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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

#281
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why shouldn’t the government have a say in what is taught to children? Children are not their parent’s property. These are future citizens and I would prefer that society has a say in what is taught to them. In a democratic system the government represents the will of the society.

Ok but I’d rather my kids have be raised understanding and influenced by their parent’s perspective so that they will influence society along those similarly into adulthood.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t sound right. For all of human history bullies who were bigger and stronger made the rules. The weak were ostracized. If anything, what you’re doing in homeschooling is reverting away from the norm and creating a sheltered environment. This is a double edged sword, you can turn your kids into fragile beings incapable of dealing with a harsh world but at the same time they will probably have productive, pr…

If you weren’t bullied growing up then maybe we can find some for you now, as you seem to be advocating this for kids.

Definitely not advocating for bullying, just pointing out that you can’t harken back to antiquity and call homeschooling a continuation of that paradigm in this particular sense.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was homeschooled and avoidance of "worldly" topics like evolution and (very basic) sex education were at the core of it. I was literally taught that dinosaur bones were planted in the soil by Satan to deceive people about the age of the world.

This is anecdotal fallacy if the intent is to suggest homeschooling is suspect because such cases do occur. You can find equally strange cases in public schools.

It's a straightforward description of lived experience. The only "intent" I see is to tell us of the curriculum that was pressed upon the author.

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

#285
post #257

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…

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

Maybe your public school experience was mostly decent, but for a lot of people it's hell and it actively breeds misanthropy. You can learn to deal with stupid and difficult people without being exposed to soul poisoning doses of both.

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

#286

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?

Think about it like work. A low level manager or individual contributor may be able to greatly change trajectory and outcomes for their small team but is unlikely to change anything for an entire global organization and the bureaucracy that comes with it. With enough successes at a low level then maybe those get recognized and the effects begin to trickle up. Or maybe not but at least you did the best you could for what you were directly responsible for.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you had a rough experience. I'm sorry about that. That said, for a lot of families homeschooling had changed by the late 90s and early 2000s. I was homeschooled around that time with my siblings, as were my wife and her family. We all still have great relationships with our parents, and our homeschool experiences were very far from the stereotypes. We participated in many different co-ops. We took ever…

12/13 of the circle of homeschooling families that made up our socialization group in the 90s/00s have gone no contact with their parents now. Congrats on your success, it’s not the norm.

People stop talking to their parents because the relationship isn't good, not because they didn't get to take a turn being shit on in public school.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the norm within your social group, which was presumably mutually selected by your respective parents. That suggests that these families are not 13 independent data points, but rather a group of 13 families that all had similar predispositions and evolved along similar lines. I'd like to see the stats overall before coming to a conclusion about what the norm is.

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When your child is coming home in tears every day because other children are mean, and the teachers and administrators won't do anything, and your child is sitting bored through bullshit indoctrination and being harangued for skipping brainless homework to write or make art or do any number of other things, feel free to sit down and tell them how valuable the public school system is, and how their suffering is stupid and they need to get over it.

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

#289
post #166

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…

Uh have you even tried that or know anyone who has? If you have issues with the curriculum, its not getting changed. It’s often set at a state or federal level with a lot of committees and politics.

States set guidelines but Boards of Education choose curricula for their districts.

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

#290

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> Homeschooling generally happens because parents don't like some aspect of public schooling and more often than not it's that general knowledge conflicts with a religious belief. This is absolutely false. Did you read the article? Parents didn't flock to homeschooling during the lockdowns because of religious ideology: they did it because they wanted their children to LEARN. IME, the two biggest reasons parents chos…

My wife's exposure to the daily habits of public schools in our area as part of her internships towards a degree in childhood education are a huge part of why we chose to homeschool. My experiences going through the public school system are another big part. Your explanation fits our scenario completely.
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