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

291–300 of 597 posts

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

#291

Post by jack_pp »

tiffanyg wrote: post #263
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only some kids truly have an aptitude for mathematics anyway. That's an absurdly strong and inaccurate statement that feeds into psychological walls that then get erected in the minds of the young and perpetuate ad infinitum. The psychological research here is very clear: stressing work, over some sort of ethereal innate 'talent', in ANY area makes a massive difference in skill attainment. I don't have time this mome…

Can't really compare math with basketball. Basketball is enjoyed by millions, it is a sport that is easily accessible with a very low common denominator.

In order to truly enjoy math you have to have a particular kind of brain that you are indeed either born with or not.

Can't say that I did enjoy math that much because I've had horrible abusive teachers but even so I liked it somewhat because I was better at it than everyone in my class. I would just read the lesson from the text book and it clicked for me instantly, not even needing teachers most of the time.

I seriously doubt that literally everyone else just had mental blocks to pick up things as easily as I did. With hard work and private tutors they eventually could catch up indeed but I really doubt they enjoyed it or even needed that knowledge

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

#292

Post by everybodyknows »

jquery wrote: post #140
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My main issue with homeschooling is mostly around the fact that it's generally done so parents can control and limit children's access to well accepted facts (such as evolution, age of the earth, or dinosaurs). What is the problem with that? I am not aware of anything in the daily life that is dependent on the existence of macroevolution, the age of earth, or the history of dinosaurs. So, I really deeply from my he…

I'd be a lot more worried about the lack of sex education. That's often when a child first realizes they are being sexually abused.

That makes sense! Has implications for the age at which some, limited, sex ed should be introduced.

Wondering why I haven't seen this consideration raised before, in mainstream press. Nor read of any specific cases of abuse being exposed that way. Would be interested in references.

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

#293

Post by [deleted] »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #285
vasco wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#294

Post by CuriouslyC »

cogman10 wrote: post #76

[flagged]

Plenty of kids learn to read almost on their own, just by being read to some and getting very basic feedback from adults. Young minds are like a sponge, you just have to engage them and provide corrective feedback and they teach themselves. You only need to be a teaching ninja when you've been tasked when educating children who don't want to be there and aren't interested in what you have to say.

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

#295

Post by jkestner »

whimsicalism wrote: post #156
jkestner wrote: post #54

The reason we moved our kids from Montessori to public school is to throw our lot in with the majority of society. It’s made me active in the PTA and school library because up close it’s hard to ignore the challenges staff deal with, and with skin in the game, I don’t have the time to wait for someone else to do it. Hopefully the work we put into the shared system raises the tide for all families, so my children grow…

Thank you, you are making a good choice, and as someone whose parents made a similar choice (sent me to an underperforming urban public school when they could have afforded private), I am very grateful to them now.

Thanks. Could you say more about why you’re grateful?

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

#296

Post by sintaxi »

sanp wrote: post #218
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #131

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.

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for dinner.

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

#297

Post by silverpepsi »

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'…

I really disagree with all the comments that make reference to reality - no that is not at all what "reality" is. The fact of the matter is that as an adult, I can draw a line in the sand and either leave a job or report someone who is making the workplace hostile. I can have arguments with friends, but I can also decide certain friendships are over because they've passed a reasonable max threshold for toxicity.

As a kid, you're repeatedly forced into situations where you dont have these same rights - in my experience. Schools try to trick you into thinking they're arbitrators above the law. They incentivize victims sucking it up, because if you get punched in the face at school, both parties involved will be suspended. However, it didn't strike me until I was in my 20s - this is all a trick - I could call the cops and press charges instead. One of the deceptions of my childhood anyway. Assault is a crime, school is not a special jurisdiction outside US law.

The idea that anyone's circle of chosen friends is not reality to me is nuts, of course everyone faces some amount of conflict with friends. Why does it have to necessarily be conflict from someone you hate with all your being(at a public school) to train you for life? Someone who'll physically assault you? That seems like a made up arbitrary rule. I'm in my 40s and have yet to experience anything like what I did as a 11 year old in my adult life. what exact training for real life did I need that was so valuable to my future? etc.. School sucked!

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

#298

Post by jprete »

soligern wrote: post #276
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…

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…

> That doesn’t sound right. For all of human history bullies who were bigger and stronger made the rules. The weak were ostracized.

That requires more than a little bit of backup before using it as a basis for claiming that homeschooling is bad.

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

#299

Post by wvenable »

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…

For some kids, going to school is the only escape from their bullies.

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

#300

Post by ameister14 »

gemstones wrote: post #185
lolinder wrote: post #169

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.

You've got a little bit of a self-selection bias going there. Your socialization group is no more likely to be the norm than the person you replied to.
Post reply on HN