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

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

#241

Post by pdonis »

mikeyouse wrote: post #148
_blz2 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are making a choice for their kids, whether they want the after effects of religious or public school 'brainwashing'. For many, its a clear cut choice, one way or the other.

It's weird to strip the kids of any agency or consideration, but you've phrased it well. People are making a choice for their kids -- parents don't own their kids, they have something akin to justified paternalism over them. Society should care whether parents are providing a base level of education and opportunity to these kids. It's pretty apparent from the discussion here who grew up around e.g. fundamentalist Mor…

> Society should care whether parents are providing a base level of education and opportunity to these kids.

And society should also care whether government-run public schools are doing this--not to mention whether they are indoctrinating children with values that many parents disagree with.

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

#242

Post by bloaf »

brightball wrote: post #161
MadcapJake wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are big efficient schools better than lots of small schools?

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-most-dangerous...

This article makes a case that the statistics of small sample sizes has bamboozled many different well-intentioned groups, including the small school movement.

The argument is that the fact that many of the best schools are small is an artifact of statistics (de Moivre's equation) rather than evidence small schools are superior.

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

#243

Post by rcpt »

standardUser wrote: post #135
keiferski wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I have basically the same opinion. It's not so much that I believe homeschooling is amazing in-itself, but rather that the public education system has so clearly deteriorated that it seems borderline criminal to subject your kids to it. The question for me, personally, is private school vs. homeschooling. If you can avoid many of the downsides of public education via choosing the right private school (and bei…

I don't understand this talk about "the public education system". Every school and school district is going to be different. Some are great and others are not. I understand if you live in an area with middling-to-poor schools, but lots of people live near great public schools.

Ridiculous amounts of standardized testing and curriculums designed to optimize for that was the main thing we hated. Seems to be a thing everywhere.

When I was a kid teachers had a bit more freedom to decide what to teach but now you teach to the test or lose your funding.

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

#244

Post by akira2501 »

cycomanic wrote: post #178
akira2501 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

> Because your children are not your property, they are your responsibility

I am their _guardian_.

> and we as society have decided that we want to make sure that the education is to a certain standard.

And what is that standard? Passing standardized tests? How do you account for the poor performance of American schools in general? How do you account for the differential performance across the country, let alone, wild performance differences across a single city? If a child goes to school but fails to become educated, can the sue the school district? Does the school owe them continued education until they meet the standard?

> believe they should have ultimate authority (sometimes it feels more like ownership) over their children.

If something happens to my children and I'm even just negligent then I will pay the ultimate price. You cannot ensconce in me this responsibility and then deny my authority to exercise control over them to maintain it.

> Why do you believe that the freedoms do not apply to children?

Why do you think children can't sign contracts or buy alcohol? They have _limited_ freedom, under my _guardianship_. This is more important than the States imputed idealism with respect to "education."

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

#245

Post by elil17 »

ejb999 wrote: post #167
elil17 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But should you be able to totally escape from scrutiny? To me it seems very wrong to deny a child the opportunity to learn the things they'd need to function in society like reading, math, and science. Most homeschooling parents are teaching these things to there kids, but there are some who aren't. That ought to be stopped.

there are plenty of public schools, despite spending 10-15-$20K per student are also not teaching those things. THAT ought to be stopped.

Yeah that should also be stopped.

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

#247

Post by chasd00 »

pengaru wrote: post #182
MadcapJake wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're not reinventing anything, they're just doing education with a better instructor:student ratio. We all know the worse the ratio the worse the education tends to be. Tutoring is a long established means of compensating for this, by supplementing sessions with a 1:1 ratio, clearly illustrating the problem.

Also, every parent and student has a direct connection to every other parent and student. Doing education "at scale" is a terrible idea.

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

#248

Post by ARandumGuy »

whatshisface wrote: post #125
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.

I have got bad news about that, the majority of abusive households send the kids to school and scare them into silence. Regulations against abusive households do exist but enforcing them completely would require a degree of inescapable surveillance that cannot exist.

That may be true, but way more kids get sent to school then are home schooled, so that doesn't mean much on its own.

The issue is that when a kid's at school, there are many people who may notice something's wrong. From teachers, school nurses, school administrators, and even other kids. This is by no means perfect, and many, many cases of abuse slip through the cracks. But it is something, which is more then many home schooled kids have.

While I'd wager most home schooled kids aren't abused, the fact of the matter is it's much easier for an abusive parent to cover up their abuse if their child is home schooled. You may still feel home schooling is a net positive, but this aspect is very hard to deny.

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

#249

Post by sweeter »

I mean its obvious. There has been a concerted effort to de-fund public schools and center the conversation about "right to choose" education, alongside a handout of vouchers to attend private religious schools AND the implementation of new laws that allow tax payer dollars to go to funding those privately owned religious schools (seriously).

The intent imo is to make schools seem "scary" and push parents to put their kids in private schools that these religious groups control, they are for-profit so they can rake in those sweet tax dollars and the parents money, while public schools flail and kids don't get a proper education. Its a concerted effort to privatize and dismantle the public school system. These schools don't have to abide by federal laws either, even while receiving federal tax money.

Throw that in with the very real dangers of going to school these days, these are the only two options after a while. Go to a private religious school, or home school... and that is not an accident or a coincidence.

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

#250

Post by chasd00 »

n3storm wrote: post #35
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…

Montessori is succesful with healthy wealthy beloved children.

Montessori was invented specifically for bottom income special needs kids.
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