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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#351
I find looking beyond the rim of your own plate such an inspiring thing when it comes to schooling.

Germany for example prohibits home schooling. don't breed detached extremists. however Germany thinks binning kids into handcrafts, simple office jobs and academia at age nine (!) is a brilliant idea o-O. but then on the upside again, you will go to school for at least 13 years if you get _any_ kind of qualified professional education.

China has one (1) math text book for 1.4bn people.

France has competitive cognitive Tests (Concours) to enter highest education.

maybe a problem is that everybody went to school so everyone thinks they are experts. it's hard to evolve schooling. like steering a super tanker. slooow. too slow for four year election cycles.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add at least a 3rd group: Parents of kids with sensory (e.g. autism) or behavioral issues that are incompatible with learning at a school.

That still falls under option 1.

I'd broaden the group to "kids who parents feel have been done wrong or failed by the local school and see home schooling as the best choice available." I don't think this group is quite as consistently college educated as group 1.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#353
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's only recently that the average people have had the chance to become elites, rather than be born into it. It still mostly depends on being born into it. In the US your odds of going from impoverished to wealthy are extremely slim and socioeconomic mobility is among the worst compared to other developed countries. The US falls behind South Korea, Lithuania, Estonia, Singapore, Malta, and Slovenia, while the Nord…

I know an extended family of third world impoverished immigrants who became middle class by basically all going to nursing school. It is almost a joke that all Filipinos become nurses, it's almost fool proof way to have at least a car, shitty apartment and decent food to eat. It's worth looking into for anyone who is stuck, none of it is particularly difficult to learn although it is hard work.

Nursing can also pay extremely well, at least in California, and for those willing to travel.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#354
post #351

I find looking beyond the rim of your own plate such an inspiring thing when it comes to schooling. Germany for example prohibits home schooling. don't breed detached extremists. however Germany thinks binning kids into handcrafts, simple office jobs and academia at age nine (!) is a brilliant idea o-O. but then on the upside again, you will go to school for at least 13 years if you get _any_ kind of qualified profes…

>however Germany thinks binning kids into handcrafts, simple office jobs and academia at age nine (!) is a brilliant idea o-O

As a German that's the first time I hear that. Do you mean Schülerpraktikum? That's usually at age 14. Never heard anyone doing that at age 9.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expulsion works." There really seems to be two kinds of public schools. One is willing to expel students who are violent and disruptive and this allows the students who are willing and able to learn to do so. The other refuses to expel violent and disruptive students and they make it nearly impossible for the willing and motivated students to actually learn.

There are some rotten incentives at work here, as well as constraints that aren’t obvious from a parent or student’s point of view. For example, CA schools have to publish statistics on suspensions and expulsions. So there’s an incentive for administrators to minimize them. In practice, this means that expelling a student (short of some extreme situations) is a lengthy process of ass-covering. Even when administrator…

> For example, CA schools have to publish statistics on suspensions and expulsions. So there’s an incentive for administrators to minimize them.

Are you sure administrators care? I live in Oakland, where some of the public schools have absolutely abysmal (academic) statistics. I haven't checked the expulsion statistics. I'm not sure anyone cares.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#356

> These tech parents are hackers by nature, and I think they’re convinced that in homeschooling they’ve happened on the ultimate life hack: just opt out of being around average people. It's difficult to feel optimistic about a society that thinks this way, much less has a cultural and economic elite that is seemingly emboldened to think this way. "Average" people are the norm, the reality that "not average" people wi…

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a universally valuable experience, especially for people who would fashion themselves as "not average." If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it? Seems like there's only something to lose from adjusting to their shittiness. Like Harrison Bergeron And seeing the state of California tr…

Well, one reason is that your assumption that they are all or mostly inferior is wrong.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#357
post #351

I find looking beyond the rim of your own plate such an inspiring thing when it comes to schooling. Germany for example prohibits home schooling. don't breed detached extremists. however Germany thinks binning kids into handcrafts, simple office jobs and academia at age nine (!) is a brilliant idea o-O. but then on the upside again, you will go to school for at least 13 years if you get _any_ kind of qualified profes…

Also a lot of countries have different goals, and most people when they think of optimization of schooling think of better outcomes at the top end, whereas administrators think of better outcomes at the bottom end. The difference between stimulating your smartest people enough that they become leading beacons of their field vs minimizing the amount of people that get left behind. In some places there's a mixed approach with magnet schools but there's many countries where that doesn't exist.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#358

I live in a good area and have friends who work in a few different schools out here. Kids are throwing chairs at teachers. There are elementary school classrooms where ~1/4 students don't speak English. The reading/math skills are so dismal, any student who learns at home is bored as hell. Private schools are outrageously expensive. Homeschooling is becoming the pragmatic choice.

Homeschooling parents are divided into two separate groups. One is secular with college degrees who really want to give their children a better education than they could get in a school AND are able to do so. The other group are very religious who don't want their children learning about evolution or many other secular things. The only real issue I have with homeschooling in the US is that regulations vary wildly by…

There is another issue. Kids in the first group can get an incredible academic intellectual education, AND be emotionally and socially stunted. I have directly observed this, unfortunately. It also happens in very liberal, high-end, private schools.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's only recently that the average people have had the chance to become elites, rather than be born into it. It still mostly depends on being born into it. In the US your odds of going from impoverished to wealthy are extremely slim and socioeconomic mobility is among the worst compared to other developed countries. The US falls behind South Korea, Lithuania, Estonia, Singapore, Malta, and Slovenia, while the Nord…

In the US your odds of going from impoverished to wealthy are extraordinarily good. I personally know dozens of examples, even excluding tech entirely. Social mobility is a term of art in economics and only weakly correlated with the ease of becoming wealthy. It doesn’t mean economic mobility. Social mobility is a measure of relative rank change. In countries with compressed wage ranges, such as those you mention, “s…

If US had many people "going from impoverished to wealthy", its social mobility stats would be better. You are seeing few outliers, that is it.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#360

I live in a good area and have friends who work in a few different schools out here. Kids are throwing chairs at teachers. There are elementary school classrooms where ~1/4 students don't speak English. The reading/math skills are so dismal, any student who learns at home is bored as hell. Private schools are outrageously expensive. Homeschooling is becoming the pragmatic choice.

Homeschooling parents are divided into two separate groups. One is secular with college degrees who really want to give their children a better education than they could get in a school AND are able to do so. The other group are very religious who don't want their children learning about evolution or many other secular things. The only real issue I have with homeschooling in the US is that regulations vary wildly by…

There is also abusive parents who want their kids to be isolated and do not want social services to get involved.
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