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> You know which group didn’t suffer learning loss? Homeschooled children, w

So, the group that had already self-selected for independent learning and who had the financial capacity for one parent to not work did fine [0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

A lot to unpack here but I've seen homeschooling work wonderfully and completely fail -- within the same household.

Homeschooling is not for every family, perhaps not for most families. Parents may not have the luxury of time. Teaching is a profession that requires a level of expertise in subject matter and the art of education itself that parents may not have. Kids have differing levels of intrensic motivation for learning school subjects. Some children do much better with other authority figures than their parents for some activities. Not to mention children with learning challenges that most parents are ill equipped to respond to adequetely. Not to mention the value of interacting with different people and viewpoints. And on and on.

I'm glad your familiy has found success. I've seen it work and work amazingly for some. But I've also seen it fail badly.

Schools, especially public schools, have their problems, no doubt, but if I had to place bets on which society would end up in a better place in two generations, one where everyone is homeschooled vs one where everyone goes to public school, it's no contest. Teaching done by professionals is going to win hands down.

Homeschooled kids aren't taught by just their parent(s). They also learn from the subject matter experts who teach specific skills - I personally was enrolled in piano, martial arts, and swimming lessons, but there's plenty of classes that teach important skills that shore up the weaknesses in the parent's teaching toolkits.

Aside from that, homeschooled kids learn from the world around them. They learn from their own experiences, and they develop their own discipline. They learn how to self-motivate, and how to explore the world around them. It was an eye-opening experience when I went to high school for a few years. I learned so little and wasted so much time, though I tried my hardest by asking questions, contributing to the class, and respecting my teachers. There's just so little that can be done when a single teacher is forced to administer 40+ children.

Meanwhile, before high school I'd sit down and read a textbook for 4 hours (without being told to, just because I was interested). I'd go on long walks and sketch plants that I saw. Some days I'd do quite a lot, and other days I'd be done by noon. Even now I find myself approaching problems in a fundamentally different manner than my peers and I can't help but believe that it's because I grew unimpeded by the early academic process.

That's great. I knew a woman who successfully went to a top university at 16 after being homeschooled who graduated summa cum laude and got a full ride scholarship to a very good law school. She was intrensically motivated and geared toward learning. She's done very well for herself.

Her little brother tried to do as little as possible, failed out of community college, and was put in place at his father's company where he proceeded to run the best people off. His father conveniently decided to retire and sell the business to a competetor before that went on too long and the last I heard his son was still living at home trying to get his twitch streams to take off. He's not a dumb person. He probably would have done better with more structure.

> failure is ultimately with the parents

Do you view a lack of time to homeschool as a parental failure? I know single parents working multiple jobs to scrape by.

> moved, reconfigured our whole house, changed jobs, etc to ensure our kids got what they needed

How would your comment go if you’d been unable to do any of this?

Reminds me of all the middle class knowlege workers who at peak covid smugly proclaimed that everyone should just "work from home", I'm doing it and I am very important so why isnt everyone else.

Turns out the supermarket shelves arent at home and someone needs to deliver the toilet paper so you can panic buy your 200th roll that week.

First, I don’t think anyone should be a single parent. Find a new mate asap, if you can’t there’s something deeper there. If not for you, for your children.

That said, I get it. That’s a situation where you need support and help. I also don’t view it as a “failure”, there are optimal and suboptimal situations. If you didn’t have children in a marriage and / or you divorced your spouse; that’s suboptimal and created by the parents (ie a failure). In situations where the spouse dies, society supporting them is necessary. It also isn’t a failure in the sense of any control. Ultimately though, it’s still the parents job. You can’t just ignore the responsibility, you may also not do as well as possible, even if it’s out of your control. It’s unfortunate, but life.

To be fair, the kids who are really doing poorly, are the ones who don't have stable homes.

Obviously if you have the means to homeschool, you have stability.

I didn't have a stable home, and no matter how many stupid teachers told me I could still do well in school, just doesn't happen.

I've been making six figures for the last 7 years though so that counts for something

> Frankly, I’m surprised people think the idea of putting “kids the same age” together will ever result in a more “normal” or better experience for kids.

I call it age segregation.

Which one of you gave up a career to do this?

FWIW, I was home-taught up till 16. In my experience, there are a lot of pluses and negatives to consider, for the long-term health, wealth, and happiness of homeschooled kids (especially for continuing homeschooling for that logo). In my opinion, you need at least some reference to the current acceptable social and academic standards (for a variety of reasons, I had neither).

> Which one of you gave up a career to do this?

Neither. I moved to a remote job in a different time zone that worked odd hours. My wife was able to move her hours to weekends and opposite hours.

My kids are in a lot of different activities in the community and we have friends and family we see regularly. Getting to know the new ugh it’s as well is always good.

I can definitely see people doing this poorly. And my wife and I definitely missed stuff. But you learn. The public school I grew up in (wife attended the same one) was one of the worst in the state. Fights, stabbings, had to go through metal detectors, kids would yell all day in the classroom. We had one teacher arrested who was a pedophile and the kids all knew it for years but no one cared until after we left. That kind of school. Trust me, schools can be far worse than home. It really depends on each situation. That said, parents who care and are responsible are really the most important imo for any situation.

> Homeschooled children, which indicates to me the failure is ultimately with the parents.

> I’m way more aware of the parents who take their responsibility seriously

It’s hilarious how you think upheaving your entire life to homeschool your children is so easy and parents have failed if they don’t do so. It’s incredibly expensive and not scalable in any shape or form. This is why actual schools exist.

Oh, so like everything else, just be rich. Got it bro.

Most of the homeschool families near me make like $40k a year. You just have to decide what’s important to you.

If it’s that cheap, why did you need to upheave your life to achieve it? Would love to see a cost breakdown of homeschooling.

Because you have to do it? So you have to make time, it’s not something you pay for besides opportunity cost. I probably paid $500 total for supplies

What do you mean you don’t pay for homeschooling?

Are you claiming that its not necessary to:

- hire a tutor/teacher

- buy important supplies like textbooks/sports/music/etc

- fund learning and recreational trips

Reading between the lines of your umpteen confusing comments in this thread, are you claiming that your partner gave up their paid job to tutor your kids for “free”? Is that the “opportunity cost”?

Homeschooled children have always had a reputation for being quite a bit “off” socially(no offense I come from a strange situation too).

Now all of these children will be on that level, only with overworked parents who never wanted to homeschool in the first place.

I was homeschooled. It definitely isn't for everyone. I mean it was basically a full-time job for my mom.

We had a group that we sometimes did events with, so I have more than a couple friends who were too. A few homeschooled acquaintances are kind of weirdos. But most of the folks from my homeschool friend group are totally normal. And a couple have really sparkling personalities -- I think they actually ended up with abnormally good social skills by hanging around with adults during their childhood, and not engaging in the weird social pressure cooker of highschool.

I suspect the reputation comes from the outliers -- most people don't know I was homeschooled until I tell them. If you could figure it out on your own, it would have to be the case that I was a real weirdo.

> Homeschooled children have always had a reputation for being quite a bit “off” socially

This is often by design. People homeschool a lot of the time because they don't want their children to pick up many parts of mainstream culture, or be subjected to the things that shape it.

There's a common joke in the homeschooling world: "I was worried my child wasn't getting the socialization of public schools, so I beat him up and stole his lunch money".

<<Now all of these children will be on that level, only with overworked parents who never wanted to homeschool in the first place.

I think this is the relevant quote. Homeschooling parents already self-selected as it were. It is a little bit like Linux. You get in knowing it will require some level of effort. People who choose Windows have no time to devote to that kind of learning. I would not feel comfortable mandating Linux for everyone. Some people are just not ready for responsibility.

I was not homeschooled, but my grammar school experience was borderline horrible and did not improve until private HS ( mostly because my peers were all, well, smarter than me ).

I think you have a point, but it goes back to the question about parents' responsibility and their failures as parents. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad, but we need to be able to qualify results somehow.

Oh I agree. That said, I know the families who kept their kids in school have crazy other issues in our area. Many had delayed speech by a year and what not.

Really not great options, we just did the best we could with what we had. It turned out well and I suggested it to others (if you can, being key). If you can also implies that you want to do it.

>its your fault nananana

simply no, when the government makes it so you need 2 and a half parents working full time to be able to afford a paycheck to paycheck living IT's CLEARLY NOT OUR FAULT!