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Homeschooling hits record numbers

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Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#591

Post by eucyclos »

lapcat wrote: post #507
alphazard wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot, and it may be true, but I am very skeptical that it matters. The statistics about home-schooled children don't support the idea that they have horribly inaccurate models of the world guided mostly by religious thinking. Or if they do it doesn't seem to affect life achievement in any important way. Instead home-schooled children are typically more advanced at graduation and have higher lifetime achi…

> Especially when there is propaganda taught in the public schools that does warp the students' world views in ways that harms them and me. This sentence caused a record needle scratch sound in my head. I'm afraid to ask what you mean, and it seems like you might be afraid to say, because it's a bit bizarre to drop that line with no explanation.

I can give a very simple example - in my high school history class, the cold war was presented as a conflict between communism and democracy - despite the fact that on an economic field the conflict was clearly between communism and capitalism, while on a political field proponents of both systems were happy to subvert the democratic process whenever someone had the audacity to vote for the wrong economic system.

Ooh, as I was typing I thought of a better example - remember the four food groups? eight to twelve servings of grains per day? Less obviously propaganda, though I'd argue the farm lobbies pushing it count. But harms in terms of its link to obesity and heart disease are pretty damn stark.

Given that school children are a huge captive audience of future consumers/voters/employees it would be incredibly strange if the curriculum wasn't the target of all kinds of special interest groups that aren't perfectly aligned with public interest.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#592

Post by singpolyma3 »

dboreham wrote: post #464
ecshafer wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. There is the neighborhood kids, you have sports and clubs kids can join, religious groups. Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. Some people "homeschooling" I know are groups of parents getting together to educate their c…

Part of "socializing" is observing that one's parents aren't the absolute authority in the world. Parents sometimes butt heads with teachers, coaches etc. No home schooling scenario can provide this experience. I think it leads to enhanced levels of narcissism in both students and parents.

Why would you think homeschooled children have no teachers or coaches for their parents to butt heads with? I assure you this is not the case

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#593

Post by deadeye »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #583
deadeye wrote: post #580

The problem with public schools is that they are free and required (essentually). That is a bad combination. There is really nothing intrinsically good about the average public school. Many are filled with kids that aren't there to learn. From the attitudes seen in this forum, that seems to be OK, because school is paradoxically about "socializing", while most here report being bullied. As noticed here many home scho…

> Many are filled with kids that aren't there to learn. That's on the kid, not contingent on whether school is public. > most here report being bullied. Anecdotes like this are not worth much. What do the stats say? > There is really nothing intrinsically good about the average public school. Schools don't just socialize, though that is also important. Whether they succeed at educating well depends on more than one f…

>That's on the kid, not contingent on whether school is public.

Yes and no. The interest of the kid to learn is on the kid/family, for sure.

However, the fact that a kid who has no interest in learning is forced to go to public school is a function of how public schools operate.

Again, free and required is a bad model. They should either be free and selective or, less ideally, available and costly.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#594

Post by eucyclos »

nlavezzo wrote: post #222
swannodette wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can afford it! "Grass-roots segregation hits records numbers" would be an equally fitting title.

What leads you to believe the reason parents are willing to dedicate huge amounts of their time and money to homeschool their children is racism? Maybe it's: - the terrible educational state of the school system? - the fact that device and social media addiction is a prevalent and growing problem that they don't want their kids brains rotted by? - they want to provide their kids an education based on experiential and…

I saw a study a while back - don't have the link handy - that while homeschooled kids of all ethnicities showed improved education outcomes compared to their public-school counterparts, African American kids improved the most. Not really surprising if they would otherwise be going to the worst schools!

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#595

Post by chongli »

wildzzz wrote: post #359
ecshafer wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. There is the neighborhood kids, you have sports and clubs kids can join, religious groups. Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. Some people "homeschooling" I know are groups of parents getting together to educate their c…

You don't need a degree in math to teach children age-appropriate math topics. Teachers don't become teachers just because they have a degree in that subject, they have been taught the methods on how to teach. Having prior knowledge of the subject is almost irrelevant. Teaching is really just applying solid methods on how to build knowledge from the most basic concepts as well as having the patience in dealing with h…

I have a math degree. I have been volunteer tutoring high school kids in math for 9 years. When a student comes to me for help I can always tell if their teacher has math anxiety. They teach the students extremely rigid methods and refuse to allow alternative approaches to solve the problems. They enforce this with grading and penalize students who don't toe the line.

Some of the methods these teachers use are incredibly awkward, bespoke approaches that baffle me for their obtuseness. It's incredibly frustrating to deal with and it has a negative effect on the students.

My approach has always been to try to find the method that makes the most sense to the student, and work with them on that. I don't have any issues adapting my style to the student's needs. I only struggle when the spectre of one of those bad math teachers looms over our shoulders.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#596

Post by biztos »

prng2021 wrote: post #546
ecshafer wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. There is the neighborhood kids, you have sports and clubs kids can join, religious groups. Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. Some people "homeschooling" I know are groups of parents getting together to educate their c…

Everytime I see these kinds of arguments, it sounds like someone desperately trying to argue that a park playground is almost as entertaining for kids as an amusement park. Your example of 5 kids socializing with each other is definitely better than 1 kid at home. It’s also definitely worse than learning to socialize in a school of 500 kids each day. This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500…

I went to a school of about 50 kids, and I often wished I’d been at a school of 500 or more kids, but looking back I’m very glad my family didn’t opt for the school of 5000 kids.

At 50 kids, if you were social you definitely had friends (not just acquaintances) from very different socioeconomic backgrounds. At 50 kids, you could play sports on the official team if you wanted to and showed up and didn’t slack off. You knew everyone and there were no cliques, that would have been ridiculous with 50 kids.

I could go on, but those are just a few things (IMO good things) you get in a tiny school that you probably wouldn’t have at 500 kids and surely not at 5000.

I find it strange that you don’t hear of more homeschooling groups pulling together to create something like the 50-kid school.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#597

Post by eucyclos »

Nextgrid wrote: post #502
hereme888 wrote: post #234

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…

> hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children Unless you can magically guarantee (or have enough money to fund their whole life) your children will never have to interact with "problem" people, they will need to learn to deal with those people one way or another. And it's better to do so in a low-stakes situation like school.

The trouble I have with this line of argument is that, at least for male children, the skills one learns for dealing with 'problem' people in school (IE skills one would learn in an MMA gym) are not relevant for dealing with problem people afterwards.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#598

Post by Melatonic »

eucyclos wrote: post #573
prng2021 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime I see these kinds of arguments, it sounds like someone desperately trying to argue that a park playground is almost as entertaining for kids as an amusement park. Your example of 5 kids socializing with each other is definitely better than 1 kid at home. It’s also definitely worse than learning to socialize in a school of 500 kids each day. This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500…

>This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500 kids would somehow have less diversity of personality, thought, languages, physical features, intelligence, etc. I have such an argument - have you considered the amount of forced social conformity in a public school versus a community of homeschooled people? Humans are weird in a way that 'public school culture' tries to paper over.

What social conformity is forced by schools these days ? Only one I can really remember was we had specific uniforms for PE (basically just gym shorts and a tshirt)

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#599

Post by lapcat »

eucyclos wrote: post #591
lapcat wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially when there is propaganda taught in the public schools that does warp the students' world views in ways that harms them and me. This sentence caused a record needle scratch sound in my head. I'm afraid to ask what you mean, and it seems like you might be afraid to say, because it's a bit bizarre to drop that line with no explanation.

I can give a very simple example - in my high school history class, the cold war was presented as a conflict between communism and democracy - despite the fact that on an economic field the conflict was clearly between communism and capitalism, while on a political field proponents of both systems were happy to subvert the democratic process whenever someone had the audacity to vote for the wrong economic system. Ooh…

> remember the four food groups?

LOL this cannot be a serious reason for homeschooling. You're trolling me, right? Please tell me you're trolling me.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#600

Post by aeroevan »

Voultapher wrote: post #342
QuercusMax wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooled kids have much more flexible schedules which can allow them to do things in the community during the daytime that are not available to kids who have to go to school in-person full time. This can include volunteer work or part time jobs working with the public and interacting with people of all ages. Why do you think you being forced into a monoculture of only kids your own age would help your interaction…

Because I've met several homeschooled adults over the years, and talking to them that's something most of them had in common when explaining the impact it had on their life. Looking for more objective data I found this one source that seems to be written by people not already convinced of the desirability of homescooling [1], forgive me for being skeptical of the objectivity of places called "national home education…

From those slides (I did have to open them via google, the direct link didn't seem to work):

  Discussion
  • Evidence from this study and others suggest that homeschoolers may not
  be a socially isolated group
  • Instead, homeschoolers in these samples seem to have peer networks
  and social connections that arise in conventional and unconventional
  social settings and they report being well-connected later in life
  • It is important to note that although this study contributes to the
  literature, it has methodological limitations (e.g. small sample, self-reports)
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