Rather than pearl clutching about individual anecdotes or doubling down on government control, I think states should provide direct funding to homeschool co-ops in addition to direct funding to families. That money and its positive effects on socialization and educational development will only work if governments keep their noses out of the details (i.e., parallels arguments for UBI).
My son is autistic and non-verbal. The local public school program that he would be in is overwhelmed. We hire a speech language pathologist to tutor him 3-4 hours a day in our home. That is only possible because of Arizona's support for homeschooling families. Homeschooling is a great outlet when standardization fails.
It's maybe not 100% what you're thinking of, but it's reasonably close.
I was homeschooled to grade 3, and just because my parents didn't give me tests or grades, it absolutely mattered.
I had to correctly solve, both verbally and in writing, enough questions at the end of the current chapter of the textbook, to a standard that satisfied them. For every subject of study. Every single day.
> I had to correctly solve ... to a standard that satisfied them
In other words, you had tests and grades
A grade is a permanent record of a snapshot-in-time evaluation of your understanding of a material.
"Read the chapter, solve the problems in it, we'll go over your work later" is neither a test, nor a grade.
Government funded homeschool co-ops or government funded homeschool families... Not so much.
As someone who pays taxes under the expectation that the government will do its best to use the money to provide a consistent education for all, I have a limited set of options when it comes to influencing how it gets spent. There is opportunity to improve that situation, certainly, but it's not corrupt. We pay in together and we vote for people who will spend that money on our collective behalf.
I don't have kids, so presumably I won't have the option to redirect that money towards Newton and away from Chaucer (or you know, whatever politically motivated alteration I come up with). People who do have kids shouldn't get different options than I do w.r.t. how the money is spent.
If somebody wants to influence the curriculum that gets funded with tax dollars, they should have the same power to do so as all of the other taxpayers. It should not be coupled to their educational choices for their own kids.
Expecting those children to then spend it on education seems like a stretch, but we're already playing what-if here, so why not?
But unless you have that plan in your back pocket, we're still in a world where scarcity is relevant. If some people want to repurpose the commons in support of their own non-common agendas, then it's up to the rest of us to oppose that.
And you'd give the money to the children's guardians, who can make those decisions on the children's behalf. Maybe they hire a tutor. Maybe they send their kids to a school. Maybe they use the money to offset a stay at home parent.
I don't think UBI makes sense for a variety of reasons, but that's the gist of it, no?
No. That's an argument used by the subset of UBI supporters who believe that UBI should displace all other social support including non-means-tested aid, but that's not the general case of UBI advocates (who generally advocate that UBI should displace means-tested benefits, but there's no general position on universal/unconditional non-cash programs alongside UBI.)
Support for universal (public single-payer or otherwise) health coverage of some kind among UBI supporters is pretty common, for instance.
The more general reason for UBI is the belief that multiple means-testing bureaucracies are duplicative of each other and thr tax system, and prone to adverse incentives due to too-quick clawback both in where it cuts in and in the ratio of aggregated benefit reductions for each increment of additional income.
In general, I prefer:
1. a functioning government
2. a UBI-enabled market
3. a malfunctioning government
It seems to me that the least violent way to kill off a government and bootstrap a new one in its place is to work towards a position where you can safely turn your back on the currency that the incumbent is minting. I view UBI a tool to make such a step more palatable. A safety net for transition times.
It still has to be backed by something, and I think the most likely candidate for that something is demonstrated success in other areas of DIY-government. If people can look around and see that the problems are getting solved, then maybe they'll have enough faith in a UBI system designed to let them safely quit the old ways and participate in building something new. This credibility would come from solving things like education and healthcare, which is why I say I have a hard time imagining a UBI system getting up and running in a community that does not have a grasp of those more immediate problems.
Without that initial success as a credibility-builder, the UBI-paved road to a functioning government will be indistinguishable from a ponzi scheme: here's some pretend thing for you to value.
If people truly have no faith in the existing government's ability to do government things, then their DIY efforts should be gathering steam to sideline that government, not angling for a slice of the tax bill from the very government that they've lost control of. If they get that slice they'll have become the very sort of corruption that they're objecting to.
If that's not an amount of work they're ready to stomach, then maybe they should rethink their disavowal of the existing channels in the first place and instead go participate in them.
> We hire a speech language pathologist to tutor him 3-4 hours a day in our home.
You have a good point. GP’s experience with home schooling was an anecdote whereas your experience with home schooling is not
Pay more taxes. Solve the problem for all people who run into it, not just the ones who can afford it.
I think our educational outcomes are not in line with our spending because a part of our political apparatus is simultaneously trying to sabotage the program.
I feel like they think that the money is given to the kids directly, who waste it on weed and the hippity hop albums or whatever. Call it what it is: racism and classism destroys their critical thinking capacity.
But that's beside the point, because the notion is always brought up as a way to say that the students themselves are a lost cause.
The joke's on you, I wasn't home-schooled and I still got both of those.
The only school I ever went to that was good for socialization was community college. Tbh, for learning too. I basically learned all of math, from arithmetic up, as an adult at community college, to compensate for learning nothing and getting pushed through all of the grade levels at public school.
I wish they had community colleges where I live now lol.
Socialization was hard, mostly because the other kids my age were really, well, dumb. I am still friends with every good friend I had back then. I noticed plenty of problems with other homeschoolers, but nowhere near as bad as the school kids I knew. They were growing up either stressed beyond belief, addicted to drugs, or promiscuous. Occasionally all three. Compared to my religious fundamentalist friend who is now a happily married mechanical engineer, their "enhanced socialization" is worthless.
It's not like kids learn anything in school anymore. Our test scores are nationally tanking, the only reason to get good grades is to get into a better school which will probably not teach you anything valuable, and real knowledge is increasingly devalued. I was raised and taught that knowledge is its own reward, and if you're smart and good at learning, you can do anything you put your mind to.
Guess what? It's true.
What are you working on?
Hi. I was homeschooled. I graduated university top of my class, have a high-skill high-paying job, think more critically (about everything including religion) than most people that I know, and overall I enjoy my life very much. I'm homeschooling my kids.
It's a pity that some people will take a collection of anecdotes as data and treat a lack of countering anecdotes as conclusive proof.
Homeschooled kids are a minority, and therefore formerly-homeschooled adults are a minority too. More of a minority, even (since the rate of homeschooling was lower when we were growing up). It's not "telling", it's simply the fact that not a ton of people exist to give a defense.
For my part I was homeschooled and had a great experience. My parents were able to challenge me in ways that the local public school wasn't willing to, and they made consistent efforts to make sure I had social exposure to other kids. I don't believe I am lacking in any way because my parents homeschooled me - in fact, if anything I believe it was the better option for me.
And I think you need to remember that the other side of the coin exists too. My wife went to public school, and was bullied by other kids. She has social anxiety and other issues to this day (she's 42 years old) as a result. That doesn't mean public schools are all bad, of course, but people need to stop ignoring the downsides of public school when they compare the two paradigms.
Being bullied sucks and has huge negative impacts. I am glad though, that I have the tools and experience to identify that happening now that I am an adult. A homeschooled me might not, and then suffer much more in the adult sphere. Negative interactions are something kids have to learn to deal with. It's not pretty or fair or even safe, but neither is the world.
Companies have to bribe and cajole customers to leave positive reviews because otherwise the few people with disastrous experiences will be the only ones who bother to review at all. There's no equivalent pro-homeschool lobby begging people to get on and defend homeschooling on Hacker News.
I'm another successful homeschooled-until-college adult, but homeschooling isn't that common now and it was even less popular when I was growing up.
EDIT: unless you were mentioning defense of homeschooling given they were homeschooled. I would assume most people on HN who were homeschooled had a decent education/homeschooling experience.
> Negative interactions are something kids have to learn to deal with. It's not pretty or fair or even safe, but neither is the world.
Completely agree. If someone assaults you in real life, you should learn that you need to file charges to ensure your assaulter goes to jail. Not sit quietly in the corner while your abuser gets a talking to.
If someone assaults me I have to become a public prosecutor?
Victims, qua victims, can file a police report. But only the state can file criminal charges, and whether they will or won't depends on, well, lots of things outside of the control of thr victim.
Filing charges to make sure your assaulter goes to jail is a fantasy for many people and situations. Just like in school, justice is not always going to happen. Sorry.
Also, should we through 10 year old bullies in jail? 15? What’s the line?
I think being accountable for your work to a person who isn't in your family is actually an important thing to learn. It also turns out, parents aren't really qualified to be teachers just because they believe that they are.
You'll find this in public schools too.
Beyond studies by the National Home Education Research Institute, that is. The three leading studies by homeschooling advocates looked at "homeschooled students who went to college" and how they did at school versus public schooled students at college, and ignored the fact that the percentage of homeschooled students who went to college was much smaller (why?) than for public schools.
I’ve done alright for myself and have even managed to rank among top achievers in my family, but it’s felt like I’ve been stuck playing catchup in various ways throughout my adult life. Now in my mid-30s, in some aspects I feel that I’m where I should’ve been in my mid-20s.
With that in mind I wouldn’t say I’m against homeschooling necessarily, but I think it’s crucial for parents to consider if they really have the time available to make it as complete as it needs to be. If there’s any doubt at all it might not be a great idea.
I'd qualify as smart depending on the metric. I actually went to a private school (the public schools in the area were complete garbage and out of control - bomb threats, drugs, etc at the middle school level). It really wasn't that challenging and most of my useful knowledge beyond the basic read/write/math is self taught. Most of the stuff I learned in college was never used. Using those innate skills at a young age produced nothing tangible. I won't achieve any real success in life even though I checked all the boxes when I was younger - smart, good grades, extracurriculars, family, religion, went to college, etc.
Really all any good school or parent can do that is helpful is teach their kids to want to learn and how to self-teach. Most schools are terrible at this and just want to hit test scores and follow procedures/regulations (learning environment can be atrocious). I'd say most parents are average at this.
The real question is, what do you think would be different and why can't you achieve that now?
I went to school and got beat up, colour me sceptical about school as a mechanism for socialisation.
Actually, you might be on to something!
Public schools are operated with the purpose of breaking the spirit of the children of the underclass so that they become obedient workers or soldiers. That's why the education part is so lacking and the obedience training so focused. Children are schooled in having no liberty of time, no liberty of movement and no liberty of thought. Perfect for a soldier or industrial or corporate worker.
On the contrary a successful adult is characterized by having liberty of her time, liberty of her movement and liberty of her thought.
The purpose of state schools is to create failed human beings, because they are needed to serve the rulers.
Schools are specifically made to break communities by separating children by age, leaving their main influence to be a few teachers, instead of having dynamic interactions with adults of all different types.
No institution has been more damaging to humanity than state schools.
They aren't the state's kids. The school can help parents in things like socialisation, as far as they deem it appropriate, but I think the state raising kids is totally the wrong mindset.
that's sometimes called indoctrination.
Public schools socialises kids like McDonald's feeds a society.
I prefer homegrown tomatoes.
Now a very large portion of us live in detached homes, far away from any groups of children.