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Homeschooling hits record numbers

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Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#371

Post by mmcclure »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #356
mmcclure wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that's a lot or a little? Tuition for most (non-religious) competitive private schools in San Francisco is easily twice that amount.

I'm saying it's a lot. See my other comment here for my reasoning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46008035

I think your reasoning is flawed, but fine...if the goal is to try and have the cheapest possible one room school house. That $200k gets eaten up pretty quick by things like security, janitorial, building maintenance, support staff like principals, librarians, guidance counselors etc etc. If you’re meaning to include total cost for the full time employees (the teachers) in the list, then the salaries are a lot less attractive once you’re done covering benefits, etc.

I've got multiple kids, so I'll admit I think about schools here a lot. The absolute cheapest private schools I've seen in San Francisco are subsidized by religious institutions. The tuition for those schools per child is roughly $28k. Non religious private schools usually start in the $40k range and can easily get into the $50s and well beyond.

My point is that it's hard to point at some issue of inefficient public bureaucracy, because clearly private institutions aren't able to do it any cheaper. I would also argue they wouldn't try, because their goal is a good education, or at least better than the public alternative (that only spends $28k per kid).

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#372

Post by hereme888 »

joshstrange wrote: post #326
hereme888 wrote: post #234

The biggest misunderstanding I hear year-over-year is homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? Parents of healthy children should give 0 s*ts of societal/political pressure against…

> Homeschoolers are some of the most resilient and well-behaved people I know. I'm sure they exist, they may even exist as the majority, I will say for my part the homeschooled kids I knew through my church growing up were not any of these things. I would quite literally use the opposite of both those to describe them. I'm not saying they represent the majority but they do exist and they were not well adjusted IMHO.…

> song

Yea, the guy later made a video clarifying he never meant to throw the baby out, just the bathwater.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#373

Post by marcus878 »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #367
satvikpendem wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what I've seen, to keep kids in their brainwashing bubble.

Where I live in the Midwest that is absolutely the case. The homeschool "groups" are almost all religiously oriented in some way.

Lived in the Midwest too when I was younger, wasn't till I grew up that I saw how religiously linked it all was.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#374

Post by bluesummers5651 »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #187
rossdavidh wrote: post #131

My daughter is in college now, but we used a variety of private, part-time, and homeschooling approaches prior to that. One thing is that there are a lot of resources (e.g. independent teachers for subjects you don't know, co-ops for socializing, etc.), and the more people are doing it, the more true that becomes. My parents were both public school teachers, and yet we found ourselves home- and alternative-schooling…

Seattle schools have that issue. After covid a bunch of kids were moved to private schools, and SPS (the organism in charge of school) complained and blamed parents on having money and not wanting to mix with the riff raff and other bs. When they actually asked the parents why their children weren't returning after covid, it was because SPS decided to axe the advance/gifted programs they had for kids, among other edu…

I feel this pain. I grew up in what I thought were great public schools and am a big believer that public school is a fundamental institution that should raise the floor for society. Now I'm raising kids in Seattle and it's a constant struggle to get the kinds of educational programs and opportunities for my kids that I took for granted when I was in public school and just assumed would still be around when I was an adult. For lack of a better way to phrase it, I feel like I am exactly the kind of parent SPS should want to keep in its system - a strong believer in public education with the means to support the schools, yet sometimes I feel like they are actively driving families like mine out of school system with their decisions.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#375

Post by mmustapic »

gallamine wrote: post #348
rootusrootus wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The adults I know who are most against homeschooling today are the ones who were homeschooled themselves. Maybe it's just a pendulum.

I was homeschooled. I'm doing the same with my children.

The person who you are replying to is stating a different implication: hates homeschooling -> was homeschooled

You are saying: was homeschooled -> likes it and will do the same with his/her kids

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#376

Post by TaupeRanger »

ecshafer wrote: post #244
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #147

I can't say my public school experience was great, I was bullied and didn't really click with the popular kids, but being around a cross section of actual American kids in my age group (my school district mixed middle class with lower class neighborhoods) helped me shape my worldview and learn to deal with people who didn't look or talk like me. I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch…

My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. There is the neighborhood kids, you have sports and clubs kids can join, religious groups. Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. Some people "homeschooling" I know are groups of parents getting together to educate their c…

15+ years ago, that might have been the case. Now, you might find some friends in the 3-8 year old range, but then the kids just...don't do things anymore. In both suburban neighborhoods I've lived in the past 10 years, there are basically zero middle school or high school kids doing anything except playing video games and messing around on their phones from the comfort of home. School is quite literally the only social interaction most of these kids get aside from their parents, and if they didn't go to school, they'd just spend more time playing video games or on their phones.

Outside of the coasts or university towns, there aren't any "mathematicians" with kids just waiting around to form homeschooling groups with you.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#377

Post by sbuttgereit »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #30

homeschooled kids are literally competing against kids from other countries that are being schooled on calculus, geometry, statistics, algebra with practical chemistry, physics and biology lessons. This is not going to end well 15 yrs down the line

You think avoiding these things are why people are thinking about homeschooling?!

In San Francisco where I live the public school system made the decision to not offer algebra until later for egalitarian reasons. Basically since they couldn't bring up the students that faired poorly in math, they delayed the subject for everybody. Along the same lines, they took the one high school dedicated to the highest achieving students and turned it into a lottery system rather than something earned.

Yes, of course you're right, kids will be competing on all those subjects. But the idea that public institutions are somehow the safeguards of fundamental academic achievement is just out of touch.

Of course, San Francisco public school's embrace of socialist/egalitarian drive identity politics is just one example of public education failure. Elsewhere in the US in these times, other school districts are being turned effectively into seminaries because the other political side has other doctrinal objectives. In neither case is learning how to think or how the world really works is important.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#378

Post by lurking_swe »

toasterlovin wrote: post #213
lurking_swe wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that’s a great fantasy but when you consider, statistically, how many marriages end in divorce - that’s a foolish plan. EVERYONE thinks their marriage is different or special. Maybe working part time is OK, you at least have some job history. But no work history for 10+ years? Great ways to put all your eggs into 1 basket and potentially end up a poor single mom. And i say this as a husband and father.

Optionality has costs. If you live your life like it's going to go astray, then you miss out on a lot of the upside if it doesn't go astray (such as by being a stay at home mom, if that's what you actually want to do). The statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce is often bandied about, but it also means that 50% don't. Which means that going all-in on your marriage is a completely reasonable thing to do.

what you say is true. But consider, the “cost” of going back part time is not very big. It’s not very stressful, and _greatly_ reduces long term risk.

Your take is a bit like saying in the year 2000 “i believe Apple is an amazing company, i’ll go ALL IN with my life savings”. If you’re right the you think you’re a genius. But what if you were wrong? What if apple turned out like IBM? Then you’d look back and think “how could i have been so stupid? so naive”.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#379

Post by ryandrake »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #369
ryandrake wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might have been our experience from our bubble, but are these examples representative of the overall pattern? I suspect for every 1 kid pulled out of public school because of academic reasons like gifted programs, there are 10 pulled out due to religious reasons or vaccines or the gamut of anti-government reasons.

People are allowed to pull their kids out for religious reasons.

Nobody's saying they shouldn't be allowed to. We're just speculating about the reasons and I don't know if there's really any hard data showing which reasons are more prevalent.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#380

Post by arevno »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #331
ghssds wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens to asshole kids? Do they become regular adults or asshole adults? Do they become soldiers or prisonners never to be seen again by normies? Do they even reach adulthood? Are they even a stable group or were we all asshole kids to some other kids?

I think it's an important development milestone to learn that people don't want to be their friends, and the longing for human connection might be a good moderating force in their life. I was a really pessimistic teenager, which I received plenty of feedback on, and have worked against my own nature to become a more positive and cheery adult.

This is a strange claim.

In my personal experience, the asshole kids overlapped greatly with the popular kids in a Venn diagram sense. People, in general, did want to be their friends.

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