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I honestly don't understand how home schooling is supposed to work. I mean, primary school maybe (though even there I seriously doubt the capacity of most paren

I honestly don't understand how home schooling is supposed to work. I mean, primary school maybe (though even there I seriously doubt the capacity of most parents, but whatever, we could handle that). But secondary school & beyond? Like, we're lucky that we can explain path, physics, chemistry, grammar to our kids & help them, but we struggle on some of the subjects (& gave up on others - e.g. chemistry - at highschool level). But it's one thing to help them on some subjects - and a whole different things to be able to actively teach everything: not only those, but history, geography, foreign languages, arts, music etc - that's far more than one full-time job! The only reason why teachers are able to do it is that they teach a single subject (to an entire classroom). Yeah, in primary school you (mostly) have a single teacher for the class, so home-schooling is plausible. But beyond that, I just don't understand it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
p1esk 7y ago
Coursera
cybert00th 7y ago
Adopting homeschooling as the way to educate your children involves a paradigm shift on a number of fronts. You switch to being a single income family. One parent, most usually the mother, gives up their career progression for the duration of their children's education. Actual homeschooling isn't that difficult for the simple reason that there is a massive amount of resources available online - from distance learning organisations or individual tutors offering tuition on specific subjects, to distance learning organisations handling the whole curriculum, to mixing and matching DIY learning together with enlisting the help of distance learning organisations for more 'difficult' subjects - think Maths, Chemistry and Physics (the route we took). It just depends on how deep your pockets are and your level of commitment i.e. if the homeschooling parent is willing to put in the hours to prep ahead of lessons or they'd prefer to leave it all up to a distance learning organisation and they just act as the facilitator. We're currently putting our two girls through UK GCSEs, it's a mix of my wife teaching them English and a couple of others subjects and me teaching them Computer Studies, and us then also paying for online tuition in Spanish and the services of a local Music teacher.
- dataduck 7y ago
  I provide remote tutoring professionally but as a sole trader, and I'm quite interested in what your experience is (good and bad) of distance learning organisations.
jaspax 7y ago
Kids who are homeschooled their whole lives quickly get used to learning from a textbook rather than a teacher. Furthermore, homeschooling textbooks are written with this in mind, and tend to be more easily accessible without a teacher present relative to mainstream textbooks. I know that by the time our child was in 2nd grade he was already doing most of his lessons without any adult intervention, calling on us only when he didn't understand something. I imagine that by the time he reached high school he would have had no trouble tackling something like Chemistry without trouble. Furthermore, it's not uncommon for homeschooling groups to arrange to have adult tutors for some subjects, especially in the higher grades.
- virgilp 7y ago
  My kids don't really learn without some form of supervision and/or encouragement - what I have seen times and times again is kids learning from textbooks on _some_ subject, which it typically after a good teacher created interest for said subject. > I know that by the time our child was in 2nd grade he was already doing most of his lessons without any adult intervention, You're very fortunate. For my kids that kinda/ sorta true for the high-school one. And from what I've seen, they're not the exception. It even gets worse with teenage children, because they'll challenge your authority - so while they may work on stuff that teachers gave them, they won't easily take suggestions from you (e.g. what to study, for the high-school exams).
davedx 7y ago
What our child's secondary school is doing is giving lessons with Microsoft Teams on these kinds of subjects, then he has to do school work based on those lessons. We aren't required to "school" him at all actually. Our 6 year old on the other hand requires constant supervision and teaching for her material, and that stuff is of course quite manageable.
vollmond 7y ago
If you, as a (presumably) successful graduate of a public school system, can't understand the textbooks and other modern resources well enough to help your own child learn basic chemistry, what did you actually get out of your public school education? And why would you want to send your child to spend years of their life there? It's one thing to thoughtfully decide that it is best for your family to outsource education for various reasons. It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself.
- virgilp 7y ago
  Because just because I'm a computer scientist doesn't mean that my child can't be a doctor or chemist. I haven't touched organic chemistry in 20years+ ... is it really surprising that it'd take me a lot to understand? I don't have the same amount of time to invest in (re-)learning everything. > It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself. It's not, if they chose the same career path as I did, or my wife did. But I don't see how we could plausibly expose them to different options. Case in point - the older child plans to study architecture; the exam involves quite specialized drawing skills. Both of us would have extremely limited knowledge to guide her.
- pwthornton 6y ago
  Your average high school chemistry teacher has a chemistry degree. They didn’t just take one class in chemistry in high school and become an expert. This is a ridiculous comparison. There are a lot of things I took a class or two in that I am not qualified to teach. Most people are not qualified to teach most subjects at s high level. I’m a professor and there are only certain topics that I am an expert in. I could tech myself high school chemistry again, but it’s been a few decades.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

p1esk 7y ago

Coursera

cybert00th 7y ago

Adopting homeschooling as the way to educate your children involves a paradigm shift on a number of fronts. You switch to being a single income family. One parent, most usually the mother, gives up their career progression for the duration of their children's education. Actual homeschooling isn't that difficult for the simple reason that there is a massive amount of resources available online - from distance learning organisations or individual tutors offering tuition on specific subjects, to distance learning organisations handling the whole curriculum, to mixing and matching DIY learning together with enlisting the help of distance learning organisations for more 'difficult' subjects - think Maths, Chemistry and Physics (the route we took). It just depends on how deep your pockets are and your level of commitment i.e. if the homeschooling parent is willing to put in the hours to prep ahead of lessons or they'd prefer to leave it all up to a distance learning organisation and they just act as the facilitator. We're currently putting our two girls through UK GCSEs, it's a mix of my wife teaching them English and a couple of others subjects and me teaching them Computer Studies, and us then also paying for online tuition in Spanish and the services of a local Music teacher.

dataduck 7y ago
I provide remote tutoring professionally but as a sole trader, and I'm quite interested in what your experience is (good and bad) of distance learning organisations.

jaspax 7y ago

Kids who are homeschooled their whole lives quickly get used to learning from a textbook rather than a teacher. Furthermore, homeschooling textbooks are written with this in mind, and tend to be more easily accessible without a teacher present relative to mainstream textbooks. I know that by the time our child was in 2nd grade he was already doing most of his lessons without any adult intervention, calling on us only when he didn't understand something. I imagine that by the time he reached high school he would have had no trouble tackling something like Chemistry without trouble. Furthermore, it's not uncommon for homeschooling groups to arrange to have adult tutors for some subjects, especially in the higher grades.

virgilp 7y ago
My kids don't really learn without some form of supervision and/or encouragement - what I have seen times and times again is kids learning from textbooks on _some_ subject, which it typically after a good teacher created interest for said subject. > I know that by the time our child was in 2nd grade he was already doing most of his lessons without any adult intervention, You're very fortunate. For my kids that kinda/ sorta true for the high-school one. And from what I've seen, they're not the exception. It even gets worse with teenage children, because they'll challenge your authority - so while they may work on stuff that teachers gave them, they won't easily take suggestions from you (e.g. what to study, for the high-school exams).

davedx 7y ago

What our child's secondary school is doing is giving lessons with Microsoft Teams on these kinds of subjects, then he has to do school work based on those lessons. We aren't required to "school" him at all actually. Our 6 year old on the other hand requires constant supervision and teaching for her material, and that stuff is of course quite manageable.

vollmond 7y ago

If you, as a (presumably) successful graduate of a public school system, can't understand the textbooks and other modern resources well enough to help your own child learn basic chemistry, what did you actually get out of your public school education? And why would you want to send your child to spend years of their life there? It's one thing to thoughtfully decide that it is best for your family to outsource education for various reasons. It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself.

virgilp 7y ago
Because just because I'm a computer scientist doesn't mean that my child can't be a doctor or chemist. I haven't touched organic chemistry in 20years+ ... is it really surprising that it'd take me a lot to understand? I don't have the same amount of time to invest in (re-)learning everything. > It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself. It's not, if they chose the same career path as I did, or my wife did. But I don't see how we could plausibly expose them to different options. Case in point - the older child plans to study architecture; the exam involves quite specialized drawing skills. Both of us would have extremely limited knowledge to guide her.
pwthornton 6y ago
Your average high school chemistry teacher has a chemistry degree. They didn’t just take one class in chemistry in high school and become an expert. This is a ridiculous comparison. There are a lot of things I took a class or two in that I am not qualified to teach. Most people are not qualified to teach most subjects at s high level. I’m a professor and there are only certain topics that I am an expert in. I could tech myself high school chemistry again, but it’s been a few decades.