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Homeschooling hits record numbers

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Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#441

Post by ryandrake »

incognito124 wrote: post #435
Kuyawa wrote: post #360

I am an advocate of homeschooling but also know the importance of social contact for kids, so always wondering how hard would it be to create local clubs for kids where they learn mainly about economy, liberty and social relations sprinkled with some astronomy, history, biology, math and whatever personal interest of their parents like sports or arts? I'd be happy to pay for a private institution like that

I'm pretty sure you just described a public school

I was going to say! Dude just re-invented "school."

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#442

Post by kachapopopow »

pyuser583 wrote: post #390

I used to teach high school. The amount of time I spent doing crap work was insane. It was necessary. If you don’t remind students 100 times what the assignments are, they won’t do them. You also have to spend an insane amount of time with the lowest performers, because with enough attention, they can improve dramatically. But this creates tradeoffs. Should I neglect the students doing best? One on one instruction is…

well if we just apply the bell curve here, on average children will be pretty average (shocker) so those should be left on their own and discover their own niche while bad performers should get extra attention so they can keep up with the rest and with the gifted (if they actually want to) given the opportunity to explore higher level subjects.

so in the end we give attention to gifted and the struggling since there's very little you can do to children who are already decent and are capable of keeping up at most they lack discipline or motivation.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#443

Post by lazyasciiart »

zaphar wrote: post #403
mmcclure wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

If the religious institution does a better job at roughly the same cost-point then it's probably not the money that is making the difference.

No, it’s the selection process of parents and children.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#444

Post by emtel »

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…

It absolutely is. If you are well equipped to navigate the adult world, you place yourself in hand-picked groups of people. I do not work with, socialize with, or live near a random sample of the population, and I highly doubt most people reading this thread do either!

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#445

Post by DennisP »

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…

Paul Graham pointed out that public school is a weird and degenerate microcosm that isn't much like the real social world at all.

> I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.

> When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage.

> ...If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie...Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners.

https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html?viewfullsite=1

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#446

Post by russdill »

whatsupdog wrote: post #397

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.

When the hell did praying get banned?

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#447

Post by FireBeyond »

Brendinooo wrote: post #87
Yizahi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can actually. It's called theory of probability and statistics, which is probably "forgotten" by these amazing self-appointed homeschoolers. A few rare successes of homeschoolers doesn't mean this practice is good on average, and vice versa the rare failures of the public education system doesn't mean that it is bad on average.

Most times I look this up, I see stuff like "[t]he home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests". https://nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#Academic

Yeah, that study has been debunked or countered by "... among home-educated students applying for college", and the proportion of home schooled kids who apply for college versus those in the traditional education system is far lower, i.e. this is very self-selecting.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#448

Post by array_key_first »

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…

My general experience is that homeschool children have self esteem and confidence issues precisely because they've been around 'hand picked' people... forever.

They've never experienced assholes, or people who think their personality is grating, or whatever. Thick skin needs to be built up, to a degree. I'm not saying bullying is good, but being exposed to the unwashed masses definitely can be.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#449

Post by Telemakhos »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #376
ecshafer wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 soc…

My cousin homeschooled her kids, who are now finished with college. I know they're capable of using phones (one's a programmer), but I've never seen them pull one out. They're social and love playing board games, and I suspect that comes from their parents. They also socialized with other homeschooled kids, because they were part of lots of homeschooling groups.

The kids in public school are there by default; the homeschooling parents are actively choosing to raise their kids differently, and, from what I've seen, they're more likely to interact with their kids instead of letting them go terminally online or play video games.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#450

Post by DennisP »

jfreds wrote: post #386
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 was homeschooled until high school. I couldn’t agree with you more. The value that the socialization the public school offers is underestimated. Learning activities with other homeschooled kids is ok but not enough. A tight-knit neighborhood of friends is huge, but not enough. You need to develop a thick skin and a sense of self-assurance. I have no counterfactual of course, but I think much of the social anxiety I…

And I've always felt that most of my social anxiety came from public school. Maybe we were both just prone to it.

(I unlearned it too, but it took quite a while.)

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