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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#151

Post by demosthanos »

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?

There are many volumes on the subject, but I'm honestly tired of debating this with people who doubt ADHD is a thing. If you're legitimately curious, there are myriad sources out there about the differences in ADHD brains.

Suffice it to say that I'm sure. All of the adults I'm thinking of have had serious interference with their daily lives in ways that rise to the level of a disability. I'm the only one of the set that has been able to build a steady career, and that's due to a lot of luck and due to developing an anxiety disorder that, while not at all fun, at least allows me to keep track of things that I used to miss.

"Special" makes it sound like you think I think we're better. I don't. I just know that we don't work in the way that the world expects us to.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#152

Post by Dalewyn »

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…

>In states where property taxes fund schools, ... b) live in a school zone with high real estate values

Here's some tangential anecdata.

I'm in Oregon, the county I live in pays for the local schools through property taxes. More than half of the tax goes to the schools if I recall.

Anyway, that's not the fun part. The fun part is one of the schools needs(wants?) a new roof. Sounds reasonable, here are the unreasonable parts: They want to raise funds with additional taxes, because they refuse to budget and earmark money for it. They also said they need(want?) several million dollars to do it. The taxes would also be used by the county to buy school-issued bonds from the school to fund the new roof, rather than directly using the tax dollars.

Unsurprisingly, the county measure to introduce that new tax failed during the election in November with a resounding laugh.

The entire way our schools are operated begs some very hard questions.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#153

Post by TheFreim »

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.

> Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator.

This applies equally to paid teachers, along with numerous downsides that don't apply to parents (i.e. being able to tailor education to a single individual, developing a relationship that lasts close to two decades, ability to slow down and speed up course material where necessary, and more). Paid teachers, contrary to semi-popular mythology, are not special and don't do anything that an average person couldn't do (they are not extra-"competent"). In the natural course of being a parent you learn how to interact, guide, and teach your children.

This argument also fails in many concrete situations. For example, where I grew up there is a decent homeschooling community made up of people with average levels of education, low to average income, and yet the kids perform very well academically and are well socialized. Saying that these parents are not competent because didn't get a badge (education-related degree) is absurd considering they do as well as the people who did get that badge.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#154

Post by cratermoon »

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.

Ah, so you just opt out of being around average people. OK.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#155

Post by ruthmarx »

demosthanos wrote: post #151
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?

There are many volumes on the subject, but I'm honestly tired of debating this with people who doubt ADHD is a thing. If you're legitimately curious, there are myriad sources out there about the differences in ADHD brains. Suffice it to say that I'm sure. All of the adults I'm thinking of have had serious interference with their daily lives in ways that rise to the level of a disability. I'm the only one of the set t…

Thank you for answering.

I don't doubt the research, it's more I doubt how many diagnoses were accurate.

I was diagnosed with ADD as well, so I'm not being entrely dismissive. In this age of self ID I think there can be reason to be.

> All of the adults I'm thinking of have had serious interference with their daily lives in ways that rise to the level of a disability. I'm the only one of the set that has been able to build a steady career, and that's due to a lot of luck and due to developing an anxiety disorder that, while not at all fun, at least allows me to keep track of things that I used to miss.

If I may ask on this point, how would you distinguish ADHD from possibly being on the spectrum?

> "Special" makes it sound like you think I think we're better. I don't.

Not my intention, I should have said unique or significantly different in the contexts you mentioned or something.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#156

Post by tombert »

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…

> There's a saying that if you gave a scientist the job of designing a system to completely derail an ADHD brain, they'd come back with the typical public school classroom.

Doctors aren't sure if I have ADHD or Major Depression or Bipolar II (I've been diagnosed and attempted to be treated for all three), but this fits into my experience.

I was consistently frustrating to my high school teachers, because I was clearly learning the material, but I wouldn't do my homework, and I'd get bored during class, and as a result I would get bad grades. I don't think the teachers took any joy in giving me a bad grade, but they were kind of forced into it because I didn't really fit into the bureaucratic mold that they needed me to fit in.

This eventually led to me almost flunking out, and eventually dropping out of my first attempt at university. I did eventually finish my bachelors, but it was at Western Governors University (WGU), which feels almost tailor-made for the ADHD-brained people.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but the American GPA system still kind of gives me anxiety when I think about it.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#157

Post by ruthmarx »

d4mi3n wrote: post #149
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?

As someone with this condition, I think it may be helpful to note that while your comment may not be intended to be disparaging, it can be interpreted in such a way. A lot of neurodivergent folks or people experiencing mental health issues are commonly told their problems are imaginary, or aren’t a big deal. [0] It’s a pretty big sore spot. It’s also debatable how over diagnosed ADHD is. The diagnosis criteria has ce…

> As someone with this condition, I think it may be helpful to note that while your comment may not be intended to be disparaging, it can be interpreted in such a way. A lot of neurodivergent folks or people experiencing mental health issues are commonly told their problems are imaginary, or aren’t a big deal. [0] It’s a pretty big sore spot.

Not my intention, but I was diagnosed as a kid when over-diagnosing did seem to be a trend, and I've become skeptical in these times of self IDing.

When I mentioned over-diagnosing it was more referring to the 90s, but I think a lot of adults who were diagnosed then may have been misdiagnosed and never checked.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#158

Post by cratermoon »

brightball wrote: post #70
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.

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…

> A free market fixes anything

https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#159

Post by rayiner »

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 isn’t much better. Kids don’t learn much more, everything is just less chaotic because they can counsel out the ones who can’t behave.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#160

Post by bluGill »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #141

Economics plays into this too. Housing in good school districts is often much more expensive, and private schools are ridiculously expensive. COVID is another factor. Anecdotal of course, but I've only met two home schooled families since moving to our present city 3 years ago, and one of them started out of necessity during the pandemic and found that it worked well and so never went back -- but they're a one income…

Where I live all the districts have the same funding per student across the entire MSA. The inner city schools still do much worse.
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