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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#691

Post by ch4s3 »

mzi wrote: post #370
jandrewrogers wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate Not true in the case of the US, which famously adopted a culture of universal literacy earlier than the rest of the world. By the mid-19th century, literacy rates among whites were not much different than they are today. It is one of the bright spots of American history; they took literacy very seriously for complicated historical reasons. Their book consumption per…

> By the mid-19th century, literacy rates among whites were not much different than they are today But the states does have among the lowest literacy rate in the west. Less than 80% was considered literate in 2024, compared to almost 99% in the EU (with a range from 94% to almost 100%).

Of the 20% of US adults who don't have a level of literacy necessary to be considered "literate", 40+% are from other countries with low levels of literacy.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#692

Post by sanitycheck »

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…

This was my reaction upon seeing the question in the post title, too.

I've chosen not to have kids (my childhood experience of other kids being one contributing factor) but if I did I would not want them to be anywhere near a UK state school.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#693

Post by rbanffy »

volkk wrote: post #682
rbanffy wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you A billion times this. School is not to train you on Math, English or Science. It's also to teach you how to cooperate, how to reach consensus, how to make decisions as a group, and so on. These soft skills are absolutely critical to maintain a properly functioning society.

why can't homeschooling involve the same attributes? genuine question. from what i've been seeing in modern trends, homeschooling doesn't literally mean you sit and your mother teaches you all day and then you "go home" by migrating to your bedroom. you're still in a small group with other children, all of whom likely still share characteristics where disagreements will naturally happen, and cooperation will need to…

> far more controlled environment

They risk being able to function better in highly controlled environments with other kids that share the same background as them. Not optimal.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#694

Post by bombis »

NoGravitas wrote: post #629
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…

> some supposed connection between the Constitution and some Indian tribe Do you mean the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee [1]? I.e., the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy? The place where the founding fathers of the US got the idea of separation of powers? The form of government of one of the major regional powers at the time the US was formed? Don't know why your daughter's teachers would bother teaching her a…

> The place where the founding fathers of the US got the idea of separation of powers?

This reads a bit more like spinning a noble savages tale rather than the much more obvious explanation being that the founders were building on the proven greco-roman models and various Enlightmentment figures - as they directly state in a number of federalist papers.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#695

Post by simonsarris »

arkh wrote: post #670
zaphar wrote: post #621

I can't really know nor do I care to speculate on why it's becoming fashionable. But I'm a successful, well adjusted, homeschooled child from when it wasn't fashionable. This comment stood out to me: "Opt out of interacting with average people." And my immediate thought was: "I can't imagine a less effective or worse way teach kids how to deal with people, average or not, than to throw them into a pool of similarly u…

> Teachers can't be expected to help 30+ children work through that. The big mystery is: how did teachers manage this miracle 50 or 80 years ago?

If you read something like Annie Dillard's An American Childhood, you realize that teachers didn't. In the middle+ class at least, the children's parents did that work by organizing specific extra-curriculars, such as dances, from a very young age. These ensured that the children learned manners, dated people of acceptable character or class, etc.

That social infra is simply gone today. Parents don't have much of an interest, or are erroneously(!) assuming that teachers are supposed to do it, or used to do it. We are less class focused* today, which may be good, but certainly less manners and etiquette focused as well.

* by that I mean like, if you are an American of German descent, you are not particularly worried if you child is dating an American of Irish descent, whereas you might have been in 1940. Similarly (and overlappingly) for Protestant/catholic etc etc. Not even what we typically think of as class today! We're so blind to a lot of that stuff now, we forget it existed, just like the other social infrastructure.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#696

Post by zozbot234 »

Retric wrote: post #676
PaulHoule wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principal always told me "just walk away" and I said, "You fool, the bullies have legs". The key thing that enables bullying is your being confined in a space with them. Bullying can leave scars that last a lifetime that will affect your employment, your relationships, your children, everything. Not least hearing complete crap from authorities primes you to distrust authorities unconditionally.

Having the emotional maturity to deal with things you don’t like happening has a major influence on how tough being bullied feels like. It’s rarely much time or physical pain, but some kids obsess over it even if they aren’t the major target they often feel extremely persecuted. Adults can watch something happening and think nothing particularly significant is going on while some kids are experiencing extreme interna…

The typical case of physical bullying is not just "things happening that you don't like"; it's wanton, unprovoked assault and battery. Even lesser forms of bullying generally involve some kind of unambiguous threatening, menacing or intimidation. The "emotionally mature" way of dealing with such things in any sane society is not to just walk away, but rather to acknowledge that such actions are inherently an outrage to their fellow students' basic human dignity, and demand that those responsible face meaningful consequences. The fact that "it's rarely much physical pain" (and that merely because kids are involved as opposed to adults) is completely irrelevant.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#697

Post by rbanffy »

zaphar wrote: post #679
rbanffy wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is essentially what public school does. The school I went to had, luckily, excellent teachers. One of them, not sure if as a coordinated effort or not, was big on letting the class decide things and helping us form the social structures needed for that - structuring discussions, votes, rules, and so on. I suspect it was a reaction to the dictatorship time requirement of studying an idealized version of Brazil…

There are definitely hero teachers and administrations in public schools. They aren't the norm though and it's a bit of a lottery whether your child will end up with one.

A first step is to properly fund public schools. Then one would need to better select teachers (which becomes an option if teaching pays better) and train them. Teachers need to be trained in teaching, not only their subject matters, and need to be kept updated.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#698

Post by ravenstine »

PaulHoule wrote: post #648
ravenstine wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm both glad and dismayed to hear that I'm not the only one who likens public school to prison. I went to school in California, and I would say my school experience became prison-like between grades 4 and 11. In fairness, I can now look back at my child self and realize that I was delayed in terms of emotional maturity, which contributed to my social problems, but the kind of environment I was in was the wrong one f…

The principal always told me "just walk away" and I said, "You fool, the bullies have legs". The key thing that enables bullying is your being confined in a space with them. Bullying can leave scars that last a lifetime that will affect your employment, your relationships, your children, everything. Not least hearing complete crap from authorities primes you to distrust authorities unconditionally.

I can see why an adult who's never dealt with these difficulties in childhood would give that sort of advice, but it's bewildering how school administrators weren't (and probably still aren't) trained on the reality that "just walk away" is a platitude in the context of an environment where bullies have a captive audience.

It reminds me of how we were told "stick and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me", which is easy to say as an adult with autonomy and other sources of fulfillment; in reality, words not only hurt, but have lasting social consequences. If some turd of a kid has the charisma to humiliate you in front of everyone, even when only verbally, that can lead to a permanently damaged sense of self and lack of respect from peers.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#699

Post by teeray »

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…

> Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You likely mean memorisation? That’s not education.

There’s so many classes that I want a refund on my wasted childhood time. Reading the “classics” in English, studying foreign language, Theology (Catholic schools), History (yes, History). I hated all these classes, didn’t learn much from them beyond what it took to pass the tests, then quickly forgot what they taught. Anything useful that would have come from those subjects I learned later, through alternate more enjoyable means (e.g. Assassin’s Creed was way more effective in teaching me the history those games covered).

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#700

Post by kristianbrigman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #426
thih9 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The panopticon design was originally intended for schools too, as well as other institutions: > Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums. He devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison, so the term now usually refers to that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon Whether it’s friendly and encourages healthy develop…

The criticism section of the Wikipedia article focuses on political aspects, but to me, the very idea of keeping someone feeling like they're always watched sounds like psychological torture .

And yet, I bet when you make a trade on craigslist (showing my age :), you meet in a public place where people can see you. Why?
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