Techies Who Are Homeschooling Their Kids
wired.com
wired.com
One danger of public schools is that parents can get a false sense of security about whether their child is being properly educated. It can be easy to get into autopilot mode and trust that there are good things going on at the school. As long as the child is passing classes, being promoted to the next grade on schedule, and gets a diploma everything should be good - no?
Unfortunately, such indicators don't appear to mean much. I know several people who received extremely deficient educations, and yet passed all classes and got a diploma. In one case, the person received their diploma without knowing basic addition/subtraction or other arithmetic, and could barely read. They've since taken years of private tutoring (at their own expense, since the state owes them nothing once they grant the diploma). So, they could certainly learn, but apparently the school didn't teach.
The parents in this case were not well educated themselves, and were trusting that the school was doing its job. It's easy to throw rocks at them for not paying more attention, but what the heck was the school doing?
There's certainly no perfect system, but parents who are taking on the homeschooling responsibility deserve a lot of latitude and support.
I knew the schools here weren't great, but I had no idea how bad they were until my oldest started 3 years ago. We at least have a lot of options, with my wife being a stay-at-home mom, and my salary being enough to afford modest private school tuition. My heart breaks for those who are just making ends meet with two earners (or only a single parent). They really have no options other than the public school system, which is a shame.
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It also somewhat astonished me that the schools are so poorly funded; it's a fairly affluent area with high property values, so I would have expected better funding. California natives blame it on Prop 13, and I would like to see the math on that; the per-student funding here today is about what it was when I was in elementary school on the East Coast in the 80s, which is less than half as much in real dollars.
So, if giving the schools a lot more money bought no better educational results, then continuing year after year to increase funding beyond inflation, spending more than any educationally superior country, still left educational outcomes essentially unchanged, what are the chances that the major problem is the level of funding?
Isn't it a lot more likely that the major problem is what the school systems actually do? If they could show that each 10% increase in funding in a given location had produced an average 40 point gain in SAT scores, I would want to talk about further funding increases in that location. On the other hand, if they showed that each 10% increase in funding produced, well, 10% more for the staff but nothing for the students, I would want to discuss changes other than funding.
This. When I graduated high school (about 15 years ago) the amount spent per student was around $5k a year. The high school was in the top 1-2% of public schools nationwide. The school now spends around $14k per student and is in the top 15-20%. What changed? The perception of the school. The parents whose children would pull that number up have chosen neighboring school districts (myself included).
The urban schools actually get the most per student in the state. $14k-$15k from the district alone, with additional state funding pushing that number north of $20k (some schools reaching $25k). There is not a funding issue at all. They have the lowest student to teacher ratios in the state, along with the most teacher aides and social workers.
And this isn't on the coasts, this is in the upper midwest, so the cost of living is not high.
I don't deny that there are things of value that are hard to quantify with precision. That doesn't mean they can't be measured at all. For something to be of value, it must have detectable consequences, at least statistically or eventually. The detection of its consequence is a measurement, and that consequence, even if roughly measured, can be compared to the cost to achieve it. If it has no detectable consequences at all, though, it is not worth paying for.
If the schools tell you that they are teaching "critical thinking", for example, ask them for a demonstration of something a child can now do that he couldn't before his critical thinking instruction. If they can come up with something, they've figured out a way to measure it; if not, it's either just a meaningless buzzword or they don't know enough about critical thinking to be paid to teach it.
When they tell you that your past increases to their pay have produced no measurable improvements but lots of unmeasurable improvements, tell them that until they can find a way to measure those improvements, their future compensation increases will be in the form of unmeasurable benefits.
Schools take on a lot of roles that really should be handled by social services.
I wonder how much is spent directly on education.
Obviously no test is perfectly an aptitude test, and the easiest way to raise average SAT scores is to teach strategies specifically for the SAT.
And even the SAT depends on how big your vocabulary is (comes from extensive reading of challenging material that is no longer fashionable at elite campus schools of education), how fluent you are in the math they use (fluency comes from what "progressive educators" ridicule as "drill and kill"), and so on, which is why the College Board had to "recenter" the scoring in 1995 after three decades of decreases in educational "aptitude".
For instance, a starting teacher's salary in Michigan is around $30,000-35,000 a year. I know I personally wouldn't want to work, for that low of a salary, for 60+ hours a week (managing and teaching classes of 25+ students for 8+ hours a day, then having to use time outside of class to plan further lessons, manage paperwork, work on professional development, do all of the other crap required by school administration), for 9 months out of the year with some ad hoc work during the summer "vacation". I especially wouldn't do all of that just for everyone to tell me that I'm doing it wrong (which seems to be the major public opinion currently), and I have a feeling many people who would be great educators are smart enough to realize it isn't worth it for these same reasons.
You don't give money to schools, you give it to the school districts. Which already have a set of their own financial obligations such as pension liabilities, outstanding bond payments and current overhead.
Pension liabilities increase any time the investments do not as well as projections, and any time people live longer http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2013/2/teacher-p...
Bond companies have their own way of structuring municipal bonds to arrive at nice upsides http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bonds-496091-school-bank....
Even going back to his first juvenile in 1947, Rocket Ship Galileo, the scientist protagonist is very surprised at how well educated in science, math and engineering are the group of high school students he falls in with.
And he wrote rather a lot on this elsewhere, e.g. comparing what he, his father and his grandfather were taught. The rot has been going on for a long time. One book traces it back to the Unitarians capturing Harvard from the Congregationalists in the 1810-20 period, I use the 1930 when phonics were successfully attacked. That we're still arguing that, 50 years after the publication of Why Johnny Can't Read, tells us just about all we need to know about the US educational establishment.
And, yeah, they were very influential on me as well, and the experiences of life also prompted me to adjust some of those beliefs. But that's a pretty normal thing, I think.
Heinlein always seems to have realized that, in a world with limited elbow room and the ability to fail very hard, government is both inescapable and actually valuable--and beyond the "blind arbiter of contracts" that you hear out of the libertarian bucket. I liked how Spider Robinson put it (although the article it comes from[1] is kind of fawning):
a man who bitterly opposes military conscription, supports consensual sexual freedom and women's ownership of their bellies, delights in unconventional marriage customs, champions massive expenditures for scientific research, suggests radical experiments in government; and; has written with apparent approval of anarchists, communists, socialists, technocrats, limited-franchise-republicans, emperors and empresses, capitalists, dictators, thieves, whores, charlatans and even career civil servants.
I'm not a libertarian (because I don't believe the strong should rule the weak, and I don't think Heinlein does either) and it's hard to find anything that in principle I can't be cool with.
[1] - http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/rahrahrah....
1. Lazy teaching – parents being unwilling to devote 4-6 hours each day to education. Homeschooling is a commitment that should be treated with the same gravitas as a full-time working position, but many parents have trouble maintaining this mentality over many years of education. This leads to kids that, although they might be bright, just haven't been taught much, which makes them seem dull.
2. Inherited ignorance – if the parents don’t know or care much about history, unbiased politics, mathematics, literature, etc. then the kids won’t either. Obviously, the parent can make a commitment to learn the field at least to a high school level so they can educate their kids, but often this commitment falls through. Because of that, homeschooled kids can lack a multidimensional perspective of the world.
3. Neuroticism – some parents have a tendency to like to make decisions for their children. This can be very dangerous for homeschooled kids, because they don’t learn how to think for themselves or make mistakes.
4. Social gracelessness – a lot of homeschooled kids have very little interaction with their peers. School can provide social acclimatization that parents often don’t know how to give their kids. Especially if the kid is naturally shy, since parents rarely want to put their kids in a social situation where they are uncomfortable. Unfortunately, this can just exacerbate the issue, to the extent that the kids have nervous breakdowns when they finally do have to engage their peers (yes, I've seen this happen).
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't want to say that it's impossible for one person (usually, it's just one parent that is home during the day) to provide a well-rounded education to their kids, just that it's hard -- very, very hard. You need to help your kids make friends, and you need to let them be independent. You need to be a committed and capable educator, and you need to give them a dynamic education with diverse experience, not just doing workbooks in the house. Some people are good at this -- they are natural teachers. Other people find it much, much harder.
Both I and many of my friends were homeschooled. In the circles I was in, most homeschool parents were ambitious and committed to their kid's educations. It is indeed a full job for the parent.
[1] http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232544669_The_impact...
[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-...
Also, much more curriculum is available online these days, including online schools so you can have a teacher helping your child through their work, even while home schooled. The online coursework also reduces how much you need to be the teacher... but does not completely replace it.
We have our kids that home school do the bulk of their work online, and then I review their progress and their areas of struggle, and help them specifically with problem areas, then they go read and write for a while,m and spend the afternoon with less structured time to follow their own interests.
It isn't perfect, and you do need to make sure your children are getting a good education. But that is also true of sending your kids to a school. As a parent, we are responsible for the education, no matter where they actually sit during the day.
As for single parent homeschooling...I can't even imagine. Homeschooling is my wife's job, that is what we call it. Anything less is a disservice to the kids.
It's even worse when parents care very much about giving their children wrong information about topics. Many people I know were homeschooled by conservative Christians who specifically wanted their children to believe things that are not actually true: that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that condoms are not effective at preventing pregnancy and tranmissions of STIs, that America's founding fathers intended the place to be a Christian theocracy, that the Bible gives a complete and accurate account of ancient history, and so on.
It takes all kinds to make up a society. You might think that an 18% pregnancy rate (check wikipedia) for typical condom use is 'effective', but others may not. You may not like what the Bible has to say, but others probably have a different view. I don't see many Lutherans or Baptists running around blowing up planes or burning down villages, but I do see alot of them involved in the community in helpful ways, so I'm not too worried that they may be passing their beliefs down to their children.
Yeah, they might be decent and kind people. But being kind and decent is not a replacement for being effective.
> I don't see many Lutherans or Baptists running around blowing up planes or burning down villages,
Lutherans do get a mostly free pass, but you should listen to this: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophet...
I suspect that there's a correlation between the amount of secular education given to (or forced upon) a religious population and how peaceful they are.
If the latter, one could equally point out that these people were male or non-American, or under six feet tall or liked three sugars in their tea or any other attribute and would be equally meaningful.
Stalin's government was also very anti-religion, but it was based on portraying him as a secular divine figure, "infallible sage, 'the greatest leader', 'sublime strategist of all times and nations'", etc.
Made it hard to make friends though, since a good portion of our group was ATI. I was kind of an outcast because I listened to music that had drums in it.
http://store.iblp.org/product/ZHABE.html
Edit: I believe it, just find it really sad.
They might be able to score well on a GED or other standardized test, but they are not being given a real education.
also, i was homeschooled (all 12 grades) and have a lot of homeschooled friends and general acquaintances. sure, some hold beliefs about origins that differ from the mainstream (i in fact, hold beliefs that differ from the main stream), and some decided to pursue careers and paths in life that did not require intense scientific inquiry, but many chose very scientific fields (doctorates in chemistry, biology, graduate degrees in math and engineering).
nearly all of them are productive members of society who can read, write and to varying degrees reason and think and act responsibly.
i say all that because, it feels like you're using "a real education" as a pejorative. but my experience has shown that most of the time, these people do get a "real education". what a person chooses to do with the knowledge he/she is given is entirely up to them.
my friends aren't unaware of the arguments for/against origins, global warming, etc... and they may be wrong, but that isn't because they weren't educated.
One can just look at polling organizations who look at Christian opinions on the trustworthiness of science, age of the earth, climate change and ecological responsibility, evolution, vaccination, secularism, gay marriage, and so on. You're going to find that these Christians have been exaggerated as fringe, when they are in fact a substantial minority, and sometimes a fair majority.
That's why politicians still talk about this stuff. That's why during election season, this stuff shows up on multi-million dollar advertising campaigns, sometimes in the form of sinister but subtle implications of things to fear, like gay people molesting kids, or public schools as centers for secularist brainwashing (the place where you're going to lose control of your kid's religiosity). People know that these issues cannot be explicitly talked about, so they talk in code.
To be fair, public school science is mostly bullshit. I don't think you can teach science to young children as anything other than a rote memorization of facts, and that actively holds them back when they study "real science" in college. Personally, I'd ditch science from the curriculum and replace it with courses in logic and statistics.
Really, in the normal US curriculum biology is exactly that, because it doesn't require any math to speak of, then comes general chemistry because you can get by with algebra, but you don't have any real understanding of atoms etc. because you haven't done physics, critically E&M, but also classical mechanics. Then normally algebra based physics, since the US math track is so slow calculus comes too late.
But that's cargo cult physics, no one in the real world does it without the calculus. Heck, Newton invented his calculus to do the physics for which he's even more famous for, right?
As I mention in my other comment in this sub-thread, I consider myself lucky that my high school physics class was an automatic A class where the teacher just talked with us for the whole period. I learned a lot of useful things without doing stuff I'd have to unlearn in college.
The "physics for poets" level I graduated high school with (including a great book on quantum chemistry I checked out from my local college's library, I think). This is useful, albeit dangerous as I've been saying, and enough to thrive at MIT with.
The cargo cult algebra based physics, only used in "education". E.g. the difference between Sears, Zemansky and Young's University Physics vs. College Physics
And calculus based physics.
My claim is that if you were to rank order their usefulness, it would be calculus, poets and then algebra way behind. I'd like to hear from some people who went from algebra to calculus based physics how that worked for them. I certainly found learning physics for real with calculus to be a joy....
ADDED: As for programmers and systems types ... yeah. While electronics intrinsically does nothing for me, I've always studied hardware to know how to build programs and systems better, and that's done me very well.
And the level of understanding can be appalling, we've had several discussions recently about big clusters failing at load and being replaces by a single system, often a surplus desktop, because the programmer had a clue.
Robinson, who was primary research associate of the 20th Century's premier chemist, Linus Pauling, was forced to come up with something when his wife suddenly died. His thesis is that we now have something better to train the mind than the old classics of Latin and Greek and what was written in them. Math and science, but real science.
So the curriculum has an initial singular focus on reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic, with the reading selections bringing in the other stuff needed like history. The math focus is to get you through single variable calculus as fast as possible, and only then do you study calculus based physics and otherwise pick up additional math as you need it. If there's time before college, then chemistry. If there's even more time, statistical mechanics and/or "Call the CalTech bookstore and ask them what's the current textbook for the general biology class" (he's an alumn).
If the child gets interested in a particular science topic, say ants, treat it as a subject outside of the formal learning. Get him a significant professional book on the subject, which he of course won't initially understand all that much of, but will prompt him to start filling in the gaps (that worked for me when in the '70s I rather randomly got my hands on some books like one on rocketry circa. the '50s)
It's also designed to be non-labor intensive after initially teaching phonics and the math tables by rote, just grade the writing each school day, have the kids grade their own math work, and generally watch over them and e.g. make sure they're doing the reading (again, something forced on his family by the death of his wife, he could do most of this while doing his own science research).
It's very interesting, and I would have loved to have been taught this way as opposed to struggling in a school system which had a college track but which had abolished its "honors" classes because they were "racist" (this, despite in my year the school systems' best chess player being black), and that including no AP courses and a lot that granted automatic As, like Latin and physics (which was just as well for the latter, since algebra based physics is cargo cult science).
It's not a small miracle I learned just enough math to get accepted by MIT (which is not as intense as CalTech), and most of the other factors in the acceptance had nothing to do with my public schooling, such as geographic balance and demonstrating I could do serious science and (software) engineering projects.
Stuff like force = mass * acceleration seems pretty fundamental.
Or let's use Newton's infamous apple. We say that gravity exerts a force of kd/t^2 (in MKS 9.8 m/s^2), but to describe the motion of the apple....
If you want I can grab my copy of University Physics, skim it and go into more detail about what can and can't be done with just algebra.
I have a very hard time understanding what you're saying here (but it could be very interesting). Could you post screenshots of textbooks? Or proofs?
It is very interesting stuff, but I'd suggest studying the most basic bits of the calculus and classical mechanics if you want to go further (this is typically the first thing you're taught about both). At this level it's not all that hard.
EDIT: At least link to something to support your rather opaque post.
http://www.amazon.com/Sears-Zemanskys-University-Physics-10t... (Inexpensive older edition that's a good choice for self-study; see also the associated Study Guides and Student Solutions Manuals).
Seriously, learn the very basics ("learn how the universe works" as I like to put it), for which I think there's no substitute, and what I'm saying will be clear. Or maybe find a "physics for poets" text that goes into these details, but that's an appeal to authority.
Sure, our science fair projects weren't really science, but it is a good developing block.
But echoing the general discussion, he was not able to convince the high school placement drones that I was ready for biology, so if not for a great Algebra I teacher I would have totally stagnated in 9th grade, and it was generally grim since I'd correctly realized in 1st grade my calling was science and was learning absolutely none of it that year (1974-5 academic year, the ARPANET was 5 years old with 46 IMPs on it (Interface Message Processors; they could support multiple computers, but few sites had more than 1-2).
Continuing, OK, now you know the scientific method. How far can you take that without math? How many of today's big scientific public policy issues require a fair amount of math (and physics) to really think about?
Plus, Lutherans and other christians did go around burning down villages and killing people. Christianity is no more enlightened than Islam in that respect. There are extremists in both faiths.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/9313/9611/6384/truth_...
The comment lumping Islam and Christianity together is way off base. With Islam, the founder was a man of violence. With Christianity, the founder was a man who shunned violence.
So, while 'christians' have committed great acts of violence, they are certainly not acting in accord with the belief system they espouse, nor are they following the example of their founder. This just shows that people are not always motivated (good or bad) by the belief system they espouse. They have other motivations as well.
The question to ask is, how does a person's belief system instruct them in their life? Does their belief system sanction violence? coercive behavior? Or, does it invite the believer to change their behavior and act more constructively?
How many tens of millions of people did Stalin and Mao kill? These men were committed Atheists who sought to coercively convert anyone they could. Should it be acceptable to criticize Atheist parents who are homeschooling their children, simply because some Athiests did terrible things?
I know we all want to reach out and make sure that all children get the best shake at life, but the best way to do this is to support their parents.
Change your brand of condoms ;-) More seriously, it's considered a good idea to use BOTH condoms and the pill.
> With Christianity, the founder was a man who shunned violence.
Except when he expelled the vendors from the temple apparently..
As for children education.. As an atheist I would teach my children about all the religions the many dead religions, the living religions, the cults, the non-religious opinions (atheism, agnosticism), somehow I doubt that most religious people do that..
to be clear I think creationism is stupid and insupportable, but it didn't end up hurting them that bad and I know plenty of people with "better" educations that don't seem to be inoculated against believing stupid stuff. For instance, people I know that have expressed skepticism about vaccinations are evenly split between people I would classify as "conservative Christian" and "progressive".
As someone who participated in the rise of the religious right in the 1970s and 1980s, I can tell you that you can’t understand the modern Republican Party and its hatred of government unless you understand the evangelical home-school movement.
[0] http://www.salon.com/2015/01/20/the_rights_home_school_consp...
It was neat how he worked in the evil Kochmonsters at the end there. And Halliburton. And Palin. Great article... next up, a FreeRepublic discussion of public unions...
Any essay discussing this topic without mentioning Jimmy Carter siccing the IRS on Christian schools is ... by someone not quite inhabiting the same universe as I do.
Maybe. This essay doesn't really go into that, its thesis at 0th approximation is that Christians setting up an independent school system/society is axiomatically illegitimate ("diversity", as many have noted, doesn't extend to thought/worldviews/ideology, and "liberalism" or whatever you want to call it is a competing non-religion religion every bit as doctrinaire and severe as these Christians').
But the article claims that this had an outsized affect on politics and particularly the Republican party, and that simply would not have happened without Carter's action.
"Live and let live" is an old and sound American tradition. Taking people's children away from them, in wherever on the scale of figurative to literal in this case you'd put it ... well, you might as well try it with a mother bear and her cubs. That's what really energized the Religious Right in politics, and why its time in the sun was so short.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer#Political_ac...
If you don't see Christian terrorism (including in the U.S.), its because you aren't paying attention.
No, Oklahoma City is quite enough, thank you, as is the continued campaign against gay and trans rights, which is only nonviolent because the violence isn't reported on as part of a coherent campaign.
That's if you don't use them properly. I wonder why that might happen?
You haven't explained how you got bigotry out of my comment and I wish you would.
Do these people teach their children reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic?
If they do, all other defects (as you see them) can be remedied in the future. The simple demonstrable fact that the public schools in the US are often bad if not hopeless (e.g. no phonics) at even those modest goals is enough for me to support even snake handling Pentecostals. Not able to read == no future intellectual life absent, let me put it, a "miracle".
I've seen kids destroyed by home schooling and I've seen kids saved by home schooling. You are absolutely correct that the potential is there but not always realized.
Homeschooling shines when the parents play to it's strengths.
* Individually tailored education at the elementary level provides a huge boost to many kids.
* An environment that stresses and promotes self directed learning at the high school level also does wonders for a teenagers future. Done right home schooling encourages, rather than discourages, thinking for themselves through debate and conversation with adults.
* Lack of social grace while it exists for some kids is far from the norm. So far from the norm that I consider it a myth. It gets trotted out in almost every discussion I encounter around home schooling. And yet for the overwhelming majority of Home Schooled kids it couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact I think that in many ways Social Skills can be one of the biggest advantages a Home Schooled child can have.
Most kids learn to socialize from their friends. Those friends have no more idea than they do though. When they get their first job and/or attend college they have to learn all over again how to interact with adults.
A home schooled child tends to learn to socialize from other adults. The number 1 thing most people noticed about me and other Home Schooled people I've known was how well we could hold a conversation with an adult.
I've seen kids end up far too sheltered and harmed as a result but this is much less of a danger than most people think in my experience.
The #1 thing to keep consider though if you are thinking about homeschooling is the time commitment. You will probably need one parent to commit to it full time because it's a lot of work.
For a few weeks, there was a definite gap in social grace as the homeschooled kids adjusted to cultural norms. After that, a significant fraction were fitting in just fine. It is true that a larger fraction of the homeschooled kids were awkard than the non-homeschooled kids after this adjustment period, but there is significant selection bias here; I know for a fact that a few of those kids were pulled from early elementary school because they were awkward and getting bullied, so the cause/effect is potentially reversed there.
As a homeschooled kid I never quite lost this 'awkwardness' upon entering the 'normal' school system. A big part of this awkwardness, for me, comes from an inability or lack of desire to conform to social behavior that seems pointless or downright negative.
While I'm happy that I did go to a normal school eventually, and that I did learn how to fit in, I'm very happy with the fact that I seem to never lose a sense of (healthy?) skepticism, detachment, and dislike for many social behaviors around me.
And while this is anecdotal, if I look at my younger siblings (who spent more time in the public school systems), there does seem to be a strong correlation between how much time they spent in public school, and how creative, inventive, eager to learn, and 'subversive' they are. And that in turn seems to correlate with how close their actual lifestyle fits their desired lifestyle.
A number of my friends were also homeschooled, had to go through 'special' schools, or dropped out early. They all seem to have a similar 'awkwardness' in society, and they all seem to benefit from in similar ways. The biggest downside I've noticed is that those who spent too much time outside 'normal society' find it so hard to conform even a little that it causes problems in their life.
But a healthy mix of homeschooling and social life (sports, etc.) might solve much of that.
One set of social norms will serve them throughout life. The other is only useful for surviving till graduation.
I'm disappointed the article didn't go over how/if the kids get the much needed social interaction. Kids need conflict, and a lot of it, in order to fit in well with society (and especially the workplace).
Weirdness, in my opinion, is a very good trait, provided you can be 'normal' enough when you have to be. Most homeschooled kids I know spent part of their lives in the normal system, or had extra-curricular activities in more normal social settings, though.
Furthermore, I know many more people who were seriously damaged because of the social interactions in school.
And when you think about it, that kind of makes sense. It seems (relatively) more healthy to me for a kid to spend most of his time with a mix of adults and other kids, often within a strong community-setting, rather than stuck in a classroom with only other kids of their age and an often slightly disinterested teacher (or one going through the motions).
What if the local culture had expectations that they found objectionable? I have to wonder whether they would decide to re-conform to whatever happened to be the local fashion in thought and behavior, go along and get along, or whether they would choose a different path and be thought "weird". If they were willing to deviate from unfortunate social norms and risk being different, why not do it here and now?
It matters because I don't take for granted that the current culture in many public schools is the right one to conform to. It would be quite a coincidence if the local culture of the moment just happened to represent the best a human being could be.
Furthermore, being in a public school doesn't just mean conforming to 'local culture', it means conforming to the local culture of those in a small age range. I'd say conformism coupled with being a teen is significantly worse than just having to adapt to 'local culture'.
Social gracelessness is just natural introversion, which is wonderful. The biases of the parents certainly do affect their children, though. In place of lazy teaching I would say that homeschooled children do not gain early experience coping with difficult systems. This is a strength and a weakness depending on where life takes them.
I agree with other commenters that we are nearly living in a golden age of being able to self-direct traditional education as well as educational experiences. It's interesting to compare the current generation of homeschoolers with those 20-30 years ago, when it started to become more popular. At the time, the concern was that a rigorous education could not be obtained in a public school as they were pursuing non-traditional education. Now, public schools are obsessed with academic rigor (to the degree they've embraced Common Core), and the advantage of homeschooling is the flexibility and non-traditional approach.
So, at least in my experience, when you're devoting one on one time with a child, it takes far less time to teach them as you can craft the teaching style to fit their needs.
On (4) there's not hard quantifiable data to suggest homeschooled kids lack social interaction, as amount of quality of social interaction at public school is questionable (and could comprise of bullying another kid). There are home-schooled socialites and public school hermits and weirdos on both ends of the spectrum.
Schooling is only part of social interaction for kids; sport leagues, scout organizations, local clubs can fill that purpose as well.
The "no schooling" concerns are valid and I think it is like running a business - when you homeschool you might like some objective advisers outside of your family to keep you on your toes. This "educational advisory panel" can take many forms. For example, we use the Kumon private tutoring center to make sure we don't miss any holes with English and the Mathnasium center and Khan Academy to cover all the broad topics in math. These are private programs and they are expensive but worth it - kids who go through them ace standardized tests. It's very "tiger mom" and a good balance to the "unschooling" philosophy. They are still way cheaper than private school for a big family and they don't take much time out of the week. This leaves room for all those "creative class, student led inquiry based projects" and family/friend/socializing time pursuits.
It works for us :-)
In every one of these situations, the wife stays at home to raise and teach the kids while the man works. In many ways it forces a continuation of traditional gender roles, which I personally don't agree with.
So while I understand and agree with some of the decisions these folks are making, there is a clear gender divide that they are ignorant of, or unwilling to even talk about.
It's interesting that even those that are skeptical about the US educational system system seem to cast the problem in very traditional terms. I think a big problem with the educational system is about the inefficiency of the bundling of goods.
A lot of value has been generated from un-bundling of goods in other sectors. People used to read newspapers for news, sports, classifieds, op-ed, etc. Today' many people get their news from one venue, sports from another, and so on. I don't often hear people suggesting that maybe the system should be less bundled so students/parents have a choice to take different classes from different providers. A lot of schools may have good math programs but weaker English programs but there is no reason that these classes have to be bundled together. At the very least we should un-bundle sports from education. Although sports are beneficial to many young people, having them tied to an educational institute seems ridiculous.
In regards to what these parents are doing, I'm happy with any experimentation. Hopefully some parents will be able to pool their resources and serve groups of children. One parent can teach engineering to the neighbors kids, and another can teach literature.
This happens quite a bit actually
That means keeping my eyes open for any similar experiences, and I've recently fallen in love with these guys [2] because they're the first "family nomads" I've come across who also talk about managing a mortgage back home etc (most people on a permanent holiday are singles in their 20s and 30s - I need assets, not cheap laundry tips).
This article in particular looks at the challenges they've overcome, and extensive research they've found, in deciding positively to homeschool their children abroad - http://www.escapingexpectations.com/are-homeschooled-kids-de...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8994656 [2] http://www.escapingexpectations.com/
[Edit] Let me also add, in case he's too modest to, Karl's excellent homeschool resource site Learn in Freedom - HN context and link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5094480
With that perspective, a child grows up assuming their parent is biased and seeks out competing views. This skill of analysis and synthesis is incredibly critical.
We can definitely sometimes be socially awkward (I can spot other homeschoolers a mile away) but I know a lot of friends who have become quite successful in their careers which does take quite a bit of social skills.
My personal example is that I just raised money for my open source startup (http://github.com/amark/gun) tackling the pains of databases. Most other homeschoolers I know went after the legal/political fields though.
Feel free to ask me any questions. :)
A caller was telling Rush about a new bathroom policy in his neighborhood's public elementary school that allowed transgendered children to use whichever bathroom most closely aligned with their sexual identity.
To the caller, this was the height of liberal filth. He rejected not only the idea that transgendered people really exist, but that a child would even HAVE a sexual identity at an early age. He was furious that he was having to explain to his son why a person who was "obviously a girl" got to use "his" restroom. The upshot of all this was that he claimed that this was the point he realized he was an alien in a secular universe, and that it was time to pull his children out of public school and homeschool them.
Why did I tell that story? Why did it stick with me? Because, to me, it highlights a feeling I've been having about something very profound that's happening to America. I don't know if it's a wonderful thing or a disaster (or both), but I have an irresistible gut feeling that it's happening.
I'm talking about the emergence of a new national mitosis.
North vs South, Red State vs Blue State, liberal vs conservative, religious vs secular. Whatever you want to call it, Americans - it seems - are separating themselves into two (or more) distinct and ideologically opposed groups. This is nothing new, of course, but what IS new (at least in my memory) is that there are fewer and fewer opportunities for common discourse. All sides are not only furious at each other, they are genuinely mystified by each other. That's why I found Rush's caller so interesting. I could hear something in his and Rush's voice that was far beyond anger and the usual partisan name-calling. It was pure cultural shock and confusion; like a martian landing in Times Square.
So what does that all have to do with techies homeschooling their kids? It strikes me as significant that though there is no simple way to divide these two groups (and there is definitely overlap), both of them are beginning to eschew public education. If you are passionately pro "tech" or passionately pro "God", it seems there is little left that public schools (and mainstream society itself) can offer you and your children.
These two groups have more alike than might first appear. Both groups feel that there is something so rotten at the core as to be nigh unfixable (whether loss of Biblical values on the one side or complete loss of intellectual curiosity on the other).
I don't have any deep insights as to why we seem to be splitting into multiple Americas or what might happen next, but I can feel that it's happening. If you want to watch the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, watch who homeschools their kids.
The buckets you're talking about are an illusion. "Clash of cultures" is bullshit - it doesn't exist. Let's assume for a minute that I'm not very unique, and so these opinions I hold are common, and try to figure out what it means:
If I think transgender people by definition have gender dysphoria, does that make me an intolerant bigot? What if I also think that if an operation is the best way to relieve them of the stress of that condition, then they should have the operation? And if I also support universal health care, so that I think the state should end up paying for that operation, well now I can't tell if I'm supposed to be an intolerant bigot or a bleeding heart or what.
If I think that, strictly speaking, a person does actually choose to be gay, in the sense that the state of their mind is informed by both physiological and psychological factors (like just about anything else), does that also make me an intolerant bigot? What if I also think that, well, if it's a choice, it's still a person's right to make that choice, just like they ought be able to marry whoever the hell they want and otherwise be totally unaffected by that decision, seeing as how it has absolutely no consequences to anything at all other than what happens in that person's bedroom, which is of course nobody's fucking business.
A lot of LGBT people will take great offense at what I've written, despite all of my relevant policy goals pretty much aligning exactly with theirs. And, likewise, few people in the family values camp will be able to find much common ground with me, even though I've echoed some of where they are coming from culturally. So, what am I?
Well, I'm a member of homo sapiens from the planet Earth, like everyone else, and if everyone could just shut the fuck up for a minute and keep that in mind when they interact with other human beings - and I'm glaring now mainly at the far Left and the Religious Right - we'd have approximately half the problems globally that we have now, and we'd be giving the psychopaths at the top of our social order a lot less leverage against us, which is also probably a good thing.
Is there any possible evidence anyone could show you which would convince you this position is wrong?
> If I think that, strictly speaking, a person does actually choose to be gay, in the sense that the state of their mind is informed by both physiological and psychological factors (like just about anything else), does that also make me an intolerant bigot?
I don't know, do you think people choose to be straight or bi? Do you think a straight person could choose to be gay, or either of them choose to be bi, or vice-versa(-vice-versa)? Because if you can't really choose to be another way, it isn't a choice the way the term is used in this context, and you're being obfuscatory.
For the "fanning the flames" part, you'd have to either show me that entrenched media and political organizations aren't exacerbating existing, previously rather benign, divisions in society. And creating new ones. Or, you'd have to convince me that I'm interpreting what I'm seeing in American politics and public life, the wrong way. It would be a tough sell, but is theoretically possible.
For the other part, perhaps I overstated my case with the "320 million groups", but with regard to the contention that there are two buckets in direct opposition that Americans are naturally sorting themselves into - no, I don't think you can convince me of that. At least, I'm not sure how.
> I don't know, do you think people choose to be straight or bi? Do you think a straight person could choose to be gay, or either of them choose to be bi, or vice-versa(-vice-versa)? Because if you can't really choose to be another way, it isn't a choice the way the term is used in this context, and you're being obfuscatory.
I think people choose to be straight or bi or gay in much the same way people choose to be good at math, or enjoy science fiction. Which is to say, some of it is innate, and some of it might also be upbringing, or other environmental factors. I guess 'choice' isn't the right way to put it as you say, I'm just not convinced it is 100% genetic in every case. And, I mean, you often hear that sexual orientation is more of a continuum rather than a binary choice (or ternary, or whatever). And if that's true, then it seems there is an element of choice involved. To what degree, I can't say.
But, I will remind you that you're completely ignoring my point on that, which is that it doesn't fucking matter. Even if it was 100% free choice and a straight person could choose to be attracted to the same sex instead, or vice-versa[0], it should have no bearing on anything at all, other than what happens in that person's bedroom. And that person should be able to come out as gay, and marry their partner of choice, etc etc., and suffer absolutely no social or legal or workplace or whatever repercussions at all. Obviously.
You're demonstrating my point here. I am quite confident that when it comes to LGBT issues, you and I would agree on just about every single item of actual consequence. But, because I apparently hold a few guiding principles as opinions, which you don't agree with (which, by the way, are absolutely open to debate and not set in stone at all), instead of looking at me as an ally, I'm an adversary instead. So it goes with much of America these days.
[0] (for the record, I do not believe this is the case, but for the sake of argument...)
How about convincing you they weren't doing it deliberately, but instead were chasing ratings using controversy and not caring about long-term societal results?
> For the other part, perhaps I overstated my case with the "320 million groups", but with regard to the contention that there are two buckets in direct opposition that Americans are naturally sorting themselves into - no, I don't think you can convince me of that. At least, I'm not sure how.
Fair enough. I think the two-bucket thinking is wrong, myself.
> I am quite confident that when it comes to LGBT issues, you and I would agree on just about every single item of actual consequence.
Except, perhaps, one: Do you think people should be able to sell reparative therapy, which is billed as a way to make gay people straight? (No, it's never used to make straight people gay, and I've never heard of it being applied to bis or asexuals.) If you think being gay is due even in part to environmental factors, then reparative therapy would have to be able to do something according to your hypothesis; however, it's been shown to be completely ineffective, which is evidence for the 'completely innate' hypothesis.
This is false. Even if sexual orientation is due in part to environmental factors, that does not imply mutability once established.
To answer your question, I don't think it should be allowed in principle - probably not for anyone but particularly not for minors. The effectiveness of the treatment has not been established at all, for one, and it causes a variety of disturbing side effects in people in the form of serious mental health issues, regardless of the outcome of the 'treatment'. For that matter, since sexual orientation is not a mental health issue in the first place, it's impossible to justify treatment even if it is effective. If reparative therapy were a pill, and I were the FDA, there is no way in hell it would pass human trials. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't even make it to human trials.
This is complicated somewhat by the fact that psychological treatment (i.e. as opposed to psychiatric treatment which involves medication) is more lightly regulated in many jurisdictions, if at all. Perhaps that should also change. But especially in the case of minors, and especially for reparative therapy in particular, where in the overwhelming majority of cases parents are clearly not approaching it from the perspective of what's best for their child - no it should not be allowed.
> How about convincing you they weren't doing it deliberately, but instead were chasing ratings using controversy and not caring about long-term societal results?
I don't think that's exclusive to using media for social control. In fact, it's sort of an important part of it, since you need everyone paying attention and giving all the bullshit the undue consideration it totally doesn't deserve.
To be clear, I don't think there is a single grand conspiracy to bring all of Western civilization under the control of a handful of oligarchs, and that this conspiracy involves media control. Rather, I think that various psychopaths in positions of power are involved in various petty conspiracies with other psychopaths, and some of these people happen to own media organizations. And, probably some of them have also convinced themselves that in fact they are involved in such a grand conspiracy - it would be something to point out and laugh at if the effects of it weren't so awful.
I bring this up because I've seen people embrace homeschooling (with mixed results) as a way to right perceived wrongs in their own childhoods. I sometimes wonder whether their experiences might be better applied in teaching their kids the lessons learned from their time in a school system rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and just avoiding the system altogether. After all, you survived and ended up in a position to make and have this choice for your kids...so all was not lost.
My wife and I have discussed sending our kid to school through about 5th grade or so and then doing home school. We also are open to a vocational high school. I guess high school is ultimately the kid's choice.
Part of the problem with me was that I was smart and didn't really find classes interesting or challenging until college. But even if I were not as smart, I probably just would have fallen behind and disliked it too.
It's... honestly not as new as you think. Not even the lack of common ground bit.
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/09/phases-of-american-civ...
Creating common ground is the actual job of politicians. They're just bad at it. (Which isn't that surprising, given the sheer scope of the task and that a good number of them don't appear to realize it.)
That's not an unreasonable view, but the actual structure of the US electoral systems creates disincentives to do that job.
Guess what my position on that thread was.
So the politics of the US seems, from this outsider's perspective, to be extraordinarily similar until you get to the real fringes, and yet despite (because of?) this similarity is so full of fury.
People in the US can agree on a great many things but media allows them to self reinforce extreme views. There are no requirements for balanced journalism reflecting reality. When 95% of experts agree on something and get the same 1 minute of air time that a representative of the 5% get it creates the appearance that both arguments have equal value.
I can't fault media companies for catering to extremes because they are businesses and the model has proven to drive more revenue. I don't think this will change until the public starts rejecting fringe reporting (not likely to happen anytime soon).
I mean the parties in the UK agree on pretty much all the major issues (particularly social trigger points like abortion, LGBT stuff), save perhaps for how to deal with inequality. Most of the big issues in the UK seem to be much less major by comparison.
Increasingly homogenous 'family units', decrease in contact with extended family, neighbors, and via religious affiliation might have a much bigger effect on society than we are currently aware of.
EDIT: Not to mention a strong increase in freelancers and as a result a decrease in long-term work relationships (with 'the company' and with colleagues).
The percentage of homeschoolers in the population is extremely low, so it is doubtful that you would see a large group of them anywhere, including YC.
I assume a large portion of techie homeschooler's kids will go onto college, some elite ones too.
Homeschoolers generally do very well on standardized tests like the SAT and ACT because their literacy is very high.
The police will literally show up at your door and escort your kids to school if you attempt to home-school.
Gleichschaltung is still a thing, even if it's relaxed and focused on a different ethos.
The legality of Home Schooling was very much up in the air in the early days. No one ever succeeded in making it into the house since my Mom was very educated about her rights and the rights of her kids and was totally capable of standing up to anyone who came without a warrant.
As a child of 6-10 years of age I thought it was incredibly exciting. Our family was rebelling against the Man!
i know lots of friends with similar experiences, having prepared statements to tell adults who wanted to know why we were out during normal school hours, having to wait until after 3pm to go outside to play just to avoid the scrutiny.
If enough people show an interest, I'll go into it more tomorrow but, for now, I'm going to bed.
The problem was, zaphar knew everything he needed to know in 1st grade before he showed up the first day. He got excessively bored in class as a result and developed a daydreaming habit his teachers didn't want to take the time address. By the time he was in 2nd grade, he was learning nothing and fell behind. The teachers met with my mom as they usually do and told her that they were just going to pass him to the next class instead of keeping him back. Mom thought that was "unacceptable" and that was part of what prompted my parents to pull him out and homeschool us.
It took her a couple years to break him of the habit (and a lot of one on one interaction).
There are probably other things zaphar might know, but that's how I remember it.
As a result, I never went to public schools at all (with the exception of drivers ed in highschool). Kindergarten was 30 mins a day for a summer. I would run up to mom and say "let have school!" and then when i got bored we would stop.
For the record, I was socially awkward. I'm naturally shy and that didn't help. I eventually overcame that (though it does come out when i'm more fatigued) and would like to think I can hold my own socially. But I doubt public school would have been good for me. If it was anything like college was, I would have done far worse academically. I hate lectures, they make me sleepy and bored and I retain very little. I need to read and work the problems to understand them. Mostly, I marvel at the waste of time. I could typically do all my homework in ~4 hours (or less if i was being diligent) and be done with school by lunch. Sitting for nearly 8 hours a day (given my aggressively active nature as a child) would have been torture.
My mom taught herself the multiplication tables along side me. She missed a lot of school when she was younger due to hospital stays because she had contracted Polio.
She took that weakness and turned it into a strength even though she may not have felt qualified to home school me at the time.
I think it helped that the School System had thoroughly angered her though :-). There's a story there that I won't go into now.