Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#21

Post by chongli »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #5

Good luck to these people, hope it turns out well. Personally, I can't imagine home-schooling kids. I neither have the time nor patience to do that, which is why I appreciate teachers. Besides, I believe school is also a place for kids to socialize with and learn from their peers. I'm very introverted, but I think I would have ended up horribly social-wise if I was home-schooled.

Home schooling doesn’t mean setting up the garage with a chalkboard and two kids at their desks with mom or dad playing teacher. Home schooling doesn’t even have to take place at home! Lots of homeschooling parents will take their kids to the library, the (science, art, natural history) museum, to offices and factories, and out into nature preserves.

It also doesn’t mean just Billy and his little sister Jenny learning all by themselves. Homeschooling parents often join groups where they can bring all the kids together. The kids can socialize and the parents can share responsibility for teaching and supervising.

It also doesn’t mean just the parents participate. At my local public library, the children’s floor has a huge amount of programming aimed at homeschooling families. The librarians run activities with the kids, showing them how to find books in the library for science research, make crafts together (by hand and with library 3D printers), learn about engineering by building cars and robots with electronics components.

Homeschooling can of course be done badly and we should worry about kids in those environments. However, homeschooling done right can be far more dynamic and engaging than the best public schools around. It also doesn’t have to be expensive, it just takes time and commitment from the parents involved.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#22

Post by brodouevencode »

keiferski wrote: post #8

This is a fundamental change of life, and it’s astonishing that it’s so persistent. It is pretty misleading for this article to talk about homeschooling being a “fundamental change” without mentioning that homeschooling was the default practice for most of human history. If anything, this is just a return to a long-established practice, not a fringe movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling

It's a fundamental change versus the Prussian model, which provided a basis for much of the educational theory in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#23

Post by Amezarak »

CharlesW wrote: post #12
brightball wrote: post #7

When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I'd never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it. This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, dep…

There are many home-schooling success stories, and also many home-schooling horror stories. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-pr...

Similarly, there are many public school horror stories. For example, despite spending $21k/student, making it the third-highest funded school system in the country, 23 Baltimore schools failed to produce a single student with basic math proficiency.[1]

One of my friends went to a school where she was beaten every day and the teachers had totally given up and most of them did not teach.

Unfortunately, we need much more data than we have. The article mentions school quality is often not the driving reason for homeschooling, but you can definitely imagine public schools where almost any level of homeschooling is a better alternative.

[1] https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/state-test-r....

My children are in public school, but I am not sure if they will stay there. Even in "good" schools, there's many problems (especially in middle schools) and a lot of time is wasted if your kids have any academic ability at all.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#24

Post by Loughla »

krastanov wrote: post #9
boeingUH60 wrote: post #5

Good luck to these people, hope it turns out well. Personally, I can't imagine home-schooling kids. I neither have the time nor patience to do that, which is why I appreciate teachers. Besides, I believe school is also a place for kids to socialize with and learn from their peers. I'm very introverted, but I think I would have ended up horribly social-wise if I was home-schooled.

Just FYI, while I share the overall sentiment, I think you are not up to date on the socialization aspect of homeschooling. Typical homeschooling today includes activities where most homeschooled kids from the town gather together for PE or art or other enrichment activities, maybe even specialized academic activities.

There is no such thing as typical homeschooling, in my experience in education (decades and decades).

It is extremely dependent on 1. access to wealth, 2. underlying reason for homeschooling (religion/safety/other item), and 3. where in the country you live (rural v suburban v urban).

In that order specifically. Homeschooling is the ultimate class solidification technique. Those with wealth can almost certainly guarantee their children will do really well. Those without don't stand a chance in hell.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#25

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

tivert wrote: post #15

> 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?

Sounds like a generational Dunning-Kruger situation.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#26

Post by at_a_remove »

The Post has a vague undercurrent of bafflement, a wide-eyed, "What could it possibly be?" and really only bothers to speculate toward the end.

I was on Facebook, idly scrolling, and I received an ad for a nearby Montessori school. The ad was a simple lavender square, with the name of the school on it (no photo), and simply the text "Championing LGBTQIAA+ Lives." Of all of the letters, the "three Rs" weren't in evidence. Nothing about how the school will teach the child how to learn, prepare them for high school, or provide a rounded education. Just "Championing LGBTQIAA+ Lives." Upon some mental reflection, I recalled some recent radio ads for local universities, and the first sentence was about how they were diverse, and then there was something about inclusion and equality. No mention was made of "we will prepare you to be an adult" or "we will get you a good job."

Unfortunately, I cannot have children, but if I were in a position to, I would like to think I would be interested in their education to the extent that I would make serious choices. And right now, that educational institutions consider their highest advertising priority is to display a relentless laser focus on DIE to the exclusion of, well, education does give a little pause to their selection.

As I recall just how ill-served I was by the many schools I attended (we moved quite a lot), both for education and socialization, I can only imagine that diverting the already-anemic school efforts away from the core mission it even-then was not doing a great job at would only make these institutions even less-suited to their supposed task.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#27

Post by burcs »

We'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 personality. I became much more of a loner, reserved, quiet, and just defeated. I'm still working through some of that baggage 30 years later. That's not the socialization that I want for my kids.

I work remotely, my wife freelances. We have lots of friends and family with children our kids age, why not surround them by people who love them?

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#28

Post by Loughla »

tivert wrote: post #15

> 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 college I most recently consulted with had to take a homeschool "transcript" that can literally be a signed paper from the parent handwritten with nothing to back it up.

It's astounding. I don't know if that's just because that particular state doesn't have very strict rules around homeschooling, or if that's standard; I just haven't done the research.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#29

Post by brodouevencode »

303uru wrote: post #17
brightball wrote: post #7

When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I'd never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it. This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, dep…

Sure, that's one model. The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. Similarly, there is household in my neighborhood that home schools. The kids (all 8 of them) never leave the house. They have a 8ft. fence and 1 acre yard where I assume they get some outside time. No one visits. Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird.

For this anecdote I can provide you with about 20 anecdotes that are the complete opposite in nature. There is no regulation, but does there need to be? Homeschoolers take the same standardized tests as everyone else - that's about as regulatory as it needs to be (and even that's questionable).

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#30

Post by rootusrootus »

zaphar wrote: post #14
boeingUH60 wrote: post #5

Good luck to these people, hope it turns out well. Personally, I can't imagine home-schooling kids. I neither have the time nor patience to do that, which is why I appreciate teachers. Besides, I believe school is also a place for kids to socialize with and learn from their peers. I'm very introverted, but I think I would have ended up horribly social-wise if I was home-schooled.

I think possibly the worst place to learn and practice social skills is from other kids who are just as in the dark as you are. In my experience a home schooled child is significantly more likely to be good at social skills than a public schooled child. They are also adept at navigating adult conversation and social situations much sooner.

My experience is exactly the opposite. Homeschooled kids frequently have to learn how to adult all at once, right as they get dumped into the pool with everyone else to go find a way to make a living.

The most successful kids that I see are the ones who have professional instructors by day and excellent support at home. Not one or the other, but both.

Post reply on HN