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Comment by kylehotchkiss | Hacker News Reader

I can't say my public school experience was great, I was bullied and didn't really click with the popular kids, but being around a cross section of actual American kids in my age group (my school district mixed middle class with lower class neighborhoods) helped me shape my worldview and learn to deal with people who didn't look or talk like me. I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch your mouth around specific people. I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures.

I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them.

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My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. There is the neighborhood kids, you have sports and clubs kids can join, religious groups.

Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. Some people "homeschooling" I know are groups of parents getting together to educate their children together in small groups of ~5 kids to share the responsibility, and hiring a tutor to fill in the gaps. Monday they go John's house, his mom has a philosophy degree and teaches them. tuesday they go to Janes house, her dad is a Mathematician and teaches them. etc.

It's going to depend greatly on your geo location and socioeconomic circumstances, but a homeschooled kid who interacts a lot in the neighbourhood (big "if", IME; those kids all have a lot of school friends) is still going to miss out on broader social, cultural, racial and financial exposure. Example: my white, middle-class kids have a lot of people exactly like them in community groups and sports clubs, but lots of eastern european & asian immigrants in their school classes. This is super-important in elementary school when they're far less aware and insular about interacting with people who are "different" IMO

The venn diagram of 'homeschooled' and 'goes to church regularly' is not quite a circle but its not far off. Moderate to large churches also provide a great deal of socialization in this same way. Cross-socio-economic, racial, and other bases, all with a shared value system that creates a localized high trust environment that affords a greater degree of freedom for child autonomy.

Having a degree in philosophy or mathematics or whatever does not automatically make someone a good teacher. Teaching - particularly with young children - is a skill that is almost orthogonal to subject knowledge.

I think what makes you a good teacher is mostly a personality trait.

Prior knowledge of the subject is just a cherry on top.

Teaching ability is an innate feature of human beings.

My parents taught me a lot of things. Neither had a teaching degree.

At my university, I was taught by professors and grad students, none of whom had a teaching degree.

> Teaching ability is an innate feature of human beings.

Distribution seems to follow a bell curve - you’ll usually find the people with exceptional teaching ability harnessing that aptitude in a professional setting.

All features in humans follow a bell curve. Viva la difference!

Pretty much all humans can run. Yes, some have exceptional talent at it, and some can barely walk. But the vast majority can run reasonably well. Exceptional talent at teaching is certainly not required for routine learning.

Besides, you can buy the workbooks for every level of math, and work it through with the critters. There's no special skill needed. I don't recall any teachers of mine at any level who had any apparent special skill at it.

Except for Feynman. I attended one of his lectures. It was amazing! Feynman was at the extreme end of the bell curve, that's for sure.

Let me add to that Herb Sutter. He is very very good at explaining things.

> At my university, I was taught by professors and grad students, none of whom had a teaching degree.

Professors and grad students may well have done a course on how to lecture. It is obligatory and/or an easy way to pick up credits in many PhD programs. In any event, grad students teaching badly, because the department has allowed the more competent faculty to put their teaching burden on grad students, is a common complaint about US universities.

Maybe that's a new thing, because I've never heard of it.

I have recommended to professionals that they take a public speaking course, but those were not part of any degree program.

> Maybe that's a new thing, because I've never heard of it.

You mentioned in another post attending a lecture from Feynman. I think you might be a few decades behind modern academia.

> I think you might be a few decades behind modern academia.

Definitely. And I've seen no evidence there's been any improvement. More like things have gotten worse.

I used to work at a YMCA, and the local homeschool group asked us to do a PE class, which I taught.

I had the kids doing swimming, rock climbing, and all kinds of traditional PE games.

I worked with "normal" kids most of the time, and I will say the homeschool kids stuck out. They're more awkward around kids their age, but far less awkward around adults. They know how to speak and act, in large part. And they were disproportionately ahead of their peers academically--though I think that's probably a selection bias for the parents seeking out homeschool PE classes.

This was in the early 2000s, before Facebook. I'm sure the avenues to connect have only grown with social media.

> They're more awkward around kids their age, but far less awkward around adults. They know how to speak and act, in large part.

This is another argument that "by age" is not the best way to find one's academic or social peers.

Some people in 2nd grade should be in high school. Some people in high school should be in 2nd grade. (And, academically, sometimes that's different by subject; some people need to be in 2nd grade math and high-school reading.)

I was a TA/lab-assistant at the community college I was attending. I spent a lot of time talking to and helping out people, universally older than me, who had gotten out of high school and needed to figure out where in a multi-year curriculum of remedial math they should start.

This is one of the most insane comments I’ve ever read on a hackernews story. Age is very much important when finding one’s social peers as a child.

Why?

Under 18, the mind is closer to those +/- a few years from you, developmentally (and generally speaking). At least, that's what the know-it-alls were telling me when I was listening. Both pro and con home-school "zealots". Age peers is a thing

Peers in what sense? There are clearly examples of kids that are both erudite many years beyond their age and kids that excel in technical subjects well beyond their years. Clearly a distribution exists and it’s wider than +/- a few years even if that covers 1 or even 2 standard deviations.

For what it’s worth I’ve even met adults who can’t regulate and control their emotional reactions. They often have a prison background which either caused it or why they ended up in prison.

Age. I said "age peers"

I think you completely missed the point I was trying to make. Age peers are an illusion and only appears like a thing because most people follow a standard distribution; but this does nothing for the people who are further away from the mean.

Yeah, I routinely took classes with students 3–8 years older than me before going to college. "Age peers" are an illusion. However:

1. I mostly only cared about school w.r.t learning. For most kids, school is primarily a place to socialize.

2. If it took you two years to achieve the same level as what took someone else ten years (going with the 2nd vs. 10th grade example from a few comments up), I don't think you're going to get an appropriate pacing by just moving into the same class as them...

Maybe you missed when I said "generally". However you seem to be aware of standard distribution (ie generally) and then go on to talk about the edges (again).

I'm not missing your point at all. I'm talking generally and you're just stating (the obvious) that curves (spectrum?) exist and that some (~30%?) are outside the middle of the bell. Neat.

Since we agree there is a range of personalities and intelligence, maybe we agree that wide exposure to others (such as classmates) is, generally, a good thing.

Take a second to think through why it might be bad for a 2nd grader to seek high schoolers as social peers.

Take a second to think through why it might be great for a fourth grader to seek out college-aged people as social mentors (with the right barriers).

That was me.

With your condescending broad-speak.

Per HN's Comment Guidelines, I'd assume that Josh meant sorting students by both physical age and subject skill levels. The physical/emotional differences between 2nd graders and HS kids are obvious enough.

OTOH, one of my grandmothers spent her education career in a one room school house, teaching all subjects to grades 1-8. With the right social context, it can work very well.

It seems like a great way to foster a sense of community.

Our peers are more than people our age. They are the people older and younger than us too.

> It seems like a great way...

It was a small town, in the early 1900's. Everybody knew everybody, including the kids - who freely roamed the town when not doing chores or such.

I'd agree that it was very good for the kids' social development...but "foster a sense of community", in the present-day context, sounds like an express ticket to expecting far too much from it.

:) Perhaps.

Diversity of peers is generally a win. Children aren't supposed to be learning how to act based on what other children are doing - it is a crowd where no-one has any idea how to behave. Kids by nature are supposed to be developing in the company of adults.

Assuming you are in the US, consider that your perspective may be influenced by the modern (since second half 20th century) education system which so strictly stratifies by age. It actually is much stranger to me that we would expect peers to be exact age. There is a lot to learn from older kids, or even other (non-teacher, non-parent) adults.

> I'm sure the avenues to connect have only grown with social media.

The rise of social media has led to a massive increase in lonelyness and alienation of young people, not the contrary.

I had the mind of a home-schooled child in the body of a public-school student. Never clicked with peers until college, to be frank. Perhaps I could have made actual friends in high school if I gave up on associating with students of higher social status.

You don't need a degree in math to teach children age-appropriate math topics. Teachers don't become teachers just because they have a degree in that subject, they have been taught the methods on how to teach. Having prior knowledge of the subject is almost irrelevant. Teaching is really just applying solid methods on how to build knowledge from the most basic concepts as well as having the patience in dealing with humans who are not fully formed in their emotions.

> Having prior knowledge of the subject is almost irrelevant. Teaching is really just applying solid methods on how to build knowledge from the most basic concepts as well as having the patience in dealing with humans who are not fully formed in their emotions.

I would disagree with this. Those are necessary but not sufficient. It is necessary to have enough knowledge and joy from the subject to convey that to students.

I have a math degree. I have been volunteer tutoring high school kids in math for 9 years. When a student comes to me for help I can always tell if their teacher has math anxiety. They teach the students extremely rigid methods and refuse to allow alternative approaches to solve the problems. They enforce this with grading and penalize students who don't toe the line.

Some of the methods these teachers use are incredibly awkward, bespoke approaches that baffle me for their obtuseness. It's incredibly frustrating to deal with and it has a negative effect on the students.

My approach has always been to try to find the method that makes the most sense to the student, and work with them on that. I don't have any issues adapting my style to the student's needs. I only struggle when the spectre of one of those bad math teachers looms over our shoulders.

I wish there was a way to filter out those dumb-dumbs from the teaching profession. Stop ruining students’ future math ability.

There isn't. That's why homeschooling is taking off. People invest absolutely everything into their childrens' future. They're tired of seeing that investment wasted by subpar teaching and dysfunctional schools.

There is, but lowering standards is a cheap trick to get a bonus/promotion.

Why do 3rd grade math Teachers' Edition books have an answer key in them, I asked a 3rd grade teacher. She replied that many of the teachers couldn't do arithmetic.

It's a funny joke, but I'd be very surprised if that held at any grade school math level.

Someone would have to be numerically illiterate (with a college degree!) to be unable to do grade school math they've been teaching for multiple years.

Year 1, possible. But eventually it rubs off on even the teacher.

It's funny, but not a joke.

An interesting thing about 3rd grade math - I was taught long division. When implementing the standard C library for the PC, I implemented the same algorithm in assembler, and then again for the floating point divide emulator.

Sadly it's not a joke.

Most people suck at math. Those who don't suck usually have many well-paying jobs available for them. There are lots of schools, so many math teachers are needed.

Put these numbers together, and you realize that there is no way to have math teachers who are actually good at math. The numbers just don't add up.

My father has a PhD in physics and couldn't really teach me math past seventh grade. On the other hand, my father has a PhD in physics and ran out of math to teach me around seventh grade.

15+ years ago, that might have been the case. Now, you might find some friends in the 3-8 year old range, but then the kids just...don't do things anymore. In both suburban neighborhoods I've lived in the past 10 years, there are basically zero middle school or high school kids doing anything except playing video games and messing around on their phones from the comfort of home. School is quite literally the only social interaction most of these kids get aside from their parents, and if they didn't go to school, they'd just spend more time playing video games or on their phones.

Outside of the coasts or university towns, there aren't any "mathematicians" with kids just waiting around to form homeschooling groups with you.

My cousin homeschooled her kids, who are now finished with college. I know they're capable of using phones (one's a programmer), but I've never seen them pull one out. They're social and love playing board games, and I suspect that comes from their parents. They also socialized with other homeschooled kids, because they were part of lots of homeschooling groups.

The kids in public school are there by default; the homeschooling parents are actively choosing to raise their kids differently, and, from what I've seen, they're more likely to interact with their kids instead of letting them go terminally online or play video games.

this is just wild to make some blanked statement about kids that are homeschooled and screen time compared to kids that go to school based on one example. probably 99.97% homeschooled kids spend more time staring at the screens than kids that go to school (if not more)

You’re doing the same thing, except with even less anecdata

exactly :)

The previous neighborhood I lived in, had around 100 townhomes, very secluded. I never saw kids outside other than walking from the bus stop. However my current neighborhood, which is a development of 15 houses, 11 of which have children. The kids are almost all doing things outside every day. Caveat: everyone in my neighborhood is college educated (mix of engineers, professors, finance, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and some other stuff) pretty sociable, and we (the parents) all seem to independently be anti smart phone, tv, etc. high school age kids do seem to go outside less, but theyre all 2 or 3 sport kids, and pretty busy academically.

It's also a question of accessible public spaces.

The US (especially the vast bulk of suburbia) is incredibly varied in quantity of these.

Some areas have them. Ironically, for all their faults, Florida master planned developments do better than most, and the west has a surfeit of natural land.

Others are an endless sea of kid-unfriendly private businesses and/or income-gated spaces, locked behind access to an automobile.

At some point the US, especially east coast suburban US, forgot that roaming kids need somewhere to roam...

I think it’s mostly phones, social media etc… My 20 year younger sister grew up in the same house I did with almost zero changes within walking distance.

Her and her friends never played outside. Me and my friends and my brother (7 years younger than me) and my other sister’s (4 years younger younger) friends lived outside in the summer.

> In both suburban neighborhoods I've lived in the past 10 years, there are basically zero middle school or high school kids doing anything except playing video games and messing around on their phones from the comfort of home.

While perhaps not uncommon, these sound like massively dysfunctional neighborhoods.

John Jane Mary set up is incredibly idealized. In a big city I have not been able to find anyone willing to commit to anything except one off play dates in a museum which has nothing to do with actual education.

It sounds like school with extra steps.

And control over who else is in it.

There is no such thing as “the neighborhood kids” anymore. Having any kind of social circle for your children is going to require your facilitation and effort… a lot of it. It’ll be extra hard without the common bond of shared activity.

Not knocking what sounds like your choice to homeschool, just sharing something that has changed from my youth.

There are in fact neighborhood kids. It only takes a couple of families deciding to restrict phones and video games and support their kids in spending real time together. We’ve done this in our neighborhood and it’s great. It just has to be intentional now, where it was the default before all these screens.

Part of "socializing" is observing that one's parents aren't the absolute authority in the world. Parents sometimes butt heads with teachers, coaches etc. No home schooling scenario can provide this experience. I think it leads to enhanced levels of narcissism in both students and parents.

I guess you aren't married. Lol.

Why would you think homeschooled children have no teachers or coaches for their parents to butt heads with? I assure you this is not the case

“Good socializaron experience” is the exact opposite of “religious groups”. Said as someone who went to a private Christian school for 7 years.

Everytime I see these kinds of arguments, it sounds like someone desperately trying to argue that a park playground is almost as entertaining for kids as an amusement park. Your example of 5 kids socializing with each other is definitely better than 1 kid at home. It’s also definitely worse than learning to socialize in a school of 500 kids each day. This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500 kids would somehow have less diversity of personality, thought, languages, physical features, intelligence, etc.

But it may be much better than dealing with the problems that come with having 500 "random" kids to socialize / interact with. Everything's a tradeoff.

Yeah, wouldn’t want kids to learn how to deal with problems.

Dealing with adult problems shouldn't be something kids have to learn, as long as the problems scale with their development that's not a problem

>This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500 kids would somehow have less diversity of personality, thought, languages, physical features, intelligence, etc.

I have such an argument - have you considered the amount of forced social conformity in a public school versus a community of homeschooled people? Humans are weird in a way that 'public school culture' tries to paper over.

What social conformity is forced by schools these days ? Only one I can really remember was we had specific uniforms for PE (basically just gym shorts and a tshirt)

not the school administration, other students.

So, good training for exactly the same pressures they'll face as adults?

well today’s parents do just about everything except prepare their children for adulthood

I’m not against public schools, but pretending the social pressures are anywhere near similar is wrong.

Kids are assholes in a way that would get most adults fired or imprisoned.

There are social pressures to conform, but you don’t get called names for wearing off brand shoes the way kids were when I was in grade school.

They are the same pressures. They occur in the same proportions.

Children are just really bad at it so it is extremely obvious. The rituals do not disappear when you turn 18. They do not disappear when you turn 98.

Probably AI generated.

Every actual human with lived experience in society knows, that real life is much more diverse than school. In school, there’s at best a few cliques and mostly a single social hierarchy. After school, even during student years, but even more so when entering the workforce, there’s incredible variety of social hierarchies to climb, skills to learn and excel within, and career paths to take.

Zero comparison to school.

> They are the same pressures. They occur in the same proportions.

That's one hell of a claim to make:

Have you really had work environments where half your co-workers refused to talk to you? For months, if not years?

Have you ever been shoved down to the ground and punched repeatedly?

Have you ever had a co-worker chase you with a knife?

Have you ever had a co-worker set off a bomb to get out of work early?

Have you ever had a co-worker steal your wallet?

I can safely say I saw all of these going to public school, and have never encountered any of that behavior in the office.

If “the rituals” are so subtle that I don’t notice them then it’s not the same pressure then is it?

Children are really good at this. Adults stop trying for various reasons.

“Humans are weird in a way that 'public school culture' tries to paper over.”

I went to a public school as did the vast majority of the world’s population today. Genuinely curious… Are you saddened by what you view as a lack of diversity and creativity in the world and do you blame that on public schools?

Schools have athletic kids and within that, groups interested in different sports. And within each sport, subgroups of kids who become close friends. All of that also applies to kids interested in musical instruments, art, computers, board games and on and on. Some kids are nice, some are assholes, and everything in between. You make it sound like public school systems output an army of clones. No. Your friend group changes over time as you meet others, as your interests/views change, and as other people change. You're constantly immersed amongst all the other groups and you learn to tolerate some, love some, and hate some. All of this learning is tremendously stifled if you’re talking about a kid learning to socialize in a group of 5 instead of 500.

Aside from individualism, there has to be conformity as well. That’s part of learning to socialize and function in the real world for later as an adult. Conforming is also just human nature stemming from wanting to be accepted in a group. We all naturally learned to balance conformity and individualism when we were thrown into the public school system. By home schooling, you’re saying no, I don’t have the confidence that my child can do it on their own, even if 99% of the world has done so.

Since you said you're genuinely curious - the answer to your first question is no. I'm grateful for what diversity and creativity does exist - and I recognize that even with public schools in the mix, it's more than what existed for most of human history. But public schools have certainly been a retarding force in the generally positive developments we've seen since my grandfathers' time.

Incidentally, they're only a little bit older than that, so we shouldn't pretend they're some deeply tested social technology.

Everyone will eventually be exposed to some form of forced social conformity. You cannot shield your children from it forever. It is better that they experience it now and you do your job as the parent to teach them how to handle it appropriately.

Except you don't interact with a meaningful section of those 500 kids you get stuck most of the day with a small % all the same age as you and told not to talk to each other.

I went to a school of about 50 kids, and I often wished I’d been at a school of 500 or more kids, but looking back I’m very glad my family didn’t opt for the school of 5000 kids.

At 50 kids, if you were social you definitely had friends (not just acquaintances) from very different socioeconomic backgrounds. At 50 kids, you could play sports on the official team if you wanted to and showed up and didn’t slack off. You knew everyone and there were no cliques, that would have been ridiculous with 50 kids.

I could go on, but those are just a few things (IMO good things) you get in a tiny school that you probably wouldn’t have at 500 kids and surely not at 5000.

I find it strange that you don’t hear of more homeschooling groups pulling together to create something like the 50-kid school.

My son is in a co-op with around that number of kids, but that's total (through HS).

The co-op I was in 30 years ago was a bit smaller but sounds like it's still going strong (no clue how big it is these days though).

So there definitely are homeschooling co-ops around that size. I do wonder what the average size of a co-op is though

The way I look at it if I were to end up homeschooling my kid wouldn't socialize with the ~5 kids in the co-op.

* co-op

* Ballet

* Fencing

* Gymnastics

* Math Circle

* Church / Fellowship

* Neighbors

* Family & Friends

That easily adds up to 50 children their age.

But my thinking isn't really about the numbers of socialization. Public school academics move at a glacial pace. They don't have a sufficient rigor, lack a decent education in mathematics, neglect the classics and philosophy, and have started to neglect the western canon in favor of contemporary literature which is poorly written and offers little value. There are also, even in the best schools, trouble students that disrupt classrooms.

In my neighborhood:

* there is no co-op. Meeting another homeschooler is a whole day affair due to traffic

* ballet and other extracurricular are fine, but always after school hours when traffic is terrible

* math circle is so oversubscribed you have to test to get into it

* neighbors’ kids are locked in school all day and then doing their custom extracurricular. We never see them.

* family & friends, we have none.

Nonetheless we homeschool. We can cover 2 years of math and reading in 6 months.

and what does “covering 2 years of math and reading in 6 months” do for you? getting ready to send your kids to 9-5 grind when they are 12?

I hope they’ll have more options than I did. I never wanted to be a SWE working in social media, but grad school in pure math showed me I wasn’t good enough. A common story.

your kids will have amazing opportunities just because you are obviously a kick ass parent. but I don’t think squeezing two years of math in 6 months will do anything

As a bright student who was never challenged in K-12, I can unequivocally state that this ultimately hurt me in the long run. I seriously didn't know how to study and didn't care to try learning when I actually needed it in some of my undergrad courses.

For example, when I took trigonometry in high school I did none of the homework, showed up to the tests and aced them. That led me to getting a C in that class (kindly the teacher advanced me to pre-calc, but forced me to retake trig as well). That's basically the attitude I had throughout high school and undergrad. I'm positive I could have amounted to more earlier in life (only years later did I return to academia to earn my PhD in CS after tiring of industry).

same-ish for me but times are different now. kids these days have all the knowledge in the world at their fingertips and it is really up to the kids (with a little guidance :) )

You can't forget the projects that are supposed to teach you that you're really gonna regret it if you don't have good study habits that you skate through fine without developing those habits. Causes all future teachers to lose credibility.

Or just because math is awesome and knowing more is just great knowledge to obtain.

For some reason people think having an education is only valuable if it is traded for money. For example I think an educated wife and a mom who never earns a single dollar from an employer is incredibly value to her family.

I hope my daughters get a robust liberal arts education and then just get married young and have kids and be homemakers.

It means they can get to the fun stuff that much faster. Speed run grinding the basics.

When do you work to pay for your life? And have time for your self?

I think quality over quantity matters. There was no one at my academic level at the public school, but two lived at my house. If you're worried about social skills, why do you expect an open admissions school to be able to train your children better than a more curated social group? You could say, "I don't trust parents to actually give their children experiences that would be beneficial, because maybe the parents are bigots or something," which like, sure is true. Lots of parents are like that. But they already pretty much have free reign to put their child in the local Bible Bootcamp instead of the public high school, so you're not really preventing this bad thing from happening, but you are preventing a lot of parents who would give their children a better experience than the local vaudeville show.

> Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day.

I would argue if your kid stays home all day you're not better than a school so why would you bother? I know zero homeschoolers keeping their kids locked up at home

I would have gotten a vasectomy if I knew my kid had to go through this kind of childhood

I highly doubt the kind of people who homeschool their kids for popular/narrative reasons have enough cognitive or social capability to make all that happen.

> But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

As person who was homeschooled in a large homeschooling community, no, I now believe at a fundamental level that not only is it not possible to adequately difference homeschooled children, it very much defeats the updated-but- always it is not possible to "get good socialization". There are two issues: the gross tonnage of exposure to other people is just not possible in homeschooling, and, there's a fundamental difference between the kinds of socialization.

I believe there is value in being forced into socializing with people you may not like. I did not experience what one might call "involuntary socialization" until my first job out of college. It took me a very long time to learn how to exist comfortably in a world where not everyone would agree with me, like me, see me as an equal, or treat me with respect.

In institutional education environments and in jobs, you don't get a choice who you have around you. You have to learn how to deal with that. Taking the kids to karate class doesn't teach them that because most everyone at karate class wants to be there.

Any voluntary socialization arrangement is--by definition--a self-selection into a group with at least one point of commonality: you are so there for the thing, the activity.

Involuntary socialization arrangements expose you to others where your overlapping demographic is nothing more than just geographic circumstance. Many people don't learn how to deal with that in public schools: it's where antisocial behavior comes from. But *every" homeschooled kid will miss that lesson completely.

Yeah but this is basically people with the same social circle and religion etc...

Which is how the vast majority of the world is and how most of America is. I mean, it's not bad to be around people with different ideas or backgrounds, but it is also not some great requirement.

> But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling.

Absolutely. I was homeschooled and in my state (Illinois) the laws work out such that homeschool students can enroll in public school classes if the school has space for them. That's how I socialized. So I got at least a modicrum of socialization (especially once I started band) but wasn't dragged down by the mediocre education at our local public schools.

As the parent of a small child, there is a very noticeable difference in social skills that develop immediately as a result of my child being in a daycare interacting with other children of a similar age. Compared to my friends' same age children who are mostly staying at home and babysat by a grandparent.

(as a disclaimer, the daycare has very good teachers/caregivers from what I can tell so I'm sure that's part of it as well)

Daycare quality is a spectrum, the same way as babysitting at home. My smaller one just started daycare, and we settled for one that actually does stuff with the kids (forest school style). But I can tell you, we've visited lots of places that are basically just making sure the kids are not dead by the time you pick them up. Same for babysitting with grandparents; there's the hyper-social grandpa style that's always doing something, and the couchpotato with +10k hours on Cocomelon.

Yes, I'll admit that my sample size for comparison is relatively small so I'm mostly offering anecdotal evidence. And I totally agree on the quality of daycares being a spectrum. Just like how one single, good teacher who actually cares can really change a student's school experience (even if the school itself is not that great).

In my opinion, grandparents are the worst. They completely spoil them.

Or have bad habits like playing shovelware games on their phones.

Every human being should have the experience of unconditional, unadulterated love from someone else. But not 24 by 7.

In the rural areas that I've lived in, it's mostly about a strong desire to supplant science and history with religious ideas and principles.

That is exactly what I've seen, to keep kids in their brainwashing bubble.

Where I live in the Midwest that is absolutely the case. The homeschool "groups" are almost all religiously oriented in some way.

Lived in the Midwest too when I was younger, wasn't till I grew up that I saw how religiously linked it all was.

You are light gray but creating a bubble is actual expressed reason for many home schoolers like with young earth creationists.

I hear this a lot, and it may be true, but I am very skeptical that it matters. The statistics about home-schooled children don't support the idea that they have horribly inaccurate models of the world guided mostly by religious thinking. Or if they do it doesn't seem to affect life achievement in any important way. Instead home-schooled children are typically more advanced at graduation and have higher lifetime achievement metrics than their public school counterparts.

As an athiest, and a bayesian, it's difficult for me to worry about other peoples religious beliefs that don't seem to negatively affect them or me. Especially when there is propaganda taught in the public schools that does warp the students' world views in ways that harms them and me.

> The statistics about home-schooled children don't support the idea that they have horribly inaccurate models of the world guided mostly by religious thinking.

I'd be surprised if any such statistics exist. I've seen studies about the reasons parents choose to homeschool, and various outcomes of homeschooled kids versus public school kids, but none about what particular beliefs homeschooled kids have regarding, say, the age of the Earth.

Homeschoolers tend to outperform their regular school peers. But I think parental involvement is a significant differential and is probably contributing to the outcomes.

In what and citation needed.

"In study after study, the homeschooled have scored, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the United States and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile."[1]

"Descriptive analysis reveals homeschool students possess higher ACT scores, grade point averages (GPAs) and graduation rates when compared to traditionally-educated students."[2]

[1]https://www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/sites/www.educa...

[2]https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ893891

That doesn’t control for socioeconomic background.

Yes, homeschooled kids do better than the average. The average is also dragged down by the country deciding that if your parents are poor you should starve.

> Especially when there is propaganda taught in the public schools that does warp the students' world views in ways that harms them and me.

This sentence caused a record needle scratch sound in my head.

I'm afraid to ask what you mean, and it seems like you might be afraid to say, because it's a bit bizarre to drop that line with no explanation.

Propaganda being the incorporation of political ideology into much of the lesson plan - even when banned.

Whatever it is, public schools are an absolute failure. But that could be attributed to the immigration in the US over the last half decade. North Carolina lost like 20% of their student base following mass ICE raids.

Many teachers around me have mentioned how the portion of non-English speakers has dramatically increased and is causing significant degradation to their effectiveness in the classroom and the outcomes.

Please check the work of howard zinn or event just watch one of his talks. The entire curriculum is structured to support an ideological narrative more than to provide an honest historical or ethical platform of understanding.

> Please check the work of howard zinn

Somehow I don't think you and alphazard are talking about the same things.

I can give a very simple example - in my high school history class, the cold war was presented as a conflict between communism and democracy - despite the fact that on an economic field the conflict was clearly between communism and capitalism, while on a political field proponents of both systems were happy to subvert the democratic process whenever someone had the audacity to vote for the wrong economic system.

Ooh, as I was typing I thought of a better example - remember the four food groups? eight to twelve servings of grains per day? Less obviously propaganda, though I'd argue the farm lobbies pushing it count. But harms in terms of its link to obesity and heart disease are pretty damn stark.

Given that school children are a huge captive audience of future consumers/voters/employees it would be incredibly strange if the curriculum wasn't the target of all kinds of special interest groups that aren't perfectly aligned with public interest.

> remember the four food groups?

LOL this cannot be a serious reason for homeschooling. You're trolling me, right? Please tell me you're trolling me.

You're tempting me to start doing just that. Maybe focus on keeping the conversation productive in keeping with HN's community guidelines.

> Maybe focus on keeping the conversation productive

I didn't and don't want to have this conversation. Technically, I didn't even ask alphazard what they meant, and in any case, I didn't ask anyone else what alphazard meant, as if someone else could magically interpret alphazard's cryptic remark any better than I could, which they can't, as proved by the multiple different unsolicited answers I received.

I was perhaps morbidly curious what the atheist was objecting to in public schools when they nonetheless seemed perfectly fine with conservative religious homeschooling.

Stalin wasn't elected. Neither was Gorbachev.

North Vietnam's leaders were. So was Iran's.

The notion of being "elected" when you have a gun pointed at you at the ballot casting is silly.

You always know the elections are shams when the communist candidate gets 95% of the vote.

technically North Korea has had elected leaders since the founding. They have elections in North Korea. Doesn’t make me convinced North Korea isn’t a communist dictatorship.

> remember the four food groups?

1. Calories

2. Carcinogens

3. Caffeine

4. Cholesterol

That has been the case for a long time, and I guess something about the current generation of parents has gotten them to act more on it. My dad came from a very religious family and they all did private religious schools for their early grade school years. Then they went to public for high school years.

If I had to guess, its maybe something about the demise of church life that has gotten religious parents to just pull back entirely. It wasn't that uncommon for public schools to make nods toward Christian ideals/lifestyles before like the 90s, but now that stuff just doesn't happen anymore.

> It wasn't that uncommon for public schools to make nods toward Christian ideals/lifestyles before like the 90s, but now that stuff just doesn't happen anymore.

Schools should absolutely teach Christian mythology and history, and Greek mythology and history, and Egyptian mythology and history, alongside many other subjects. But to the extent that they used to make "nods" towards "this is the cultural default we defer to", nope.

Take this thought, apply it to your favorite non-Western country and tell me where you end up.

Why? How does this benefit the students, except in understanding allusions in books and poetry? Or is that the goal, in which case, sure, but I think Eastern mythologies should be included too.

Same reason for studying literature, in addition to understanding the pervasive allusions and effects throughout society. And yes, of course; that list was an example, not a comprehensive list.

States are saying that schools have to post the 10 commandments and when teachers put up a poster about “everyone is welcomed here” showing kids of different colors it’s “too woke”.

Which is funny since I (a Black guy) went to a mostly White Christian school in the 80s where they sung “Jesus loves the little children - red and yellow black and white they are all precious in his site”.

> States are saying that schools have to post the 10 commandments

Yeah that definitely seems against the First Amendment (and Texas' equivalent in their Bill of Rights). I feel like the world makes more sense if you read the First Amendment as a treaty between the Christian sects that were executing one another in the colonies for heresy, rather than y'know what it literally says.

> when teachers put up a poster about “everyone is welcomed here” showing kids of different colors it’s “too woke”.

Keep gang signs out of the classroom. In places where university rivalries are high, teachers are also asked to keep ensignia off their doors. It's the same here. "Everyone is welcomed here" (without a cross) is now a callsign for "registered Democrat". Imagine if a teacher put a big "don't trample on me" sign with a snake... I feel like that would send a message other than, "be respectful in class."

How is telling kids it’s okay if you’re not White like the rest of the kids or you’re in a wheelchair a Democratic talking point?

Read what I wrote:

> "Everyone is welcome here" is now a callsign for "registered Democrat".

Maybe it's suspicious that this phrase is able to distinguish Republicans from Democrats, but the point isn't the virtue of the parties, it's that it's one of the most common phrases people choose to use to distinguish themselves as Democrats. If you don't want one teacher walking around with a MAGA hat, but don't have the political power to just ban them from schools, you have to make a treaty like, "we'll ban rainbow capes and MAGA hats."

Banning rainbow caps and Pride is completely different than showing kids of different colors playing together holding hands and showing a kid in a wheelchair.

This is the exact poster - even more innocuous than I thought

https://www.idahoednews.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Every...

It was originally a stand against hate

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/the-story-behind-the-all...

Do I need to emphasize that this was the sentiment that was repeated when I was in a Christian conservative mostly White private school in the 80s?

You have yet to address or even acknowledge the focus of both my comments: this phrase is a common means of signalling party affiliation. I feel like you need to improve in how you approach these kind of discussions, because you're getting nowhere in convincing me when you come across as not even understanding my argument.

If your goal is different, maybe to just socially stigmatize people opposed to worlds you prefer, well I guess you're doing fine with that, but you do see how that's problematic at creating consensus, right? And how, the sane reaction is for me to faux-politely call you a shill or a clown. I don't think this is actually your goal (which is why I deleted my previous reply, it was unnecessarily mean unless this is your goal), I just don't think you've really built up your debate toolbox yet.

Saying we don’t hate people because of the color of their skin was something that conservatives said with Reagan through Bush 2 when he spoke in solidarity with American Muslims after 9/11.

If we ban any symbol that might be used as politics we should ban the American flag in classrooms since that now has become a symbol of the MAGA movement. Defending banning a poster showing hands of people of different colors is just as non sensical - there were no pride colors on the poster, no pro immigration signaling nothing.

I bet you a paycheck they would have banned a multi racial group picture of kids just playing together because it was “too woke”.

In fact, there is a long history of states being triggered showing people of multiple races actually getting along

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/02/05/sesame-str...

It’s not about political signaling - it’s straight out racism

Talking about the greatness of America has been a theme among Democrats from FDR to JFK, when they spoke about defending and spreading American cultural values like democracy and freedom. It goes back even further to the 1840s with James K. Polk and Manifest Destiny. Banning the MAGA hat in the classroom isn't about political signalling - it's just straight out America hate.

Do you see how silly you sound? Look, here's my issue with you: I've told you my reasons to oppose MAGA hats and welcome posters in the classroom. You refuse to believe those are my reasons. You're calling me a liar, saying I must secretly be withholding some racist motivated reasoning. I get that there are America haters who want to ban MAGA hats, and racists who want to ban these posters. But you're talking to me, not them. If you can only refute people who collectively share two brain cells, then you're probably just wrong on your position.

MAGA was introduced by Trump and is a symbol of Trump. I didn’t argue that they shouldn’t ban “Hope” even though Hope was also something that wasn’t political before Obama. It was clearly partisan for Obama.

MAGA is not speaking to “American greatness”. It’s whining that America isn’t great any more because of among others gays and skinny jeans wearing west coast elite - ie making it great “again”

The idea of America not already being “great” was something that no Democrat could have said. We have been drinking the Kool Aid of American exceptionalism for a century.

If you listen to almost anyone in the MAGA camp, it meant “those evil minorities like the secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law and those Hatians eating pets took over America and now it’s a crime ridden country infested by immigrants”

You still have yet to actually reply to me and my argument. As I said earlier, you need to improve at this skill if you want to actually convince people their position is wrong.

What position is that?

1. That showing different colored hands raised with a heart in it is “too political” - again they were not holding hands, no Pride symbols (that you brought up)

2. That MAGA isn’t political?

I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m saying that a certain contingent of conservatives have always been triggered about the thought that the US is not just White people and even more triggered with the thought of people of various races getting along. It’s especially prevalent in a post MAGA takeover of the Republican Party.

Neither of those are my position. If you're not trying to convince me I'm wrong, that's fine, just realize that Idaho is a one-party state and the Republican Party has the power there to do what they think is right. The only way to influence that is to convince enough people that banning these posters is not right, which I thought was your goal, but I guess political commentary has its own purpose.

I’m the last person to try to convince racists not to be racists (referring to Idaho politicians - not you). I’ve lived an entire life ignoring them and living my best life. That’s a lost cause.

That’s like trying to convince people that a man didn’t rise from the dead after three days and the only way that he will come back to take them to heaven is if the government protects Isreal - yea that is what evangelicals think.

Hell I had a house built in an infamous “sundown town” (where the outskirts were still conservative but more traditional conservative)

Yeah this one:

https://youtu.be/WErjPmFulQ0?si=BpsfzQXo0HP2AXLB

And completely ignored the looks I got every time I walked out of my house.

I won't pretend to know where you live or what those people's desires are but I definitely started homeschooling after the last US administration took moral volatility to new standards. The principles taught in schools just did not align anymore with what was common sense when I was in school and what I believe in. Now before you judge, I'm not looking for a fight. My wife and I have both master-degree educations in CS and law and our four kids have been to public school in the US and abroad, they've been to an evangelical christian school, and now that we've decided to homeschool for two years, we're not likely to take them back. The traditional school aspects take up 2-3h per day at most, then comes the school of life: raising and caring for animals and plants, fixing the truck or other engineersy activities and of course plenty of fun activities outside of the too-busy-to-be-fun times. My kids have learned of historic events such as Jamestown, Gettysburg or Mount St. Helens at the actual site of the event, they've been to most of the national parks and the fear of being socially-disconnected is not more than a fear before you start. Heck, thanks to Starlink they can even talk to their friends while we're driving through a desert.

Now let me also say that preparing the curriculum, ordering the materials etc. takes a lot of effort and discipline. It's definitely almost a full time job and I'm blessed with an amazing wife that's gifted in all that but the reward is more than worth it. Also, if you're thinking about it, many states have home school support programs and put you in touch with other home schoolers in the area.

So, to be clear, you pulled your children out of public school because students were being educated to accept other people who do not adhere to their own set of religious and cultural beliefs, in a country founded on freedom of religion?

And now instead of learning science in a lab and socializing, they are forced to maintain your farm?

What an good job you are doing!

You're forgetting an important distinction: Freedom of religion amongst various Christian denominations. Failure to recognize this as a historical fact leads to back to the original point of public education being a morality platform and not an objective educative platform.

"the last US administration took moral volatility to new standards" I have no idea what this means. Can you explain it?

" The principles taught in schools just did not align anymore with what was common sense when I was in school and what I believe in."

Please explain in more detail what you mean by this. You old do you think the earth is? In my experience most home schoolers are young earth creationists.

I mean in the inner city science is supplanted as well like when they close down stem schools because too many Asians or something.

The public school experience in the U.S. depends so much on your ZIP Code. I attended the best public schools in my state while my wife attended the worst in the same state. I am genuinely pro-public school, but there is a point where the benefit of being around different people is overshadowed by distractions and low standards. My wife had to be diagnosed with a learning disability in college to receive test accommodations when she discovered that you cannot stay after class indefinitely to finish an exam. Her teachers never raised any concerns about her taking 50% as long with exams compared to the other students, and she was the valedictorian of her huge urban high school. The lack of concern is bizarre until you consider that her teachers were preoccupied with students graduating and showing up to class. Many of her classmates ended up getting pregnant, and the school had a large daycare for the children of high school students.

My wife didn't end up taking the SAT or ACT because she attended a relatively strong local university with a full-ride scholarship and a test-optional policy. The MCAT exam initially denied her request for accommodations because she was only diagnosed with a learning disability in college. We successfully appealed by writing an essay arguing that my wife wasn't diagnosed with a learning disability in K-12 because her schools sucked (we submitted documentation that proved that her schools tested among the worst in the state, her elementary school was literally the worst in the entire state, when she was a student), and her teachers had much bigger concerns than why the smart, studious kid takes a long time to complete exams.

If the wife had gone to the K-12 school system that I attended, her learning disability would have been addressed in elementary school, and she would have been spared much angst. I was a very poor reader in early elementary school, and received almost daily one-on-one attention at my school from instructional aides and volunteers (mostly highly educated parents and grandparents) for years. I received a perfect score on the ACT reading section in high school.

The set of ZIP codes to geographical school assignment is neither 1:1 nor onto. Actually,

(just kidding)

I agree that school assignment is highly variable. I'm glad your wife managed to get her appeal approved. It's unfortunate she even had to go through that process to begin with.

> her teachers were preoccupied with students graduating and showing up to class

That's because the attendance rate is the driver of state funds to the schools.

The schools also get more funding if the students perform poorly.

> The schools also get more funding if the students perform poorly.

that's such a weird policy.

The teachers can produce poorly performing students easily (without much effort i might add), but cannot do that very same for well performing students (even with effort). The incentive to produce poor performing students to get more funding means it's misaligned with the student's best interests.

Schools and students _should_ be incentivized to perform well, and funding ought to be a portion of that incentive.

> that's such a weird policy

Yup. I've taken adult lessons in things, and I don't continue to buy lessons if the coach is unable to teach me. But in the public schools, watch what happens if you suggest merit pay. Shields up, Mr Sulu!

Instead, teacher pay is based on years of service and how many credentials you have.

We could all learn from Hengshui.

(This is kind of a joke, because while the Hengshui school system is much more meritocratic, including in teacher salaries, it's also infamous for a stressful school environment. It's not really a joke though. While there are problems with the long hours, it's definitely better than whatever America has going on.)

Part of the issue with merit pay is if it's tied to simple metrics like grades, those metrics will get inflated without raising the things those metrics were meant to measure.

but grades that are external to the school could be used as the metric - something the school cannot tamper with themselves. Grades like "international baccalaureate assessments" or some sort of university entrance exams.

Now the school will do everything possible to convince their crap students to leave before those exams!

I was homeschooled until high school. I couldn’t agree with you more. The value that the socialization the public school offers is underestimated.

Learning activities with other homeschooled kids is ok but not enough. A tight-knit neighborhood of friends is huge, but not enough. You need to develop a thick skin and a sense of self-assurance.

I have no counterfactual of course, but I think much of the social anxiety I’ve had to unlearn as a young adult came from homeschooling. And I had great circumstances

I was horribly bullied in high school. It was really bad.

The worst part was being ostracized. The school had anti-bullying policies, but they don’t force anyone to be your friend.

Strangely, I was elected to lots of student government office, and held leadership in lots of clubs.

Maybe my memory is just off, but I don’t think so.

I think I was really good connecting with the grownups who ran the school, so they made sure I got leadership positions.

I was always much better at being the kid in class the teacher liked - same with principals, etc.

Probably one of the reasons the other kids didn’t like me - but that went over my head.

I think it’s really easy to overestimate how important the socialization in public schools is. We go to so many movies where the plot is based on the dynamics of public high school, we assume it’s normal.

We see so much of terrible stuff downplaid like it doesn’t matter. Just rewatched Back to the Future which laughingly brushes off every kind of violence as long as it’s done at the prom.

As someone else who was homeschooled except the last three grades, I also agree. Additionally, the effect is multiplied if the kid in question lives in a rural or semi-rural area rather than a suburb or city.

For the majority of my adult life I’ve been playing catchup. Even now, barreling towards 40, there’s aspects of social capabilities where I come up quite short relative to my peers.

If I’m ever to be a parent, I won’t homeschool. Depending the circumstances I might not send my kids to public school, but their schooling situation will at minimum involve social exposure comparable to that of public school.

> Even now, barreling towards 40, there’s aspects of social capabilities where I come up quite short relative to my peers.

I identify with your post as a rural kid who mostly didn't socialize with classmates after school. I went to public school, and I'm 40 now. I think the human experience is that you are inevitably going to encounter social situations where you feel outmatched or simply don't belong. I do agree with making sure your kids experience public school, but I think that's about the bare minimum of what you can offer your kids.

Yeah, there are always going to be outliers, that can't be avoided. The problem lies with the kid never having been given the opportunity in the first place.

And I've always felt that most of my social anxiety came from public school. Maybe we were both just prone to it.

(I unlearned it too, but it took quite a while.)

> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them.

The older I get, the more I think that helping your kids avoid interactions with others who aren't with the program is for the best. Ideally your children's friends should be people that you think are good kids, kids that you would go to bat for. Then when you are teaching your kids to compromise and play nice and forgive, you can legitimately feel good about it. I think my default assumption about a negative interaction with a public school random would be that they are basically a wild animal to be avoided.

The world is messy for all sorts of reasons, that may not be the way anyone would like it to be but it's the way it is, and imo it's best to learn it when the stakes are low rather than when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on, or they're being taken advantage of at work or in an adult relationship.

I wouldn't fault someone for wanting to situate their kids among peers and adults that help them grow at a similar level rather than hinder it, but I think it's also best to be a guiding hand rather than a applicant tracking system when it comes to the non-academic side

> when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on

If you think homeschooling makes kids grow up to be prejudiced, you should just say that, instead of insinuating it.

> If you think homeschooling makes kids grow up to be prejudiced, you should just say that, instead of insinuating it.

Absolutely not what I was insinuating.

I was suggesting that explicit isolation from potential peers that come from different levels of wealth or backgrounds based on pre-existing prejudice has the potential to reinforce those prejudices. I'd wager this would overwhelmingly come from private schools and suburbs, not homeschooling, but it's more of a matter of where the desire to control the exposure comes from if that's part of the reason.

So no, I was making no direct association between homeschooling and prejudice.

There are certainly tradeoffs, but it's not all negative. In my experience, what it boils down to is that home-schooled kids tend to have more experience with adults and less experience dealing with a wide variety of other kids, particularly assholes.

When I was a kid in public school, there was no shortage of assholes and I definitely would have preferred to not have to deal with them. OTOH, I don't doubt that there is also some value in that experience, not to mention interacting with all the other people. Also, we didn't have social media or semi-regular school shootings when I was a kid. So yeah.. to me, it's not at all obvious which set of tradeoffs is preferable nowadays.

You're forgetting that public school also exposes you to more adult assholes, including ones with direct power over you that can screw you over for no reason.

It's important to know how and when to advocate for yourself and others, when to escalate through proper channels and when to escalate outside of proper channels, and when to back down and let them be an asshole because they're frankly not worth your time.

In particular, learning "pretend to lose now, win later" is a useful skill. But I think there are healthier ways to learn that skill than on a live-fire course.

What happens to asshole kids? Do they become regular adults or asshole adults? Do they become soldiers or prisonners never to be seen again by normies? Do they even reach adulthood? Are they even a stable group or were we all asshole kids to some other kids?

Some become President of the United States. Others probably grow out of it?

I think it's an important development milestone to learn that people don't want to be their friends, and the longing for human connection might be a good moderating force in their life. I was a really pessimistic teenager, which I received plenty of feedback on, and have worked against my own nature to become a more positive and cheery adult.

This is a strange claim.

In my personal experience, the asshole kids overlapped greatly with the popular kids in a Venn diagram sense. People, in general, did want to be their friends.

I think that a lot of the assholes behaved that way because they were naturally charismatic and people wanted to be their friends despite their being assholes. They were never socially punished for their behavior because they could turn on the charm at will. In other words, they were assholes because they could afford to be.

Looking back at the assholes of my youth, they run the gamut. Some seem like lovely adults, and are very successful. Some are just like they were and are very successful. Some others crashed out completely. The more brash, upfront assholes and the clever assholes seem to have done better than the sneering, malicious assholes.

And we were (almost) all assholes sometimes, but there's definitely a class of kids who were assholes most of the time.

Dunno, maybe all of the above? Believe it or not, I didn't really keep in touch with them.

My point was that kids are disproportionately likely to treat other kids badly, especially when adults aren't around. That kind of situation is common at school, but much less common at home, unless the parents choose to allow it.

In my experience they become regular adults. Whatever made them an asshole is still there, but they've either learned to deal with it or the context has changed such that there's no point in being that kind of asshole anymore. Nobody's perfect, and adolescence is rough in the best of times.

> Do they become soldiers or prisonners never to be seen again by normies?

Not necessarily those two exact options, but yes. Adults are free to self-segregate. Even in K–12, once the option for tracking into advanced classes is available, everyone's social lives improve.

The ones from my school mostly became good for nothing's or went to jail.

All over this discussion, the big negative has nothing to do with missing out on stellar education, skill development, or expert teachers. Instead, it’s the perpetual handwringing that homeschooled kids won’t be Properly Socialized, i.e., be exposed to and have to endure mistreatment, disruption, and sometimes assault from other maladjusted, cruel, or even mentally ill peers — because that’s “the real world.”

This is not the W for the government schools that proponents seem to think it is.

On reddit, they all believe that site has chased away the libertarians and nonconformists enough that they're no longer careful to keep the quiet parts to themselves: they want homeschooling banned so that the government can conduct surveillance on parents and instill the proper philosophical values to to the children.

A common justification for group projects was, "you have to learn how to work with people, even people who will not work." Yeah no, that's not the case. People get filtered through a much finer sieve when they're older.

But that's absolutely the case. You get on a project and someone falls ill or has to take care of someone ill. Or they're shit at their job. Or they're just not as dedicated as you. It doesn't matter if they get fired or accommodated, you have to get it done. You will be punished in some what for not getting it done, whether that is directly or indirectly. Group projects exist in any job with collaboration. You rarely get to choose your group unlike in school and at least proving someone is a slacker has a high chance of impact in school. It's not always the case at all at work.

People discount school rituals, but they happen a lot. Pop quizzes happen all the time within my career. You don't always get to say, "I'll get back to you" as much as we all wish that was true.

Actually as an adult you do choose your group. At will employment is an amazing thing

This is the most common myths about homeschooling. In reality, the kids at public school sit at a desk most of the time. They don't get to socialize. Most activities are structured. Homeschoolers have CO-OPs, field trips, weekly PE visits, real interactions with adults, and actual free time. They are the most socialized kids in the US. The diversity in the homeschool relationships is quite large which you can see when a homeschooler has discussions with adults while their public school peers just quietly talk amongst themselves.

You're straw-manning the worst public school experience against the best possible homeschool experience.

> They are the most socialized kids in the US.

Bullshit. You know how I know? Because on average parents are terrible at exposing their kids to Things Not Like Them and Things They Don't Approve Of.

There are great homeschooling parents and crazy ones, but maybe it's not the worst idea to give kids a few hours a day outside their family-approved bubble?

Just in case it's the latter.

Or am I mistaken and all homeschooling in the US requires the child's consent?

> Bullshit. You know how I know?

People should be able to bypass public schools if they want.

I don’t disagree with your final statement, but they’re also not wrong. Growing up it was well-known that homeschool kids were strange, intelligent in some ways, and completely inept in most ways that mattered. People who desire to completely shield their children are just as detrimental to their children’s development as those who over-expose. However, in my purely anecdotal experience, the ones who were over-exposed were better off than the former. And the middle road led to better outcomes overall.

>Growing up it was well-known that homeschool kids were strange,

Growing up, it was well-known that in highschool that there was always a small subset of students who were strange. It was so cliche that more than a few sitcoms were founded on that very premise. You could walk up to any stranger age 40 or older, say "you know those weird kids in high school" and they could almost certainly rattle off the list of names even today.

This is because in any large group of kids, some significant percentage of them will be weirdos. Thinking that this is somehow a result of homeschooling is more than simply fallacious, it reveals a prejudice of yours.

Where were you and others encountering these homeschooled kids if they were locked up in their cosseted homes in which they were apparently never socialized?

As another reply pointed out, maybe these kids are “weird” in some way, maybe they are not. We don’t have more than anecdotes here. More importantly, and to the point of my first reply, we don’t know the motives of their parents. The GP was engaged in mind reading. Certainly, the motives are manifold. One motive may be, “I’m going to home school my kid because he’s weird and won’t do well in a public school.” We don’t know which way the causal arrow points.

How many conservatives do you socialize with regularly?

Regularly? About 10. (That's 3 MAGA and 7 more traditional conservatives)

Follow up question: how many people do you socialize with regularly in total?

Probably ~25?

This ability to so confidently assert things from your own dreamland with no regard to the real world is amazing. Were you also homeschooled?

Growing up, homeschool kids were absolutely weird as hell. Sure, some turn out fine, but it's very hard to do right, and requires parents putting their kids outside of everyone's comfort zone, which is... uncomfortable, so it rarely happens.

The homeschooled neighbor kid from a super religious family absolutely went off the deep end at 18. Many such cases.

Paul Graham pointed out that public school is a weird and degenerate microcosm that isn't much like the real social world at all.

> I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.

> When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage.

> ...If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie...Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners.

https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html?viewfullsite=1

Perhaps unlike in some ways, but some aspects of school life persist in so-called adult life, e.g., jocks, nerds, freaks, party animals, slackers, and teacher’s pets are all still around — now with zeros on the end.

In fact, those sterotypes and type-casts get even more extreme, and often they are enflamed by the very groups that claim to be the most egalitarian.

And PG didn't deny that. He just said the dynamic is very different when the group is larger, doing things that matter, and needs people who can get the right answers.

Probably like 90% of the time it feel like I'm perpetually in high school and it never really ended.

Assuming that's a negative experience for you, that's worth trying to fix. I'm pushing 60 and most of my career has not been like that. You don't need to put up with it.

A big part of that for me was fixing my own social anxiety. But even before I managed that, I found groups that didn't feel that way. Later I worked someplace for a while that was kind of a throwback, but then I changed jobs and it was fine.

Id probably describe it as neutral.

> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them.

We already have this problem with the population at large, only a tiny minority of whom got homeschooled.

Right here on HN you can read daily accounts of severe introversion and social anxiety. You can see that out in public, at work, among friends and family. Many Americans, children and adults, take medications (licit and otherwise) to cope with anxiety and things like ADHD. Many Americans self-diagnose as "on the spectrum" and "introverted."

Do you have any evidence to support the idea that homeschooled children suffer more from these common afflictions?

> I frequently saw fights, so I learned

So this part of your education was entirely self-guided? And you're worried if children don't see fights and just sort of 'figure out' how to deal with them on their own they won't develop properly?

> I was bullied [...] learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures.

So the institution valued popularity to the point of allowing you to be abused because you didn't possess it. Another self-guided lesson.

I can never understand why people defend schools. They're terrible environments for learning. We clearly need a school setting for book learning and an _entirely separate_ one for social learning. This seems easily surmountable.

This is a common sentiment, but how much do you really know about the counterfactual?

It's not obvious to me that you would have been unable to deal with people who didn't look like you if you had been homeschooled.

It also seems to me that a lot of public school environments surely contain kids who look different from each other, form cliques based on physical appearance, and learn to base how they treat people largely on physical appearance.

Speaking of bullying, high school caused me to greatly overestimate how important unarmed combat would be to my future success in life.

It's nice to not worry about it on the rare occasion that I go to sketchy places, but it also highlights that dealing with a cross section of our country's population is not necessarily relevant to the kind of life we build when we can choose our peers.

> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them.

Most research does not support the idea that homeschooling inherently creates social bubbles or makes children unable to interact with others. Studies generally find that homeschooled children perform as well as or better than traditionally schooled peers on standardized social skills measures and often participate actively in community groups, sports, etc. Long term studies of adults who were homeschooled also show no meaningful deficits in life outcomes or social functioning. The main caveat is that homeschooling varies widely: children in highly isolated or restrictive environments may have fewer opportunities to practice mainstream social norms, but this is a function of the specific homeschooling approach, not homeschooling as a whole. Overall, the literature suggests that social problems arise from lack of social exposure not from homeschooling itself.

I had a similar experience growing up to what you describe, but in my adult life I ended up living around all upper middle class and wealthy people and I don’t think my earlier experiences have really been very relevant or helpful. So I think it might depend on what the child’s expected adult environment will be like? Like do we need to be around or interact with the sort of people you need to stay away from or watch your mouth around?

>cross section of actual American kids

So many factors have led this to be a major liability for young people now. School is not what it was 20 years ago.

Empirical research [1] [2] shows that your worry is unfounded.

[1] Homeschooled Children’s Social Skills: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED573486.pdf

[2] Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited: https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socia...

Edit: if I had to bet (don't know any research), schools nowadays are the main producers of intolerance, with the indoctrination and teaching kids to only respect civil discourse, ideas and opinions if they agree with the mainstream world model.

In my opinion you are just more likely to run into bad influences that not only won't bring value but might as well send you a pretty bad path. The socialisation aspect of school is very largely bullshit, just like the diversity propaganda nonsense. There are actually studies on this is you want to look it up. Homeschooled children, do better in social settings later in life, not worse.

The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman. Other factors seem to play a much larger factor in the things you are (rightfully!) concerned about. As long as the parents have "the will to have nice things" (to refer to Patrick McKenzie's concept), then these are very surmountable problems.

Respectfully, A grateful dad who was homeschooled and who will homeschool.

P.S. Of course I will do some things differently than my parents, but it was an amazing gift and I had an extremely vibrant and stimulating time, including with peers (and adults!) outside of my parents' network who pushed me, challenged me, thought very differently than me, etc.

>The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman.

How do you do that? Seems like it would be impossible to replicate the experience of learning to navigate daily social interactions in a mixed group of people, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.

Easy - homeschooling may include but does not require "in the home" any more than "homework" is required to be done in your house.

I was homeschooled and have homeschooled my three kids. Never has that meant "only at home and only with my family". My kids have been in co-op classes, taken classes from Art or Technical instruction centers (piano lessons, voice classes, programming, robotics), enrolled in community classes via private institutions and the local JC (cooking classes, performing arts) and been enrolled in independent study charter public schools which have some in-person classes. And in high school they start taking in-person JC courses.

There is lots of regular exposure to a variety of other people in all of that!

Just redefine homeschooling to include enrollment at schools and community colleges, tada.

> especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.

What makes you think school is a good environment for that? Kids can be very cruel to each other with often the most societally maladapted dominating for reasons that have no bearing in real life.

> I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures.

Popularity is not an exclusively American concept. Just as public school broadened your horizons, so will traveling (or living) abroad.

Too many CO2 emissions for that to be practical for the billions of people who don't have public transit access to another nation.

not if you send em by boat

Popular misconception of homeschooling. At least in my experience. We homeschool our children. We do a couple of hours a day of curriculum. The rest is being a member of a few homeschool coops. Parents are close, yet it's big enough that there are still "groups". Kids are making friends and socializing in a much more fruitful way than the chambers of public school. There's play, then there's exploration. We go on nature walks and clean ups, the theater, the naval base, we have soccer, gymnastics, and jiu jitsu, we go to the museums, libraries, and recycling plant.

Our kids have friends. We have made friends (tough at our age). And our kids are 1-2 years above their peers on diagnostics.

Not sure what would cause someone to downvote my post without reply. Guess they're upset about their own performance and/or that of their kids.

> I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch your mouth around specific people.

Unfortunately this encourages people to have a blind eye regarding bullying.

I would be much more happy if more people intervened against bullies and liars. Maybe we'd have better people in politics today if 40 years ago schools punished bullies and liars and sent them to have their behavioral problems addressed.

Fully agree. The foundation of education is learning how the world actually is, not how we wish it would be.

There is some realy valid things to consider here.

The thing it leaves me wondering is how many kids from elementary through high school a child really keeps in touch with, and if college is currently the place where many students finally get to start to be themselves.

>I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures.

It's always felt like a quirk of biology, in the same way that most people are now too fat. (ie, we didn't evolve in an era with constant excess calories and for the most part we can't cope with the situation) In that same way, people engage in this vicious fight for status between middle school and high school, only to be whisked away to colleges and then whisked away to wherever the jobs are; the fight for status never mattered and you can reinvent yourself in ways which would have never been possible in our ancient kin groups. But, we just cannot stop fighting for that status, and don't even give it much though. It's a huge waste of energy.

> I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures.

This is generally not true, as far as popularity correlates to having better social skills and a better understanding of social dynamics. Not saying income is the sole definition of success, but here is one study that found that teenagers with more friends earned more as adults: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27337

Except homeschooled people I know are lovely and well adjusted.

If you can afford it! "Grass-roots segregation hits records numbers" would be an equally fitting title.

What leads you to believe the reason parents are willing to dedicate huge amounts of their time and money to homeschool their children is racism?

Maybe it's:

  - the terrible educational state of the school system?

  - the fact that device and social media addiction is a prevalent and growing problem that they don't want their kids brains rotted by?

  - they want to provide their kids an education based on experiential and project based learning rather than filling out worksheets? 

  - they don't want their kids to be forced to wait for the slowest / least interested kids in class to catch up before moving on to more challenging material?

Are they going to spend huge amounts of time & money?

I'd be willing to bet that we'll hear some stories about how they outsourced the effort to AI

Not sure why you're being down voted. I'm sure there are some folks homeschooling because of things like racism, but that has always existed just like evangelical christians have always been big into homeschooling.

If there is a big uptake, it's likely due to the ever present threat of school shootings coupled with all the things you said above. I have to teach my kid a lot outside of school and they go to what is considered a good one. The only reason I send them is my spouse and I work and my kid needs to learn social skills. If I won the lottery, I'd homeschool them myself and do it for a few other families as well so that my kid can get the social aspect too.

I’m sure these motivations do play out in some circles. However, every single homeschooler I know personally, and I know quite a few, does so because they want their children to have a very specific kind of religious education. Often the way this plays out is that they homeschool for a while, transition to a denominational school, and then depending on the family they may stay there or make a second transition to public school around 9th grade.

I think this tendency is heavily dependent on where you live. We have great public schools that will track advanced children aggressively if the parents push for it, so the motivations you list are unusual in my area.

Religion is definitely a big motivator. My perception though is other motivations have been on the increase, especially since the pandemic. One other group attracted to homeschooling is the hippie-type who thinks school is some kind of diabolical machine designed to crush kids' souls. Since the pandemic there's also been a big surge in the "I don't trust vaccines" group (which already had a good deal of overlap with the hippie group).

I have a feeling a really large percentage of homeschooling is about religious separatism and political separatism, and not about academic performance. Yes, you'll hear HN commenters sing the praises of homeschooling because this site is going to be disproportionately represented by the group doing it for actual educational reasons.

Also, we HN commenters typically see the success stories around us at work, not the failure stories. We all know that guy on the QA team who's a genius and credits his success to homeschooling, but we don't know the countless numbers of grown adults who are trapped as housewives who can't get a job because they never learned 5th grade multiplication.

That may be so, especially if you add a sort of "cultural separatism" (a la the hippies I mentioned). An odd thing I see recently too is people who seem to believe they're making various choices for educational reasons, but it's not clear if the education they're moving to is any better. They just do it because they perceive their child as being unhappy or stifled somehow. There seem to be, for instance, more and more parents who believe their kid is unusually smart and should be on some kind of fast track or not have to do certain things, even when there's little objective evidence of the kid's abilities.

Vague "educational reasons" is always the noble-sounding excuse they use, but often if you dig deeper they'll admit it's more about the various forms of separatism.

Sometimes you don't have to dig. A ton of moms in my wife's church group permanently pulled their kids out of public school in recent years, and they will openly admit that it's about keeping their kids away from "those" people, where the definition of "those" runs the gamut.

Both were certainly major motivating factors for my parents’ choice to homeschool me in the 90s. Quality of education was a concern too, but it very much took a back seat to the other two.

The overwhelming majority of other homeschooling parents they had contact with also held separatist motivations.

I don't want the separatism, but I also want the ability to give my kids a decent education. There ought to be some way to determine which is which. Do you have any ideas?

We did the homeschool thing for one year after most kids went back to school after COVID. My wife has underlying medical conditions that made her quite concerned about catching it before the vaccine rollout. We did a few of the homeschool group organized field trips and I got to briefly meet some of the parents. Overall I can't say much about the kids, they seemed fine. The parents were friendly, but when I asked about the curriculum they almost invariably suggested PragerU material, which makes me concerned for their children's future.

It's insightful how they said segregation and financial means and you immediately went to racism.

There is certainly some level of segregating the children from families who have the means to "dedicate huge amounts of their time and money to homeschool their children" and children from families that don't have those means.

You can't use the word segregation wrt people and then pretend it's surprising or unreasonable when someone assumes you're talking about racism.

They used the phrase "If you can afford it." The charitable assumption would have been that the segregation was tied to income.

I never said it was surprising or unreasonable, I said it was insightful. Your comment is further digging in on that point.

> What leads you to believe the reason parents are willing to dedicate huge amounts of their time and money to homeschool their children is racism?

A lot of the people I know who do homeschool (the extreme majority of families I know) have openly said the reasons why they're choosing to homeschool is because they don't want their kids exposed to the other "cultures" in their area whether that be immigrants, other religions, or LGBT people.

One family I know was thinking about pulling their kids out of public school because the choir was going to sing "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" and was worried this was indoctrinating their child into another religion. Forget the fact the rest of that holiday choir event was filled with Christian holiday tunes and what that means for the non-Christians that have a right to go to the school, that wasn't a concern at all.

Not all families, I agree. I've known a few outliers who actually are exceptional teachers and think they'll do a better job teaching the kids than the local schools (and they're probably right). But they're definitely the outliers around me. Most that I've personally known are not like that, and rely on just giving their kids workbooks with extreme religious bent to figure things out on their own.

> they don't want their kids exposed to the other "cultures" in their area whether that be immigrants, other religions, or LGBT people.

Culture is distinct from race. Some cultures advocate for the destruction of others. Some don't.

I agree its not always "racism", but ultimately the main reason is still largely the same. They don't think their kids should mingle with the "others". Its the exact same logic of black school segregation during Jim Crow.

Sometimes for good reason. Observe what happened to people who tried to approach Sentinel island. That may seem extreme, but it's not my point. It's is that cultures are different and some are detrimental to the people of some other culture's wellbeing.

I saw a study a while back - don't have the link handy - that while homeschooled kids of all ethnicities showed improved education outcomes compared to their public-school counterparts, African American kids improved the most. Not really surprising if they would otherwise be going to the worst schools!

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