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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#851
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 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 single worst mandatory system I have been exposed to in my life.

Hey this is more or less the universal experience world over. Be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#852

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.…

How did you choose the private school? There are so many choices around us but it seems hard to figure out their quality without actually sending a child there, or having close connections. Wish there was a review forum of some sort.

We live in western central NJ so the options are pretty limited. There were only a handful to pick from, and there were roughly two price tiers: tier “A” was around $15,000 a year per student, tier “b” elite schools were $50,000 and up per student per year. Our choices were down to only three schools, one was out because it was all-boys, and we chose out of the other two based on meeting teachers and staff.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay for a private school, it's expensive yes and I know not accessible for all, but it's kind of the best of both worlds. You get to choose the school and it's a community vibe. It helps when the other kids, potential bullies, know your kid and know their parents talk to your parents. It also helps as the staff is acutely tuned in to things like this, and they have amazing ways of conflict resolutions. It's not di…

This is why introducing a degree of school choice is becoming a popular policy among parents in both parties, but I think bringing back rapid expulsion to disciplinary boys/girls schools would be even more impactful. Unfortunately, recent social justice activism has stymied that possibility in progressive areas. Either restore unfettered power of self-curation to the environment and ensure it is wielded effectively,…

I'm sorry - you're following all the comments about public schools being like a prison and you're suggesting people get expelled faster or disciplined more to improve schools?

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#855
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. Funny enough, in the US, most states changed their methods of teaching (especially math) 10-20 years ago. And facebook is still filled with parents (although probably mostly grandparents) bitching about not understanding "common core math" without trying to understand it, and expressing how they learned via…

To be fair - the US changing their mathematics education system has been worse for the mathematics program. The kids learning math now who don't learn from outside networks will be significantly worse off in mathematics by far.

Also there is no other way for people to learn mathematics then without doing the work to learn. This utopian idea that's bled into the education stream that we can teach math without significant amount of problems to practice on is kind of nuts.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#856

Many reasons. Bad influence from other students Bad policies for phone use Bad teachers Strange curricula influenced by ideology Aggressive low performing immigrants from other cultures (Europe) The last point will get me downvoted from people who can not handle the truth.

>Aggressive low performing immigrants from other cultures (Europe) Elaborate? https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor... USA is 18th and eight of the countries above it are European. The fifteen below it have a comparable score to the USA. That is 23 European countries that are either above or around the same performance (or slightly lower) as the USA. Unless you mean Eastern Europe, which seems…

I am not so much worried, what position you are in. I am more worried if you are rising or sinking. The countries I was thinking in Europe are...sinking in the school rankings.

Feel free to use google translate for this example: https://weltwoche.ch/daily/wiener-schulleiter-provoziert-mit...

The problem: There are cultures that highly value education. Chinese for example. And then there are cultures where education either has much less value, or a different definition (e.g. considered highly educated if a person has memorized the complete Quran).

DEI. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The "inclusion" is a problem with some cultures. They bluntly reject being "included". They considered their culture as highly superior and want to include you into their culture. At the same time, they are not able to understand why their countries are shitholes and believe that the wealth and success of Western countries is just by chance and luck and culture has no play in that.

For starters:

* Rule of law

* open society

* women rights

* Democracy

* Market Economy

* strict separation of church and state

* No tribal culture

* Freedom is speech.

* And don't marry your cousin. Your cousin may be good-looking but trust me, inbreeding won't make you smarter.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#857
> I can’t help but notice that history’s richest and most successful people have raised some pretty unpleasant kids.

Could that be because newspapers like to report on those and people like to read stories about how awful rich kids are?

There are plenty of unpleasant kids from modest backgrounds. It's just that their tales are boring.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#858
post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 functio…

Except the literature from studies on the subject suggest that homeschoolers on average do slightly better than public schoolers on this specific metric. The data suggests public school has worse outcomes.

I didn't say that home schooling produced poor social skills, and in fact said something like the opposite. My point was that traditional schooling was a perfectly fine way to learn social skills, as a side effect of being forced to socialize. If home schooled kids and traditionally-schooled kids have somewhat similar social skills, and (as you say) teachers in public schools aren't teaching these skills directly, how do you suppose kids are learning them?

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#859

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…

We pay for a private school, it's expensive yes and I know not accessible for all, but it's kind of the best of both worlds. You get to choose the school and it's a community vibe. It helps when the other kids, potential bullies, know your kid and know their parents talk to your parents. It also helps as the staff is acutely tuned in to things like this, and they have amazing ways of conflict resolutions. It's not di…

I find it appalling that parent who can afford a private school, even with much sacrifice, would instead send their children to a a public school.

It is the equivalent of eating soup at a homeless shelter when you can go to the store and buy something better, made worse by the fact that you are making the decision for someone else that cannot decide on their own.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#860
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…

In one word, yup. My solution: In class put head down and just ignore the teacher. I DID want to learn the good material (math and science) so DID that in the one hour of daily 'study hall' and when I got home. And, with this approach, in math and science did quite well in aptitude tests and achievement tests. Those test results, and NOT what the teachers said about me, got some higher-ups to send me to summer advanced math/science programs.

That self-learning approach served me well in school, work, and life to the present.

The plane geometry teacher was one of the worst. We had a disagreement: She thought that in her subject she was superior, a lot better than the students were (actually, not for long!), regarded the students as subordinates, and tried to intimidate us. So, I communicated with her only a few times but then was showing that I was better in the subject than she was. I.e., one reason I worked hard and DID learn well was to show up the teachers, show that they were NOT better, even in their own subject, and keep them from being nasty to me, trying to subordinate me.

Since my brother wanted me to go for the football team, I did. The coach was no help at all and treated me with contempt. I was not any good at football, didn't try self-learning, but the coach was no help. As part of dumping on me, the coach gave me an old helmet, not effective, unique on the team. One day another player gave his elbow to my head, and I hit the ground maybe a little hurt. In one word, the coach was a bully. To heck with that: I quit the team.

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