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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

#901

Post by rando_dfad »

keiferski wrote: post #19
CharlesW wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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…

The biggest US public school horror story is how we have taken a great instrument of social progress and decimated it.

Public schools in countries where schools are treated well have phenomenal success.

US schooling has been taken over (at the level of the state legislatures; blame goes to state Congress not to the schools) by companies selling "achievement" test. And also by charter schools whose success is based on only selecting high-achieving problem-free children?

Why do teachers say they are nothing but babysitters? Maybe because they aren't allowed to teach, to inspire love of learning in the children? And their classroom budgets are so tight they buy school supplies out of their own pockets, while living on an income that is close to poverty level? While facing felony charges for having the wrong book in the shelf behind their desk???

When things like "Creme de la Creme Early Learning Center of Excellence" are real institutions instead of something from a comic dystopia, you know you have a problem.

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

#902

Post by mcpackieh »

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...

Giving a bad teacher more money won't make them a better teacher. Maybe you can argue that offering more money to teachers will draw in qualified people from other professions, but this kind of solution can't be implemented in a vacuum. The bad teachers are already in the schools and cannot easily be fired because they're protected by politically powerful unions and furthermore, protected by a substantial portion of the public who hold school teachers on a pedestal and will resist any political move to make it easier to fire bad teachers.

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

#903

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

troupe wrote: post #631
mrguyorama wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> All the wealthy families sending their kids to private schools or homeschooling and removing their property taxes from the public school system. How exactly does that work? We homeschool and I pay property taxes that fund our local school just like everyone else in town. I pay for services that I don't use and can be used for other children if the powers that be decide to allocate it that way.

The above poster is talking about "school choice" which is making its rounds through legislatures in red states. The legislation effectively defunds public schools if people decide to homeschool or can afford to send their children to private school.

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

#904

Post by graemep »

dmurray wrote: post #287
brightball wrote: post #7

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…

At what point does this become not "homeschool", but "school, with different licensing requirements for the teachers"? It doesn't seem right to discuss this setup in the same breath as children schooled by their own parent.

because it is not institutional or full time.

it is like the difference between a commercial child care service, and having your friend's kids or you kid's friends over for the day.

I think it depends largely on who controls the process - the parents of a paid professional.

That said, it is not a typical approach either, nor is schooling by a parent. I have used (and this is typical in the UK, although i do not know about the US) paid face to face tutors, taught my self, provided the kids with textbooks etc. to teach themselves, paid for online courses, helped them find other resources and so on.

The paid tutors are qualified (both of them are qualified in the subjects they teach, one is a former school teacher).

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

#905

Post by rando_dfad »

keiferski wrote: post #19
CharlesW wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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…

Excuse prior rant. New rant beginning here:

The real public school horror story is that today, in America, a "good school" is defined as one where your child won't get shot.

I leave the rest of the rant as an exercise to the reader.

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

#906

Post by RecycledEle »

debacle wrote: post #899

IF I could do it again, I would homeschool. My kids are both relatively gifted. If you have a gifted child, this is what school looks like: K-5: Extreme boredom and anxiety because roughly 1/2 the year is review or test prep. If you are lucky, your child might have a GT teacher. 6-8: Your child will struggle to make friends, especially if they aren't connected to social media. Thankfully, my kids were athletes and mu…

I love home schoolers, but there are options.

4th through 7th: seek out a FIRST Lego League program for your kids. FLL teaches then to think and solve problems.

High School: Dual credit does exist. Look for a high school in your area that offers a college degree through dual credit.

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

#907

Post by mcpackieh »

jwestbury wrote: post #20
keiferski wrote: post #8

This is a fundamental change of life, and it’s astonishing that it’s so persistent. It is pretty misleading for this article to talk about homeschooling being a “fundamental change” without mentioning that homeschooling was the default practice for most of human history. If anything, this is just a return to a long-established practice, not a fringe movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling

There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance.

Human sacrifice is an interesting example, since there are several public school proponents throughout this discussion arguing that good parents have an obligation to send their bad schools to thereby improve the quality of those schools for the other children. This amounts to human sacrifice.

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

#908

Post by AdamN »

inglor_cz wrote: post #426
MadcapJake wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like people are reinventing all the same stuff schools do at scale. Can't we be more efficient as a society? Not to mention the privilege that is draped over every detail of this setup.

If everyone was force-fed the same dinner and compelled to wear the same clothes, there would be a lot of societal efficiency to unlock. It would also be a nightmare. People are diverse and have diverse needs. That includes kids. AFAIK the most efficient method of education is still one-to-one tutoring, the very opposite of "schools at scale". Unfortunately it is also very expensive.

It's not necessarily that expensive - at least I'd say it's within 50%. At Oxford where I did 1:1, I believe the total time with the tutors was around 5 hours per week and each tutor was probably investing 2 hours (max) per student. That would mean a tutor could handle let's say 15 students on a full load. This is about the same ratio as a teacher at a well-resourced school.

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

#909

Post by eutropia »

mrguyorama wrote: post #444
eutropia wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

Yeah, school choice is a bullshit policy, typical of the fuck-you, got-mine neocon movement.

I voted to raise property tax where I live specifically to improve the funding situation for our struggling public schools - I attended a great public school district growing up (because, surprise: my parents could afford to move into the district).

The funding situation needs to be fixed across the board, because indeed everyone attending public school deserves as good an education as I received, but the way the system functions currently is that poor areas get poor schools (at least in the midwest where I've lived).

So, while I whole-heartedly support education reform and improving funding as public policies: I still wouldn't send my own kids to the public school district where I live; they're terrible. I wish they weren't.

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

#910

Post by arkey »

defgeneric wrote: post #240
zarzavat wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People socialised for thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands of years before schools were invented. I went to school and got beat up, colour me sceptical about school as a mechanism for socialisation.

Socialization is broader than just between peers. It's how the individual develops a relationship to society as a whole. The public school system is the primary way the state socializes kids. You learn the difference between the public and private spheres (the school vs the family), how the two relate, and how they relate to the broader community. Some are better served by it than others but on the whole it's a very…

> The public school system is the primary way the state socializes kids.

Public schools socialises kids like McDonald's feeds a society.

I prefer homegrown tomatoes.

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