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Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

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Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#911

Post by Wowfunhappy »

lolinder wrote: post #778
swiftcoder wrote: post #763

The problem with homeschooling is it's pretty much a crapshoot whether you end up in a weird religious environment or an abusive environment, with a long-shot chance of ending up in a fun constructive environment with lots of personalised attention and the opportunity to travel the world. Of course, this is pretty much the same set of dice you roll when you spawn into a traditional school system, except you roll with…

> it's pretty much a crapshoot whether you end up in a weird religious environment or an abusive environment, with a long-shot chance of ending up in a fun constructive environment with lots of personalised attention and the opportunity to travel the world. It's a crapshoot for the kid, but a parent who's considering homeschooling knows pretty well whether they are going to be the fundamentalist type or not. If they…

I assume GP was considering the societal value of homeschooling. I.e., what (if any) bureaucratic checks should be in place to ensure the children are actually being educated (assuming that home schooling is legal at all).

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#912

Post by programjames »

matrix87 wrote: post #210
woodruffw wrote: post #164

> These tech parents are hackers by nature, and I think they’re convinced that in homeschooling they’ve happened on the ultimate life hack: just opt out of being around average people. It's difficult to feel optimistic about a society that thinks this way, much less has a cultural and economic elite that is seemingly emboldened to think this way. "Average" people are the norm, the reality that "not average" people wi…

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a universally valuable experience, especially for people who would fashion themselves as "not average." If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it? Seems like there's only something to lose from adjusting to their shittiness. Like Harrison Bergeron And seeing the state of California tr…

> If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it?

The appearance of humility^[0]? I don't really see what there is to gain either.

[0]: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Section II, Paragraph 9

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#913

Post by wakawaka28 »

LanceH wrote: post #840
rbanffy wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you A billion times this. School is not to train you on Math, English or Science. It's also to teach you how to cooperate, how to reach consensus, how to make decisions as a group, and so on. These soft skills are absolutely critical to maintain a properly functioning society.

I've tutored literally hundreds of homeschoolers at this point, mostly in the high school ages as their parents ran out of math ability. As a whole, they are far better socially adapted than the average teenager. Sure, there is selection bias among those who get that far in math, and those who would seek out tutoring. But I had 9th graders coming to me already behaving well as adults. More often than not they were in…

I think kids copy what they see. If they spend disproportionate time with adults, they will often act mature for their age. That isn't always a good thing, because they do need to deal with other children eventually. Of course, this is not a universal rule, and it's hard to keep kids from getting influenced by TV and random other kids they will eventually see.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#914

Post by bitwize »

Because (USA perspective) government-provided schooling is shit, and getting shittier.

People whinge about Trump possibly abolishing the Department of Education, but maybe no DoE is better than the one we've got. Because between Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, and whatever psychological experiment the education establishment has cooked up recently, I can't distinguish between the education system's serious proposals and sinister plots by a saboteur to undermine education from within.

What's really needed is a constitutional convention. Abolish and reboot the entire government, implement a multiparty parliamentary system with actually functional, corruption-resistant government agencies and bodies. Homeschooling is citizens' response to a state that's failed in its basic responsibilities.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#915

Post by programjames »

jkolio wrote: post #749
matrix87 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a universally valuable experience, especially for people who would fashion themselves as "not average." If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it? Seems like there's only something to lose from adjusting to their shittiness. Like Harrison Bergeron And seeing the state of California tr…

When my car broke down in the middle of a DoorDash run, I walked to a nearby park and sat next to a homeless guy who was about my age. He was deaf; we talked via text on our phones about how we'd ended up on the same bench, and I shared some of my food. I learned from him how resilient someone can be, even under incredibly unfair circumstances, but more importantly, he got something to eat. It's not all about you.

Exactly. It's not all about you. It's best for the community to encourage education, and dragging down students who actually care about education does the opposite.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#916

Post by programjames »

crabbone wrote: post #609
matrix87 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a universally valuable experience, especially for people who would fashion themselves as "not average." If those people have worse habits, are less motivated, less educated, less cultured, what is there to gain from it? Seems like there's only something to lose from adjusting to their shittiness. Like Harrison Bergeron And seeing the state of California tr…

> what is there to gain from it? Humility.

Humility is only considered a virtue because the vast majority of people rank their abilities too high. The GP is coming from an assumption that the person is ranked higher than those around them; humbling such a person makes the rankings even more inaccurate.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#917

Post by programjames »

crabbone wrote: post #606
tomp wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Average" people are the norm, the reality that "not average" people will have to deal with for the rest of their lives. What are you talking about?! I'm a highly educated, "high class" (professional career) person, and I've been socially segregated from "average" people since high school (so, since I was 15). Literally primary school was the last time I ever interacted with "average" people in a meaningful way (be…

The fact that you don't personally meet with "average" people isn't the point. The point is that they exist, and they affect your existence, and they will not and cannot be made to disappear. The "average" people have to share resources with you, and in a way the resources cannot be segregated... unless we start building colonies in space, and send "non-average" people there or some similar dystopian project.

Someone comes in with a gripe that the bottom quintile imposes negative externalities on their education system. Your response is that the same people impose positive externalities when they grow up. These are not the same. If they were still imposing negative externalities when they grow up, I wouldn't want them to exist around me, and sending "non-average" people to space or some similar dystopian project [or jail] would be the correct game-theoretical response.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#918

Post by programjames »

crabbone wrote: post #624
lmm wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning how to co-exist with people who aren't like you is a universally valuable experience, especially for people who would fashion themselves as "not average." Nope. For some people it may be valuable. For me it was miserable, almost to the point of being deadly. It does not prepare you for adulthood or life or what have you in any meaningful sense (think about what would happen in your everyday life if someone…

Your argument is similar to burning the house down, once you discover that you don't like the couch in the living room. Or, more realistically, arguing against taxation based on the idea that rich people avoid being taxed anyways, and it's only poor people who will get the short end of the stick. The school system isn't perfect, and is hard to improve due to many reasons, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It ha…

> The school system isn't perfect, and is hard to improve due to many reasons, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

The people you hear giving up today have tried to fix the system. It's a little insulting to insinuate otherwise. When I was in high school, I tried to start a CS club, but no one was interested. I helped run MATHCOUNTS at the local middle school, and we had five people show up on a good day (I don't think it is possible to fix the education system. The student body has adopted an anti-learning culture, administrators are lowering standards to raise their metrics, and most teachers would be wholly unfit for an ideal classroom, let alone the ones they're supposed to oversee nowadays. I am all for "burning the house down". I think the best solution would be to fire everyone, raise salaries by 10x, and then hire back 10% as many people. After all, the professorship pyramid scheme has lots of PhDs who might be interested in teaching for $300K/year.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#919

Post by programjames »

plussed_reader wrote: post #776
Scubabear68 wrote: post #623

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.…

"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." This kind of myopyic outlook that conflates the then-traditional instruction period to the remote instruction paradigm greatly cheapens every other point of your argument. None of the teaching staff that had to ada…

GP mentioned they were totally incompetent in their subject areas. It doesn't matter what medium they are transferring information through if they have no information to transfer.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#920

Post by programjames »

aaroninsf wrote: post #784
Scubabear68 wrote: post #623

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.…

"millions of parents", "their schools" should be "me", "my school." If your school isn't good, I recommend improving if for every other kid, who didn't pull the lottery ticket of affluent parents with flexible jobs. School boards benefit from parents who care and are competent.

The people you hear giving up today have tried to fix the system. It's rather insulting to insinuate otherwise.
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