Outschooling
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Outschooling
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Re: Outschooling
#2Homeschooling seems like an ideal solution for those with a parent at home to improve their children's academic learning. But it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.
Re: Outschooling
#3[deleted]
Re: Outschooling
#4Homeschooling seems like an ideal solution for those with a parent at home to improve their children's academic learning. But it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.
> it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.
As someone who was homeschooled: it's extremely scary. I've missed out on social experiences and also on actual education and consider myself generally worse-off for it.
Consider: Texas permits homeschooling and has effectively zero oversight. How many homeschooling families are also anti-vaxxers or feed into anti-government paranoia? Especially consider the bitterness of such parents whose taxes pay into the school system but those same taxes aren't utilized for homeschooling families: so it's literally the government taking money to pay for a service for all citizens -- except you, you're not getting what you paid for.
Re: Outschooling
#5Homeschooling seems like an ideal solution for those with a parent at home to improve their children's academic learning. But it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.
> it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system. As someone who was homeschooled: it's extremely scary. I've missed out on social experiences and also on actual education and consider myself generally worse-off for it. Consider: Texas permits homeschooling and has effectively zero oversight. How many homeschooling families are also anti-vaxxers or feed into anti-govern…
I can read your comment in several, slightly conflicting, ways:
- homeschooling is in practice mostly undesirable, because it overwhelmingly attracts people with fringe beliefs who are not going to act in their child's best interest
- homeschooling is at a systemic disadvantage because parents that care enough about their kid's education to take an active part in it have no voice in the public schooling system (my understanding of grandparent's point); in addition, they contribute as much as other taxpayers to the public school system while not getting anything for it.
Am I misunderstanding?
Re: Outschooling
#6Interesting blog post and theory.
A core counter argument to their base premise is that learning effectively is done in person, as part of a social group, in a physical space dedicated to learning, with hands on practice. It certainly seems to be the core takeaways of Waldorf/Montessori/constructionist/etc. approaches.
> When our kids were in school and struggled with a class/teacher/subject, we would get them a tutor to come to our home in the evenings.
In other words, there's a reason they paid the tutor to come in person, and not tutor over Skype or the phone.
The author speaks of their intent being to open up access to education, and replace the "outdated tech" of physical schools and classrooms. I need to be convinced that successful execution of this plan (and its inevitable percolation into policy if it makes financial sense - which I have no doubt it does, for a VC to take interest in it) won't result in a two tiered system, with students from poorer families getting free, public education over video lessons, and students from wealthier family being able to attend private, more expensive, in person schooling.
Re: Outschooling
#7I'm slightly torn on models like this. On the one hand, the cost savings and potential to improve outcomes by scaling the impact of the best classes is obviously wildly important. At the same time, it does seem like there is hard to quantify value in the social aspects of a traditional school. As I write this, however, I realize that there are plenty of private and parochial schools where the class sizes are so small that you could probably replicate the social value pretty easily, since you wouldn't need too many students in the same place to do things like "class trips".
Re: Outschooling
#8Interesting blog post and theory. A core counter argument to their base premise is that learning effectively is done in person, as part of a social group, in a physical space dedicated to learning, with hands on practice. It certainly seems to be the core takeaways of Waldorf/Montessori/constructionist/etc. approaches. > When our kids were in school and struggled with a class/teacher/subject, we would get them a tuto…
> In other words, there's a reason they paid the tutor to come in person, and not tutor over Skype or the phone.
I'll refrain from posting the ages and names of his kids in the interest of privacy (you can figure it out with very light Googling), but his older children are in their late twenties, meaning they are nearly my age. When I was in high school "Skype tutoring" wasn't a thing, because reliable video chat didn't exist, and very little of my schoolwork used a computer for more than web processing. Isn't it a lot more likely that the sentence you are referencing is referring to that experience than evidence "in person" was the reason he paid for a tutor to come in person?
Re: Outschooling
#9Homeschooling seems like an ideal solution for those with a parent at home to improve their children's academic learning. But it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.
Many of the most actively involved parents are already removing themselves (and their children) from the public school system, as the payoff to fighting for improvement won't come until after it can benefit their kids. I don't think it's exactly a tragedy of the commons situation, more of the inverse, but the costs (to the parent) are so high that it's hard to blame them. Personally, I think the best we can hope for is that models like Outschool can develop into supplements that work in concert with public school, reducing the relative ROI of going private.
Re: Outschooling
#10Homeschooling seems like an ideal solution for those with a parent at home to improve their children's academic learning. But it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.
> it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system. As someone who was homeschooled: it's extremely scary. I've missed out on social experiences and also on actual education and consider myself generally worse-off for it. Consider: Texas permits homeschooling and has effectively zero oversight. How many homeschooling families are also anti-vaxxers or feed into anti-govern…
I was also home schooled (4th and 5th grade) and it wasn't scary. I missed out on some social opportunities but I joined clubs and played sports to make up for those interactions.
Homeschooling put me far ahead of my peers. I went back for middle school (6th grade) and skated through the next 3 years until I could take AP classes in high school. I am by no means exceptional nor were my parents great teachers. I think being able to go at my own pace allowed me to learn faster and more thoroughly than if I had been in a classroom.
I'd say there are a lot of upsides to home schooling if parents can swing it, and the downsides can be mitigated by a little extra effort on socializing.