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

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

#321

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…

For real. It's telling that the kids don't jump in here to defend the practice, hardly ever (also homeschooled, education was great, socialization was absolutely problematic despite doing all the homeschool group things.)

read plus the internet are a bit challenging for them :P

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with bullies is something you'll definitely see later in life. I'm glad I learned how to shut it down quick or avoid it altogether earlier rather than later. Being let out into the world thinking everybody loves you sounds like a terrifying idea too.

What do you do to quickly shut down an adult bully?

It really depends.

If it's a peer in a more professional setting, simply calling them out generally makes you less a target, especially if calling out their behaviour is done in a group setting. It comes down to the old "stand up for yourself" rule we've all heard. Also, calm confidence tends to work with adults too.

If the bullying is coming from above, time to move on. I have zero patience for it, and there's likely no stopping them.

Also, I'm not suggesting you take them outside, although I know a couple guys who've been through fights between coworkers in their workplaces. Grown men (in their 30s) sure can take a long time to grow.

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

#323

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…

My siblings and I were homeschooled up to about middle school. My mother had three years of college but no degree and taught all four of us at once. For financial reasons we all ended up going to public school at around late elementary/middle school and we were miles ahead of everyone from an academic standpoint. There were definitely some social issues integrating which didn't take long but I think our parents could have done a better job exposing us to "normal" kids and not moving around so much. YMMV.

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

#324
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, this doesn't end well. The data isn't amazing for homeschooling, but what I've seen shows a strong bimodal distribution. Extremely wealthy home schoolers with tons of resources have kids that perform well in college and have strong lifetime earnings. Everyone else not so much, unprepared for college, earnings well below their peers. Pair this with the fairly predatory organizations offering "learning materials" a…

> Extremely wealthy home schoolers with tons of resources have kids that perform well in college and have strong lifetime earnings. Everyone else not so much, unprepared for college, earnings well below their peers. So... exactly the same as public schools, then?

right. what they want is "wealthy home schoolers with tons of resources" to suffer in college and have low lifetime earnings in the same way as "everyone else". That's equality.

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

#325

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…

We started blaming parents long, long ago and never stopped. Unfortunately that's not effective in many cases. A lot of parents are ineffectual, apathetic, or shameless. Blaming them might make the rest of us feel morally superior but it doesn't improve outcomes for their children.

And for older children, peers tend to influence them more than parents anyway. Turning around a failing student will often require separating them from their current friends. Tough to do when you can't afford to move to a better school district.

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

#326
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…

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that. Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it be…

> religious indoctrination

indoctrination is a given. Do you prefer your secular type, the religious type or the government type?

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

#327
It might help to begin with the end in mind. The goal of education and the reason you send your kids to school is so that they come out with skills that enable them to succeed in society[1] and you also want them to be bolstered as moral and ethical human beings.

If you trust the public school to do that - or at least do a better job of it than you could yourself - then you send them. On the other extreme, you either opt for private school or home-school.

I assume people don't make these decisions lightly. The path of least resistance is to send your kid to whatever random school they are zoned for. The next level of care is to move to an area with better schools or hope you can get into a charter school. Next level beyond that is paying a heavy price (in dollars or hours) to send them to private school or home-school. So I respect people who do that, a lot. It comes from care for their kids and ability to commit to it deeply.

As a personal observation, I was very lucky with the public school education I got in Brooklyn in the 90s. Especially in high school, I had many teachers that taught me how to think more than what to think. But that was 30 years ago and that kind of teacher was kinda old-school then. Back then, I can count on one hand the number of teachers I had that today would be categorizes as "woke crazies" (one tell-tale sign, they grade you on whether you agree with them, not the quality of your argument) but I suspect that ratio is way worse now. My kid is a toddler and I have a bunch of years to evaluate the teaching in our area, but I wouldn't think I'd be doing my son a favor sending him to a school that constrains thinking and speech rather than encourages breadth. I am very far from considering home schooling but if my choice is to basically stay home and teach my kids or to send them to a brain-deadening environment (that's an extreme, don't think it's happening in my town) I know what I'd pick.

[1] that is a combination of technical, thinking, and social skills.

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

#328

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. Public school spending in the US is up almost 50% in the last 30 years.[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

Thanks for the data! It seems that adjusted for inflation, it still is an overall net decrease (11,500$ in 1990 equals about 27,000$ today).

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

#329
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…

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that. Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it be…

// other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination

I was raised totally secular but I now understand that religion is about fundamentally aligning yourself to the highest aspirations ("what kind of man does G-d want me to be?") and even w/o actual faith, I am starting to think that's preferable to the current mode of "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions." So yeah I am not surprised that parents aren't dying to throw their kids into an environment that fosters the latter.

I used to think religion was about deep fear, now I see it more as about deep care. You may still disagree with what they care about but I find that harder and harder to do, personally.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that. Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it be…

> religious indoctrination indoctrination is a given. Do you prefer your secular type, the religious type or the government type?

I prefer the Reaper type, myself.
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