Homeschooling hits record numbers • Hacker News Board

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#861

Post by gosub100 » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

5upplied_demand wrote: post #858

gosub100 wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children's world view is shaped early on. They shouldn't have to suffer just because poor, violent, should-have-been-aborteds are legally required to go to public schools. Children should experience carefree happiness at least once, in their formative years so they know happiness is possible.

> They shouldn't have to suffer just because poor, violent, should-have-been-aborteds are legally required to go to public schools. Yikes! Good thing these people, whom you so clearly despise, will cease to exist after school and will never have to be dealt with in regular life. I guess the rise in homeschooling is not surprising when we openly view our fellow civilians as inherently poor/violent and shouldn't exist.

They can be avoided later in life just like they can be avoided in public schools. Freedom to choose was established 50 years ago, sorry if you dislike it.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#862

Post by programjames » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 7:56 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #859

programjames wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in fact the best outcome, because education is just a ranking game, and it's not like you will end up ranked lower in your school. Also, since the point of education is to help people learn, your calmer presence and pro-learning attitude may rub off on the worst students, and their chance of ending up jobless and in prison will go down!

It might be the best outcome for society, but it's not the best outcome for the people. I experienced severe violence directed at my person for most of my life and it caused lifelong trauma. I was further punished for defending myself, expected to just allow people to harm me. During school I was beaten many times, had bones broken, was stabbed with a pocket knife, and had numerous other things happen. Unlike the kid…

Sorry, I should make it more clear when I'm being sarcastic. I tried to juxtapose these two clauses as close as I could:

> (1) education is just a ranking game

> (2) since the point of education is to help people learn

I feel like people who actually believe your situation was for the best must have a certain level of cognitive dissonance. Either that, or they just don't actually care about you and feel alright with hurting you for a chance of a slight gain for the people they do care about.

It's also a pretty hard sell to claim these kinds of situations are the best for society. If you could produce 2x as many billionaires by expelling the bottom 10% of the population from the education system (and imprisoning them for life), that would be better for society (financially). It might be worse for social reasons, but I kind of find that hard to believe.

This is why I think empathy doesn't scale. It's much easier to point people's empathy towards the person who is ruining their own life, and many others' at school, because they won't have a happy future. It's much harder to point people's empathy towards someone who will likely be successful in the future, even if they're being beat, stabbed, and abused in the present. Especially if they're not even being physically abused, just imprisoned for half their waking hours in a classroom. Empathy is great in very small groups, but not when you're setting policy for hundreds of kids in a school, thousands in the city, or millions across the state. At that point, empathy just ends up hijacked by the worst actors to redirect attention and resources to their own pet causes.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#863

Post by mikece » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

lisbbb wrote: post #496

mikece wrote: post #286

Interesting to see this topic being discussed on HN; I'm curious if any homeschooling parents here have kids who WANT to learn computer programming. I haven't pushed my kids to do any of the things that I loved doing growing up (or what I do now). If any homeschooled kids are getting into programming was it as a result of playing with something like Scratch or did they dive directly into writing Python or JavaScript?

It hurts me so bad to have to say this (as someone who has been a life-long technologist with higher degrees in CS and CE): Pushing kids towards STEM careers is only going to end in disappointment. Medicine, sure, but engineering and programming? I don't think it's ever coming back to what it was here in the states. We took that golden goose out back and chopped its head clean off.

I am not suggesting pushing in any direction; it was more a realization that one of my kids said they wanted to learn to program I'm not sure what the best first step would be (learning straight C like I did a long time ago probably isn't he best starting point) and I was curious if anyone else had ideas.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#864

Post by MisterMower » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 4:29 AM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #482

alphazard wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them. The older I get, the more I think that helping your kids avoid interactions with others who aren't with the program is for the best. Ideally your children's friends should be people that you think are good kids, kids that you would go to bat for. T…

The world is messy for all sorts of reasons, that may not be the way anyone would like it to be but it's the way it is, and imo it's best to learn it when the stakes are low rather than when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on, or they're being taken advantage of at work or in an adult relationship. I wouldn't fault someone for wanting to situate the…

> when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on

If you think homeschooling makes kids grow up to be prejudiced, you should just say that, instead of insinuating it.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#865

Post by MisterMower » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 4:35 AM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #816

whiddershins wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many conservatives do you socialize with regularly?

Regularly? About 10. (That's 3 MAGA and 7 more traditional conservatives)

Follow up question: how many people do you socialize with regularly in total?

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#866

Post by MisterMower » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 4:55 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #502

hereme888 wrote: post #234

The biggest misunderstanding I hear year-over-year is homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? Parents of healthy children should give 0 s*ts of societal/political pressure against…

> hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children Unless you can magically guarantee (or have enough money to fund their whole life) your children will never have to interact with "problem" people, they will need to learn to deal with those people one way or another. And it's better to do so in a low-stakes situation like school.

What makes you think homeschool kids never deal with assholes?

Assholes are a dime a dozen. Homeschooling doesn’t exempt your kids from learning how to deal with them.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#867

Post by cindyllm » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

MisterMower wrote: post #866

Nextgrid wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children Unless you can magically guarantee (or have enough money to fund their whole life) your children will never have to interact with "problem" people, they will need to learn to deal with those people one way or another. And it's better to do so in a low-stakes situation like school.

What makes you think homeschool kids never deal with assholes? Assholes are a dime a dozen. Homeschooling doesn’t exempt your kids from learning how to deal with them.

[dead]

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#868

Post by MisterMower » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 4:59 AM UTC

afavour wrote: post #255

hereme888 wrote: post #234

The biggest misunderstanding I hear year-over-year is homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? Parents of healthy children should give 0 s*ts of societal/political pressure against…

> homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? ...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it? I think your view is a very black and white one. Kid…

If you can’t hand pick your kids experiences through life, why does everyone worry about what school district they live in?

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#869

Post by MisterMower » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 5:07 AM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #400

mmcclure wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that's a lot or a little? Tuition for most (non-religious) competitive private schools in San Francisco is easily twice that amount.

Nearly every time we try to fix this problem with money it fails. The problem is not money. All else being equal there is little to no correlation between spend and outcome. Money get's touted by schools and politicatians as a way of pretending to care but not actually do any of the work to improve outcomes. What does tend to correlate with money and also correlates with outcomes is parental involvement. Solving that…

I would argue spending less money would actually improve things.

Ultimately it’s a culture problem. America’s attitude toward problems is nothing if not “throw more money at the problem and hope it gets better.” See also, healthcare, military spending, college sports, etc.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#870

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

hackable_sand wrote: post #698

sarchertech wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not against public schools, but pretending the social pressures are anywhere near similar is wrong. Kids are assholes in a way that would get most adults fired or imprisoned. There are social pressures to conform, but you don’t get called names for wearing off brand shoes the way kids were when I was in grade school.

They are the same pressures. They occur in the same proportions. Children are just really bad at it so it is extremely obvious. The rituals do not disappear when you turn 18. They do not disappear when you turn 98.

Children are really good at this. Adults stop trying for various reasons.