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Comment by burcs | Hacker News Reader

We're homeschooling our kids. I was pretty against it at first, but seeing our education system degrade to the state it is today, and being honest about my schooling experience definitely opened me up to it.

I think the biggest argument for schooling is the socialization aspect of it. I don't know about the rest of you but I was bullied pretty relentlessly throughout grade school and it completely changed my personality. I became much more of a loner, reserved, quiet, and just defeated. I'm still working through some of that baggage 30 years later. That's not the socialization that I want for my kids.

I work remotely, my wife freelances. We have lots of friends and family with children our kids age, why not surround them by people who love them?

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Check for homeschooling groups in your area. Meet and talk to parents, you’ll find out all about it including resource centers for when your child needs to learn topics where you are weak.

We’ve been homeschooling for 7 years. Our child’s social experience has increased both quantitatively and qualitatively. From few/constantly bullied physically and sexually, to many/nice thoughtful friends who will jump in and defend her instead of filming her, should things go down. She’s also a leader, does service for her community, and (proud papa moment here) at her 4th debate competition (3 per year in this league) won 9th place speaker and 3rd place team. Her team swept the series of 4 rounds. The only way their team could do that…wait for it…lots of practice aka socialization.

The “socialization” boogeyman is one of the most overplayed red herrings about homeschooling IMO.

I think I have basically the same opinion. It's not so much that I believe homeschooling is amazing in-itself, but rather that the public education system has so clearly deteriorated that it seems borderline criminal to subject your kids to it.

The question for me, personally, is private school vs. homeschooling. If you can avoid many of the downsides of public education via choosing the right private school (and being able to afford it), I do wonder if that would be superior to most homeschooling setups.

We didn’t go full home-school, but my wife and I intentionally left our city to go raise our kids out in a rural area so they could grow up in and around nature and with a nice, small school district that smokes anything we had back in the city. Better test scores, smaller classes, minimal major discipline issues.

Prior to moving, our only “good” option for realistic schooling was putting our children in a local Catholic school with high fees. Given our state is in the midst of legal battles with activist groups fighting to overturn a recent school-choice voucher program, seemed moving was the safe choice.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone but a public-sector teacher being finally held to account would fight against giving parents options to place their kids in a school they see fit.

I like collecting examples that confirm/deny my biases. Would you mind sharing the demographic differences between the two schools?

> For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone but a public-sector teacher being finally held to account would fight against giving parents options to place their kids in a school they see fit.

Because they want to indoctrinate your kids. A lot of teachers get into the profession because of a compelling social justice urge, much like a missionary from the church. When they are outside the public school system they are harder to reach.

Additionally, the more kids in the system equates to more political power for the teachers unions since they get to expand.

After going through something like this[0], it seems similar to what we do in tech. Try the fancy new thing! Don't worry that the creators aren't particularly qualified and mostly want to sell you stuff.

Hard to disentangle good change from bad; some of the initiative is good, but negative feedback seems to have been translated to "ignore those haters, they have no valid points."

https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

I don't understand this talk about "the public education system". Every school and school district is going to be different. Some are great and others are not. I understand if you live in an area with middling-to-poor schools, but lots of people live near great public schools.

I’m sure there are good public schools, but my experience and the experience of everyone I’ve ever known has not been positive. Combined with policies like California’s [1], I don’t think it’s unreasonable to just be skeptical of most American public education.

1. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/california-needs-real-math-edu...

Ridiculous amounts of standardized testing and curriculums designed to optimize for that was the main thing we hated. Seems to be a thing everywhere.

When I was a kid teachers had a bit more freedom to decide what to teach but now you teach to the test or lose your funding.

Teachers absolutely should teach to the test. And individual teachers really shouldn't be in the business of deciding what to teach, either.

Why is there an assumption that what is on the test is inherently worthless but every individual teacher is qualified to design an entire curriculum?

The educators that stood out in my life were the ones who were passionate and interesting and added their own experiences and perspectives. We have somewhere between 40-60 teachers over the course of a typical public education. I'd hope at least a good cross-section of those bring something to the table other than rote explanations of test questions.

>Why is there an assumption that what is on the test is inherently worthless but every individual teacher is qualified to design an entire curriculum?

Because my mother went to school for six years for exactly that purpose? Some states have pretty high requirements for teachers, and they tend to do well.

Also, the "teach to test" BS is extremely locality dependent. There are zero things you can generalize across all public schools in the US.

For what it's worth my bar is higher. Can we expect every teacher to design a top-tier curriculum independently?

Or, in other words, do we need hundreds of thousands of curricula? Doesn't that leave a lot of by definition below average curricula. Would selecting among even dozens of well-designed options make sense instead?

Years ago, like right before khan academy became popular, I had started making a math education platform. The idea would have been to have many instructors and lessons/sections votes and scores that lead to the best courses that students could choose from based on any further preferences. It would have also provided a skill tree and automated assessments for placement and assessment. As new, better instructors got traction, they could have courses promoted. The financial incentives would be profit sharing between the platform and top educators. Never got it close enough to launching and then started a new gig and never got back to it.

The cows are not putting on enough weight, better weigh them more often.

Teaching to the test is akin to teaching music only through sheet music; no instruments. The test is a mile wide and an inch deep and instead of helping students appreciate and understand topics and apply that knowledge creatively, we rush temporary memorization and regurgitation.

Like all measures, once they become a target, they become a poor measure.

I think anyone who has been seriously bullied would definitely agree - being bullied as a child can severely fuck up the rest of your life. Sure, many/most eventually move on, but like you, 30 years later I've got the therapy bills to show for it.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty feeling envious about my nieces' upbringing. They went to private school that ran from 1-8 grade, so they essentially skipped the middle school experience that was detrimental to so many. Honestly, I believe middle school as I experienced it (a whole bunch of elementary "feeder" schools that fed into one giant middle school for 7-8 grade) is the dumbest invention in the history of humanity. It sticks together kids, at wildly different stages of development, in an unfamiliar environment where everyone is trying to find their place in the social hierarchy - Lord of the Flies should have been set in middle school. Much better IMO to just have kids stay together 1-8th grade, and by then most folks are at least well into puberty by the time they get to high school. Not saying of course bullying doesn't happen in high school, but I think by then more kids are able to find their "tribe", so if they are bullied they have friends to fall back on (again, I'm of course painting with broad strokes).

I've heard a professor describe high school the same way. We throw a bunch of hormonal, identity-discovering, stressed teenagers together and then wonder why incidents happen.

> That's not the socialization that I want for my kids.

On the other hand, I'd definitely want my children to be familiar with it. Bullying is not something isolated to schools. I've seen it in nearly every social and political situation that exists at nearly every age group. In my estimation people are getting worse at identifying it and collectively we're getting worse at punishing it.

Dealing with bullies is something you'll definitely see later in life.

I'm glad I learned how to shut it down quick or avoid it altogether earlier rather than later.

Being let out into the world thinking everybody loves you sounds like a terrifying idea too.

What do you do to quickly shut down an adult bully?

Sleep with their wife

Well that escalated quickly.

Are you also taking photos for blackmail purposes? That'd very possibly shut the whole thing down.

It really depends.

If it's a peer in a more professional setting, simply calling them out generally makes you less a target, especially if calling out their behaviour is done in a group setting. It comes down to the old "stand up for yourself" rule we've all heard. Also, calm confidence tends to work with adults too.

If the bullying is coming from above, time to move on. I have zero patience for it, and there's likely no stopping them.

Also, I'm not suggesting you take them outside, although I know a couple guys who've been through fights between coworkers in their workplaces. Grown men (in their 30s) sure can take a long time to grow.

Yeah, that can be tough if it's coming from above and you need the paycheck.

> Bullying is not something isolated to schools. I've seen it in nearly every social and political situation that exists at nearly every age group.

Unless you live in prison or a war zone I highly doubt you've witnessed "adult" bullying that remotely approaches the ferocity and cruelty some kids have to endure on a daily basis.

As an adult there is basically no situation where someone is harassing you and you have no way out of it. What do you have in mind?

This scenario is most commonly found in prison.

Public schools teach you all the wrong ways to deal with bullies, and forbid the correct ways. They teach kids to run to teachers for help whenever they get bullied; in the real world that doesn't work because there's no teacher to run to. And when a kid stands up to a bully themselves, the school punishes him for exercising precisely the skills he'll need later in life. Schools don't teach kids how to deal with bullies, they teach kids how to be docile victims.

As someone with a toddler, I've found myself annoyed with this already with Ms Rachel videos on youtube.

"If another kid is throwing sand at you and won't stop when you ask, tell a grown up."

No, grown ups were also raised on this garbage and won't do anything. What's the teacher going to do if the other kid won't stop? Go tell the principal? And what will they do? Nothing.

The correct thing to do is to shove the other kid. Don't hurt them; just indicate they need to back off. If they still don't, throw sand at them, and then while they're recoiling, shove them down and kick them.

Society has a major problem where proper, proportionate, defensive violence is punished, and it traces back to this kind of crap.

Yes, they'll encounter it later, but the later they encounter is is probably better. They can then face it with a more mature brain, relatively speaking, and hopefully avoid forming deep pathways in their minds related to trauma.

> I work remotely, my wife freelances.

Are you both working full-time? What's the arrangement? How do you fit the homeschooling in around your jobs?

My wife and I have talked about this a lot. We don't have kids yet, but we're very open to the idea of homeschooling when the time comes. I'm not sure how we'll do it though - we're in a better position than most (we make good money and both wfh) but there are only so many hours in the day. I'm interested to know how other people make it work.

Kids are in school for 5 or so hours per day, but for many kids (especially those who are bright), they are learning for perhaps 1 hour of that time. If you can take an hour to teach them something, and another 10 minutes to assess their progress later in the day, they will learn at least as much as they would have in school. Of course, the time commitment also varies by grade; younger kids need lots of attention, whereas older kids are more self-sufficient. It depends on lot based on your particular kids.

I taught PE for homeschool kids when I was a young man, at a YMCA. It was a small program we ran during some seasons. I'd get 6-15 kids every week for about an hour, and since it was daytime, we could use any facilities we wanted, so we spent a lot of time on the rock wall, at the skate park, and in the pool.

The kids were great, and the parents were mostly great, too.

Anyway, maybe there's some similar local programs. If not, I bet you could run one yourself. I bet youtube would make it super easy, actually.

Even when I taught, sometimes the parents would organize something else for a week, like a local hike.

Care to name the region of your 'degrading system' with your anecdote?

I'm glad that I grew up in {shithole} (as Trump would put it) where I was able to threaten to (and follow up on in one case) beating the shit out of my bullies in school. It didn't magically stop the bullying, but it made it much less effective when I could lunge at him/fake him out and make him flinch back in fear of a repeat.

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