Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very, very wrong. I know numerous homeschooled peers who have advanced degrees, including PhDs.
You know what they say about the plural of 'anecdote'.
Of course, but I can respond to anecdotes with anecdotes.
For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
491–500 of 597 posts
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1. Parents are not the only ones who push their own desires and beliefs. Thought experiment: how many members of the group that decides the curriculum vote Republican or Independent? Scuttlebutt (unverified by me) is that most folks in US schools and on US school boards are Democrats. Regardless of one’s opinion on political matters, that (if true) would suggest a certain uniformity of thought, and the likely prese…
As anyone who's been part of any bureaucracy knows, stated policy is often different than implemented practice. A lot of the issue with saying things like 'Republicans exercise control over school curriculums, thus the GOP is in charge of schools' misses the point that, regardless of the curriculum, the overwhelming majority of teachers vote democrat, which means -- again regardless of the curriculum --they will inje…
Meanwhile states across the country are passing laws threatening teachers with firing or criminal penalties for teaching the "wrong" things, which exerts its own kind of influence which isn't subtle.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1. Parents are not the only ones who push their own desires and beliefs. Thought experiment: how many members of the group that decides the curriculum vote Republican or Independent? Scuttlebutt (unverified by me) is that most folks in US schools and on US school boards are Democrats. Regardless of one’s opinion on political matters, that (if true) would suggest a certain uniformity of thought, and the likely prese…
Did you totally miss the part where I clearly indicated that I’ve not bothered to research and find out if it’s true? Hanging around schools to observe it firsthand would be pretty damned creepy at my age since I don’t work in education and don’t have kids. Nor do I pay much attention to the board elections for the same reason. The fact that those running for board positions typically have their political affiliation…
> Did you totally miss the part where I clearly indicated that I’ve not bothered to research and find out if it’s true?
Oh. Then why do you think you have anything worth saying on a topic you freely admit complete ignorance of?
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That’s completely wrong. The state with the absolute lowest average teacher salary is Mississippi. Average salary is $48k. Assuming 12
hour days for 190 days a year, that’s about 3x minimum wage.
There are many districts with much higher averages. Just one example. In a relatively low cost of living state, Fulton county GA—the county Atlanta is in—the starting salary is $56k, and $62k with a masters. It goes up every year from there.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tbh I still associate homeschooling with conservative christianity. They have a much stronger incentive to homeschool than others by a large margin.
That's interesting to hear, as someone living in a different country I always assume that the reason to homeschool is so you could give your children better education.
That's a common reason here, too. It's why I was homeschooled—my parents were perfectly content to send us to public school until we moved to another state and had a terrible local school.
OP's perception is because we also have a much larger conservative-Christian cohort than most other developed countries. As the grandparent points out, that leads to a large percentage of homeschoolers doing it for non-academic reasons, which skews stats and public perception.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep GP, we can clearly see that homeschooling has changed a lot.
It has. Some of the issues parents have to worry about today parents of the past couldn’t even imagine.
Yep, bullying and poor pedagogy I can tolerate, but I draw the line at teaching kids about condoms and consent.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
The school system has many problems. That doesn't mean that homeschooling isn't 10x worse.
In aggregate, sure. At a personal level, probably not. Just pick whatever works.
So simple! Why didn't I think of that.
The reality is that what homeschooling parents think is "right" is often extremely noxious and damaging. Again, not all of them sure, but a large portion.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
The school system has many problems. That doesn't mean that homeschooling isn't 10x worse.
Just because you can point to cases of homeschooling that's 10x worse than the average public school doesn't mean there aren't homeschooling environments that aren't much better, and public school environments that aren't MUCH MUCH worse.
What a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. Were you homeschooled? /s
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The problem is you’re on HN, which probably means you’re quite intelligent. A lot of parents that homeschool aren’t, and I sure as hell wouldn’t trust them to teach my kid anything past grade 4.
There’s plenty of teachers who I wouldn’t trust to teach any kid past 4th grade as well. I’m glad that public education exists, but I’m also glad there’s an opt out mechanism for people who don’t feel it’s working.
There will obviously be failures , but I don’t think it’s that hard for an average parent teaching 1-4 kids to outperform a trained teacher with 30.
Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a strawman. The steelman version is something like the following chain of reasoning: (a) gender identity is something that everyone has that is distinct from sex, (b) with enough introspection, everyone can discover their true gender identity, (c) if you don't have a strongly felt gender identity, you need to introspect, (d) if introspection does not yield certainty then this suggests genderfluidity, or even w…
Would you please explain the math example? I was in school until last year (Germany tho) but I don't get it (the 4chan argument about percentages and races?)
See for example a slide from education advocates which states that asserting "2 + 2 = 4" is "Covert White Supremacy".
https://twitter.com/HTheijsmeijer/status/1571174175162699778...
There was a huge popular discourse in 2020 specifically about whether 2 + 2 = 4. See e.g. Kareem Carr, who was a major participant: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostatistics/2020/09/kareem-ca...
The steelman argument for the subjectivity of math would be something like: the process of choosing how to represent/model a real world situation in mathematical terms may influence what conclusions can or will be reached under that model, because biased assumptions can sneak their way into the model.
To be clear, this is good knowledge and should be taught.
However, it is not an effective attack on the coherence of natural number arithmetic. We have to get students to a certain level of objective operational competence before they are ready to think about the subjectivity of mathematical modeling.