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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?

#261

Post by 99_00 »

hgomersall wrote: post #179
ElijahLynn wrote: post #108

Social needs. Children need to learn how to be in relationship with others, it is the most fundamental need we have and is so important for the future of our planet. If I were to homeschool, it isn't about the learning, that is easy, it is about providing an environment where children can learn to co-exist with others. That can still be done with homeschool, but it will need to be intentional with daily activities th…

This so much. I've met quite a few homeschooled children and almost without fail they lack some pretty fundamental social skills. Things like an apparent inability to interact with children of their own age, or behaving obnoxiously to others in ways that would be rapidly stamped out by peers.

How do you know that the parents didn't pull the kids out of school because lack of social skills and unusual but unctronable behavior resulted in peer bullying.

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

#262

Post by swatcoder »

xpe wrote: post #249
wyager wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand. Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling.

> Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling. No. This seems like an attempt at a wise phrase unfortunately mechanistically generated from some recursion and word substitution. Please try to support the claim if you actually believe it. Research classical liberalism, the scientific meth…

I think what they’re railing against is an actual truth: an important role of education has always been inducting kids into a common understanding of the society they’ll be navigating as a adults.

For modern western nations, that does means encouraging kids to think in terms of specific liberal, secular humanist values like universal human rights, pluralist nation-states, global interdependency, democratic government, capitalist economics, etc — and there are many communities throughout the world and throughout the US who have not actually bought into those values and instead value other, sometimes incompatible things.

There is a real and legitimate tension between state education vs homeschooling (regardless of the particular politics/culture at home).

I personally think too much such value fragmentation will damn us all and that a common education is necessary to keep a relatively peaceful order in what’s a constitutionally and inescapably diverse nation, but I get the complaint and worry that these other commenters are airing.

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

#263

Post by kennywinker »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #254
kennywinker wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an insane thing to say. Qanon level insanity. Trans activism is big pharma selling HRT to kids? First off, HRT is expensive, but not that expensive. Whatever made up narrative you have for them convincing kids to support trans people would be entirely too expensive to justify. Second, trans people have existed for MUCH MUCH longer than pharmaceutical companies have existed. Edit: oh, this poster thinks hitler…

So what explanation do YOU have for trans activism? It certainly isn't just "we have always had this many of them but now it's ok to acknowledge". From my experiences (which are many) it is vastly due to cultural identitarianism with a hefty side helping of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. But I still want to hear your explanation.

People have always been this way. Some points in history culture has crushed it out of almost everyone, sometimes in history culture has encouraged it to flourish. We’re in a time when culture is doing both.

Your assertion that it is certainly not aways been here, is wrong. Examples in history are plentiful. From shakepearean actors, to two-spirit people in the americas. Gender is somewhere between 50% and 100% a social construct. We construct it differently in different times, but the desire to construct it both as a binary and as a fluid spectrum are as human as breathing.

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

#264

Post by jhawk28 »

muzani wrote: post #248

We did remote schooling during covid. Kids don't actually like it. I never thought I'd see the day when my child would wail about not being able to go to school, but that's it. Also as bad as kids are with learning with teachers, it's usually a lot worse with parents. It's very stressful to, say, teach a child math. I think being in a group of others doing it gives them a little more grit.

Remote schooling is not the same as homeschooling. When the children are young, it is a lot of couch learning. You sit down with the child on the couch and go through a lesson per day of reading. You have "manipulatives" like blocks to show patterns and counting. Books are often scripted so that you can just read the lesson to the child. As the children get older and more independent, the child can read the lesson themselves and answer the questions. The parents role is then to grade the work and make sure their children are doing the work. Homeschooling is not easy. It can be stressful, but it gives you the freedom to teach your kids in the best or worst way.

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

#265

Post by anon291 »

xpe wrote: post #245
anon291 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can say the same thing about public and private schooled kids -- sheltered from traditional and conservative ideas.

This is a false claim of equivalence: very different things are happening. A liberal education does not 'shelter' students from religion -- instead, they are more likely to learn about it critically, perhaps in comparison with various faiths and histories. Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts. Perhaps something about the organ…

But that's my point... I went to a normal school. Even though it was religious, I wasn't exposed to any conservative ideas (religious != political conservatism). The school kinda went along with the general zeitgeist. Perhaps your experience is different. We did a cursory (and I mean extremely cursory) view of all world religions, as I think many schools may offer, but we never went in depth.

But again, religion is not conservatism, whether political or even social (Stoicism is a 'conservative' philosophy, despite not being religious and perhaps even anti-religious).

It wasn't until I was older that I began studying these topics in any great detail.

> Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts.

That's not really germaine. Did you learn it in a public school? Because if not, I think my point stands.

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

#266

Post by rayiner »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #108

Social needs. Children need to learn how to be in relationship with others, it is the most fundamental need we have and is so important for the future of our planet. If I were to homeschool, it isn't about the learning, that is easy, it is about providing an environment where children can learn to co-exist with others. That can still be done with homeschool, but it will need to be intentional with daily activities th…

The socialization of modern schooling is terrible and artificial. Children are age segregated and managed by a handful of adults. Which means they learn mainly from each other, instead of from older kids and adults. It’s the factory farm equivalent of raising children.

Homeschooled kids, of course, can learn social skills because they exist in societies and communities. Our neighbor’s kids are homeschooled. They’re over at our house right now. They play with the neighborhood kids, go to church, and engage in other social activities in mixed-age groups of kids.

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

#267

Post by anon291 »

OJFord wrote: post #250
xpe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false claim of equivalence: very different things are happening. A liberal education does not 'shelter' students from religion -- instead, they are more likely to learn about it critically, perhaps in comparison with various faiths and histories. Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts. Perhaps something about the organ…

I'm very confused about the meaning of 'liberal' in this thread - it's quite overloaded anyway, but is it also like 'conservative' in having quite a different (or at least more specific) meaning in the US vs. UK (and especially vs. capital-C 'Conservative' party)? But also it seems to be assumed contradictorily to imply each secular and not?

Yeah, he brought up religion for no particular reason. To be clear, when I say 'traditional' ideas, I mean those ideas that have captured the secular zeitgeist of generations before us. For example, the idea that the family is the foundational element of society today has religious connotations, but only because it is carried over from Roman times. The Romans achieved this conclusion through secular means. It's now associated with religion because the Catholic church basically is the current implementation of the late Roman empire's value system.

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

#268

Post by devindotcom »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #254
kennywinker wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an insane thing to say. Qanon level insanity. Trans activism is big pharma selling HRT to kids? First off, HRT is expensive, but not that expensive. Whatever made up narrative you have for them convincing kids to support trans people would be entirely too expensive to justify. Second, trans people have existed for MUCH MUCH longer than pharmaceutical companies have existed. Edit: oh, this poster thinks hitler…

So what explanation do YOU have for trans activism? It certainly isn't just "we have always had this many of them but now it's ok to acknowledge". From my experiences (which are many) it is vastly due to cultural identitarianism with a hefty side helping of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. But I still want to hear your explanation.

Gender and sexuality have been fluid for as long as we've recorded them. It's in all the primary sources.

Trans people (and gay people, and bi, and asexual..) exist and have always existed - it's only now that modern medicine is capable of and permitted to let them shape their body in the way that matches their identity. It also happens to be during a resurgence in anti-LGBT rhetoric that's part of the MAGA "we had it right in the '50s" dog whistle. Their activism is a natural result.

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

#269

Post by somethoughts »

troupe wrote: post #228
somethoughts wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As some one interested in the space - I definitely feel providing tools to parents for home after schooling is a much, much larger total addressable market size and likely more profitable. The average after school math tutor probably nets $90-$120 per hour, where the average school teacher probably nets $50 per hour.

If you are willing to do stuff online, the cost for a math tutor is only a fraction of what you described.

The real shame is that the material is all essentially free. The challenge as with all MOOCs and online (and offline) educational material is that its not fun and its hard to stay motivated.

And this is true doubly so for kids.

It'd be interesting to what extent the fees that normally would be spend on tutoring expenses could be spent on prizes or some other reward - without cheapening the experience (i.e. taking away their intrinsic love for learning by making it transactional and based on extrinsic rewards, etc.).

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

#270

Post by celtain »

DennisP wrote: post #209
monk_e_boy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in educating young men and women, ages 16 up to around 60. Homeschooled kids almost never make a year in "normal" education. They fail to adjust to a small college, they are no longer the center of attention. They have to wait for others to catch up. They are not team players. It's really hard to watch.

The rest sounds bad but "they have to wait for others to catch up" sounds like a win for homeschooling.

It's unsurprising that a teacher-student ratio around 1:1 could yield incredible academic results. If that so often comes at the cost of skills necessary to operate in the vast majority of real world environments though, it's kind of useless.
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