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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

#461

Post by pokstad »

haizhung wrote: post #261

Am I the only one thinking that home schooling is the wrong solution to the underlying problem? The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Teachers are quitting left and right, and schools are in a terrible state. Instead of fixing THAT problem, now people homeschool. Ok; I guess. At least homeschooling is something that the individual can control,…

Funding is not the issue. Private schools pay their teachers less and have higher success rates.

Public schools are still teaching in a style suited for the Industrial Revolution. They also are a jobs program, so they can’t change to accommodate students if it hurts the employees.

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

#462

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

chmod600 wrote: post #455
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's not money you have a right to as a parent. I don't take part in all the social programs my government offers, but I don't get all that money back.

Public schools don't have some inalienable right to that money either -- they are entrusted with the money by popular vote. If we want that to continue, then there needs to be very broad consensus that the things teachers are teaching are the right things, or at least not the wrong things.

What other institutions do people try to claw back money from when people decide they can do a better job?

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

#463

Post by calebm »

I heard Salmon Khan give a talk earlier this year where he mentioned the "Two Sigma Problem" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem), where kids with a private tutor perform 2 standard deviations better (on average) than public-schooled children. (Caveat: not all parents are going to be quite as good as a private tutor.)

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

#464

Post by Jensson »

verisimi wrote: post #326
jandrese wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that. Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it be…

> religious indoctrination indoctrination is a given. Do you prefer your secular type, the religious type or the government type?

> Do you prefer your secular type

What is secular indoctrination? Kids who grow up without a religion doesn't get told anything, all you have to do is to not indoctrinate the kid into a religion.

There is still school etc, but removing religious indoctrination doesn't add anything else, its just less indoctrination overall.

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

#465

Post by prosqlinjector »

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]

> but if you watch how they act, how they vote, and how they discriminate it could not be farther from the truth.

This is a low quality and bigoted comment.

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

#466

Post by jackmott42 »

xyzelement wrote: post #329
jandrese wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that. Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it be…

// 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…

Hard to look at the current state of American Christianity and think of it as deep care.

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

#467

Post by chmod600 »

kashunstva wrote: post #132
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…

> For parents who do so for political or culture war reasons, that must seem profoundly unfair. I homeschooled my daughter for reasons other than culture wars or politics (she’s a violinist and public schools didn’t regard practice time as particularly important.) But I never thought of public school funding as transactional. We did not take direct advantage of the benefit; but a reasonably well educated populace ben…

"We did not take direct advantage of the benefit; but a reasonably well educated populace benefits me in a host of other ways."

But that's precisely the point: what does "well-educated" mean? If the money is going toward reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, then few will disagree. When the curriculum, environment, or manner of teaching drift into more controversial areas, then you might start to see things differently.

Imagine the school starts teaching things that don't align with your values, and they leave out things that do. How would you feel about the way your tax dollars are spent?

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

#468

Post by NemoNobody »

jjav wrote: post #337
verisimi wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> religious indoctrination indoctrination is a given. Do you prefer your secular type, the religious type or the government type?

> indoctrination is a given. Indoctrination is not a given and should never be acceptable in education. What is indoctrination? Here's one dictionary definition: indoctrination: the process of repeating an idea or belief to someone until they accept it without criticism or question Note "accept it without criticism or question". This is the polar opposite of what education should be, which is to encourage investigati…

Societies indoctrinate all those that live within them - that's what social norms are.

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

#469

Post by wskinner »

jandrese wrote: post #264
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…

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that. Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it be…

I don't know where you live, but my anecdata from being homeschooled starting ~20 years ago in the Bay Area contradicts this. I was part of a group of more than 50 homeschooled children of various ages. Our parents all had their own reasons for homeschooling us, but to my knowledge, none of them did it because they thought the public schools were too secular and teaching "sinful" science.

We were aware of families homeschooling for religious reasons, but not in the Bay Area.

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

#470

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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