Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education • Hacker News Board

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#171

Post by hombre_fatal » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

MadcapJake wrote: post #154

brightball wrote: post #7

When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I'd never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it. This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, dep…

It's like people are reinventing all the same stuff schools do at scale. Can't we be more efficient as a society? Not to mention the privilege that is draped over every detail of this setup.

Scale isn't necessarily good. I went to a massive highschool in Texas and suspect I would have had a far better experience in a much smaller school whether it be a homeschooling co-op or a small public school (the latter didn't exist in my hometown, only massive Texan highschools).

And my best classes in uni weren't the massive lectures at the University of Texas but rather small summer school classes I took in a cheap Houston community college during summer break where I could actually interact with the teacher and fellow students.

Finally, HNers overuse "reinventing" as a pejorative. If you use a similar approach found in another option, and the HNer doesn't prefer your option over the other option, you're always "reinventing" it. As if some trivial thing in common between two options are the only would-be differences between them. It's not very thoughtful commentary.

Home-schooling could be 100% identical to public schooling except that it's not the local school system and it would still deliver on its goal of not being the local school system. That's the whole point.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#172

Post by ejb999 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #112

tivert wrote: post #15

> Many of America’s new home-schooled children have entered a world where no government official will ever check on what, or how well, they are being taught. Isn't escaping from those officials the whole point? Either because they're failing at their job or doing things that are disagreeable to some subset of the population?

> Isn't escaping from those officials the whole point? Either because they're failing at their job or doing things that are disagreeable to some subset of the population? It sounds ideal. But we might want at least some oversight and regulation to, for example, make sure kids aren't being homeschooled on how to build rockets and kill some group of people.

because public school kids never kill people?

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#173

Post by lapetitejort » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

Hello71 wrote: post #159

lapetitejort wrote: post #137

I was home-schooled until high school. Long story short, it was a disaster. I bordered on having no education at all, on top of no socialization. I'm so fortunate I got at least four years of public school. I still think I suffer to this day. For parents who are thinking of home schooling your kids: best of luck to you. If you succeed, maybe your kids will be smarter. If you fail, you could be setting your kids up fo…

there are obviously lots of kids that had a very bad homeschooling, and also lots of kids that had very bad public schooling. many kids are bullied so badly at school that they commit suicide, and many more develop antisocial habits there. the question is whether those issues are better or worse with homeschooling, and a single anecdote doesn't help us with that.

I see a lot of single anecdotes and see no reason not to include mine.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#174

Post by bluefirebrand » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

boeingUH60 wrote: post #5

Good luck to these people, hope it turns out well. Personally, I can't imagine home-schooling kids. I neither have the time nor patience to do that, which is why I appreciate teachers. Besides, I believe school is also a place for kids to socialize with and learn from their peers. I'm very introverted, but I think I would have ended up horribly social-wise if I was home-schooled.

In Alberta, homeschool is really more akin to "remote school" than homeschool.

The kids are still required to pass the same exams to get their high school diploma, and they still get a package of course work and required reading and such. They also have access to a teacher to ask questions to, who can help explain concepts, projects, and such.

My wife was homeschooled here growing up and she loved it. She would finish her school for the day in the morning then do whatever she wanted for the rest of her time. She would also finish her courses early and have long summers. Now she has a masters degree and leads teams at work.

Definitely not for every family or every kid, but the outcomes don't have to be terrible

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#175

Post by jononomo » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

MadcapJake wrote: post #154

brightball wrote: post #7

When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I'd never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it. This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, dep…

It's like people are reinventing all the same stuff schools do at scale. Can't we be more efficient as a society? Not to mention the privilege that is draped over every detail of this setup.

I guess if having friends, family, and a garage is "privilege", then more power to them -- they'd be idiots not to take advantage of this privilege.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#176

Post by zarzavat » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

lapetitejort wrote: post #137

I was home-schooled until high school. Long story short, it was a disaster. I bordered on having no education at all, on top of no socialization. I'm so fortunate I got at least four years of public school. I still think I suffer to this day. For parents who are thinking of home schooling your kids: best of luck to you. If you succeed, maybe your kids will be smarter. If you fail, you could be setting your kids up fo…

People socialised for thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands of years before schools were invented.

I went to school and got beat up, colour me sceptical about school as a mechanism for socialisation.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#177

Post by arrowsmith » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

burcs wrote: post #27

We're homeschooling our kids. I was pretty against it at first, but seeing our education system degrade to the state it is today, and being honest about my schooling experience definitely opened me up to it. I think the biggest argument for schooling is the socialization aspect of it. I don't know about the rest of you but I was bullied pretty relentlessly throughout grade school and it completely changed my personal…

> I work remotely, my wife freelances.

Are you both working full-time? What's the arrangement? How do you fit the homeschooling in around your jobs?

My wife and I have talked about this a lot. We don't have kids yet, but we're very open to the idea of homeschooling when the time comes. I'm not sure how we'll do it though - we're in a better position than most (we make good money and both wfh) but there are only so many hours in the day. I'm interested to know how other people make it work.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#178

Post by cycomanic » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #114

303uru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's one model. The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. Similarly, there is household in my neighborhood that home schools. The kids (all 8 of them) never leave the house. They have a 8ft. fence and 1 acre yard where I assume they get some outside time. No one visits. Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird.

> The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. I didn't need your permission to give birth to my children, why do I need your permission when deciding how I educate them? > Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird. If you feel these children are legitimately being abused in some way, I'm guessing there are plenty of state resources to address that challenge. Do…

> > The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature.

> I didn't need your permission to give birth to my children, why do I need your permission when deciding how I educate them?

Because your children are not your property, they are your responsibility and we as society have decided that we want to make sure that the education is to a certain standard.

As a side note I find it fascinating how people who feel strongly about individual freedom, believe they should have ultimate authority (sometimes it feels more like ownership) over their children. Why do you believe that the freedoms do not apply to children?

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#179

Post by ViktorV » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

orochimaaru wrote: post #110

Amezarak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, there are many public school horror stories. For example, despite spending $21k/student, making it the third-highest funded school system in the country, 23 Baltimore schools failed to produce a single student with basic math proficiency.[1] One of my friends went to a school where she was beaten every day and the teachers had totally given up and most of them did not teach. Unfortunately, we need much mor…

School is parents + school. I would say about 60% parenting and 40% school. If you don’t push your kid academically nothing is going to happen. Peer groups matter. In “good” schools you’re optimizing the peer group. A good/bad school rating has little to do with teacher capability.

Just a personal anectode: I'm pretty sure that this wasn't true for me. I think some humans have an instinct for survival, maybe all of them, if a persons emotional needs are met then developing, advancing, learning is a natural byproduct without any external pressure. Just like we learn to talk and walk without someone telling us to do.

All the push just hurt me in the end, I would be a lot better off without traditional school, rarely I learned anything useful there.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#180

Post by margalabargala » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #55

MilStdJunkie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's biased in the same way an unchoked shotgun shoots pellets with wider dispersion. K-12 education done independently, atomized from regional or national institutions, means people come out more different, so the edges of the cluster are further away. Homeschoolers are biased about 43% to white and rural, so it's pretty fair that the fring is going to be on that side of things. I'm kind of stumped as to how that's…

You can't tell me with a straight face that public education is a uniform experience in the US. Just read through the comments other people have posted in subthreads here about their own experiences. My own school had a wide range of "don't bother learning, get pregnant and drop out" to "goes on to elite university" students, and everything in-between.

> You can't tell me with a straight face that public education is a uniform experience in the US.

No one claimed that "public education is a uniform experience in the US". Did you reply to the wrong comment?

Do you think the variability is wider among public schools, or among homeschools?