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

#211

Post by scarmig » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #140

keiferski wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I don't think anyone denies that there are some home schooling horror stories. But it really doesn't seem like most public schools do a great job either, so the question is if this broken system damages more people than one dominated by home schooling.

We have some insight into the answer to this, because public schooling is (more or less) a replacement for home schooling. Home schooling has an incredible amount of inequality built in to it. Affluent parents can hire instructors. Poor parents may not even be able to meet their children’s basic schooling needs, if it weren’t for public schools. Obviously there’s a lot of middle ground between those two extremes, and…

> IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead.

Imagine your school district has banned teaching algebra to 8th graders, for reasons of equity. You're upset at this, since you have a child about to attend 8th grade. You go to a school board meeting, express yourself, and are at best ignored or more likely called names. What, from the perspective of a parent with a child who needs an education, do you then do? Fixing the system would be nice and all, but how do you do that before your kid becomes an adult, let alone make up for all the damage public schooling has been doing in the meantime?

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

#212

Post by jononomo » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

defgeneric wrote: post #201

I'm skeptical when these parents their kids cite poor public schools as the primary reason for home schooling. When you look closer, it's almost always lifestyle and ideology that are the main factors. The often-cited failure in socialization extends beyond socialization within peer-groups as well--kids also need exposure to a variety of adults and authority figures. It's not only about learning how to make friends.…

> I mean reading this it just sounds like they are discovering the hard way the concept of... a school??

Yeah, a school that works.

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

#213

Post by politician » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #72

asynchronous wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, and article hit pieces like this are exactly why it will continue to expand. Newsflash, there’s an actual large portion of the population that more and more doesn’t want what is taught to their children regulated by the government.

Yeah, there are a number of people out there who only want to teach their kids what's in the Bible. We should all be so lucky as to be a bunch of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidts. Obviously I'm presenting an extreme example, but society at large has a vested interest in ensuring that children, broadly, are educated. I'm not saying there are no problems with regulations, but I hate how the "deregulate everything!" crowd con…

If you just taught kids the Bible, at a minimum they would have amazing literacy skills.

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

#214

Post by defgeneric » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #150

People talk about homeschooling as if it's one single concept, but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things. There are people who homeschool because they don't agree with the government's viewpoints, people who homeschool because the public school system has failed their kids, people who homeschool because it just happens to fit their lifestyle. Those are all very different motivations. Likewise, there a…

Then these should be distinguished and regulated appropriately.

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

#215

Post by kup0 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #150

People talk about homeschooling as if it's one single concept, but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things. There are people who homeschool because they don't agree with the government's viewpoints, people who homeschool because the public school system has failed their kids, people who homeschool because it just happens to fit their lifestyle. Those are all very different motivations. Likewise, there a…

Fully agree. For a long time I was heavily biased against it because of the versions of it I saw, growing up in a conservative religious family and seeing other far more conservative religious families in our church/etc do a very extreme/strict/sheltering form of it- and then becoming non-religious, kept that bias.

But over time I've come to realize that is only one very specific form of 'homeschooling' that is nothing like other forms

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

#216

Post by merpnderp » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:58 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…

I’m sorry for you bad experience, but statistically kids do better when homeschooled. It’s not like public school as some minimal level they’re assured to bring kids up to.

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

#217

Post by PuissantSheep » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #180

zdragnar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

#218

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

doubled112 wrote: post #133

akira2501 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not the socialization that I want for my kids. On the other hand, I'd definitely want my children to be familiar with it. Bullying is not something isolated to schools. I've seen it in nearly every social and political situation that exists at nearly every age group. In my estimation people are getting worse at identifying it and collectively we're getting worse at punishing it.

Dealing with bullies is something you'll definitely see later in life. I'm glad I learned how to shut it down quick or avoid it altogether earlier rather than later. Being let out into the world thinking everybody loves you sounds like a terrifying idea too.

What do you do to quickly shut down an adult bully?

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

#219

Post by alistairSH » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #39

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.

> underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature No that’s literally the main benefit. People actually get to teach their own kids without state indoctrination (either left or right.)

I love that when a parent tells a kid that Jesus rode a velociraptor it's "teaching" but when a school tells a kid the universe probably started with a big bang, it's "indoctrination".

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

#220

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #12

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…

There are many home-schooling success stories, and also many home-schooling horror stories. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-pr...

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