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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#421

Post by svnt »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #254
woodruffw wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it? This is prejudice in the most basic sense: you literally don't know any of these things about the people you're surrounded by in a society. The person who rides the bus next to you could be a couch potato, or a talented artist, or something entirely different that simply isn't legible to you . I don't…

I feel like you and the parents post are compatible views of the world that could be simultaneously held in the same brain without dissonance. Reading your comment, it seems to focus on the individual. “The person” you know nothing about. The parent comment seems to be Bayesian, the probability of “the person” being something. I do think it’s possible to simultaneously believe that: * every single person you meet in…

I feel like you both got and missed the point, and it relies on your misuse of exceptional that doesn’t escape the original discussion:

Society needs and has exceptional people living in communes, in the financial district, in software development communities, and yes even in Springfield, Illinois.

Sharing your values or not does generally not correlate with exceptional.

If you are just looking for someone in your field to learn a trade from, well, great, but that is hardly the intent of primary education.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#422

Post by pastage »

liontwist wrote: post #277
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 people could absolutely read. > schooling fixed all that Not globalization, industrialization, and urbanization?

I can not talk for the US, but in Sweden it was schooling. I think Sweden has better literacy rates earlier than the US, but I guess I really should compare this on a state level considering how the US works. I am pretty sure that it is a political goal not an economic one, this is obvious considering US black literacy levels took until 1979 to be comparable to whites. I would like to point out that the Danish nobility discussed but decided against keeping poor and oppressed farmers illiterate in the 18th century, so it is not really an issue of globalization.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#423

Post by simonbarker87 »

dijit wrote: post #420
globalise83 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of school you went to sounds very different from the grammar school that my working-class father went to in the 1960s and that helped him escape a life of asbestos-breathing drudgery in moribund shipyards.

For non-british readers; state-funded Grammar schools famously, were abolished. (I’m being downvoted, but this just objective fact, and something my grandfather brings up commonly). EDIT: according to a lot of HN comments; they still seem to exist but they aren't evenly distributed. There certainly were none in my city. Despite one being named a grammar school, it does not follow a grammar school curriculum: https://…

No they weren’t. There are still many (163 according to a very quick google search) selective schools in the UK with entrance based on taking the 11+ exam.

Edit to clarify they are state funded and not private.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#424

Post by ImPleadThe5th »

Come from a family of teachers.

From what I hear, it really feels like parents are more willing to homeschool than to be engaged with their children's education.

You thinking your kid needs some additional sauce to not be "average". Rad, teach them that at home. What about sending your kid to school prevents you from doing that?

I'm not saying school is perfect. But lately Parents care more than students about getting an "A" and if not it's the "Damn Teacher's" fault.

They want to protect their kids from the discomfort of not doing well in school. When they should be working with their student to help develop their talents.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#425

Post by simonbarker87 »

dijit wrote: post #399
Nursie wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right to start by saying this isn't universal worldwide, or even within Britain. You describe hell. But I don't believe that your experience is dominant or even that common in the UK. Which generation are you from?

I’m 35 now, so, millennial; for additional context I was brought up in a city called Coventry which is a city that was in decline during that period. (just like most of the north of the UK following Thatcher’s closing of the mines). As a consequence of this experience, though, I saw that I wasn’t exactly entirely unique either, as there were other children treated as I was and we sought each other out. So I know that…

I have some friends who teach in Cov, there are some particularly bad schools in the city sadly. Sorry to hear you went through one of them. The effective postcode lottery of schools has an awful affect on how the part of our lives plays out.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#426

Post by TeMPOraL »

thih9 wrote: post #411
bill_joy_fanboy wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forced internment for children Where I live (U.S.), new schools are literally built like prisons... each wing is laid out from a central "observation area" for the administrators. It's just a panopticon design modeled after penitentiaries. I was with my family in our new local high school. My dad and I were the only two who noticed the layout.

The panopticon design was originally intended for schools too, as well as other institutions: > Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums. He devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison, so the term now usually refers to that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon Whether it’s friendly and encourages healthy develop…

The criticism section of the Wikipedia article focuses on political aspects, but to me, the very idea of keeping someone feeling like they're always watched sounds like psychological torture.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#427

Post by dijit »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #423
dijit wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For non-british readers; state-funded Grammar schools famously, were abolished. (I’m being downvoted, but this just objective fact, and something my grandfather brings up commonly). EDIT: according to a lot of HN comments; they still seem to exist but they aren't evenly distributed. There certainly were none in my city. Despite one being named a grammar school, it does not follow a grammar school curriculum: https://…

No they weren’t. There are still many (163 according to a very quick google search) selective schools in the UK with entrance based on taking the 11+ exam. Edit to clarify they are state funded and not private.

This is just incorrect information.

> By the end of the 1980s, all of the grammar schools in Wales and most of those in England had closed or converted to comprehensive schools. Selection also disappeared from state-funded schools in Scotland in the same period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school

There are private schools that call themselves grammar schools (paid schools, not state funded) and some grammar schools still exist in Northern Ireland.

But the system that defined what a grammar school is - has long since been abolished, and all free-access grammar schools were completely gone from my area before I was even born.

—-

EDIT: seems like the some state funded selective grammar schools exist but they are not exactly distributed evenly.

So, I am wrong; and this situation is actually significantly more class-enforcing than it used to be. Amazing.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#428

Post by woodpanel »

It's becoming fashionable outside the US as well. And the core reason is that public schools deteriorate.

Public school systems sucks at diversity. It demands parents and students to endure diversity (i.e. putting kids from all walks of life into a single class), while it delivers zero itself, i.e. refusing to diversify its offerings as affluent kids from high-iq parents need different schooling than the fresh foreign refugee-arrival from a war-torn country.

Teachers Unions make sure to deflct any "market pressure" from teachers and these unions' political arms (i.e. left-leaning progressive parties) rake in extra profits because they can cry wolf about the bad state of education or worsening abilities for poorer people to rise through the ranks via merit. Crocodile Tears.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#429

Post by brightball »

elcritch wrote: post #326
UltraSane wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Certainly a biased view of religious home schoolers. Most of my religious friends who homeschool are college educated and many have postgraduate degrees. Some do disbelieve evolution, or at least disdain it a bit. Pretty much all of them are motivated people however. Of course that's just my little bubble.

The hard thing for a lot of people to accept is that belief or lack thereof of evolution has no impact on daily life at all. It always comes up in these discussions as a boogeyman anyway.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#430

Post by entropyneur »

I think the author is simply wrong is their assumption. I'm pro-homeschooling, more or less fit the described profile and I don't see a slightest problem with my kid interacting with average people nor do I have contempt for them. The problem I see though is with putting the child into a non-voluntary community. Those tend to be toxic and prison-like.

Also, the school education is not crap because it's done by average or designed for the average. It's crap because it objectively can't adapt to an individual kid's pace. There's just no way around teaching kids in huge groups that doesn't involve everyone working as a teacher. Maybe AI will help here.

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