7 ms·

>For every parent who has the right personality, time AND education to teach their child at home, there are 5,000 who should NOT be teaching their kids - or any

by dfgfek 3y ago

>For every parent who has the right personality, time AND education to teach their child at home, there are 5,000 who should NOT be teaching their kids - or anyone's kids. Could say the same about teachers in schools really.

shellygoodman 3y ago
You could, and you’d be wrong. The unbridled hostility displayed towards teachers on this site is demented. HN is a contrarian cesspit.
- dfgfek 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - spunker540 3y ago
    It’d be wrong to think the average parent is more competent than the average teacher though…
    - chongli 3y ago
      On the subject of their child’s individual needs?
silverbax88 3y ago
Not really (even though the low pay for teachers is a filter for talent) - public school teachers still have to have at least a documented education to teach, and must maintain their certifications/training. Parents are not required to do any of that.
- dfgfek 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - r2_pilot 3y ago
    A documented education, however, does show that one can exhibit consistency with regards to a curriculum. Regardless of how you feel about expertise (judging from your comment history, I'd say you probably don't value expert opinions highly), the ability to adhere to a particular regimen is a virtue in education.
pavlov 3y ago
Teachers are kept in check by school administrators, other teachers, parents, and nowadays increasingly media (both social and professional). Parents teaching at home have no guardrails. They can beat their kids or feed them candy all day, and nobody will know for a decade.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > Teachers are kept in check by school administrators, other teachers Err... no. No, they aren't. You have no idea how hard it is to fire a bad teacher. I'll give you a hint: real friggin' hard.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  I have a vague sense from talking with teachers that the school systems are soul crushing, for both teachers and students. The consensus seems to be that there are very little resources for anyone not in +/- a half std dev of the mean, academically speaking, so both those outlier groups suffer.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > They can beat their kids or feed them candy all day, and nobody will know for a decade. If they disappear into the forest, never to be seen by society again, sure. But for the families that have some community engagement, you soon find out. People notice, people talk. Of course, knowing and doing something about it are very different things.
r2_pilot 3y ago
As someone who has been around the education systems my whole life, this is an unhelpful perspective to have. At least teachers generally have been educated in how to teach, specialize in a couple of fields(and age groups), and have a support structure for special needs students. The same is not expected from a homeschooling parent.
- eduction 3y ago
  Ya no the schools routinely fail special needs students and even actively encourage homeschooling those kids sometimes because they see it as a big disruptive headache. I’ve seen this specifically with fellow parents who have kids on the spectrum (even though legally speaking the schools have an obligation to help these kids and meet their needs, there is a lot of dysfunction in how they try to do this and in some situations it seems intentionally harmful to deter the parents from keeping the kids there). While I admire teachers (the many good ones) and their training, the fact is you don’t have to be smarter than them when you are teaching one or two kids full time and they are teaching ~25 for 6 hours a day.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
alpinisme 3y ago
Well, one relevant difference is that in a school the student is exposed to dozens of teachers while at home the number is much smaller.
- caseysoftware 3y ago
  "Exposed" is probably a bad word to use here. There were almost 500 sexual misconduct complaints again public school teachers in just Chicago in 2022 when not all kids were back in school. There's something fundamentally broken there. Ref: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/report-500-sexual-misconduct-complaints-against-chicago-public-school-employees/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/report-500-sexual-misconduct-...
  - drewbug01 3y ago
    Illinois Policy is a rather biased source. If you read section 4 of the CPS report they reference, you’ll find some interesting stats that Illinois Policy neglected to highlight: - The investigative unit in question does not have discretion over what it must open a case for; they must open a case and investigate every claim even when said claims are submitted anonymously, or without evidence, even without names attached. - That same investigative unit recently had its role expanded to include broader, non-sexual violations of the CPS guidelines for staff/student interactions. - Over the past four years, it has only substantiated 300 policy violations, of which only 16 resulted in criminal charges. So … suffice it to say Illinois Policy is selling a pretty slanted narrative there. They aren’t a neutral party. The actual report paints a hell of a lot less damning picture. It is extremely misleading to say that 500 sexual misconduct allegations were leveled against teachers in one year.
- lolinder 3y ago
  In elementary school it's typical to have a single teacher for a whole year. A bad year can very easily throw off the rest of a child's education as they try to catch up.

by dfgfek 3y ago

shellygoodman 3y ago

You could, and you’d be wrong. The unbridled hostility displayed towards teachers on this site is demented. HN is a contrarian cesspit.

dfgfek 3y ago
[flagged]
- spunker540 3y ago
  It’d be wrong to think the average parent is more competent than the average teacher though…
  - chongli 3y ago
    On the subject of their child’s individual needs?

silverbax88 3y ago

Not really (even though the low pay for teachers is a filter for talent) - public school teachers still have to have at least a documented education to teach, and must maintain their certifications/training. Parents are not required to do any of that.

dfgfek 3y ago
[flagged]
- r2_pilot 3y ago
  A documented education, however, does show that one can exhibit consistency with regards to a curriculum. Regardless of how you feel about expertise (judging from your comment history, I'd say you probably don't value expert opinions highly), the ability to adhere to a particular regimen is a virtue in education.

pavlov 3y ago

Teachers are kept in check by school administrators, other teachers, parents, and nowadays increasingly media (both social and professional). Parents teaching at home have no guardrails. They can beat their kids or feed them candy all day, and nobody will know for a decade.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
> Teachers are kept in check by school administrators, other teachers Err... no. No, they aren't. You have no idea how hard it is to fire a bad teacher. I'll give you a hint: real friggin' hard.
jvanderbot 3y ago
I have a vague sense from talking with teachers that the school systems are soul crushing, for both teachers and students. The consensus seems to be that there are very little resources for anyone not in +/- a half std dev of the mean, academically speaking, so both those outlier groups suffer.
randomdata 3y ago
> They can beat their kids or feed them candy all day, and nobody will know for a decade. If they disappear into the forest, never to be seen by society again, sure. But for the families that have some community engagement, you soon find out. People notice, people talk. Of course, knowing and doing something about it are very different things.

r2_pilot 3y ago

As someone who has been around the education systems my whole life, this is an unhelpful perspective to have. At least teachers generally have been educated in how to teach, specialize in a couple of fields(and age groups), and have a support structure for special needs students. The same is not expected from a homeschooling parent.

eduction 3y ago
Ya no the schools routinely fail special needs students and even actively encourage homeschooling those kids sometimes because they see it as a big disruptive headache. I’ve seen this specifically with fellow parents who have kids on the spectrum (even though legally speaking the schools have an obligation to help these kids and meet their needs, there is a lot of dysfunction in how they try to do this and in some situations it seems intentionally harmful to deter the parents from keeping the kids there). While I admire teachers (the many good ones) and their training, the fact is you don’t have to be smarter than them when you are teaching one or two kids full time and they are teaching ~25 for 6 hours a day.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

alpinisme 3y ago

Well, one relevant difference is that in a school the student is exposed to dozens of teachers while at home the number is much smaller.

caseysoftware 3y ago
"Exposed" is probably a bad word to use here. There were almost 500 sexual misconduct complaints again public school teachers in just Chicago in 2022 when not all kids were back in school. There's something fundamentally broken there. Ref: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/report-500-sexual-misconduct-complaints-against-chicago-public-school-employees/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/report-500-sexual-misconduct-...
- drewbug01 3y ago
  Illinois Policy is a rather biased source. If you read section 4 of the CPS report they reference, you’ll find some interesting stats that Illinois Policy neglected to highlight: - The investigative unit in question does not have discretion over what it must open a case for; they must open a case and investigate every claim even when said claims are submitted anonymously, or without evidence, even without names attached. - That same investigative unit recently had its role expanded to include broader, non-sexual violations of the CPS guidelines for staff/student interactions. - Over the past four years, it has only substantiated 300 policy violations, of which only 16 resulted in criminal charges. So … suffice it to say Illinois Policy is selling a pretty slanted narrative there. They aren’t a neutral party. The actual report paints a hell of a lot less damning picture. It is extremely misleading to say that 500 sexual misconduct allegations were leveled against teachers in one year.
lolinder 3y ago
In elementary school it's typical to have a single teacher for a whole year. A bad year can very easily throw off the rest of a child's education as they try to catch up.