[flagged]
[flagged]
For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
151–160 of 597 posts
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#152We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…
Just as a counterpoint... I was homeschooled from 2nd grade until sophomore year of high school. I played sports the entire time (was the captain of various teams), had plenty of friends, and was pretty social. Even still, I felt like my social skills were significantly stunted when compared to others my age. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable just hanging out with others because most of my social time wa…
I feel the exact same also homeschooled. It’s also interesting being in this thread with homeschooling parents - I remember hearing about how “homeschool groups provide the same level of socialization” back then, and it wasn’t any more true then than it is today. Schooled kids get 8 hours a day with peers and you get 1 if you’re lucky. Not the same.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#153Home schooling is a real burden on many parents who aren't professional teachers of course and are pulled in many directions. One of the most exciting emerging trends in home schooling is to pool the resources of multiple home schooling parents. It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day. So home schooling parents can team up and share the…
The biggest problem with the setup you outlined is that the central government has no say in what is being taught to kids. So no matter how similar homeschooling will look to government-controlled schooling, people with power will never stop attacking it because of that crucial nuisance.
It's also a ploy to avoid integrated schools, but I think we gave up on the Brown v. Board world a few decades ago.
e: Not saying this is the reason but it is certainly the subtextual reason in the southern urban school district I lived in that a lot of kids were homeschooled.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Homeschooling is, to a first approximation, the most individualistic approach to a child's education possible. If your goal is to instill values of mutual cooperation, a sense of obligation, etc. in a pluralistic society, I'd think that you'd want to send them to a public school in a large city. That's what the last ~200 years of American immigrants and children of immigrants have more or less done.
> Homeschooling is, to a first approximation, the most individualistic approach to a child's education possible. In a superficial way, sure. The dominant American culture is intensely individualist. So if you don’t want your kids to grow up that way, you need to buck conformity in that narrow sense. > If your goal is to instill values of mutual cooperation, a sense of obligation, etc. in a pluralistic society, I'd th…
This is a very shallow understanding of "large city public schools" (is that a euphemism for something?). What you are taught is going to vary greatly depending on the teacher.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#155Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#156The reason we moved our kids from Montessori to public school is to throw our lot in with the majority of society. It’s made me active in the PTA and school library because up close it’s hard to ignore the challenges staff deal with, and with skin in the game, I don’t have the time to wait for someone else to do it. Hopefully the work we put into the shared system raises the tide for all families, so my children grow…
Thank you, you are making a good choice, and as someone whose parents made a similar choice (sent me to an underperforming urban public school when they could have afforded private), I am very grateful to them now.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My main issue with homeschooling is mostly around the fact that it's generally done so parents can control and limit children's access to well accepted facts (such as evolution, age of the earth, or dinosaurs). What is the problem with that? I am not aware of anything in the daily life that is dependent on the existence of macroevolution, the age of earth, or the history of dinosaurs. So, I really deeply from my he…
I just have a problem with parents closing doors for their kids. A lot of early education is about kids finding their interests and passions. It's also about making for a well rounded society. I don't care so much of a kid is like "I hate this dinosaur garbage" or whatever, but I feel awful for the kid that could have been a great paleontologist or biologist only to have that opportunity snuffed. Sort of the same rea…
[flagged]
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#158Why are people in the US so against public schools? I am someone who did not really enjoy “school” and found it anxiety inducing but I still see the benefits of it. In public school you are forced to mingle with the people of your generation. The ones who will inevitably go on to run the country in whatever big or small way. The objective of public school is to break down the regional identities of old and assimilate…
In cities, a lot of it is tied up in racial politics and the post-Brown v. Board landscape.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#159Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#160This is giving me the worst of vibes: - options for people who don't want to expose their children to out-of-family ideas, to perpetuate family biases - a completely unregulated market for children to go to a "school" with a few other kids, giving them small classrooms, BUT, no teacher with specialization or educational background. Would be extremely hit or miss, with little resource if it isn't working out. - only f…
Hmm. But why? Why do we need to have one system for everyone to make em into one acceptable mold. Why can't people pick on their own? Why is the idea that 'system is fucked so I might as well do what is best for my family' not an acceptable one?
Because that's how we got the shit we have today. Look at our healthcare system. The wealthier you are, the more you can go "fuck it, I'll buy a wing in a hospital and never have to worry" meanwhile middle america has giant chunks of population who suffer with chronic pain for decades.
Obamacare was the first time that half of america was able to even go to a doctor to figure out wtf is wrong with them.
The point is that what you're saying IS ideal if you can afford it, but the second you cannot, you're stuck in the worst situation available.
The goal is NOT to create 1 education system, the goal is to force everyone to use the same system, and then variance occurs not because of rich vs poor, but because of intentional choice.