Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Homeschooling hits record numbers

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 878 posts

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#291

Post by AlotOfReading »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #220
AlotOfReading wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty hard to touch philosophy without covering marxism in some way. Very little of it has anything to do with the family of political ideologies despite sharing a similar name. The question of God's existence is also fundamental to the history of philosophy. It's not particularly shocking that a course might cover people like Lucretius, Bentham, or Russell. Most philosophy surveys will also include some of the…

> It's pretty hard to touch philosophy without covering marxism in some way The complaint was that the alternative wasn't discussed.

I read the parent as saying that the course covered these at all, not as complaining that nothing else was presented.

But continuing on that train, what would you want from mentioning alternatives to a theoretical framework? A framework is just a different way to look at the world that you can discard if it's not useful.

To give a programming analogy, if a course does a module on JavaScript exclusively with react, they're not teaching that vue, angular, or svelte don't exist and you should only use react. It's much more likely a statement that react is common and useful for people to be familiar with when they go into the outside world. Covering the long list of alternate frameworks, many of which the teacher will have never actually used in a serious way, is both difficult to do in a useful manner and takes away from the limited time available to cover what they can with sufficient depth.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#292

Post by ecshafer »

dmje wrote: post #216

Obviously there is some serious nuance here - there are of course edge cases and serious reasons for considering home schooling. But as a general principle, encouraging kids further and further out of (group) human contact seems like an obviously terrible idea to me. We're already doing it with (lack of) play spaces, "no ball games", insane screen times (which equates to less "real" face to face time) amongst teens,…

The most common form of homeschooling is, I believe, in the form of co-ops. Where groups of parents get their kids together in class room like settings to teach them together. They don't go to school, they might meet at a church, or library or a home, but they are socializing. I know people who homeschool and between church, youth fellowship, co-op classes, fencing, swimming, basketball, neighborhood kids, family, etc. they have extremely active social lives.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#293

Post by meheleventyone »

seneca wrote: post #284
meheleventyone wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. As a parent I get the impulse to remove my children from any potential harm but the real world has sharp edges. They need to be confident in that world not just smothered. And really as the person who used the term it’s really up to you to define what you mean.

> The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. That's just not true though. Your job isn't going to force you to interact with people who disrupt the environment constantly. Those people are fired and removed from the group.

My job isn’t the totality of my life and you have very strange ideas about how quickly disruptive people actually get fired. You get plenty of unfiltered interaction in life. If anything I’d say the sort of thing you describe sounds more like an insular cult. Although even there you get misanthropic people, abuse and so on.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#294

Post by j45 »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #147

I can't say my public school experience was great, I was bullied and didn't really click with the popular kids, but being around a cross section of actual American kids in my age group (my school district mixed middle class with lower class neighborhoods) helped me shape my worldview and learn to deal with people who didn't look or talk like me. I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch…

There is some realy valid things to consider here.

The thing it leaves me wondering is how many kids from elementary through high school a child really keeps in touch with, and if college is currently the place where many students finally get to start to be themselves.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#295

Post by AnimalMuppet »

seneca wrote: post #284
meheleventyone wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. As a parent I get the impulse to remove my children from any potential harm but the real world has sharp edges. They need to be confident in that world not just smothered. And really as the person who used the term it’s really up to you to define what you mean.

> The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. That's just not true though. Your job isn't going to force you to interact with people who disrupt the environment constantly. Those people are fired and removed from the group.

In functional workplaces, yes. In dysfunctional ones, sometimes you have to leave.

In the military, say, you don't get that option.

In your neighborhood, you can move, but that's a fairly difficult and expensive step. When someone moves in whose kids want to be gang members, or who wants to verbally abuse people out jogging, or whatever other antisocial behavior, you have to deal with it, at least for a while.

So you can't completely avoid the brokenness of the real world. (Note well: I am not saying that throwing a six year old into the deep end is the best way to prepare kids for this.)

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#296

Post by rahimnathwani »

michaelt wrote: post #228
connicpu wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It affects the minimum viable salary for a teacher to even be able to live in the city where you want to hire them to work, same for all the other support staff that make a school function.

With a budget of $28k per student, and 21 students per classroom, that’s $588k per classroom. Now, granted, some of that goes on building upkeep, cleaning, supplies, heating, pensions, managers etc - but if $588k per classroom doesn’t let you pay enough to attract teachers there’s something very suspicious going on.

  there’s something very suspicious going on
Yup! SFUSD has ~9,000 government employees, and only ~50,000 kids.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#297

Post by hereme888 »

seneca wrote: post #284
meheleventyone wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. As a parent I get the impulse to remove my children from any potential harm but the real world has sharp edges. They need to be confident in that world not just smothered. And really as the person who used the term it’s really up to you to define what you mean.

> The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. That's just not true though. Your job isn't going to force you to interact with people who disrupt the environment constantly. Those people are fired and removed from the group.

Exactly. Adults don't tolerate the same B.S. children are forced into.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#298

Post by hamdingers »

Unsurprisingly this thread has become a battleground on the merits of homeschooling.

Something to keep in mind: "Homeschool" is a useless descriptor. It covers a spectrum from complete educational neglect to world class private tutoring. It includes cohorts almost indistinguishable from school, and cohorts that engage in cultish indoctrination.

Any criticism you might have for your idea of homeschool, there exists a type of homeschooling that addresses that criticism, and there will be someone in the replies ready to tell you about it.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#299

Post by rahimnathwani »

a2tech wrote: post #209
bluecalm wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an average class has 20 students it's $560k per year. If an average student gets 1000 hours of schooling per year you can pay 200$/hour and you have spent only just above 1/3 of your budget. It feels like there is more to the story that "$28k doesn't go as far in San Francisco".

It’s because this is a very simplified view of a classroom. What is presented above is the best case scenario, not a realistic one. For example, there’s no consideration of costs associated with any sort of handicapped student, or student with special education needs. Real world costs completely spiral out of control when you look at the actual system—for example, the buildings are all built during the rapid expansio…

  there isn’t money or interest from the community to tear them down and build new ones
San Francisco voters have repeatedly voted to borrow massive sums of money to fund SFUSD capital improvements: https://www.sfusd.edu/bond/overview

The most recent $790,000,000 in 2024.

Post reply on HN