I was homeschooled back in the 90’s and it was all on me to teach myself. Have things really changed?
For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
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Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no and has never been any true evidence that home schooled kids are worse at socialization then the ones that go to a traditional school, at least as far as I can tell. It's a meme that people propagate because it is "common sense," but none of the studies I've looked at supports it.
I was homeschooled and the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. Try finding adults who were homeschooled who speak fondly of the experience.
I have known several. I've also known an overwhelming number of people from public and private schools who hated those experiences.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if it's not about missing perspectives, but exposure to infohazards?
Explain this more to me. Presumably something so insidious you need to remove your child from even the possibility of being exposed to it. Perhaps, the existence of gay people?
That's a strawman.
The steelman version is something like the following chain of reasoning: (a) gender identity is something that everyone has that is distinct from sex, (b) with enough introspection, everyone can discover their true gender identity, (c) if you don't have a strongly felt gender identity, you need to introspect, (d) if introspection does not yield certainty then this suggests genderfluidity, or even worse that puberty ought be delayed until certainty is achieved.
Or how about: an AMAB child playing with a Barbie doll often is strongly suggestive that he might actually be trans.
Or how about: values like "being on time" or believing that a math problem has one correct answer are inherently white supremacist and racist.
etc.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem with the setup you outlined is that the central government has no say in what is being taught to kids. So no matter how similar homeschooling will look to government-controlled schooling, people with power will never stop attacking it because of that crucial nuisance.
The “I don’t want the government perspective imposed on my children” is so funny to me as a homeschooling argument. Go to schoolboard meetings. Talk to your kids and their teachers. Understand what your kids are learning. If you feel a perspective is missing, fill in the gaps. Your kids will be better off for seeing different perspectives, understanding basic argumentation, and coming to their own conclusions. Oh thi…
"The “I don’t want the government perspective imposed on my children” is so funny to me as a homeschooling argument."
I think it's more the bureaucracy (which is a form of government perspective), and in some cases the lack of quality.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#205Home schooling is a real burden on many parents who aren't professional teachers of course and are pulled in many directions. One of the most exciting emerging trends in home schooling is to pool the resources of multiple home schooling parents. It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day. So home schooling parents can team up and share the…
>This means the kids gather together in one location because many kids can learn from the person doing the teaching. >Often as well it makes sense for the parents all to contribute a little money so that instead of the parents having to teach things that they are not expert in, the can pay as a group for someone with subject expertise to assist. >It can be problematic though gathering so many kids into one house for…
Except that in regular school, if you want your kids to learn math, depending of the state you're in, you may be just out of luck.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#206A couple things to pull out… (1) sometimes alternative education is worse. There’s no question that, in some cases, alternative school is worse for a child’s development than standard public school. I’ve personally seen children who were falling behind because their parents were not equipped to teach them in high school. (2) it can sometimes be better. Alternative school is higher variance than public school - the ch…
You make some good points but "The parent is the person most able to accurately assess their child’s needs" feels like a really strong claim to make without any support. Evaluating a child's needs can really require the opinion of an expert and potentially require testing to evaluate things like learning disabilities or identify what the child is good at. I think it's reasonable to say that the final decision on a child's education belongs to the parent, but that doesn't mean they're actually a domain expert on parenting or education just because they had a kid. Becoming an educator requires lots of study.
My two siblings and I all dealt with different individual educational challenges and it was way beyond the ability of an ordinary parent - even well-educated ones like my parents - to be able to fully understand what was going on with us and how best to address it, so they had to bring in qualified experts to help figure stuff out. "everything begins and ends with the parent" is an opinion I've seen quite a few times and it really does not hold up from my PoV.
I can imagine maybe the majority of homeschooled children are "ordinary" with no unusual challenges, and in that case educating them at home (or at a trusted friend's home) is not a problem. But how many people are truly ordinary? Disabilities are way more common than most people think - depending on the statistics you trust, 10-25% of adults have some sort of disability.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#207I was told thought public school was invented, not to instruct, not to educate but to emancipate kids. Giving them a chance to see the world from a different perspective from their family. One might call it endoctrinement, yes, but if you are confronted to two concurrent belief systems, you are more likely to see them for what they are.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Explain this more to me. Presumably something so insidious you need to remove your child from even the possibility of being exposed to it. Perhaps, the existence of gay people?
That's a strawman. The steelman version is something like the following chain of reasoning: (a) gender identity is something that everyone has that is distinct from sex, (b) with enough introspection, everyone can discover their true gender identity, (c) if you don't have a strongly felt gender identity, you need to introspect, (d) if introspection does not yield certainty then this suggests genderfluidity, or even w…
If this is the steel man god help this argument.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#209Home schooling is a real burden on many parents who aren't professional teachers of course and are pulled in many directions. One of the most exciting emerging trends in home schooling is to pool the resources of multiple home schooling parents. It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day. So home schooling parents can team up and share the…
This just sounds like school. I guess the difference is you can be very selective with what you teach and pick your own curriculum, especially if you’re a fundamentalist religious person and don’t agree with what most schools teach.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#210Home schooling is a real burden on many parents who aren't professional teachers of course and are pulled in many directions. One of the most exciting emerging trends in home schooling is to pool the resources of multiple home schooling parents. It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day. So home schooling parents can team up and share the…
One of the very first things i learned when i began homeschooling was that 9 to 3:30 schooling simply exists for parents work schedules. We can typically knock out our school day in 2 to 3 hours altogether. Granted, my kids are still elementary age