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

For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 597 posts

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#221

Post by Spooky23 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #167
whynotminot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “I don’t want the government perspective imposed on my children” is so funny to me as a homeschooling argument. Go to schoolboard meetings. Talk to your kids and their teachers. Understand what your kids are learning. If you feel a perspective is missing, fill in the gaps. Your kids will be better off for seeing different perspectives, understanding basic argumentation, and coming to their own conclusions. Oh thi…

Are you suggesting that a single parent can meaningfully influence a public school curriculum? That is a ridiculous notion as far as I’m aware.

Influence? Sure.

I remember my dad organized a group of parents to push for improvements to math and science teaching at our rural school district. Eventually that included lobbying state legislators to support distance learning, so that a group of a dozen schools could use shared services to teach or access advanced courses. My brother got to realize that - he took Calc 1 & 2, as well and intro to computer science at a state university about 100 miles away, in high school.

Passionate people with good ideas can always drive change.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#222

Post by sanp »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #197
kiba wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the war is between state imposed ideology versus parental ideology, whatever the ideology might be? What if parental ideology are whacky? What then? Yes, state ideology can be whacky as well, but at least it is in the public and in the open where that can be challenged on a field, instead of uncontested at home.

If parental ideology is whacky, one family suffers. If state ideology is whacky, million families suffer. Including those who didn’t consent. What if someone can’t keep themselves healthy? Is it a good reason to regulate food consumption? What if someone is an alcoholic? Let’s introduce dry law?

In a democratic system, people can change the government.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#223

Post by cratermoon »

andrewstuart wrote: post #111

Home 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…

Why not spend all those hours and money to improving public schools?

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#224

Post by datadrivenangel »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #131
andrewstuart wrote: post #111

Home 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.

Homeschooled students are required to take standardized tests and meet certain scores.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#225

Post by variadix »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #64
jawns wrote: post #2

We 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…

It’s arguable whether public schools provide positive socialization in the first place. I imagine it largely depends on the school, the teachers, the other students, and the individual, but plenty of people come out of public school with poor social skills or (in worse circumstances) anti-social behaviors. It’s not like public school inherently does better at this.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#226

Post by whynotminot »

Spooky23 wrote: post #216
whynotminot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “I don’t want the government perspective imposed on my children” is so funny to me as a homeschooling argument. Go to schoolboard meetings. Talk to your kids and their teachers. Understand what your kids are learning. If you feel a perspective is missing, fill in the gaps. Your kids will be better off for seeing different perspectives, understanding basic argumentation, and coming to their own conclusions. Oh thi…

The point is that there’s no reasonable - folks doing this have deeply expressed beliefs and if you disagree you’re evil. They only sound reasonable when speaking in general terms. I was a school board president of a catholic school that for the most part aligns with state and professional standards and added faith and cultural material not appropriate in a secular school. The kids get a solid education - We got “inv…

> The point is that there’s no reasonable - folks doing this have deeply expressed beliefs and if you disagree you’re evil. They only sound reasonable when speaking in general terms.

This is such good point about why this conversation is so frustrating.

Because in the abstract, if good faith could be assumed, there's a discussion to be had here. GP responded to me here being like "well what if they were Russian or Chinese schools" -- which does make you have to acknowledge "ok fine, if my kid were in North Korea maybe I would be really worried about what the local public school was teaching."

And so you get duped into engaging on the merits. And then you dig just a tad deeper and find out that it's never a high-minded debate about pedagogy or state imposed perspective on like the role of the Federal Reserve or treatment of the Native Americans, it's always bat-shit stupid stuff about Creationism, banning woke books, and demagoguing over gays and trans people.

It's so depressing.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#227

Post by mellavora »

megablast wrote: post #194
glitchc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This means the kids gather together in one location because many kids can learn from the person doing the teaching. >Often as well it makes sense for the parents all to contribute a little money so that instead of the parents having to teach things that they are not expert in, the can pay as a group for someone with subject expertise to assist. >It can be problematic though gathering so many kids into one house for…

Nothing gets passed your professor. If we do have online learning, maybe the need for schools goes away?

Nothing gets past your professor.

There, fixed it for ya

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#228

Post by [deleted] »

credit_guy wrote: post #205
glitchc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This means the kids gather together in one location because many kids can learn from the person doing the teaching. >Often as well it makes sense for the parents all to contribute a little money so that instead of the parents having to teach things that they are not expert in, the can pay as a group for someone with subject expertise to assist. >It can be problematic though gathering so many kids into one house for…

Except that in regular school, if you want your kids to learn math, depending of the state you're in, you may be just out of luck.

[deleted]

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#229

Post by pfannkuchen »

whynotminot wrote: post #172
pfannkuchen wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that a single parent can meaningfully influence a public school curriculum? That is a ridiculous notion as far as I’m aware.

I’m saying you as a parent can talk to your kids and provide the missing perspective. I do not endorse the parents of todays worlds almost continuous crusade to change school curriculum in the face of things they disagree with. Provide context or alternative views to your kids where you feel is appropriate. Let them make their own choices.

Thanks for clarifying. One problem with this approach is that it is purely additive. What if people want to avoid something being taught? Prior to a certain age, children don’t really understand things in a cold and analytic way. The things they are told shape their moral beliefs and personality (which is why religions are always very controlling of schooling). So, they aren’t really “choosing” in the adult sense, it becomes more of a RNG for whether they will pick up the state selected value system or yours. Of course once a person is old enough they can and should be exposed to everything, to build context.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#230

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

mvnuweucxqokii wrote: post #203
whynotminot wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain this more to me. Presumably something so insidious you need to remove your child from even the possibility of being exposed to it. Perhaps, the existence of gay people?

That's a strawman. The steelman version is something like the following chain of reasoning: (a) gender identity is something that everyone has that is distinct from sex, (b) with enough introspection, everyone can discover their true gender identity, (c) if you don't have a strongly felt gender identity, you need to introspect, (d) if introspection does not yield certainty then this suggests genderfluidity, or even w…

I see your "how about" and raise you a [citation needed].
Post reply on HN