Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lottery is pretty rough on people, and a lot of the schools are not amazing.
What's "not amazing" about them?
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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
61–70 of 1001 posts
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to public school (not in SF) but the only "wokeness" was historically accurate — erm — history classes. We didn't have books banned in the library or English courses either. The lack of physical safety is a product of policy (or rejection of) by the same people whining about "wokeness".
The lack of physical safety is caused by many things, and I doubt you can lay the blame on people complaining about wokeness. There are bullys, drug dealers, gangs, normal hormonal teenagers fighting, interpersonal drama, romance, poverty. All sorts of things influencing the violence.
I was referring to complacency as it relates to guns and the horrific violence inflicted with said guns.
Bullies are everywhere. One runs X. You deal with them.
I never saw any drug dealers or gangs and the rest of what you’re describing sounds like what I’d expect as a normal part of growing up.
One of our many societal shortcomings (or outright failures) is that we treat poverty as a moral failing, not with any sort of kindness, interest in understanding the root cause(s) or meaningful attempts to address the issue.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#63One 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.
One thing I've never understood with public schooling: How come teachers think they have the competence to be in loco parentis? Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#64One 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.
I'm generally not a fan of home schooling in a lot of cases, part of what school does is expose you to a vertical slice of humanity, and you will almost certainly be dealing with that for the rest of your life.
HOWEVER... remember that "home schooled" doesn't mean "as a parent you are the only teacher" right? You can hire tutors, you can form teaching groups with other parents, you can use online resources, etc. If done WELL and with a sense of one's own limitations, and the need to socialize your child, homeschooling can work.
It's just unfortunate that so often homeschooling is used as a way to ensure that no outside influences interrupt a parent's particular brand of ideological indoctrination... although in the narrow case of tech parents, I suspect that's less of a driving force.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#65I have no idea how common this, I hadn’t much of this trend among tech weirdos before this article. The one thought that I imagine is being told you’re “above average” and “destined to do great things” your whole life by your socially-deemed successful parents is just another set of probably unrealistic expectations placed on kids.
I try and homeschool my kid when they are home (from school). I say some of those things, but I also say, when we are fixing a clogged drain by disassembling the plumbing. "You could be a plumber, lots of hard problem solving and you are not afraid to get dirty". You can have high expectations that they live an actualized life w/o projecting your own life-arc desires on them. If my kid turns out thoughtful, kind and…
> The problem with homeschooling is that rarely is someone so well rounded that they can supply the full spectrum of education that a child needs. Blackbody vs an RGB source emulating a full spectrum. We all have cognitive blindspots.
While this is true, it's not like schools are teaching kids a full spectrum of knowledge either. In particular, a lot of practical skills are often not taught in modern schools - personal finance, cooking, basic home maintenance and construction ("shop class"), etc. How valuable some of this stuff is will depend on the child of course.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#66One 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.
The USA hasn’t had a healthy education system for decades, so parents who have gone through that system are a) not very well educated and b) think they can do better.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#67One 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.
We don't think we have the competence to be a teacher. We would never presume to teach someone else's kids. We think we have a relationship with our own child that allows us to understand what they need and how to communicate with them in a way that works for them. We think we have the time (assuming one parent is full time parenting) to give our child the attention they need to excel. And we believe that a combinati…
You can do all that on top of a normal education.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Increasing the quantity and quality of good influences on your children is just good parenting. If I know there's a kid down the street who seems like he will grow up to be a criminal, and another kid who seems like he'll grow up to be a kind, hard-working, well adjusted person, there is a 100% guarantee I will encourage my kids to play with the second kid, not the first.
The poster above references the 'average person'. Do you think that the average person is not going to be a good influence?
Depends if your kid is above or below average.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#69The USA is going backwards in many, many areas and is no longer in the top of any important indices so this fits the bill.
Public school education is a shit show in many western countries. I'm not in the USA but all the talk about private schools and lotteries is very real. The only thing we don't have is charter schools leaching public funds.
Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
#70I live in a good area and have friends who work in a few different schools out here. Kids are throwing chairs at teachers. There are elementary school classrooms where ~1/4 students don't speak English. The reading/math skills are so dismal, any student who learns at home is bored as hell. Private schools are outrageously expensive. Homeschooling is becoming the pragmatic choice.
This seems to reflect a lot of what I hear about as well. Everything is too entrenched from a decision making standpoint for any one person to make a difference in reforms.
A free market fixes anything where people have the ability to "vote with their wallet" and simply stop paying for services which aren't meeting expectations when they find another that does. Things like employer sponsored health insurance are insulated from you choosing a different option for yourself and we get the situation that we currently have because of it.
Education is the same way but the only ways to vote with your wallet are...
1. Buy a house zoned for the school that you want.
2. Pay for private school.
3. Home school.
4. In some areas, school choice where you can choose from another of the available public options may be viable too.
The only long term solution here that has potential to fix things legislatively is a true school voucher program that would let you take the tax money assigned for your kids education and put it into whatever option you believed was actually best for their education.
This _should_ lead to a start-up like small business ecosystem with lots of small Montessori style schools especially for younger kids. Most likely a "neighborhood schools" model would pop up and parents would end up walking their kids to school again, even in suburban areas.
Most likely you would still see bigger options for high school still as teenagers crave more socialization. Sports would likely revolve more around communities than individual schools too.
You'd of course see some specialties. Schools advertising why they were the best option for your kids and then having to prove it in order to keep them. Yes, there would definitely be religious schools as there already are now.
My guess is that a lot of the current home school co-ops that are popular in my area would simply become suddenly funded because the parents involved as pretty happy with the model. I had a lot of biases against home schooling until I saw how these co-ops work and it's really effective. Basically just like a normal school small school with parents teaching different lessons on different days. Each parent's commitment is a half day a week to teach and they still do school plays, etc.