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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#211

Post by tonymet »

My school district in south WA is a representative example. Outcomes in math & English have been poor and continue declining. Attendance has dropped by > 30% despite mild population growth. Cost / student are among the highest, and due to the lacking attendance, deficits have led to staff cuts, leading to worsening outcomes. A death spiral.

To many, schools are perceived to be costly, unsafe indoctrination centers that push left-leaning agendas. Extended covid lockdowns were a huge betrayal.

You only have one chance to raise your kids, and the competition is getting tougher every year. Homeschooling in the area has tripled.

Some of the criticism is justified, some isn’t. But with failures on the academic outcomes, safety, and subjective failures on the ideology – the onus is on public schools to win back trust.

You can shame the homeschoolers , but that won’t bring them back. Time will tell if they succeed, but compared to public schools, the bar is so low that odds are in the homeschoolers favor. Especially if their parents care enough to do it.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#212

Post by Rebelgecko »

Aurornis wrote: post #182
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.

> Kids are throwing chairs at teachers. I don’t know where you live, but kids (plural!) assaulting teachers like that would be very unusual. I have a lot of family and friends in elementary education and management. Stories like that are the kind of thing that get talked about for years if they happen, not something that happens enough to be referred to in the plural.

A family member who taught at a title 1 elementary schools encountered chair/desk throwing multiple times in the short time she was there. I think unfortunately YMMV greatly depending on the area where you live

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#213

Post by s0kr8s »

The author's thesis is that the rise in home-schooling is driven by a desire to "opt out of being around average people," and he implies that he is not home-schooling his own children in part because he himself was home-schooled and believes that may have contributed to his own struggles with social stress.

However, given his self-description, it seems there is a decent chance he would have struggled with social stressors regardless of what education setting he was in, possibly even more so if he had been exposed to bullying or excessive social stressors in a more traditional public education setting.

Exposing oneself to just the right dose of poison in order to develop immunity is a delicate science.

When I was younger, I was also taught to believe that nurture always triumphs over nature, but as I got older and eventually had my own kids, I found out that nature was winning way more of those battles than I first realized.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#214

Post by rayiner »

Terr_ wrote: post #184
rayiner wrote: post #142

American schools just aren’t very good. I remember when I was in third or fourth grade, my mom flipping out about why we were spending so much time learning about native Americans and so little time learning math. To this day, my mom, who grew up in Bangladesh but got a classic British education from a tutor, is more well read in western literature than I am (Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Socrates, Plato, etc.) As far as I c…

> spending so much time learning about native Americans and so little time learning math After a bunch of years overseas, I returned to the US to complete my last two years of high school. I was shocked and dismayed by how much time (and stupid memorization-minutiae) was dedicated solely to the 4 years of the US Civil War.

The remarkable thing is that Americans don’t understand their own civilization. They don’t learn anything substantive about the founding U.S. cultures (big differences between Puritans and Jamestown settlers). They don’t study European history as a required course so they know almost nothing about how the modern world came to be (Westphalian nation states, etc). And they learn almost no world history beyond ancient civilizations (native Americans, ancient Egyptians, etc).

I spend $33,000 a year on my daughter’s education and she was telling me about some supposed connection between the Constitution and some Indian tribe—but she has no idea what the Magna Carta is, or what the political structure was of the UK that we declared independence from, who Plato is, etc. My mom was more educated as a girl in a desperately poor Muslim country in the 1950s than my daughter in an affluent DC region private school.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#215

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

from-nibly wrote: post #114
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.

This is exactly why I dislike the push to erode parental rights or attack homeschooling, which is happening in many blue states. Parents know best, not a civil worker (teachers) or bureaucrat or the “state”.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#216

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

rayiner wrote: post #142

American schools just aren’t very good. I remember when I was in third or fourth grade, my mom flipping out about why we were spending so much time learning about native Americans and so little time learning math. To this day, my mom, who grew up in Bangladesh but got a classic British education from a tutor, is more well read in western literature than I am (Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Socrates, Plato, etc.) As far as I c…

I think that Native American history, the Civil War, and Geology are all reasonable subjects to cover in school.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#217

Post by Spooky23 »

Mostly religious fanaticism.

It sucks, my sons went to catholic schools, and now an independent Catholic high school. The new breed of “evangelical style” Catholics are starting to appear. They are more political and reactionary in terms of religious politics/practice.

Where infrastructure doesn’t exist, homeschools and stuff like “classical education” are gaining traction.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#218

Post by bjt »

s0kr8s wrote: post #213

The author's thesis is that the rise in home-schooling is driven by a desire to "opt out of being around average people," and he implies that he is not home-schooling his own children in part because he himself was home-schooled and believes that may have contributed to his own struggles with social stress. However, given his self-description, it seems there is a decent chance he would have struggled with social stre…

Judging by the name and picture, I'm pretty sure Forrest Brazeal is a he.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#219

Post by xnx »

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #195
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.

LLMs hallucinate and often provide incorrect answers. They're a fabulous tool if you're not necessarily looking a specific, correct, answer. But I'm not sure I would want my kids to use them as a tutor, without someone to vet the output.

That's a very good concern to have. Grounding[0] helps a lot with this and will continue to improve. I'll also add that I've had human teachers who were confidently wrong about things.

[0] https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/facts-grounding-a-new-...

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#220

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

ndriscoll wrote: post #129
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.

We haven't really decided what we're going to do with our kids. I personally think I'd enjoy homeschooling them, but I don't know what their preferences will be. Their mom would appreciate the break. That said, 1. Teachers develop skills in managing rooms of ~30 kids. I believe this is completely different from tutoring someone 1:1 and likely has very little overlap. 2. Part of my day job is already mentoring/teachin…

Good points. Your last paragraph suggests we really need a drastic rethink of how education works and where funding goes. Right now a one size fits all solution with no competition is what gets funded.
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