not to homeschool ! Though you could certainly mentor your friends’ kids! I believe we can all take part in educating the next generation whether we are parents or not !
I always found the International Baccalaureate interesting. It seems to be both a more rigorous (academically) and a more flexible (administratively) system than typical public schools: the main demographic I heard who were doing it did so because joining the regular system would have been difficult (because they spent a year abroad, or were travelling with their parents), but they were on average very successful in tertiary education, and they all credited the IB and its rigorous curriculum. Another advantage of the IB is that, despite its unusual structure, it has near universal global recognition, which is important because a recognized high school diploma is a formal requirement in many places.
If you were able to do something like that for distance/home schooling that would be interesting.
It would also be great to have some knowledge base-style articles about how to navigate the bureaucracy, how to get whatever funding is available, etc. I know this varies by jurisdiction, but presumably this could be crowdsourced and validated for many areas.
Yet, I wouldn't take my kids away from school, basically because I remember when I was a kid and meeting kids that had been homeschooled (either later in school, or in activity centers) and they were always weird. I'm wondering how they grew up, and if it was much more difficult for them to acclimate after that, or if it was actually fine. But I feel like the world is a hard place, and the more you delay the reality the harder it'll be for kids. I'd be interested in stats like, for example, rate of suicide amongst homeschooled kids vs non-homeschooled kids.
I said this in an earlier reply, but I agree that school is inefficient at education, but I'd argue that's not what the benefit of school is. School is about learning the social skills to succeed in life as an independent adult. That skill helps with learning later. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true: Intelligence is no guarantee to cross the social bridge.
Secondly, the relationship between a student and teacher, much like an employee and employer, is a professional relationship. It is completely different from the close personal relationship you want with your parent/child. Inserting yourself as a teacher or “boss” completely throws off this dynamic.
Thirdly, my academic opportunities were severely limited as a result. I had no ap classes, no extracurriculars, no guidance counselor, etc. I didn’t have a teacher that challenged me to achieve more. My mom only has a bachelors, and did not have the knowledge to challenge me in subjects like math past algebra. I eventually took the SATs, the ACTs, and was able to go go university and get a BS in Computer Science. However, I was severely behind in math compared to my peers. I had only taken Algebra 2 in highschool, so in university I had to start with precalc instead of Calc 1. I had no AP credits that I could use to skip gen-eds. Perhaps my parents were just unprepared for homeschooling, but they were definitely worse than a teacher. Although I admit this last point might be specific to my experience.
Prior to that the two biggest things stopping us were the assumption that children have to go to an 'official' school in order to get a diploma and go to college, and the challenge in finding good curriculum.
In my opinion, the good resources include Khan Academy, IXL, and Well Trained Mind, or at least that is what has worked for us.
Tools that would make homeschooling easier would be an assignment tracker by class/subject that was easy to use. Khan supports assigning work but it's rather labor intensive to administer. For example if I have assigned tasks in a class for the next eight weeks and the schedule slides by one week then it would be nice to be able to just move all the assignments in that class back one week instead of changing every individual assigned date separately (as Khan Academy currently requires). This could even be something as simple as making a list of assignments available as a spreadsheet.
Logical progression across the units in a class is important. The Khan Academy AP Physics curriculum is a good example of what not to do in that respect.
Any attempt by the instructor/course material at getting the student excited about learning should be avoided/removed.
Grammatical errors, typos, and misspellings should never be present in anything your company makes available to students or parents.
That's quite funny if you don't immediately recall that North Americans talk of 'graduating' school...
Anyway, do you fit this in alongside working (not as a home-teacher I mean) through some combination of relatively hands-off assignments etc. and evenings/weekends, or does it only work because you don't?
The schools should have a moral obligation to teach everyone academics first and say everyone deserves to be treated with respect. There doesn’t need to be a big agenda about racism/sexism/ableism. Trump? Treat with respect. Hilary? Treat with respect. Homeless? Treat with respect. Former criminals? Treat with respect. Anybody who’s different than you? Treat with respect. Now let’s get back to math.
I don’t want to hear any individual teachers opinion on anything other than academics. If they want to give their opinion it should be leveled and end with treating all people with respect. If they did this maybe less people would homeschool and go to private school and then schools could continue to have their much needed funding.
Do you have a source for that statement or is it just "common knowledge?" There seems to be at least some evidence that homeschooling produces children who are more tolerant of other views.
While one study does not prove anything, it is slightly stronger than "general recognition" without a source.
https://reason.com/2019/01/22/homeschooling-produces-better-...
On the other hand if your local public school will get your kids to whatever academic level you feel they are capable of, it is great you have a local school that meets your particular needs.
I made use of various tools for that, including the same problem setting software the professional teachers used, and of course Messrs Kahn and 3Blue.
I have not seen any efforts in developing materials that children, once they've decided they want to be homeschooled, can give to their parents to convince them that homeschooling is a good idea.
What is more reasonable for me is educate children in smaller group of parents, that want do homeschooling and than have ie one day per week just for teaching a small group of children among our friends. Also this could be more connected to professions of parents.
* To ensure their values live on
* To take their kids out of a racist environment
* To protect their kids from the high number of sexual assaults from government teachers
* To protect their kids from bullying
* To spend more time with their kids
* Flexibility in scheduling and curriculum
When working from home, it is difficult to do serious, thoughtful work when your young children are running and playing around the house.
I've been thinking about building tools as needed. It's my dream to work in this space.
E.g. is it possible for me and a few other neighborhood families hire a private tutor for our kids?
HSLDA.org has the state legal summaries
Of course, the public schools here have to take your child if you drop them off.
My wife is well-socialized, extremely well-educated, and way better off than her peers, so it worked.
- No commute to middle school, which returned me an hour of my day right there.
- No bullying from the soon-to-be dropouts.
- No gross school lunches or having to tote around a smelly lunchbag/box/cooler.
- No carrying a pile of books everywhere because the administration banned bookbags (drugs or weapons or something like that...), and no dealing with the worst students who always had their hands free because they didn't care if they had their books.
- I went as fast as I wanted through my Algebra textbook (doing up to 8 lessons a day.)
- Went to a science class taught every Friday in the next city over with demonstrations of chemistry and physics.
- Played my trombone the homeschool band, we performed at Disney World and local recitals too.
- Made some friends in the homeschool group.
- I disliked the English and History exercises but I did them in weekly batches to get them done. And I read lots of books from the big city's library which was far superior to the school or local city's library that I would have to use later when high school let out.
If I had stuck with the homeschooling system I could have finished my BS at the same time I finished high school by taking all my classes at the local university - but I would have probably not double-majored.
My experience with home-schooling gave me a big insight to my high school experience. I asked for privileges such as staying in classrooms during lunch or pep-rallies to play chess or read, and I usually got them because I was well-behaved, respectful, and demonstrated I could be trusted.
But I also resented the arbitrariness and capriciousness of the public school administration's dictates built around maintaining order due to worst behaving students (for example, I couldn't wear a ball-cap on a bad hair day because the resource officer caught kids hiding drugs in caps - knocking a cap off would start brutal fighting). Compared to that system, homeschooling was a kind of utopia to me.
The only downside was not being around the friends that I grew up with. Fewer birthday parties and such. But there was more hanging out with a much smaller set of friends who were all homeschooling, and making new friends in the local homeschool resource group. I went back to high school in 9th grade on the theory that I missed my friends and wanted to be involved in student government and other clubs. But they weren't as friendly as I remembered, and student government and the other clubs did basically nothing. So I spent my 12th grade year at the local university full time, which gave me the freedom I sorely missed from 8th grade. My only regret was not doing it sooner.
I suspect a high %age of people here on HN could say the same thing.
There's the Big Bang Theory effect, to portray all intellectually gifted people as neurotic social basket cases. I think that's done in many schools as well.
My options were home schooling or a Christian school affiliated with my parents' church. I chose to be home schooled. My mother is high school educated, not a teacher, and frankly weak on most subjects. But she loves to dig in and research options, so she did a reasonable job of finding curriculums for standard things like math. I always had a strong thirst for knowledge of certain subjects, so she left me to my own devices on those things (this was pre-internet so I think this was an especially bad strategy. How's a kid with no money going to find the best resources to learn about these things that would normally be classes?). In general, I have always loved learning, so I was relatively easy to homeschool. By 8th grade I was scoring at the 12th grade level, 99th percentile on the CAT across the board. I had more free time than my peers and more flexibility in my schedule. Field trips were a breeze. By high school I was taking community college classes and tutoring the adults, which was extremely helpful to have those credits when I went to college - I got to skip some intro courses and had the flexibility to take a year off of school when financial hardship hit.
So far it sounds great, but I would not really recommend it. If you don't have access to quality schools for your kid, you should move if you can afford it at all. There were a few major issues: - Social isolation. I had little access to kids my own age, mostly my parents' friends' kids, who were, frankly, shitheads. (Not that the Christian school was better. All but one girl in what would have been my class graduated pregnant or with a child, and therefore married or engaged to be, shotgun style) - College Admissions. I was enrolled in an online high school program at an accredited school (the first one!), but even with the transcript + 4.0 GPA in a year's worth of community college credits, colleges were deeply skeptical about homeschooling and made me jump through extra hoops. I'm fairly certain my top choice rejected me because of this. - Misinformation & bias. I know this is an issue in school too, and my alternative option of a religious school would not have been much better, but I had to unlearn so so much of what I was taught - Extracurriculars. Opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities are extremely limited. Many things are associated with a school and not open to non-students.
It's also worth noting that while I did relatively well in this setup, I have siblings who were also home schooled and never finished high school or got their GED.
If you do go down this path: - Have a strategy for how to socialize your kids beyond "well, some of my friends have kids" - Find good curriculum - Have a strategy ready for when a kid does not want to learn something - Make sure you or your spouse will have a lot of free time to supervise - Enroll them in a program that will get them a HS transcript from an accredited school. - Find ways to expose them to extracurricular activities of their choosing, beyond your own interests.
The CAT exams were the same for me, always scored really high and above my grade level. I aced the 12th grade one by age 14. My parents took that as evidence that I was doing well, and I didn't trust them enough to confide just how desperately lonely I was. The CAT (and SAT) ended up being incredibly poor indicators of preparation for college level courses, many of which I failed my first semester despite also being a self-starter who reads voraciously. It was just too much of a jump for me from the unstructured way I'd been teaching myself previously, and I was missing too much background knowledge.
Even with my high SAT scores it was really hard to get into college. I ended up at a tiny private religious school (I'm not religious) because they were the only one that accepted me, and one of the few I was even able to complete the application for because many admissions offices didn't make allowances for homeschooling in their application process (this was around 2001). After a few years there I managed to bring my GPA up high enough to transfer to a state school.
In retrospect, I believe things could have been really different if I'd had access to a councilor with academic experience to explain how the system worked and tell me what paperwork I would need for college applications or what subjects would be necessary for the program I wanted to do. Even in 2001 with internet access I just wasn't able to navigate that on my own and ended up making a lot of costly (time, money, embarrassment) mistakes. And I was a pretty smart kid, I taught myself to code for one. It turns out being smart didn't make up for that much of a knowledge gap.
Homeschooling is very bad and should be banned in the US, as it already is in many other countries.