Live data from Hacker News

My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

fast.ai

41–50 of 108 posts

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#41
post #38
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

>That's because public schooling was initially invented by industrialists as a way to control the populace and get them to be good little factory workers and to avoid rebellions. are you sure about this? industrialists were adamantly against mandatory school because that pulled the kids out of the factory into the schools.

It is frequent home schooling talking point. I don't think it is history at all, the history of schooling is waaay more complicated. Homeschooling is largely ideological, frequent motivation is to keep kids inside religious or other similar bubble. However, those who homeschool for ideological reasons need to demonize public schools and its origins.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#42

Home schooling sounds great until you start talking to the people who home school. There's always something weird about them. This lady is no exception: >I have been disturbed to follow the ever-accumulating research on cardiovascular, neurological, and immune system harms that can be caused by covid, even in previously healthy people, even in the vaccinated, and even in children. While vaccines significantly reduce…

TBH homeschooling is promoted by both vaxxers (they are paranoid and don't feel safe about their children being around other children) and antivaxxers (they don't want vax/mask mandates and other nonsense like eating lunch in freezing cold outside enforced on their kids). So vax preference here ain't really definition of "weird".

My kid spent pretty much continously like 1.5 month in 4-5 quarantines from school and guess what, he got COVID in between anyway, completely pointless waste of everyone's (parents/chidlren) time, because some parents had nothing better to do than ruin it for everyone else.

Btw. there is nothing really wrong with being weird, most of the people are stupid falling for whatever they are fed. Although it doesn't mean everyone weird is smart or better than majority.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#43
post #22

I was homeschooled: k-11. I have a graduate degree. My sibling has a similar path. The academics I received as a homeschooler were, frankly, probably 90th percentile, maybe more. Yet, simply going to a good school district with good teachers and supportive parents would, in all likelihood, have given me similar outcomes. And now, looking back twenty-plus years later, I don't think that it produced a materially differ…

It’s rather surprising to me that, despite what was an apparently net positive outcome for you and your immediate family, you would have such a negative opinion of homeschooling. For the others reading the thread (relevant bits of which are linked in the article) consistently shows that on average homeschooled students perform several percentage points higher on academic achievement tests, and a moreover a majority o…

Some of those are rosy studies designed to be rosy tho. As in, many of those studies are are as independent as cigarette company paying for research on smoking and health. Also, a lot of effort goes into insulating religious homeschooling families from any independent sight at all.

The elephants in the room he mentions is very real thing too. Fair amount of homeschooling is explicitly social/political project. It is meant to shape both how family structure looks like (who is head of the house) and also meant to create young people that change larger society into religious one. ( Partly you can see it when you listen to homeschoolers talking about public school or even non religious people in general - frankly they often sound like aliens who got the idea from movies. )

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#44
post #35

Hi all. I'm Jeremy, the husband of the author of this post. We really didn't expect to see this get any particular attention -- but I'm happy to answer questions about homeschooling you might have. As my wife Rachel said in the intro, this post is really about our particular experiences. It's not an attempt to convince anyone else to do the same thing. Home-schooling is very different to what I expected. There are th…

Thanks for sharing your story! How did you find the various tutors, and what percent of the teaching do you do yourself? About how many hours a day are you actively working with your child? Do you expect to homeschool indefinitely?

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#45
post #35

Hi all. I'm Jeremy, the husband of the author of this post. We really didn't expect to see this get any particular attention -- but I'm happy to answer questions about homeschooling you might have. As my wife Rachel said in the intro, this post is really about our particular experiences. It's not an attempt to convince anyone else to do the same thing. Home-schooling is very different to what I expected. There are th…

Hey Jeremy, what sorts of apps have you found most useful with your daughter? You mention using a few math ones that you found to be a good fit for her.

PS. thanks for the excellent fast.ai course!

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the majority of homeschool parents do it. It’s borderline control freak behaviour if not over the line most of the time. Usually to force some kind of religious beliefs on their kids and keep them away from any kids with other opinions.

People, especially parents, with religious faith do not view it this way. It is not "force" to hand down our faith and inculcate our children with values based on loving God and loving neighbor. Only viewed from the outside does this appear to have some kind of coercivity or violence associated with it. On the contrary, we view this as the most precious gift we can give to a child. I endured more than my fair share o…

> People, especially parents, with religious faith do not view it this way. It is not "force" to hand down our faith and inculcate our children with values based on loving God and loving neighbor.

If it involves more then negligible amount of spanking in the "how to train your baby" style or emotional manipulation, it absolutely is coercive.

As in, there is such a thing as healthy amount of teaching your faith. There is also religious based abuse. And then there is someone saying "glaring deficiency of public school is the inability to train your child's character for most of the day" which do suggest overbearing amount of it.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#47
post #7
post #3

Homeschooling is interesting. I like the idea, but I'd be more worried about lack of socialization with other children or any kind of group learning. Even more so if the child is slightly introverted. This is less of an issue if children are raised in the nuclear families like in the olden days, but these days what other avenues are left where children can learn something in a group and form long term friendships oth…

Homeschooling is not the isolation that most people think it is. In fact, the vast majority of parents who homeschool (myself included) join forces with other parents who homeschool for events, activities, and learning opportunities, all of which bring with them natural socialization while still allowing for a far more tailored learning experience than you can get in any classroom. In addition, homeschool kids typica…

In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day, every day, plus any time after school or on weekends, alongside our school work. We also had hundreds of peers that we could make friends with if we wanted to.

Compared to that I'd absolutely say homeschooling (even with occasional events and activities) is quite isolating.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#48

Outside of the Anglosphere homeschooling is not really a thing [1]. Coming from Europe I've personally never meet anyone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_st...

I've come to learn that homeschooling is illegal in some European countries. That may be a big reason why. E.g. Germany https://amp.dw.com/en/european-court-rules-against-german-ho...

It is possible in Austria though. We’ve met a group of people who’ve kept at it post-COVID enforced periods of lockdown homeschooling, because it worked so well for their children. The parents take turns supervising the group and I think they also employ a part-time private teacher for oversight.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#49

I learned pretty much everything I know from reading by myself since I lived out in the country. My parents did my homework with their left hand when I was young so I'd have time for more productive pursuits like exploring or reading. Worked pretty well for me. I aced almost every exam in my childhood. And I am quite successful. In many ways, school just slows you down. But I liked my parents' way. That let me go to…

idk where you went to school but the "homework" and worksheets I got before high school I could do with my eyes closed. The teachers would hand it out, I'd complete it in 2 minutes then not worry about it. It never even reached my parents. They had already taught me how to read a clock, how to do multiplication and long division, etc. "Homework" as a concept basically didn't exist for me before AP classes.
Post reply on HN