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

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

#251

Post by brightlancer »

jquery wrote: post #195
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you are taught is going to vary greatly depending on the teacher. And that's why you home-school: you don't want the education that your children receive depend on the school's choice of the teacher for your child.

It's not like the kids get one teacher their whole life, every kid going through the public school system will have dozens of teachers and the affect of any single good or bad teacher averages out. Could public schools be better? Yes, absolutely. We do not fund them enough, the fact that so many of my friends send their kids to private schools despite the enormous cost is testament to that. I have leaned on private s…

> It's not like the kids get one teacher their whole life, every kid going through the public school system will have dozens of teachers and the affect of any single good or bad teacher averages out.

"averages out" - No, it may not.

I had the same teacher for 4th and 6th grade in elementary school. I thought she was great. A friend of mine _changed schools_ so she wouldn't have the teacher again, because the teacher had been verbally abusive to her. I never saw it, but it was a big deal to her.

A year later, I had a teacher who would _publicly_ ridicule and harass me. Sure, I only had to deal with that for one class and homeroom everyday for TEN MONTHS, no big deal, right?

My other teachers weren't like that. But one is enough.

My anecdotal experience as a parent is that there are far more teachers like that now. (The students are often worse, too, which may be one factor.) To write off abuse from a) persons in authority and b) government employees as "oh the kids will get over it" isn't just wrong, it's demeaning.

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

#252

Post by opportune »

nitwit005 wrote: post #245

Everyone shows up to be taught by a common teacher, with government and non profit funding? That's just school.

Except they have much more flexibility, up to individualization, in terms of curriculum content and pacing, teachers from potentially more varied backgrounds/main jobs besides teaching, and the ability to eject unruly and problematic kids that impact other kids’ abilities to focus and learn?

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

#253

Post by justin_kempton »

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.

We were forced to homeschool our child due to Pandemic, and later, from desire for him to actually learn. It was eye opening! Schools are chaotic, and one of the biggest take aways for the child is conformity. In fact, I believe the entire institution of age based grades started in the militaristic state of Prussia. From the point of view of a state that needs soldiers, having standards and consistency is important. Individualism, and creativity are not very useful in a marching formation. And questioning authority, is equally frowned upon.

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

#254

Post by sarchertech »

sho_hn wrote: post #148
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is this maybe the problem to address, then? Reading this from outeide the US, it's bizarre to me that people don't want a professional, trained teacher who can do a better job than they could.

School is local in the US, so there’s no point in generalizing when discussing things like teacher salary.

That aside, a fantastic highly trained teacher with 30 students, isn’t likely to outperform a mediocre teacher devoting their full time to 1 or 2.

I wasn’t homeschooled myself but I did help my homeschooled younger (by 20 years) sister with math. If I had the time to devote 30 hours a week or so I’m fairly confident I could outperform even the best teacher teaching my own kids—-assuming they had 20+ full time students.

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

#255

Post by CodeWriter23 »

What did you all think was happening? Parents chose to hold their children back in subject areas they were weak in? Of course we delegate teaching certain topics to professionals.

The thing about those professionals, they know their continued employment is based on the merit of their work. You can fire your children's teacher(s) and hire better ones.

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

#256

Post by bitlax »

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…

TIL there is no difference between a City of Baltimore public school and a hagwon because they both have desks and chairs.

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

#257

Post by vasco »

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…

Learning how to deal with adversity and dumb people was school's greatest gift. The world is full of both.

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

#258

Post by opportune »

lugu wrote: post #207

I was told thought public school was invented, not to instruct, not to educate but to emancipate kids. Giving them a chance to see the world from a different perspective from their family. One might call it endoctrinement, yes, but if you are confronted to two concurrent belief systems, you are more likely to see them for what they are.

Historically schools were usually a way to do one of two things: provide a strong education (mostly in the humanities) to the upper class, and teach basic literary skills so that kids could read religious scriptures and then later, post Enlightenment, adequately participate in government and society (including basic arithmetic and non-religious literary skills). The first public schools in New England were motivated by the pre-Enlightenment attitude and public schools became more widespread with the post-Enlightenment attitude.

The idea of public schools as a way to enforce national unity (~WW1 when it became a priority in the US to de-italicize ethnic identities and loyalties) and teach kids skills that would set them up for nationally important jobs like those in science and technology (Cold War) was a much later phenomenon.

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

#259

Post by mmierz »

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…

> It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day

This is a “tell me you don’t homeschool without telling me you don’t homeschool”

No homeschooling family I ever met has set hours, and most spend far less time than that daily. Schoolwork takes a lot less time when you cut out the crowd control, distractions, “pledging allegiance” and other nonsense

Edit: I see I missed the joke

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

#260

Post by david-gpu »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #246
silverpepsi wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> Exposing kids to this reality doesn't seem bad to me.

I hope your children don't get "exposed to this reality" in school, as you put it.

The sorts of harrassment that school bullies inflict on their victims is, to put it simply, not tolerated anywhere else. Why should it be tolerated when it happens in school, where the victims have no choice but to attend every day?

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