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My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

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Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#81

Post by baud147258 »

bearmode wrote: post #47
lax4ever wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooling is not the isolation that most people think it is. In fact, the vast majority of parents who homeschool (myself included) join forces with other parents who homeschool for events, activities, and learning opportunities, all of which bring with them natural socialization while still allowing for a far more tailored learning experience than you can get in any classroom. In addition, homeschool kids typica…

In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day, every day, plus any time after school or on weekends, alongside our school work. We also had hundreds of peers that we could make friends with if we wanted to. Compared to that I'd absolutely say homeschooling (even with occasional events and activities) is quite isolating.

> In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day

In school you spent 6 hours each day on recess/lunch break? Because I'd argue that in most classes, you aren't exactly supposed to be socializing, but rather, you know, following the class you're in

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#82

Post by YesWeWill »

baud147258 wrote: post #81
bearmode wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day, every day, plus any time after school or on weekends, alongside our school work. We also had hundreds of peers that we could make friends with if we wanted to. Compared to that I'd absolutely say homeschooling (even with occasional events and activities) is quite isolating.

> In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day In school you spent 6 hours each day on recess/lunch break? Because I'd argue that in most classes, you aren't exactly supposed to be socializing, but rather, you know, following the class you're in

That doesn't stop the bullies with good grades that are liked by teachers.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#83

Post by ausbah »

Eleison23 wrote: post #64
watwut wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People, especially parents, with religious faith do not view it this way. It is not "force" to hand down our faith and inculcate our children with values based on loving God and loving neighbor. If it involves more then negligible amount of spanking in the "how to train your baby" style or emotional manipulation, it absolutely is coercive. As in, there is such a thing as healthy amount of teaching your faith. There…

I have no idea what sort of connection can be made between spanking and the Christian faith, other than your own negative perceptions from outside.

you don't recognize there's any sort of historical pattern between religion, at least w the more extremist parts, and punitive punishments? conversion therapy, Indian boarding schools, child wilderness camps, Catholic sex abuse scandals are just a few that pop to mind

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#84

Post by baud147258 »

watwut wrote: post #43
matheweis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s rather surprising to me that, despite what was an apparently net positive outcome for you and your immediate family, you would have such a negative opinion of homeschooling. For the others reading the thread (relevant bits of which are linked in the article) consistently shows that on average homeschooled students perform several percentage points higher on academic achievement tests, and a moreover a majority o…

Some of those are rosy studies designed to be rosy tho. As in, many of those studies are are as independent as cigarette company paying for research on smoking and health. Also, a lot of effort goes into insulating religious homeschooling families from any independent sight at all. The elephants in the room he mentions is very real thing too. Fair amount of homeschooling is explicitly social/political project. It is…

Though why the fact some people might choose homeschooling with wrong goals in mind should prevent you from choosing to homeschool your own children, with your own goals and methods, which will be different from what other homeschooling parents would choose?

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#85

Post by Eleison23 »

watwut wrote: post #65
Eleison23 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what sort of connection can be made between spanking and the Christian faith, other than your own negative perceptions from outside.

One connection is how to train your baby books I mentioned. The foundation most popular book is named "To Train Up a Child". They are literal Christian child raising books that teach how to property spank. These and similar books/approaches are recommended inside fundamentalist circles, unknow or controversial outside them. Christians openly advocating for these approaches is just normal in more fundamental circles (…

And atheists and agnostics would not ever strike their own children, or their students?

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#86

Post by MerelyMortal »

koonsolo wrote: post #60
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing there's a big ick factor to separating kids into "smarter" and "not that smart" groups. It feels inequitable, undemocratic, it goes against the commonly accepted blank slate hypothesis. People will say that if kids show different outcomes, the teachers just haven't tried hard enough, or that the state hasn't spent enough on them.

I'm willing to bet most gifted kids are born in the first half of the year, and most not so smart ones in the second half. Same in sports by the way: most "gifted" players are born at the start of the year: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/features/wh... Conclusion: at young ages, you should be very careful what you call "gifted" when you place kids with almost 1 year difference in the same group.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-athletes-birthdays-...

Link with google removed.

(whenever you copy and paste it, you can just delete the "www.google.com/amp/s/" part and the URL will now point to the real website.)

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#87

Post by watwut »

Eleison23 wrote: post #85
watwut wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One connection is how to train your baby books I mentioned. The foundation most popular book is named "To Train Up a Child". They are literal Christian child raising books that teach how to property spank. These and similar books/approaches are recommended inside fundamentalist circles, unknow or controversial outside them. Christians openly advocating for these approaches is just normal in more fundamental circles (…

And atheists and agnostics would not ever strike their own children, or their students?

They dont claim it is biblical requirement when they do that. They dont have organized promotion of those practices the way fundamentalists do.

Also "I am going to homeschool because my kids might have meet christian in public school" is not really a movement among atheists.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#88

Post by sfink »

Gigachad wrote: post #32
ARandomerDude wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The glaring deficiency of public school is the inability to train your child's character for most of the day. You hope that the teachers and students have similar values to you. Some do, many don't. I want my children to be honest, thoughtful, compassionate, diligent, respectful, and courageous. These aren't society's values today so I homeschool.

This is why the majority of homeschool parents do it. It’s borderline control freak behaviour if not over the line most of the time. Usually to force some kind of religious beliefs on their kids and keep them away from any kids with other opinions.

> This is why the majority of homeschool parents do it.

I strongly doubt that. It may have been true at some point, I don't know. It was certainly my stereotype growing up several decades ago. But now that I'm homeschooling and in contact with numerous other homeschooling families, I haven't really seen it. At all.

Other areas could certainly be different. Here, in the SF Bay Area, it's mostly about parents who see their kids just not thriving in one way or another at traditional school, and not really having any effective levers to do something about it while staying within the system. So yeah, there's an element of control, but only of the environment and opportunities available. Especially today, I'm skeptical that controlling the landscape of their peers' opinions is even possible. I guess it is for younger kids, when you could restrict their access to devices for anything but academic purposes. But generally there's just too much stuff to be doing in your own life and setting up and managing the kids' classes and activities—it'd be tough to micromanage their beliefs and values or whatever even if you wanted to. It's not that different from traditional schooling in the end.

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#89

Post by sfink »

gnicholas wrote: post #31
pnathan wrote: post #22

I was homeschooled: k-11. I have a graduate degree. My sibling has a similar path. The academics I received as a homeschooler were, frankly, probably 90th percentile, maybe more. Yet, simply going to a good school district with good teachers and supportive parents would, in all likelihood, have given me similar outcomes. And now, looking back twenty-plus years later, I don't think that it produced a materially differ…

> tl;dr: don't homeschool. take it from a former homeschooled kid. send the kid to a good public school, please. This is a bit of a false dichotomy. Wealthy people can send their kids to good public/private schools because they can afford to live places with access. But less-wealthy people may not have the option. The social interaction piece is interesting, and may be addressed by the fact that there is massive grow…

Yeah, but it also requires some degree of wealth to homeschool. Two parents working full time, or a single parent working full time, are going to be hard-pressed to set up a decent homeschooling environment. You can rely on the "non-location based charter school"'s curriculum and staff quite a bit, but then (1) you won't be that different from traditional schooling, and (2) they can't provide all-day supervision or anything close (for younger ages when it's necessary).

Re: My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

#90

Post by walthamstow »

seanhunter wrote: post #79
j7ake wrote: post #16

Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. This individualised form of education may be making a return over the next years as apps and material become more personalised.

> Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. Yes. As a fun aside, my understanding is that is the reason for a baffling (to people outside the UK) anomaly. In the UK, if you there is a school you have to pay for (ie not a government school) that is called a public school . Everywhere else in the world that would be called a private school - a much more logical-sounding name. The reason is that…

Not quite. Harrow, Eton and Winchester are public schools but somewhere like Bromley High School and most other no-name fee-paying schools are called independent or private schools. Nobody would refer to one of these as a public school.

A school that you don't pay for is usually referred to as a state school.

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