It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren’t a lack of public school horror stories…
You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you'll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you'll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bunch of religious organizations that homeschooled most of their children with educations that I'd consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap/uneducated labor they could abuse.
Obviously there’s a lot of middle ground between those two extremes, and the circumstances today don’t exactly match the circumstances of the mid-19th century, which is roughly when modern public schools started appearing in the US (based on the “Prussian model”).
There are a lot of different objectives that public schooling sets out to achieve. It can be too easy to focus on narrow sets of metrics like test scores, or collect a bunch of anecdotes about bad experiences in public schools (or bad experiences in homeschooling). IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead.
Imagine your school district has banned teaching algebra to 8th graders, for reasons of equity. You're upset at this, since you have a child about to attend 8th grade. You go to a school board meeting, express yourself, and are at best ignored or more likely called names. What, from the perspective of a parent with a child who needs an education, do you then do? Fixing the system would be nice and all, but how do you do that before your kid becomes an adult, let alone make up for all the damage public schooling has been doing in the meantime?
Both suggestions require extra time, while still keeping your child "within the system" through attending school and (presumably?) receiving a decent-enough education in other non-math subjects. If the malaise extends to (many) other subjects, then I could see how home schooling becomes a more attractive option.
...so now after your child spends hours every day at school, they have to spend yet more hours learning what they should have learned in school.
You can see why so many parents decide that for more effort, they can save their child a lot of wasted time, effort, resentment, and bad influences. Particularly families where at least one parent can stay at home (and these days, working from home makes that so much easier once kids are old enough to learn by themselves).
This makes the comparison very hard, since one side is has all of its successes and failures critiqued in public, and the other side is only ever talked about with anecdotal data.
Personally I believe there should be some sort of periodic standardized test for homeschooled kids too. Even if it's not for "passing" a grade, so we know in which level of learning they are compared to everyone else.
If we can't compare them, how can we evaluate its merits and flaws?
For the SATs, homeschooled students score ~75 points higher than public school students. We can draw only limited conclusions from that, though. People self select into taking the SATs. And there's the the bigger issue of demographics: given the demographics of homeschoolers who take the SAT, you'd expect them to outperform anyway. Regardless, more data is better.
I would say that "in some states" is the key here. A lot can change depending on the state.
Which has essentially the same incentives and results that the NRA does -- cater to the craziest of your constituents, fan outrage, then push the most extreme views (to protect everyone).
As a result, HSLDA essentially says that no child abuse or sexual assault exists in the home schooling communities, because it's the only way to justify their position that zero regulation is the only appropriate amount of regulation.
Reality, of course, has a non-zero rate of abuse (which the HSLDA then does their best to hide). Warning, pretty terrible stuff: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2013/05/hslda-...
But it's psychological outcomes and averages, so I'd take any study with a grain of salt. It does match my experience having home-schooled friends growing up, it's just so much more efficient to be learning at one's own pace than that of the slowest kid out of 30.
Compared to public schools, where most kids are going to take some kind of achievement test. Whether it be the SAT, ACT, or state-level grade advancement test.
Also, the demographics are pretty wonky, as they note:
- 94% white
- 97.2% two-parent marriages
- 93.8% Christian mother (no info on other parent?)
- 2-3x general pop's attainment of 4 year degree or higher
- ~2x likelihood to be in the highest income brackets (50k+)
- Essentially no home schooling families in the lowest income bracket (0.8% vs 12.6% of all families with children)I honestly think social sciences aren't all that amenable to the scientific method - too hard to control all variables - and I'm sure someone could cherry pick studies to say the opposite of what I'm posting here. But, what else can we do?
It's a miracle even drug development on the harder science side works as well as it does.
Thanks! I'll give this one a read later.
Ostensibly education is why the schools exist. If they're not going to do that, let's at least let the kids go play in the park or something. They'd probably get better socialization that way anyway.
Does anyone actually believe this? It would be more than naive to do so. On r/teachers just the other day, I was reading about one of them complaining that all they really are, are baby-sitters so they parents can work dayshift. Even they know what they're for.
But if everyone were to suddenly be willing to speak this truth aloud, it'd be too absurd to continue. People are shamed and guilted into paying the taxes for education. No one could be shamed or guilted into paying for someone else's teenager daycare.
> The math situation is a clear signal that school administration/education departments do not prioritize education, and in fact find it unfair that some students actually manage to learn something, and want to stop that.
I was in first grade in 1980 (1981?). It was like this for me the entire run of it. Wanting to learn more, hungry for it, with them rationing what I could learn to tiny little crumbs a few times throughout the school year. Studies were paced out for the dumbest kid in class. I think I made it to my sophomore year of highschool before I gave up, and when I did, that was my fault too.
It was bad even then, and at least back then they were still pretending that it was about education.
GP clearly believes it, since they wrote this. I believe it too, and I think this is a mainstream belief, not a "more than naive" one. Your one anecdote based on a Reddit rant (and, I assume, personal bias) is not nearly convincing enough to change my mind.
My anecdote, such as it is, is hardly uncommon. It is in fact, nearly a cliche at this point, or a stereotype. I sincerely doubt that me having communicated it to you is your first encounter with the idea.
As to your mind, I don't wish to change it. I am content with you remaining naive. My own children receive advantage from this. Please continue to screw up the public education system for decades, my entire lineage can only prosper the longer this continues.
So we're clear, when a teacher complains about being daycare, what they mean is they're:
- an educator
- an administrative assistant
- daycare
And so you complain about the unreasonable things, but don't mention the reasonable one... because it's literally the job.
Taking kvetching about ancillary mandates to mean that education isn't happening or isn't still the primary job is weird.
When someone disputes this, what they really mean is that they are uncomfortable with the realization that it is daycare, that it hurts them to consider that something so profoundly part of their status quo is rotten to the core, and it makes their own lives seem dishonest. They would rather than misperception that education still occurs to persist unchallenged.
> because it's literally the job.
Hasn't been, for years. It's not improving/reverting. You're willfully blind to it.
> or isn't still the primary job is weird.
Please don't mistake me. I'm not claiming that education has been secondary to other concerns. I'm saying that it doesn't happen at any significant rate at all, isn't in anyone's list of priorities, and that when it does happen it is accidental and unrepeatable.
Or, they disagree, and they have their own thoughts.
> Please don't mistake me. I'm not claiming that education has been secondary to other concerns. I'm saying that it doesn't happen at any significant rate at all, isn't in anyone's list of priorities, and that when it does happen it is accidental and unrepeatable.
As someone with two parents, multiple family members, and past partners in the profession of education, early childhood and other... we will have to agree to disagree.
I'm sure your opinions are formed from your own experiences.
Mine disagree.
Hehe, this is simply not true. Where did this conspiracy theory come from, and why do you think this poorly of people who are spending their time trying to help kids despite low pay and a constant barrage of harsh critical opinions from parents, law-makers, and hordes of armchair critics on the internet?
You’re making wild assumptions and using the worst possible motivation to build a straw man criticism. If you can do better, maybe you should get involved or consider being a school administrator?
I don’t like it when there is less support for the motivated students, and it happened to me in high school. But you are aware the situation we’re discussing is due to needing to educate 100% of the student body up to a minimum standard, right? Public schools are almost always underfunded and short-staffed. Nobody’s trying to actively prevent the smart kids from learning, they’re trying to avoid using all their resources teaching the kids that don’t need it as badly from leaving the larger group of kids who’s families have less money completely behind. Your comment is completely ignoring what happens to the students who are behind in math already, and how to get them enough help.
What is always true is that what’s best for the group isn’t necessarily best for the individual. In this case, you’re suggesting the opposite of prioritizing education for all, and thus you’re not talking about prioritizing education, you’re talking about prioritizing resources toward students that already meet the minimum standards. Schools, teachers, and administrators are trying to prioritize education for all, and they have an explicit duty to get every last kid up to basic minimum standards. If they don’t meet those goals of getting the bottom half of their classes passing, they could lose their jobs and they would be failing to prioritize education for all.
This is false. Why else ban teaching algebra district-wide to 8th graders? The explicit justification is that it helps some students get too far ahead of other students and causes inequitable access to take calculus classes later on, which is considered a bad thing.
Teachers even complain if you help your child accelerate through the textbook for the year.
If a state did the same thing with LGBT topics or evolution, I suspect you'd take no issue with calling it a ban.
Why are so many that hate public schools so focused on these two things? I don't think there's an evolution class, but it would be covered in biology.
They do want those things banned in schools and since they can't get them banned have rage quit the system.
Hahaha you mean the topics that are actually getting banned in states like Florida and Kentucky?
> giving directives that schools are not to devote any resources to teaching 8th grade algebra is in every sense equivalent to “banning teaching algebra”
Again, please provide some specific examples of this happening. Are you getting all worked up over something that is mostly made up or taken completely out of context? No way to know unless you cite the actual problem and demonstrate the magnitude of the problem.
Of course there absolutely is a huge difference between not having the resources for a class and banning it by law, and you know it. You can argue the outcomes might be equivalent, if you want, but it undermines your own argument to exaggerate.
I can't speak to local school board politics outside of SFUSD, but here's a particular example:
https://www.sfexaminer.com/forum/put-algebra-1-back-in-eight...
Opinion piece, but substantive.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfusd-algebra-ma...
A more recent piece.
Googling it I can see that SFUSD is reconsidering https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/...
> The question is not if we can increase acceleration options, but how we can meet that need equitably and while upholding our SFUSD values
Says it all. They have the resources, but still don't want to do it because outcomes will (obviously) diverge.
The California proposal for mathematics education got a lot of play on HN over the last several months, e.g.:
Here you go: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/14/metro/cambridge-schoo...
I'm sure you'll move the goalposts and say it doesn't count.
Banning advanced math is just another instance of this. A slower paced class for lower performing students would actually help them. Bringing down advanced students only serves to make the school look more equitable.
> A slower paced class for lower performing students would actually help them.
Agreed, bingo! If you don’t have the resources to cater to people who are ahead, the only choice to help those who need help is to lower the bar.
The thing about tracking is that it doesn't require more resources. If you have 6 classes in a year, you can put e.g. the top 17% together, and they can move at a faster pace than the bottom 17%. Or you can let kids take classes with mixed ages. Gifted kids don't need more resources. Literally you could have them go sit in the library and do what they want and they'd probably learn more than sitting in a class where they're forced to pay attention to something they've already mastered. When I was in calculus I was bored enough that I would also read my uncle's discrete math book that he let me borrow, but most teachers don't like when you ignore them, and when you're in a class with the lower end of the aptitude curve, there's negative peer pressure around being a nerd.
Hehe of course it does. You’re talking about more curriculums, more book and material acquisition, more teachers with more training, etc. And maybe lots of schools don’t have 6 different math classes.
> Gifted kids don’t need more resources.
Agreed! That’s maybe why some schools are focusing on the kids who do need more resources?
In fairness to your argument, I think “gifted” kids do need support though, it’s just that they are statistically better at either having it given to them outside of school, or of finding it on their own. What’s left is just a rather weak argument about not letting them get bored. Solving boredom should take a back seat to solving education for the less fortunate, IMO.
> What’s left is just a rather weak argument about not letting them get bored. Solving boredom should take a back seat to solving education for the less fortunate, IMO.
Okay, then let the advanced kids go sit in the library, go outside and play, or go home. Making them sit in class is, if anything, going to make them anti-social and create resentment toward the "dumb" kids. I don't think torturing a kid making them sit bored out of their mind among people they don't like for 15% of their life for no reason is a "weak" thing to argue against.
But the objection is "inequity". Surely this extra effort creates more inequity?
I always laugh at the people insist it's best to let their kids be guinea pigs while public school systems which aren't even utilized but it's most vocal advocates for their own children are on a multi decade track of "figuring it out".
The most likely place someone is to experience violence in their lifetime is in a school, sexual abuse and assault rates are higher than in the Catholic Church or BSA by population. You can't be mad at people for opting out while the rest of the advocates figure it out for the 5th decade of objective decline and empty promises when problems they've experienced when they were in school haven't even been addressed or have gotten worse. They may be voting for the right people and are active advocates for better education but their kids are in immediate need of a better education.
Your "dogwhistle" is itself a dogwhistle (your obvious implication being "only a racist Trumptard could support allowing students to take algebra in 8th grade"). Ironic, in that the people defending the decision implicitly believe that non-white people are less capable of learning algebra than white people. Which itself is stupid, from a historical point of view. Who, after all, first formulated algebra?
Here's my lived experience: algebra in 7th grade, black boy. I'd have been better off taking it later, and making it up with summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses /certs in between algebra, algebra ii, calc, and diff eq/calc ii in high school. If that meant my classmates could have a better chance of keeping up, all the better; being in the historically lily-white gifted track at my magnet high school didn't do much in the way of convincing my teachers not to give up on me at the first sign of weakness. Yet another nuance you either miss or refuse to acknowledge.
The supplementary courses were provided by the school system, by the way. I would have taken them, but I was working or otherwise predisposed. If you really cared, you'd be advocating for the same (especially since a large portion of the general failure to attain math competency in America is due to our excessively long summer breaks).
That's a bit of an understatement. I'm not great at history, but my understanding is that the mid-19th century was a little lacking in videoconferencing software, educated people with the resources to be on the other end of that video link, population density to have enough other like-minded kids within driving... uh, horse-riding range, up to date books, parents who weren't gone to the factories or fields during the day, etc.
> There are a lot of different objectives that public schooling sets out to achieve.
Agreed. There is a smaller set of objectives that they actually do achieve.
> IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead.
I would assert that it's impossible to fix this broken system, and I can cite a lot of past history. I would also assert that replacing it entirely with homeschooling (which is not a single thing, but whatever) is also a guaranteed path to failure. The only hope I see is for exploration to be possible, and for people in the different situations to learn from each other. The public school institutions do try to experiment, but are incredibly restricted in all sorts of ways. Homeschoolers have the training wheels off and are much more free to crash straight into the bushes or off a cliff, but in practice plenty don't and plenty come up with a lot of different ways of doing things, some of them that seem to be working quite well in practice — academically, socially, etc.
I agree that sucking resources out of public schools to benefit the privileged few is very troubling and worrisome. But so is the current state and trajectory of public schooling, and holding everyone back may be short term fair but long term disastrous.
We're homeschooling one of our kids (both until recently, when one went to a public charter high school). We've seen the institutional effects firsthand. Simple example: we found excellent math resources, but they weren't "A-G" accredited for University of California entrance requirements. Which gave us pause, since we wanted to leave that option open. We ended up going through a A-G accredited program, the best of what we could identify, for a semester. It was crap: rote memorization of algorithms exactly matching to the state standards, lots of repetitive exercises, minimally useful feedback from teachers and their assistants. My son passed all of their tests and got an A+ grade, and is now a semester behind in math because none of that stuck in a way that is useful for building on. It was a waste of time. We gave up on it and the whole accredited path, and went back to an online program that is far more conceptual, rigorous, and just plain effective. (His earlier public school experience was somewhere in the middle, Again he did quite well there according to the state tests.)
My guess is that it's yet another form of enshittification: A-G accreditation is very valuable, but once you get it there's no profit in increasing quality, only in growing your student base. There aren't enough accredited places to provide any competition on quality, especially when there's so much disagreement about what "quality" is in the first place, and as usual any useful definition ends up being expensive. Non-accredited places have to compete on quality.
(For anyone who finds value in my personal opinions: Silicon Valley High School math bad, Art of Problem Solving math good.)
"Mistakes of this size are never made innocently." ~Ayn Rand
Inequality of education is a symptom of a self reinforcing broken economic system.
Meanwhile, if I can provide a superior education and social experience for my children, Im glad to have the opportunity to do so. I’ve seen bad outcomes and good ones from homeschooling, and in my particular case I am absolutely delighted with the results (now that my children are adults)
But to achieve that my wife and I invested our entire lives, uprooting ourselves and living experiences with our children as part of their education, sailing around on a boat we rebuilt and going to local schools in other languages as their cultural preparation. It was a bit hellish for my wife and I but the 6 years we invested in that paid unbelievable dividends for our children. Most people can’t or won’t do that.
We weren’t (financially) rich, but I have always prioritized my freedom over material wealth, and you can do amazing things on a modest (60k/year was our passive income from contracting at that time) budget if you have complete control of your time.
I suspect that the education kids get at the worst 20% of public schools in the country is still way better than the worst 20% of homeschoolers.
I also would totally believe that the education kids get at the top 20% of homeschools is better than the average public school.
Public schools are far from perfect, but there are minimum standards and there are resources at the state and federal level to try to improve schools that aren't meeting those standards.
My problem with homeschools is that in most states, there aren't any standards being enforced. If homeschools had surprise inspections and biannual state-run testing, I'd be fine with it.
It's kind of the democracy versus authoritarianism debate. Authoritarians typically look really good on paper because they can conceal their mistakes, while the democracy bears all to the populace. And yea, there are some benevolent dictatorships with great outcomes, but I don't think that a single one of the homeschoolers would think that would be a valid point because it's also the exception.
> homeschooling has horrific and hidden outcomes
Please tell me more, as a homeschooled and successful software engineer and family guy I'm interested. Several people in my family are or have been homeschooled. I could tell you where they're at right now but I've bragged enough with myself already.
Yes, there can be horrific and hidden outcomes with homeschooling. Also with public education. Also with woodworking. Or having kids. Or cooking.
It's about how you do something, and why you do it.
Sorry for being so condescending, but your statements are offensive in their absurdity.
> Please tell me more
https://www.hsinvisiblechildren.org/fatalities/
The root issue is that the homeschooling community, in their general distrust and suspicion of government authority has pushed hard for zero oversight and regulation (mostly through the HSLDA).
In most states, they've been able to achieve that.
And as potentially valid of a goal as avoiding oversight by someone you don't trust might be, it has willingly created a void.
A void that the homeschooling community itself doesn't police.
Consequently, when you do have the worst of the worst home outcomes... there's no one to turn to. And HSLDA even has specific playbooks to help parents avoid CPS intervention.
These cases are then buried to the extent possible (lobbying, media removal requests) because their very existence threatens the overall goal.
What are a few broken eggs to make an omelette, though?
This is horrific.
> What are a few broken eggs to make an omelette, though?
I hope my comments don't suggest that this is the perspective of my thinking.
However I think we should make an effort of separating extreme cases from the norm. It is unjust to judge homeschooling as a concept by these very unfortunate fringe cases, when there's heaps of proven success cases on the other side, furthermore taking into account that abuse also happens despite kids going to public or even private schools.
And also taking into account that the protection laws that are so mentioned here have also been often abused by the government against innocent and honest people and their families.
Most of this stuff is driven by religion and politics.
As so is the backlash. I get the impression that the emotional foundation to many of the objections to homeschooling is the idea that some kids will get a (home-schooled) education that doesn't conform to the commenter's politics or values. School has long been a mechanism for a dominant group to impose its politics and values on other people's kids. Public schools are just a milder form of that than Indian residential boarding schools or Chinese boarding preschools (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/china-tibet-board...), but they still perform the same function.
Homeschooling provides an escape from those functions (and other problems), and that's one I'd certainly want available to myself. I can imagine how nightmarish it'd be to be forced to send my kids to one of those Chinese boarding schools.
Deficits of empathy like those that would deny that escape (and the attendant hypocrisy) are getting really grating to me, even in people I more or less agree with.
IMO, private religious schools with appropriate regulation (ie not some indoctrination academy) are a great thing, and I think supporting families in some way to avail themselves of them is a good compromise.
As I stated elsewhere here, my kids went to catholic schools and did great. I’m not approaching this as a “thou shalt public school” perspective. I also coached baseball to age 15, and I can tell you that kids benefit from someone who isn’t mom or dad instructing them.
Is that "typical"?
It's a leap to assume that it's "typical" that homeschooling parents incompetent and incapable of educating their children. If anything, I'd assume the extra attention and emotional investment that's possible could make up for a lack of a educational credentials.
It's also a leap that the public schools would do better. It's also a common theme here that a motivation for homeschooling lack of academic rigor or outright failure of the public schools. I could see homeschooling as the only realistic option for a parent who lives in a failing school district (which are depressingly common) but is not wealthy enough to afford private school tuition (and has no access to vouchers).
And I'm not really biased here: I send my kids to public school.
These don't need to be exceptional, but they do probably need to be above-average to do a decent job, and obviously time and wealth are entangled (no time if have to work two jobs).
You literally do not know what you're talking about. Go read the article I linked, which you clearly did not bother to do.
Yesterday, there was a teach complaining that they weren't allowed to flunk students who did not show up for class. For middle school. They weren't allowed to flunk students who scored 0% on tests, because they would sit at the back of class and play on smartphones the entire time, or disruptively talk to other students.
When they would demand from administration some kind of answer, they'd be told they weren't doing enough to engage the students.
You claim there are minimum standards, and technically that's true... any of us could look those standards up on the internet in only a moment, those standards are ignored for some incredibly large fraction of public schools.
> If homeschools had surprise inspections and biannual state-run testing, I'd be fine with it.
The great thing is, I don't have to put up with you being fine with how my wife and I teach our children. We don't have to answer to you.
I'm not just a contrarian here. You are fine with what the public schools are doing, right now. Your oversight, such as it is, doesn't seem to be effective at doing any of the things that I could want. It does lead me to be suspicious about what it is that you want.
If an argument is based on a single specific case, then an extreme argument can be constructed about anything.
E.g. public school teachers duct taping students to desks
E.g. home schooling parents sexually abusing their children
These things happen at non-zero rates, but neither are representative of the general population.
Letting parents opt out of public schools means that the most committed abusers get to sidestep this safety valve.
Any distraction from a school's primary mission to educate disparately impacts the people who need it most.
School's primary mission is to serve the needs of a societies children.
Inactive children don't learn as well as active children (especially boys). Hungry children don't learn as well as feed children. Abused children don't thrive.
I'm deeply curious why you don't want public school children feed or protected from abuse.
My children are more important to me than, well... just about anything. Including your children or anyone else's.
If other people are so subhuman as to harm their own children, then that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make so that my children aren't abused by the public school system, aren't turned into idiots by the public school system, and aren't indoctrinated by the public school system.
Do you think that when there's a string of tweenage suicides, that the contagion didn't spread via public schools? Am I supposed to put my kids at risk of that, just so you can pretend you'll catch the 1-in-10,000 of horrific abuse, which CPS will just ignore anyway?
You offer a bad bargain. I pay everything and get nothing. Fortunately (and I mean this in a way that the words just can't do it justice... "fortune" of the sort like out of Greek mythology where the gods have smiled upon me and bestowed every blessing and boon) I don't have to take that deal.
Primary schooling's mission is to educate children about capabilities to provide for themselves and those in there care as well as operate as how to perform and behave as productive members of society. Ancillary benefits are nice, but not required, to achieve that mission, thus should only be included in the strategy to the point that they support the overall mission.
So kids learn better when both active and not hungry? Yep, we know this, and thus justifies having lunch, cafeterias, gyms, and PE class. (We should have more funding for these things).
So kids learn better when not abused? Yep, we know this, and thus schools are typically required reporters. (And thank goodness they are -- we should fund more training on these things).
What you missed in my prior comment was that the argument wasn't against any of these outcomes. It was bemoaning that society requires these ancillary benefits in schools in order for society to continue operating at all, not that it's nice that schools are available as resources to provide what should be a child's primary caregiver's responsibilities.
Thus my comment. Schools shouldn't have to be police, meal kitchens, exercise facility, or child care in order for society to function. But they too often are. It's a failure of policy to which no one holds others to account. And insisting or expecting that schools provide these as primary responsibilities does harm to the students to whom need these in their lives, but for the school would not have them.
Help the marginal student? Yes, absolutely, we should fund.
Provide long term assistance (disguised welfare) through the schools? Not appropriate, a full change in situation is warranted for basic needs to be met for children by their caregivers.
Consider this. During the pandemic, we could have conscripted all school teachers in the first few weeks to deliver food to everyone within their school operating areas. A ready, idle workforce to solve one of the fundamental problems, allowing virtually everyone but teachers to remain locked down while focusing use of protective gear during its limited availability. Why didn't we rely on the schooling workforce to deliver food during lockdown? Most of the answers I can see apply to long term welfare and social safety net assistance being provided through schools as well -- training, safety, and other elements that simply aren't appropriate to expect of educators.
You said:
> Completely disagree. [...] Any distraction from a school's primary mission to educate disparately impacts the people who need it most.
This response makes it sound like you don't "Completely disagree." after all.
I've explained my disagreement sufficiently. Have a good day.
but even if that's what the author meant, what's wrong with education being a necessary support for other goals?
it's always quite hard to identify tangible skills that traditional education actually teaches, and explain why those are important to the real lives of graduates. the average person needs, day-to-day, pretty minimal R,W&A skills.
Absolutely insane take.
This is a street that goes both ways. I had parents who were caring, nurturing, and not even remotely abusive. The other children at my public school were physically and emotionally merciless, and the school didn't give a shit. When I started standing up to my bullies and fighting back, I was the one who got in trouble, not them.
In my n=1 data set and lived experience, public schools are the evil, twisted abuse enablers, not the parents.
And you don't need n=1, this is extremely common.
Not sure which is worse.
I have an education thanks to my family and despite public education. I was partially homeschooled. It was my family who helped me go through high-school, not the other way around. For the high-school I went to, I could have (and almost did at one point) ended up being dead, for all they cared.
I won't deny there's abuse and cases in which public institutions have helped and saved people, but by assuming that this is the norm you completely overshot it here with your absolutism.
I disagree with your risk assessment, though. Most kids who are abused are most likely to be abused by a parent, not a stranger. (source: https://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/nationa...)
Homeschool requirements vary wildly by state, and even in states with more requirements like testing, kids slip through the cracks. I was never required to take a standardize test by either of the states I lived in (Washington and Oregon). I knew a homeschool girl my age (12) who could not read. Her 16 year old brother could read, but could barely do math. They had no learning disabilities, their mom just wanted the welfare paycheck for them and otherwise ignored them. She already had a 5 year old and a newborn as well to keep the gravy train coming.
I had very little access to mandated reporters, and again nothing enforced by law. Those I did have access to, like my annual visit to my doctor, my mother insisted in sitting in the exam room with me. The doctors made no effort to remove her (they asked me in front of her if I was comfortable with her staying. Of course I said yes, I would have been severely punished at home if I admitted I wanted her to leave.)
Safety rules are not made with the 99% of good people in mind, but to catch the 1% of bad actors. Homeschooling is attractive to good parents because they can improve the outcomes for their children. It is also attractive to bad, abusive parents because it removes children from any external oversight and support structures outside their abuser's control.
I am not trying to downplay any risks here, and even less disregard very unfortunate situations and cases that for sure happen more often than they should.
However I can't see how this becomes as absolute as the parent comment is suggesting, in which by default it is assumed that parents are nefarious agents and public school is the saviour.
Which brings me to:
> Safety rules are not made with the 99% of good people in mind, but to catch the 1% of bad actors.
The risk in accepting this, as it happens so often in society, is ending up having to downgrade everyone to the worst case scenario, and working from that.
> The risk in accepting this, as it happens so often in society, is ending up having to downgrade everyone to the worst case scenario, and working from that.
I think most folks would be fine with homeschooling if there were reasonable regulation for it, including sharing your curriculum and schedule with the state, and allowing surprise inspections during your schedule, so that abuses can be found.
The biggest problem with homeschooling right now is that the lobbying group for homeschooling is vehemently opposed to any form of regulation, which makes it the wild west, which allows abusers to flourish.
If homeschooling wants to prevent the worst excesses, it has to standardize oversight and enforcement mechanisms.
"Zero regulation is the only acceptable amount of regulation," the talking point, enables abuse.
Not by the 99% who are doing it well!! But by the few bad apples out there.
By my thinking:
- Requiring a child be registered with the state as homeschooled
- Requiring a background check on parents who homeschool, and disqualifying those with child abuse priors
- Taking annual standardized tests (grade level or better)
- Surprise inspections (once a year? With parent-requested follow-up surprise inspections, if the first happened on a bad day)
And the homeschooling community should want these things too, because they would provide a firm rebuttal to anyone attacking the practice from a perspective of abuse.
But now... when some abuse happens... but there are continued calls for zero oversight...
That's not a great look.
I'm glad you had a good school experience. I was lucky to avoid the worst of it, but I knew kids who grew up with lifelong PTSD from the bullying / abuse, and complete apathy of the school system.
Likewise, I knew kids at school who had terrible home lives. This was almost a result of drug or alcohol abuse, or just plain neglect on the part of the parents. The children were treated as an annoyance or inconvenience. These parents were glad that school got them out of their sight; I'm sure if boarding schools were free they would happily sent their kids off to one.
I'm convinced that the percentage of parents that would actively make it a full time job to torment their children by homeschooling them is a vanishingly small number. Bad parents simply don't care about their children.
You just described public schools, Universities, and their relationship to the student loan racket. Deficient education followed by indentured servitude through loan repayment. False advertising by public school teachers of a ticket to the easy life through any university degree. If I had a nickel for every person I've met who had their life messed up by that lie, I'd be rich
You're also not going to hear about the homeschooling horrors from the typical HN demographic. Broadly, and obviously with exceptions, there are two groups of parents who choose to homeschool: 1. Parents who have an abundance of educational resources and time and do it to provide a higher quality of education, and 2. Parents who do it for religious separatism reasons because public school gets in the way of their indoctrination. Selection bias means you're going to see a lot of the outcomes from #1 posting here, and not a lot of #2.
For every example who was homeschooled with a high-quality curriculum, had great parent-run extracurriculars, socialized well, and so on, how many examples are invisibly stuck as someone's housewife who can't even be employed because their only textbook was the Bible, and they didn't learn anything past 3rd grade math? They're not posting their horror story here on HN.
I have a relative who is deeply religious. I know I would not agree with her on, for example, evolution. But she is loving and devoted and her two daughters have received tons of time and investment from her in their education, far more than they would receive in a public school.
I obviously haven't, like, tested her kids, but they do seem smart and well adjusted. I'm not really worried about the limitations on their scientific learning — it's not ideal if they are skipping some evolutionary biology (I actually have no idea but I assume they are) but they are going to leave home, go to college in a very secular country and get to learn that stuff. I'm sure with the internet they are already widely exposed to what science has to say about e.g. the creation of the universe (which, honestly, how many high school students could walk you through?).
By the way, I don't think there is anyone homeschooling with the "only textbook is the Bible" and in most states you need to file a curriculum every year that gets reviewed and approved.
They’re pretty common, in fact. Here’s a curriculum company that’ll gladly give you the tools: https://answersingenesis.org/homeschool-edition/
“The Bible is the only education you need” is a very common meme among evangelical Christians.
> and in most states you need to file a curriculum every year that gets reviewed and approved.
Most states have almost no recourse to reject submitted curricula, no matter how specious they are. One influential homeschool association has a 24/7 legal hotline specifically for subverting these mild attempts at accountability.
> Here’s a curriculum company that’ll gladly give you the tools: https://answersingenesis.org/homeschool-edition/
Contrary to your claim, the linked page implies nothing about the Bible being the "only textbook". It simply offers a set of Bible lessons for homeschoolers ("This exciting curriculum contains homeschool lessons that cover the entire Bible chronologically in four years…").
As for your last statement: in most states there's no oversight. Sure, parents have to file a curriculum that gets reviewed and approved. Parents jump through that hoop by downloading a curriculum and mailing it in. There's nobody checking that they actually follow any of that curriculum. There's no state-run testing as a check and balance.
My kids went to a Catholic elementary school, where I was the school board president. A breakaway group tried to insert a “classical education” curriculum on the school, which is a popular trend in more right-wing Christian schools that was adopted from homeschool curriculum.
The biggest growth in private schooling is in this and similar curriculum. It’s attractive to more reactionary people as they can assert “local control” while using texts that are too old to be considered controversial.
Parents aren’t to blame necessarily, people want what’s good for their kids. But awful elements of society are abusing religion to achieve their social ends. In my case, I was accused of being a “Marxist” for not condemning a fundraiser that provided winter clothing for poor children, including migrants swooped up and shipped across the country. We’ve allowed people to be brainwashed by charlatans.
To be clear, a 'classical education' refers to a traditional form of education where you break up a child's education into grammar, logic, and rhetoric stages and then mainly use primary sources. There's nothing wrong with this system and it was likely the way many people, including Marx, were educated. The idea that this is 'right wing' is bonkers to me.
If you don’t like it, though, there are less successful countries in this world that still persecute people based on religious belief. You are free to try one out. See how it goes.
I don’t agree with parent, but the reasons are vastly more nuanced than “your ancestors were religious so you’re wrong.” And that’s ignoring the even weirder swipe suggesting parent move to a different country.
Instead I simply suggested a reflection: would you still feel this was a good thing to do if it was your great great grandparents having their children seized? Wouldn’t a great many of us have had our families broken?
I’m an atheist and evolutionary biology is my favorite field outside of CS, but unless you are personally working on figuring out how things actually work, I’m not sure how one belief over another benefits the average person.
Evidence, when not absolute, is as useful as the lack of it.
People accept evolution without having a clue about it.
1) The amount of evidence for a claim. 2) The grandiosity of the claim.
If you tell me you have a pet dog named "Spike" I probably would be willing to accept that with as little evidence as a picture of you holding a dog, found in your wallet [i might even take your word for it, if i knew you to be an otherwise mostly honest person]. Because, dogs exist and are plentiful, billions of people own dogs, and "Spike" is a common name. you may be fooling me (it may be the neighbors dog) but i'm still justified in the believe because the evidence rises to the claim.
If on the other hand you claim that you have a pink polka dotted flying dragon as as a pet named "Chester". I would be a fool to believe you. I have no evidence such a thing exists, or that people have them as pets. I would have to see it in person, and even then, i would need to get a report from teams of biologists/zoologists to be willing to accept the claim. It would require tons more evidence.
And yet, the claim STILL isn't _that_ preposterous. The dragon would be an animal, and i know animals exist. I know there are animals with scales, i know some animals fly. I even now there are some with wild coat patterns.
Now if you tell me you believe in an all powerful all knowing god who is responsible for why there is life? I have zero evidence, i have no experience like what you are describing. I've never been given evidence of a being outside of time and space. I don't know that that is even a thing. I don't know what all powerful is, or if that could exist? or all knowing? is that possible? I have no correlary to compare to. It's not like we know King Neptune exists, and while not infinitely powerful, is still pretty boss. Why would i believe that was the explanation for why there are creatures on this planet?
Evolution, on the other hand, has mounds of evidence. We have a powerful fossil record, We went thru a pandemic that shows the power of mutation. Even our own ability to drink milk. And yet even evolution isn't making all that fanciful of predictions. It doesn't claim to know your thoughts, or how you will die. So the evidence rises to claim. Do we know everything there is to know about evolution? Could we be wrong in some areas? Sure. But we are justified in accepting it.
However, I think you either have too high an opinion of how people go about their ideas and beliefs, or you trust too much in the power and protagonism of reasoning.
I'd bet a lot, if not most of the people, don't go as far as you described. They believe in evolution because that's what's believed right now, and they got taught that in school. Try having a critical conversation about evolution with the average Joe, see what you find out.
Truth is everyone has faith in something. I have faith in God, so I believe certain things that might not seem rational to someone. Other people have faith in science and scientists and teachers, so they believe certain things which definitely don't seem rational to me. They don't have proof, they don't understand the reasonings, they haven't seen evidence. They just have faith in "the experts". And so they believe.
Anyway, why is the idea of God being real _that_ preposterous?
as for trusting in experts, there's no question that that is problematic in the extreme. However, it comes back to how the evidence rises to the claim. Can a group of people be experts in a subject? How can we validate that? Can we verify that their are experts in how electrical wiring works? To a large degree we can. We have lots of evidence. Do they know everything, probably not, but i can have confidence that they are mostly correct. Can we verify there are experts in evolution? Again, i think we can. They have produced mountains of evidence. Do they know everything? No. But they are likely largely correct. Can we verify there are experts in God? What are the tests? How do we verify these experts?
You mention faith, and i have to ask, what good is faith? Is there anything you could _not_ believe, based on faith? If faith has no mechanism to filter out anything, does it tell you anything about what is true or likely true?
There's usually low risk in trusting that a contractor is an expert in electrical wiring if they say so, and I usually trust plumbers or tradesmen to know their stuff and do their work. And how many times I've been wrong.
But my point is that most people don't go through this verification process, examining the credentials of scientists, taking a look at the evidencie, studies, papers, reasoning, etc. that backs up evolution. So it's not a rational belief. It's faith in other people, or a system.
If people did that, they would get to the conclusion that a lot of evidence points at the possibility of evolution being true. But by no means it's proven beyond doubt.
I don't know about your education or professional background, but from my side as a software engineer I very well understand that you can pile up evidence that will point you in a certain direction, and afterwards you might get that small 0.1% that will turn things completely around.
Regarding your questions about faith, I would not say that's how faith works. I have reasons behind what I have faith in. Right now I would not be able to switch my faith to something else just because.
Hebrews 11:1 - Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
That something is not visible does not mean it doesn't make sense.
Could I be wrong? I guess I could, by definition, and I would be rejecting a scientific theory. Could you be wrong? What's the consequence of that?
Unlike the natural world, the supernatural cannot be observed nor reproduced so it necessarily requires faith in order to function.
In more concrete terms: I don't know how my microwave oven works. I've never built one and don't have a degree in microwave oven technology. But I still don't need to have faith that it works--I can observe it working and if I wanted to, I could take it apart and observe its subcomponents working. I don't do this, but just the fact that I could means that I don't have to blindly believe in it or conjure up explanations about how it works.
you can still be justified in a belief if the prevailing evidence rises to the claim. We can be wrong about anything, and certainly in the mid 1800's people probably thought they knew how physics worked pretty well. They were wrong, of course, However, until evidence was produced that discounted their existing evidence, they were justified in that belief, and, it mostly worked for all intents and purposes for the tests they proposed/attempted, even tho quantum physics says something quite surprisingly different.
>> I would not be able to switch my faith to something else just because.
i don't doubt you. However, 9 billion people can use the process of faith to believe things, including things you think are horrendous. How do you discount their beliefs, while being confident in yours, if all you have is faith to discern the difference? If you are discerning a difference, that difference is coming from somewhere else, likely evidence and rationality. So the process of faith, itself, is not trustworthy, as i'm guessing you feel that at least half the planet is using faith and coming to the wrong conclusions.
After her eldest child was bordering on middle school age and still completely illiterate, she wound up sending the lot back to public schools. Thank god, but I still feel awful for those kids.
(Mandatory “not all homeschoolers” of course.)
As you say, learning the basics of evolution is something that can be done on your own in a weekend reading wikipedia. Similarly, you can learn the mainstream scientific explanations of how the universe was created from watching a few youtube videos. That's basically how I learned that stuff as an (atheist) homeschooled kid.
School seems to fail to teach the philosophy of science well anyway - skepticism, evidence, double-blind testing, etc. So I don't think evangelical homeschoolers are missing that much.
The current internet makes it very easy to self-select (intentionally or not) a bubble, and then never see anything outside of it (or only see one-sided takes you agree with about the “debate”). Given the algorithms major platforms use, I suspect it would be relatively easy to create a bubble in which evolution is never treated as real, and where dinosaur bones were planted to fool people.
Public schools themselves indoctrinate children--just with a different set of values than many parents have. The people who built the US system of widespread compulsory public schooling in the US were quite explicit about that being one of the primary purposes of the system. (So were the people who built the Prussian system that was referenced elsewhere in the thread.)
Yale flew me out to interview for a biology graduate program. I had the credentials and test scores to be considered, but was turned down, quite possibly because of those stereotypes (based on the questions I got in the interview process).
You get things like a Christian family whose "curriculum" for their daughters was: listen to classical music, bible listening 20 minutes/day, handwriting, bible memorization, exercise 15/day (not great so far, but wait for it): clean room 6/week, fold laundry 5/week, clean living room 5/week, clear off bar 6/week, tidy shelves in dining room 3/week, tidy stereo cabinet 2/week, clean brown cupboard in pantry 5/week, clean storeroom 1/week, tidy blue chest, dust piano, clean and vacuum, clean hallway, make bed...
Part of good media literacy is being able to discern the facts from the opinion on the part of the reporter. In this case: Yes, it's clear that the LWT team skews pretty liberal, and because of that, they and I are going to disagree on a lot. But you really don't need to spin the fact that numerous groups of extremely christian parents are providing home schooling that borders on (and sometimes crosses into) child abuse. The way children are treated as parents property in this country is fucking disgusting. This is not simply "someone's child" this is what will eventually become a person, a person who will have to work to earn a living the same as the rest of us, a person who will have to reckon with global politics and issues, a person who will have to file taxes and send out their water bill, I could go on for the rest of the day listing off things they will almost certainly have to do, and NONE of them, not a single, sodding, fucking, solitary one of those things, is going to be helped by Jesus.
My wife grew up in an extremely religious household (not fundamentalist thankfully, but very evangelical all the same) and they completely and utterly failed her in terms of preparing her for the real world, in ways too numerous to name here. She learned a whole lot about Jesus though! Not that it did her much because she's an atheist now, and I basically have to run the logistics of the household because she can't do math.
This is among many reasons for my continued slide further from Atheist to Anti-Theist.
The point is they're not trying to not.
> This is not simply "someone's child" this is what will eventually become a person
No; they're already a person. They're also someone's child.
> and NONE of them, not a single, sodding, fucking, solitary one of those things, is going to be helped by Jesus.
This hyper-emotional take seems unrelated to the discussion. I hope things get better, though.
And my point is I think the act of trying to not is overrated.
> This hyper-emotional take seems unrelated to the discussion. I hope things get better, though.
I'm not afraid of my feelings. The notion of children being raised with nothing but their sky friend's manual is terrifying. We are already in the midst of the fallout of a society largely run by people who think the Rapture is coming soon and that the world was created by god six thousand years ago. The effects on long term planning, problem solving, addressing social ills cannot be overstated when the leadership of so many nations is convinced that God is gonna show up sometime in the next 30 years and pack up humanity like a train set, and therefore there's no point in mitigating the effects of climate change, or taking care of people who refuse to take their magical bullshit seriously and/or respect their bigotries as anything other than what they are.
If that doesn't make you emotional to think about, I think that's a you problem.
That would be very odd indeed. Quite an odd thing to claim, though.
> The notion of children being raised with nothing but their sky friend's manual is terrifying. We are already in the midst of the fallout of a society largely run by people who think the Rapture is coming soon and that the world was created by god six thousand years ago. The effects on long term planning, problem solving, addressing social ills cannot be overstated when the leadership of so many nations is convinced that God is gonna show up sometime in the next 30 years and pack up humanity like a train set, and therefore there's no point in mitigating the effects of climate change, or taking care of people who refuse to take their magical bullshit seriously and/or respect their bigotries as anything other than what they are.
This is just raw prejudice and negativity. More people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 100 years that in the previous 10000, and to a standard higher than that of kings and queens of a couple of hundred years ago. We cooperate and interoperate more; we stand our ground together against evils in the world; we fight poverty and hunger more than anyone ever could've dreamed of in history.
> If that doesn't make you emotional to think about, I think that's a you problem.
This is a non sequitur. One can feel emotions without going on hyper-emotional rants.
Absolutely correct, and none of that is achieved by people raised on a strict diet of Jesus. How many borderline illiterate people from the Appalachians are revolutionizing our world? I am not saying people not born of means are incapable of changing the world (beyond the ways in which the world has ensured it anyway) in fact I am mourning, I am mourning the loss of so much human potential, sacrificed on the altar of this anti-social libertarian experiment within which a child is completely unable to advocate for themselves, their desires, and their being until they turn the magic age of 18, at which point they are thrust into the adult world, whether they have been prepared for it or not in the care of people who are not held accountable to performing that task, and if they fail to perform, they will be cast out, they will starve, they will die.
You're damn right I'm prejudiced against these people. I have seen firsthand the hell they inflict upon their children in the course of following their bullshit ideology. I've listened to hours of their intellectually bankrupt and dishonest defenses of ancient texts they insist are the best foundation for a child's learning, texts full of rape, murder, slavery, torture, all performed in the name of a narcissistic unbeing who demands complete obedience to his arbitrary commands, while demonstrating no measurable effect on the world and insisting he is the only truly righteous force. And his followers in turn wield this book as a weapon against the marginalized worldwide, waging an endless war on everyone different from them, based on nothing but their own bigotry.
My only disappointment in being Atheist is I'm fairly certain there is no hell for these people who so desperately deserve it.
The "public schools as a warrantless, ongoing search by the government into parenting" model of schooling.
Why wouldn't everyone want to sign up for that? I mean, it's not even expensive. Just subject your kids to bullying, bureaucracy, and bumblefuckery (call 'em the Three Bs!) and you too can be under suspicion for 13+ years.
Public schools in countries where schools are treated well have phenomenal success.
US schooling has been taken over (at the level of the state legislatures; blame goes to state Congress not to the schools) by companies selling "achievement" test. And also by charter schools whose success is based on only selecting high-achieving problem-free children?
Why do teachers say they are nothing but babysitters? Maybe because they aren't allowed to teach, to inspire love of learning in the children? And their classroom budgets are so tight they buy school supplies out of their own pockets, while living on an income that is close to poverty level? While facing felony charges for having the wrong book in the shelf behind their desk???
When things like "Creme de la Creme Early Learning Center of Excellence" are real institutions instead of something from a comic dystopia, you know you have a problem.
By definition progress is movement in a direction. Who set the direction? Toward which destination? To achieve which aim and goals? Who benefits? To assume it is the students, the teachers, or "the people" broadly, is a naive and destructive assumption.
Social progress by one definition might include the production of obedient soldiers and factory workers. It might include the limiting of cultural diversity, creating a common core of cultural conformity and homogenization among the youth a country populated by recent immigrants. It might include training the youth to accept authority without question.
If one is interested enough to learn about the actual thinking of the founders and maintainers of public school institutions in the United States and around the world, you can read what they published of their thinking for yourself. John Taylo Gatto unearthed much of this thinking and shared it with the world in his books and lectures.
Here is one transcript you may find enlightening:
https://smarthomeschooler.com/blog/2021/5/28/gatto-six-purpo...
"Public schools in countries where schools are treated well have phenomenal success."
How do you measure such success? There's standardized testing but you don't seem to like that.
Public schools were created in the US to indoctrinate catholic kids - the “unwashed masses of Irish papists.” It was an oppressive institution from the start. They were designed with the same architecture as incarceration systems from France and to this day are mainly serviced by the same companies that service our prisons.
There have been so, so many attempts to recast public schools in the image of our aspirations - most notably Teach for America. I count many of their graduates among my edtech founder friends.
For those of us that have given a portion of our lives to improve these systems, the reality is heartbreaking. Public education is a callous political football whose primary purpose is to make sure children are being babysat so their parents can work. Genuine progress can be made but will be snuffed out by the well oiled grinder for government funding and political promotions.
Administrators determine our children’s future, not teachers, parents, or children. Any of those three would be better.
Yes, there are bright spots. But the vast majority of school systems destroy the aspirations of well-intentioned, newly educated teachers within a couple years. Most teachers leave the profession after less than a decade in it.
The best researchers I’ve found have all reached a stunningly simple conclusion on why better funding does not improve outcomes - students are living in intense poverty. Many students are homeless. Many have no safe place to sleep.
The reason homeschooling is rising is because intelligent, caring parents can give their child a better education simply by not subjecting them to the bizarre social experience that has become most public schools.
The exception to that rule is the proof of what matters - a community of parents/guardians who come together and support a mutual learning center with caring educators.
Co-op, private, public, they all work when you have that.
https://www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/sites/www.educa...
Selection effects create a "blind men and the elephant" problem when considering anecdotes about homeschoolers. Homeschool children who return to public school may do so because their parents lack the resources to homeschool them effectively, so they might perform worse (academically & socially) than the average homeschool child. But homeschool children who get jobs in the technology industry and post on Hacker News are probably more successful than the average. It remains for the reader to determine whether the lack of "success" of homeschool children who join the military, in contrast to homeschooler mean success elsewhere, is due to a selection effect or a psychological effect of homeschooling.
It's not that surprising given that the Prussian schooling system upon which ours is based was meant exactly for that.
The real public school horror story is that today, in America, a "good school" is defined as one where your child won't get shot.
I leave the rest of the rant as an exercise to the reader.
That is a pretty serious factor to weight.
They were able to franchise a school for, I believe $10-15,000 (certainly under $20K), a background check, and a 2 hour open book test for them both.
I struggle to see how this is acceptable for not just "homeschooling" your own kids, but other people's kids.