Students can also access "real time group classes taught largely by very experienced K12 teachers" by... going to school.
Outschooling
91–100 of 173 posts
Re: Outschooling
#92Hiring a high school student to tutor a kid in math is not a "1%er" solution. Maybe 50%er?
Re: Outschooling
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife was from a very competitive school district which forced overachievement and I got beat up by bullies in a small town school. Besides the personal anecdotes, 1. we felt like time was passing too quickly and wanted to have them around, we wanted to be together basically. 2. with 3 kids my wife hasnt been able to work (her line of work is not well paying), so it made sense to start homeschooling vs private scho…
I was homeschooled for 8 years and this schedule sounds very familiar, except it was surfing and working a part time job for me. School does not need to take 8 hours to be effective. As far as socialization, I’ve been asked this a hundred times: “so...like...how do you talk to people when you’re at home?” Now, I understand they mean well. But for someone who just implied their superior social capabilities, they sure…
It strikes me as similarly naive as "If you're not religious, how can you be moral?".
It turns out that humans are innately moral and social, outside of extreme situations.
Re: Outschooling
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does outschool offer that khanacademy doesn't have?
Lots of random extracurriculars like: "Travel to Paris" "Viking Art and History" "Waldorf Form drawing" "The History of Halloween" They also get to see the instructor and interact with them and other kids.
> "Travel to Paris"
Dumb question: Is that a field trip or just a "learn about Paris" lesson?
Re: Outschooling
#95I think public school system provides a good return for dollars spent. It has the scale that is difficult to match with other schooling methods. This is my experience from shuffling between private preschools. I think other schooling methods are appropriate if your circumstance forces you (e.g. bad public school system.)
You can always opt out of the crazy things that happen at public schools. After school, you can homeschool your kids. This way you can get the positives of both systems.
Education is complicated. We need to avoid comparing and optimization. It's idiotic to make a personal stance in education.
Re: Outschooling
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole point is to NOT be equivalent. That is the principled objection to public school. For example: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+history+school+book&t=canoni... About half the population would be offended by those textbooks. You're insisting on an equivalent education, which would mean teaching with that same bias. The whole point is to do otherwise. One can find other examples in the way books treat the Viet…
> You're insisting on an equivalent education, which would mean teaching with that same bias. Please learn what "equivalent" means. Maybe get some help at your local public school. It doesn't mean "identical" with the same biases etc. It's entirely possible to define what would constitute an equivalent education even in a subject such as history (never mind neutral subjects such as math which you seem unwilling to ta…
You want to talk about math now? OK...
My coworker's wife was a math major. She volunteered to help at her child's public school. (kind of surprised that this is allowed, actually) The teacher gave a math problem, "BLANK - 9 = 9", accepting both 9 and 0 as the only valid answers. My coworker's wife tried to correct this, claiming that 18 should be the only valid answer. The teacher insisted that 18 was incorrect because they hadn't covered 2-digit math yet!!!
This is not any sort of impoverished school, nor is it rural or urban, nor is it significantly non-white or immigrant or anything of the sort. It is borderline wealthy. Statistically, you'd expect it to be nearly the best America has to offer.
Nobody should want an equivalent to that.
Re: Outschooling
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor? What the hell does that matter? Look, I'm not saying there isn't value to public education. And I'm not saying that educators don't provide a valuable and important service. But forcing public education as the panacea for finding all the ways parents fail their children is sub-optimal. If you want to find abuses, diseases, malnutrition, etc, t…
> What the hell does that matter? If you think that homeschooling is fine, but homedoctoring is crazy, then you think that being a teacher is a job that any idiot can do, while being a medical doctor requires a specific set of skills. I'm not saying that all homeschooling parents are crazy and are doing a horrible job, I'm just saying that people have to study a bunch of stuff before becoming teachers, and even then…
If I can demonstrate that the results of my "crazy" homeschooling is commensurate with (or surpasses) those of public schools, then what difference does it make. Yes, public school teachers have skills. Do those skills apply directly to the homeschool setting? Is there a difference between attempting to teach the one or two or so offspring compared to a classroom of strangers? Are parents incapable of attaining the necessary skills through any means besides university?
If it were reasonable to achieve "doctor" level results of medical care without being a doctor, then I would agree with you. The evidence shows otherwise. If I were getting poor results with my kids, they'd be back in public school.
Re: Outschooling
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
What social experiences do you feel like you missed out on? Having teachers ignore you and spend 90% of their time dealing with problem kids? The petty drama? How many people look back fondly on K-12 and think “man, that was great?” Read Sasse’s “the vanishing American adult.” It’s got some great commentary on what’s wrong with modern school. We take kids, and instead of having them be around adults to socialize them…
> What social experiences do you feel like you missed out on? If you're only interested in social experiences then there's all the obvious answers: girlfriends, team memberships, or even just how to discover and talk to other people my age with similar interests. Standing up for myself is hard. Simply talking to people is hard. How to filter the words I say so that people don't take offense to me expressing an opinio…
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Re: Outschooling
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of random extracurriculars like: "Travel to Paris" "Viking Art and History" "Waldorf Form drawing" "The History of Halloween" They also get to see the instructor and interact with them and other kids.
> "Travel to Paris" Dumb question: Is that a field trip or just a "learn about Paris" lesson?
He's not the guy behind the startup in the OP, he's just a guy doing homeschooling sharing his own personal experience. He's saying that at one point they went to Paris, which is a very educational think to do. That's homeschooling. Then they also studied Viking stuff. Maybe it was even in Norway at Viking sites? That sort of thing. A reasonable response to what do you do that Khan Academy doesn't which was the question asked of him.
Re: Outschooling
#100The one I would be interested in would be "home-after-schooling". I would love to have more resources to help support K-8 students learn how to do original research for science fairs, MOOCs for non-math subjects and programming. Basically Khan Academy type courses that can enable teaching economics, literature, philosophy to a 12 year old. The interesting non-math stuff for Khan Academy doesn't start until 9-12th gra…
It's a matter of focus. We'd love there to be more self-study content available for kids also. But MOOCs have a famously low completion rate and it's hard to stay motivated without interaction. So we're focused on connecting learners and teachers and having them interact over video chat.
> low completion rate
Most people who sign up don't actually want a certificate and aren't trying to complete. They are interested in the subject, watching some videos, move on. When you have class sizes with 1000-30,000 students, it's OK if 90% don't complete the certificate since many more did than in a brick and mortar school, yet it cost much less per student to deliver the class.
In online classes where you need to pay to get the certificate, it's been found that paid students have the same completion rate as brick and mortar university students.
https://www.afr.com/news/policy/education/fee-payments-lift-...
> Students in massive open online courses (MOOC) who pay a modest amount for a "verified certificate" are just as likely finish their course as regular university students, according to a new large-scale study of online education.