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Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

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Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#81

Post by giaour »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #48
hprotagonist wrote: post #14

What stops me is that the socialization and peer-group relationship skills that are obtained rapidly in a public school context are not replicatable at home. Neither are the skills learned in dealing with non-family adults, independence of task skills away from home, and much else besides in that vein. I would rather -- and do -- support the public school system in my (medium sized) city.

I personally have never found the "socialization" argument persuasive. Public school is, in fact, a highly artificial and non-representative environment. You have a group of kids, all within 12 months of the same age, and an authority figure to boss them around. As far as I know, that kind of "society" is not replicated anywhere , with the possible exception of military boot camp. Real societies have a mixture of peo…

A military boot camp is also an educational institution, so the similarity to a school is hardly accidental.

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#82

Post by actfrench »

dsr_ wrote: post #43

We could start with: it's incredibly expensive. Kids need time and attention and space. Teaching is not compatible with holding down a full-time job, because it is a full-time job. Teaching one or two or three kids is not significantly less work than teaching 20.

Actually homeschoolers are on average the same or lower than the median in terms of household income. Families who go to public school have to pay a ton on childcare, summer camp and after school classes, whereas homeschoolers often choose flexible work and develop creative solutions like skill shares and childcare shares. Fostering independent learners also certainly helps.

Here’s some more I wrote on the topic of homeschooling on a budget https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/budget

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#83

Post by wanderr »

I was homeschooled from 5th grade on. The reasons people have for homeschooling their kids varies widely, from hyper-religious to anti-establishmentism to the-schools-here-suck. The types of kids people have also vary widely. So my experience is not necessarily reflective of what your kids' experience might be. That said, here's my story:

My options were home schooling or a Christian school affiliated with my parents' church. I chose to be home schooled. My mother is high school educated, not a teacher, and frankly weak on most subjects. But she loves to dig in and research options, so she did a reasonable job of finding curriculums for standard things like math. I always had a strong thirst for knowledge of certain subjects, so she left me to my own devices on those things (this was pre-internet so I think this was an especially bad strategy. How's a kid with no money going to find the best resources to learn about these things that would normally be classes?). In general, I have always loved learning, so I was relatively easy to homeschool. By 8th grade I was scoring at the 12th grade level, 99th percentile on the CAT across the board. I had more free time than my peers and more flexibility in my schedule. Field trips were a breeze. By high school I was taking community college classes and tutoring the adults, which was extremely helpful to have those credits when I went to college - I got to skip some intro courses and had the flexibility to take a year off of school when financial hardship hit.

So far it sounds great, but I would not really recommend it. If you don't have access to quality schools for your kid, you should move if you can afford it at all. There were a few major issues: - Social isolation. I had little access to kids my own age, mostly my parents' friends' kids, who were, frankly, shitheads. (Not that the Christian school was better. All but one girl in what would have been my class graduated pregnant or with a child, and therefore married or engaged to be, shotgun style) - College Admissions. I was enrolled in an online high school program at an accredited school (the first one!), but even with the transcript + 4.0 GPA in a year's worth of community college credits, colleges were deeply skeptical about homeschooling and made me jump through extra hoops. I'm fairly certain my top choice rejected me because of this. - Misinformation & bias. I know this is an issue in school too, and my alternative option of a religious school would not have been much better, but I had to unlearn so so much of what I was taught - Extracurriculars. Opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities are extremely limited. Many things are associated with a school and not open to non-students.

It's also worth noting that while I did relatively well in this setup, I have siblings who were also home schooled and never finished high school or got their GED.

If you do go down this path: - Have a strategy for how to socialize your kids beyond "well, some of my friends have kids" - Find good curriculum - Have a strategy ready for when a kid does not want to learn something - Make sure you or your spouse will have a lot of free time to supervise - Enroll them in a program that will get them a HS transcript from an accredited school. - Find ways to expose them to extracurricular activities of their choosing, beyond your own interests.

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#84

Post by sofixa »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #37
rfdave wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that a problem?

It decreases the diversity of thought. If your school system is failing, the government shouldn’t imprison parents who want to do their best to try something else.

There are always private schools you can send your kids to if you really think the public school system is failing.

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#85

Post by wanderr »

f154hfds wrote: post #80
kennywinker wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there are few things more enriching for your child then getting involved in their education That’s a pleasing statement that seems true, but ignores the millions of ways that parents can be a bad influence. Over pressuring, taking away agency, just being bad study partners, biasing data as it arrives, etc etc etc. Everyone wants to believe they will be a good parent. But everyone will fuck it up in some way. On…

This is a signal vs. noise issue. Quite simply if you think your values are better than the average (and believe me - you do think this) then it makes sense to inculcate your values into your children as much as possible. A decision to not home educate your children is usually because of other considerations, usually financial, sometimes cultural, etc. I don't want to minimize your point about mental health though. I…

I think there is a big difference between supplementing and replacing. Near total control leaves them sheltered, naive, and probably more rebellious, and of course it's silly to think that you can do a better job across the board than a bunch of professionals.

If you have the time, getting involved in your child's education is probably a huge win. Fill in some gaps you see, correct some biases. Help them get ahead in areas they are doing well in, help them catch up in areas they are not doing so well in. But just because those things are helpful doesn't mean that replacing their education entirely is going to be an improvement.

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#86

Post by kennywinker »

verisimilidude wrote: post #75
Turing_Machine wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because home schooled children never see anyone else at all? I think you'll find that is not actually the case. Also, I would argue that the distorted "society" produced by public schools is more harmful than beneficial.

Tell us where homeschooled kids get their socialization. Church? That's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to social distortion. Homeschooled peer groups? There's no way that's a broader population than the school in 99.9% of homeschooling scenarios.

I can answer this. Being from a non-religious family, it was the latter. Peer groups.

I can’t speak for everywhere or every time, but in the 90s in my city, those groups were diverse in some dimensions (age, economic, political beliefs, homeschooling method, schooling exposure, weird parents) and un-diverse in some dimensions (race, immigrants and 1st generation children of immigrants).

It’s important to note that I don’t think every school would get a checkmark on all of those boxes either. But where it differs the most would probably be numbers. Small schools exist in rural settings, but a peer group of 40 kids only about 5-10 of similar age to you is pretty different from most people’s school experience.

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#87

Post by actfrench »

somethoughts wrote: post #69

I'd welcome more tools to enable home after -schooling and home summer schooling. A lot of the after school/summer school in person offerings are pretty expensive and usually pretty sports centric. Full home schooling I feel could easily burn out even the most hard working parent - as there's little time for getting groceries, etc. done. And lack of socialization in the childs cohort is an issue. I think more online…

Thank you for these great thoughts and questions somethoughts. Awesome handle, btw

Actually I think about homeschooling more as a movement and ideology of greater involvement in education than a replacement to school. In fact, I call it “modular learning” where families can choose a variety of modules to compose their child’s education including school !

The burnout factor is real but I think that when you give yourself freedom to optimize on academics , social and childcare, you might find it’s lesss of a burnout than the grind of early morning wake-up’s, after school pickups , homework and pta meetings.

I’ve written a lot about curriculum tools to support learning at home.

With regards to physics and chemistry, it depends on your kid’s ages … some of my favorites off the top of my head are mystery science, blossom and roots science curriculum, quantum camp , mel science, Steve Spangler science

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#88

Post by actfrench »

vyrotek wrote: post #78

Time. I also think our 3 kids would struggle with the lack of separation between Teacher and Parent. Similar to how some adults struggle with working at home and separating work and home life appropriately. I know several folks who do it well and love the freedom and flexibility. But I feel it would take a lot of effort to really stay on top of it and not let things slide when it gets tough. Not going to lie, the "ba…

Childcare is a really big deal. One of the nice things about homeschool though is you can customize childcare for when you need it, not just 9-3

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#89

Post by actfrench »

judah wrote: post #66

I was homeschooled and I credit much of my success in life to it. It taught me to think logically, taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality. It taught me the value of hard work, of loyalty, of kindness. It kept me out of vices that many of my public-schooled friends and peers got pulled into. In my experience, homeschooling can create well-rounded, upright people at a ra…

It’s hard. I think a lot of parents see teachers in school and think they have to imitate that - behavioral management and direct instruction. At the best, good teachers are guides for self-directed learning and don’t need to push much at all. I wish you luck ! Let me know if you want me to talk to your wife sometime more about this :) manisha[at]modulo[dot]app

Re: Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

#90

Post by aaronchall »

I homeschooled in 8th grade and I loved it.

- No commute to middle school, which returned me an hour of my day right there.

- No bullying from the soon-to-be dropouts.

- No gross school lunches or having to tote around a smelly lunchbag/box/cooler.

- No carrying a pile of books everywhere because the administration banned bookbags (drugs or weapons or something like that...), and no dealing with the worst students who always had their hands free because they didn't care if they had their books.

- I went as fast as I wanted through my Algebra textbook (doing up to 8 lessons a day.)

- Went to a science class taught every Friday in the next city over with demonstrations of chemistry and physics.

- Played my trombone the homeschool band, we performed at Disney World and local recitals too.

- Made some friends in the homeschool group.

- I disliked the English and History exercises but I did them in weekly batches to get them done. And I read lots of books from the big city's library which was far superior to the school or local city's library that I would have to use later when high school let out.

If I had stuck with the homeschooling system I could have finished my BS at the same time I finished high school by taking all my classes at the local university - but I would have probably not double-majored.

My experience with home-schooling gave me a big insight to my high school experience. I asked for privileges such as staying in classrooms during lunch or pep-rallies to play chess or read, and I usually got them because I was well-behaved, respectful, and demonstrated I could be trusted.

But I also resented the arbitrariness and capriciousness of the public school administration's dictates built around maintaining order due to worst behaving students (for example, I couldn't wear a ball-cap on a bad hair day because the resource officer caught kids hiding drugs in caps - knocking a cap off would start brutal fighting). Compared to that system, homeschooling was a kind of utopia to me.

The only downside was not being around the friends that I grew up with. Fewer birthday parties and such. But there was more hanging out with a much smaller set of friends who were all homeschooling, and making new friends in the local homeschool resource group. I went back to high school in 9th grade on the theory that I missed my friends and wanted to be involved in student government and other clubs. But they weren't as friendly as I remembered, and student government and the other clubs did basically nothing. So I spent my 12th grade year at the local university full time, which gave me the freedom I sorely missed from 8th grade. My only regret was not doing it sooner.

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