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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#741

Post by jkolio »

toasterlovin wrote: post #314
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…

My read of history is that the puritans basically had universal literacy not that long after the printing press hit Europe. I believe America and Israel are unique among modern countries in being founded by people whose ancestors had achieved universal literacy in the 1500s.

This seems like a suspiciously bold statement. Both in the assertion that these groups had achieved universal literacy, and in that other groups hadn't been at least as literate. Japan comes to mind, wrt the latter. Literacy, if not universal, was also widespread across the Muslim world.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#742

Post by Scubabear68 »

huehehue wrote: post #736
Scubabear68 wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NJ, the School Superintendent is effectively the CEO of the district. Many of them had advanced degrees in education, management, and finance. They control tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Ours has a BA in health, was a gym teacher then an admin person, eventually a principal and then we hired him out of desperation when covid hit and our superintendent was retiring. He has been a total disaster because he…

My old gym teacher also taught science because we just couldn't find another teacher, and was genuinely surprised to learn there were forms of matter smaller than atoms. My health teacher was a "permanent substitute" situation where we just watched movies the whole semester and got A's. One of my math teachers died and we just...never hired a replacement, so nobody learned anything that semester. Bonus: my driver's e…

I know a large number of teachers who have been campaigning for years to eliminate all forms of teacher evaluations, with the claim that “you can’t measure what we do!”.

Which is utter horse shit, but it’s where we are today.

The result is that many schools don’t really track teacher performance, and as you indicate you can get wild inconsistencies.

The best parents can do (other than leaving) is to aggressively direct kids into the better teachers’ classrooms. We see that all the time - one class has kids who’s parents are “in the know” and gets the good teacher, the other class is where the kids get dumped who’s parents don’t complain. The district knows who is bad and who is not, but is afraid to anger the union, so anything short of actual violence by a teacher against a student won’t have any consequences.

Our school district local enrollment as a result has declined from around 900 kids to just 650 in just a few years as a result. The kids left are those too poor to go private or home school, those not lucky or connected enough to go to a “choice” school, and a small number of die hard loyalists reliving their glory days through their kids at the same school they went to.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#743

Post by carlosjobim »

UltraSane wrote: post #201
nosefurhairdo wrote: post #23

I 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.

Homeschooling parents are divided into two separate groups. One is secular with college degrees who really want to give their children a better education than they could get in a school AND are able to do so. The other group are very religious who don't want their children learning about evolution or many other secular things. The only real issue I have with homeschooling in the US is that regulations vary wildly by…

Schools shouldn't teach neither evolution, nor creationism, nor any other origin story. Because it is something that doesn't matter at all – knowledge without value.

Worse is that the majority pupils around the world will be taught both the Abrahamic creation story, the origin of man according to evolution, and usually a third or even fourth creation story from local pre-Abrahamic mythology. In the same school and from the same teacher. Talk about confusion of the highest order!

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#744

Post by jkolio »

pastage wrote: post #422
liontwist wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150 years ago people could absolutely read. > schooling fixed all that Not globalization, industrialization, and urbanization?

I can not talk for the US, but in Sweden it was schooling. I think Sweden has better literacy rates earlier than the US, but I guess I really should compare this on a state level considering how the US works. I am pretty sure that it is a political goal not an economic one, this is obvious considering US black literacy levels took until 1979 to be comparable to whites. I would like to point out that the Danish nobili…

>I am pretty sure that it is a political goal not an economic one, this is obvious considering US black literacy levels took until 1979 to be comparable to whites.

I don't follow. 1979 would have been a high point in closing the black/white economic gap in America (partly because of the falling economic prospects of white Americans at the time).

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#745

Post by lbrito »

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 find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work, with exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a functional understanding.

Institutional childcare in general is mostly this; a necessity driven by an economic imperative. Both parents must work. School is a continuation of that logic, although as the kids get older and more independent this becomes less important.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#747

Post by greenthrow »

dijit wrote: post #649
greenthrow wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in the US and I hated every single day of school. I don't have a favorite teacher I remember fondly, I don't have friends from school, etc. I absolutely hated it. But I still am against home schooling. I still got social skills from going to public school that homeschooled kids lack. I still don't think your average parent is equipped to give their children a good education. I have people I know who have ho…

Because what I was literally forced by the state to endure, is not child abuse. Come one.

Yes some kids face abusive situations in public schools. But all kids are by definition facing abuse when home schooled imho.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#748

Post by cryptonector »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #390
cryptonector wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masking children was fucking cruel.

Not really. If you've grown up in Asia you're used to wearing a mask whenever you are feeling unwell or have a cold. We do that out of courtesy to others, and it makes a lot of sense (which is why the practice has continued at hospitals since COVID). My kids were both in elementary school during COVID and got used to it quickly and were just fine.

No sorry, this was full time whether sick or not. And if you're sick you just skip school. It was fucking cruel and wrong.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#749

Post by jkolio »

matrix87 wrote: post #210
woodruffw wrote: post #164

> These tech parents are hackers by nature, and I think they’re convinced that in homeschooling they’ve happened on the ultimate life hack: just opt out of being around average people. It's difficult to feel optimistic about a society that thinks this way, much less has a cultural and economic elite that is seemingly emboldened to think this way. "Average" people are the norm, the reality that "not average" people wi…

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a universally valuable experience, especially for people who would fashion themselves as "not average." If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it? Seems like there's only something to lose from adjusting to their shittiness. Like Harrison Bergeron And seeing the state of California tr…

When my car broke down in the middle of a DoorDash run, I walked to a nearby park and sat next to a homeless guy who was about my age. He was deaf; we talked via text on our phones about how we'd ended up on the same bench, and I shared some of my food. I learned from him how resilient someone can be, even under incredibly unfair circumstances, but more importantly, he got something to eat.

It's not all about you.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#750

Post by standardUser »

elcritch wrote: post #326
UltraSane wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooling parents are divided into two separate groups. One is secular with college degrees who really want to give their children a better education than they could get in a school AND are able to do so. The other group are very religious who don't want their children learning about evolution or many other secular things. The only real issue I have with homeschooling in the US is that regulations vary wildly by…

Certainly a biased view of religious home schoolers. Most of my religious friends who homeschool are college educated and many have postgraduate degrees. Some do disbelieve evolution, or at least disdain it a bit. Pretty much all of them are motivated people however. Of course that's just my little bubble.

> Some do disbelieve evolution, or at least disdain it a bit.

That's an absurd belief and any system of education that results in that level of ignorance in science has failed.

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