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

#511

Post by AlbertCory » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:32 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #434

AlbertCory wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even understand this. FL officials are encouraging homeschooling? That's silly, given that the majority of kids will still go to public schools.

It's ideology. If you're invested in taking those things out of education, and that's your motivator, then you have a couple of options: encourage homeschooling, where it can't be mandated, or work to remove it from public schools. Who is to say you can't do both? After all, either achieves your ideological aims.

so you claim to have found a motivation for this behavior, which you haven't even provided evidence for?

these horrible people are encouraging homeschooling, and that's why it's growing? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Especially when the whole article describes it as a nationwide phenomenon.

I believe "projection" describes this paranoid belief of yours.

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

#512

Post by c0pium » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #370

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…

> "what kind of man does G-d want me to be?" Unfortunately, there is not a singular answer to this question. You still have to choose which religion/sect you want to answer this question for you. You can't really delegate your morals to a deity because the choice of which interpretation of that deity's teachings you want to follow is still yours to make.

What’s unfortunate about that? Free will is a good thing. It doesn’t sound like gp is delegating anything, that sounds pretty thoughtful.

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

#513

Post by chaostheory » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:37 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #417

drw3 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> I know you just said “religion,” but I can only speak about Christianity as I’m deeply familiar with it. I believe you when you speak of the bad experiences you had, but you seem to think that what you've seen is the only (or at least the typical) manifestation of Christianity. But that isn't true, and if you do indeed believe it's true I respectfully suggest you aren't deeply familiar with Christianity the way you…

Christianity is not one singular entity. There are many different sects that can drastically vary from each other. Fundamentalist Christians like the Southern Baptists are not going to be as accepting or open minded as the more liberal Christian sects such as Catholicism.

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

#514

Post by rhcom2 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:39 PM UTC

CaptWillard wrote: post #430

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. While this may technically fit the definition of "indoctrination", that's a pretty loaded way to describe what parents teach their own children. // they thought the public schools were too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution. Really? In 2021, the hot-button issue among religious parents was evol…

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

#515

Post by kelnos » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:40 PM UTC

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…

I was raised very Catholic (and decided by my early teens that I didn't believe in any of it), and I completely disagree with your conclusion. Organized religion (at least Christianity) absolutely is about deep fear. "Do this or you'll go to hell!" "Believe this or you'll go to hell!" Repeat ad infinitum.

I won't deny that some churches (as in, specific people, not the system as a whole) can do good in the world; one church I attended with my parents as a kid had some great community outreach programs that helped a lot of people who had fallen through the cracks. And some clergy members are good people who are trying to help.

But overall, religion is about control (for the religious leadership, and politicians who use religion to gain power), and about belonging and feeling less lost and alone (for practicioners) in an uncertain world.

Oh, and as an atheist who knows and hangs out with a lot of other atheists, I can assure you that "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions" is not a thing. Or, rather, it very much is a thing, but that attitude comes from just as many religious people as it comes from the non-religious. And there are quite a few actions that religious people take that I think are disgusting and immoral, but somehow "anything goes" as long they can justify it in the pages of their made-up fantasy holy book. I don't consider things moral or immoral based on what a storybook tells me; I decide based on how I think my actions will affect others. My system is certainly not a perfect one, but I dare say it's miles ahead of the religious process.

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

#516

Post by SeanLuke » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:41 PM UTC

This is a terrible, just terrible headline and awful data spin.

Let's start with the obvious: "fringe" is a measure of size. "fastest growing" is a measure of rate. You don't go from size to rate.

Next: the data graphically presented has no axes or explanation, but what it appears to be showing is the percentage growth of each schooling type relative to its 2017 value. But then there's this bit:

> In 390 districts included in The Post’s analysis, there was at least one home-schooled child for every 10 in public schools during the 2021-2022 academic year ... > The Post estimates that there are now between 1.9 million and 2.7 million home-schooled children in the United States, depending on the rate of increase in areas without reliable data.

Let's be charitable and say 2.7 million. The Post data says that's 158% of the 2017 value, and 2020 was, oh, let's say, 164%, so in 2020 there were 2.8 million. According to the DoE, there were 48.1 million kids in public schools in 2020. This is at best 1 in 17. Surely the Doe and the WP can't differ by a factor of 2?

https://research.com/universities-colleges/number-of-public-...

Last, the graph clearly shows that, post covid, home-schooling is the fastest declining form of education. It has dropped 15% since 2020 alone, whereas public school has dropped by, what, about 1%? Why isn't this the headline? Or that clearly homeschoolers are being moved to private institutions?

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

#517

Post by xyzelement » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:43 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #491

xyzelement wrote: post #327

It might help to begin with the end in mind. The goal of education and the reason you send your kids to school is so that they come out with skills that enable them to succeed in society[1] and you also want them to be bolstered as moral and ethical human beings. If you trust the public school to do that - or at least do a better job of it than you could yourself - then you send them. On the other extreme, you either…

Not sure how old your toddler is or whether you already know about this, but you might consider adding 'Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons' to your cart: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Funny enough, I heard about this book on HN before, took it out from the library and didn't do anything with it for months, then returned it and just thought to buy it yesterday!

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

#518

Post by lolinder » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:43 PM UTC

gemstones wrote: post #312

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…

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.)

You must be skipping over all of the comments on this thread where homeschooled kids do exactly that.

Hi. I was homeschooled. I graduated university top of my class, have a high-skill high-paying job, think more critically (about everything including religion) than most people that I know, and overall I enjoy my life very much. I'm homeschooling my kids.

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

#519

Post by justhereforthe » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

clausok wrote: post #371

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…

We started homeschooling by happenstance when it turned out that kindergarten was going to conflict with our son's beloved jiu-jitsu class. The class was a bit of a drive and we weren't going to be able to get there in time for his favorite part: the 30 minutes of horsing around on the mats before class started. We thought, "Well, it's only kindergarten". It worked out well enough (knock on wood) that we just kept go…

May I ask if your son is an only child? I’ve thought about online homeschooling my son when he’s old enough (he’s still a baby), but I wonder if he would be lonely if he turns out to be our one-and-done. You mentioned your son’s beloved jiu-jitsu; does he have other outlets for meeting friends and socializing?

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

#520

Post by PsylentKnight » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 10:45 PM UTC

CaptWillard wrote: post #430

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. While this may technically fit the definition of "indoctrination", that's a pretty loaded way to describe what parents teach their own children. // they thought the public schools were too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution. Really? In 2021, the hot-button issue among religious parents was evol…

> While this may technically fit the definition of "indoctrination", that's a pretty loaded way to describe what parents teach their own children.

I'm a former homeschooler that had to watch countless Ken Ham and Kent Hovind videos. These videos were filled with strawmen and faulty logic. I distinctly remember one of them tearing into Lamarckism, a theory discredited in the 1930's, as if it were something that people actually believe in today. Indoctrination is exactly how I'd describe it.