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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

#471

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My experience is exactly the opposite. Homeschooled kids frequently have to learn how to adult all at once, right as they get dumped into the pool with everyone else to go find a way to make a living. The most successful kids that I see are the ones who have professional instructors by day and excellent support at home. Not one or the other, but both.

"who have professional instructors by day" what school age child has access to that? Maybe in the most selective and well funded private schools there's professional instructors put public school? No way.

Probably school districts in close proximity to prestigious schools (Boston/Harvard) who can hire new grads who want to stay within the university bubble.

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

#472
post #361

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[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 relig…

Genuinely curious what your personal approach is to "picking" a religion to believe in. Generally I know most people don't pick a faith and just have the one they grew up with, but you strike me as someone who actually critically examines their beliefs (based on your comments).

I've had a lot of great conversations with religious people about the nature of their faith, but I have never gotten a good answer on why they chose their particular organized/named faith. Other religions have people who believe just as much as you do that their religion is the "right" one and all the others are wrong. How did you come to choose your particular form of Christianity over the dozens of other named faiths you could choose that have equal levels of historical correlation to their religious texts?

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

#473

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For real. It's telling that the kids don't jump in here to defend the practice, hardly ever (also homeschooled, education was great, socialization was absolutely problematic despite doing all the homeschool group things.)

> It's telling that the kids don't jump in here to defend the practice, hardly ever... Homeschooled kids are a minority, and therefore formerly-homeschooled adults are a minority too. More of a minority, even (since the rate of homeschooling was lower when we were growing up). It's not "telling", it's simply the fact that not a ton of people exist to give a defense. For my part I was homeschooled and had a great expe…

Counterpoint - why don't we see defense of homeschooling at the same rate of attacks? Even if they are rare, there are several posters here that have experienced bad home schools. If they are at least 50:50, shouldn't we expect the same rate of defense? That we don't see that is telling.

Being bullied sucks and has huge negative impacts. I am glad though, that I have the tools and experience to identify that happening now that I am an adult. A homeschooled me might not, and then suffer much more in the adult sphere. Negative interactions are something kids have to learn to deal with. It's not pretty or fair or even safe, but neither is the world.

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

#474

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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…

What a weird take. Religions ability to influence behaviour works because of our lizard brain, not despite it.

The idea of God judging people from afar is an extension of the important humans place on social conformity. We are hard wired to care about what other people think of us. If you remove the religious decorarions then that underlying trait still exists.

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

#476
post #344

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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 sha…

Segregating everyone into insular pockets of the like-minded just feeds ignorance, intolerance, and group-think. We shouldn't force beliefs on everyone, but we should reject ignoring facts or replacing them with beliefs.

There's a lot to be said for giving all children a baseline level of education based on fact so that everyone understands the world and the large problems we have and so they will know how to work together to face them.

The kids who are only ever taught that the world is 6,000 years old and flat, that women are inferior, that evolution is a lie, that global warming isn't real, or that gay people cause hurricanes are going to be at a substantial disadvantage in many areas of their lives and they will hinder efforts to resolve conflicts, to coordinate when necessary, and to reach general consensus.

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

#478

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> 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…

This is my thing, like what right does a public school have to regulate when I can and won't send my kids to school? If I decide to take a trip abroad for a month, that's on me... why do i have to worry about truancy court and CPS breathing down my neck?

Your kid has a right to education, you don't get to deny them that right. It's funny how rugged individualism seems to end with self and extend to happily stomping on others.

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

#479

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

I only exist as an educated person who can make a middle class income and live a normal life because of public education. My single mother is an experienced and gifted teacher, but would not have had the time to educate me. We could never have afforded to send me to any private school. My only chance for a normal life and education was public school. A huge amount of americans are poor in time and money. The only opt…

> Society will not be a better place for your kids if they are individually 10% better but 10% of the children born in the US basically have no access to education.

But that's not how they think. They believe the bottom 10% deserve their hard lives.

Capitalism needs an oppressed class to function.

The people on top write laws to ensure the oppressed class will exist. Then they sell it to the middle class using scary stories of crime, religion, etc.

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

#480

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...

Are there any broad indicators of what separates the success stories from the horror stories?
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