Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 1001 posts

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

#551

Post by waffleiron »

ndriscoll wrote: post #546
PsylentKnight wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Unless you wanted to be a research biologist, does the precise mechanism driving evolution really matter? And the ideas did turn out to have some merit with epigenetics, right? Sure it's largely wrong, but it's a strange sort of indoctrination to care about. Sort of like how we tell children the story about electrons being balls that orbit the nucleus. Wrong, but only important for physicists and chemists.

The thing about creationism is that it also inherently tells you science is wrong, not to be believed and that scientists and the government willingly lie to you. That doesn’t set you up to get far and do well in the world as it is.

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

#552

Post by xyzelement »

jkestner wrote: post #422
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…

> the current mode of "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions." That doesn't match reality. Do you have kids in public school? Of course they judge actions—especially those that harm others. Sometimes that's called social-emotional learning, one of the things that Florida politicians have tried to make a boogeyman. We're certainly willing to punish kids based…

I meant something different by "anything goes." I am ~40 and was born in Eastern Europe -- but even in the US, back then there was still a strong value that a good life a combination of having a family and raising the next generation, ability to work to support your family and contribution to society through your work.

Whereas even in "my time" these values would have resonated with the tone in a public school, I am pretty sure that's not going to be the case today. But these values remain for me very central, and I would sacrifice a lot to ensure my kids are educated in an environment that supports them. A religious school that frames these values along the lines of "what G-d expects of me" would totally work for me separate from whether I literally believed in the religion. "Anything goes" by contrast to this is the vibe that it's fine to not do any of these things.

It's funny/sad to see eg on HN folks saying "oh, I don't see why it's important to have children, or to have my work matter." Right, but the fact that you "don't see it" is sad to me (you do you but I don't have to think it's great) and I don't want my kids to "not see it"

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

#554

Post by xyzelement »

underwater wrote: post #474
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 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.

// Religions ability to influence behaviour works because of our lizard brain

Totally not my experience. My lizard brain doesn't want to keep the Sabbath, or spend an hour at the temple, or to donate a lot (or anything) to charity, it doesn't really want to bother raising my kids a certain way, or to be discriminant in my diet, sexual behavior, etc.

It is my higher-level self that sees the elevating function of these things and struggles to override my lizard brain for daily control. When it succeeds, it's glorious. When it fails, I am still happy to have fought.

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

#555

Post by xyzelement »

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.

I understand what you mean, but I find that men who are able to truly humbly embrace that there's a higher power and purpose beyond their own whim and limited perception are a certain breed - and whichever framework they engage with this higher power through is a secondary choice.

EG - a devout Jew and a devout Hindu maybe very different in the practices they follow and the words they use, but they would not be very different in the kind of morality they follow, the kinds of family life they lead, etc.

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

#556

Post by Clamchop »

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.

Isn't it some comfort that you can see there is something to stop or change?

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

#557

Post by trealira »

petertodd wrote: post #395
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…

> but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things. Even in the same kid it can be very dissimilar. The main reason I was homeschooled was that the local school system's ridiculous "whole word" approach to reading and writing was failing me badly, and by age ten I still could barely read. So that part of my homeschooling experience was very traditional, hands on, drilling in phonics and other time tested tec…

> Funny thing is I actually learned basic programming _before_ I could read fluently. I remember the hardest thing about it being struggling to read the books I was learning from. Programming itself seemed pretty straightforward in comparison.

That's really interesting. How did you get introduced to programming? For example, did someone show you BASIC interpreter on a computer? (Not knowing your age, I don't know whether BASIC was popular when you learned basic programming.) What was it like to use a computer barely knowing how to read?

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

#558

Post by jandrese »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #360
jandrese wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost anything out of the ordinary by definition, but usually refers to children somewhere on the Autism spectrum. They often struggle with being bullied in public school and depending on where they are on the spectrum can cause considerably increased workload for the school or even have outright behavioral problems complete with physical violence. That's extreme and rare thankfully, but even kids with relative…

Tiny suggestion: s/children/people. It's true that it's usually used to refer to children, but that's just because autism is most identifiable in early childhood. Autism (or Asperger's syndrome) is not something you can 'grow out of' or 'cure', because it's a difference in basic cognitive functions.

Yes, but the context here is school students.

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

#559

Post by mattmaroon »

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 think they care, I just wish they could better decouple that from Sky daddy mythology and all of the poor logic that flows from treating as your epistemological foundation the words of people who don’t didn’t even know what atoms were.
Post reply on HN