6 ms·

Teaching kids at home is not remote schooling. Remote means the instructor is not in the same room as the student. Homeschooling implies the instructor is pre

by matt_s 6y ago

Teaching kids at home is not remote schooling. Remote means the instructor is not in the same room as the student. Homeschooling implies the instructor is present in the room, probably in a 1:2 teacher/student ratio. Even if you are using online materials, you are actively there to guide your child through the material.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Yeah, I know. I've taken remote college classes. I'm familiar with the concept. Have you actually homeschooled? A lot of homeschooling parents don't actively guide their kids through anything. I used to have a page of education quotes, which included ideas like "The ability to learn is older and more common than the ability to teach" and "Education should be the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a pale." I surveyed everything in the house -- books, games, TV shows, etc -- decided which should be counted as educational and which shouldn't and for what subjects and my kids mostly did various activities independently. I only actively worked with them when they had problems with something because they have learning disabilities. I actually spent more time working with my kids on their homework when they were in public school plus taking them to school, attending parent-teacher conferences, etc than homeschooling took. My oldest son tested at the senior in college level for at least one subject on a placement test at age 11. One of my rules was "If you are above grade level in the subject, you get to do whatever the heck interests you." My kids are twice exceptional. This is probably the hardest educational profile to try to effectively educate.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  > My kids are twice exceptional. This is probably the hardest educational profile to try to effectively educate. This is probably true if you want to educate them to their maximum potential. But the wiggle room for ineffectiveness is enormous. If you have kids that are incredibly smart then you get a natural buffer. The challenge is that we sure would like everybody to be able to read and write at a high school level so being inefficient in teaching the kids who are already going to struggle with this ends up being less acceptable. There is no question that homeschooling can be enormously valuable for kids that are smart and interested and have parents with means to participate in their education. Scaling to the rest of the population is the hard part.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    It's really a lot more complicated than that. If you have someone strong in science but weak in math, their math disability can actively block their ability to learn their favorite subject. But I really shouldn't ever bother to discuss this on HN. The only person who knew me before I joined HN knew me through homeschooling and gifted circles and never once said anything nice about me, just politely nitpicked my comments to death for eight years. No one ever said "Dude. Wow. Leave her alone." Because misogyny and double standards are alive and well. So y'all feel free to feel like you know more than I do about the topic. My sons are grown. No one here will ever either respect me or pay me for my expertise, so your current pain points on this topic really aren't my problem.
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      Huh? I think you likely did a great job raising your children. Nothing in my post was intended as an attack on you (or women or mothers or homeschoolers). In general, I find that this community is extremely receptive to nontraditional education methods. My concern was largely in what I saw as a priority mismatch when considering individual examples vs population-scale policy.
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        Sorry, I get an excess of grief on some topics and it's especially aggravating in this case because I feel I really ought to have a reputation as something of a subject matter expert and would if it weren't for an eight year long campaign of very polite character assassination, something which stopped after I blogged about it at some point but was never remedied in any fashion.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  I appreciate that you have shared your experience as I acknowledge a personal bias against homeschooling. I have two adult friends that were home schooled and both resent their parents for it. One was home schooled because their devoutly religious parents didn’t want them socializing with non-religious students. The other because their parents didn’t believe the available school could serve their needs related to autism. Both vocally believe they were significantly stunted academically, socially, and professionally. Anecdotes are anecdotes, but it’s always nice to hear the other side.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    If you are actually interested in looking for useful resources, gifted homeschooling resources are quite different from religious homeschooling resources.
    - germinalphrase 6y ago
      I’m absolutely sure this is true.
- matt_s 6y ago
  I have not home-schooled my kids, however the topic for this post was remote schooling. I think those are two different topics with some overlap. Parent engagement in their child's education is probably a big factor regardless of home/public schooling. The more engagement, the better the outcome is my guess. From an efficiency perspective, I'd agree public schools aren't efficient on time usage nor are they effective at helping anyone that are outliers - gifted or disadvantaged. Those things aren't their goal though, it is massive public education usually governed by state laws. I think one of the top problems is with families that cannot have kids at home on their own for economic reasons like poor families that have to work outside the home for basic food and shelter. Do you think there are practices done with effective home-schooling that can be used as a seed for larger-scale remote education?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    My sons are in their thirties and when I was homeschooling them around two decades back there were already online homeschool umbrella schools. This has existed a long time, so someone has to know something better than what I'm hearing this past year from schools that suddenly and unexpectedly became remote-only overnight due to the pandemic. Homeschooling has a really terrible reputation -- which I tend to forget because I didn't homeschool for religious reasons and those who do have something of a tendency to give the practice a bad name. So the idea that homeschoolers know anything useful gets dismissed out of hand and then a lot of homeschooling parents are the moms. Homeschoolers are often middle class families with a full-time homemaker doing the teaching and the world is really bad about acting like homemakers are all idiots who don't know nothing. I am out of the loop on this and have baggage over how I've been treated, so I mostly just shake my head and pass on participating in such discussions on HN. I don't need the grief. But "Homeschoolers know something useful that can be borrowed upon" is exactly the point of my initial comment. What I've read about remote K-12 schooling has been truly horrifying. I think it would be difficult to do anything worse than what I've seen described.

by matt_s 6y ago

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Yeah, I know. I've taken remote college classes. I'm familiar with the concept. Have you actually homeschooled? A lot of homeschooling parents don't actively guide their kids through anything. I used to have a page of education quotes, which included ideas like "The ability to learn is older and more common than the ability to teach" and "Education should be the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a pale." I surveyed everything in the house -- books, games, TV shows, etc -- decided which should be counted as educational and which shouldn't and for what subjects and my kids mostly did various activities independently. I only actively worked with them when they had problems with something because they have learning disabilities. I actually spent more time working with my kids on their homework when they were in public school plus taking them to school, attending parent-teacher conferences, etc than homeschooling took. My oldest son tested at the senior in college level for at least one subject on a placement test at age 11. One of my rules was "If you are above grade level in the subject, you get to do whatever the heck interests you." My kids are twice exceptional. This is probably the hardest educational profile to try to effectively educate.

UncleMeat 6y ago
> My kids are twice exceptional. This is probably the hardest educational profile to try to effectively educate. This is probably true if you want to educate them to their maximum potential. But the wiggle room for ineffectiveness is enormous. If you have kids that are incredibly smart then you get a natural buffer. The challenge is that we sure would like everybody to be able to read and write at a high school level so being inefficient in teaching the kids who are already going to struggle with this ends up being less acceptable. There is no question that homeschooling can be enormously valuable for kids that are smart and interested and have parents with means to participate in their education. Scaling to the rest of the population is the hard part.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  It's really a lot more complicated than that. If you have someone strong in science but weak in math, their math disability can actively block their ability to learn their favorite subject. But I really shouldn't ever bother to discuss this on HN. The only person who knew me before I joined HN knew me through homeschooling and gifted circles and never once said anything nice about me, just politely nitpicked my comments to death for eight years. No one ever said "Dude. Wow. Leave her alone." Because misogyny and double standards are alive and well. So y'all feel free to feel like you know more than I do about the topic. My sons are grown. No one here will ever either respect me or pay me for my expertise, so your current pain points on this topic really aren't my problem.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    Huh? I think you likely did a great job raising your children. Nothing in my post was intended as an attack on you (or women or mothers or homeschoolers). In general, I find that this community is extremely receptive to nontraditional education methods. My concern was largely in what I saw as a priority mismatch when considering individual examples vs population-scale policy.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      Sorry, I get an excess of grief on some topics and it's especially aggravating in this case because I feel I really ought to have a reputation as something of a subject matter expert and would if it weren't for an eight year long campaign of very polite character assassination, something which stopped after I blogged about it at some point but was never remedied in any fashion.
germinalphrase 6y ago
I appreciate that you have shared your experience as I acknowledge a personal bias against homeschooling. I have two adult friends that were home schooled and both resent their parents for it. One was home schooled because their devoutly religious parents didn’t want them socializing with non-religious students. The other because their parents didn’t believe the available school could serve their needs related to autism. Both vocally believe they were significantly stunted academically, socially, and professionally. Anecdotes are anecdotes, but it’s always nice to hear the other side.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  If you are actually interested in looking for useful resources, gifted homeschooling resources are quite different from religious homeschooling resources.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    I’m absolutely sure this is true.
matt_s 6y ago
I have not home-schooled my kids, however the topic for this post was remote schooling. I think those are two different topics with some overlap. Parent engagement in their child's education is probably a big factor regardless of home/public schooling. The more engagement, the better the outcome is my guess. From an efficiency perspective, I'd agree public schools aren't efficient on time usage nor are they effective at helping anyone that are outliers - gifted or disadvantaged. Those things aren't their goal though, it is massive public education usually governed by state laws. I think one of the top problems is with families that cannot have kids at home on their own for economic reasons like poor families that have to work outside the home for basic food and shelter. Do you think there are practices done with effective home-schooling that can be used as a seed for larger-scale remote education?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  My sons are in their thirties and when I was homeschooling them around two decades back there were already online homeschool umbrella schools. This has existed a long time, so someone has to know something better than what I'm hearing this past year from schools that suddenly and unexpectedly became remote-only overnight due to the pandemic. Homeschooling has a really terrible reputation -- which I tend to forget because I didn't homeschool for religious reasons and those who do have something of a tendency to give the practice a bad name. So the idea that homeschoolers know anything useful gets dismissed out of hand and then a lot of homeschooling parents are the moms. Homeschoolers are often middle class families with a full-time homemaker doing the teaching and the world is really bad about acting like homemakers are all idiots who don't know nothing. I am out of the loop on this and have baggage over how I've been treated, so I mostly just shake my head and pass on participating in such discussions on HN. I don't need the grief. But "Homeschoolers know something useful that can be borrowed upon" is exactly the point of my initial comment. What I've read about remote K-12 schooling has been truly horrifying. I think it would be difficult to do anything worse than what I've seen described.