3 ms·

I would think that the people who'd be great to consult would be a. homeschooling parents, the homeschooling community, academics who study homeschooling, or b.

by kixiQu 6y ago

I would think that the people who'd be great to consult would be a. homeschooling parents, the homeschooling community, academics who study homeschooling, or b. education professionals, particularly those doing studies of effectiveness of educational techniques (as opposed to the impact of social factors that are probably fixed for a given child). I would think that the hacker news community would not have particular expertise in this field, and indeed, be desperately afflicted by whatever one calls the specific variety of Dunning-Kruger where a person believes that their own subject-matter is complicated and worthy of intense study, but subjects outside of it may be adequately understood with surface-level effort.

kixiQu 6y ago
Now, that said? I was homeschooled and so based on that experience: Follow what your kids are excited about and learn to nudge that into the learning experiences they need. When I was young, we did a lot of research projects about "kitties" because that's what I cared about. The book excerpt in here models that well: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/23/achievement-gap-the-knowledge-gap-natalie-wexler https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/23/achievement-gap-the-... and there's this as well... https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54470/why-content-knowledge-is-crucial-to-effective-critical-thinking https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54470/why-content-knowledge-i... What this really means, I think, is that we tend to view the actual topics of material that an elementary/middle schooler is dealing with as, well, immaterial--that there are fungible skills they need to learn. And that's kind of true--but what's certainly true is that bouncing around pretending that you can synthesize information about baseball without learning about baseball (example in one of the links) and then tomorrow it's off to practice diagram reading with Mayan agriculture--that isn't effective. At homeschooling scale, you can afford to let your kids' passions drive, and work in the skills-based aspects as it fits.

by kixiQu 6y ago

kixiQu 6y ago

Now, that said? I was homeschooled and so based on that experience: Follow what your kids are excited about and learn to nudge that into the learning experiences they need. When I was young, we did a lot of research projects about "kitties" because that's what I cared about. The book excerpt in here models that well: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/23/achievement-gap-the-knowledge-gap-natalie-wexler https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/23/achievement-gap-the-... and there's this as well... https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54470/why-content-knowledge-is-crucial-to-effective-critical-thinking https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54470/why-content-knowledge-i... What this really means, I think, is that we tend to view the actual topics of material that an elementary/middle schooler is dealing with as, well, immaterial--that there are fungible skills they need to learn. And that's kind of true--but what's certainly true is that bouncing around pretending that you can synthesize information about baseball without learning about baseball (example in one of the links) and then tomorrow it's off to practice diagram reading with Mayan agriculture--that isn't effective. At homeschooling scale, you can afford to let your kids' passions drive, and work in the skills-based aspects as it fits.