We started homeschooling our kids during the pandemic with a neighborhood group, and it went really well. Everything about them improved, not just their academic performance, but also their mood got way more positive about learning. Now we have them in private school and.. it seems to be going fairly well. They don't have the irritability that they did in public schools, and I think my children are much happier. From my perspective, there's just too much chaos in public education for healthy learning.
Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
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Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#52[dead]
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think possibly the worst place to learn and practice social skills is from other kids who are just as in the dark as you are. In my experience a home schooled child is significantly more likely to be good at social skills than a public schooled child. They are also adept at navigating adult conversation and social situations much sooner.
My experience is the absolute opposite of yours. In all seriousness, there is a trend of homeschooled kids coming to the local large high school for the extracurriculars, and the school offering Autism testing, because they are so far behind socially. I find it interesting that your experience is the opposite. Where in the world do you live?
> the school offering Autism testing, because they are so far behind socially.
Do you have any published evidence for this?
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#54We're homeschooling our kids. I was pretty against it at first, but seeing our education system degrade to the state it is today, and being honest about my schooling experience definitely opened me up to it. I think the biggest argument for schooling is the socialization aspect of it. I don't know about the rest of you but I was bullied pretty relentlessly throughout grade school and it completely changed my personal…
Check for homeschooling groups in your area. Meet and talk to parents, you’ll find out all about it including resource centers for when your child needs to learn topics where you are weak.
We’ve been homeschooling for 7 years. Our child’s social experience has increased both quantitatively and qualitatively. From few/constantly bullied physically and sexually, to many/nice thoughtful friends who will jump in and defend her instead of filming her, should things go down. She’s also a leader, does service for her community, and (proud papa moment here) at her 4th debate competition (3 per year in this league) won 9th place speaker and 3rd place team. Her team swept the series of 4 rounds. The only way their team could do that…wait for it…lots of practice aka socialization.
The “socialization” boogeyman is one of the most overplayed red herrings about homeschooling IMO.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#55> a largely unregulated practice once confined to the ideological fringe Tell me your bias without telling me you're biased.
It's biased in the same way an unchoked shotgun shoots pellets with wider dispersion. K-12 education done independently, atomized from regional or national institutions, means people come out more different, so the edges of the cluster are further away. Homeschoolers are biased about 43% to white and rural, so it's pretty fair that the fring is going to be on that side of things. I'm kind of stumped as to how that's…
You can't tell me with a straight face that public education is a uniform experience in the US.
Just read through the comments other people have posted in subthreads here about their own experiences.
My own school had a wide range of "don't bother learning, get pregnant and drop out" to "goes on to elite university" students, and everything in-between.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#56The problem with home schooling is that it is a solution for the rich and leaves all of the poor kids behind.
It is almost exclusively a middle class activity. Also not that expensive if one parent is home. I knew many homeschooled kids who were just given a math textbook and worked through it. You only go to math class in public school for about 182 hours a year, so a diligent kid can do a year of math in a few months no problem.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#57The problem with home schooling is that it is a solution for the rich and leaves all of the poor kids behind.
Yes it is. People forget this because they live in a bubble. It’s like remote work, nice for the laptop class, but not possible for the person growing your food and manufacturing your tesla.
Oh, there's definitely poor people doing it as well. Not necessarily as well.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#58This is a fundamental change of life, and it’s astonishing that it’s so persistent. It is pretty misleading for this article to talk about homeschooling being a “fundamental change” without mentioning that homeschooling was the default practice for most of human history. If anything, this is just a return to a long-established practice, not a fringe movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance.
> There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance.
I better example might be freedom from surveillance. It's a totally fringe lifestyle to not be tracked everywhere you go, at least in a developed country.
But your rhetoric might be useful for shooting down privacy advocates during the next dust-up. Privacy may have been common in the past but now its fringe, just like animal sacrifice. Key escrow is the future!
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about that is untrue?
Nothing whatsoever - they are technically correct (the best kind of correct). And yet it is also a descriptor that is likely to prime the reader with a negative connotation. There's a reason that witness oaths require not only "nothing but the truth", but first of all "the whole truth".
I read it as acknowledging a preconception the reader is likely to have and therefor building rapport with the reader, not necessarily a sign of bias by the author.
Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many home-schooling success stories, and also many home-schooling horror stories. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-pr...
It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren’t a lack of public school horror stories…
There are plenty of 'public school' horror stories because these things are public and can be audited in a great number of cases.
You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you'll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you'll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bunch of religious organizations that homeschooled most of their children with educations that I'd consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap/uneducated labor they could abuse.