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Comment by dotdi | Hacker News Reader

I get this is targeted at the US, still I'm throwing this out there:

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.

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That’s definitely a problem. And even in the US families can face problems. I know great homeschool families in nys who had social services called on them by a neighbor. And many of the African American teens in our community have been stopped on the streets for “truancy” when they’d legally registered to homeschool.

Why is that a problem?

It decreases the diversity of thought. If your school system is failing, the government shouldn’t imprison parents who want to do their best to try something else.

Not sure why "diversity of thought" is axiomatically a Good Thing. When extremely religious parents homeschool their children because they want to pass on those values, that's bad for society. Some things are heterodox for a reason.

You don't get to decide that religious values are good or bad.

As a citizen in a country, you get to decide on allowing religious fundamentalists to indoctrinate their children. I choose hell no, keep religion out of schools and out of public life.

You're using a lot of loaded language in your response. What is a "religious fundamentalist" to you? Also you're missing the point, because the topic of discussion is religious people educating their own kids, not religion in public schools.

This is an authoritarian mindset common on the left but is antithetical to liberal values. Having a desire to control how other people prefer to care for their children usually doesn’t end well historically.

I do, actually.

I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that human sacrifice is bad.

I do, and society does. Sex equality comes to mind.

Diversity of thought is important for creating a robust problem-solving framework. Once a monoculture forms it becomes easy to subvert it because people tend to be vulnerable in the same way.

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.

There are always private schools you can send your kids to if you really think the public school system is failing.

Private schools often start out as homeschooling coops.

You're assuming that parents who are homeschooling intend to provide their children with a good education. However, what about people who claim to "homeschool" their children but don't actually follow through, leading to uneducated adults who can't support themselves. I think that assuming good intentions for everyone is a problematic assumption, and you need to manage policies for bad actors as well.

My wife and I have one child and she requested homeschooling for high school.

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.

> we live in Germany, and it is absolutely illegal here

Why is it illegal?

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