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My wife and I homeschool our two daughters. It’s been a huge blessing. AMA.
by Ancapistani 6y ago
My wife and I homeschool our two daughters. It’s been a huge blessing.
AMA.
- k__ 6y agoWhere 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 agoIt’s not your business?
- throwaways885 6y agoThis is HN. Discussion is kind of the whole point.
- Ancapistani 6y agoI 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 agoDown-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)?
- Ancapistani 6y agoAs I’m sure you can infer from my username, keeping our children out of state-run schools is a primary motivating factor for us.
- war1025 6y ago> As I’m sure you can infer from my username For the record, I've seen you reference your username before and I still don't entirely understand what the word means, though I did look it up at one point.
- anchpop 6y agoAnarcho-capitalism is a similar ideology to libertarianism, only more extreme. Proponents are called Anarcho-capitalists or "ancaps" for short. The idea seems to involve being able to start a private alternative to government (with your own private police force enforcing your own laws, etc.)
- Ancapistani 6y agoYep - close enough for an overview.
- rorykoehler 6y agoWhy don’t you move to Mexico where the cartels have already installed an anarcho-capitalist state?
- rhexs 6y agoProbably for a reason similar to that classic maxim “real communism has never been tried”.
- Ancapistani 6y ago
- dudul 6y agoThat Germany is not the USA? Studies are almost unanimous. Homeschooled kids are more successful in college, get almost an entire extra point of GPA on average and earn more money than other kids. You do you, and let others do what they want.
- username90 6y agoHomeschooling is really bad for STEM though, only reason it looks good is that so little of kids grades are based on STEM in school. Look at the data, and then consider that home-schooled kids in general comes from more stable homes with higher wealth and better educated parents. https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/the-homeschool-math-gap/ https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/the-homeschool-math-gap...
- dudul 6y agoThe data seems to be a data set of 74 homeschoolers. Not super compelling. And yes I agree that being able to homeschool your kids is definitely a privilege, unfortunately. Maybe we can at least meet half way and say that homeschooling absolutely doesn't create these mythical, supposedly antisocial weirdos then, and it is completely possible to have healthy well functioning homeschoolers.
- lazyasciiart 6y agoI think everyone would have to admit that homeschooling can produce healthy well functioning adults, there are plenty of examples to point to. I think you'd also have to admit that it can produce antisocial weirdos.
- harry8 6y agoI wouldn't admit either of those things, actually. Both are possible but neither certain and could also be false. Perhaps the healthy, well functioning adults would have been so regardless of schooling. Perhaps the weirdos would have been so regardless of schooling. Perhaps schooling makes the difference for a proportion less than 100% of the students? How much less? Under what circumstances? Who could know with any confidence? I honestly don't know how you could get clear evidence to say one way or the other as to schooling contribution to the causation of "weirdo-ness"
- Ancapistani 6y agoIt definitely happens, without question from my perspective. Personally, I don’t think it’s something government should try to “solve” - of _course_ parents want their children to share their views. From a practical standpoint, it’s been difficult for us to find homeschooling communities that aren’t one of two extremes: new age/“hippie” or fundamentalist Christian. While my wife and I are Christian, it’s important to us for our children to get a thorough and well-rounded education. That entirely rules out a lot of resources for us, and we end up picking and choosing quite a bit. For instance, we’re using the Abeka math curriculum at the moment, but their science curriculum isn’t at all acceptable.
- growlix 6y agoAnecdotally, this stereotype seems to exist in the United States as well. When it comes to data, the 2016 National Household Education Survey by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that 51% of parents selected "A desire to provide religious instruction" as an "important" reason for homeschooling their children, and 67% selected "A desire to provide moral instruction" as an "important" reason for homeschooling [0, in bar plot form; 1, original data]. [0] https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/summaries/reasons-parents-homeschool/ https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/summaries/reas... [1] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017102.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017102.pdf
- k__ 6y agoThanks for providing some numbers on this.
- surge 6y ago"A desire to provide moral instruction" "Don't do drugs." "Sex is great, but you need to wait until you're ready to handle it because it has serious emotional and physical consequences as well. If you do though, use a condom." "Don't treat people that way." Its disingenuous that state run schools don't have their own moral instruction as well. Although I can't find it but I remember a post where a student got in an argument because the teacher failed them for saying ethics and morality were two different things and the teacher argued it was the same. So I don't exactly trust them to do it either. Ultimately it is up to the parents to teach kids their values, not the state's. The parents have the most influence on a child's values anyway, short of removing them from the home, not much changes there.
- vinay427 6y ago> Its disingenuous that state run schools don't have their own moral instruction as well. No one is saying otherwise. The survey says that parents have a desire to provide moral instruction. > Although I can't find it but I remember a post where a student got in an argument because the teacher failed them for saying ethics and morality were two different things and the teacher argued it was the same. So I don't exactly trust them to do it either. Why generalize from what seems to be a single anecdote?
- nemo44x 6y agoAs opposed to having the school do it? To their belief system that maybe isn’t “religion” but is still based on a certain type of faith and moral opinion. Public schools are littered with teaching kids _what_ to think, not _how_ to think. I get your point and in particular I understand Germany’s caution. But what is wrong with a parent teaching their child their morality through religion? Why is having the state control this less dangerous? Why is religion bad?
- Barrin92 6y ago>Why is religion bad? Take a look around this planet and oppression done in the name of religious superstition, but for a more charitable argument, even if religion is good, children deserve to have a diverse and secular upbringing if we care about the religious freedom of the child. I'm also German, and here children are essentially mini-citizens, not some sort of property of their parents, with about as much autonomy as a mule. It's not about whether religion is good, it's about whether children have the right to be brought up, from an early age, in an impartial, dvierse and social environment, rather than being indoctrinated by their parents. the US system doesn't treat children like citizens with autonomy and rights in their own right, but leaves them to the whim of their parents, regardless of what quality of education or values they can provide. That is incomprehensible to me,and I'd argue it actually harms the freedoms and rights of children and their autonomy. It's outright medieval to me to be honest.
- logicchains 6y ago>Take a look around this planet and oppression done in the name of religious superstition I've sure you've heard the argument, but last century over a hundred million people were killed by atheist movements (Maoism, Stalinism), way more than were killed by any religion. And this century the most repressive governments (China, North Korea) are atheist too. Religious people are also happier, statistically speaking (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religious-people-happier-healthier-our-new-global-study-explores-this-question/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religio...). So it can't be all bad if it's raising happier people.
- tomcam 6y agoI think that attitude is completely bizarre.
- surge 6y agoThat's a very old ignorant view. It probably was more true for a time, many parents didn't wanted their kids thinking Jesus rode dinosaurs, etc. But ultimately even then, in a few cases that didn't hold them back, they usually got into adult hood figured out their parents were likely full of crap in college, but because they also learned math and reading, and did often better, which is actually something needed practically and were successful as a result. Many modern home school curriculums are secular are taken from the same ones or follow the same standards/guidelines schools use. Majority of home schoolers I know are secular, and want better options, especially those to meet the learning needs or styles of learning they themselves or their kids thrived in. They don't believe either because their own experience or what they've seen with their kid that kids learn best in a very rigid, sit down, and be quiet and listen model of instruction that was designed for factory workers and has barely changed in 100 years. Also, there's nothing stopping a parent from putting a kid a private Catholic/Jewish/Orthodox/etc school, etc that will do the same. Parents can indoctrinate their kids, home school or not, into a religion, they have them on evenings and weekends where the ultra religious just take the kids to their religious institution 4-5 times a week.
- primrose 6y agoI grew up religious and believing weird stuff. College also fixed that for me as did the internet. I still went to public schools.
- surge 6y agoRight, it barely matters, if anything the sheltering shocks the person so much when they are finally exposed, they question everything and usually end up distrusting or taking issues with the parent.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- primrose 6y agoIt's the other way around. Prussian's realized when most conscripts were faced with war, they would pee their pants and run away. "The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed." This horrifies me. More so that we do it here in the United States. https://www.forcedschool.com/post/69947261758/the-prussian-model https://www.forcedschool.com/post/69947261758/the-prussian-m... Their should be no government run schools. Give parents a voucher and let them decide.
- imtringued 6y agoWould you rather have citizens fight amongst themselves because their cultures are in conflict with each other?
- primrose 6y agoBased on the levels of death caused by government brain washing the answer is pretty clear.
- Ancapistani 6y agoWell, yes. Let me put it another way, for the purposes of illustrating the principle: “Of course we should have a shared culture. Here it is - _my_ culture. If it’s in conflict with yours, too bad, we’re going to make sure your children are indoctrinated into it from an early age by taking them out of the home for eight hours each day, five days per week.”
- rorykoehler 6y agoAs a half German living in Germany my impression is the government make the people far too reliant on the it and the people mostly just go along with it. It’s the biggest criticism I have of the country. So many people I’ve met abdicate personal responsibilities because of the system.
- inglor_cz 6y agoCzech here. Guess who outlawed homeschooling in Germany (Reichsschulpflichtgesetz). Yes, it was him. No children outside state control. Unfortunately the modern German state likes this idea too. We have homeschooling in CZ. Not many people use this option, but those who do usually do so because they see schools as inefficient. When I was a kid, at least a third, sometimes more than a half of every lesson was spent on various logistics, individual examination of pupils by the board, or simply disciplining the class. This is a very wasteful use of time, our most restricted life asset. In individual training, you can teach all the necessary stuff in three hours and then, for example, go for a hike. In my experience homeschooled children are the most fit ones. They move around a lot, not being forced to sit (the worst position for a human body) for endless hours.