10 ms·

My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

92 points by alexdong 4y ago

awinter-py 4y ago
> ... key differences: Each child could work at their own pace, largely through playing educational games and apps that adapted to where they were. There was no particular endpoint that the kids needed to get to at the end of the semester. if self-pacing is possible, not doing it seems like a huge unforced error in education policy
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  Only if you assume that having learn as fast as they are able to is a goal in education policy. In fact, it is not. Having some kids ahead of the others is not a desirable outcome of public education as it actually exists. Instead, it operates under assumption that all kids are interchangeable tabula rasas, and if some kids are ahead, that only means that the education is under serving those who are behind them. As a result, great amounts of efforts are spent to get these slower kids to the pace of faster kids. It never actually has any non-superficial effect. If it seems to, it’s almost universally some more or less apparent selection bias going on. This disappoints the educators greatly, especially as they are under pressure to deliver the equal outcomes they promised. The outcome is that more and more resources are spent on the slower kids, at the expense of the faster kids. At this point, parents of the faster kids (who very often are people of means, and this is by no means an accident) remove their kids from public education, and move them to private schools. This is often decried as some kind of moral failing, as if they and their kids owe something to the schools that fail to serve them, and for which they continue to pay anyway, despite not using them. This is not unforced error, this is the result of the incentives embedded in the education system, which are, in turn, a result of unreasonable expectations put on it. We shouldn’t expect that everyone learn the same amount at school. This is never going to be the case, and is hurting everyone in the system.
  - candiodari 4y ago
    > This is never going to be the case, and is hurting everyone in the system. Yeah, and changing it will cause revolt. It would be going back to saying people "just aren't equal", ie. the idea of nobility. And if there's one guarantee in life: it very quickly won't be actual achievement that determines if you get ahead in such a system.
rwbt 4y ago
Homeschooling is interesting. I like the idea, but I'd be more worried about lack of socialization with other children or any kind of group learning. Even more so if the child is slightly introverted. This is less of an issue if children are raised in the nuclear families like in the olden days, but these days what other avenues are left where children can learn something in a group and form long term friendships other than a school?
- kiba 4y ago
  Sport clubs, local neighborhood. In particular, I retained a childhood friend who was a street playmate. The rest of my friends last through middle and high school until they moved away, and in some case drifted apart.
- lax4ever 4y ago
  Homeschooling is not the isolation that most people think it is. In fact, the vast majority of parents who homeschool (myself included) join forces with other parents who homeschool for events, activities, and learning opportunities, all of which bring with them natural socialization while still allowing for a far more tailored learning experience than you can get in any classroom. In addition, homeschool kids typically spend more time around adults and get a better understand of the socialization standard that is expected of them, allowing them to build mature relationships easier.
  - bearmode 4y ago
    In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day, every day, plus any time after school or on weekends, alongside our school work. We also had hundreds of peers that we could make friends with if we wanted to. Compared to that I'd absolutely say homeschooling (even with occasional events and activities) is quite isolating.
    - YesWeWill 4y ago
      Why is it so great to force children to socialize for 6+ hours with people they might hate and who might hate them? Especially in an environment where the adults are so undernumbered they can't possibly keep track of what's happening - and sometimes they participate in the hate towards specific children too? With homeschooling, the parent sees what's happening and can protect their child. Nobody will protect them at school - especially if the school lies to the parents to save face/protect teachers. And nobody will ever pay for the destroyed family relationships this produces.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Not surprising that the kid of two extremely successful and intelligent parents -- at least technically and academically -- is suffocated by the pacing of public schooling. It's supposed to accommodate the needs of the general population and its standard deviations of nurture and nature. I wonder if this will become a more common pattern for the cognitive elite.
- ido 4y ago
  It’s not about the cognitive elite. The mass-education public school system is designed for an average with very little deviation that doesn’t actually fit that many pupils - it’s not a single int stat like in d&d, kids have different capabilities & interests and aiming for some sort of generalized lowest common denominator is going to be a bad experience for pretty much everyone. The only solution IMO is the expensive one - more individualized curricula, smaller classes, more personal attention from the teacher to the pupil and less focus on standardized tests and grades.
  - koonsolo 4y ago
    There is another way, and I know they sometimes use it in Belgium: let the smarter kids help out the ones that still struggle with the material. That way they learn how to properly explain things, teach others. Maybe they don't see more material than the other kids, but they sure learn other usefull skills.
    - chongli 4y ago
      That’s not great. The smartest kids could be learning calculus in elementary school. Having them teach arithmetic to their struggling peers is just going to add frustration onto boredom. It also turns out that the smartest kids don’t even need that much attention. They just need access to resources and challenging material and a supervisor to help them set and achieve goals. It really doesn’t cost much to society to provide gifted kids with what they need and at the same time free teachers up to spend more time with those who need it. I think we all know the main reason we as a society don’t fund gifted and talented education: spite. Parents of average kids hold a special animosity toward gifted kids for no other reason than envy. They would be far better off finding ways to get the most problematic and disruptive kids out of their children’s classrooms but that doesn’t satisfy people the way seeing a gifted program close does.
renewiltord 4y ago
I learned pretty much everything I know from reading by myself since I lived out in the country. My parents did my homework with their left hand when I was young so I'd have time for more productive pursuits like exploring or reading. Worked pretty well for me. I aced almost every exam in my childhood. And I am quite successful. In many ways, school just slows you down. But I liked my parents' way. That let me go to school and have that shared experience with other kids while not holding me back. I wonder how I can do that for my kids. Unfortunately, homework is part of the grade and you can't tell the teachers to skip it for your kid. Or maybe you can.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > In many ways, school just slows you down. Yes, and that's not even accounting for bullying if you are unlucky
- rwbt 4y ago
  > Unfortunately, homework is part of the grade and you can't tell the teachers to skip it for your kid. This is the biggest curiosity killer. Instead of helping them it somehow teaches the kids to become a bunch of obedient rule followers. Maybe that's the intended effect.
- trophycase 4y ago
  idk where you went to school but the "homework" and worksheets I got before high school I could do with my eyes closed. The teachers would hand it out, I'd complete it in 2 minutes then not worry about it. It never even reached my parents. They had already taught me how to read a clock, how to do multiplication and long division, etc. "Homework" as a concept basically didn't exist for me before AP classes.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Oh my homework was sheets of that stuff. The constraint was writing speed honestly. It would take hours of work just to write it out. I was talking to my parents the other day and they laughed about how many pages of cursive text they had to fill just to let me off the hook. But who knows, maybe you're better than me. It's definitely one thing I like very much about American education: it appears to be much less mechanical. Though unless you go to magnet schools or specific private schools, the peer group is usually weak.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
j7ake 4y ago
Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. This individualised form of education may be making a return over the next years as apps and material become more personalised.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  This morning on our local public radio station here in Santa Fe, I heard a report on salaries in education. Private tutors were the highest paid category, above all "actual" teachers in terms of mean salaries (median would have been better). Apparently Santa Fe was rated #2 of all US metro areas in this category.
- seanhunter 4y ago
  > Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. Yes. As a fun aside, my understanding is that is the reason for a baffling (to people outside the UK) anomaly. In the UK, if you there is a school you have to pay for (ie not a government school) that is called a public school. Everywhere else in the world that would be called a private school - a much more logical-sounding name. The reason is that if in say the 15th century you were well off but weren't quite rich enough to pay for tutors for your children you might be able to send them to a public school (eg Eton college) instead. There were no government schools at the time, so schools that were open to the public were called public schools to differentiate from private tuition.
  - walthamstow 4y ago
    Not quite. Harrow, Eton and Winchester are public schools but somewhere like Bromley High School and most other no-name fee-paying schools are called independent or private schools. Nobody would refer to one of these as a public school. A school that you don't pay for is usually referred to as a state school.
kasperni 4y ago
Outside of the Anglosphere homeschooling is not really a thing [1]. Coming from Europe I've personally never meet anyone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_status_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_st...
- wisemanwillhear 4y ago
  I've come to learn that homeschooling is illegal in some European countries. That may be a big reason why. E.g. Germany https://amp.dw.com/en/european-court-rules-against-german-homeschooling-family/a-47021333 https://amp.dw.com/en/european-court-rules-against-german-ho...
  - phillc73 4y ago
    It is possible in Austria though. We’ve met a group of people who’ve kept at it post-COVID enforced periods of lockdown homeschooling, because it worked so well for their children. The parents take turns supervising the group and I think they also employ a part-time private teacher for oversight.
- wincy 4y ago
  - bbu 4y ago
    >That's because public schooling was initially invented by industrialists as a way to control the populace and get them to be good little factory workers and to avoid rebellions. are you sure about this? industrialists were adamantly against mandatory school because that pulled the kids out of the factory into the schools.
    - watwut 4y ago
      It is frequent home schooling talking point. I don't think it is history at all, the history of schooling is waaay more complicated. Homeschooling is largely ideological, frequent motivation is to keep kids inside religious or other similar bubble. However, those who homeschool for ideological reasons need to demonize public schools and its origins.
thrown_22 4y ago
Home schooling sounds great until you start talking to the people who home school. There's always something weird about them. This lady is no exception: >I have been disturbed to follow the ever-accumulating research on cardiovascular, neurological, and immune system harms that can be caused by covid, even in previously healthy people, even in the vaccinated, and even in children. While vaccines significantly reduce risk of death, unfortunately they provide only a limited reduction in Long Covid risk. Immunity wanes, and people face cumulative risks with each new covid infection (so even if you’ve had covid once or twice, it is best to try to avoid reinfections). I am alarmed that leaders are encouraging mass, repeated infections of a generation of children. I'd love nothing more than to spend time going over areas I find fascinating with a child but I know I have my own idiosyncrasies and multiplying them for the next generation isn't doing anyone any favors. Being exposed to multiple ideas is a good way to keep you from going off the deep end. In short: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTsIPRgWUAALz4v?format=png&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTsIPRgWUAALz4v?format=png&name=...
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Did you read that, or did you scan for the keyword "vaccine"? It's widely accepted that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    Being raised by someone who has numerous medical issues to the point where they can't function in society any more will not lead to a well functioning adult. She's welcome to raise her kids however she wants. But you should keep in mind that this is very much not someone who you want to copy unless you're also basically an invalid.
    - cjbgkagh 4y ago
      It’s very common for very smart people to have autoimmune conditions, you have to take the good with the bad. Thankfully as medical tech gets better we can minimize the bad.
pnathan 4y ago
I was homeschooled: k-11. I have a graduate degree. My sibling has a similar path. The academics I received as a homeschooler were, frankly, probably 90th percentile, maybe more. Yet, simply going to a good school district with good teachers and supportive parents would, in all likelihood, have given me similar outcomes. And now, looking back twenty-plus years later, I don't think that it produced a materially different effect than others of my age group. Certainly my family's homeschooling did wonders for our academics; others in the homeschool group variously finished high school or did minor college. Nothing remarkable. Just like the public school kids - some did great, some did ok, some scraped by. Barring some _exceptionally_ unusual cases - lets say 4th std dev cases, I feel, sharply, that homeschooling is a bad idea. On a broad social level, it removes expected bodies of knowledge suitable for having a useful society; on an individual level, it leaves them in a bad place for interacting with peers. I also believe that most parents are not qualified to actually supervise modern education past a certain grade level- being a parent is a remarkably easy thing to start doing, after all. The social interaction is a profound and subtle problem. There's this thing about dealing with the mass of peers that homeschooling doesn't teach - but the work world and other situations require. This is not going to come with homeschooling. I also note, in passing, that I am assuming that parents are _trying_ to do exceptional education and are not trying to play particularly ideological games. In other words, something roughly analogous to normal schooling goals. However. This assumption does not hold true in much of homeschooling discourse. Much of homeschooling is an explicit religious approach; some of the homeschooling curricula and groups are actually a religious-political project attempting to build political power with an alternative education system outside. So discussions of homeschooling have to address that elephant in the room. Also in passing, any homeschooling policy worth its salt should ensure that children are simply not being educationally or personally neglected; those cases do exist, unfortunately. tl;dr: don't homeschool. take it from a former homeschooled kid. send the kid to a good public school, please.
- jph00 4y ago
  Having not gone through it yourself, you may have an overly-rosy view of school. Personally, I hated school, and I think it had a strongly net negative impact on me. It's not for everyone.
jph00 4y ago
Hi all. I'm Jeremy, the husband of the author of this post. We really didn't expect to see this get any particular attention -- but I'm happy to answer questions about homeschooling you might have. As my wife Rachel said in the intro, this post is really about our particular experiences. It's not an attempt to convince anyone else to do the same thing. Home-schooling is very different to what I expected. There are things today that just weren't available to previous generations. In particular, there's a lot of well-designed adaptive apps and websites that take kids through topics at a speed that's appropriate for them. This has meant, in our case, that our daughter has avoided the extreme boredom that she faced when she was at a traditional school, and is now enjoying her learning much more. It's particularly good for topics like mathematics, where if you start getting behind it can become nearly impossible to make progress, and if you're ahead then you might just zone out. Also, Zoom is a game-changer. Our daughter gets tutoring in coding from an MIT computer science grad (who also minored in music and teaches her piano too), in physics from a physicist, in art from a professional artist, in Japanese from a native Japanese speaker, and so forth. Her tutors are from all over the world and are extremely diverse. This has been a lot of fun for her, and has opened her eyes to different ways of thinking about the world. Without Zoom and friends, we'd have been restricted to people that are in our local geographic area. We've had a lot of help from Modulo (https://www.modulo.app https://www.modulo.app). Another nice thing about Zoom is that the vast majority of her learning occurs in a social environment with 1-5 other kids. We've found that this is a great group size, and is more social than most larger classrooms -- the kids are never told to keep quiet, but instead encouraged to have lots of discussion and ask questions whenever they come up. There's lots of diversions to follow whatever the kids get interested in along the way. I've personally spent a lot of time reading academic papers and books about education and listening to lots of interviews with teachers. There are all kinds of fascinating insights that just haven't been brought into regular schools so far, but we're able to take advantage of in all our daughter's lessons. For example, we use a lot of spaced repetition, and teach her tutors how to take advantage of it too (e.g see http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html).
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing your story! How did you find the various tutors, and what percent of the teaching do you do yourself? About how many hours a day are you actively working with your child? Do you expect to homeschool indefinitely?
russellbeattie 4y ago
As_You_Wish 4y ago
With everything about what I've been reading about public schools recently, no way in heck would I want my child in a public school, where instead of teaching the basics, they are more about indoctrinating children into a specific political worldview. I'm neither liberal or conservative, I'm neither. But from what I'm reading, the agenda at public schools is about as hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible. I don't want my children to be indoctrinated to the left or right. I wouldn't have my kids go to a public school where they push religion, either. Both suck. Just...no thanks.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible What does this even mean? Examples? Who told you this? How do you think that's maintained in opposition to whatever your local district politics is?
- PointlessLogin 4y ago
  > from what I'm reading, the agenda at public schools is about as hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible. Where are you reading this, and why do you choose to believe it?
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  I suspect the people telling you this are doing so for their own political purposes.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
Myself and the wife don't have the skills, time or frankly the patience to be a teacher. My eldest is studying to become a K12 teacher and it is a 4 year degree course so I don't think Zoom and parents are going to replace her soon. My youngest is a "aspy" and when she went to high school it was a disaster - she ended up in a clinic for treatment of depression and one of the triggers was high school. Square peg in a round hole. We fortunately found a tutor that had taught kids with learning disabilities and was close to home and enrolled her in an online school platform for the materials and exams. She had to drop Physics/Chemistry as there was no way for her to do practical lab work even at another place. She went to the tutor's home during the day - helped other kids when not busy and completed Grade 12 over two years - she is now studying IT programming first year at a university. It was the best decision we made ever - home schooling but letting a professional do it and for the right reasons - "We don't trust the govt" or "install my morality/belief system" is shitty reasons IMHO.

92 points by alexdong 4y ago

> ... key differences: Each child could work at their own pace, largely through playing educational games and apps that adapted to where they were. There was no particular endpoint that the kids needed to get to at the end of the semester. if self-pacing is possible, not doing it seems like a huge unforced error in education policy

xyzzyz 4y ago
Only if you assume that having learn as fast as they are able to is a goal in education policy. In fact, it is not. Having some kids ahead of the others is not a desirable outcome of public education as it actually exists. Instead, it operates under assumption that all kids are interchangeable tabula rasas, and if some kids are ahead, that only means that the education is under serving those who are behind them. As a result, great amounts of efforts are spent to get these slower kids to the pace of faster kids. It never actually has any non-superficial effect. If it seems to, it’s almost universally some more or less apparent selection bias going on. This disappoints the educators greatly, especially as they are under pressure to deliver the equal outcomes they promised. The outcome is that more and more resources are spent on the slower kids, at the expense of the faster kids. At this point, parents of the faster kids (who very often are people of means, and this is by no means an accident) remove their kids from public education, and move them to private schools. This is often decried as some kind of moral failing, as if they and their kids owe something to the schools that fail to serve them, and for which they continue to pay anyway, despite not using them. This is not unforced error, this is the result of the incentives embedded in the education system, which are, in turn, a result of unreasonable expectations put on it. We shouldn’t expect that everyone learn the same amount at school. This is never going to be the case, and is hurting everyone in the system.
- candiodari 4y ago
  > This is never going to be the case, and is hurting everyone in the system. Yeah, and changing it will cause revolt. It would be going back to saying people "just aren't equal", ie. the idea of nobility. And if there's one guarantee in life: it very quickly won't be actual achievement that determines if you get ahead in such a system.

rwbt 4y ago

Homeschooling is interesting. I like the idea, but I'd be more worried about lack of socialization with other children or any kind of group learning. Even more so if the child is slightly introverted. This is less of an issue if children are raised in the nuclear families like in the olden days, but these days what other avenues are left where children can learn something in a group and form long term friendships other than a school?

kiba 4y ago
Sport clubs, local neighborhood. In particular, I retained a childhood friend who was a street playmate. The rest of my friends last through middle and high school until they moved away, and in some case drifted apart.
lax4ever 4y ago
Homeschooling is not the isolation that most people think it is. In fact, the vast majority of parents who homeschool (myself included) join forces with other parents who homeschool for events, activities, and learning opportunities, all of which bring with them natural socialization while still allowing for a far more tailored learning experience than you can get in any classroom. In addition, homeschool kids typically spend more time around adults and get a better understand of the socialization standard that is expected of them, allowing them to build mature relationships easier.
- bearmode 4y ago
  In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day, every day, plus any time after school or on weekends, alongside our school work. We also had hundreds of peers that we could make friends with if we wanted to. Compared to that I'd absolutely say homeschooling (even with occasional events and activities) is quite isolating.
  - YesWeWill 4y ago
    Why is it so great to force children to socialize for 6+ hours with people they might hate and who might hate them? Especially in an environment where the adults are so undernumbered they can't possibly keep track of what's happening - and sometimes they participate in the hate towards specific children too? With homeschooling, the parent sees what's happening and can protect their child. Nobody will protect them at school - especially if the school lies to the parents to save face/protect teachers. And nobody will ever pay for the destroyed family relationships this produces.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

Not surprising that the kid of two extremely successful and intelligent parents -- at least technically and academically -- is suffocated by the pacing of public schooling. It's supposed to accommodate the needs of the general population and its standard deviations of nurture and nature. I wonder if this will become a more common pattern for the cognitive elite.

ido 4y ago
It’s not about the cognitive elite. The mass-education public school system is designed for an average with very little deviation that doesn’t actually fit that many pupils - it’s not a single int stat like in d&d, kids have different capabilities & interests and aiming for some sort of generalized lowest common denominator is going to be a bad experience for pretty much everyone. The only solution IMO is the expensive one - more individualized curricula, smaller classes, more personal attention from the teacher to the pupil and less focus on standardized tests and grades.
- koonsolo 4y ago
  There is another way, and I know they sometimes use it in Belgium: let the smarter kids help out the ones that still struggle with the material. That way they learn how to properly explain things, teach others. Maybe they don't see more material than the other kids, but they sure learn other usefull skills.
  - chongli 4y ago
    That’s not great. The smartest kids could be learning calculus in elementary school. Having them teach arithmetic to their struggling peers is just going to add frustration onto boredom. It also turns out that the smartest kids don’t even need that much attention. They just need access to resources and challenging material and a supervisor to help them set and achieve goals. It really doesn’t cost much to society to provide gifted kids with what they need and at the same time free teachers up to spend more time with those who need it. I think we all know the main reason we as a society don’t fund gifted and talented education: spite. Parents of average kids hold a special animosity toward gifted kids for no other reason than envy. They would be far better off finding ways to get the most problematic and disruptive kids out of their children’s classrooms but that doesn’t satisfy people the way seeing a gifted program close does.

renewiltord 4y ago

I learned pretty much everything I know from reading by myself since I lived out in the country. My parents did my homework with their left hand when I was young so I'd have time for more productive pursuits like exploring or reading. Worked pretty well for me. I aced almost every exam in my childhood. And I am quite successful. In many ways, school just slows you down. But I liked my parents' way. That let me go to school and have that shared experience with other kids while not holding me back. I wonder how I can do that for my kids. Unfortunately, homework is part of the grade and you can't tell the teachers to skip it for your kid. Or maybe you can.

ekianjo 4y ago
> In many ways, school just slows you down. Yes, and that's not even accounting for bullying if you are unlucky
rwbt 4y ago
> Unfortunately, homework is part of the grade and you can't tell the teachers to skip it for your kid. This is the biggest curiosity killer. Instead of helping them it somehow teaches the kids to become a bunch of obedient rule followers. Maybe that's the intended effect.
trophycase 4y ago
idk where you went to school but the "homework" and worksheets I got before high school I could do with my eyes closed. The teachers would hand it out, I'd complete it in 2 minutes then not worry about it. It never even reached my parents. They had already taught me how to read a clock, how to do multiplication and long division, etc. "Homework" as a concept basically didn't exist for me before AP classes.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Oh my homework was sheets of that stuff. The constraint was writing speed honestly. It would take hours of work just to write it out. I was talking to my parents the other day and they laughed about how many pages of cursive text they had to fill just to let me off the hook. But who knows, maybe you're better than me. It's definitely one thing I like very much about American education: it appears to be much less mechanical. Though unless you go to magnet schools or specific private schools, the peer group is usually weak.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

j7ake 4y ago

Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. This individualised form of education may be making a return over the next years as apps and material become more personalised.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
This morning on our local public radio station here in Santa Fe, I heard a report on salaries in education. Private tutors were the highest paid category, above all "actual" teachers in terms of mean salaries (median would have been better). Apparently Santa Fe was rated #2 of all US metro areas in this category.
seanhunter 4y ago
> Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. Yes. As a fun aside, my understanding is that is the reason for a baffling (to people outside the UK) anomaly. In the UK, if you there is a school you have to pay for (ie not a government school) that is called a public school. Everywhere else in the world that would be called a private school - a much more logical-sounding name. The reason is that if in say the 15th century you were well off but weren't quite rich enough to pay for tutors for your children you might be able to send them to a public school (eg Eton college) instead. There were no government schools at the time, so schools that were open to the public were called public schools to differentiate from private tuition.
- walthamstow 4y ago
  Not quite. Harrow, Eton and Winchester are public schools but somewhere like Bromley High School and most other no-name fee-paying schools are called independent or private schools. Nobody would refer to one of these as a public school. A school that you don't pay for is usually referred to as a state school.

kasperni 4y ago

Outside of the Anglosphere homeschooling is not really a thing [1]. Coming from Europe I've personally never meet anyone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_status_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_st...

wisemanwillhear 4y ago
I've come to learn that homeschooling is illegal in some European countries. That may be a big reason why. E.g. Germany https://amp.dw.com/en/european-court-rules-against-german-homeschooling-family/a-47021333 https://amp.dw.com/en/european-court-rules-against-german-ho...
- phillc73 4y ago
  It is possible in Austria though. We’ve met a group of people who’ve kept at it post-COVID enforced periods of lockdown homeschooling, because it worked so well for their children. The parents take turns supervising the group and I think they also employ a part-time private teacher for oversight.
wincy 4y ago
- bbu 4y ago
  >That's because public schooling was initially invented by industrialists as a way to control the populace and get them to be good little factory workers and to avoid rebellions. are you sure about this? industrialists were adamantly against mandatory school because that pulled the kids out of the factory into the schools.
  - watwut 4y ago
    It is frequent home schooling talking point. I don't think it is history at all, the history of schooling is waaay more complicated. Homeschooling is largely ideological, frequent motivation is to keep kids inside religious or other similar bubble. However, those who homeschool for ideological reasons need to demonize public schools and its origins.

thrown_22 4y ago

Home schooling sounds great until you start talking to the people who home school. There's always something weird about them. This lady is no exception: >I have been disturbed to follow the ever-accumulating research on cardiovascular, neurological, and immune system harms that can be caused by covid, even in previously healthy people, even in the vaccinated, and even in children. While vaccines significantly reduce risk of death, unfortunately they provide only a limited reduction in Long Covid risk. Immunity wanes, and people face cumulative risks with each new covid infection (so even if you’ve had covid once or twice, it is best to try to avoid reinfections). I am alarmed that leaders are encouraging mass, repeated infections of a generation of children. I'd love nothing more than to spend time going over areas I find fascinating with a child but I know I have my own idiosyncrasies and multiplying them for the next generation isn't doing anyone any favors. Being exposed to multiple ideas is a good way to keep you from going off the deep end. In short: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTsIPRgWUAALz4v?format=png&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTsIPRgWUAALz4v?format=png&name=...

whatshisface 4y ago
Did you read that, or did you scan for the keyword "vaccine"? It's widely accepted that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Being raised by someone who has numerous medical issues to the point where they can't function in society any more will not lead to a well functioning adult. She's welcome to raise her kids however she wants. But you should keep in mind that this is very much not someone who you want to copy unless you're also basically an invalid.
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    It’s very common for very smart people to have autoimmune conditions, you have to take the good with the bad. Thankfully as medical tech gets better we can minimize the bad.

pnathan 4y ago

I was homeschooled: k-11. I have a graduate degree. My sibling has a similar path. The academics I received as a homeschooler were, frankly, probably 90th percentile, maybe more. Yet, simply going to a good school district with good teachers and supportive parents would, in all likelihood, have given me similar outcomes. And now, looking back twenty-plus years later, I don't think that it produced a materially different effect than others of my age group. Certainly my family's homeschooling did wonders for our academics; others in the homeschool group variously finished high school or did minor college. Nothing remarkable. Just like the public school kids - some did great, some did ok, some scraped by. Barring some _exceptionally_ unusual cases - lets say 4th std dev cases, I feel, sharply, that homeschooling is a bad idea. On a broad social level, it removes expected bodies of knowledge suitable for having a useful society; on an individual level, it leaves them in a bad place for interacting with peers. I also believe that most parents are not qualified to actually supervise modern education past a certain grade level- being a parent is a remarkably easy thing to start doing, after all. The social interaction is a profound and subtle problem. There's this thing about dealing with the mass of peers that homeschooling doesn't teach - but the work world and other situations require. This is not going to come with homeschooling. I also note, in passing, that I am assuming that parents are _trying_ to do exceptional education and are not trying to play particularly ideological games. In other words, something roughly analogous to normal schooling goals. However. This assumption does not hold true in much of homeschooling discourse. Much of homeschooling is an explicit religious approach; some of the homeschooling curricula and groups are actually a religious-political project attempting to build political power with an alternative education system outside. So discussions of homeschooling have to address that elephant in the room. Also in passing, any homeschooling policy worth its salt should ensure that children are simply not being educationally or personally neglected; those cases do exist, unfortunately. tl;dr: don't homeschool. take it from a former homeschooled kid. send the kid to a good public school, please.

jph00 4y ago
Having not gone through it yourself, you may have an overly-rosy view of school. Personally, I hated school, and I think it had a strongly net negative impact on me. It's not for everyone.

jph00 4y ago

Hi all. I'm Jeremy, the husband of the author of this post. We really didn't expect to see this get any particular attention -- but I'm happy to answer questions about homeschooling you might have. As my wife Rachel said in the intro, this post is really about our particular experiences. It's not an attempt to convince anyone else to do the same thing. Home-schooling is very different to what I expected. There are things today that just weren't available to previous generations. In particular, there's a lot of well-designed adaptive apps and websites that take kids through topics at a speed that's appropriate for them. This has meant, in our case, that our daughter has avoided the extreme boredom that she faced when she was at a traditional school, and is now enjoying her learning much more. It's particularly good for topics like mathematics, where if you start getting behind it can become nearly impossible to make progress, and if you're ahead then you might just zone out. Also, Zoom is a game-changer. Our daughter gets tutoring in coding from an MIT computer science grad (who also minored in music and teaches her piano too), in physics from a physicist, in art from a professional artist, in Japanese from a native Japanese speaker, and so forth. Her tutors are from all over the world and are extremely diverse. This has been a lot of fun for her, and has opened her eyes to different ways of thinking about the world. Without Zoom and friends, we'd have been restricted to people that are in our local geographic area. We've had a lot of help from Modulo (https://www.modulo.app https://www.modulo.app). Another nice thing about Zoom is that the vast majority of her learning occurs in a social environment with 1-5 other kids. We've found that this is a great group size, and is more social than most larger classrooms -- the kids are never told to keep quiet, but instead encouraged to have lots of discussion and ask questions whenever they come up. There's lots of diversions to follow whatever the kids get interested in along the way. I've personally spent a lot of time reading academic papers and books about education and listening to lots of interviews with teachers. There are all kinds of fascinating insights that just haven't been brought into regular schools so far, but we're able to take advantage of in all our daughter's lessons. For example, we use a lot of spaced repetition, and teach her tutors how to take advantage of it too (e.g see http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html).

gnicholas 4y ago
Thanks for sharing your story! How did you find the various tutors, and what percent of the teaching do you do yourself? About how many hours a day are you actively working with your child? Do you expect to homeschool indefinitely?

russellbeattie 4y ago

As_You_Wish 4y ago

With everything about what I've been reading about public schools recently, no way in heck would I want my child in a public school, where instead of teaching the basics, they are more about indoctrinating children into a specific political worldview. I'm neither liberal or conservative, I'm neither. But from what I'm reading, the agenda at public schools is about as hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible. I don't want my children to be indoctrinated to the left or right. I wouldn't have my kids go to a public school where they push religion, either. Both suck. Just...no thanks.

pjc50 4y ago
> hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible What does this even mean? Examples? Who told you this? How do you think that's maintained in opposition to whatever your local district politics is?
PointlessLogin 4y ago
> from what I'm reading, the agenda at public schools is about as hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible. Where are you reading this, and why do you choose to believe it?
amanaplanacanal 4y ago
I suspect the people telling you this are doing so for their own political purposes.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

Myself and the wife don't have the skills, time or frankly the patience to be a teacher. My eldest is studying to become a K12 teacher and it is a 4 year degree course so I don't think Zoom and parents are going to replace her soon. My youngest is a "aspy" and when she went to high school it was a disaster - she ended up in a clinic for treatment of depression and one of the triggers was high school. Square peg in a round hole. We fortunately found a tutor that had taught kids with learning disabilities and was close to home and enrolled her in an online school platform for the materials and exams. She had to drop Physics/Chemistry as there was no way for her to do practical lab work even at another place. She went to the tutor's home during the day - helped other kids when not busy and completed Grade 12 over two years - she is now studying IT programming first year at a university. It was the best decision we made ever - home schooling but letting a professional do it and for the right reasons - "We don't trust the govt" or "install my morality/belief system" is shitty reasons IMHO.