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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

#851

Post by Workaccount2 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #414
marcusverus wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Public school spending in the US is up almost 50% in the last 30 years.[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

Where the hell is all this money going ? It's certainly not to teachers, whose salaries have barely changed[1] when adjusted for inflation. Is it going to real estate costs? Technology costs? Administration? What? [1] https://www.statista.com/chart/20979/public-school-teacher-s...

Buying and supporting expensive laptops for every kid, with expensive education package subscriptions, all so kids can read a textbook on a screen instead of in a book.

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

#852

Post by dahfizz »

cycomanic wrote: post #178
akira2501 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> > 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? Because your children are not your property, they are your responsibility and we as society have decided that we want to make sure that the education is to a certain standard. As a side note I find it fascinating how people who f…

> Why do you believe that the freedoms do not apply to children?

As if public schools provide kids any sort of freedom or autonomy? What is your point here?

Someone has to be in charge of a kid. Either the parent acts as the authority over their child, or the state does.

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

#853

Post by ARandomerDude »

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,…

Homeschool done right (TM) isn’t you teaching by yourself though. Teach your kids to read well at an early age, get a good math curriculum, and feed them high quality books written by people who know way more about each subject than you do.

Self-learning and reflecting on what you read are two of the most important parts of learning. Too often, schools pay lip service to these ideas, then spoon feed information to students.

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

#854

Post by uticus »

nunez wrote: post #833

My problem with homeschooling is that it's completely unregulated. This is a huge problem given that parental involvement is the single biggest determinant of children's success and growth. Public school is treated like a huge daycare by many, but at least kids from negligent parents _had_ to go. My concern is that parents can now say "we're homeschooling" when in reality they're doing fuck all and, worse, are using…

> parental involvement is the single biggest determinant of children's success and growth

yes!

> my problem with homeschooling is that it's completely unregulated

oh dear. so...if perhaps you meant "not regulated to x standards" i could agree more readily with that, at least in US / many European. but even conceding that, regulation historically has tended to effectively supplant parental involvement with state involvement (speaking about actual effects of regulation, not intentions). contra your first point about parental involvement.

i suppose it's possible future regulation could be different. but i see no reason given the current cultural climate to think future regulations will in fact uphold parental responsibility over state responsibility.

and besides it appears to me that government funded schooling is being held up as the "huge daycare." it has automatic funding in most places - even those who would not wish to pay, even those who never have children involved in it are contributing. it is in fact consistently used as a way to collect more taxes, but i digress. if i were a lax parent i would not have any inclination to move away from something that is already paid for and easy for me. or if i simply needed a place for my children to go for 8 hours out of the day government funded schooling is an obvious easy option.

in short regulation is not the solution to bad parenting, nor is it a good way to prevent bad parenting.

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

#855

Post by NiagaraThistle »

My biggest concern with Home Schooling is you literally have someone not qualified as a teacher, as in probably knows nothing of the subject and may not even have an education themselves, teaching the children.

Obviously this isn't all cases, and some traditional school teachers are questionable at best, but at least traditional teachers had to at least TRY to be subject matter experts before teaching in a traditional school. Sadly I personally know several friends that homeschool their kids and I have to say they are certainly doing a disservice to their children as the kids will only ever be as smart as their teachers and these 'teachers' (ie parents) are not the brightest.

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

#856

Post by aeroevan »

buildbot wrote: post #473
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 happenin…

This is the classic problem solved by Bayes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZGCoVF3YvM there just aren't that many homeschooled people to provide a defense.

I'm another successful homeschooled-until-college adult, but homeschooling isn't that common now and it was even less popular when I was growing up.

EDIT: unless you were mentioning defense of homeschooling given they were homeschooled. I would assume most people on HN who were homeschooled had a decent education/homeschooling experience.

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

#857

Post by deepsquirrelnet »

WoodEye wrote: post #589
deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #221

Growing up, I had friends from 3 different families of kids that were homeschooled. The first was my neighbor. I’m not really sure why his parents homeschooled him. He was an only child, and strikingly similar to the character of Cartman from Southpark. Him mom was also strikingly similar to Cartman’s mom. He didn’t learn anything, as his mom was not very strict about making sure he did his lessons. He had terrible s…

That’s a pretty wide range of outcomes but is it materially different than what happens to kids in average public schools? There are also factors like social class and resources that make judging outcomes pretty tough. Most people that homeschool kids due to religion aren’t going to be well off.

Yeah, I guess I think it’s not a matter of public school vs homeschool that’s really important. I think it just matters that someone is encouraging a kid’s education and development. It could be a parent or a teacher.

What saddens me is that some kids I grew up with were deprived of that in their homeschools. They almost certainly would have done better in public schools than at home. Not that public schools are better than homeschooling, but they are better than neglect.

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

#859

Post by Slava_Propanei »

pixl97 wrote: post #60
keiferski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren’t a lack of public school horror stories…

There are plenty of 'public school' horror stories because these things are public and can be audited in a great number of cases. You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you'll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you'll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bu…

[dead]

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

#860

Post by confidantlake »

kulahan wrote: post #525
kelnos wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You've misunderstood Catholicism. The entire reason Christianity is so radical is because it's the first major religion of purely love. There is no need to sacrifice anyone, you get infinite forgiveness, so long as you truly repent, and nearly every facet of Catholicism is based around the idea of love. A fine example is the incredibly important Corinthians 13:13: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But…

The catholic church sure seems to love little kids and the protecting the priests from the consequences of loving those kids.
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