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Homeschooling hits record numbers

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Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#281

Post by 5f3cfa1a »

dmoy wrote: post #169
5f3cfa1a wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of these, most are easily handled. I am in a midsized city and there are plenty of groups that offer music, robotics & engineering, speech & drama, etc. focused towards homeschooled students. That, plus the rise in homeschool "pods"/co-ops means socialization and activities are very available to students & parents who want them. Sports might be the challenge. Many US states have athletic associations that handle most…

Besides big ones like soccer that you mention, more niche sports are often partially or totally outside of school systems. Fencing for example, is usually clustered around external clubs. Very few high schools will have fencing teams, and in a lot of cities even the high schools that do have fencing teams will be kind of a joke compared to the club teams.

This comment made me curious so I did some research. Of the sports offered by my local school district (in the top 30 for enrollment in the country), I can find an alternative for homeschoolers that offer competitive opportunities for every sport but bowling and football.

Of the others, there are either homeschool alternatives that are explicitly secular or at least not overtly religious, or there are competitive clubs. All the schools have track & field, but there is a large homeschool league. And the district has a few schools with pools and a few more with swim teams that practice at the city pools, but the local swim club is the one turning out the Olympians – but even then, it also seems to have plenty of offerings for kids who won't set a world butterfly record. Football, I imagine, is just so popular that the private/public schools take all the players.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#282

Post by ecshafer »

dfxm12 wrote: post #236
broof wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example is in high school I had an excellent literature class that also covered a lot of philosophy. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the various philosophies we studied were the philosophies that are often foundational for Marxism, atheism, and general left of center academia. Probably the best class I had in high school but I wish it had also covered things on both sides, or been more transparent that…

"Both" sides? If you suggest Marxism is one side, what is the other? Also, it's hard to take such a vague comment at face value when you consider the long list of Marx's influences. For example, there are right and young Hegelians...

I do think there is too much politicization in education, but this also stuck out to me. Marx was a synthesis of Hegel with Adam Smith (And a lot of Ricardo) You absolutely have many people taking those same ideas and going right. Even Das Kapital isn't really "Left Wing" per se as it is more trying to explain how labor is treated in an industrialized economies, its the communist manifesto where Marx takes those ideas and starts synthesizing with Hegel and making ideas of what should happen.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#283

Post by iambateman »

When a social failure happens at a public school - a child fails a class, drugs are found, a teenager gets pregnant, there’s a fight - most people don't question the public school system itself. But when a social failure happens to a homeschooler, we wonder if the system of _homeschooling_ is broken.

In reality, stories of homeschooling failure are probably no more common than stories of failure in public high school, they're simply more attention-grabbing.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#284

Post by seneca »

meheleventyone wrote: post #271
hereme888 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "real world".

The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. As a parent I get the impulse to remove my children from any potential harm but the real world has sharp edges. They need to be confident in that world not just smothered. And really as the person who used the term it’s really up to you to define what you mean.

> The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like.

That's just not true though. Your job isn't going to force you to interact with people who disrupt the environment constantly. Those people are fired and removed from the group.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#285

Post by obscurette »

ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #208
obscurette wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a GP and I don't know if any of these qualifies as "left-ish" (which is very US specific IMHO), but as I understand, the education all over the western culture is destroyed by few really simple and really crazy (for me) ideas: - Kids are never responsible for anything. - Teachers are responsible for everything.

That's a parenting problem though, not an education problem, right?

Actually no. The problem comes from society. If you think that kids should be responsible for anything, you are a bad person. If you think that kids should be punished if they do something really bad, you are a monster.

Here we had a case teenagers bullying their teacher – abused her verbally during school, posted deepfake revenge porn into internet, stole stuff from her garden etc. She cried for help and the case was investigated by commission that included people from people from ministry of education, police and psychologists. But the commission concluded that she was the problem – she lacked the skills to build a trusting relationship with kids.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#286

Post by mikece »

Interesting to see this topic being discussed on HN; I'm curious if any homeschooling parents here have kids who WANT to learn computer programming. I haven't pushed my kids to do any of the things that I loved doing growing up (or what I do now). If any homeschooled kids are getting into programming was it as a result of playing with something like Scratch or did they dive directly into writing Python or JavaScript?

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#287

Post by jancsika »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #15
jmathai wrote: post #3

I do think Covid forced people to ask questions they hadn’t before. We have sent our kids to private, poor quality and top rated schools. We saw a stark difference between the poor quality and higher cost options. No surprise. But the reason we are considering home schooling our younger kids was surprising. It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or bette…

One of the key issues in school is classroom size. A teacher with 30 kids is handicapped as a teacher compared to one with a smaller class. Let's say your family has four kids. As a family, that's large. But as a classroom size, it's really small . That gives you an advantage as a homeschooler over a public school teacher.

Did you make a schedule of regularly switching off with other families of four? In other words, those parents teach your kids and you teach their kids? Otherwise I'm not sure how you'd tackle confirmation bias creeping up in all kinds of ways.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#288

Post by mikece »

zdragnar wrote: post #280
mikece wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mormons aren't the only people with large families. Ultra-conservative Jews, Muslims, and many Christians have large families. What I don't think I've ever seen is a couple who is non-religious or atheist and has a large family.

Catholics aren't so much anymore but used to be the same. My parents both had 5 siblings growing up.

Not all Catholics, just the ones who go to the traditional Latin Mass. :-)

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#289

Post by rahimnathwani »

jorts wrote: post #231
rahimnathwani wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$28k per student is more than enough to run a school in San Francisco. Let's assume we cannot take advantage of the economies of scale available to SFUSD, and we're running a school with just one classroom: 22 7th graders. That would cost SFUSD $616k ($28k x 22). What would it cost us? Teacher (all-in cost): $150k Teaching assistant: $100k Rent for commercial space in SF (~1,200 sq ft): $60k Curriculum, books, suppli…

As the son of a teacher and a friend of several teachers, you're way underestimating their workload.

I estimated that a class of 22 children would require one full time teacher and one full time teaching assistant.

What am I missing? My table has $200k left over so we could add another full time teacher at $150k?

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#290

Post by 5f3cfa1a »

Starman_Jones wrote: post #260
5f3cfa1a wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of these, most are easily handled. I am in a midsized city and there are plenty of groups that offer music, robotics & engineering, speech & drama, etc. focused towards homeschooled students. That, plus the rise in homeschool "pods"/co-ops means socialization and activities are very available to students & parents who want them. Sports might be the challenge. Many US states have athletic associations that handle most…

I know several homeschooled students who played varsity sports for their local high school (the one that they would have been attending). I'm not sure about the universality of that, but that's an option for at least some people.

I think it's patchwork & has changed over time. When I was at high school one of my friends who was homeschooled competed with me on our academic team. His older (and far more athletically gifted brother ;-)) lettered in several varsity sports. But now that state's athletic association explicitly says no to homeschool students.
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