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Comment by getwiththeprog | Hacker News Reader

Hi Tom, I like your website. We have many interests in common. When I first had kids, I wanted to home-school them. After 5 years, I changed my mind. They take up so much time and effort that I feel that I can be there for them MORE when I send them to school!

With all your interests and entusiasm, I am sure your kids will do really well at many things. There is no need to push them too fast. I found that the teachers at my school sometimes know more about education than I do.

My advice would be yes persue those books you are looking for, but consider finding the best school for your family over the next couple of years. Time apart (from parents), and kids coming to understand society by being a part of it are also important for them.

All the best,

GWTP

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I disagree quite strongly with this. How can you be there more for them by not seeing them most of the day? I have sent the kids to school and home educated, and the latter is definitely better from this point of view.

HE does not mean pushing. It means going at the right pace for the child, and having the time to follow interests. It frees a child from wasting time being bored in easy classes, or falling behind and failing to understand in one that is too difficult.

You seem to share the common misconception the home educated kids stay at home all the time. They do not. Home education is better for being a part of society (and learning social skills). Instead of spending most of your time in one place, with the same group of people, most of them the same age, every day, kids can meet lots of different people in different places doing different things. The kids my daughter met at Sea Cadets, were different from the ones at dance classes, were different from the ones at stage fighting classes, were different from the ones she met playing D & D....

It also develops independence. My daughter started travelling to a different town by herself regularly to meet her D & D friends.

She has had the time to visit friends in different counties (in the UK), and she has travelled around the UK and abroad with her older sister and with family friends. All that would have happened a lot less, if at all, with the restrictions of a school timetable.

I guess it depends. I was in school + home-schooled. I really really hated the home school part. What made it worse was that both of my parents are teachers/professors and TBH I have many cases saying that they are the WORST people to homeschool their own kids. No joke, I have so many failed cases that it might even be close to stat sig...basically every time someone complained that he got some awful home-schooling I always asked him/her are your parents teachers?

I guess the reason is that it's so damn difficult to be good at education that parents really need to make sure that home-schooling is not making things worse. I realized from childhood that putting a lot of genuine effort into something (in my case my parents basically sacrificed their career for the home-schooling and other activities) does not guarantee a success. That's the only good part that came from my home-schooling experience. After that I was kinda mature enough to accept that 1) Getting a girl's love has nothing to do with how much effort you spend, it's more genetic, and 2) It's perfectly normal to get slapped in work even if one works hard.

Indeed, I'm certain they will do well regradless (even in public schools!) both because I am curious and hence knowledgeable, and because they will likely be curious as well (my genetics!).

But there's one thing that curiosity doesn't help with (in fact, it's probably detrimental) - it can leave gaping holes in knowledge (you don't know what you don't know). Hence why I'm also interested in at least somewhat (or more likely) complete treatises from experts in their respective fields...

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