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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#361

Post by Glyptodon »

brightball wrote: post #70
nosefurhairdo wrote: post #23

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.

This seems to reflect a lot of what I hear about as well. Everything is too entrenched from a decision making standpoint for any one person to make a difference in reforms. A free market fixes anything where people have the ability to "vote with their wallet" and simply stop paying for services which aren't meeting expectations when they find another that does. Things like employer sponsored health insurance are insu…

Even if there were more ways to "vote with your wallet" is abundantly clear that a lot of parents, respectively, (a) couldn't care less anyway, and (b) can't actually tell a good charter or voucher school from a bad one.

When the purpose of schooling is ensuring a civic floor amongst citizens the effectiveness of things like the home school co-ops mentioned can't come at the expense of population at large unless we wish to surrender the republican form of government for something else.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#363

Post by endofreach »

woodruffw wrote: post #164

> 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…

> These tech parents are hackers by nature

Why? Being in tech doesn't make you a hacker. Most people, even very talented engineers, are still happy to follow boss, do a 9 to 5, and don't really bend or break the rules... they don't go against the elite. They see themselves as the elite.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#364

Post by lmm »

woodruffw wrote: post #164

> 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."

Nope. For some people it may be valuable. For me it was miserable, almost to the point of being deadly. It does not prepare you for adulthood or life or what have you in any meaningful sense (think about what would happen in your everyday life if someone e.g. decided you had insulted them somehow, and punched you. Think about how different your experience of that probably is to the average person. And then think about what that experience is like for a schoolkid). It's just a whole load of unnecessary suffering.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#365

Post by cyberax »

windexh8er wrote: post #192
nosefurhairdo wrote: post #23

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.

I'm curious where you live. My spouse and I selected the area we live in based on the school district when our kids were around pre-K age. We live in a district that isn't overly expensive to live, but has the best public schools in the state and are some of the top in the nation. Throwing chairs? That's a parent problem. Not sure why the district would put up with that. Expulsion works. I've never heard a story like…

> Throwing chairs? That's a parent problem. Not sure why the district would put up with that. Expulsion works.

Our local education superintendant _in_ _his_ _program_ _document_ is saying that he will go after any teacher attempting to impose discipline in a "community inappropriate manner".

So basically, nobody gets expelled.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#366

Post by qdl »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #354
froh wrote: 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.

I guess he is talking about the three school types you can go to after elementary

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#367

Post by Glyptodon »

rayiner wrote: post #161
vel0city wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voucher programs are just going to flood the "education market" with substandard schools teaching things like humans walked with dinosaurs a few thousand years ago before the great flood. They're going to extract profits from our tax dollars to give us a worse quality service. We'll see a lot of new schools open up, spend a few years collecting profits, then get shut down for substandard quality after effectively fai…

Being able to read the Bible would be a big improvement on say the Baltimore school system, which spends $22,500 per year per student: https://www.city-journal.org/article/are-baltimore-students-... (“According to the 2022 NAEP test, only 10 percent of fourth-graders and 15 percent of eighth-graders in Baltimore’s public schools are proficient in reading.”) Literally, madrassas in Pakistan that just teach the kids to…

I tend to see big per student spending in public schools as suggestive that they've been loaded up with a disproportionate share of the kids with IEPs.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#368

Post by prmoustache »

> Why are tech people suddenly so into homeschooling?

Are they? I mean statistically. Or is that just an observation from some random articles about a handful of freaks?

> and let me tell you, at no time were my six siblings and I considered the cool kids on the block.

I don't want to defend homeschooling but in my experience, the cool kids on the block tend to end badly. These are the girls that end up pregnant at 16 or in relationships with abuse partners, the boys that end up in addiction and a career of jumping from shitty jobs to shitty jobs.

Having said that it is nice to be able to develop social skills. I used to be super shy and had to force myself to grow a more sociable person and I am glad I had to force myself doing that by going to school.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#369

Post by hilux »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #230
TheFreim wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator. This applies equally to paid teachers, along with numerous downsides that don't apply to parents (i.e. being able to tailor education to a single individual, developing a relationship that lasts close to two decades, ability to slow down and speed up course material where necessary, and more). Paid teachers, contrary to semi-popular m…

Great, I'm sure you'll have no problem using the services of a self-taught doctor, lawyer, or engineer then. After all, why would they need to be taught by a professional? Go spend some time in a classroom and get a fucking clue how much more there is to teaching than what your layman's view entails. You, and this disrespect for our educators and the potential of what we could be offering in our public schools is why…

It is an objectively measurable fact (e.g. by test scores) that K-12 teaching, in the US, pays poorly, lacks prestige, and attracts far from the best and the brightest.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#370

Post by mzi »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #283
pj_mukh wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better question is: How did the median get so much better over 150 years, and why can't it keep getting better? 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate, poorer (in all senses of the word) and less connected to the world around them. Over a 100 year old grind, schooling fixed all that. Why can't it keep going? So the outlier, super special "phenom" today is the median of tomorrow.

> 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate Not true in the case of the US, which famously adopted a culture of universal literacy earlier than the rest of the world. By the mid-19th century, literacy rates among whites were not much different than they are today. It is one of the bright spots of American history; they took literacy very seriously for complicated historical reasons. Their book consumption per…

> By the mid-19th century, literacy rates among whites were not much different than they are today

But the states does have among the lowest literacy rate in the west. Less than 80% was considered literate in 2024, compared to almost 99% in the EU (with a range from 94% to almost 100%).

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