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

Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

newsletter.goodtechthings.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 1001 posts

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#461

Post by Simplex66 »

dijit wrote: post #389

OK I guess I’m going to go against the deluge of comments here; And give an appreciable reason instead of denigrating those who might choose this. The context, though, I am British. I grew up in Britain. I went to British school. I can’t speak universally about my experience, (even within all of Britain), because it’s my experience which is in one small area of the country. However, school, for me, was by far the sin…

I went to a state school in the North of England with a GCSE pass rate between 30-40% and this is a fair description of what it was like. At the time the performance of all schools was based on the percentage of students achieving at least a C including Maths and English, and as Goodhart’s law suggests this inevitably meant the school’s resources were optimised for getting students around the C grade borderline to pass while all other students didn’t get an education suited to their ability. The Gove reforms included changing how schools are assessed to a value-added measure, that I believe is commonly used in the United States, which has created the incentive for schools to focus on all students rather than just those near an arbitrary passing grade. The deeper underlying issue that’s harder to solve is the anti-aspirational culture that pervades through a lot of schools in deprived areas, in my experience most students didn’t really get the value a good education could bring to their lives and like the original comment treated it like internment rather than a route out of poverty.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#462

Post by tdeck »

pkkkzip wrote: post #279
bjt wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by the name and picture, I'm pretty sure Forrest Brazeal is a he.

We live in a social climate where we can't even assert ourselves of someone's gender based on their name out of fear from a very local special interest group that has far reaches into public education system and this is another big reason why parents who can't afford private school opt for home schooling. The fact that parent had to edit their comment and could not call a man a he answers the article's question very…

This is word salad. What does it mean to "assert yourself" of someone else's gender?

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#463

Post by JohnCClarke »

dijit wrote: post #389

OK I guess I’m going to go against the deluge of comments here; And give an appreciable reason instead of denigrating those who might choose this. The context, though, I am British. I grew up in Britain. I went to British school. I can’t speak universally about my experience, (even within all of Britain), because it’s my experience which is in one small area of the country. However, school, for me, was by far the sin…

I've always assumed that the babies grown in test tubes and graded into alphas to epsilons in Huxley's "Brave New World" are simply a metaphor for children going throught the UK school system.

In that case the homeschooled are akin to the "savage" in the story.

EDIT: corrected spelling!

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#464

Post by UltraSane »

Glyptodon wrote: post #349
UltraSane wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expulsion works." There really seems to be two kinds of public schools. One is willing to expel students who are violent and disruptive and this allows the students who are willing and able to learn to do so. The other refuses to expel violent and disruptive students and they make it nearly impossible for the willing and motivated students to actually learn.

There's a big difference between someone with an IEP (usually massive trauma and mental illness also) doing things and a "regular" student doing them. Expelling a kid usually just means they move to a different school, and all expulsion is doing is moving the burden down the chain, usually from more affluent places where parents are equipped to complain, to less affluent ones. Particularly if the room destroying-viol…

It hardly matters to other students WHY a particular student is making it very hard for them to learn and using up all the teacher's time. Only that they ARE.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#465

Post by UltraSane »

brightball wrote: post #429
elcritch wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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. "

Not accepting it leads to a profoundly WRONG worldview that bleeds into everyday life in many ways.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#466

Post by jamiedumont »

dijit wrote: post #389

OK I guess I’m going to go against the deluge of comments here; And give an appreciable reason instead of denigrating those who might choose this. The context, though, I am British. I grew up in Britain. I went to British school. I can’t speak universally about my experience, (even within all of Britain), because it’s my experience which is in one small area of the country. However, school, for me, was by far the sin…

34 year old who grew up on Guernsey (small island south and independent of Britain but with very much the same values) and went to a state-funded Grammar school for secondary and can't relate to all of this, but certainly most. The details are different but I agree that the education offered is subpar and the "socialisation" argument is bullshit. School left me feeling more isolated and alone than I've ever been.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#467

Post by defrost »

tdeck wrote: post #462
pkkkzip wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in a social climate where we can't even assert ourselves of someone's gender based on their name out of fear from a very local special interest group that has far reaches into public education system and this is another big reason why parents who can't afford private school opt for home schooling. The fact that parent had to edit their comment and could not call a man a he answers the article's question very…

This is word salad. What does it mean to "assert yourself" of someone else's gender?

It means the user, a relatively recent account, is trawling for bites. The KKK in the username and the slant of many of their comments might hint at a touch of bad faith edge lording.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#468

Post by jamiedumont »

JohnCClarke wrote: post #463
dijit wrote: post #389

OK I guess I’m going to go against the deluge of comments here; And give an appreciable reason instead of denigrating those who might choose this. The context, though, I am British. I grew up in Britain. I went to British school. I can’t speak universally about my experience, (even within all of Britain), because it’s my experience which is in one small area of the country. However, school, for me, was by far the sin…

I've always assumed that the babies grown in test tubes and graded into alphas to epsilons in Huxley's "Brave New World" are simply a metaphor for children going throught the UK school system. In that case the homeschooled are akin to the "savage" in the story. EDIT: corrected spelling!

I've not encountered "Brave New World" but I love (and can see) the metaphor!

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#469

Post by xboxnolifes »

from-nibly wrote: post #114
vodou wrote: post #40

One thing I've never understood with homeschooling: How come parents think they have the competence to be a teacher? Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator.

That's like half your job as a parent: teaching your kids stuff ( the other half being: keeping them alive). You are THE most qualified person on the planet to teach your own kids anything.

Well, maybe not best, but it's also not something I would advocate for taking away from parents. It's silly to pretend parents need a degree to teach their kids something when teaching their kids how to live life is half of the job.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#470

Post by 20after4 »

bill_joy_fanboy wrote: post #403
dijit wrote: post #389

OK I guess I’m going to go against the deluge of comments here; And give an appreciable reason instead of denigrating those who might choose this. The context, though, I am British. I grew up in Britain. I went to British school. I can’t speak universally about my experience, (even within all of Britain), because it’s my experience which is in one small area of the country. However, school, for me, was by far the sin…

> 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.

In Missouri, high-school buildings use the same blueprints as state prisons. Why bother designing something custom? They serve the same purpose. They literally are prisons.

If a teenager fails to show up for school, a police officer will eventually show up to arrest their parents and place the teenager in the custody of a "foster family." Now both parent and teenager are imprisoned. And we are told this is freedom.

To make matters much much worse, children in state custody with the foster system are routinely exposed to all kinds of abuse. Many foster families operate like a profitable business where costs are minimized and care is entirely absent.

Post reply on HN