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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#111

Post by from-nibly »

ruthmarx wrote: post #109
demosthanos wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why are you so confident that they shouldn't be confident?

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#112

Post by red-iron-pine »

* smart tech folks who value education not seeing education value in local schools * chronically underfunded public schools based on local property taxes, fewer programs, etc. * good private schools aren't cheap * political axes to grind esp. by the right to defund the Dept. of Education, and create curriculums that don't sell well (e.g. bibles in school, pro-oil & gas slants, etc.)

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#113

Post by from-nibly »

vel0city wrote: post #83
brightball wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to reflect a lot of what I hear about as well. Everything is too entrenched from a decision making standpoint for any one person to make a difference in reforms. A free market fixes anything where people have the ability to "vote with their wallet" and simply stop paying for services which aren't meeting expectations when they find another that does. Things like employer sponsored health insurance are insu…

Voucher programs are just going to flood the "education market" with substandard schools teaching things like humans walked with dinosaurs a few thousand years ago before the great flood. They're going to extract profits from our tax dollars to give us a worse quality service. We'll see a lot of new schools open up, spend a few years collecting profits, then get shut down for substandard quality after effectively fai…

Why would it give people worse education? Besides who are you or any of us to decide what is and isnt a good education for someone elses kids? It's not your job to police ideas.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#114

Post by from-nibly »

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.

That's like half your job as a parent: teaching your kids stuff ( the other half being: keeping them alive). You are THE most qualified person on the planet to teach your own kids anything.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#115

Post by vel0city »

from-nibly wrote: post #113
vel0city wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voucher programs are just going to flood the "education market" with substandard schools teaching things like humans walked with dinosaurs a few thousand years ago before the great flood. They're going to extract profits from our tax dollars to give us a worse quality service. We'll see a lot of new schools open up, spend a few years collecting profits, then get shut down for substandard quality after effectively fai…

Why would it give people worse education? Besides who are you or any of us to decide what is and isnt a good education for someone elses kids? It's not your job to police ideas.

Are you really arguing schools getting taxpayer money to teach kids humans walked with dinosaurs and all modern biology is a lie a good educational outcome?

Do you really not see how that's a bad outcome?

Do you not see that removing the funding from the regular public schools to go to teach that nonsense will lead to worse outcomes for those kids who can't leave those regular public schools?

Sure, maybe some students will potentially have some better outcomes if they manage to go to a good private charter school with their voucher that happens to be a decent one. For everyone else it's a worse outcome, unless you think it's a good thing to teach every animal alive today are direct descendants of the ark that was just a few thousand years ago.

Also, kiss special education funding goodbye. It won't be profitable to handle these students. They'll be trapped in those even more underfunded public schools. Hooray, great outcomes!

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#116

Post by ruthmarx »

from-nibly wrote: post #111
ruthmarx wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why are you so confident that they shouldn't be confident?

Were you the downvote I got instantly after commenting, lol? I'm simply curious and that should be sufficient, I'm not really sure what it has to do with you though.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#117

Post by vel0city »

zdragnar wrote: post #53
WillPostForFood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid and the school shutdowns, did create a real boost in the homeschooling. Exacerbated by the particularly draconian shutdowns and masking in areas where there are a lot of tech workers like the Bay Area.

I think it merely made parents aware of what was already happening. My nephew texted my brother during his lunch break to ask for more credits for his switch account. My brother asked why play games instead of talking or hanging out with others. My nephew sent back a video of the lunch room: every single student had their eyes glued to a digital device of some sort. The experience kids have in schools isn't what we a…

Hearing accounts like this where apparently kids bring game consoles to school as a regular thing further makes me support schools having technology lockers.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#118

Post by xnx »

wrenky wrote: post #99
xnx wrote: post #92

No one seems to have mentioned AI/LLMs yet. Between Khan Academy, Wikipedia, and LLMs, if your child has curiosity, the resources to tutor have never been better.

Those are sources, and while curiosity is great most kids are focused on specific things not everything. Kids need direction and somebody them to focus on things they dont want to learn- like a kid who loves animals isnt going to learn math or how to write well, and a kid whos interested in history might not care at all about science. Parents are no better at this unless they are incredible focused on utilizing a cur…

> Talking to a computer is not a replacement for a teacher (yet).

I agree. The limitless patience and non-judgement of a computer is very valuable in a learning context. LLMs won't be better than the best private tutors, but its very likely they'll be better than 80% of junior high through college teachers.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#119

Post by vel0city »

AlexandrB wrote: post #65
sitkack wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try and homeschool my kid when they are home (from school). I say some of those things, but I also say, when we are fixing a clogged drain by disassembling the plumbing. "You could be a plumber, lots of hard problem solving and you are not afraid to get dirty". You can have high expectations that they live an actualized life w/o projecting your own life-arc desires on them. If my kid turns out thoughtful, kind and…

> The problem with homeschooling is that rarely is someone so well rounded that they can supply the full spectrum of education that a child needs. Blackbody vs an RGB source emulating a full spectrum. We all have cognitive blindspots. While this is true, it's not like schools are teaching kids a full spectrum of knowledge either. In particular, a lot of practical skills are often not taught in modern schools - person…

I agree with this, but IMO the more correct solution is to look for the gaps in learning from all sources and look to fill those instead of removing a massive chunk of education assuming one can do all of it better.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#120

Post by nradov »

vel0city wrote: post #83
brightball wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to reflect a lot of what I hear about as well. Everything is too entrenched from a decision making standpoint for any one person to make a difference in reforms. A free market fixes anything where people have the ability to "vote with their wallet" and simply stop paying for services which aren't meeting expectations when they find another that does. Things like employer sponsored health insurance are insu…

Voucher programs are just going to flood the "education market" with substandard schools teaching things like humans walked with dinosaurs a few thousand years ago before the great flood. They're going to extract profits from our tax dollars to give us a worse quality service. We'll see a lot of new schools open up, spend a few years collecting profits, then get shut down for substandard quality after effectively fai…

Come on, be serious. In a huge country with 50M students attending primary/secondary school you can always dredge up a few horror stories but those are far from the typical case. On the scale of ways that schools damage kids, teaching them the unscientific mythology of certain Christian sects is hardly the worst. The Catholic church, which is one of the largest private school operators, has no official position on paleontology or evolution through natural selection.
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