Comment by iamleppert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamleppert | Hacker News Reader

My parents divorced when I was just becoming a teenager, and I had to move schools from a suburban school to a poorly funded urban school. Both parents were very hands off (as in didn't want to know about my schooling, didn't care). I tried the urban school for a year, but it was shocking how different it was. They basically had no funds for anything, and you could see it everywhere. The classes were mostly teachers giving assignments, not much teaching and frequently disrupted by out of control students.

I decided to enroll in a public charter school my next year of high school. It was billed as a "Science Academy". I gave it about 6 months before I quit that school year altogether. It was even worse than the urban school, and was filled with students who had been expelled from the local public school district, and couldn't be turned away from the charter school by what they laws were at the time. And the teachers were all foreign with incredibly thick accents. It went about as well as you'd think: constant disruptions in class and terrible quality teachers.

So I decided to switch back to the urban, public school for the next year. I think I ended up going another 8 months before just deciding to drop out completely of high school and get my GED after I was beaten and robbed in the parking lot, and start going to college.

The education system, in most places in the US, is a complete joke and my story is way more common than you'd think. If your parents don't care about your education and aren't willing to move to a good school district, you're basically screwed.

As a homeschooled kid, the thing about your story that really sticks out to me is that you even felt you had the agency to make any of these decisions.

You just ... decided to enroll? You, as a child, can do that? I didn't obtain that kind of personal agency until my early 20's. My late teens were a confusing time of basically waiting for any kind of adult to tell me what I was allowed to do.

You didn't like it and ... just went back to a different school? That's something that you can do?

You just... dropped out? You had that option?

My experience is the polar opposite. My mom kept a vice grip on everything we learned. Bringing up wanting to go to Public School resulted in literal months of venom and self-victimization (aka: "I guess you hate how I sacrificed my body to bring you into this world ,and I sacrificed my dreams to stay here and raise good Christian children"), various punishments, and bible verse memorization assignments. Books were excised from the house if there was a hint of independence within. My mom literally took away a book I was reading about an orphan boy and his love of dirt-bike racing because on one page, the boy's foster parents asked him if he would attend church with them, he politely declined, and the foster parents accepted that. My Mom told me she "didn't want me thinking that was OK" when she took it away.

To me, being accepting of home-schooling is in the same camp as ditching all CI tooling because "every developer's style is valid and has its benefits". Accepting home-schooling means accepting that the lowest common denominator is good enough to teach the next generation.

I get what you're saying. In my case, I had full control because my parents were aloof. I easily got them to go along with whatever I wanted and sign any necessary forms because they didn't care. I'm not sure how I would feel with the opposite problem of helicopter parents. I think I would have benefited from some parental involvement and support, but as I am now an adult, the thought of worrying about a child and their school after working all day is exhausting to me and I can see how my parents made the choice they did. A lot of people put huge efforts into their kids schools and end up with poor outcomes.

> Accepting home-schooling means accepting that the lowest common denominator is good enough to teach the next generation.

This is just as true for most public schools. GP is rather unique in that most students don't get to choose where they learn. The option(s) available to them are often constrained by their zip code. Of those that had a meaningful choice, most tested into a magnet/exam/grammar school, lived in a charter school friendly areas, or resided in a city with a bussing program. In spite of what you've suffered, home schooling shouldn't be condemned wholesale. I've met several home-schooled individuals with interesting lives and well-rounded educations rivaling those of private school graduates.

It sounds like your experience was pretty terrible and I’m sorry that you’d spent formative and enjoyable years suffering.

We homeschool our kids and are generally quite the opposite (we’ve never been religious either). I wouldn’t say we are smarter than tertiary teachers in specific fields, but for the junior years it doesn’t really matter. Our kids are (electively) performing at higher grades than their age level requires, and we support that where they’re interested in it.

We do structured learning every day and also unstructured learning and just enjoying life. It’s a good balance that enables us to raise the happiest kids we can. My eldest has expressed an interest in going to school next year, we are fostering that interest and if he’s still keen next year we will enable that too.

People make blanket statements about homeschool, public school and private school. But after having kids one thing is certain: everyone’s experience is incredibly unique.

It sounds like you had a very bad experience but to say that "in most places in the US" the education system is a complete joke is projection.

I think it’s a fair criticism. The fact that we fund schools based on property taxes disadvantages those students who need the most help. Schools in cities tend towards bad. Schools in rich suburbs tend to be excellent.

I went to college with a guy who attended a prestigious private school. He was an indifferent student there and still knew more than me on most subjects.

I was left with the impression that public school in the US overall, as a system is a joke even though I went through a pretty privileged one.

A lot of us have had a pretty bad experience.To say we are all projecting is the real joke. I live in a college town & work with several kinds who are >2 std dev of your median cohort. Kids with a perfect ACT score in math at the age of 10. Kids who can do ap calc problems by age 12 - so can do limits, differentiate, integrate, handle tangent vectors, the whole calc1-calc2 shebang. To all of these kids, the system is a complete joke. Utter waste of their time. You don't even have to trust me. Get on aops. They have student blogs. Read thru the student blogs. Kids tarnish their schools, school textbooks & math teachers all over the place. I would happily link them here but don't want to invade their privacy.

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