Hacker News Reader

Comment by thetrendycyborg | Hacker News Reader

Homeschool. Then you don't have to deal with group dynamics like that. If you care about your children's education and don't trust teachers then do it yourself.

View on HN

Homeschooling can be a great option but it's not feasible for everyone, esp. those without the time and/or resources to be able to do homeschooling. It's still important to look at public education critically to look for ways of improvement since there are many that rely on public education as one of the, if not the only, available source of group education in their communities.

Definitely agreed. The public education system needs a cold hard look and it needs to be overhauled. We haven't really changed it since its inception, and it's just assumed that it works.

But its core assumptions are being proven false. A one-size-fits-all education is failing most of our students, the students who are slower and can't catch up, and the students who are faster and are held down.

Or you could give it more money and call it a day.

The vast majority of people who homeschool bring in less than a typical salary for a good developer. It's not about feasibility for the HN crowd, it's about willingness to prioritize.

Most families today choose a dual income over the reduced childcare and educational costs and greater control over the education of their children. It's a trade-off few people consider. Income is not the only aspect of this.

Learning about group dynamics and social situations is probably the most important part of middle/high school, and more often then not homeschooled kids are at a disadvantage in these situations when they finish school then when compared to non-homeschooled kids.

This isn't always the case, and social awkwardness can go away after x amount of time, but I know that I am glad I wasn't homeschooled despite the occasional bad experiences at high school. Knowing how to deal with people face to face is an extremely important skill.

Homeschooling is not solitary confinement.

As a commenter in the original article pointed out, homeschooling is a work around, not a solution.

As a home-schooled kid myself, I would suggest thinking very long and hard about all options and long-term goals before doing it. There are positives and negatives to everything of course, but the +'s and -'s of home-schooling can be very far reaching and long-term. You can't just exit the plan and move on without consequence.

It's not a workaround. A workaround wouldn't solve the original problem: getting an education. Homeschooling does that.

"It's not a solution, it's a workaround" is used when one does not wish to allow solutions that reject the current system, in this case education by the state.

That's a solution for you, but the education system would remain broken for everyone else. That is bad for the country as a whole. Thus, home-schooling your child is a work-around to the bad state of education, but the solution for all children is to fix education.

You assume that education for most must be done by the state. Yes, what I stated is a solution, and it does work around the state education problem. I admit the possibility that the state education system can be fixed, but I also admit the probability that it won't be in my lifetime.

If you have a problem, and you can use a different infrastructure to avoid it at an acceptable cost, it makes sense to use it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com