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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#651

Post by throw4847285 »

zaphar wrote: post #643
spandrew wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense to me. We all get better at a talent by practicing it. We make mistake. We watch others. We determine our own preferences for what we like/don't like. We learn, grow. Kids figure it out. How does staying at home with just your sibs fair better? You wouldn't get same exposure to the buttload of social interaction and scenarios in a closed system like that.

Practice, with guidance is superior to practice without guidance. Homeschooling doesn't mean isolation in the average case. You get a lot of practice as a homeschooler. The primary difference is that your practice is both with other adults and children while supervised and also modeled directly to you in homeschooling by other adults while public school is primarily unsupervised and lacking in a modeled behavior to o…

No offense, but the idea of having adult level social skills as a child is terrifying to me. Most of the people who I've encountered who describe themselves that way also talk about the burden of from a young age totally internalizing the idea of every interaction being a performance. Every interaction is a new opportunity to try and convince adults that you are worldly and smarter than other kids. That tends to mess you up. Of course, this is purely anecdotal.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#652

Post by b800h »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #587
rgblambda wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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". That doesn't sound like a question a middle class kid would know anything about - not unless your definition of "middle class" is far different from mine.

Think in terms of the family in Mary Poppins. That's Middle Class.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#654

Post by zaphar »

throw4847285 wrote: post #651
zaphar wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practice, with guidance is superior to practice without guidance. Homeschooling doesn't mean isolation in the average case. You get a lot of practice as a homeschooler. The primary difference is that your practice is both with other adults and children while supervised and also modeled directly to you in homeschooling by other adults while public school is primarily unsupervised and lacking in a modeled behavior to o…

No offense, but the idea of having adult level social skills as a child is terrifying to me. Most of the people who I've encountered who describe themselves that way also talk about the burden of from a young age totally internalizing the idea of every interaction being a performance. Every interaction is a new opportunity to try and convince adults that you are worldly and smarter than other kids. That tends to mess…

It didn't mess me up and I didn't treat any interaction as a peformance. They were just fun conversations.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#655

Post by nickd2001 »

dijit wrote: post #532
wink wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because your own school was sadly, terrible, doesn't necessarily mean your kids' would be similar, though? A formula that's worked for us, is - find a school with nice staff, be wary of huge academy chains (UK specific) and above all, seek peers that are very diverse - in terms of class, education level, wealth, race, nationality etc. That way your kids avoid being bullied for being "weird" because there's no such concept of "weird"-ness, kids in such a group have many different perspectives. To me, that's a far better environment for kids to develop and flourish, than siloed in a homeschooling situation.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#656

Post by myheartisinohio »

rayiner wrote: post #142

American schools just aren’t very good. I remember when I was in third or fourth grade, my mom flipping out about why we were spending so much time learning about native Americans and so little time learning math. To this day, my mom, who grew up in Bangladesh but got a classic British education from a tutor, is more well read in western literature than I am (Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Socrates, Plato, etc.) As far as I c…

Western literature is bad because it was written by cis white men. Native Americans lived here and had an advanced society that was way better and it didn't have capitalism. /s

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#657

Post by PaulHoule »

otikik wrote: post #645
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'm sorry you had a bad time at school. > give an appreciable reason You might not have succeeded at that. You did a very good job at denigrating school though :) Let me try to tell you my view: both homeschooling and schools have risks. A child can suffer mistreatment both at school and at home. School however offers something that homeschooling can't: options. If you have a bad teacher, you will have another 4 whic…

Bullying is not just something that one does to another person. It's the social destruction of self that is mediated by a group:

https://www.amazon.com/Bullying-Social-Destruction-Laura-Mar...

Bullies couldn't do what they do if they did not have the support of the other students, teachers, administration, etc. As late as college I was harassed by criminally minded person who led a criminal gang that was not held in check until they finally smashed somebody in the face with a rock in front of many witnesses. Two people were driven to suicide.

The leader has been to prison and if he got out and went straight I could forgive him, even celebrate him, because it is so hard to get out of being justice involved. I'm still angry at the college administrator who told me "my hands are tied" who many see as a hero because he really did a lot of great things for our school -- but I wonder who else was driven to suicide and I fantasize about going to his funeral and dumping over his casket. An apology from him would go a long way, I've asked for it, I never expect to get it.

If you're being bullied in elementary school you don't get friends. It could be that the bullying drives away friends, or if you had friends you wouldn't get bullied, or the same deficits that cause you to get bullied also cause you not to get friends. Just being in a safe environment is a basic human right.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#658

Post by dyauspitr »

csa wrote: post #556
GrantMoyer wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I’m not super happy about the extreme views on race, sex and religion that are going through the school system. Maybe I'm living under a rock; what extreme views are going through the school system?

> Maybe I'm living under a rock; what extreme views are going through the school system? Not op and not taking a stance on any of these here, but: 1. Critical race theory (CRT) 2. Gender fluidity 3. Endorsement and use of Christianity/Bible in public schools These are all hot-button issues in education today, at least in some states and districts.

CRT is a boogeyman. It’s not ”taught” anywhere.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#659

Post by drdude »

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 agree with you. This is coming from Saudi.

I don't have any friend from my school times. Bullying was the norm back in late 80's and the 90's till I am in college on '99.

The real friends? the real education? started at college. School was a 12 years full of non sense useless stuff to someone's practical life and improvement (to me and many of people around me. The most I remember of these days were math and science lessons that were beneficial and my father alone was more than capable teaching me that... other than language lessons, religious teaching that were just a formality for us (we learn religion the best from home, our extended family) etc etc. At the end? We lost most of 12 years that are the best for internalizing more engineering and professional education. Yes we are capable of that at that age, I and my younger brother at the least built some robots and actual cars with suspension and steering etc although using old Lego collections (since we grew poor we couldn't afford actual tools) and that was ALL on our own at home and we didn't have internet or anything. We modified RC cars to go faster by soldering capacitors to give that boost to the motor (at the expense of battery life and potentially burning the motor) when we were in middle school.

Programming you say? my love for computers and computer games? all at home too, with some help from my older cousin (that I will visit in 30 minutes, he is 67 years old now and without him I wouldn't even dream of getting a PhD in CS, and of course my professors who I revere and respect).

Nearly all my useful skills, other than math and science as I mentioned), I and my brother learned on our own... at home. It all started at home. The school? was torture and a formality we had to go through or no one will hire us.

I am for minimal formal schooling with specialization starting from day 1, each one can choose a MUCH shorter path and more focused on what they want to do... switching between specializations and/or profession shouldn't be like collapsing a sky scraper we have built with hay (like it is now the case). wasting people's lives, causing them trauma for whatever miss function (e.g. students being beaten for silly missed homeworks etc). This system is age old and not effective, and there are more effective ways. Most of those who changed the world were school drop outs for a reason... they focused on what really matters and connected it to reality.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#660

Post by PaulHoule »

NoGravitas wrote: post #637
23B1 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NEA is the largest union in the United States.

But also not functionally a union. Teachers are actually represented by their state affiliate, and whether or not they can collectively bargain (the sine qua non of being a union) varies from state to state. Personally, I've lived in several states, but none in which the state Education Association was able to collectively bargain for its members.

Every K-12 teacher I've known (male and female) has had times when they've come home crying from the stress. (workload, the kids you care about and can't help, ...)

The NEA does something about pay and tenure but when it comes to protecting teachers emotionally forget about it. Roughly half of the people who get a teaching certificate at their own expense discover it is a job that they can't stand to do.

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