Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 597 posts

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

#401

Post by anon84873628 »

vasco wrote: post #275
anon84873628 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the steel man, that's a straw man where you just flipped the politics of the scenario. Letting kids feel safe to introspect and question their gender expression is a good thing. The implication that kids will be _systematically_ forced to delay puberty or undergo a transition they don't want is absurd and not a valid "chain of reasoning". Yes, I'm sure it has happened and could continue in rare instances b…

> make serious medical decisions Did you sneak that in by mistake? Kids shouldn't be making any serious medical decisions for obvious reasons. This is law in many countries.

More like, learn how to evaluate those decisions and advocate for their own healthcare, which is something everyone needs to learn and practice in the US eventually.

Medical interventions for adolescents is always going to be controversial and no simple heuristic will solve it. Hopefully if kids are more comfortable expressing their identity and not comforming to traditional stereotypes then medical treatments will feel less necessary.

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

#402

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

smt88 wrote: post #357
labster wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a child in a public school, you have no right to freedom of association, and no right to freedom from association. Your school chooses your classes, and the state will use violence to ensure you attend those classes, bully or not. In home school, there is less people and more choice. There are no perverse incentives that value attendance over education and health.

A) You absolutely have freedom of association in public school. There is statutory and empirical intolerance for bullying, to the point that libertarians have been complaining that there isn't enough due process for the alleged bullies. Parents can also easily move kids to other classes to avoid unwelcome company. B) There is, in practice, no meaningful freedom of association in the real world. Childhood is an approp…

You know how good black / gray hat hackers are at circumventing the law or just don't even think about it?

Yeah, bullies generally aren't scared by "the rules" or by the fact that what they're doing is technically illegal either.

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

#403

Post by watwut »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #287
gemstones wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12/13 of the circle of homeschooling families that made up our socialization group in the 90s/00s have gone no contact with their parents now. Congrats on your success, it’s not the norm.

People stop talking to their parents because the relationship isn't good, not because they didn't get to take a turn being shit on in public school.

The "your choice to homeschool me harmed me" is point of contention and literally the conflict in some cases.

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

#404

Post by YZF »

cogman10 wrote: post #303
Hayvok wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We homeschool our four children, are religious, most of our friends homeschool, and this is nonsense. We love the schedule flexibility of homeschooling, the ability to let our kids explore their own interests more, and most of all - we just love being with our kids and they get to have their siblings and parents all day. > That's because teaching kids is super hard and real easy to mess up. Forgive me, but this is ju…

My concern is primarily around standards of education. If you gave your kids wonderful educations with excellent curriculum, more power to you. The issue I have is that's not universal. It's that I've seen far too many examples of children that are illiterate. Examples of lazy parents doing things like taking a walk in the park and saying "see, we did biology today!". Examples of parents that "oops, forgot to do scho…

A walk in the park, identifying plants, studying birds and other wildlife, can be "we did biology today". I went to school and I basically learnt zero biology in all 12 years of school. I didn't have a ton of interest and I didn't have good teachers. You learn very little at school in general which is something you find out in your first year of university.

I had to make up a final exam at school for a subject I didn't take. I covered the entire material for 2 years in a couple of weeks and passed the final. That's pretty much my experience of school- 2 weeks worth of material stretched over 2 years. A glorified daycare system. How can you teach a class of 25 young individuals where 90% couldn't care less, anything?

That said I agree this (EDIT: homeschooling) is not for everyone and not everyone does it for the right reasons.

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

#405

Post by licebmi__at__ »

silverpepsi wrote: post #244
glitchc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This means the kids gather together in one location because many kids can learn from the person doing the teaching. >Often as well it makes sense for the parents all to contribute a little money so that instead of the parents having to teach things that they are not expert in, the can pay as a group for someone with subject expertise to assist. >It can be problematic though gathering so many kids into one house for…

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…

> Parents won't force their kids to continue to be around others they dislike

Ha, you would be surprised. Parents will totally force kids to be around people they dislike. I mean my parents knew that I was bullied in my private, free association school. Even after one asshole pulled a knife on me and the school wouldn’t do a thing because he was from a rich family in my small town, they still decided to kept me in there because “it has good academic level/learning to deal with these people is good/kids will be kids/”.

But hey, maybe you are right and free association is good. After all they kicked me out because of absenteeism when I decided to bail out of school because it was living hell.

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

#406

Post by tp34 »

labster wrote: post #348
paraknight wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As a child in a public school, you have no right to freedom of association, and no right to freedom from association. Your school chooses your classes, and the state will use violence to ensure you attend those classes, bully or not. In home school, there is less people and more choice. There are no perverse incentives that value attendance over education and health.

> In home school, there is less people and more choice.

I think you meant "there are fewer people." Were you home schooled? Perhaps public school English would have been a better option.

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

#407

Post by jen20 »

sarchertech wrote: post #254
sho_hn wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this maybe the problem to address, then? Reading this from outeide the US, it's bizarre to me that people don't want a professional, trained teacher who can do a better job than they could.

School is local in the US, so there’s no point in generalizing when discussing things like teacher salary. That aside, a fantastic highly trained teacher with 30 students, isn’t likely to outperform a mediocre teacher devoting their full time to 1 or 2. I wasn’t homeschooled myself but I did help my homeschooled younger (by 20 years) sister with math. If I had the time to devote 30 hours a week or so I’m fairly confi…

> there’s no point in generalizing when discussing things like teacher salary.

I bet there isn’t a single US public school district where teacher pay keeps pace with minimum wage when divided by the number of hours spent working.

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

#408

Post by emodendroket »

Home schooling seems so harmful to socialization and such a vehicle for teaching ridiculous nonsense (or just not really teaching much of anything at all) that I think the countries that make it illegal have the right idea. It's even more egregious that some states are, apparently, actually throwing money at completely unregulated "micro-schools" where you are taught by someone with no qualifications whatsoever.

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

#409

Post by emodendroket »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #287
gemstones wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12/13 of the circle of homeschooling families that made up our socialization group in the 90s/00s have gone no contact with their parents now. Congrats on your success, it’s not the norm.

People stop talking to their parents because the relationship isn't good, not because they didn't get to take a turn being shit on in public school.

You don't see how the choice to voluntarily socially isolate your kid might strain your relationship with them?

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

#410

Post by [deleted] »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #355
JackMorgan wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very good point. Public and private schools for all of recorded history have countless examples of child abuse. Kids die with alarming frequency in public schools. In 2022 there was an average of one shooting a week in US public schools. Even if you decide that the risks are not that high of a kid actually dying, there's a very real chilling effect. There's now paranoia, stress, and an atmosphere of fear. These are…

> In 2022 there was an average of one shooting a week in US public schools. Not to downplay the tragedy of what we think of in terms of a school shooting… But the claim you are making is NOT what we think of, a Covington or Coloumbine or Uvalde. That stat is a gun control talking point intentionally designed to mislead. That list counts any shooting within a few blocks of a school, and at any time of day. There is on…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN