Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

331–340 of 424 posts

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

#331
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. > Isn’t that what you just did? The key is understanding what I mean by "deny". First, I'll define liberalism and pluralism as I'm using them (from Wikipedia): > Pluralism as a political philosophy is the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which is seen to permit the peaceful coexistence of different…

Quoted post unavailable.

(facepalm)

The world is so interesting and nuanced! It would be tragic to expect one word answers to deep questions.

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to public school and would argue it's a terrible place to be socialized. You are socialized by kids your age in an environment that's more akin to prison than the real world.

A lot of child comments are pointing out that school kids are often terrible peers and experiences there are not great, and I have had my share of similar experiences, but.. that is part of social growth too. Making social mistakes, learning the consequences of those mistakes, and experiencing hurt when others make mistakes in interacting with you are all important life lessons. Part of the reason “the real world” af…

Have you met many people from homeschooling backgrounds?

I live in a community full of them. Social interaction has not been a problem for them. As adults they're some of the most well adjusted I know. As teens some of the happiest I've ever met.

Academically they vary but I'd say it works better than school for most.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teaching students not just to be pupils but to be democratic citizens and active participants in public life. The subtext being that homeschooled children grow up into worse citizens than schooled children? What is the basis for that?

Depends on the motivation but I think there are some straight forward reasons. If the motivation is religious, then withdrawal is the explicit goal. The US say, has a long history of sort of apolitical, religiously secluded parallel communities that are deliberately parochial. Another reason is that if you're not participating in common institutions you have no stake in them. If everyone goes to the same schools (in…

From what I have been able to piece together about Germans (my wife lived there and we have had several au pairs from there), they don’t understand the situation with religion in America. In Germany, people gradually stopped participating in organized religion, but the social framework has remained largely intact. Last I checked, German public schools are still required to offer religious education under Article 7-3 of the Basic Law.[1]

In the US, secularists have made a concerted effort to scrub every trace of religion out of public life and impose French-style secularism on a country that’s as religious as Poland. And they did that not in the 21st century, but in the 1960s and 1970s, when both Germany and the United States were vastly more religious.

Folks who want to homeschool their kids for religious reasons aren’t the nuts that American media makes them out to be. They’re people who in Germany or Sweden or the Netherlands or many other places would be able to avail themselves of public options that those countries include in the mainstream.

[1] Germany appears much more content to let social mores evolve organically rather than tearing up the social fabric by rushing change. Germany is a much more liberal country than America, but the laws are much more conservative in many ways. A subset of Americans are besides themselves because the Supreme Court overturned a case recognizing a right to abortion until viability (22 weeks). Meanwhile, Schwangerschaftsabbruch I (deeming abortion to be a violation of the Basic Law’s right to life) is still the law in Germany, and decriminalized abortion is permissible only to 12 weeks. Nobody called Angela Merkel a fascist for voting against same sex marriage. Bavaria requires crosses in public buildings and hasn’t been kicked out of the country. Etc.

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

#335
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…

> taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality Those do not sound positive at all. It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents, which matches with my preconceptions of homeschooling.

Tradition, morality, spirituality, and honoring your parents don't sound positive?

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

#336

Homeschooling was detrimental to my own social development as a child, and that of my (many) siblings. Adjusting to college life made me nearly suicidal with hopelessness that I'd ever catch up either academically or socially, and none of my other siblings managed to successfully complete it. We're all doing much better now, but none of us would ever consider putting our own children through that kind of isolation lo…

I too was homeschooled for most of my youth all the way through high school. At the time I welcomed it due to some pretty bad undiagnosed anxiety and ADD, but it in no way prepared me for life outside my nuclear family, nor did it provide me with much of an education that I didn’t explicitly give myself. My parents took me out of school for religious reasons primarily, with this vague notion they’d protect me and my sisters from secularism, while proving us a “better education.” As it turns out they were woefully under qualified to teach us anything past maybe grade 7, after which we were handed text books and encouraged to learn, instruction not included. Meanwhile I learned very little about social survival, or science, or life outside of the home. While I may have been protected from triggers to my anxiety, it actually got worse in ways because I was never challenged to grow, and it set me back in my social and emotional development many years. Subjects that the conservative Christian community considered risky (evolution anyone?) were either omitted or presented in such a corrupted way as to be worse than useless.

I love my parents, they tried their best, but there are very few scenarios in which I would encourage someone to homeschool their kids, if for no other reason than most parents aren’t trained teachers who actually know how to educate properly.

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

#337
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

(facepalm) The world is so interesting and nuanced! It would be tragic to expect one word answers to deep questions.

The world is too interesting and too nuanced to waste time trying to decipher a worldview obscured with wordplay.

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

#338
post #272
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why are you talking about > classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics when our conversation was about > Liberalism and pluralism (your words)? > State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society This is not an even approximately correct model for why the sta…

> This is deeply ironic, although I don't expect you to be able to notice why.

Are you trying to insult me?

If not, I'd suggest leaving out "although I don't expect you to be able to notice why."

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality Those do not sound positive at all. It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents, which matches with my preconceptions of homeschooling.

I'm as atheist as they come, and I value liberalism and secularism extremely. But I also acknowledge that not all humans are like me and that not everyone has a liberal mindset. They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending lib…

> They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all.

Can you spell out your logic?

When I think about the relative merits of forms of government, I consider a large range of factors: human nature, philosophy, morality, ethics, technology, and more.

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

#340
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of child comments are pointing out that school kids are often terrible peers and experiences there are not great, and I have had my share of similar experiences, but.. that is part of social growth too. Making social mistakes, learning the consequences of those mistakes, and experiencing hurt when others make mistakes in interacting with you are all important life lessons. Part of the reason “the real world” af…

Have you met many people from homeschooling backgrounds? I live in a community full of them. Social interaction has not been a problem for them. As adults they're some of the most well adjusted I know. As teens some of the happiest I've ever met. Academically they vary but I'd say it works better than school for most.

I have. My comment wasn’t a criticism of homeschooling. As I said:

> many well adjusted homeschooled kids are those who are exposed to social situations in other ways.

I was criticizing the idea the school is a bad place to learn socialization.

Post reply on HN