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

#401

Post by gnicholas » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #62

If you home school, you don't get the money back. Public school is something like $12k/yr. That's a lot of money that you're essentially opting out of. For parents who do so for political or culture war reasons, that must seem profoundly unfair. To be driven out of the public schools means to be denied resources. Public schools using public money should be especially sensitive and as neutral as possible on political…

> If you home school, you don't get the money back. Public school is something like $12k/yr. That's a lot of money that you're essentially opting out of.

Money spent ≠ value provided. My kid's class has over half a million dollars spent on it per year. But many parents see it as merely childcare, and then spend more money on after school tutoring and activities.

I can see the appeal of skipping the schooling and doing the other activities during the school day. It's probably much easier/cheaper to get appointments before 2, when most kids are in school. And there's more flexibility in terms of scheduling. I just heard today that a family was threatened with being kicked out of our local school if they accrued 10 days of unexcused absences (which includes vacation days). While I don't think the school would actually kick the family out, the fact that this is even floated as an idea sounds crazy.

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

#402

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #227

eutropia wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I’ll intentionally disadvantage my kids in the name of the ideal of egalitarianism” said basically no parent ever.

I had someone (childless i might add) try to make me feel guilty for pulling my kids out of a school circling the drain and into a high performing one in the name of diversity. I told them, when the time comes, if they want to sacrifice their child on that altar then it's their decision but don't ask me to sacrifice mine.

Kind of wild and weirdly refreshing to finally see the "everyone is in it for themselves and their own" attitude on fully overt display in this article's comments. Usually it's masked behind talk of "freedom" and "individuality," but here, it's raw and out there in the open!

FWIW I probably could afford to send my kid to a better private school or alternate-schooling group, withdrawing from the community and not-so-great public school system, but I don't because then I'm just another contributor to the inequality problem. We Live In A Society.

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

#403

Post by ndriscoll » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 8:57 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #344

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…

Sure, but ultimately when kids receive vastly different childhood educations, it will eventually fracture society because we're all starting from a completely different set of beliefs. Even if some schools are "better" or "worse" for the most part they have similar curriculum. As time goes on and that curriculum diverges, it'll make the political fractures in society today seem like a walk in the park IMO. The social…

In theory, society should be robust to differing beliefs: allow people to segregate into communities with shared beliefs and self-govern. Use higher levels of government sparingly to resolve conflicts and where coordination is necessary and general consensus exists that the thing you are coordinating is desired.

In practice, people have trouble not butting into each other's lives. If we're going to try to force a shared belief on everyone, it should be to fix that.

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

#404

Post by rrradical » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 8:58 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…

I was (non-religiously) home schooled and very much benefited from it. I was able to spend a lot more time reading books than I would have in school. I was able to learn about computers, programming, etc. I did get some socialization through other kids in my neighborhood and events with other home school families. I started in back in school around high school and, although it was a bit of a transition, I enjoyed it (and don't regret homeschooling either).

It probably wouldn't work well for every kid and every family. Personally, I found the structure of elementary school very constraining and was glad to get out. I'm sure there are pros and cons to both approaches.

I think relative to my peers I'm generally able to be a bit more self motivated. And I think schools generally teach you to solve problems using only the information on the page in front of you, whereas the real world is much messier than that.

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

#405

Post by simplyluke » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

The article's failure to mention the shuttering of many of these schools for well over a full academic year seems intentionally negligent. My local school district, Seattle, didn't have full in-person instruction until the Fall of 2021. We've now got decent data on how disastrous remote learning was for kids, so parents choosing to take matters into their own hands seems like an entirely rational response. I don't have kids but if I did would have absolutely looked into alternate options to zoom lectures for kindergarteners.

> In fact, high-scoring districts had some of the biggest spikes in home schooling early in the pandemic, though by the fall of 2022 increases were similar regardless of school performance

Parents with resources are opting out of a system that was not providing for their kids. This isn't surprising.

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

#406

Post by whatshisface » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

ARandumGuy wrote: post #248

whatshisface wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

Homeschooling requires some degree of investment in the child, even just to keep them occupied or tolerate their presence. School provides free childcare for long periods of time. I don't think the majority of abusive parents will ever homeschool their children, because most are not believers in teaching an abusive ideology but rather have simple personality disorders. "Homeschool makes it easier to hide abuse" presupposes that abusive parents are planning or organizing abuse which is plainly not true in the majority of cases.

Like the Satanism panics of the 1990s demonstrate, elaborate imaginings of complex sadistic rituals that are necessarily rare[0] bordering on nonexistent, tend to capture the public mind and suck oxygen away from treating the totally unattractive (not even in the capacity of making for a true crime special) real problems.

If you want to see this on TV, the last season of The Wire was about it.

[0] There were actually a spate of ritual killings in Liberia through the 1970s, proving humanity capable at least and making the issue to be one of reasonableness.

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

#407

Post by ImJamal » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

sweeter wrote: post #249

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 thei…

While there may be an effort to defund public schools, funding (inflation adjusted) has been increasing.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

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

#408

Post by ksenzee » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

drw3 wrote: post #361

xyzelement wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

// other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination I was raised totally secular but I now understand that religion is about fundamentally aligning yourself to the highest aspirations ("what kind of man does G-d want me to be?") and even w/o actual faith, I am starting to think that's preferable to the current mode of "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like an…

[deleted]

I was raised in a conservative Christian denomination and left it for a progressive one, and I’ve learned you can’t say “Christianity is ___” and be at all accurate. There are too many different Christianities. There are denominations that are pro-debate, pro-introspection, pro-logic, pro-science. They’re aiming for exactly what the GP is getting at: how best to live out the commandment to love one another, to build a society on earth where we care for each other and live up to our potential.

I bring this up not because I want to wave my “not all Christians” flag, but because it is really important for our common civic life that post-religious people understand there is more to religion than the sad toxic morass they grew up with. Society doesn’t need religion to die off. It needs religion to evolve. It needs people who are naturally religious (and there are a lot of us, we’ve evolved that way) to come together for the common good, not get shoved into a back closet to worship illegally in secret.

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

#409

Post by bluGill » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

drw3 wrote: post #361

xyzelement wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

// other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination I was raised totally secular but I now understand that religion is about fundamentally aligning yourself to the highest aspirations ("what kind of man does G-d want me to be?") and even w/o actual faith, I am starting to think that's preferable to the current mode of "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like an…

[deleted]

As a christian I already have a region that is not debatable. That helps me be more willing to debate all the things outside. Communist, capitalist, jew, muslim, hindu, cannibal, republican, democrat, green, other sect of christian - all the same to me, something I'm not religiously attached to so I can try to understand. Some of those I understand enough to conclude they are wrong.

I know some who are strongly religious about their political party. I was treasurer of my local Republican party for a while, but I was able to leave them when the party it self starting going off of the things I supported them for (the local party is still pretty good). I might return in the future, we will see.

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

#410

Post by spiderfarmer » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

biomcgary wrote: post #170

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…

Did you notice that the article highlights the rise of homeschooling co-ops? This is intentional on the part of the homeschooling movement. It improves both socialization and educational opportunities (e.g., shared lab equipment). Rather than pearl clutching about individual anecdotes or doubling down on government control, I think states should provide direct funding to homeschool co-ops in addition to direct fundin…

> The local public school program that he would be in is overwhelmed.

Pay more taxes. Solve the problem for all people who run into it, not just the ones who can afford it.