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For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

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Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#81

Post by sdsd »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #64
jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

Just as a counterpoint... I was homeschooled from 2nd grade until sophomore year of high school. I played sports the entire time (was the captain of various teams), had plenty of friends, and was pretty social. Even still, I felt like my social skills were significantly stunted when compared to others my age. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable just hanging out with others because most of my social time wa…

If it makes you feel better, I was public schooled, and a lot of the kids seemed to have really awful social skills. This kind of numb mindlessness. Not everyone, but it was too widespread. Something about sitting still doing nothing for 7 hours, surrounded by people but forbidden from interacting with them.

I'm sure there were many benefits but public schools don't seem to be doing great at socializing kids.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#83

Post by fallingknife »

tomp wrote: post #58
zerbinxx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One good thing about the rigid institutional environment, for better or worse, is that having exposure to that rigidity and institutional side of things can at least give kids some skills in the long run for navigating the anti-human organizations that form so much of our public and private sectors.

Almost all other societal structures are way less rigid and tyrannical. Name another institution where inmates have to ask for permission to go to the toilet, besides school and jail . Edit: or another institution where people can attack you and you can’t call police to help you.

That's a ridiculous statement and has nothing to do with the institution. We have decided as a society that the police shouldn't be involved in petty children's fights. Seems like the right call to me.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#84

Post by ssivark »

Justsignedup wrote: post #70

This is giving me the worst of vibes: - options for people who don't want to expose their children to out-of-family ideas, to perpetuate family biases - a completely unregulated market for children to go to a "school" with a few other kids, giving them small classrooms, BUT, no teacher with specialization or educational background. Would be extremely hit or miss, with little resource if it isn't working out. - only f…

> The real solution is not to homeschool. It is to force ALL kids, regardless of age, location, and income to be forced into the same school system. Want to improve things? gotta make it better for everyone.

But what if there is a fundamental diversity in educational goals, that different sets of parents want to aim in different directions as “better”? How would you accommodate that?

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#85

Post by williamtrask »

Justsignedup wrote: post #70

This is giving me the worst of vibes: - options for people who don't want to expose their children to out-of-family ideas, to perpetuate family biases - a completely unregulated market for children to go to a "school" with a few other kids, giving them small classrooms, BUT, no teacher with specialization or educational background. Would be extremely hit or miss, with little resource if it isn't working out. - only f…

> people have completely given up on society and said fuck it, we'll make our own.

Fwiw, this type of thinking played a pretty strong role in how America began (and in other social/moral movements). It's not always a bad thing.

> This is sad. The real solution is not to homeschool. It is to force ALL kids, regardless of age, location, and income to be forced into the same school system. Want to improve things? gotta make it better for everyone.

I get your point, but just to continue my analogy, King George might have said something similar in the late 1700s. A good general counter-narrative to this line of thinking is James Scott's "Seeing like a state" which documents the degree to which governments regiment society in ways that reduce social welfare.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#86

Post by pbh101 »

jimmytucson wrote: post #5
jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

How much time does homeschooling take for you? Does it roughly equate to one full-time job? I have wanted to homeschool my kids but I am afraid I would have to quit my job or downshift to part-time. And since they are different ages, I worry that if I taught them all at the same time, the curriculum would average into something too challenging for the younger and not challenging enough for the elder. How do you manag…

The way I’ve seen it is each kid usually has a grade-specific curriculum they are following. There can be cross-pollination on some topics/deep dives and extracurriculars that different ages will get different amounts out of, but the typical model isn’t ‘all the kids are in the same classroom learning the same thing synchronously’. Rather, you are switching between between each as they asynchronously progress in their individual lessons: Johnny needs help on this math lesson while Sally is making independent progress on vocabulary, and vice versa. Even if they are waiting sometimes, the dead weight loss is still way smaller than in 30-person typical classrooms.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#89

Post by williamtrask »

abnry wrote: post #19

I was homeschooled K-12. Even 15 years ago, my parents would say that they were like general contractors for my education. And it is really is true. I had a mix of co-op, community college, online, self-study, and parent-guided study for all my courses. This was more so for highschool and less so for primary or grade school, which was mostly directly taught by my mother. And as others have said, homeschooling is very…

More or less the same experience here. I also think it prepared me pretty well for WFH (which I now absolutely love).

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#90

Post by standardUser »

zarzavat wrote: post #42
mikhmha wrote: post #17

Why are people in the US so against public schools? I am someone who did not really enjoy “school” and found it anxiety inducing but I still see the benefits of it. In public school you are forced to mingle with the people of your generation. The ones who will inevitably go on to run the country in whatever big or small way. The objective of public school is to break down the regional identities of old and assimilate…

Do you think we should do the same with adults? Many of these arguments are also used by proponents of military service. The funny thing about school is that almost no adults would be willing to be subjected to it. Confined to a building every day for the best years of your life, required to study what the government decides should fill your head, and a persistent risk of being beaten up. Delightful. Ultimately the m…

My sincere condolences to anyone who thinks their teenage years were or were supposed to be "the best years of your life".

As for the blanket cynicism disguised as analysis, you're wrong. Schools were not originally conceived of as a capitalist daycare system, even though people love to say that. It's first and foremost a capitalist training system, or at least socialization more generally. Daycare was not necessary for most people during the first hundred years or so of public schooling.

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