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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#771

Post by Boogie_Man »

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…

To heavily paraphrase a short of stature comedian: Childhood and School is basically jail. You're confined with a bunch of violent sociopaths, have minimal agency over what you do everyday, spend most of your free time trying to smoke weed out of improvised pipes, and the greatest reward you can obtain is like a bag of Doritos.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#772

Post by graemep »

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…

Also British, although i was living abroad when I started home educating (the correct term in UK law, and more accurate because the whole point is that its not HE).

> It took becoming an adult to learn for myself that I enjoyed learning. My school was not learning

This is why I stuck with home educating up to GCSEs. I wanted my kids to enjoy learning and they do. They have a very wide range of interests and good academic results and IMO are better prepared for A levels and university than they would have been at school (even really good schools).

> find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work,

This is why we have so much after school stuff and breakfast clubs. Yes, it means some kids get fed in the morning, but a lot of them seem to get given junk food.

> for those saying it was good for socialisation with other children

IMO home education is better for socialisation. What skills do you learn from meeting the same group of people your own age in the same place everyday? My kids had more time to do things by themselves (anything from going to a shop to taking a bus to meet up with a friend). They did (between them) guides, dance, sea cadets, sailing, D & D, art classes, singing classes piano classes, drama, stage fighting and more. They had both remote (which develops a useful skill set these days) and face to face tutors at for some GCSE subjects. it would be really hard for kids tied by school hours plus home work to do as much.

> the endless chasing of metrics has made even the tiniest amount of joy that could exist in school- Non-existent.

The chasing of metrics has been a disaster. My younger daughter is at sixth form college for A levels and it has deteriorated since her older sister went there. it is still good but they have become a lot more rigid and I feel they are less focused on students best interests and more on the metrics.

I went to one of the best schools in the UK (consistently top 10 academically), with no bullying problems, no corporal punishment (it had abolished it in Victorian times IIRC), excellent facilities - and I still think my kids had a better education than I did

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#773

Post by karaterobot »

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…

That actually sounds like a good way to teach kids how to deal with others. Just figure it out, in a safe environment with minimal consequences and some guard rails. I wouldn't expect a teacher to teach kids how to socialize, especially on an individual level, but rather to step in when necessary. Being in a big group of people you may not like is pretty much a description of life, and the goal is to learn to function and even thrive in that environment. I support home schooling too, but I don't think there's anything about it that naturally lends itself to learning this skill. Many homeschoolers manage it, but it takes extra work, whereas being in 'gen pop' teaches it as a side effect.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#774

Post by petsfed »

9rx wrote: post #622
bell-cot wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody was screaming about how much I'd regret it, but ... In a really healthy society, with really good schools, dropping out would (99%) be quite regrettable. Some of those screaming people probably cared about you and your future. Most of them just resented you, for highlighting the actual state of their society and schools. And perhaps making them doubt their own choices.

> In a really healthy society, with really good schools, dropping out would (99%) be quite regrettable. That depends. Those who drop out because they can't hack it will find misplaced regret, blaming future woes on dropping out when in reality the problem is a continuation of the deficiencies that lead them to dropping out. Those who drop out because they have bigger and better plans won't think about it again.

I think there are two assumptions embedded in the parent comment that I think you're ignoring:

1) The people who are on to bigger and better things are in fact vanishingly rare. Like, yes, Bill Gates dropped out of college, but he dropped out of Harvard, not Evergreen Community College. He wouldn't have been there in the first place if he wasn't already capable of some big things.

2) A really healthy society, with really good schools, would provide a path for those who can't hack it. Its almost definitionally not a good school if the process exposes some deficiencies, then just gives up. Like "well, it turns out your dyslexic, here's your cardboard box and begging pan" sounds like a bad school.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#775

Post by swiftcoder »

kajumix wrote: post #768
swiftcoder wrote: post #763

The problem with homeschooling is it's pretty much a crapshoot whether you end up in a weird religious environment or an abusive environment, with a long-shot chance of ending up in a fun constructive environment with lots of personalised attention and the opportunity to travel the world. Of course, this is pretty much the same set of dice you roll when you spawn into a traditional school system, except you roll with…

Why do you imply that the fun, constructive environment for homeschooling a long shot, but the weird religious or abusive environment is more of the norm?

Well, normal, boring people tend to send their kids to school, so your chances of a normal, boring homeschooling experience are pretty slim. And even the most well-intentioned of counter cultural folks don't always excel at parenting, never mind educating.

I've met a fair number of other homeschooled folks over the years who had a great childhood, but I've met more for whom the lack of community/government oversight meant their parents could get away with things we wouldn't generally countenance (be that actual abuse, various forms of religious indoctrination, or just plain old "unschooling" - aka "ignore the kids till they go away").

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#776

Post by plussed_reader »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #623

So we chose private school over home schooling, for both time reasons, educational reasons, and social reasons. But the important thing is we choose to take our kids out of public school. The trigger was Covid, but what really happened was suddenly millions of parents could directly see what their schools and teachers were like because we watched our kids work remotely all day for a year. We did not like what we saw.…

"The trigger was Covid, but what really happened was suddenly millions of parents could directly see what their schools and teachers were like because we watched our kids work remotely all day for a year."

This kind of myopyic outlook that conflates the then-traditional instruction period to the remote instruction paradigm greatly cheapens every other point of your argument.

None of the teaching staff that had to adapt to that period of time were trained to make that experience 1:1 for the prior expectations and to use that as a basis to judge their entire ability is petty as fuck.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#777

Post by cryptonector »

Glyptodon wrote: post #345

It's true that there has always been a sizeable chunk of religion motivated home schoolers, historically there was a long tail with motivations and efficacy that was all over the map. One thing that's really common is for parents to try it when they feel that the local system is failing their kids in some way and the family economics supporting are acceptable. There are also many permutations - it wasn't uncommon whe…

> That said, I think you have to ask why are charter schools and vouchers (not just home school) becoming even more fashionable despite there being little to no evidence that they generate any broad improvements in the base level of education in the population at large?

People demanding it is evidence that political public education should adapt to that demand. It may or may not pay off, but this is how politics works, and education is politicized.

There is NO WAY that voters are going to see commentary like yours and be dissuaded -- that's just not how politics works. Have you ever changed someone's mind really on politics?

It would be much better to look at what's been motivating voters to demand vouchers / whatever else you don't approve of and see if you can satisfy their demands in some other way, such as reducing the politicization of education in other ways.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#778

Post by lolinder »

swiftcoder wrote: post #763

The problem with homeschooling is it's pretty much a crapshoot whether you end up in a weird religious environment or an abusive environment, with a long-shot chance of ending up in a fun constructive environment with lots of personalised attention and the opportunity to travel the world. Of course, this is pretty much the same set of dice you roll when you spawn into a traditional school system, except you roll with…

> it's pretty much a crapshoot whether you end up in a weird religious environment or an abusive environment, with a long-shot chance of ending up in a fun constructive environment with lots of personalised attention and the opportunity to travel the world.

It's a crapshoot for the kid, but a parent who's considering homeschooling knows pretty well whether they are going to be the fundamentalist type or not. If they are, they likely aren't here reading this discussion.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#779

Post by computerdork »

geye1234 wrote: post #563
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 went to grammar school (UK) in the 1990s, and also absolutely loathed it. I think it set me up horribly for life and (especially) for my career. People use the phrase "PTSD" too lightly, but I think it gave me something like it that I often feel in an office full of people, and especially during in-person meetings. Years of CBT and ERP have helped a lot, and now I'm middle-aged I think I've put the worst of it behi…

Wow, it seems like the UK education system is a very severe environment. Remember Anthony Hopkins saying the same thing about it being brutal, having received abuse from both the teachers and the other students.

Yeah, just from my perspective having gone through the US public schools, the schools here seem to be a lot more open and friendly (following the American stereotype). But at the same time, we probably have a lot lower standards in terms of learning, and also the US has a lot of variation in school quality.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#780

Post by graemep »

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…

> Adults can watch something happening and think nothing particularly significant is going on while some kids are experiencing extreme internal distress.

I think because that is also often because they regard it as normal for kids. A lot of people say things like "bullying toughens them up".

They would not think its OK for the same things to be done to adults. I wonder what the toughens them up lot would think if I showed up at their house with a few friends and gave them a light beating - I think calling the police would be a more likely outcome than thanking me for teaching them to be tough!

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