24 ms·

Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative

175 points by jgord 10y ago

Glyptodon 10y ago
Ah, so instead of fixing a system that does not meet their needs homeschoolers opt out and leave the less time and resource affluent to stew. How commendable and good for society. I think the course presented illustrates well why democratic and republican societies should always prohibit private and home schooling. Instead of opting out parents such as the writer would be forced to engage and reform and participate in change and help bettering things for society and not just themselves, because the differences in educational equity they'd otherwise beget are seeds sown on the path to social schisms, vast class divides, and the destruction of a system dependent on educated voters.
- smithkl42 10y ago
  What you call "social schism" I call liberty. I think the universal availability of public schooling is, in general, a great good. But the idea of the government telling me that I can't home school my children makes my skin crawl. The US constitution correctly defines strictly limited roles for the government, and carves out huge spaces for individual liberty - liberty which is meaningless if I'm forced to allow the government to indoctrinate my children in ways that I may strongly disagree with. Turn it around. Imagine that schools taught a sort of religious fundamentalism that you found abhorrent. Would you want the government to be able to force you to send your children there? Making home schooling illegal turns the government into a master precisely when it should be a servant, and a jailer when it should be a helper.
  - justinlaster 10y ago
    >Imagine that schools taught a sort of religious fundamentalism that you found abhorrent. Ironically, home schooling seems to be used for this purpose.
    - zeveb 10y ago
      You left off the key next sentence: 'Would you want the government to be able to force you to send your children there?' Home schooling permits parents to teach their children their values, which is their right as parents. Public schooling forces all taxpayers to subsidise the teaching of values with which they may or may not agree; in some places, it also forces all parents to have their children taught values with which they may or may not agree.
      - justinlaster 10y ago
        >Home schooling permits parents to teach their children their values, which is their right as parents. The public school system does not stop them from doing this, in any way shape or form. >Public schooling forces all taxpayers to subsidize the teaching of values with which they may or may not agree The public school system is built to be incredibly neutral, and in my opinion sometimes too neutral. So I'm not sure what "values" are being forced through the public school system.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  Your primary duty as a parent is to your child, not "society". "I think the course presented illustrates well why democratic and republican societies should always prohibit private and home schooling." Any society that does such things is neither "democratic" nor "republican". It is totalitarian, pretty much by definition. They're not your children, dude.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    Then every society is totalitarian. The fact is that society already tells you how to raise your children and will remove them from you if need be.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      There's a wide, wide range between (e.g.) beating your children and refusing to hand them over for state indoctrination. Pretending otherwise isn't a reasonable argument.
  - DasIch 10y ago
    Indeed parents have a duty to their children. Clearly this cannot and should not mean that they're allowed to treat their children however they want or that they're allowed to educate them on what and how they want. There can be a space for them to make decisions but the rights of the children always have to take precedence. It's only natural for the government to step in and determine exactly what this means. Allowing the government to do this without limits is problematic, so you balance that out with rights assigned to parents. It's not an easy question to determine where the line should be drawn but I don't think it's really all that totalitarian to prohibit home schooling. It ensures that children are educated, that they socialize with other children, get confronted with different points of view and gives them the freedom and ability to safely explore the world and themselves in an environment where there parents have much less influence over their lives. It should not be forgotten that not all parents are included to provide that without force.
    - joeclark77 10y ago
- throwaway729 10y ago
  I'm a... victim, I guess... of this mindset. I didn't really start getting even a half decent mathematics or science education until college. If I didn't pick up programming as a hobby, IDK where I would be right now. Probably nowhere good, financially and perhaps otherwise. (Mind you, AFAICT private schools aren't typically much better, and there's less accountability and more personal cost to boot.) I'm very conscious of what you're saying here and mostly agree with the negative effect of affluent people opting out of the education system. So I'll commit myself to improving the systems that my own kids would be in if I didn't have the time and money for alternatives. But I'm still unsure whether I'll actually send my own children to public schools. The cost to them will be real.
- potholefiller 10y ago
  There are many friends I've seen do exactly that, but the efforts only seem to be particularly effective when localized. The educational system can be quite slow to change, likely requiring a more significant investment of energy to "fix society" than to direct that energy towards their own children. Many school teachers and administrators get into the field specifically with the ambition to better the system. They spend their full-time attention on these issues, yet truly are at the mercy of government policies. Do I agree that this is the appropriate way to go? No more than I agree with private schools (which I don't), but we're not all political activists, and even if we were, everyone's got their own issue and their own viewpoints. Where the author opts out of the system, another opts in and digs in; such is a fairly concept in free society.
- jgord 10y ago
  op here .. no, in many case they have really tried to fix the system, work around it etc, before they have opted out. Its never the first option to take children out of school.
- stevendhansen 10y ago
  With respect, the idea that most parents could fix the system if they just tried is incredibly naive. I think most parents do the best that they can. If they feel that homeschooling is better for their children then they absolutely should pursue that option.
threeseed 10y ago
This is from Victoria, Australia in case there is confusion. And as a background. The majority of K-12 schools are free, public schools with a smaller but growing group of religious schools. Home schooling is perfectly legal but requires you to register with the government. Personally I think those who advocate for home schooling often think schooling is purely for education. When for children it is also the time in which they develop socially. Taking them away from that without a suitable alternative is in my opinion somewhat reckless. But provided there is some alternative I don't see why it wouldn't be an option.
- learc83 10y ago
  Interacting with other adults is so different from the social interactions you deal with in school that I'm not sure whether school is a net benefit or detriment to developing social skills. When I think back, I don't think school really prepares you socially for anything other than life in an institution. If you plan on doing prison time that might be useful. But after high school I've never been in any kind of situation remotely like that (other than maybe my first retail job).
- joeclark77 10y ago
  I think many homeschoolers know that students "develop socially" in the public schools, but have observed also that the social structures and behaviors seen there (gangs, bullies, cliques, general teenage crappiness) are utterly dysfunctional and quite unlike the social behaviors that would be acceptable in the adult world. There's a case to be made for homeschooling as a better way to "socialize" kids than public schooling.
- jgord 10y ago
  op here.. all too true! To mitigate that, at least in Melbournes East there is a growing group of homeschoolers who get together for events - organised on facebook sites such as HEN aka http://home-ed.vic.edu.au http://home-ed.vic.edu.au [membership] and "Melbourne Homeschool Families With Teens" etc.
  - petertodd 10y ago
vacri 10y ago
I don't have a horse in this race (no kids), but this call to action bothered me. Lots of run-on sentences; incorrect capitalisation; 'Math' instead of 'maths', 'lite' instead of 'light'[1]; weird double- and triple-spacing; 'Id' instead of 'I'd' grammatical errors; overuse of dashes[2]; using both -ise and -ize endings on the same word (realise); so on and so forth. On the one hand, I realise that I'm being a bit pedantic, but on the other hand, there were a lot of these errors, in a call to action to allow the author to teach people. Clarity of expression is one thing that is taught in high school, and it's important. I'd want to proofread my article if I was trying to put forward that my ability to teach was decent. The occasional error should be overlooked, but this was pretty sloppy. If I saw these errors in someone wanting to teach more practical skills rather than abstract ones, I guess they wouldn't stand out so much. [1] I've lived in that state all my life, and am familiar with the localised terms (lite? yuck) [2] which I frequently abuse myself, to be honest
- smithkl42 10y ago
  Just one point - "maths" is in fact the correct (local) term in Commonwealth countries - sort of like how they refer to "sport" instead of "sports".
  - vacri 10y ago
    Yep, I think you've read that point the other way around to how I meant it :)
- jgord 10y ago
  op, here - yes, you could argue Im not well educated for writing such articles - I was educated in schools not homeschooled :) Im happy to correct spelling grammar errors - I by no means represent myself as a professional author. Be aware that 'Math' or 'Maths' can be correct according to where you are [ Ive heard Maths used in Australia, Math used in US, ymmv ] ps. I really _am_ trying to teach practical skills - for example my videos on multiplication - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAucwKdByrU&t=385s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAucwKdByrU&t=385s Now you may say they aren't very good .. but thats okay if they help even one student learn math, or open to the idea it might be interesting or understandable by them.
yakhat 10y ago
I'll be your whipping boy here if I may, guys, but can we please refrain from downvoting based purely on disagreement for this one? I'd really appreciate reading a discussion on this subject from both sides and all between. This is difficult to do otherwise.
- eropple 10y ago
  Turn on showdead if you're worried about it.
taeric 10y ago
I honestly don't know how to feel on this. At some level personal experimentation is a wonderful thing that everyone should consider. I am personally terrible at it, but I feel that is because I wasn't taught to be rigorous; which is ultimately what is needed. However, I am also convinced that schools serve two real purposes for kids. 1) To push them further than parents think they should be pushed, and 2) to socialize them. (Which, really, is just part of 1.) Ignoring all of the advantages that schools have -- mainly, more experience than makes sense -- even "bad" teachers are almost guaranteed to be better than a given parent. Because of their experience. They will have seen more kids than I can comprehend. But back to my points. Even if I was somehow a better informational teacher than the ones at the school, I can not be a better teacher than their peers. Building healthy peer relationships is tough. As a parent, you think "nobody that will hurt my kid." However, I am not sure that is right. What we really want is "nobody that will unfairly hurt my kid." And even then, we want peers for our kids that will grow with them. So, really, it is "nobody that will convince my kids to repeatedly hurt others." And this gets to the crux. Building a peer relationship for kids when you deprive them of diverse peers is nigh impossible. And if you have a reasonable set of peers, you are really just in a private school; not a home school. Privates schools are not bad. At least, not something I want to vilify. However, I want my family to know and be a part of the community. Not a separate bubble within it. Weighing that against them having a "quality" education is tough.
- space_fountain 10y ago
  I think there are many different experiences of homeschooling and I think for some they do develop strong peer groups without it becoming just a private school. One of the main arguments for home schooling is that done properly schooling will take less long as you can focus on just one or two kids and thus there is time left over for extracurricular. On the other hand as somebody who was home schooled I wouldn't do it with any kids I have. I think what made it bad was that both my parents are introverts. The amount I've grown socially in the last couple of years of college really makes me annoyed at myself for missed time.
  - snerbles 10y ago
twblalock 10y ago
In my experience, most of the people who home-school their kids are young-earth creationists or some other kind of nutters who don't want their kids exposed to science as taught by mainstream schools.
- space_fountain 10y ago
  There are two groups in my experience. That's indeed one and probably the biggest group, but there are also parents who feel for one reason or another that school will not provide as good an environment as they can provide themselves.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  Your experience is atypical. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statistics.html http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statisti... Under "Parents’ Most Important Reasons for Homeschooling Their Children", "A desire to provide religious instruction" comes in fourth, and "A desire to provide moral instruction" comes in fifth.
  - baobrain 10y ago
    However, under "Parents' Reasons for Homeschooling Their Children (in percentages)", between 2011 and 2012 64% wanted to provide their children with "religious instruction," 77% "moral instruction." Also desire to provide religious instruction and concern about the environment in other schools (top reason) are not mutually exclusive. How do you know that the parents who were concerned didn't also list "A desire to provide religious instruction" as their second?
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      Yes, religious instruction is a common reason, but not the most important reason. Also, note that this would include any kind of religion, not just the kind of Flat Earth stuff that the OP was suggesting.
  - vacri 10y ago
justinlaster 10y ago
Personally, I've never seen a well adjusted person who was home schooled -- or admittedly one that I knew. I say this as someone who had multiple friends who were home schooled. There's always something a little bit "off" about them socially. And it's not in a terribly detrimental way, there just seems to be a noticeable latency between them picking up social cues and appropriately reacting to those cues (if they do at all!) There's also the issue, at least in the U.S., where homeschooling is really kind of a code word for "religious, non-secular" schooling. Anything from evolution to certain history is skimped over and treated in a "just learn this for the test, but don't believe it" kind of fashion, which is extremely unfair and unfortunate for the child in those situations. The biggest issue I really have with homeschooling, tied into the previous paragraph, is that you end up getting absurdly unqualified people teaching their kids (and sometimes other people kids!) subjects they have absolutely no clue about! For a group of people that tends to be extremely vocal about teaching "organically" and not by the book I've never seen any other population so reliant on textbooks when it comes to a variety of subjects. The kids basically lose out on what would be a "pseudo-professional" in what ever subject they're studying, who would able to guide them through certain areas of the subject the text book may not gracefully cover or maybe even not cover at all! Instead you get a stay at home mom, dad, or some kind of combination thereof that didn't bother to study the subject they're trying to teach _and_ went to a public school themselves on top of it all. All these posts seem to be far fetched rationalizations when it comes to homeschooling. There's nothing stopping you from teaching your kids things you want them to learn, beyond what schooling will give them. But it's been plainly obvious to me personally that homeschooling doesn't really give you anything extra, or circumvent problems with the education system, it just takes away from what you would have gotten while claiming it's doing the exact opposite.
- joelhooks 10y ago
  Reading your post personally made me chuckle, as you could be "arguing" against institutional school with only a few words changed and it would hold the same weight.
  - justinlaster 10y ago
    I mean, that's a fairly lofty claim considering what I wrote. Would you care to point out some examples?
shirro 10y ago
I wish people who are underemployed and such exceedingly talented teachers that they are better able to teach their kids than their local school would enter the teaching profession so others could benefit from their teaching.
- timthorn 10y ago
  Part of the benefit of homeschooling is the ability to teach 1:n where n is 1 or a small number, allowing you to progress at the pace of the child rather than that of the class.
pnathan 10y ago
I was homeschooled my entire k-11 career in the US. So was my sibling. We've both gone on to graduate school. We're quite functional socially. We're probably the most career-successful of the peer group of homeschoolers we grew up around; the least successful were a SAHM last I heard. Most were tradespeople in their dad's profession. Well and good, I suppose. There's a heavy cost to be borne to do it proper-like; it really requires one parent to stay home and be the teacher - most multimedia curricula are total drek, largely because kids just aren't that self-motivated to learn, they'd rather do legos or throw snowballs. Old Tom Sawyer stuff, you know. Human nature works best with a human teacher in meatspace. For a US public policy perspective, I have a few thoughts - most relatively inflammatory. I don't want to have a flamewar, but I think they merit some level of thought - email me to continue the conversation. There's a huge social cost to having diverse schooling; it funnels children out of the public schools into private schools and other alternatives, and provides a salt lake effect reducing the quality of children in schools. So I'm not actually a fan of private/charter/religous schools for that reason. It diverts funding and excellence. Homeschooling will never be popular enough (it's hard work) to really consider it a serious competitor. But it's reasonable to require tests periodically - enough parents fart around that it's a real issue. It's my opinion that control has to pass out of the hands of local school boards upwards into state or federal level. There are far too many stories about local school boards funkifying their children's grades or ruining a teacher's career who gave their child bad grades. Similarly, teachers need not unduly worry about their career because an upset parent is panicing. There are serious issues with the structure of public schools in the US, and teachers need to be privileged much more than they are now. Admins and parents are legendary for causing issues. It's my opinion that a tiered education approach is proper for the US: one tier for college-bound children, one tier for trade-bound, and one tier for "misc". Tiers should be broken out at 10 y/o or so based on aptitude tests & history, without much regard to parent's opinion. Similarly, children who are disruptive in class need to be shuffled out of class. Many people think school is about socializing. That is both true and a bad idea. It doesn't have to be: anthropology and history would tell us that modern schools are a very new innovation, and generally you got socialized outside of the school system. Having your age-peers shape you primarily is contra the long standing human experience and is segregationist in concept. It'd be much better to focus on effective use of time in school and let families adapt to having more time to socialize children. All of the above turn out to be reasons to homeschool; it's a very nice game theory picture - cooperate or defect! - what is best for my local society is that I send my children to the public school, vigorously fight for excellent academics and rigorous training of character, and make a tiny difference. What is best for my children is that I send them to a highly ranked private school or homeschool them, sacrificing either my or my spouse's career to give them 1:1 personal tutoring and drive them to the top of their potential. edit: As a clarifying note, there are about 4ish groups of homeschoolers in the US, broadly stroked out: - Academic - v. common. US public schools are often bad. - Religious (Young Earth Creationists etc) - Difficult/gifted child has inability to cope with school - Unschooling & crew "hippie" stuff I have absolutely zero sympathy for the unschooling world, both philosophically and from an outcomes perspective. It's a deep disservice to the child's potential. Again, Old Tom Sawyer loved playing hooky: don't enable it... Religious homeschooling is highly variable. A lot of it is video curricula. It can range from straight up traditional latin/greek heavy-duty academic rigor all the way over into some drivel that is a bare pastiche of what might be an education. I would advise not writing it off, but looking a bit closer at the curricula. Most is quite adequate at the basic stuff as I recall. And, of course, all sympathy to the people struggling with the difficult children.
jstewartmobile 10y ago
I know everyone on HN is big into the whole math, stem, good college thing, but out here in Central Time, all you really need to have a nice life is to not be an ass. Most schools (even some of the good ones) turn kids into asses through the "Lord of the Flies" effect. Think about it: You have inexperienced little people with underdeveloped judgement spending most of their waking hours for most of the year with other little people who are in the same boat. And people call this socialization! "I do not think that means what you think it means." If kids had a little more contact with mature, self-actualized people growing up, they wouldn't have as much baggage to work through in adolescent/adult life.
- snerbles 10y ago
  Transitioning from a home schooled to an institutional education setting at the age of 11 was quite brutal. At least I had martial arts training.
  - jstewartmobile 10y ago
    That is an excellent point! If you're going to homeschool, probably a good idea to train your kids in various forms of fitness/self-defense/badassery... just in case!
    - snerbles 10y ago
      It was really for physical education...the question posed by my parents was "Tee-ball or karate?" Needless to say that most six and seven-year-old boys have ninja aspirations. It was a source of discipline, and the dojo was one of my main social groups growing up through every sort of school.
- r00fus 10y ago
  This is why alternative school structures like Montessori and pod-classes (ie, mixed grade) allow for some role-taking and giving students the ability to guide other students. I honestly think a majority of education dysfunction comes with dual-income scenarios with "extended daycare" - If the children spent more time with their parents, it would help them really "socialize".
valine 10y ago
I was homeschooled all the way through 10th grade, and as far as social development is concerned it's a really mixed bag. I was involved in quite a few homeschool groups where I got to see first hand the wide range of social skills of other homeschooled kids. In my opinion the majority of kids I knew were just fine socially. There was also a small percentage that had significant trouble making friends and vocalizing their thoughts, however that was the exception rather than the rule. Being homeschooled I had a completely different childhood than most of my peers, and that alone can make it more difficult to connect with people. At the same time I can also tell if someone my age was homeschooled just by listening to them talk, so finding other people with similar backgrounds usually isn't too hard.
- petertodd 10y ago
  ...and plenty of kids in public schools have significant trouble making friends too! So it's tough to evaluate this stuff based on just anecdotes; I'm not aware of any large-scale studies on home-schoolers that have good controls, and it'd be very hard to do that given how much of a self-selecting group that is. I agree re: different childhood, although that's not unique to homeschooling by any means. I also spent a few years in a "gifted kids" program, and even that by itself has the exact same effect given how unique the social environment of such programs are. For that matter, I did go to public school for high-school, and again anyone at that school had a similar experience for a totally different reason: the school happened to have an unusually diverse student body, with a very high percentage of recent immigrants, and this lead to an unusually diverse social structure in the school. For example, every year no-one had any clue who the prom king and queens were because the social structure didn't have a school-wide hierarchy. More like multiple smaller groups based roughly on shared backgrounds and interests, with quite a bit of overlap. My brother on the other hand went to a different school which had a social hierarchy straight out of a American movie.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > ...and plenty of kids in public schools have significant trouble making friends too! Absolutely. I went to a private school up through 5th grade, then public elementary school for 6th grade, then junior high at a school that wasn't the one that my elementary school sent people to (the one I went to had fewer knife fights). Coming into a school where I knew nobody two years in a row was rather rough...
vivekd 10y ago
So many opponents to homeschooling are talking about socialization as the key component of schooling. This seems misguided. Modern schools seem to be a terrible environment to socialize kids, with things like bulling, weapons, drugs, sexting, sex. It seems like utter madness to want to have your kids "socialized" in an environment like that. There are much better places and environments for them to be around and socialize with other kids, for example extracurricular sports teams, religious events etc. I remember when I was a kid, I used to go out and play with the neighborhood kids, and it didn't matter that I didn't go to the same school as they did. There was a whole whole word of socializing that occurred before schools and I don't think children will lose much socializing without schools.
- twblalock 10y ago
  > It seems like utter madness to want to have your kids "socialized" in an environment like that. That's what society is. What's the point of socializing kids into anything other than the actual society?
  - jstewartmobile 10y ago
    Look around at what people do, at what people believe. Look at 4chan! Look at reddit! The point is to subtract from all of that rather than add to it.
    - twblalock 10y ago
      The children will have to enter that society at some point. Would it be better to wait until they leave for college and let them experience all of that at the same time, for the first time?
      - jstewartmobile 10y ago
        I have yet to have a post-public-school (college, work, sales, relationships, you-name-it) experience that even comes close to the barbarity of my in-public-school experience. I've seen things on TV in that vicinity, but not in real life -- knock on wood! Of course, in my public school we had dudes who were fully-pubed driving their cars to the 6th grade, so kind of an extreme example.
rabboRubble 10y ago
Homeschooling seems like a no brainer option when your kid flames out of public school and you can only afford 1 spouse not working but not private school. These are the homeschooling cautions I've read about or observed. 1 - Homeschooling has been documented as locus of identity abuse by withholding modern identity paperwork required to prove citizenship. This insures the child remains dependent on the family and religious unit into adulthood since they have no documentation to prove they are a citizen. [1] 2 - Homeschooling allows for abusive parents to be abusive with limited opportunity for a mandated reporter discovering the abuse. [2] 3 - When I went through high school and college, a homeschooled student was rare like a unicorn. I never met a single person. When I went back into a school setting in the last 5 years I met several. Anecdotal observations: (a) untreated autism spectrum disorders, (b) homeschool teachers unqualified to teach math & science leaving the adult student unable to academically survive college level sciences despite a passion for science subjects, (c) a well adjusted kids who joined 4H programs and had parents with a scientific background, and (d) one student with a deep love for English literature. On the whole, I'm dubious when I hear of people home schooling. I ask things like "Do your kids have birth certificates?". "Do you immunize?". "What is your math and science background?". "Are your kids being socialized with their peers?" I'm sure the homeschooling parents really love me. But a number of homeschooled kids are child abuse victims and I feel an obligation to probe these weird situations. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/12/how-a-teenagers-viral-campaign-to-prove-her-citizenship-is-inspiring-a-new-texas-bill/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/1... [2] https://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/policy-issues/abuse-and-neglect/abuse-in-homeschooling-environments/ https://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/policy-issues/abuse...
- dsabanin 10y ago
  I heard that a bigger number of child abuse victims are going to regular schools, and some abuse in fact is happening inside those schools. There goes your argument.
  - maus42 10y ago
    >a bigger number Well, there's an order of magnitude or two children going to regular schools... One needs a bit more statistics to back or disprove any argument.
notdonspaulding 10y ago
I went to public school through grade 7, and my parents pulled me out to home-school me through high school. It worked out really, really well for me. Most immediately, it relieved a bunch of social pressure to "fit in". My curriculum was self-paced so I was able to work through the material I already knew at a fast clip. I did grades 9-12 in 3 years instead of the typical 4, and was able graduate the same year as my then-girlfriend, now-wife (hold the jokes please, she's not my sister). Beyond my personal experience being home-schooled, I'm now a father of 5, and I think the biggest thing missing from the other comments in this discussion is the concept that the education of children is just one of the many responsibilities of parents. As a parent, it's your personal job to make sure your children are fed, clothed, bathed, socialized, educated, moralized, understood, and secured. Everyone worries about the "socialization" of home-schooled kids. But the parent who is taking an active interest in the education of their child is almost certainly also taking an active interest in their child's social development. I think it's rather more likely that parents today are all too happy to abdicate and outsource those responsibilities to whatever institution is willing to take them on. Don't get me wrong. That we have freely available public education is undoubtedly a great thing. The capacity to read and write effectively and to think critically is an amazing economic mobilizer. There's a reason slave-owners in the deep south wanted to keep their slaves from learning to read. But having that education available is supremely preferable to having it mandated by the state.
- r00fus 10y ago
  > I think it's rather more likely that parents today are all too happy to abdicate and outsource those responsibilities to whatever institution is willing to take them on. s/too happy/required to/ Try to get by with a high-earning single income in the south bay area or a median income in any metro. Housing prices and health costs force families to move to dual income.
  - joeclark77 10y ago
    The answer to that is, "get out of the metro". Cities are designed for singles and DINKs. There's a reason people talk about moving to the country, building a little house, starting a garden, etc... it's a better life for a family, and sustainable.
wehadfun 10y ago
Did not have time to read this but I think what is really needed is extra small class sizes K-3 three to four kids per class 4-5 seven to eight kids per class / gender seperated 6 ten kids per class / gender seperated 7-12 anysize / mix it up
Taylor_OD 10y ago
I was home schooled from 2nd grade until sophomore year of high school. My program was very loose and there are gaps in my education I wish didnt exist. However when I joined public school in high school I realized how basic and sub par most of the classes were. I never really suffered from social issues due to having a "home school group" that we regularly met with to play sports, a couple siblings that were close to my age, and being on various high school or public sports teams while being home schooled. If I could go back and do it again I would make sure to get a better foundation in English and Math. My overall understanding in science and history probably suffered more than it should have as well but those dont have as much impact on my day to day life.
- TrevorJ 10y ago
  Largely similar experience. I took the ACT having never taken a formalized test in my life or having stepped foot in a real classroom. Completed most sections with perfect or near perfect scores, but my math score was abysmal. It uncovered some major gaps in my knowledge.
  - Taylor_OD 10y ago
    Haha. Interesting that you mention the ACT. I took the ACT before a home football game, score a point or two above average and then joined my team right as we ran onto the field. When I saw the results they were similar. Math was by far the worst section.
joshfraser 10y ago
I've met a surprising number of entrepreneurs who were home-schooled. I don't think it's a coincidence. Home-schooling can instill some positive out-of-the-box thinking and a willingness to stand out from the crowd.
lawless123 10y ago
I disagree , i think an education is a right , not homeschooling
claar 10y ago
Full disclosure: We homeschool our children. Many here are repeating uninformed myths about homeschooling. Specifically in regards to academic performance, "The home-educated typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests."[1] But who cares? Though I could talk at length on educational benefits, what is needed for children is not an ideal academic environment. Our children need to be loved and mentored to become adults and, on average, no one can do that job better than their own parents. [1] http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschoolin...
- mundo 10y ago
  It seems like there are two very different groups being discussed here: the "I think I can do a better job of educating my kids than the state" homeschoolers and the "I want to protect my kids from this immoral society" homeschoolers. I don't know which is more prevalent but all the homeschoolers seem to think of themselves as being in the first group, and most of the vitriol is aimed at the second group, so there's a lot of people talking past each other.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    The lines are not so clear. My parents started out as the former and evolved into the latter.
    - ScottBurson 10y ago
      Please elaborate. Why did that happen?
      - marssaxman 10y ago
        My parents got into home-schooling for practical reasons; I learned to read early, the kindergarten was a long drive away, etc. They intended it as a temporary thing, a year or two before I went off to school like a normal person. By the time my younger siblings came along, they'd gotten the hang of it, liked it a lot, and just kept on teaching us all at home; I never did end up going to school. They had always been religious, and we were raised with religious practice as a part of everyday routine, but they steadily became more and more a part of the countercultural fundamentalism that was growing up around them in the 1980s. As that happened the practice of home-schooling became both a cultural marker and a means of rejecting and protecting their children from what they saw as a corrupt and unhealthy mainstream society. By the time I graduated, my parents and most of their social circle were fully on board with the whole quiverfull homeschooling right-wing fundamentalist subculture. Of course I promptly rejected the whole thing, as did most of my cohort. The fundamentalist homeschooling subculture appears to perpetuate itself almost entirely via recruitment and not through reproduction, so far as my observation goes.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
Underexplored in this discussion is that primary & secondary education, period, appears to have minimal impact on outcomes. Individual teachers appear to have absolutely minuscule effects at best. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-speech/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-...
swehner 10y ago
In my experience, which is not too much, people who "home-school" their children, would better not be allowed to do so.
deleted 10y ago
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cmurf 10y ago
I remember in 2nd grade asking, "Do I have to do this?" whatever the assignment was, because it was boring. By 6th grade I was asking, "Why does it take this long to learn this little?" Primary schools, at least in the U.S. are designed to make good little worker bees who follow instructions. It's practically designed to make children feel comfortable with being bored. The practicality of homeschooling is very far from universal. The whole concepts of time devoted to career, wealth projection, real estate cost, all need to be made more practical if homeschooling is also going to be practical. It's not practical to expect one parent to be the stay at home teacher. Not everyone is a good teacher anyway, and most of them are working full time jobs.
cmurf 10y ago
The one thing I do not agree with is the tax deductions for homeschooling. I don't agree with vouchers either. Starving public schools is not the way to fix them, or make them go away. The way to fix them or make them go away is a combination of voting and running for school boards. The reason why U.S. taxes are so complicated is because every special interest group wants their one line item deduction. And when they can't get a full deduction, they'll accept convoluted computations for partial deductions with a cap, so now it's a worksheet to do the computation for the actual deduction. Multiply that by every goddamn special interest and you get a 15 form submission every year. Income tax should be a single form for everyone. Progressive rate. No deductions for anything. No home mortgage deduction - your mortgage interest is not a superior benefit to all of society than someone else's marked up rent. It's a special interest hand out. The only fair way is if it's the same for everyone.
- lintiness 10y ago
  if money solved the public school system problem, chicago would be cranking out nobel laureates left and right (rather than sinking under the economic burden of insane pensions and accompanying property and sales taxes --- AND mass exodus of high earners).
  - cmurf 10y ago
    I did not say or imply increasing spending makes public schools better. I said taking money away from them does not make them better. Go look at Kansas and Texas and other states where they are starving public schools, and are they cranking out nobel laureates left and right either? No. The top reason why public schools suck in the U.S. is because of politicization of education. That's why there's more bureaucracy in public schools today than 30 years ago. That's why there are more derivations of school boot titles, where school boards are literally line item vetoing history books to emphasize/deemphasize actual historical facts, and with science. Regional schools are not all on the same page with the same standard, or even the same agreement of how the world is or should work. People move to specific neighborhoods to go to specific schools, and that results in far less diversity today with more small schools than fewer big ones.
- 10y ago
pklausler 10y ago
My public school education in the 70's taught me, among other things, French, physics, differential equations, music, Fortran, and an appreciation for reading great literature. My parents (who are wonderful people in every respect) could never have taught me any of these things. My later education and career and life as a mindful person would never have been possible had my parents not sent me to really good schools. Home-schooling may be a right. Fine. But it's a parental right. What about the right of the child to a top-quality education?
- 20years 10y ago
  With the resources available now, a student can get that top-quality education. There are tons of hybrid homeschool programs and in CA we have the k12 program (k12.com). It isn't totally left up to the parent like it was back in the 70's. It is not right for everyone but your stereotype of homeschoolers not receiving top-quality education doesn't really hold much weight. Recent studies show that homeschoolers are actually outperforming public schools. Some stats that may be of interest http://www.home-school.com/news/homeschool-vs-public-school.php http://www.home-school.com/news/homeschool-vs-public-school....
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- claar 10y ago
  For gifted children such as yourself, a top-quality education is much more likely via homeschooling than public schools. Everyone I know who homeschools thinks the same thing at first: "How will I teach my child subjects I don't understand?" There are many surprising answers, actually! 1. You will learn alongside your child. A rewarding part of homeschooling is that you continue your own education. You will learn many subjects more deeply than you would have otherwise. 2. You will provide resources for your child to teach themselves. As your children learn to learn, they will tackle many difficult subjects on their own using textbooks, pre-recorded courses, and other materials. 3. Others will help teach them. Successful homeschoolers don't do it alone. They find peers, form co-ops, and/or utilize tutors or community resources. Many homeschoolers take lots of college courses online or at local universities as they enter their early high school years.
justabystander 10y ago
Given that we're currently struggling to help four kids adapt and recover from a "homeschooled" education where the parents literally went off the rails into occult chanting and conspiracy theories, I find myself conflicted over this. It has good intentions, but that's just not enough. Especially for isolationist parents that just work on establishing echo chambers and eliminating dissent. Home schooling as a means of accelerated education for parents with means or extensive time and personal education can do quite well. But there are plenty of parents who aren't capable of teaching their kids and, in fact, shouldn't be allowed to have kids at all. School interactions have been an important lens into the private life of abusive families, and I don't think that parents should be allowed to just check kids out of the public school system for a decade without any oversight. There should be tests and required contact for this - far more than what many states have in place. And I don't know if there's enough budget for that type of infrastructure. On the other hand, I've seen various school districts increase the cost of schooling significantly while decreasing the value. And I've seen some teachers (retired and current) that probably have or should have restraining orders against them by children, science or both. And classes have always struggled with teaching a curriculum to kids in various levels of comprehension. Hundreds of bright kids slog through boring classes everyday just waiting for others to catch up, while some struggle just to stay afloat. There's more to both sides than we like to think, but there definitely needs to be more supervision of "alternative" education. Government investment in a recognized, "free" curriculum and online testing resources would be a good start.
ArlenBales 10y ago
This thread and all its anecdotes doesn't speak for the general public. Everyone here is a techy, many of whom are probably anti-social even as adults. People in this thread discrediting homeschooling for being anti-social, when they're probably anti-social 20 something programmers. You may have been social in high school, but as an adult you chose an anti-social career. Yet the solution for homeschooling socialness is the exact fucking same that people on HN recommend for anti-social 20 something techies. They're called clubs. (Not the nightlife kind) Homeschool parents get their children in sports clubs, music clubs, dance clubs, etc. 20 something programmers who want to be more social should get into a club also. Let me ask you this, if with your current anti-social adult brain you were transported back in time to your teenager self and given the chance to be more social at youth -- would you spend time conversing with other high schoolers and their typical teenager talk or would you seek out clubs with more mature individuals and activities that could lead you to success in adult life? Intelligent people would chose the latter, but kids aren't smart enough to make that decision at a young age, so adults should give them that guidance and direction.
alkonaut 10y ago
How do people afford to homeschool? If we assume public schools are tax funded, and homeschooling is not (so homeschooling parents are not given tax breaks or voucher money) - then basically you are paying a fair amount of taxes, and you basically can't have a job, because you spend N years educating your kids? From an economics/labor force participation/GDP perspective, having few kids per teacher isn't very sensible.
ilaksh 10y ago
Maybe part-time computer-assisted stay-home days standard practice for public schools could help relieve some of the overcrowding pressure, allow kids time to progress at their own speed, and permit more focused attention for addressing problem behaviors both by school administrators as well as parents. Perhaps for households that cant provide supervision, just create a minimally supervised and perhaps somewhat interaction-limited computer lab for self paced study during that time.

175 points by jgord 10y ago

Ah, so instead of fixing a system that does not meet their needs homeschoolers opt out and leave the less time and resource affluent to stew. How commendable and good for society. I think the course presented illustrates well why democratic and republican societies should always prohibit private and home schooling. Instead of opting out parents such as the writer would be forced to engage and reform and participate in change and help bettering things for society and not just themselves, because the differences in educational equity they'd otherwise beget are seeds sown on the path to social schisms, vast class divides, and the destruction of a system dependent on educated voters.

smithkl42 10y ago
What you call "social schism" I call liberty. I think the universal availability of public schooling is, in general, a great good. But the idea of the government telling me that I can't home school my children makes my skin crawl. The US constitution correctly defines strictly limited roles for the government, and carves out huge spaces for individual liberty - liberty which is meaningless if I'm forced to allow the government to indoctrinate my children in ways that I may strongly disagree with. Turn it around. Imagine that schools taught a sort of religious fundamentalism that you found abhorrent. Would you want the government to be able to force you to send your children there? Making home schooling illegal turns the government into a master precisely when it should be a servant, and a jailer when it should be a helper.
- justinlaster 10y ago
  >Imagine that schools taught a sort of religious fundamentalism that you found abhorrent. Ironically, home schooling seems to be used for this purpose.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    You left off the key next sentence: 'Would you want the government to be able to force you to send your children there?' Home schooling permits parents to teach their children their values, which is their right as parents. Public schooling forces all taxpayers to subsidise the teaching of values with which they may or may not agree; in some places, it also forces all parents to have their children taught values with which they may or may not agree.
    - justinlaster 10y ago
      >Home schooling permits parents to teach their children their values, which is their right as parents. The public school system does not stop them from doing this, in any way shape or form. >Public schooling forces all taxpayers to subsidize the teaching of values with which they may or may not agree The public school system is built to be incredibly neutral, and in my opinion sometimes too neutral. So I'm not sure what "values" are being forced through the public school system.
Turing_Machine 10y ago
Your primary duty as a parent is to your child, not "society". "I think the course presented illustrates well why democratic and republican societies should always prohibit private and home schooling." Any society that does such things is neither "democratic" nor "republican". It is totalitarian, pretty much by definition. They're not your children, dude.
- threeseed 10y ago
  Then every society is totalitarian. The fact is that society already tells you how to raise your children and will remove them from you if need be.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    There's a wide, wide range between (e.g.) beating your children and refusing to hand them over for state indoctrination. Pretending otherwise isn't a reasonable argument.
- DasIch 10y ago
  Indeed parents have a duty to their children. Clearly this cannot and should not mean that they're allowed to treat their children however they want or that they're allowed to educate them on what and how they want. There can be a space for them to make decisions but the rights of the children always have to take precedence. It's only natural for the government to step in and determine exactly what this means. Allowing the government to do this without limits is problematic, so you balance that out with rights assigned to parents. It's not an easy question to determine where the line should be drawn but I don't think it's really all that totalitarian to prohibit home schooling. It ensures that children are educated, that they socialize with other children, get confronted with different points of view and gives them the freedom and ability to safely explore the world and themselves in an environment where there parents have much less influence over their lives. It should not be forgotten that not all parents are included to provide that without force.
  - joeclark77 10y ago
throwaway729 10y ago
I'm a... victim, I guess... of this mindset. I didn't really start getting even a half decent mathematics or science education until college. If I didn't pick up programming as a hobby, IDK where I would be right now. Probably nowhere good, financially and perhaps otherwise. (Mind you, AFAICT private schools aren't typically much better, and there's less accountability and more personal cost to boot.) I'm very conscious of what you're saying here and mostly agree with the negative effect of affluent people opting out of the education system. So I'll commit myself to improving the systems that my own kids would be in if I didn't have the time and money for alternatives. But I'm still unsure whether I'll actually send my own children to public schools. The cost to them will be real.
potholefiller 10y ago
There are many friends I've seen do exactly that, but the efforts only seem to be particularly effective when localized. The educational system can be quite slow to change, likely requiring a more significant investment of energy to "fix society" than to direct that energy towards their own children. Many school teachers and administrators get into the field specifically with the ambition to better the system. They spend their full-time attention on these issues, yet truly are at the mercy of government policies. Do I agree that this is the appropriate way to go? No more than I agree with private schools (which I don't), but we're not all political activists, and even if we were, everyone's got their own issue and their own viewpoints. Where the author opts out of the system, another opts in and digs in; such is a fairly concept in free society.
jgord 10y ago
op here .. no, in many case they have really tried to fix the system, work around it etc, before they have opted out. Its never the first option to take children out of school.
stevendhansen 10y ago
With respect, the idea that most parents could fix the system if they just tried is incredibly naive. I think most parents do the best that they can. If they feel that homeschooling is better for their children then they absolutely should pursue that option.

threeseed 10y ago

This is from Victoria, Australia in case there is confusion. And as a background. The majority of K-12 schools are free, public schools with a smaller but growing group of religious schools. Home schooling is perfectly legal but requires you to register with the government. Personally I think those who advocate for home schooling often think schooling is purely for education. When for children it is also the time in which they develop socially. Taking them away from that without a suitable alternative is in my opinion somewhat reckless. But provided there is some alternative I don't see why it wouldn't be an option.

learc83 10y ago
Interacting with other adults is so different from the social interactions you deal with in school that I'm not sure whether school is a net benefit or detriment to developing social skills. When I think back, I don't think school really prepares you socially for anything other than life in an institution. If you plan on doing prison time that might be useful. But after high school I've never been in any kind of situation remotely like that (other than maybe my first retail job).
joeclark77 10y ago
I think many homeschoolers know that students "develop socially" in the public schools, but have observed also that the social structures and behaviors seen there (gangs, bullies, cliques, general teenage crappiness) are utterly dysfunctional and quite unlike the social behaviors that would be acceptable in the adult world. There's a case to be made for homeschooling as a better way to "socialize" kids than public schooling.
jgord 10y ago
op here.. all too true! To mitigate that, at least in Melbournes East there is a growing group of homeschoolers who get together for events - organised on facebook sites such as HEN aka http://home-ed.vic.edu.au http://home-ed.vic.edu.au [membership] and "Melbourne Homeschool Families With Teens" etc.
- petertodd 10y ago

vacri 10y ago

I don't have a horse in this race (no kids), but this call to action bothered me. Lots of run-on sentences; incorrect capitalisation; 'Math' instead of 'maths', 'lite' instead of 'light'[1]; weird double- and triple-spacing; 'Id' instead of 'I'd' grammatical errors; overuse of dashes[2]; using both -ise and -ize endings on the same word (realise); so on and so forth. On the one hand, I realise that I'm being a bit pedantic, but on the other hand, there were a lot of these errors, in a call to action to allow the author to teach people. Clarity of expression is one thing that is taught in high school, and it's important. I'd want to proofread my article if I was trying to put forward that my ability to teach was decent. The occasional error should be overlooked, but this was pretty sloppy. If I saw these errors in someone wanting to teach more practical skills rather than abstract ones, I guess they wouldn't stand out so much. [1] I've lived in that state all my life, and am familiar with the localised terms (lite? yuck) [2] which I frequently abuse myself, to be honest

smithkl42 10y ago
Just one point - "maths" is in fact the correct (local) term in Commonwealth countries - sort of like how they refer to "sport" instead of "sports".
- vacri 10y ago
  Yep, I think you've read that point the other way around to how I meant it :)
jgord 10y ago
op, here - yes, you could argue Im not well educated for writing such articles - I was educated in schools not homeschooled :) Im happy to correct spelling grammar errors - I by no means represent myself as a professional author. Be aware that 'Math' or 'Maths' can be correct according to where you are [ Ive heard Maths used in Australia, Math used in US, ymmv ] ps. I really _am_ trying to teach practical skills - for example my videos on multiplication - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAucwKdByrU&t=385s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAucwKdByrU&t=385s Now you may say they aren't very good .. but thats okay if they help even one student learn math, or open to the idea it might be interesting or understandable by them.

yakhat 10y ago

I'll be your whipping boy here if I may, guys, but can we please refrain from downvoting based purely on disagreement for this one? I'd really appreciate reading a discussion on this subject from both sides and all between. This is difficult to do otherwise.

eropple 10y ago
Turn on showdead if you're worried about it.

taeric 10y ago

I honestly don't know how to feel on this. At some level personal experimentation is a wonderful thing that everyone should consider. I am personally terrible at it, but I feel that is because I wasn't taught to be rigorous; which is ultimately what is needed. However, I am also convinced that schools serve two real purposes for kids. 1) To push them further than parents think they should be pushed, and 2) to socialize them. (Which, really, is just part of 1.) Ignoring all of the advantages that schools have -- mainly, more experience than makes sense -- even "bad" teachers are almost guaranteed to be better than a given parent. Because of their experience. They will have seen more kids than I can comprehend. But back to my points. Even if I was somehow a better informational teacher than the ones at the school, I can not be a better teacher than their peers. Building healthy peer relationships is tough. As a parent, you think "nobody that will hurt my kid." However, I am not sure that is right. What we really want is "nobody that will unfairly hurt my kid." And even then, we want peers for our kids that will grow with them. So, really, it is "nobody that will convince my kids to repeatedly hurt others." And this gets to the crux. Building a peer relationship for kids when you deprive them of diverse peers is nigh impossible. And if you have a reasonable set of peers, you are really just in a private school; not a home school. Privates schools are not bad. At least, not something I want to vilify. However, I want my family to know and be a part of the community. Not a separate bubble within it. Weighing that against them having a "quality" education is tough.

space_fountain 10y ago
I think there are many different experiences of homeschooling and I think for some they do develop strong peer groups without it becoming just a private school. One of the main arguments for home schooling is that done properly schooling will take less long as you can focus on just one or two kids and thus there is time left over for extracurricular. On the other hand as somebody who was home schooled I wouldn't do it with any kids I have. I think what made it bad was that both my parents are introverts. The amount I've grown socially in the last couple of years of college really makes me annoyed at myself for missed time.
- snerbles 10y ago

twblalock 10y ago

In my experience, most of the people who home-school their kids are young-earth creationists or some other kind of nutters who don't want their kids exposed to science as taught by mainstream schools.

space_fountain 10y ago
There are two groups in my experience. That's indeed one and probably the biggest group, but there are also parents who feel for one reason or another that school will not provide as good an environment as they can provide themselves.
Turing_Machine 10y ago
Your experience is atypical. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statistics.html http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statisti... Under "Parents’ Most Important Reasons for Homeschooling Their Children", "A desire to provide religious instruction" comes in fourth, and "A desire to provide moral instruction" comes in fifth.
- baobrain 10y ago
  However, under "Parents' Reasons for Homeschooling Their Children (in percentages)", between 2011 and 2012 64% wanted to provide their children with "religious instruction," 77% "moral instruction." Also desire to provide religious instruction and concern about the environment in other schools (top reason) are not mutually exclusive. How do you know that the parents who were concerned didn't also list "A desire to provide religious instruction" as their second?
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Yes, religious instruction is a common reason, but not the most important reason. Also, note that this would include any kind of religion, not just the kind of Flat Earth stuff that the OP was suggesting.
- vacri 10y ago

justinlaster 10y ago

Personally, I've never seen a well adjusted person who was home schooled -- or admittedly one that I knew. I say this as someone who had multiple friends who were home schooled. There's always something a little bit "off" about them socially. And it's not in a terribly detrimental way, there just seems to be a noticeable latency between them picking up social cues and appropriately reacting to those cues (if they do at all!) There's also the issue, at least in the U.S., where homeschooling is really kind of a code word for "religious, non-secular" schooling. Anything from evolution to certain history is skimped over and treated in a "just learn this for the test, but don't believe it" kind of fashion, which is extremely unfair and unfortunate for the child in those situations. The biggest issue I really have with homeschooling, tied into the previous paragraph, is that you end up getting absurdly unqualified people teaching their kids (and sometimes other people kids!) subjects they have absolutely no clue about! For a group of people that tends to be extremely vocal about teaching "organically" and not by the book I've never seen any other population so reliant on textbooks when it comes to a variety of subjects. The kids basically lose out on what would be a "pseudo-professional" in what ever subject they're studying, who would able to guide them through certain areas of the subject the text book may not gracefully cover or maybe even not cover at all! Instead you get a stay at home mom, dad, or some kind of combination thereof that didn't bother to study the subject they're trying to teach _and_ went to a public school themselves on top of it all. All these posts seem to be far fetched rationalizations when it comes to homeschooling. There's nothing stopping you from teaching your kids things you want them to learn, beyond what schooling will give them. But it's been plainly obvious to me personally that homeschooling doesn't really give you anything extra, or circumvent problems with the education system, it just takes away from what you would have gotten while claiming it's doing the exact opposite.

joelhooks 10y ago
Reading your post personally made me chuckle, as you could be "arguing" against institutional school with only a few words changed and it would hold the same weight.
- justinlaster 10y ago
  I mean, that's a fairly lofty claim considering what I wrote. Would you care to point out some examples?

shirro 10y ago

I wish people who are underemployed and such exceedingly talented teachers that they are better able to teach their kids than their local school would enter the teaching profession so others could benefit from their teaching.

timthorn 10y ago
Part of the benefit of homeschooling is the ability to teach 1:n where n is 1 or a small number, allowing you to progress at the pace of the child rather than that of the class.

pnathan 10y ago

I was homeschooled my entire k-11 career in the US. So was my sibling. We've both gone on to graduate school. We're quite functional socially. We're probably the most career-successful of the peer group of homeschoolers we grew up around; the least successful were a SAHM last I heard. Most were tradespeople in their dad's profession. Well and good, I suppose. There's a heavy cost to be borne to do it proper-like; it really requires one parent to stay home and be the teacher - most multimedia curricula are total drek, largely because kids just aren't that self-motivated to learn, they'd rather do legos or throw snowballs. Old Tom Sawyer stuff, you know. Human nature works best with a human teacher in meatspace. For a US public policy perspective, I have a few thoughts - most relatively inflammatory. I don't want to have a flamewar, but I think they merit some level of thought - email me to continue the conversation. There's a huge social cost to having diverse schooling; it funnels children out of the public schools into private schools and other alternatives, and provides a salt lake effect reducing the quality of children in schools. So I'm not actually a fan of private/charter/religous schools for that reason. It diverts funding and excellence. Homeschooling will never be popular enough (it's hard work) to really consider it a serious competitor. But it's reasonable to require tests periodically - enough parents fart around that it's a real issue. It's my opinion that control has to pass out of the hands of local school boards upwards into state or federal level. There are far too many stories about local school boards funkifying their children's grades or ruining a teacher's career who gave their child bad grades. Similarly, teachers need not unduly worry about their career because an upset parent is panicing. There are serious issues with the structure of public schools in the US, and teachers need to be privileged much more than they are now. Admins and parents are legendary for causing issues. It's my opinion that a tiered education approach is proper for the US: one tier for college-bound children, one tier for trade-bound, and one tier for "misc". Tiers should be broken out at 10 y/o or so based on aptitude tests & history, without much regard to parent's opinion. Similarly, children who are disruptive in class need to be shuffled out of class. Many people think school is about socializing. That is both true and a bad idea. It doesn't have to be: anthropology and history would tell us that modern schools are a very new innovation, and generally you got socialized outside of the school system. Having your age-peers shape you primarily is contra the long standing human experience and is segregationist in concept. It'd be much better to focus on effective use of time in school and let families adapt to having more time to socialize children. All of the above turn out to be reasons to homeschool; it's a very nice game theory picture - cooperate or defect! - what is best for my local society is that I send my children to the public school, vigorously fight for excellent academics and rigorous training of character, and make a tiny difference. What is best for my children is that I send them to a highly ranked private school or homeschool them, sacrificing either my or my spouse's career to give them 1:1 personal tutoring and drive them to the top of their potential. edit: As a clarifying note, there are about 4ish groups of homeschoolers in the US, broadly stroked out: - Academic - v. common. US public schools are often bad. - Religious (Young Earth Creationists etc) - Difficult/gifted child has inability to cope with school - Unschooling & crew "hippie" stuff I have absolutely zero sympathy for the unschooling world, both philosophically and from an outcomes perspective. It's a deep disservice to the child's potential. Again, Old Tom Sawyer loved playing hooky: don't enable it... Religious homeschooling is highly variable. A lot of it is video curricula. It can range from straight up traditional latin/greek heavy-duty academic rigor all the way over into some drivel that is a bare pastiche of what might be an education. I would advise not writing it off, but looking a bit closer at the curricula. Most is quite adequate at the basic stuff as I recall. And, of course, all sympathy to the people struggling with the difficult children.

jstewartmobile 10y ago

I know everyone on HN is big into the whole math, stem, good college thing, but out here in Central Time, all you really need to have a nice life is to not be an ass. Most schools (even some of the good ones) turn kids into asses through the "Lord of the Flies" effect. Think about it: You have inexperienced little people with underdeveloped judgement spending most of their waking hours for most of the year with other little people who are in the same boat. And people call this socialization! "I do not think that means what you think it means." If kids had a little more contact with mature, self-actualized people growing up, they wouldn't have as much baggage to work through in adolescent/adult life.

snerbles 10y ago
Transitioning from a home schooled to an institutional education setting at the age of 11 was quite brutal. At least I had martial arts training.
- jstewartmobile 10y ago
  That is an excellent point! If you're going to homeschool, probably a good idea to train your kids in various forms of fitness/self-defense/badassery... just in case!
  - snerbles 10y ago
    It was really for physical education...the question posed by my parents was "Tee-ball or karate?" Needless to say that most six and seven-year-old boys have ninja aspirations. It was a source of discipline, and the dojo was one of my main social groups growing up through every sort of school.
r00fus 10y ago
This is why alternative school structures like Montessori and pod-classes (ie, mixed grade) allow for some role-taking and giving students the ability to guide other students. I honestly think a majority of education dysfunction comes with dual-income scenarios with "extended daycare" - If the children spent more time with their parents, it would help them really "socialize".

valine 10y ago

I was homeschooled all the way through 10th grade, and as far as social development is concerned it's a really mixed bag. I was involved in quite a few homeschool groups where I got to see first hand the wide range of social skills of other homeschooled kids. In my opinion the majority of kids I knew were just fine socially. There was also a small percentage that had significant trouble making friends and vocalizing their thoughts, however that was the exception rather than the rule. Being homeschooled I had a completely different childhood than most of my peers, and that alone can make it more difficult to connect with people. At the same time I can also tell if someone my age was homeschooled just by listening to them talk, so finding other people with similar backgrounds usually isn't too hard.

petertodd 10y ago
...and plenty of kids in public schools have significant trouble making friends too! So it's tough to evaluate this stuff based on just anecdotes; I'm not aware of any large-scale studies on home-schoolers that have good controls, and it'd be very hard to do that given how much of a self-selecting group that is. I agree re: different childhood, although that's not unique to homeschooling by any means. I also spent a few years in a "gifted kids" program, and even that by itself has the exact same effect given how unique the social environment of such programs are. For that matter, I did go to public school for high-school, and again anyone at that school had a similar experience for a totally different reason: the school happened to have an unusually diverse student body, with a very high percentage of recent immigrants, and this lead to an unusually diverse social structure in the school. For example, every year no-one had any clue who the prom king and queens were because the social structure didn't have a school-wide hierarchy. More like multiple smaller groups based roughly on shared backgrounds and interests, with quite a bit of overlap. My brother on the other hand went to a different school which had a social hierarchy straight out of a American movie.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > ...and plenty of kids in public schools have significant trouble making friends too! Absolutely. I went to a private school up through 5th grade, then public elementary school for 6th grade, then junior high at a school that wasn't the one that my elementary school sent people to (the one I went to had fewer knife fights). Coming into a school where I knew nobody two years in a row was rather rough...

vivekd 10y ago

So many opponents to homeschooling are talking about socialization as the key component of schooling. This seems misguided. Modern schools seem to be a terrible environment to socialize kids, with things like bulling, weapons, drugs, sexting, sex. It seems like utter madness to want to have your kids "socialized" in an environment like that. There are much better places and environments for them to be around and socialize with other kids, for example extracurricular sports teams, religious events etc. I remember when I was a kid, I used to go out and play with the neighborhood kids, and it didn't matter that I didn't go to the same school as they did. There was a whole whole word of socializing that occurred before schools and I don't think children will lose much socializing without schools.

twblalock 10y ago
> It seems like utter madness to want to have your kids "socialized" in an environment like that. That's what society is. What's the point of socializing kids into anything other than the actual society?
- jstewartmobile 10y ago
  Look around at what people do, at what people believe. Look at 4chan! Look at reddit! The point is to subtract from all of that rather than add to it.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    The children will have to enter that society at some point. Would it be better to wait until they leave for college and let them experience all of that at the same time, for the first time?
    - jstewartmobile 10y ago
      I have yet to have a post-public-school (college, work, sales, relationships, you-name-it) experience that even comes close to the barbarity of my in-public-school experience. I've seen things on TV in that vicinity, but not in real life -- knock on wood! Of course, in my public school we had dudes who were fully-pubed driving their cars to the 6th grade, so kind of an extreme example.

rabboRubble 10y ago

Homeschooling seems like a no brainer option when your kid flames out of public school and you can only afford 1 spouse not working but not private school. These are the homeschooling cautions I've read about or observed. 1 - Homeschooling has been documented as locus of identity abuse by withholding modern identity paperwork required to prove citizenship. This insures the child remains dependent on the family and religious unit into adulthood since they have no documentation to prove they are a citizen. [1] 2 - Homeschooling allows for abusive parents to be abusive with limited opportunity for a mandated reporter discovering the abuse. [2] 3 - When I went through high school and college, a homeschooled student was rare like a unicorn. I never met a single person. When I went back into a school setting in the last 5 years I met several. Anecdotal observations: (a) untreated autism spectrum disorders, (b) homeschool teachers unqualified to teach math & science leaving the adult student unable to academically survive college level sciences despite a passion for science subjects, (c) a well adjusted kids who joined 4H programs and had parents with a scientific background, and (d) one student with a deep love for English literature. On the whole, I'm dubious when I hear of people home schooling. I ask things like "Do your kids have birth certificates?". "Do you immunize?". "What is your math and science background?". "Are your kids being socialized with their peers?" I'm sure the homeschooling parents really love me. But a number of homeschooled kids are child abuse victims and I feel an obligation to probe these weird situations. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/12/how-a-teenagers-viral-campaign-to-prove-her-citizenship-is-inspiring-a-new-texas-bill/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/1... [2] https://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/policy-issues/abuse-and-neglect/abuse-in-homeschooling-environments/ https://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/policy-issues/abuse...

dsabanin 10y ago
I heard that a bigger number of child abuse victims are going to regular schools, and some abuse in fact is happening inside those schools. There goes your argument.
- maus42 10y ago
  >a bigger number Well, there's an order of magnitude or two children going to regular schools... One needs a bit more statistics to back or disprove any argument.

notdonspaulding 10y ago

I went to public school through grade 7, and my parents pulled me out to home-school me through high school. It worked out really, really well for me. Most immediately, it relieved a bunch of social pressure to "fit in". My curriculum was self-paced so I was able to work through the material I already knew at a fast clip. I did grades 9-12 in 3 years instead of the typical 4, and was able graduate the same year as my then-girlfriend, now-wife (hold the jokes please, she's not my sister). Beyond my personal experience being home-schooled, I'm now a father of 5, and I think the biggest thing missing from the other comments in this discussion is the concept that the education of children is just one of the many responsibilities of parents. As a parent, it's your personal job to make sure your children are fed, clothed, bathed, socialized, educated, moralized, understood, and secured. Everyone worries about the "socialization" of home-schooled kids. But the parent who is taking an active interest in the education of their child is almost certainly also taking an active interest in their child's social development. I think it's rather more likely that parents today are all too happy to abdicate and outsource those responsibilities to whatever institution is willing to take them on. Don't get me wrong. That we have freely available public education is undoubtedly a great thing. The capacity to read and write effectively and to think critically is an amazing economic mobilizer. There's a reason slave-owners in the deep south wanted to keep their slaves from learning to read. But having that education available is supremely preferable to having it mandated by the state.

r00fus 10y ago
> I think it's rather more likely that parents today are all too happy to abdicate and outsource those responsibilities to whatever institution is willing to take them on. s/too happy/required to/ Try to get by with a high-earning single income in the south bay area or a median income in any metro. Housing prices and health costs force families to move to dual income.
- joeclark77 10y ago
  The answer to that is, "get out of the metro". Cities are designed for singles and DINKs. There's a reason people talk about moving to the country, building a little house, starting a garden, etc... it's a better life for a family, and sustainable.

wehadfun 10y ago

Did not have time to read this but I think what is really needed is extra small class sizes K-3 three to four kids per class 4-5 seven to eight kids per class / gender seperated 6 ten kids per class / gender seperated 7-12 anysize / mix it up

Taylor_OD 10y ago

I was home schooled from 2nd grade until sophomore year of high school. My program was very loose and there are gaps in my education I wish didnt exist. However when I joined public school in high school I realized how basic and sub par most of the classes were. I never really suffered from social issues due to having a "home school group" that we regularly met with to play sports, a couple siblings that were close to my age, and being on various high school or public sports teams while being home schooled. If I could go back and do it again I would make sure to get a better foundation in English and Math. My overall understanding in science and history probably suffered more than it should have as well but those dont have as much impact on my day to day life.

TrevorJ 10y ago
Largely similar experience. I took the ACT having never taken a formalized test in my life or having stepped foot in a real classroom. Completed most sections with perfect or near perfect scores, but my math score was abysmal. It uncovered some major gaps in my knowledge.
- Taylor_OD 10y ago
  Haha. Interesting that you mention the ACT. I took the ACT before a home football game, score a point or two above average and then joined my team right as we ran onto the field. When I saw the results they were similar. Math was by far the worst section.

joshfraser 10y ago

I've met a surprising number of entrepreneurs who were home-schooled. I don't think it's a coincidence. Home-schooling can instill some positive out-of-the-box thinking and a willingness to stand out from the crowd.

lawless123 10y ago

I disagree , i think an education is a right , not homeschooling

claar 10y ago

Full disclosure: We homeschool our children. Many here are repeating uninformed myths about homeschooling. Specifically in regards to academic performance, "The home-educated typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests."[1] But who cares? Though I could talk at length on educational benefits, what is needed for children is not an ideal academic environment. Our children need to be loved and mentored to become adults and, on average, no one can do that job better than their own parents. [1] http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschoolin...

mundo 10y ago
It seems like there are two very different groups being discussed here: the "I think I can do a better job of educating my kids than the state" homeschoolers and the "I want to protect my kids from this immoral society" homeschoolers. I don't know which is more prevalent but all the homeschoolers seem to think of themselves as being in the first group, and most of the vitriol is aimed at the second group, so there's a lot of people talking past each other.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  The lines are not so clear. My parents started out as the former and evolved into the latter.
  - ScottBurson 10y ago
    Please elaborate. Why did that happen?
    - marssaxman 10y ago
      My parents got into home-schooling for practical reasons; I learned to read early, the kindergarten was a long drive away, etc. They intended it as a temporary thing, a year or two before I went off to school like a normal person. By the time my younger siblings came along, they'd gotten the hang of it, liked it a lot, and just kept on teaching us all at home; I never did end up going to school. They had always been religious, and we were raised with religious practice as a part of everyday routine, but they steadily became more and more a part of the countercultural fundamentalism that was growing up around them in the 1980s. As that happened the practice of home-schooling became both a cultural marker and a means of rejecting and protecting their children from what they saw as a corrupt and unhealthy mainstream society. By the time I graduated, my parents and most of their social circle were fully on board with the whole quiverfull homeschooling right-wing fundamentalist subculture. Of course I promptly rejected the whole thing, as did most of my cohort. The fundamentalist homeschooling subculture appears to perpetuate itself almost entirely via recruitment and not through reproduction, so far as my observation goes.

h4nkoslo 10y ago

Underexplored in this discussion is that primary & secondary education, period, appears to have minimal impact on outcomes. Individual teachers appear to have absolutely minuscule effects at best. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-speech/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-...

swehner 10y ago

In my experience, which is not too much, people who "home-school" their children, would better not be allowed to do so.

deleted 10y ago

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cmurf 10y ago

I remember in 2nd grade asking, "Do I have to do this?" whatever the assignment was, because it was boring. By 6th grade I was asking, "Why does it take this long to learn this little?" Primary schools, at least in the U.S. are designed to make good little worker bees who follow instructions. It's practically designed to make children feel comfortable with being bored. The practicality of homeschooling is very far from universal. The whole concepts of time devoted to career, wealth projection, real estate cost, all need to be made more practical if homeschooling is also going to be practical. It's not practical to expect one parent to be the stay at home teacher. Not everyone is a good teacher anyway, and most of them are working full time jobs.

cmurf 10y ago

The one thing I do not agree with is the tax deductions for homeschooling. I don't agree with vouchers either. Starving public schools is not the way to fix them, or make them go away. The way to fix them or make them go away is a combination of voting and running for school boards. The reason why U.S. taxes are so complicated is because every special interest group wants their one line item deduction. And when they can't get a full deduction, they'll accept convoluted computations for partial deductions with a cap, so now it's a worksheet to do the computation for the actual deduction. Multiply that by every goddamn special interest and you get a 15 form submission every year. Income tax should be a single form for everyone. Progressive rate. No deductions for anything. No home mortgage deduction - your mortgage interest is not a superior benefit to all of society than someone else's marked up rent. It's a special interest hand out. The only fair way is if it's the same for everyone.

lintiness 10y ago
if money solved the public school system problem, chicago would be cranking out nobel laureates left and right (rather than sinking under the economic burden of insane pensions and accompanying property and sales taxes --- AND mass exodus of high earners).
- cmurf 10y ago
  I did not say or imply increasing spending makes public schools better. I said taking money away from them does not make them better. Go look at Kansas and Texas and other states where they are starving public schools, and are they cranking out nobel laureates left and right either? No. The top reason why public schools suck in the U.S. is because of politicization of education. That's why there's more bureaucracy in public schools today than 30 years ago. That's why there are more derivations of school boot titles, where school boards are literally line item vetoing history books to emphasize/deemphasize actual historical facts, and with science. Regional schools are not all on the same page with the same standard, or even the same agreement of how the world is or should work. People move to specific neighborhoods to go to specific schools, and that results in far less diversity today with more small schools than fewer big ones.
10y ago

pklausler 10y ago

My public school education in the 70's taught me, among other things, French, physics, differential equations, music, Fortran, and an appreciation for reading great literature. My parents (who are wonderful people in every respect) could never have taught me any of these things. My later education and career and life as a mindful person would never have been possible had my parents not sent me to really good schools. Home-schooling may be a right. Fine. But it's a parental right. What about the right of the child to a top-quality education?

20years 10y ago
With the resources available now, a student can get that top-quality education. There are tons of hybrid homeschool programs and in CA we have the k12 program (k12.com). It isn't totally left up to the parent like it was back in the 70's. It is not right for everyone but your stereotype of homeschoolers not receiving top-quality education doesn't really hold much weight. Recent studies show that homeschoolers are actually outperforming public schools. Some stats that may be of interest http://www.home-school.com/news/homeschool-vs-public-school.php http://www.home-school.com/news/homeschool-vs-public-school....
deleted 10y ago
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claar 10y ago
For gifted children such as yourself, a top-quality education is much more likely via homeschooling than public schools. Everyone I know who homeschools thinks the same thing at first: "How will I teach my child subjects I don't understand?" There are many surprising answers, actually! 1. You will learn alongside your child. A rewarding part of homeschooling is that you continue your own education. You will learn many subjects more deeply than you would have otherwise. 2. You will provide resources for your child to teach themselves. As your children learn to learn, they will tackle many difficult subjects on their own using textbooks, pre-recorded courses, and other materials. 3. Others will help teach them. Successful homeschoolers don't do it alone. They find peers, form co-ops, and/or utilize tutors or community resources. Many homeschoolers take lots of college courses online or at local universities as they enter their early high school years.

justabystander 10y ago

Given that we're currently struggling to help four kids adapt and recover from a "homeschooled" education where the parents literally went off the rails into occult chanting and conspiracy theories, I find myself conflicted over this. It has good intentions, but that's just not enough. Especially for isolationist parents that just work on establishing echo chambers and eliminating dissent. Home schooling as a means of accelerated education for parents with means or extensive time and personal education can do quite well. But there are plenty of parents who aren't capable of teaching their kids and, in fact, shouldn't be allowed to have kids at all. School interactions have been an important lens into the private life of abusive families, and I don't think that parents should be allowed to just check kids out of the public school system for a decade without any oversight. There should be tests and required contact for this - far more than what many states have in place. And I don't know if there's enough budget for that type of infrastructure. On the other hand, I've seen various school districts increase the cost of schooling significantly while decreasing the value. And I've seen some teachers (retired and current) that probably have or should have restraining orders against them by children, science or both. And classes have always struggled with teaching a curriculum to kids in various levels of comprehension. Hundreds of bright kids slog through boring classes everyday just waiting for others to catch up, while some struggle just to stay afloat. There's more to both sides than we like to think, but there definitely needs to be more supervision of "alternative" education. Government investment in a recognized, "free" curriculum and online testing resources would be a good start.

ArlenBales 10y ago

This thread and all its anecdotes doesn't speak for the general public. Everyone here is a techy, many of whom are probably anti-social even as adults. People in this thread discrediting homeschooling for being anti-social, when they're probably anti-social 20 something programmers. You may have been social in high school, but as an adult you chose an anti-social career. Yet the solution for homeschooling socialness is the exact fucking same that people on HN recommend for anti-social 20 something techies. They're called clubs. (Not the nightlife kind) Homeschool parents get their children in sports clubs, music clubs, dance clubs, etc. 20 something programmers who want to be more social should get into a club also. Let me ask you this, if with your current anti-social adult brain you were transported back in time to your teenager self and given the chance to be more social at youth -- would you spend time conversing with other high schoolers and their typical teenager talk or would you seek out clubs with more mature individuals and activities that could lead you to success in adult life? Intelligent people would chose the latter, but kids aren't smart enough to make that decision at a young age, so adults should give them that guidance and direction.

alkonaut 10y ago

How do people afford to homeschool? If we assume public schools are tax funded, and homeschooling is not (so homeschooling parents are not given tax breaks or voucher money) - then basically you are paying a fair amount of taxes, and you basically can't have a job, because you spend N years educating your kids? From an economics/labor force participation/GDP perspective, having few kids per teacher isn't very sensible.

ilaksh 10y ago

Maybe part-time computer-assisted stay-home days standard practice for public schools could help relieve some of the overcrowding pressure, allow kids time to progress at their own speed, and permit more focused attention for addressing problem behaviors both by school administrators as well as parents. Perhaps for households that cant provide supervision, just create a minimally supervised and perhaps somewhat interaction-limited computer lab for self paced study during that time.