Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

i'm sorry, but surely you're joking? no schooling - especially public schools of today - is aiming for neutrality. neutrality is a fiction, and saying it is possible is lifting up something vacuous as the standard.

schooling - especially schooling - is always done with a worldview or, if you like, an agenda. read up on the history of schooling. look up a bit on the history of education. the parents know this, the leaders know this, and i hope you'll be honest with yourself for a second and agree also.

this idea of "schooling is neutral, we will sit above everything being taught as an impartial observer and present ideas without taking part or judging" is laughably foolish and impossible. teaching that it is possible is... well at least showing the hand.

> you yourself may be wrong...let the kids figure out what they think

your advice to "show some humility" would be better received if this wasn't such an unloving proposal crouched in an argument against an arrogant straw man. should children be micromanaged, told always what to do and think? that also is unloving. but to let them figure it out for themselves? surely you can't mean something so cruel as to tell them to just trust their individual judgements, rest of the culture (and authorities and parents) be damned. read your history, please, that is the short path to horrors not the way to the chosen land.

> really shouldn't have applied for the job of parent in the first place

Yeah, I mean if you plan on getting laid off from your career some day and have to work two jobs to make ends meet, you really shouldn't have kids. Having kids should only be reserved for people who plan on having no unforeseen issues ever come up in their life, am I right?

Parents should just take responsibility and make sure that they don't ever come across hard times. See also: the poor are just lazy.

Clearly not true. Do you think every genius had teachers who ever also geniuses?

You do not need to be a qualified teacher to teach, and you do not need to teach in order to educate. Teachers need teaching skills to teach classes. That is very difficult but not something home educators need to do.

As for subject matter, parents can arrange access to appropriate resources. It is not usual for parents to teach everything and I think that is a bad approach to home education (the term I prefer, for just this reason).

My two home educated kids have been taught some subjects I know, they have gone to classes a bit, had tutors, done online courses, and done a LOT of self-teaching. I like the last of these because it developing study skills.

They have done well academically. My older daughter got a 9 in Latin GCSE, for example, for which she was entirely self-taught. For those unfamiliar with the UK system that is a top grade in public exams typically done at 16 (although my kids did most of theirs younger - less stressful, less at risk from adverse events, and one of the advantages of HE).

Even for subjects I helped them with, once they reached their teens the help needed was very minimal.

A study in Australia found HE was unusual in that working class kids did better than middle class kids. A study in the US found HE kids whose mothers had not graduated high school did better academically than similar kids who went to school. A study in the UK found HE kids did better after adjusting for factors such as parental education and income.

What I do think is a bad idea (and I suspect it what your friends are doing) is to attempt to replicate school syllabuses and teaching methods at home.

A few decades ago, most teachers did not have anything beyond high school education. While there are many valid defenses of public schooling, "public school teachers are more qualified" is not one of them, particularly given the miserable performance of many public schools - qualified teachers in 23 Baltimore schools failed to generate a single mathematically proficient student, and Baltimore is not alone. Credentials on their own don't mean anything if there's nothing worthwhile backing them. If anything, they are currently being used for gatekeeping purposes. For example, I have a Master's degree in CS and I was a TA, but if I were inclined to teach a CS at high schools, I have to spend a few thousand dollars and get a pointless certification.