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

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

#361

Post by artificialLimbs »

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…

>> For all of human history bullies who were bigger and stronger made the rules.

It takes a unique character of not only being bigger and stronger, but also of being more generous and giving and sharing to become a leader or ruler. Leaders who were only bullies and cruel could maybe beat up or kill any individual man, but could not stand against a group and would be destroyed or ostracized if he was cruel enough to alienate a big enough group around him.

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

#362

Post by phito »

rayiner wrote: post #349
kevingadd wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was homeschooled, I'm having a hard time coming up with an "infohazard" I avoided exposure to other than things like "the theory of evolution" or "the concept of sex" or "it turns out 'the slaves were treated quite well' isn't exactly true"

What about the obsession with sex, sexuality, and dating in American schools, which the adults do nothing to discourage? If I had to identify one reason why poor Asians have vastly higher income mobility than poor white people, that’d be it. We literally have twice the bandwidth to focus on studying.

School isn't just about studying?

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

#363

Post by foogazi »

BeetleB wrote: post #34
foogazi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've known homeschooled kids that are easily 2 grades ahead of where they would be at a typical public school - and with no social shortcomings whatsoever For certain kids school is holding them up But that’s the problem with a standardization. What are the odds that all kids need the same amount of time for all subjects Initially everyone was home schooled. The school system is a feature & bug of scaling up

> But that’s the problem with a standardization. What are the odds that all kids need the same amount of time for all subjects They acknowledge that, but it doesn't change the thought process, right? If I know my kids can learn 70% more than they do in public schools, and have all the skills/tools to provide it to them, I don't care about the reason schools are inefficient. The sentiment that homeschooling parents ha…

> For certain key subjects (history, math, science, etc), if you failed just one subject you get held back and have to repeat the whole year.

Insane

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

#364

Post by hahn-kev »

paraknight wrote: post #342
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 don't get it. Why can't bullying exist in the group homeschool at church? It's functionally equivalent to a school. Are you making a brand new point about traditional homeschooling (parent-child) or replying to the OP in the thread?

If a kid is a bully then the parents organizing the group can kick that kid out (as a last resort). Additionally if a child is being bullied they can tell their parents and the parents can take action directly, this can happen publicly but there's a lot of layers of administration making it non-trivial.

In a way the group homeschool can be thought of like a small private school, it's just simpler to handle personal problems in a small group.

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

#365

Post by floating-io »

throw787653378 wrote: post #316
gemstones wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a homeschooled kid: Be warned that I heard “homeschooling has changed since we were in school” in the early 2000s, from multiple parents who are now estranged from their adult children. It hasn’t really changed that much - it’s just something parents like to tell themselves to avoid thinking about the experiences their children are missing.

Throwaway for sensitive topic. I came here to write your comment and was thrilled to find it already here. As a homeschooled kid who considers myself damaged as a result, I completely agree. The OP comment is eerily similar to stuff my parents said in the 2000s-early 10s and were totally wrong about. My parents weren't religious at all and were totally in it for academic enrichment. They were all about the "new wave…

I don’t normally comment on this sort of thing (I don’t have kids, am not precisely “normal” (whatever that is) and dislike speaking publicly on sensitive topics, anonymous or otherwise), but this touched a nerve for some reason, so I’ll throw a couple of things out there for you to consider:

1. Parents are not the only ones who push their own desires and beliefs. Thought experiment: how many members of the group that decides the curriculum vote Republican or Independent? Scuttlebutt (unverified by me) is that most folks in US schools and on US school boards are Democrats. Regardless of one’s opinion on political matters, that (if true) would suggest a certain uniformity of thought, and the likely presence of a conscious or unconscious agenda that would then get passed on, deliberately or otherwise, in the resulting curriculum.

And that’s before we get to the general tendency of many groups (regardless of type) to naturally attract like-minded souls in the first place. I only used political affiliation as a visible indicator of the phenomenon (assuming that the rumors are true about Democrats and schools, which as I said, I don’t actually know ;), not to promote one or another party, and not to imply that it’s anywhere close to the only factor.

2. IMHO, schools, public or private, do not fix social issues, and in a certain subset of children, may actually create them. I say that as someone who was never homeschooled, and yet has significant issues socializing (though I’ve learned to hide that fact in public over the years, and have a good career). Your thoughts on friendship resonate with me to a degree, and school did not help it one iota. Probably made it worse, actually.

I won’t go into my personal opinion on “the right answer,” because it’s irrelevant in the end. I have no kids, and thus no skin in the game, nor do I actually know “the right answer.”

Just some food for thought.

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

#366

Post by rolisz »

tomp wrote: post #56
rolisz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is a subject where that is the case, I do not know what it would be. Once they're past the age of 7 or 8, most or all children are capable of what they would be at older ages. I don't think, for instance, that an 8 yr old learning to read is slower at it than one learning that for the first time at age 14. From personal experience: I first encountered differential equations in highschool, while preparing f…

It was the same for me with stochastic processes. Most likely has nothing to do with age, but simply the fact that it was the second time you’ve encountered it. Your brain spent 2 years subconsciously processing it.

But then in the learning to read example, a 14 year old learning to read has seen a ton more letters around them (on billboards, book covers, phones, etc) so it should be easier for them to learn then for an 8 year old.

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

#367

Post by unwise-exe »

MrPatan wrote: post #168
whynotminot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “I don’t want the government perspective imposed on my children” is so funny to me as a homeschooling argument. Go to schoolboard meetings. Talk to your kids and their teachers. Understand what your kids are learning. If you feel a perspective is missing, fill in the gaps. Your kids will be better off for seeing different perspectives, understanding basic argumentation, and coming to their own conclusions. Oh thi…

What if it's not about missing perspectives, but exposure to infohazards?

> infohazards

That would be, what, harmful social contagions like anorexia? Or dangerous explicit teachings like "the government is your friend"?

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

#368

Post by unwise-exe »

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.

That only makes sense if the government owns the people. Which is exactly backwards.

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

#369

Post by andrepd »

andrewstuart wrote: post #111

Home schooling is a real burden on many parents who aren't professional teachers of course and are pulled in many directions. One of the most exciting emerging trends in home schooling is to pool the resources of multiple home schooling parents. It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day. So home schooling parents can team up and share the…

Laughed at this one.

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

#370

Post by andrepd »

user3939382 wrote: post #322
opportune wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t both statements be true? If I had to guess, most of the original homeschoolers did it because they had strong, fringe religious beliefs. Then in your generations more secular parents started homeschooling but it was still a pretty highly self-selective group (a stay at home parent who didn’t mind staying at home most of the day teaching their kids, a belief they could do better at educating their kids even with…

[flagged]

Yep GP, we can clearly see that homeschooling has changed a lot.
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