This appears to be largely a COVID phenomenon. Lacking that forcing function, I doubt whether subsequent cohorts of parents will opt for that burden. The only thing that might push them to maintain the discipline of home schooling is the ideological capture of public schools, which leads to discrimination, unmonitored chaos and the long-term medicalization of students based on dumb ideas, the naming of which will would get this comment flagged.
Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
191–200 of 1001 posts
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I have basically the same opinion. It's not so much that I believe homeschooling is amazing in-itself, but rather that the public education system has so clearly deteriorated that it seems borderline criminal to subject your kids to it. The question for me, personally, is private school vs. homeschooling. If you can avoid many of the downsides of public education via choosing the right private school (and bei…
I don't understand this talk about "the public education system". Every school and school district is going to be different. Some are great and others are not. I understand if you live in an area with middling-to-poor schools, but lots of people live near great public schools.
I’m sure there are good public schools, but my experience and the experience of everyone I’ve ever known has not been positive. Combined with policies like California’s [1], I don’t think it’s unreasonable to just be skeptical of most American public education.
1. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/california-needs-real-math-edu...
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#193We're homeschooling our kids. I was pretty against it at first, but seeing our education system degrade to the state it is today, and being honest about my schooling experience definitely opened me up to it. I think the biggest argument for schooling is the socialization aspect of it. I don't know about the rest of you but I was bullied pretty relentlessly throughout grade school and it completely changed my personal…
> That's not the socialization that I want for my kids. On the other hand, I'd definitely want my children to be familiar with it. Bullying is not something isolated to schools. I've seen it in nearly every social and political situation that exists at nearly every age group. In my estimation people are getting worse at identifying it and collectively we're getting worse at punishing it.
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Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that some states have programs that give you the money if you home-school. There seem to be some restrictions, though: https://idealschool.education/full-day-program/utah-voucher-...
Our state does - we did not take it, because the money comes with enough strings to make it distasteful. We homeschool to keep our kids out of government schools. Inviting that same government into our home for a bit of money would make no sense whatsoever.
Makes sense, and looking at some of the requirements, understandable.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like people are reinventing all the same stuff schools do at scale. Can't we be more efficient as a society? Not to mention the privilege that is draped over every detail of this setup.
“I’ll intentionally disadvantage my kids in the name of the ideal of egalitarianism” said basically no parent ever.
Eh there no clear cut answer that the alternative doesn’t disadvantage them either
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#196"Rise from fringe to fastest-growing" seems like a math misunderstanding. Something that's small has the largest possibility of growing rapidly, expressed as a percentage. https://xkcd.com/1102/
The article really doubles down on suspect use of numbers by talking about "[Hillsborough County, Fla] vote results have predicted the winner in 22 of the last 24 presidential elections. Now it is a harbinger of a different trend: the widespread adoption and acceptance of home schooling." Spurious election correlations make for bad articles.
Within that county since 2017 school enrollment has grown "3.4 percent, to 224,538 students." (about 7400 student increase), while homeschooling has grown 74%, up to 10,680 (growth of about 4500 students).
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#197> Many of America’s new home-schooled children have entered a world where no government official will ever check on what, or how well, they are being taught. Isn't escaping from those officials the whole point? Either because they're failing at their job or doing things that are disagreeable to some subset of the population?
The statement implies the students being taught in schools today are learning at a level they should be. With all the exceptions made and dumbing down of curriculum, most classes teach to the least abled in the class holding back many.
That said, I don't think home schooling is an option for all either. Covid showed how difficult it could be for many families.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#198People talk about homeschooling as if it's one single concept, but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things. There are people who homeschool because they don't agree with the government's viewpoints, people who homeschool because the public school system has failed their kids, people who homeschool because it just happens to fit their lifestyle. Those are all very different motivations. Likewise, there a…
100% agree with this.
Also, with the right community, it is possible to have plenty of "socialization" with other kids. My family participates in a parent-led co-op that allows kids to benefit from different strengths in different parents and to have lots of friends.
As my kids are neurodivergent, I think this environment has been safer for them and allows them to focus on their passions. There is still some peer pressure re: neurodivergence, but I think it was less severe than when I was in public school with less obvious neurodivergence.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#199I was home-schooled until high school. Long story short, it was a disaster. I bordered on having no education at all, on top of no socialization. I'm so fortunate I got at least four years of public school. I still think I suffer to this day. For parents who are thinking of home schooling your kids: best of luck to you. If you succeed, maybe your kids will be smarter. If you fail, you could be setting your kids up fo…
there are obviously lots of kids that had a very bad homeschooling, and also lots of kids that had very bad public schooling. many kids are bullied so badly at school that they commit suicide, and many more develop antisocial habits there. the question is whether those issues are better or worse with homeschooling, and a single anecdote doesn't help us with that.
Neither does the balance fallacy.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like people are reinventing all the same stuff schools do at scale. Can't we be more efficient as a society? Not to mention the privilege that is draped over every detail of this setup.
"Can't we be more efficient as a society?" Not the way government tends to work in US.
It is wild that this is the take. This eep distrust of government is at the root of many American problems. It is deliberately created and fed, and it directly leads to some truly awful results: bad education, bad healthcare, virtually no public benefit for all the taxes we pay. But we do get world's largest military, large corporate subsidies, highest per capita healthcare costs.
Unlike in most other Western countries, education in the US is controlled at a local level; every town, district, and city etc has its own rules, has to hire its own staff and pay for it all out of local taxes. And because the generally tiny constituency of each district, a very small number of nutcases can change the rules and impose their point of view for the school district.
And because of the local funding, there can be huge resource and quality differences between schools for adjacent locations, just due to crossing some arbitrary jurisdiction line.
It is madness, but it is a madness that is deeply loved/entrenched here.