Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#531

Post by ArtemZ » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:06 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #141

Economics plays into this too. Housing in good school districts is often much more expensive, and private schools are ridiculously expensive. COVID is another factor. Anecdotal of course, but I've only met two home schooled families since moving to our present city 3 years ago, and one of them started out of necessity during the pandemic and found that it worked well and so never went back -- but they're a one income…

Are private schools all that ridiculously expensive though? I'm enrolling my kid into University School (a private boys only school in Cleveland) and the tuition is like 30k$ per year.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#532

Post by dijit » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:09 PM UTC

wink wrote: post #530

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…

That sucks and I really don't mean to well actually here.. but in that scenario - which doesn't sound like the default outcome of going to a public school anywhere - would this not be "just" a reason to go for homeschooling later, only after the system has provably failed (long-term). Also maybe I have a false impression but I always thought people decided about homeschooling long before the kid(s) get to normal scho…

My argument is that school experiences vary drastically, that everyone commenting before me was saying that homeschooling their children was egotistical, stupid and harmful.

When I, have a good reason why I might consider not sending my own kids to state school, because my experiences were so bad.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#533

Post by _heimdall » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:17 PM UTC

I know quite a few people who have started homeschooling their kids in recent years, including one who stopped homeschooling their kiss last year and will be pulling their kids back out of school this spring.

The most common reasons I hear are either that the public schools they are zoned for are terrible, mainly complaints over safety and/or drugs. The other common reason is just not seeing the value in the education being provided, often complaining of teacher quality or the design of a school system modelled after a program meant to churn out good factory workers.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#534

Post by Freak_NL » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:19 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #524

wccrawford wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a school that had a lot of good teachers, and I learned a lot from them. But when it came to bullies, the school was just as you described. Worse, the punishment for being in a fight was the same whether you started it or you were just beaten up. If you made the fight get noticed, you got punished. It was quite clear that they had no interest in stopping the fights, just in making sure they didn't get repor…

> Worse, the punishment for being in a fight was the same whether you started it or you were just beaten up. If you made the fight get noticed, you got punished. I'm not saying that this is anything close to optimal , but it should be noted that under this system (which is reminiscent of the way ancient Chinese criminal law worked, per Legal Systems Very Different from Ours [0]) people who get beat up should still re…

> […] so it's highly unlikely that anyone will want to beat you up again.

That is, unfortunately, not how this works. The only ways to stop bullying are to be able to stand up to the bullies, which usually is not a realistic proposition (you wouldn't get bullied in the first place if you could) and can lead to further escalation (right on up to shootings or stabbings); to have a very, very empathic teacher who will put their foot down; or to have solid anti-bullying programs which use effective, proven methods to stamp out bullying.

Mind that nothing will deter a really determined bully, and getting punished because your victim spoke up instead of accepting the bully's power will escalate things from 'bullying just because you are available' to 'bullying because I now want you, and specifically, you, as miserable as you can be, all the time'.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#535

Post by piokoch » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:23 PM UTC

rgblambda wrote: post #481

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.

There were problems with the grammar school system as well. They were created to provide a pathway to the middle class for bright children from working class families. But the entrance exam was heavily biased in favour of children from middle class backgrounds. Famously the first 11+ tests had questions like "Name the various types of servants in a household and what they do". In later years, getting out of school tu…

"Name the various types of servants in a household and what they do"

This is incredible...

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#536

Post by pie_flavor » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:25 PM UTC

maxehmookau wrote: post #490

wisty wrote: post #332

People are getting disillusioned by education; partly because of politics, but also because there's a good reason not to trust the experts. Phonics and memorising times tables in schools should be as controversial as hand washing in hospitals, but they aren't, and that's just the tip of the iceberg that a very average layperson can see. If a doctor or nurse or scientist says something is "evidence based", it works (m…

> because there's a good reason not to trust the experts I hate this. Where else do we get knowledge from if not experts and academics in their fields? That's how humans grow our collective knowledge. People learn, gather evidence, build knowledge and then share it. The people who have done the learning over many years are called "experts". Those are the people I want to learn from, no? > conservative "evidence based…

When the experts say that algebra should not be taught in 8th grade, and the experts say that guessing at words instead of sounding them out is a better way to learn to read, and the experts say that calc can be replaced with 'data science' which is actually just data literacy, and so on and so forth, I'm not really interested in how the precise definition of 'experts' actually refers to something about 'growing our collective knowledge'. I'm more interested in staying away from all that. It's a fun gotcha to say things like 'well evidence either is or isn't', but it doesn't change the material reality of who's doing what and what they're likely to be doing in the near future. Public schooling is fucked, the group of people saying 'listen to the experts' is the group of people making it worse, a lot of it is explicitly political, and your best options for guaranteeing that you avoid it are homeschooling or parochial school, regardless of what words and rhetoric can be said about it.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#537

Post by wink » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:27 PM UTC

froh wrote: post #351

I find looking beyond the rim of your own plate such an inspiring thing when it comes to schooling. Germany for example prohibits home schooling. don't breed detached extremists. however Germany thinks binning kids into handcrafts, simple office jobs and academia at age nine (!) is a brilliant idea o-O. but then on the upside again, you will go to school for at least 13 years if you get _any_ kind of qualified profes…

Not sure inspiring is the word I would hve picked :D

Overall it sounds a tad better than the US, but far from perfect.

Especially not accounting for different developmental speed of kids annoys me, although from what I heard it'd a bit better these days than in the 90s - e.g. even if they sent you to the Realschule instead of Gymnasium and at age 15 you decided you wanted to go to university they wouldn't make your life extra hard.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#538

Post by jvvw » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:29 PM UTC

rgblambda wrote: post #481

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.

There were problems with the grammar school system as well. They were created to provide a pathway to the middle class for bright children from working class families. But the entrance exam was heavily biased in favour of children from middle class backgrounds. Famously the first 11+ tests had questions like "Name the various types of servants in a household and what they do". In later years, getting out of school tu…

My parents were both grammar school kids with working class parents, who didn't get any special prep for the 11+ beyond what their state primary school gave them. Both were the first people in their families to go to university and both managed to get into Oxford (where they met!). There was definitely a sweet point period when the system did what it intended in that sense, but there was obviously the drawback that if you ended up in the comprehensive system, you were stuck there and you had a situation where children got labelled at a young age.

Obviously some areas still have grammar schools and the impression I get from people living in those areas is that to stand a fighting chance with the 11+, you need out of school tuition or for your parents to be educated enough and have time to tutor you yourself. House prices are also obviously high in grammar school areas too! I've seen recent 11+ papers and having bright children at state schools around that age who are at the top of their year academically, I think they would struggle with them without any preparation or tuition.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#539

Post by portaouflop » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:31 PM UTC

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 hated school as well but I would still disagree on almost all points with you.

But I was lucky enough to go to a good public school, found many lifelong friends there, learned a ton of aside skills that help me now in my personal and professional life.

I think it’s really sad that more and more people opt out of society, either in school or elsewhere. I can understand it to some extent but I think everyone will come of poorer in the end if we all sit in our separate boxes, only thinking about ourselves and how we can profit more.

I’m usually optimistic about the future but this is a hella depressing trend.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#540

Post by wink » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 12:32 PM UTC

miek wrote: post #239

rayiner wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The remarkable thing is that Americans don’t understand their own civilization. They don’t learn anything substantive about the founding U.S. cultures (big differences between Puritans and Jamestown settlers). They don’t study European history as a required course so they know almost nothing about how the modern world came to be (Westphalian nation states, etc). And they learn almost no world history beyond ancient c…

I attended the best school district in my state, and the history education was absolutely miserable. Didn't cover either World War, but covered and re-covered early American history in a very boring, unrevealing way.

Not sure how it is today but in the late 90s it felt like we had a section about Nazis and WW2 every year in high school (in Germany). Yes, I get it, it's important - but it's not important to rehash it every year for 9 years.

That said, overall I was pretty happy with history class.