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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#101

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

brightball wrote: post #76
netdevphoenix wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of this is that you rely on strangers for critical stuff like ensuring you don't get electrocuted or burned at home or even ensuring that the water that you drink won't make you ill or that your car is a good enough condition to not lead you to a fatal crash. Any of these affects your close relatives. What makes education different?

It's not different. If the water you drink is having problems, you'd have campaigns over it, protests, people trying to get it resolved and potentially lawsuits. People would band together to do whatever they could to fix the problem that they see. Education is seeing the exact same thing. Parents see a lot of problems. They are going to school board and council meetings, people are campaigning on solving the issue a…

Exactly right. Plenty of people have in-home systems to bring their municipal water to the quality that they want (e.g. filters, softeners). Many more even have wells because there is no municipal water.

Many people research safety ratings before purchasing a car as a proxy for how reliable a given manufacturer is at ensuring good outcomes in a crash.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#102

Post by wrenky »

vodou wrote: post #40

One thing I've never understood with homeschooling: How come parents think they have the competence to be a teacher? Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator.

I was homeschooled from 2nd - 8th grade. My elementary school was trying to put my brother on adderall and my class had sorted me into the "blue" group of readers (colors of the rainbow for reading ability). I apparently came home talking about how I was slow and it was okay because we all learn at our own pace.

Definitely not a great school! both my brother and I ended up going to college and getting engineering degrees, and had zero issues with academics in high school. My mom did a pretty okay job but it was absolute hell on her, I entered high school ahead on mathematics/history but pretty behind on writing and science. The science I dont blame my mom for, all the curriculum at the time was insanely religious, so the ones we could find were very dry.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#103

Post by Yoric »

msluyter wrote: post #51
nosefurhairdo wrote: post #23

I live in a good area and have friends who work in a few different schools out here. Kids are throwing chairs at teachers. There are elementary school classrooms where ~1/4 students don't speak English. The reading/math skills are so dismal, any student who learns at home is bored as hell. Private schools are outrageously expensive. Homeschooling is becoming the pragmatic choice.

| Private schools are outrageously expensive. Yes, and... In states where property taxes fund schools, there are basically two ways to pay for a good school: a) go to a private school, b) live in a school zone with high real estate values. At various points my wife and I calculated that 8 years at ~25k/yr tuition would work out to about the same as the ~200k house price delta we'd have to pay to move to a better scho…

Yeah, I moved house recently. The #1 factor for picking the house was the good high school 500m away.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#104

Post by vel0city »

cloverich wrote: post #82
msluyter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| Private schools are outrageously expensive. Yes, and... In states where property taxes fund schools, there are basically two ways to pay for a good school: a) go to a private school, b) live in a school zone with high real estate values. At various points my wife and I calculated that 8 years at ~25k/yr tuition would work out to about the same as the ~200k house price delta we'd have to pay to move to a better scho…

I did the same math comparing portland with suburb schools (around portland and seattle) and came to the same conclusion. But one other thought is when the money goes to the mortgage, you get to keep the wealth after (assuming you sell to downsize at some point).

More money in the mortgage principal you theoretically keep when you later downsize housing, but you also will probably spend a good bit more in taxes as well.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#106

Post by vel0city »

cloverich wrote: post #96
vodou wrote: post #40

One thing I've never understood with homeschooling: How come parents think they have the competence to be a teacher? Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator.

The same logic applies to teachers, and can be applied against your own question. As an example i once lost a mark on a math test because when rounding to the nearest whole number, i put 3.0 as the answer. Wrong. 3 is a whole number, 3.0 is not i was told, and threatened with suspension on protest. That kind of thing sticks with you. I agree with your sentiment however, i just dont think its a powerful retort.

  >>> a = 3.0
  >>> b = 3
  >>> type(a) == type(b)
  False
The right answer they were looking for was 3, not 3.0. Adding that .0 implies a precision which is not correct. They weren't looking to see if you knew the arithmetic with that question, they wanted you to show you understood what they meant by "whole number" and understand you can't just leave arbitrary precision after rounding. You didn't give the right answer and apparently kept complaining about it instead of trying to figure out why you were wrong to the point they threatened suspension. I imagine your complaints based on your assumption you couldn't be wrong were causing quite a distraction.

For example, 10 / 3 = 3.333... right? We're then asked to round to the nearest whole number, and the answer should be 10 / 3 = 3. It is not correct to then say 10 / 3 = 3.0, because that is just wrong.

I'd end up siding with the teacher on this one. Just acknowledge you didn't understand what they were looking for and do better next time.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#107

Post by epicureanideal »

pogeys wrote: post #94
Salgat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning about systematic racism has been relabeled as Critical Race Theory, and suddenly teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre or how banks used to discriminate against minorities for lending is considered extremism and "woke". Growing up, learning this stuff in history books, was just normal and made sense in order for us to avoid repeating these mistakes.

> suddenly teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre or how banks used to discriminate against minorities for lending is considered extremism and "woke". No, these things were taught to me in school and I’ve never heard anyone consider historical facts like this to be CRT except people railing against conservatives (ironically demonstrating their own ignorance of what CRT is). What’s problematic about CRT is its postmod…

Thanks for taking the time to explain this.

The “what’s taught in schools isn’t CRT” argument reminds me of the “motte and bailey” argument tactics.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#109

Post by ruthmarx »

demosthanos wrote: post #75
nosefurhairdo wrote: post #23

I live in a good area and have friends who work in a few different schools out here. Kids are throwing chairs at teachers. There are elementary school classrooms where ~1/4 students don't speak English. The reading/math skills are so dismal, any student who learns at home is bored as hell. Private schools are outrageously expensive. Homeschooling is becoming the pragmatic choice.

There's also rising awareness among parents of neurodiversity while many schools are still stagnant and failing to correct. I have ADHD. My wife doesn't, but most of her siblings do. Our kids do. Our kids love reading and love learning new things, and I know from my own experience that the fastest way to kill that love would be to send them to a public school that doesn't know how to work with ADHD brains. There's a…

ADD/ADHD was over-diagnosed for a long time. Why are you so sure all the people you mention have it vs other explanations? What is it you think makes ADHD brains special?

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#110

Post by nradov »

aurareturn wrote: post #2

Having gone through the San Francisco public schooling system, I would never send my kids there. I'd rather home school them if I lived in San Francisco, or if I have money, send them to private school.

This is one of the main reasons why there are more dogs than children in SF. There are some good public schools but parents don't want to deal with the vagaries of the lottery system so they move out to other school districts.
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