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Homeschooling hits record numbers

reason.com

421–430 of 878 posts

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#421
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume wives just want to work and many wouldn't jump at the chance to be able to stay home with their children, and also socialize with other friends outside of some office job environment?

that’s a great fantasy but when you consider, statistically, how many marriages end in divorce - that’s a foolish plan. EVERYONE thinks their marriage is different or special. Maybe working part time is OK, you at least have some job history. But no work history for 10+ years? Great ways to put all your eggs into 1 basket and potentially end up a poor single mom. And i say this as a husband and father.

If your wife wanted to stay home with the kids and not work, you would have forced her into the rat race or given her what she wants? It is not a foolish plan to confidently honor your vows and act accordingly. Condemning a wife who wants to raise her children as best as possible and to enjoy herself, to working for the man in some corporate gig and then blaming it on her need for work experience once you guys get divorced is dystopian nonsense. Just be a good husband and father, ya know? You do not have to saddle yourself with the problems of others which you yourself don't have out of some statistical optimality calculation. Just take control of your life. I say this as a father and husband.

"I know you wanted to stay home honey, and yes we have enough money and yes it would be good for the kids... but you have to think of your resume and work experience, we might get divorced someday. This very achievable situation is simply a fantasy" lol. My wife would be horrified and incredibly sad if I treated her this way.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman. How do you do that? Seems like it would be impossible to replicate the experience of learning to navigate daily social interactions in a mixed group of people, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.

Easy - homeschooling may include but does not require "in the home" any more than "homework" is required to be done in your house. I was homeschooled and have homeschooled my three kids. Never has that meant "only at home and only with my family". My kids have been in co-op classes, taken classes from Art or Technical instruction centers (piano lessons, voice classes, programming, robotics), enrolled in community cla…

Just redefine homeschooling to include enrollment at schools and community colleges, tada.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#423
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've identified examples of values, but you have forgotten to link them to the left, forgotten to show if they are controversial and, probably most importantly, forgotten to show how schools are borderline pushing indoctrination of them.

Each of those is well within public knowledge.

In other words, "Trust me, bro!"

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#424
This is another item high on the “in the future we will all have been against this” list.

Well funded public education is a bedrock of fair equal society (which is why the right attacks it ever since its invention).

Public education isn’t perfect but it is far better for individual and society than any alternative (including any religious run schools)

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#425
I went to college with a few homeschooled kids. They were by far the least capable of "normal" social interaction. Some were quite book smart, but they had trouble communicating with others, so they couldn't demonstrate it.

Also a fun side effect, they mispronounced a lot of words that they had only ever seen in books but never heard out loud. One of them was self-aware enough to ask us to correct him.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#426

The biggest misunderstanding I hear year-over-year is homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? Parents of healthy children should give 0 s*ts of societal/political pressure against…

> Your kids are a bad influence for whatever reason? Not my problem to fix.

Not your problem to fix for sure - but it is your problem to equip your child to comfortably weather. There are bad influences out in the world and they generally have outsized effects on their social and professional scenes. In fact, the kind of curated, limited community you're advocating for is one where bad influences thrive.

> So much time and resources, to produce what exactly? A piece of paper and fancy picture to stare at?

I certainly agree the degree is whatever - but I think you're really under-valuing the social-gauntlet aspect of school. You will have classmates who kind of (or really) suck. You will need to do your work anyway. You will be incentivized to learn perseverance and a self-centered locus of control. These are valuable skills that only come from actual exposure to bad influences.

Someone who's perfect in perfect conditions is going to struggle because the world is not perfect. The aims you highlight here make me think less of homeschooling than I did before.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#427
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pushing borderline indoctrination of controversial, left-ish values Which values? I haven't gone to school in a long time.

From the Conservative part of my social group, the main one applicable here is pushing elementary school kids to identify as trans. Because young children are very impressionable, and it is forbidden for staff to push back on on it at all, despite the science saying "there is absolutely no such thing as trans before age 12, and much possibility of social trauma from attempting it". Left-ish people tend to say "this d…

Name some examples of school systems "pushing" kids to identify as trans. The name of the school and individual teacher, plus the wording that counts as "pushing" would be fine. You say this is happening in the real world, so surely you can point to a few examples.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#429
home schooling is a very very priviledged concept to begin with so it's not surprising that there is quite a lot of hate for it.

as a former child I think home schooling is better in every way if there is a supporting environment built around it, but I also think public schooling introduces a lot of variety that is not seen in private or home schooling be it for better or worse, although my time in public school was rough and failed me in many ways I still wouldn't have it any other way.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#430
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? ...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it? I think your view is a very black and white one. Kid…

I can not conceive of a worse way to teach a kid how to behave in Adult social settings than to throw them into a group of other kids who have just as little experience as they do and then expect the group to "figure it out". This is not to say that there aren't some homeschooling parents who practice a form of extreme isolation which produces what I would regard as an equally bad outcome as public school. But by the…

> I can not conceive of a worse way to teach a kid how to behave in Adult social settings than to throw them into a group of other kids who have just as little experience as they do and then expect the group to "figure it out".

You are aware of teachers, yes?

> Probably because well run homeschooling groups tend to have high parental involvement

Everything I've read shows that putting absolutely all else aside, parental involvement is key to a child's success. So perhaps the reason your by the numbers evidence shows home schooling to be better is simply because it's a self-selecting group of involved parents.

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