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

241–250 of 597 posts

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

#241

Post by mvnuweucxqokii »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #230
mvnuweucxqokii wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].

That is a fair ask. To be honest, I am unwilling to devote to this discussion the time which would be required to research examples.

I will concede that if these things never happened, I personally would find the infohazard argument non-compelling, though others may have their own feared infohazards.

On the flip side, if hypothetically these were common ideas animating public school curricula and/or teacher behavior, would you consider that sufficient justification for homeschooling as being discussed here?

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

#242

Post by twodave »

If my wife and I were to put our 4 special needs kids into public school it would result in them having a bunch of unbelievably negative experiences:

- they would NOT receive a quality education or be taught to be self-learners.

- they would be passed along, even with failing grades, putting them further behind their peers, highlighted their differences and denying them their dignity.

- they would all end up in social situations that we ourselves would prefer to avoid. Not caused by their peers (though that can and does happen even in homeschooling families) but by the institutions that are responsible for public education

- we would spend just as much (if not more) time and effort fighting the system as we do just taking the reins.

If we want to get help for our kids, we literally have to pay thousands of dollars to get them each diagnosed with a mental handicap, because they aren’t cripple or have other readily-identifiable disabilities.

Still, we teach all of our kids as they’re capable that THEY are responsible for their own education. Anything else is a) a lie and b) setting them up for failure and a wrong sense of entitlement.

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

#243

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

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.

You can hire a private tutor, or teach them maths yourself. Only some kids truly have an aptitude for mathematics anyway.

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

#244

Post by silverpepsi »

glitchc wrote: post #113
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…

>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…

Something I heard a few years back put my life experience as a kid in perspective. At least for me, in the most important way possible, it doesn't sound like regular school at all.

The main deep life impacting characteristic of standard public schools is coerced unwelcome company. You're forced by law to be around the same bullies for 5, 10, even 12 years. The natural order with organic friendships (and indeed probably since antiquity) is that those who act as a bully or jerk get ostracized. It is both justice and instructive for those who get excluded from one circle and must rethink their social approach to possible get accepted in another. It is how socialization is supposed to work.

Parents won't force their kids to continue to be around others they dislike, schools are totally ok with the violation of right OTOH (basically if you have a right of free association you also have a right of non association btw).

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

#246

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

silverpepsi wrote: post #244
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…

Something I heard a few years back put my life experience as a kid in perspective. At least for me, in the most important way possible, it doesn't sound like regular school at all. The main deep life impacting characteristic of standard public schools is coerced unwelcome company. You're forced by law to be around the same bullies for 5, 10, even 12 years. The natural order with organic friendships (and indeed probab…

I'm unsure if you're saying that coerced unwelcome company is a good or a bad thing. While kids can be mean, it's just a reflection of humans in general and this kind of behaviour doesn't go away when you block it out. People get more mature but there's a lot of similarity between how people act in high school and in the work place, it's just a lot more skillfully and subtly done. Exposing kids to this reality doesn't seem bad to me.

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

#247

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

mvnuweucxqokii wrote: post #241
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your "how about" and raise you a [citation needed].

That is a fair ask. To be honest, I am unwilling to devote to this discussion the time which would be required to research examples. I will concede that if these things never happened, I personally would find the infohazard argument non-compelling, though others may have their own feared infohazards. On the flip side, if hypothetically these were common ideas animating public school curricula and/or teacher behavior,…

When it comes to public policy, I don't find myself particularly animated by hypotheticals. I think we have more than enough on our plate if we just pay attention to things that are actually happening in the large.

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

#248

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

Justsignedup wrote: post #238
hdhusiu_2 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda agree with the idea in abstract ( make things miserable for everyone and things will improve ), but it never really works like that in practice. Humans always find a way to fuck with ecisting system. It is a nice idea and maybe a way to scare some people into thinking a chunk of population had had enough. Me? I am not gonna sacrifice my kid to make a point. I don't want to enter the argument with healthcare a…

I mean the same can be said of anything. This is why the fight for for liberty never ends, because every day is a day some jackass can get into power and start claiming elections are rigged.

>"This is why the fight for for liberty never ends”

I find it odd that you’re invoking Liberty when your proposals involve forcing everyone into the same system.

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

#249

Post by opportune »

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…

I went to regular school from K-12 and I also felt like my social skills were significantly stunted for a long time. Which is not to say that homeschooling can’t negatively impact your social skills, but that plenty of kids experience stunted social skills, social anxiety, awkwardness, introversion even with regular schooling.

Also as an adult I gotta say, in most ways it’s traditionally schooled kids who are “stunted” (immature, have mannerisms/beliefs/habits incompatible with the adult world) until they hit about 20-26 more so than homeschool kids. I’ve met homeschooled kids who probably considered themselves stunted, and in some ways (being sheltered) they were, but they were also significantly more “adult-like” and mature in other ways earlier than their peers. This is also true for a lot of traditionally schooled kids who are “late bloomers” IME.

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

#250

Post by bandyaboot »

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.

Is this literally about states that have poor math achievement, or is it along the lines of some states aren’t teaching math because ? It’s become difficult to tell when a good faith discussion on public education is happening.
Post reply on HN