For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching • Hacker News Board

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#231

Post by mellavora » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #131

andrewstuart wrote: post #111

Home 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…

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.

> 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.

Just like in Florida, where teachers now face felony charges for having the wrong book in the classroom (not as required reading, just having it in the classroom). Yup, that's people with power attacking home-schooling for sure.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#232

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #142

ericbarrett wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was homeschooled and avoidance of "worldly" topics like evolution and (very basic) sex education were at the core of it. I was literally taught that dinosaur bones were planted in the soil by Satan to deceive people about the age of the world.

This is anecdotal fallacy if the intent is to suggest homeschooling is suspect because such cases do occur. You can find equally strange cases in public schools.

[deleted]

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#233

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

mvnuweucxqokii wrote: post #203

whynotminot wrote: post #177

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#234

Post by Justsignedup » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

williamtrask wrote: post #85

Justsignedup wrote: post #70

This is giving me the worst of vibes: - options for people who don't want to expose their children to out-of-family ideas, to perpetuate family biases - a completely unregulated market for children to go to a "school" with a few other kids, giving them small classrooms, BUT, no teacher with specialization or educational background. Would be extremely hit or miss, with little resource if it isn't working out. - only f…

> people have completely given up on society and said fuck it, we'll make our own. Fwiw, this type of thinking played a pretty strong role in how America began (and in other social/moral movements). It's not always a bad thing. > This is sad. The real solution is not to homeschool. It is to force ALL kids, regardless of age, location, and income to be forced into the same school system. Want to improve things? gotta…

I don't see it as social welfare, I see it as more "ensure everyone, ESPECIALLY the elite, are bought into the system". Otherwise we get conversations like we do today where "do we defund the education system" is a real convo. If those same people would have no choice but to send their kids to a defunded education system... we'll see change.

To add a bit more incentive, I'd say the children of any senator / congressman / local state legislature / governor / mayor / etc must attend school of that state. This will again ensure that people who make decisions and influence decisions are actually committed to the solution.

Again, not thinking about "how to rely on the government" but more along the lines of, "how do we make sure those in power / influence are as bought into the system and the solution of the system as the rest of us"

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#235

Post by gemstones » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #189

gemstones wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12/13 of the circle of homeschooling families that made up our socialization group in the 90s/00s have gone no contact with their parents now. Congrats on your success, it’s not the norm.

Not the norm within your social group, which was presumably mutually selected by your respective parents. That suggests that these families are not 13 independent data points, but rather a group of 13 families that all had similar predispositions and evolved along similar lines. I'd like to see the stats overall before coming to a conclusion about what the norm is.

[flagged]

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#236

Post by anon84873628 » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

mvnuweucxqokii wrote: post #203

whynotminot wrote: post #177

Earlier 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…

That's not the steel man, that's a straw man where you just flipped the politics of the scenario.

Letting kids feel safe to introspect and question their gender expression is a good thing.

The implication that kids will be _systematically_ forced to delay puberty or undergo a transition they don't want is absurd and not a valid "chain of reasoning". Yes, I'm sure it has happened and could continue in rare instances because a) there are lots of crazy parents; b) it is a new, trending concept and people like fads. But that is really no different than other types of trauma parents and teachers give to kids across the political spectrum. You're going to have to do a lot more work to prove this is something likely to happen on a broad scale.

The fact that gender identity is now something kids are allowed to have means people will interrogate them about it. People may even attempt to coerce them (just like any other beliefs) and kids will likely change their minds over time. The ability to defend their beliefs, resist influence, have role models, receive reliable advice and mentorship, manage their relationships, make serious medical decisions, etc etc is all part of the equation. It's also not that big of a deal or the end of society.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#237

Post by opportune » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

gemstones wrote: post #150

jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

As a homeschooled kid: Be warned that I heard “homeschooling has changed since we were in school” in the early 2000s, from multiple parents who are now estranged from their adult children. It hasn’t really changed that much - it’s just something parents like to tell themselves to avoid thinking about the experiences their children are missing.

Can’t both statements be true?

If I had to guess, most of the original homeschoolers did it because they had strong, fringe religious beliefs. Then in your generations more secular parents started homeschooling but it was still a pretty highly self-selective group (a stay at home parent who didn’t mind staying at home most of the day teaching their kids, a belief they could do better at educating their kids even without the resources we have on the internet now to make it easier or the ability to use the internet to organize with other homeschooling parents, anecdotally a lot of either super-weirdo parents or hippy granola parents (more in unschooling)).

Now with the internet and WFH homeschooling is possible for many more parents than just those that don’t work fulltime and want to teach their kids full time, and it’s easier to create curricula, and easier to network and schedule things with other parents.

I do think there is probably a general problem of some pathologically bad parenting traits self-selecting much more than “normal” parents to homeschool: parents with control freak/micromanagement issues they subject their kids to, socially anxious parents who want to spend all their time at home with their family, parents with fringe/paranoid/extreme beliefs, having some kind of weird attachment or smothering issues they subject their kids to. Which isn’t a problem with homeschooling per se as much as it is selection bias in who chooses to homeschool.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#238

Post by Justsignedup » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:56 AM UTC

hdhusiu_2 wrote: post #180

Justsignedup wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's how we got the shit we have today. Look at our healthcare system. The wealthier you are, the more you can go "fuck it, I'll buy a wing in a hospital and never have to worry" meanwhile middle america has giant chunks of population who suffer with chronic pain for decades. Obamacare was the first time that half of america was able to even go to a doctor to figure out wtf is wrong with them. The point is…

I kinda agree with the idea in abstract ( make things miserable for everyone and things will improve ), but it never really works like that in practice. Humans always find a way to fuck with ecisting system. It is a nice idea and maybe a way to scare some people into thinking a chunk of population had had enough. Me? I am not gonna sacrifice my kid to make a point. I don't want to enter the argument with healthcare a…

I mean the same can be said of anything. This is why the fight for for liberty never ends, because every day is a day some jackass can get into power and start claiming elections are rigged.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#239

Post by nitwit005 » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:56 AM UTC

Hayvok wrote: post #122

cogman10 wrote: post #76

[flagged]

We homeschool our four children, are religious, most of our friends homeschool, and this is nonsense. We love the schedule flexibility of homeschooling, the ability to let our kids explore their own interests more, and most of all - we just love being with our kids and they get to have their siblings and parents all day. > That's because teaching kids is super hard and real easy to mess up. Forgive me, but this is ju…

You're making an "it worked for me" argument, which doesn't mean much.

There are plenty of illiterate people in the US. Evidently teaching kids is, in fact, easy to mess up.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#240

Post by brightlancer » Sun, Aug 27, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #76

[flagged]

> Homeschooling generally happens because parents don't like some aspect of public schooling and more often than not it's that general knowledge conflicts with a religious belief.

This is absolutely false. Did you read the article?

Parents didn't flock to homeschooling during the lockdowns because of religious ideology: they did it because they wanted their children to LEARN.

IME, the two biggest reasons parents chose homeschooling were a) government school academics are garbage and b) government schools were often unsafe.

The parents wanted a SAFE _EDUCATIONAL_ environment for their kids, rather than prisons which allowed students to assault one another while the teachers spent all of their energy trying to get the bottom 10% to meet the absurdly low minimum standards.

Your experience may be very different, but don't use your bigotry to defame millions of parents.