13 ms·

This. I still can not understand how US citizens see home schooling as a good thing.

by k__ 6y ago

rllearneratwork 6y ago
because a lot of public schools are horrible. All you need to know about my neighbourhood's elementary school (Bay Area, 20 min by bicycle from Apple's new campus) is that it has metal detector on entrance. Why? Gang activity. In freaking elementary school. School rating is 4/10 if you are curious.
- ponker 6y ago
  And a 3br house there is probably $1.4 million.
  - rllearneratwork 6y ago
    I'll just say that I paid $14,000 in property taxes alone last year
    - ponker 6y ago
      Lol Right there with ya buddy.
- zo1 6y ago
  Can't they just suspend and subsequently expel all the students involved in gang activity and gang culture? What is the problem preventing people from fixing gang activity in elementary schools such as that one?
  - imtringued 6y ago
    That would just institutionalize gang culture. Do you really think gangs really care about education? They care more about having active and indoctrinated members. You can be more active and can be easily manipulated if you don't go to school.
twblalock 6y ago
Home schooling works pretty well for affluent families who can afford to have one parent not working, or hire tutors. But that is not most families.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 6y ago
  I love my children, but I dont want to stay at home homeschooling them. I really dont, I am very sure I would be quite unhappy with that. And I am very sure about that, because I did stayed home for some time why they were small and it was most depressive period of my life. It is not just about money. Majority of guys here talking about home school as being money issue would not volunteered to leave their job to be stay at home parent long term. They just want somebody else to do it.
thepoordontvote 6y ago
Very often homeschool families collaborate to provide social activities. Or they put their kids in community sports programs or other group activities. Homeshooling doesn't mean the kids never leave the house.
- dudul 6y ago
  So true. I would even add that these social activities include kids of wide age ranges which is a much better way to prepare children to real life. Life is not composed of groups of people of similar ages.
- surge 6y ago
  Not to mention co-ops, flexibility (a parent is traveling some where for business, etc, take the kid and use it as a teaching opportunity, or its a nice day, nature walk this afternoon). The amazing part is how much of a child (and the teacher's time) is wasted, especially as class sizes grow and resources are strained (https://greensboro.com/opinion/columns/christie-murphy-why-i-have-to-quit-teaching-and-no/article_b42f4ffe-8d20-5956-8375-e41a2dc088ec.html https://greensboro.com/opinion/columns/christie-murphy-why-i...). Home schooling usually takes half the day to get through all the required curriculum, because of all the time saved not getting 30 students to be quiet, lack of interruptions, etc. So little is getting done now in schools kids are coming home with hours of homework. Not good at explaining a subject, or the kid is having trouble groking it from the material, pull up a video on Khan Academy, or Kurzgesagt, or even a presentation by an Ivy League professor (like CS50) or someone who is foremost in the field. Have a fellow homeschool parent whose an expert in a field, let them teach help. Want to teach your kid financial planning, investing, and how to do taxes, you can. One style or mode of learning isn't working, try another like Montessori, direct instruction, don't need to run it through an administration, school board, and state officials. In a school, few if any breaks are given with no concern for attention spans, or mental burnout, you have to DO THIS THING AT THIS TIME. If the kid wants to do his lesson in a fun way, like dress up as Batman, he can, as long as they're doing their lessons, etc. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/new-research-finds-that-kids-aged-4-6-perform-better-during-boring-tasks-when-dressed-as-batman https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/new-research-finds-th... Are their parents who half ass it and their kid barely learns anything sure, but compared to the literacy rates most schools are producing they don't get to say much. https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-numbers-infographic https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-number...
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
It usually happens in families with one stay-at-home parent. It turns out all RRR (reading/'riting/'rithmetics) and sciences can be squeezed into one or two days of intensive learning. Having five free days a week is pretty awesome.
- Hayvok 6y ago
  My wife was homeschooled, I went to public school. She decided to home school our three kids. I was skeptical at first. I was absolutely shocked at how quickly they cover all their subjects, homework, etc. every week. My kids get 10x the amount of play time I got at their age. It's great. Makes me regret all those years I spent in public school.
MattGaiser 6y ago
I was homeschooled until grade 8. You get to spend a lot more time exploring your interests as a kid that way. I have absolutely no regrets about it.
- pfarnsworth 6y ago
  Did you find it hard adjusting to grade 8?
austhrow743 6y ago
Have you seen any news or media about their city schools? Practically jails but more rowdy.
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  You know why? Because damn rules. In good old times if a student told teacher to fuck off a teacher would've given a student a cuff on the nape and the conflict would've been resolved. These days? Nope. You're not allowed to touch children. You're not allowed to yell at children. You can call parents at school and have another "he didn't do nothing" conversation. So what you do? You introduce zero tolerance rules. You call the police. You turn school into prison where the same set of extremely strict rules is applied to each and every student. And all of that could have been prevented by just one gentle slap!
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    Nah, other countries have non-jail schools without beating kids just fine.
    - war1025 6y ago
      > without beating kids There's a pretty wide spectrum between: "Can't discipline kids that act up" and "Beating kids" Kids need boundaries. It's literally what they spend a good portion of their time testing for. If you aren't allowed to provide boundaries for them, then they will flounder, which turns into a self-reinforcing cycle.
      - austhrow743 6y ago
        The only tool I remember teachers or schools having the ability to wield against students when I was in school was suspension or expulsion. Are US schools not allowed to suspend kids?
        war1025 6y ago
Ancapistani 6y ago
My wife and I homeschool our two daughters. It’s been a huge blessing. AMA.
- k__ 6y ago
  Where I come from (Germany), homeschooling is seen as a way to indoctrinate children to their parents religion. What do you think about this?
  - ryan93 6y ago
    It’s not your business?
    - throwaways885 6y ago
      This is HN. Discussion is kind of the whole point.
      - Ancapistani 6y ago
        I agree. While I’m definitely in the camp of “it’s none of the state’s business”, stating that and expecting it to change minds is... not a very well-informed approach.
  - blumomo 6y ago
    Down-vote me if you’d like, but the opposite is also true, in many regards: Where I come from (Germany), (public) schooling is seen as a way to indoctrinate children to their government’s political agenda (call it a religion if you like). So as always, it depends: good parents, good home schooling. Bad parents, bad home schooling. Replace “parents” with “government” and you get the same message. Edit: As a German myself I’d like to add that your question reflects an attitude of the socialist/communist German Democratic Republic (you also know it as “DDR”): family is nothing, government is all. You leave all thinking and your responsibilities to the political agenda and world view of your political “leaders”. Is that a world you’d like to live in (again)?
aikinai 6y ago
When I was still in school, all the homeschooled kids I met were incredibly weird and I thought the same thing. Then later I had a friend whose little sister was homeschooled and they did it right. She was a part of some homeschooling group where the kids would get together frequently and the parents would takes turns leading different activities, often leveraging different parents' professions or special expertise. She was both well-socialized and had much more deep and engaging experiences than you can get in school. Though you still end up with the problem of when and how to rejoin the normal world since you're so far ahead.
- ponker 6y ago
  Homeschooling doesn’t always make kids weird — parents of weird kids often pull them out of school because of bullying or fears of bullying.
- surge 6y ago
  The other thing about this stereotype everyone remembers the one weird kid from home school. But its not like weird kids with socialization issues and social anxiety don't come out of public schools. Also no one factors that maybe the kid is being home schooled because they're weird. It's also possible they just have weird parents, and they're weird as a result, and school isn't going to save them from that.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    There is probably a bias of people who choose to home school. The home schooled person I know was home schooled because their parents were deeply religious and didn't want a school teaching their child unapproved content but they also didn't have the skill or time to properly educate on things like math so they ended up far behind others. How many people that homeschool are actually knowledgeable enough and have the free time to replace full time teachers.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I'm thinking that even if you are a competent "home teacher" you would still fall behind in areas that are outside your expertise. You'd need a collective of home teachers at which point all the perceived benefits of homeschooling disappear because you're handing your child to those weird teachers who aren't you.
tomcam 6y ago
https://www.educationdive.com/news/several-baltimore-schools-report-0-students-proficient-in-math-reading/443155/ https://www.educationdive.com/news/several-baltimore-schools...
surge 6y ago
The rich do it all the time.
rietta 6y ago
I was home schooled all the way through high school. I often say my mom taught me to read and books taught me everything. I was a voracious reader of fiction and real books as a kid. Taught myself to program at 14. Taught myself enough to write an accounting program for my lawn care business from scratch to QBasic. I did graduate from a school-for-home-schoolers that the parents organized and got accepted to every college I applied to, choosing to go to the Georgia Institute of Technology for both a BS and MS. I had a fantastic experience. It wasn't until while at GA Tech that I first even heard a glimpse of this home schoolers are weird and mis-educated line. Anyway, looking back I am sure that the outcome is based on what the student puts into it. My experience may not be common, but I do personally know many people from my homeschooler groups who have gone on to be very successful adults, engineers, parents, and more.
- istjohn 6y ago
  > I am sure that the outcome is based on what the student puts into it. I strongly disagree with the idea that the outcome of child education depends on "what the student puts into it." A quality education shapes a child, instills a growth mindset, nurtures curiosity, encourages grit and perseverance, and meets the child where they're at. A barren garden is not the fault of the seeds. This hits close to home for me as I am working with a child now who has been written off by his school and teachers as a "bad student." There is no such thing. He needs some extra support and coaching to learn some meta-strategies like asking for help when needed, planning, organization, and yes, diligence, but ultimately he wants to succeed and is capable of it, just like any other child. Children don't fail school. School fails children.
  - rietta 6y ago
    I appreciate your perspective as the father of an under 1 year old. She is our first and I have a lot of learning to do. I was commenting on that my homeschooling experience was great. However, I have a small direct sample of myself and my siblings and some homeschooling group friends.
primrose 6y ago
I'm guessing you never saw a kid get his head smashed on the ground during lunch.

This. I still can not understand how US citizens see home schooling as a good thing.

by k__ 6y ago

This. I still can not understand how US citizens see home schooling as a good thing.

because a lot of public schools are horrible. All you need to know about my neighbourhood's elementary school (Bay Area, 20 min by bicycle from Apple's new campus) is that it has metal detector on entrance. Why? Gang activity. In freaking elementary school. School rating is 4/10 if you are curious.

ponker 6y ago
And a 3br house there is probably $1.4 million.
- rllearneratwork 6y ago
  I'll just say that I paid $14,000 in property taxes alone last year
  - ponker 6y ago
    Lol Right there with ya buddy.
zo1 6y ago
Can't they just suspend and subsequently expel all the students involved in gang activity and gang culture? What is the problem preventing people from fixing gang activity in elementary schools such as that one?
- imtringued 6y ago
  That would just institutionalize gang culture. Do you really think gangs really care about education? They care more about having active and indoctrinated members. You can be more active and can be easily manipulated if you don't go to school.

twblalock 6y ago

Home schooling works pretty well for affluent families who can afford to have one parent not working, or hire tutors. But that is not most families.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
watwut 6y ago
I love my children, but I dont want to stay at home homeschooling them. I really dont, I am very sure I would be quite unhappy with that. And I am very sure about that, because I did stayed home for some time why they were small and it was most depressive period of my life. It is not just about money. Majority of guys here talking about home school as being money issue would not volunteered to leave their job to be stay at home parent long term. They just want somebody else to do it.

thepoordontvote 6y ago

Very often homeschool families collaborate to provide social activities. Or they put their kids in community sports programs or other group activities. Homeshooling doesn't mean the kids never leave the house.

dudul 6y ago
So true. I would even add that these social activities include kids of wide age ranges which is a much better way to prepare children to real life. Life is not composed of groups of people of similar ages.
surge 6y ago
Not to mention co-ops, flexibility (a parent is traveling some where for business, etc, take the kid and use it as a teaching opportunity, or its a nice day, nature walk this afternoon). The amazing part is how much of a child (and the teacher's time) is wasted, especially as class sizes grow and resources are strained (https://greensboro.com/opinion/columns/christie-murphy-why-i-have-to-quit-teaching-and-no/article_b42f4ffe-8d20-5956-8375-e41a2dc088ec.html https://greensboro.com/opinion/columns/christie-murphy-why-i...). Home schooling usually takes half the day to get through all the required curriculum, because of all the time saved not getting 30 students to be quiet, lack of interruptions, etc. So little is getting done now in schools kids are coming home with hours of homework. Not good at explaining a subject, or the kid is having trouble groking it from the material, pull up a video on Khan Academy, or Kurzgesagt, or even a presentation by an Ivy League professor (like CS50) or someone who is foremost in the field. Have a fellow homeschool parent whose an expert in a field, let them teach help. Want to teach your kid financial planning, investing, and how to do taxes, you can. One style or mode of learning isn't working, try another like Montessori, direct instruction, don't need to run it through an administration, school board, and state officials. In a school, few if any breaks are given with no concern for attention spans, or mental burnout, you have to DO THIS THING AT THIS TIME. If the kid wants to do his lesson in a fun way, like dress up as Batman, he can, as long as they're doing their lessons, etc. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/new-research-finds-that-kids-aged-4-6-perform-better-during-boring-tasks-when-dressed-as-batman https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/new-research-finds-th... Are their parents who half ass it and their kid barely learns anything sure, but compared to the literacy rates most schools are producing they don't get to say much. https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-numbers-infographic https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-number...

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago

It usually happens in families with one stay-at-home parent. It turns out all RRR (reading/'riting/'rithmetics) and sciences can be squeezed into one or two days of intensive learning. Having five free days a week is pretty awesome.

Hayvok 6y ago
My wife was homeschooled, I went to public school. She decided to home school our three kids. I was skeptical at first. I was absolutely shocked at how quickly they cover all their subjects, homework, etc. every week. My kids get 10x the amount of play time I got at their age. It's great. Makes me regret all those years I spent in public school.

MattGaiser 6y ago

I was homeschooled until grade 8. You get to spend a lot more time exploring your interests as a kid that way. I have absolutely no regrets about it.

pfarnsworth 6y ago
Did you find it hard adjusting to grade 8?

austhrow743 6y ago

Have you seen any news or media about their city schools? Practically jails but more rowdy.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
You know why? Because damn rules. In good old times if a student told teacher to fuck off a teacher would've given a student a cuff on the nape and the conflict would've been resolved. These days? Nope. You're not allowed to touch children. You're not allowed to yell at children. You can call parents at school and have another "he didn't do nothing" conversation. So what you do? You introduce zero tolerance rules. You call the police. You turn school into prison where the same set of extremely strict rules is applied to each and every student. And all of that could have been prevented by just one gentle slap!
- austhrow743 6y ago
  Nah, other countries have non-jail schools without beating kids just fine.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > without beating kids There's a pretty wide spectrum between: "Can't discipline kids that act up" and "Beating kids" Kids need boundaries. It's literally what they spend a good portion of their time testing for. If you aren't allowed to provide boundaries for them, then they will flounder, which turns into a self-reinforcing cycle.
    - austhrow743 6y ago
      The only tool I remember teachers or schools having the ability to wield against students when I was in school was suspension or expulsion. Are US schools not allowed to suspend kids?
      - war1025 6y ago

Ancapistani 6y ago

My wife and I homeschool our two daughters. It’s been a huge blessing. AMA.

k__ 6y ago
Where I come from (Germany), homeschooling is seen as a way to indoctrinate children to their parents religion. What do you think about this?
- ryan93 6y ago
  It’s not your business?
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    This is HN. Discussion is kind of the whole point.
    - Ancapistani 6y ago
      I agree. While I’m definitely in the camp of “it’s none of the state’s business”, stating that and expecting it to change minds is... not a very well-informed approach.
- blumomo 6y ago
  Down-vote me if you’d like, but the opposite is also true, in many regards: Where I come from (Germany), (public) schooling is seen as a way to indoctrinate children to their government’s political agenda (call it a religion if you like). So as always, it depends: good parents, good home schooling. Bad parents, bad home schooling. Replace “parents” with “government” and you get the same message. Edit: As a German myself I’d like to add that your question reflects an attitude of the socialist/communist German Democratic Republic (you also know it as “DDR”): family is nothing, government is all. You leave all thinking and your responsibilities to the political agenda and world view of your political “leaders”. Is that a world you’d like to live in (again)?

aikinai 6y ago

When I was still in school, all the homeschooled kids I met were incredibly weird and I thought the same thing. Then later I had a friend whose little sister was homeschooled and they did it right. She was a part of some homeschooling group where the kids would get together frequently and the parents would takes turns leading different activities, often leveraging different parents' professions or special expertise. She was both well-socialized and had much more deep and engaging experiences than you can get in school. Though you still end up with the problem of when and how to rejoin the normal world since you're so far ahead.

ponker 6y ago
Homeschooling doesn’t always make kids weird — parents of weird kids often pull them out of school because of bullying or fears of bullying.
surge 6y ago
The other thing about this stereotype everyone remembers the one weird kid from home school. But its not like weird kids with socialization issues and social anxiety don't come out of public schools. Also no one factors that maybe the kid is being home schooled because they're weird. It's also possible they just have weird parents, and they're weird as a result, and school isn't going to save them from that.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  There is probably a bias of people who choose to home school. The home schooled person I know was home schooled because their parents were deeply religious and didn't want a school teaching their child unapproved content but they also didn't have the skill or time to properly educate on things like math so they ended up far behind others. How many people that homeschool are actually knowledgeable enough and have the free time to replace full time teachers.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I'm thinking that even if you are a competent "home teacher" you would still fall behind in areas that are outside your expertise. You'd need a collective of home teachers at which point all the perceived benefits of homeschooling disappear because you're handing your child to those weird teachers who aren't you.

tomcam 6y ago

https://www.educationdive.com/news/several-baltimore-schools-report-0-students-proficient-in-math-reading/443155/ https://www.educationdive.com/news/several-baltimore-schools...

surge 6y ago

The rich do it all the time.

rietta 6y ago

I was home schooled all the way through high school. I often say my mom taught me to read and books taught me everything. I was a voracious reader of fiction and real books as a kid. Taught myself to program at 14. Taught myself enough to write an accounting program for my lawn care business from scratch to QBasic. I did graduate from a school-for-home-schoolers that the parents organized and got accepted to every college I applied to, choosing to go to the Georgia Institute of Technology for both a BS and MS. I had a fantastic experience. It wasn't until while at GA Tech that I first even heard a glimpse of this home schoolers are weird and mis-educated line. Anyway, looking back I am sure that the outcome is based on what the student puts into it. My experience may not be common, but I do personally know many people from my homeschooler groups who have gone on to be very successful adults, engineers, parents, and more.

istjohn 6y ago
> I am sure that the outcome is based on what the student puts into it. I strongly disagree with the idea that the outcome of child education depends on "what the student puts into it." A quality education shapes a child, instills a growth mindset, nurtures curiosity, encourages grit and perseverance, and meets the child where they're at. A barren garden is not the fault of the seeds. This hits close to home for me as I am working with a child now who has been written off by his school and teachers as a "bad student." There is no such thing. He needs some extra support and coaching to learn some meta-strategies like asking for help when needed, planning, organization, and yes, diligence, but ultimately he wants to succeed and is capable of it, just like any other child. Children don't fail school. School fails children.
- rietta 6y ago
  I appreciate your perspective as the father of an under 1 year old. She is our first and I have a lot of learning to do. I was commenting on that my homeschooling experience was great. However, I have a small direct sample of myself and my siblings and some homeschooling group friends.

primrose 6y ago

I'm guessing you never saw a kid get his head smashed on the ground during lunch.