Comment by quacked | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quacked | Hacker News Reader

It's so strange that every year that online content gets more addicting and exciting, school gets more and more boring and standardized. When I was in high school, the big issue du jour (this was between 2005-2015) was that all of the elective classes at my high school (European Literature, History of the Bible, Advanced Creative Writing, etc.) were going to be paved to make way for English 9-12.

I've talked to some high schoolers that go to the same school recently and it's nothing like when I went. All of the exterior doors are now locked with passcodes, everyone is very closely surveilled, most of the exciting electives have been cut or are on the chopping block, and if you're late to class the teacher is supposed to lock you out and you have to report back to the office.

I can hardly blame kids for taking every spare second to look at their phones. What a nightmare. I'm expecting my first child soon and I'm definitely not sending them to full-time school.

When I was in high school, 1996-1999 (and 1999-2002 I suppose? I'm never sure when "high school" ends in English-speaking places) the only elective class was Latin, exterior doors were closed and guarded and when you were late the teachers often sent you to the office. In some especially boring classes with boring teachers, some kids would read books (not school books). It got progressively more free towards the later years (not because of policy changes, older pupils were just less supervised).

I never really enjoyed school or authority after primary school, but I certainly wouldn't call it a nightmare. It was quite fine and I learnt things that I found interesting then, and others that I find useful now. I'm not sure having the exit doors open during class would have improved anything.

Anyway, I just wanted to give my experience because even though we have probably experienced high school in different countries, in my experience it has not gotten more boring than it used to be. And in the country where I live, it's also very different from how it was in mine when I was a kid.

Counter-anecdote: When I was at school, we had an aging computer lab, an IT teacher who was learning the material about 1 lesson ahead of us from the other IT teacher, an IT course that consisted of MS Access, and (non-actionscript) Flash. The only really creative subjects that could be taken were Design Technology and Art.

These days that same school has a full-on photography studio, modern computers, an actual computing course, multiple extra language courses, bigger and significantly better equipped classrooms all around. Just better in every conceivable way.

And they're no more surveilled than we were.

In almost all cases, home-schooled kids are significantly worse-off. Both in terms of attainment and social development. You are not going to be an exception to that.

send them to school so they can be with their peers, I implore you

Why? Schools seem to produce very mixed results. For example school shooters are kids who were sent to school so they could be with their peers.

There are other ways to socialize that don't involve being a cog in the machine for half their waking day. Extracurriculars can fill that same need: boy scouts, sports teams, music lessons, whatever the kid's into.

Lol, my good friend was homeschooled and is successful and contrary to stereotypes a social-butterfly. Not sure where you get this "implore you" from.

So they can be socialized by their unsocialized peers? That’s a profoundly unnatural and destructive thing to do. Human children are supposed to be raised in mixed-age setting where they can learn from older children and young adults, under the supervision of not only parents and teachers but a spectrum of adults of different ages.

At least in the recent past Americans had large families and civic organizations like churches to expose children to normal social structures. Today we are losing even those, and age-segregated schooling is the dominant mode of socialization for children.

> Human children are supposed to be raised in mixed-age setting

Ah, right. The way they are designed.

Yes, we are better adapted to some conditions than to others. This is a result of a process known as biological evolution.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Gave me a lot to think about. You're right about the current school system being contrived.

Like you say though, there's no real alternative. I wish there was something else with widespread adoption.

Lots to think about here.

Don't know if you're still following this thread, but I agree with the responder that the civic structures of society are increasingly replaced by schooling and subscription-based hobbies. I think there are many opportunities to socialize kids without school, but they're not quite as ubiquitous--and they won't become common until lots of people are doing them, like I plan to.

Also, speaking delicately, a lot of poorly-socialized homeschooled children have poorly-socialized parents, and were doomed from the start. I am gregarious and involved in many different social circles (athletics, music, engineering, etc.) and should be able to expose my kids pretty thoroughly to them.

Many home school kids are taught in co-ops, so the kids are mixing and socialising with other kids. Not every class is suited to being home schooled (some arts and sports come to mind) so for those classes you employ the services of local schools for those explicit requirements so the kids are socialising in those environments too except you are cherry picking the services/classes you want.

Home schooling isn’t for everyone and not everyone has the means (lots of ferrying around kids between activities as well as the time needed to educate, basically it’s a unpaid full time job and many families require those hours spent generating an income to survive) but the image of home schooled kids being unsocialised is pretty much a myth.

They will have peers outside of a seemingly prison like environment, it has never been easier to home school.

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