Homeschooling hits record numbers • Hacker News Board

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#391

Post by meroes » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #144

meroes wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t mention how many went to college

Given they are sufficiently successful to be living on their own, married, and some with their own homes, whether they went to college is probably an inappropriate yardstick of success. I mean, be real. If a 25 year old is married and owns a home, but doesn't have a BSc are they a failure? What are we doing here.

OP is free to chose their metrics. I wouldn’t trade education for a home personally. I think it’s interesting how they chose their metrics.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#392

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #330

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…

I get that on one hand, such regulation is one of the reasons some parents do so, but the wide diversity of "oversight" is challenging. In Washington, homeschooled students still have to occasionally connect at an actual school, or do some baseline testing. In Louisiana, you just tell the state "we're homeschooling" and the state is "have fun with that" and the child is essentially off the grid. Not for nothing, inst…

> Ahh, this chestnut. A short jump to "teachers are training preschoolers to be furries and LGBT" and litterboxes in the classroom/bathroom.

Exactly. Notice how, when people complain about the "deranged ideologies" that teachers are teaching their kids, they either 1. stop short of actually naming those ideologies or 2. spout fever dreams that are statistically vanishingly rare.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#393

Post by cosmicgadget » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

nxm wrote: post #70

At the end of the day, it's a form of school-choice where parents decide what's best for their kids which I strongly support.

Too bad for the kids though. You'd think their welfare would matter more than the parents having control.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#394

Post by zaphar » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #255

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 "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? ...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it? I think your view is a very black and white one. Kid…

I can not conceive of a worse way to teach a kid how to behave in Adult social settings than to throw them into a group of other kids who have just as little experience as they do and then expect the group to "figure it out". This is not to say that there aren't some homeschooling parents who practice a form of extreme isolation which produces what I would regard as an equally bad outcome as public school. But by the numbers from people who have studied this the evidence indicates homeschooling produces the best outcomes for social adjustment in Adulthood.

Probably because well run homeschooling groups tend to have high parental involvement which means the child learns how to socialize not from other children but from watching how the adults they are around handle interactions.

[Edited for clarity in some sentences]

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#395

Post by inetknght » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

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…

> I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch your mouth around specific people.

Unfortunately this encourages people to have a blind eye regarding bullying.

I would be much more happy if more people intervened against bullies and liars. Maybe we'd have better people in politics today if 40 years ago schools punished bullies and liars and sent them to have their behavioral problems addressed.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#396

Post by pyuser583 » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #328

iambateman wrote: post #283

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…

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

The adults I know who are most against public school went to public schools themselves.

The adults I know most against college went to college themselves.

The adults I know most against private high schools went to private high schools themselves.

Being really negative about your own education is an American tradition!

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#397

Post by whatsupdog » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:49 PM UTC

This is the result of more propaganda and brainwashing than education in schools. We should have left the politics out of the schools, after we got the prayers banned. But I guess some people will stop at nothing.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#398

Post by cosmicgadget » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:50 PM UTC

cyclotron3k wrote: post #53

nvahalik wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. It's _one_ of the prime places. I don't know a single homeschooler that sits at home all day long. They work in family businesses, participate in bands, sports, and co-ops. Many belong to churches where families come from all different strata: our church has surgeons, line cooks, programmers, self-employed handymen, disabled vets. They interact with everyone—including kids. They do things like "kid mark…

> I don't know a single homeschooler that sits at home all day long. Well, you wouldn't, would you? Sorry, not to detract from your other points, but I thought it was funny.

All of our planes came back with the wings shot up!

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#399

Post by drivebyhooting » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

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…

John Jane Mary set up is incredibly idealized. In a big city I have not been able to find anyone willing to commit to anything except one off play dates in a museum which has nothing to do with actual education.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#400

Post by zaphar » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

mmcclure wrote: post #333

rahimnathwani wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is expensive and underfunded. Expensive yes. Underfunded depends on where you are. San Francisco's school district has an annual operating budget that equates to $28k per student. I've heard people in San Francisco say that schools here are underfunded. When I ask them how much we spend per student per year, their guess is usually less than half of the actual amount.

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.

Nearly every time we try to fix this problem with money it fails. The problem is not money. All else being equal there is little to no correlation between spend and outcome. Money get's touted by schools and politicatians as a way of pretending to care but not actually do any of the work to improve outcomes.

What does tend to correlate with money and also correlates with outcomes is parental involvement. Solving that problem requires societal and economic change in a district though not giving the school more money.