Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#961

Post by Gormo » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:27 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #364

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." 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…

Learning how to co-exist with different sorts of people is definitely a valuable experience.

Trying to do that in an completely artificial institution that arbitrarily divides people into age cohorts in a way that resembles no organic social pattern and forces all social interaction to conform to bureaucratic rules is not just not a value experience, but in fact actively inhibits the above goal.

The kinds of social skills and expectations kids develop in a school environment often need to be unlearned entirely in order to function effectively in a complex and dynamic society.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#962

Post by Gormo » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

spandrew wrote: post #628

zaphar wrote: post #621

I can't really know nor do I care to speculate on why it's becoming fashionable. But I'm a successful, well adjusted, homeschooled child from when it wasn't fashionable. This comment stood out to me: "Opt out of interacting with average people." And my immediate thought was: "I can't imagine a less effective or worse way teach kids how to deal with people, average or not, than to throw them into a pool of similarly u…

This doesn't make sense to me. We all get better at a talent by practicing it. We make mistake. We watch others. We determine our own preferences for what we like/don't like. We learn, grow. Kids figure it out. How does staying at home with just your sibs fair better? You wouldn't get same exposure to the buttload of social interaction and scenarios in a closed system like that.

> We all get better at a talent by practicing it.

Exactly. Which is why kids need to practice their social skills in environments that actually reflect how real-world societies functions, rather than being sequestered in an institution with utterly distorted, artificial social structure.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#963

Post by arkey » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

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…

> If they are, they likely aren't here reading this discussion.

Why not?

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#964

Post by Gormo » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:47 PM UTC

maxehmookau wrote: post #490

wisty wrote: post #332

People are getting disillusioned by education; partly because of politics, but also because there's a good reason not to trust the experts. Phonics and memorising times tables in schools should be as controversial as hand washing in hospitals, but they aren't, and that's just the tip of the iceberg that a very average layperson can see. If a doctor or nurse or scientist says something is "evidence based", it works (m…

> because there's a good reason not to trust the experts I hate this. Where else do we get knowledge from if not experts and academics in their fields? That's how humans grow our collective knowledge. People learn, gather evidence, build knowledge and then share it. The people who have done the learning over many years are called "experts". Those are the people I want to learn from, no? > conservative "evidence based…

> I hate this. Where else do we get knowledge from if not experts and academics in their fields?

Knowledge is generated via examination of reality itself. "Experts" are merely people who have conducted the most thorough examination of reality. Relying on them is a convenience to speed up acquisition of useful knowledge, but not a necessity.

The world is full of people claiming to be experts, but who are, variously:

* charlatans or hucksters evoking the outward trappings of expertise but lacking genuine understanding;

* people who may have valid knowledge in one area pretending to expertise in other areas;

* people who may have valid knowledge, but whose motivations are primarily driven either ideological commitment, pecuniary interests, rent-seeking, or other perverse incentives;

* and people who may have valid knowledge, but mistakenly conflate empirical knowledge with normative authority, and believe that knowing what "is" entitles them to make "ought" decisions for others.

Genuine experts in empirical fields should be in the business of presenting evidence and arguments that stand on their own merits, and empowering others to make better-informed decisions. Reliance on experts should be based entirely on the quality of the information they bring to the table, and not on trust per se.

Anyone who cites their own putative expertise as a reason for why they should not have to explain themselves or justify their conclusions -- or, especially, who cites expertise as a basis for claiming authority over others -- absolutely should not be trusted.

The combination of is-ought conflation and the expertise-as-authority mindset is both incredibly dangerous and extremely prevalent in our society today. People with domain knowledge in a technical field often mistakenly think they are qualified to universalize value judgments about normative matters that relate their empirical field, and think they are entitled to use force to impose those value judgments onto others.

When confronted with this sort of hubris, it's entirely understandable why some people choose to eschew involvement with these putative experts even if it means potentially having less reliable empirical information to work with.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#965

Post by 1_over_epsilon » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:47 PM UTC

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.…

Curious, I'm also in NJ, which school district is this?

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#966

Post by 11101010001100 » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:54 PM UTC

For those comparing school to prison, please confirm that you have experience with both.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#967

Post by Gormo » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:57 PM UTC

maxehmookau wrote: post #554

pie_flavor wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the experts say that algebra should not be taught in 8th grade, and the experts say that guessing at words instead of sounding them out is a better way to learn to read, and the experts say that calc can be replaced with 'data science' which is actually just data literacy, and so on and so forth, I'm not really interested in how the precise definition of 'experts' actually refers to something about 'growing our…

> your best options for guaranteeing that you avoid it are homeschooling Accepting your premise that "public schooling is fucked" (I disagree) there's absolutely zero guarantee that homeschooling is any better for any particular child. It's a completely random chance whether your parent, or whichever potentially untrained person, is going to provide you with an education that sets you up for society, work and the wid…

> It's a completely random chance

No, I don't think these outcomes are being determined by RNGs, but rather by much more deterministic inputs related to the intentions and resources of the parents.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#968

Post by swiftcoder » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 3:58 PM UTC

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…

There are a lot of types of fundamentalists. I don't know that being raised in some sort of AI Accelerationist Musk/Theil-adjacent Silicon Valley environment is necessarily going to go particularly well for the kid either...

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#969

Post by Gormo » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #629

rayiner wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The remarkable thing is that Americans don’t understand their own civilization. They don’t learn anything substantive about the founding U.S. cultures (big differences between Puritans and Jamestown settlers). They don’t study European history as a required course so they know almost nothing about how the modern world came to be (Westphalian nation states, etc). And they learn almost no world history beyond ancient c…

> some supposed connection between the Constitution and some Indian tribe Do you mean the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee [1]? I.e., the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy? The place where the founding fathers of the US got the idea of separation of powers? The form of government of one of the major regional powers at the time the US was formed? Don't know why your daughter's teachers would bother teaching her a…

> The place where the founding fathers of the US got the idea of separation of powers?

That would be a synergy of ideas primarily found in Polybius, Montesquieu, and the extant British constitution.

Not to discount the value of teaching about the political system of the Iroquois -- that's an interesting a valid topic to cover in school -- but it's not appropriate to attempt to link it to the US Constitution in a way that's wholly speculative and tenuous, and do so at the expense of properly teaching about the actual ideas that factored into the development of the constitution.

Re: Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

#970

Post by arkey » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

poulsbohemian wrote: post #230

TheFreim wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator. This applies equally to paid teachers, along with numerous downsides that don't apply to parents (i.e. being able to tailor education to a single individual, developing a relationship that lasts close to two decades, ability to slow down and speed up course material where necessary, and more). Paid teachers, contrary to semi-popular m…

Great, I'm sure you'll have no problem using the services of a self-taught doctor, lawyer, or engineer then. After all, why would they need to be taught by a professional? Go spend some time in a classroom and get a fucking clue how much more there is to teaching than what your layman's view entails. You, and this disrespect for our educators and the potential of what we could be offering in our public schools is why…

> Go spend some time in a classroom and get a clue how much more there is to teaching than what your layman's view entails.

How, by the lack of it?

A lot of people bet for home schooling because, not despite of, their perspective from inside a classroom.