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Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#291

Post by collaborative »

sweeter wrote: post #249

I mean its obvious. There has been a concerted effort to de-fund public schools and center the conversation about "right to choose" education, alongside a handout of vouchers to attend private religious schools AND the implementation of new laws that allow tax payer dollars to go to funding those privately owned religious schools (seriously). The intent imo is to make schools seem "scary" and push parents to put thei…

I find it a bit far fetched to suggest that these private religious schools have enough influence to change laws and get tax dollars

The much simpler explanation is that having influence over private schools is very tempting for the govt and the easiest tool is via giving or retaining funding which they don't personally have to pay. They just want to secure votes and influence

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#292

Post by owenpalmer »

haizhung wrote: post #261

Am I the only one thinking that home schooling is the wrong solution to the underlying problem? The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Teachers are quitting left and right, and schools are in a terrible state. Instead of fixing THAT problem, now people homeschool. Ok; I guess. At least homeschooling is something that the individual can control,…

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding.

Lack of funding isn't always the problem. As jawns mentioned, there's a lot of reasons to remove your kids from public school.

> I have two kids, would consider myself very well educated (have a PhD, etc), and I habe absolutely 0 confidence in myself schooling my kids.

Interesting. I'm surprised you feel this way while acknowledging that most educated teachers "aren't really good at it". Perhaps you aren't qualified to teach your kids, and that's okay. At least you have the self-awareness to know they need help from someone else.

> public schooling is obviously an attempt at leveling the playing field between children from different backgrounds.

Yep. But it can also stifle the growth of overachievers.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#293

Post by DiggyJohnson »

geocrasher wrote: post #265
jawns wrote: post #150

People talk about homeschooling as if it's one single concept, but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things. There are people who homeschool because they don't agree with the government's viewpoints, people who homeschool because the public school system has failed their kids, people who homeschool because it just happens to fit their lifestyle. Those are all very different motivations. Likewise, there a…

^^^^^^^^^^ This. We unschooled our kids. Worked beautifully. They're both as much of a success or failure as if they had gone to public school. Had more to do with their idiot gene donor's DNA than their schooling.

> Had more to do with their idiot gene donor's DNA than their schooling.

What do you mean by this? I’m assuming it’s just self-deprecating humor.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#294

Post by Amezarak »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #134
orochimaaru wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School is parents + school. I would say about 60% parenting and 40% school. If you don’t push your kid academically nothing is going to happen. Peer groups matter. In “good” schools you’re optimizing the peer group. A good/bad school rating has little to do with teacher capability.

So when do we start blaming parents instead of schools? And saying, “this is what you get, take it or leave it, you have to put effort in too”? Parents treat themselves as customers expecting a turnkey service, when instead they are stakeholders with their own book of work and responsibilities they need to be accountable for to deliver the environment and education their child will need to become a functioning member…

It sounds like the article is about parents holding themselves fully accountable for their children’s education.

The problem is what you do with the parents who do not care at all. People making these statements that “it’s about the parents” - well, it has some truth to it. But when 10% of the students are running the halls, screaming and fighting, beating random kids, having sex and doing drugs in the bathrooms, and assaulting teachers who don’t care anymore, then it doesn’t matter what the other 90% of the parents are doing.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#295

Post by jltsiren »

civilitty wrote: post #222
zarzavat wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People socialised for thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands of years before schools were invented. I went to school and got beat up, colour me sceptical about school as a mechanism for socialisation.

Were they actually socialized for thousands of years? The average (sub)urban school in the US teaches more kids every day than the average person would have come in contact with in their entire lives, often ten times over. Most people were subsistence farmers and didn't travel very far from their little village in their entire life.

The average medieval subsistence farmer probably had ~10000 people living within 6 miles of them. People tended to live in areas with fertile land, and the land could easily support 100-200 people per square mile.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#296

Post by [deleted] »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #293
geocrasher wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^^^^^^^^ This. We unschooled our kids. Worked beautifully. They're both as much of a success or failure as if they had gone to public school. Had more to do with their idiot gene donor's DNA than their schooling.

> Had more to do with their idiot gene donor's DNA than their schooling. What do you mean by this? I’m assuming it’s just self-deprecating humor.

[deleted]

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#297

Post by fzeroracer »

biomcgary wrote: post #170
lapetitejort wrote: post #137

I was home-schooled until high school. Long story short, it was a disaster. I bordered on having no education at all, on top of no socialization. I'm so fortunate I got at least four years of public school. I still think I suffer to this day. For parents who are thinking of home schooling your kids: best of luck to you. If you succeed, maybe your kids will be smarter. If you fail, you could be setting your kids up fo…

Did you notice that the article highlights the rise of homeschooling co-ops? This is intentional on the part of the homeschooling movement. It improves both socialization and educational opportunities (e.g., shared lab equipment). Rather than pearl clutching about individual anecdotes or doubling down on government control, I think states should provide direct funding to homeschool co-ops in addition to direct fundin…

A homeschooling co-op is literally us just reinventing the wheel. A large enough co-op becomes a school system and a school system eventually adopts a standard curriculum.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#298

Post by geocrasher »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #293
geocrasher wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^^^^^^^^ This. We unschooled our kids. Worked beautifully. They're both as much of a success or failure as if they had gone to public school. Had more to do with their idiot gene donor's DNA than their schooling.

> Had more to do with their idiot gene donor's DNA than their schooling. What do you mean by this? I’m assuming it’s just self-deprecating humor.

Their biological father I am not. There's no way my kids would turn out the way they did if they had my DNA.

If anything, they'd be dumber.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#299

Post by ndriscoll »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #108
BurningFrog wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools are highly regulated, and are on average horrible. I'd bet a lot on parents caring more about their kids welfare than regulators.

There are many bad public schools - but it seems a bit hyperbolic to say the average public school is "horrible".

40% of American adults can't do basic arithmetic[0], which seems like a disaster to me. 88% are apparently incapable of doing things like reading a simple table or comparing two documents and identifying sentences that express the same ideas between them[1][2]. Over 50% apparently can't scroll through a list of information about books and identify the author of a specific book they're told to find. I'll never forget that in 12th grade I took non-AP government, and we were still spending significant time going over the three branches of government again (I'm quite sure this was covered in elementary school) and somehow people were not getting 100% on everything. Other tasks included--not joking--coloring pictures of animals, which the teacher put up around the room.

My school was actually rated decently for the area. Not the best, but pretty good.

[0] https://phys.org/news/2018-03-high-adults-unable-basic-mathe...

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

[2] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_...

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#300

Post by maxwelljoslyn »

jawns wrote: post #150

People talk about homeschooling as if it's one single concept, but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things. There are people who homeschool because they don't agree with the government's viewpoints, people who homeschool because the public school system has failed their kids, people who homeschool because it just happens to fit their lifestyle. Those are all very different motivations. Likewise, there a…

> Treating all these scenarios as a single thing that you can hold a single, consistent opinion about suggests to me a lack of familiarity with its wide spectrums along multiple dimensions. It's like passing a judgment on a person based on their race, country of origin, gender, etc.

A huge +1 to this, from observing the many friends I have who do homeschooling. Judging by their results -- super-smart, super-well-behaved children -- has gotten me thinking I'd like to do the same once I have kids.

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