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My wife and I pulled our kids out at age 10 and 13. The laws in Nevada are just like those in Texas: Write a letter, the kids are yours. The first thing we did

My wife and I pulled our kids out at age 10 and 13. The laws in Nevada are just like those in Texas: Write a letter, the kids are yours. The first thing we did was nothing, for about 6 months. Getting the kids out of the routine and mindset that school had put them in was vital to being able to teach them. My 10y/o son had the idea that his teachers knew more than my wife and I did "because they're older". He could have only got that idea at school because that's the polar opposite of what we taught at home. I worked full time, but my wife did not and she poured a lot of energy into teaching the kids. But we also did things that weren't schooling. We let the kids learn on their own the things they wanted to learn when they wanted to learn them. This was wonderful. My son picked up programming just for fun and didn't even tell me about it until after, when he had already lost interest and moved on. But that was okay, because I didn't expect him to be a programmer or anything else. I just wanted him to learn. Same for our daughter. They learned. They got GED's and that was that. They're both extremely well rounded adults now and didn't go through the agonies of public schooling.

88840-8855 5y ago
And what are they doing now? What jobs do they have? How do they pay?
- geocrasher 5y ago
  My son has a well paying job as a development manager at a company that builds batteries (Sorry- I don't know more- he doesn't say much about it) and my daughter has too many health problems to work full time and lives at home with me. In fact her health was one of the reasons we pulled her out. She was so far behind because of missing school that it was becoming a serious problem that the teachers were ill-equipped to handle.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  While I am sure the question is sincere, it's notable that the question wasn't, "what businesses have they started," "what are they doing for passive income and investment," "what are they using for leverage," "how many people do they manage," "what university did they graduate from," "what products have they developed," "are they on the real estate ladder," etc. When you exit the system, the status and meaning it promises doesn't doesn't have the same value. If you got kids to the level of basic analysis / calculus, traveller level in a second language, and passable in the reasoning and comprehension skills of the LSAT, they would be smarter and more capable than most university undergrads. If you add physical competence hobbies to that where some of those skills get applied, you get even more differentiated. Teenagers get amateur pilot licenses, so they are plenty capable. A way to match home schooled kids with structured team or olympic sports and orchestra or dance programs would be a big opportunity. Maybe we're at the cusp of an edu-tech boom?
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    I certainly hope so. If we had to reinvent the education system today it would look nothing like the legacy system, which was constrained by having to co-locate information sources, instructors, and students. A big danger I see is that the legacy system so damages the reputation of education that there may not be enough demand for a better version.
- klowner 5y ago
  Yeah, and how well can the fish climb a tree?
belval 5y ago
One complaint that I hear about the method you are describing is the the kid/teenager will naturally gravitate towards easier "mindless" activities such as video games/TV/YouTube. Did you enforce discipline or did they have enough intellectual curiosity to learn stuff like calculus on their own?
- geocrasher 5y ago
  Oh sure they had core stuff they had to do. But we also let them learn on their own. The programming experience? Inside Minecraft with a mod called ComputerCraft that put an 8 bit computer that ran Lua inside of Minecraft.
  - belval 5y ago
    Yeah that makes sense. Additionally, like some other commenter pointed out, did they ever suffer from limited interactions with people of their own age? My high school friends stayed my friends well into adulthood and I would've been much lonelier had I been homeschooled.
    - geocrasher 5y ago
      Nope. That's a misconception that's commonly used against homeschooling. There are homeschooling co-ops that organize field trips. We also associated regularly with our congregation with people of all ages that they were friends with. My 15 year old daughter's best friend was an 83 year old woman. They hung out all the time. It was amazing. There are those examples of families who treat it like they're on a deserted island. They're doing it wrong. Thankfully, they are a very, very small minority.
- mapgrep 5y ago
  I get these kinds of questions too and while I can’t speak for the person you’re replying to (my kids are younger) it’s the second answer. Kids naturally have a ton of intellectual curiosity which the school system. I do think there needs to be an adult with them, probably, it’s not like you could just leave them on their own for king stretches at a young age especially. Although maybe you could. This talk has influenced my thinking since I saw it in Long Beach. https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the...
project2501b 5y ago
Cool. Great. Glad it worked for you. Now, let's tax the living daylights out of everybody over USD$1M, cut the military budget and put all that money back into the educational system, so the rest of the kids can have the same experience as you, then re-introduce your kids to public schooling.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  The US already spends more on education per student than any country in the world except for Luxembourg, Austria and Norway. In postsecondary education, only Luxembourg spends more. If money (at the whole-system funding level) was the problem the problem would already be solved. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
  - capableweb 5y ago
    If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind when it comes to average education compared to the rest of the world that spends less per student, you either need to spend a lot more or make sure it's effectively spent. The argument that the US already spends a lot so nothing should be done feels loose at best.
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      >> If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind The US education system is not there to accelerate students, to lift them up. It is model the population to suit the needs of the country. That's why nearly every aspect of a child's life revolves around school, from how and when they eat to who they socialize with. The system is there to reinforce national ideas. Some of that is noble ("try hard and get ahead") and some of it is not ("money counts"). When viewed from that perspective it works very well: little ever seems to change from one generation to the next. Freedom through social stability.
  - project2501b 5y ago
    Yet, some of the neighbourhoods and districts are so grossly underfunded, teachers have to put money out of their pocket for school supplies... hmmmm
sandworm101 5y ago
>> We let the kids learn on their own the things they wanted to learn when they wanted to learn them. This was wonderful. I'm sure that it was. But good luck to them when they need to learn something important that isn't fun. There are times in every profession when you have to grind your way through something horrible. Want to be a lawyer? You will have to understand the rules of evidence regardless of what type of lawyer you want to be. Want to be a doctor? There will be anatomy that you will hate memorizing. There is something to be said for forcing kids to learn things they hate. It is necessary preparation for the important stuff that comes later, stuff they cannot learn from their parents. That's what advanced education is, learning something because an expert tells you to. Whether you enjoy every moment of it or not is beside the point. You can judge things once you become an expert. I have to go away for a two-week training course on monday. It is going to be hell. Twelve days of memorizing stupid powerpoints about stuff I will probably never use. There will be tests at the end. I will pass them. My training at school/university, learning stuff I often hated, allows me to power through such things. I can sit in that chair hour after hour without drifting. Not everyone can do that. They work very different jobs. Their employer doesn't spend tens of thousands of dollars sending them to such courses.
- true_religion 5y ago
  Sure then maybe this won’t produce doctors or lawyers, but there are plenty of professions where mere intellect can suffice. Ivy League schools for example are really good at producing the kind of people who can pass McKinseys first year deathmarch, but most of us don’t work there and don’t want deathmarches in general.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    >> then maybe this won’t produce doctors or lawyers Isn't that a decision that the children should be allowed to make for themselves once they are adults? School should give them sufficient resources for them to attack any profession, from soldier to priest, pilot to surgeon. Asking a child to make such choices, allowing them to forgo certain subjects, harms them in the long term. It limits their potential options. A few years ago I read that "social media influencer" was a more desired trade amongst highschool kids than doctor/lawyer/fighter pilot. Such kids should not be allowed to make educational decisions.
roel_v 5y ago
"They're both extremely well rounded adults now" What do they do? Did they get any schooling after the GED's?
tinyhouse 5y ago
| They're both extremely well rounded adults now and didn't go through the agonies of public schooling. That is just your opinion and bias. I can share my opinion and bias. My kids go to public schools and love it. We'd never even think about home schooling. Not that everything is perfect, but as long as they are happy, we're happy.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  You know there's a sizeable minority of kids that are subjected to chronic torment and bullying in public (or private) schools, which effectively amounts to psychological torture? The teachers simply don't care, or most often don't even know about it. Homeschoolding is a much better option for these particular kids. Your kids are probably fortunate or socially skilled enough to be outside of that group.
  - tinyhouse 5y ago
    I'm not arguing with that and I totally understand. My comment was about "through the agonies of public schooling", generalizing about public schooling because their experience was not positive.
    - geocrasher 5y ago
      Right. Well it wasn't positive for my kids! And I'm not biased. My son and daughter are just as imperfect as they'd have been if we'd put them through school. We did however save them from needlessly experiencing the problems they were already having. So it's subjective. But isn't everything?
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    Source on sizable minority? Also the greater world, outside of school, provides just as much torture and hardship as there is within our schools. I’m not condoning bullying or normalizing being bullied (I was) but there’s something to be said about learning how horrible people can be to prepare for the real world, where they are even more horrible.
wonderwonder 5y ago
What did you do for socialization and interaction with other kids? Have a friend who homeschools and they struggle with that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
electriclove 5y ago
Did they go to college? What kind of jobs do they have? I want to buck the system too but not sure what the long term consequences would be for the kids.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  I am curious to read a study on this question. I would think that such a study would need to delineate between those who do homeschooling because of religious social conservatism, and those who do so because of a pragmatic belief that they can provide a better education.
  - oflannabhra 5y ago
    That's probably a false dichotomy. I'd imagine many religious people who homeschool also pragmatically believe they can provide a better education.
- geocrasher 5y ago
  No, but they could have, no problem. It just wasn't part of their goals. I also want to mention that although we were/are a religious household, we did not do homeschooling at all because of religion. We did it so that the kids could get the best education possible. And people might wonder about their ability, as a parent, to teach. Are they up to the task? The answer is simple: The person who has the most interest in a child is going to be the best teacher. And who has more interest than a parent who loves them? If somebody wanting to do homeschooling is doing it because it's the "easy" way out, or because they are trying to "buck the system" for the sake of bucking the system, then DONT. Do it because it's what is best for your kids. It was best for ours, and the way we did it worked for them. Before you decide anything at all, do tons of research. Talk to parents in your area who are homeschooling. Look for co-ops and home schooling groups on facebook etc. There are excellent resources available to you.
andrepd 5y ago
Eh. I'm skeptical of self-assessed "my idea went well, they like it, see?" What about socialisation with peers? What about boring but necessary activities, if they only do what is fun? What about jobs?
- JeanMarcS 5y ago
  It's "fun" that the first thing that people who don't know a thing about homeschooling state is socialisation. Homeschooling doesn't mean living in a cage or away from others (well sometime it might, especially in some religious approach of it. Extreme cases are what people hear about and that might be the reason of those believes). Kids can still go play with friends, do sports or any activity ! On a personal note, my wife and I homeschooled our kids between their 7 and 10 (mostly because we were traveling here and there), and now that they're back in the school system, they have no problem and have good marks. It's way more easy to teach 2 kids (maybe we were lucky, as they're twins so are at the same class level) than 25 to 30. You can cover official curriculum pretty quick, and it leaves time to do other (fun) stuff.
  - camjohnson26 5y ago
    It also misses the socialization problem at traditional schools where bullying is common and non-standard interests can be discouraged. It’s a parenting problem regardless of the school system.
  - knolax 5y ago
    My anecdotal experience tells me that homeschooled people have worse social skills than average. No amount of exposure to peers by a homeschooler is going to match the 8 hours a day, five days to week someone who goes to public schlol experiences.
nvarsj 5y ago
This is great, but let's remember a bit of humbleness. It is an incredible luxury to have a full time adult at home like that. And it's no surprise that having a 2:1 child to adult ratio leads to good learning outcomes. I wish all kids could get the experience of small classes with a dedicated teacher. Public school systems are a symptom of chronic underfunding and mismanagement.

88840-8855 5y ago

And what are they doing now? What jobs do they have? How do they pay?

geocrasher 5y ago
My son has a well paying job as a development manager at a company that builds batteries (Sorry- I don't know more- he doesn't say much about it) and my daughter has too many health problems to work full time and lives at home with me. In fact her health was one of the reasons we pulled her out. She was so far behind because of missing school that it was becoming a serious problem that the teachers were ill-equipped to handle.
motohagiography 5y ago
While I am sure the question is sincere, it's notable that the question wasn't, "what businesses have they started," "what are they doing for passive income and investment," "what are they using for leverage," "how many people do they manage," "what university did they graduate from," "what products have they developed," "are they on the real estate ladder," etc. When you exit the system, the status and meaning it promises doesn't doesn't have the same value. If you got kids to the level of basic analysis / calculus, traveller level in a second language, and passable in the reasoning and comprehension skills of the LSAT, they would be smarter and more capable than most university undergrads. If you add physical competence hobbies to that where some of those skills get applied, you get even more differentiated. Teenagers get amateur pilot licenses, so they are plenty capable. A way to match home schooled kids with structured team or olympic sports and orchestra or dance programs would be a big opportunity. Maybe we're at the cusp of an edu-tech boom?
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I certainly hope so. If we had to reinvent the education system today it would look nothing like the legacy system, which was constrained by having to co-locate information sources, instructors, and students. A big danger I see is that the legacy system so damages the reputation of education that there may not be enough demand for a better version.
klowner 5y ago
Yeah, and how well can the fish climb a tree?

belval 5y ago

One complaint that I hear about the method you are describing is the the kid/teenager will naturally gravitate towards easier "mindless" activities such as video games/TV/YouTube. Did you enforce discipline or did they have enough intellectual curiosity to learn stuff like calculus on their own?

geocrasher 5y ago
Oh sure they had core stuff they had to do. But we also let them learn on their own. The programming experience? Inside Minecraft with a mod called ComputerCraft that put an 8 bit computer that ran Lua inside of Minecraft.
- belval 5y ago
  Yeah that makes sense. Additionally, like some other commenter pointed out, did they ever suffer from limited interactions with people of their own age? My high school friends stayed my friends well into adulthood and I would've been much lonelier had I been homeschooled.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    Nope. That's a misconception that's commonly used against homeschooling. There are homeschooling co-ops that organize field trips. We also associated regularly with our congregation with people of all ages that they were friends with. My 15 year old daughter's best friend was an 83 year old woman. They hung out all the time. It was amazing. There are those examples of families who treat it like they're on a deserted island. They're doing it wrong. Thankfully, they are a very, very small minority.
mapgrep 5y ago
I get these kinds of questions too and while I can’t speak for the person you’re replying to (my kids are younger) it’s the second answer. Kids naturally have a ton of intellectual curiosity which the school system. I do think there needs to be an adult with them, probably, it’s not like you could just leave them on their own for king stretches at a young age especially. Although maybe you could. This talk has influenced my thinking since I saw it in Long Beach. https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the...

project2501b 5y ago

Cool. Great. Glad it worked for you. Now, let's tax the living daylights out of everybody over USD$1M, cut the military budget and put all that money back into the educational system, so the rest of the kids can have the same experience as you, then re-introduce your kids to public schooling.

whatshisface 5y ago
The US already spends more on education per student than any country in the world except for Luxembourg, Austria and Norway. In postsecondary education, only Luxembourg spends more. If money (at the whole-system funding level) was the problem the problem would already be solved. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
- capableweb 5y ago
  If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind when it comes to average education compared to the rest of the world that spends less per student, you either need to spend a lot more or make sure it's effectively spent. The argument that the US already spends a lot so nothing should be done feels loose at best.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    >> If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind The US education system is not there to accelerate students, to lift them up. It is model the population to suit the needs of the country. That's why nearly every aspect of a child's life revolves around school, from how and when they eat to who they socialize with. The system is there to reinforce national ideas. Some of that is noble ("try hard and get ahead") and some of it is not ("money counts"). When viewed from that perspective it works very well: little ever seems to change from one generation to the next. Freedom through social stability.
- project2501b 5y ago
  Yet, some of the neighbourhoods and districts are so grossly underfunded, teachers have to put money out of their pocket for school supplies... hmmmm

sandworm101 5y ago

>> We let the kids learn on their own the things they wanted to learn when they wanted to learn them. This was wonderful. I'm sure that it was. But good luck to them when they need to learn something important that isn't fun. There are times in every profession when you have to grind your way through something horrible. Want to be a lawyer? You will have to understand the rules of evidence regardless of what type of lawyer you want to be. Want to be a doctor? There will be anatomy that you will hate memorizing. There is something to be said for forcing kids to learn things they hate. It is necessary preparation for the important stuff that comes later, stuff they cannot learn from their parents. That's what advanced education is, learning something because an expert tells you to. Whether you enjoy every moment of it or not is beside the point. You can judge things once you become an expert. I have to go away for a two-week training course on monday. It is going to be hell. Twelve days of memorizing stupid powerpoints about stuff I will probably never use. There will be tests at the end. I will pass them. My training at school/university, learning stuff I often hated, allows me to power through such things. I can sit in that chair hour after hour without drifting. Not everyone can do that. They work very different jobs. Their employer doesn't spend tens of thousands of dollars sending them to such courses.

true_religion 5y ago
Sure then maybe this won’t produce doctors or lawyers, but there are plenty of professions where mere intellect can suffice. Ivy League schools for example are really good at producing the kind of people who can pass McKinseys first year deathmarch, but most of us don’t work there and don’t want deathmarches in general.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> then maybe this won’t produce doctors or lawyers Isn't that a decision that the children should be allowed to make for themselves once they are adults? School should give them sufficient resources for them to attack any profession, from soldier to priest, pilot to surgeon. Asking a child to make such choices, allowing them to forgo certain subjects, harms them in the long term. It limits their potential options. A few years ago I read that "social media influencer" was a more desired trade amongst highschool kids than doctor/lawyer/fighter pilot. Such kids should not be allowed to make educational decisions.

roel_v 5y ago

"They're both extremely well rounded adults now" What do they do? Did they get any schooling after the GED's?

tinyhouse 5y ago

| They're both extremely well rounded adults now and didn't go through the agonies of public schooling. That is just your opinion and bias. I can share my opinion and bias. My kids go to public schools and love it. We'd never even think about home schooling. Not that everything is perfect, but as long as they are happy, we're happy.

fighterpilot 5y ago
You know there's a sizeable minority of kids that are subjected to chronic torment and bullying in public (or private) schools, which effectively amounts to psychological torture? The teachers simply don't care, or most often don't even know about it. Homeschoolding is a much better option for these particular kids. Your kids are probably fortunate or socially skilled enough to be outside of that group.
- tinyhouse 5y ago
  I'm not arguing with that and I totally understand. My comment was about "through the agonies of public schooling", generalizing about public schooling because their experience was not positive.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    Right. Well it wasn't positive for my kids! And I'm not biased. My son and daughter are just as imperfect as they'd have been if we'd put them through school. We did however save them from needlessly experiencing the problems they were already having. So it's subjective. But isn't everything?
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  Source on sizable minority? Also the greater world, outside of school, provides just as much torture and hardship as there is within our schools. I’m not condoning bullying or normalizing being bullied (I was) but there’s something to be said about learning how horrible people can be to prepare for the real world, where they are even more horrible.

wonderwonder 5y ago

What did you do for socialization and interaction with other kids? Have a friend who homeschools and they struggle with that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

electriclove 5y ago

Did they go to college? What kind of jobs do they have? I want to buck the system too but not sure what the long term consequences would be for the kids.

fighterpilot 5y ago
I am curious to read a study on this question. I would think that such a study would need to delineate between those who do homeschooling because of religious social conservatism, and those who do so because of a pragmatic belief that they can provide a better education.
- oflannabhra 5y ago
  That's probably a false dichotomy. I'd imagine many religious people who homeschool also pragmatically believe they can provide a better education.
geocrasher 5y ago
No, but they could have, no problem. It just wasn't part of their goals. I also want to mention that although we were/are a religious household, we did not do homeschooling at all because of religion. We did it so that the kids could get the best education possible. And people might wonder about their ability, as a parent, to teach. Are they up to the task? The answer is simple: The person who has the most interest in a child is going to be the best teacher. And who has more interest than a parent who loves them? If somebody wanting to do homeschooling is doing it because it's the "easy" way out, or because they are trying to "buck the system" for the sake of bucking the system, then DONT. Do it because it's what is best for your kids. It was best for ours, and the way we did it worked for them. Before you decide anything at all, do tons of research. Talk to parents in your area who are homeschooling. Look for co-ops and home schooling groups on facebook etc. There are excellent resources available to you.

andrepd 5y ago

Eh. I'm skeptical of self-assessed "my idea went well, they like it, see?" What about socialisation with peers? What about boring but necessary activities, if they only do what is fun? What about jobs?

JeanMarcS 5y ago
It's "fun" that the first thing that people who don't know a thing about homeschooling state is socialisation. Homeschooling doesn't mean living in a cage or away from others (well sometime it might, especially in some religious approach of it. Extreme cases are what people hear about and that might be the reason of those believes). Kids can still go play with friends, do sports or any activity ! On a personal note, my wife and I homeschooled our kids between their 7 and 10 (mostly because we were traveling here and there), and now that they're back in the school system, they have no problem and have good marks. It's way more easy to teach 2 kids (maybe we were lucky, as they're twins so are at the same class level) than 25 to 30. You can cover official curriculum pretty quick, and it leaves time to do other (fun) stuff.
- camjohnson26 5y ago
  It also misses the socialization problem at traditional schools where bullying is common and non-standard interests can be discouraged. It’s a parenting problem regardless of the school system.
- knolax 5y ago
  My anecdotal experience tells me that homeschooled people have worse social skills than average. No amount of exposure to peers by a homeschooler is going to match the 8 hours a day, five days to week someone who goes to public schlol experiences.

nvarsj 5y ago

This is great, but let's remember a bit of humbleness. It is an incredible luxury to have a full time adult at home like that. And it's no surprise that having a 2:1 child to adult ratio leads to good learning outcomes. I wish all kids could get the experience of small classes with a dedicated teacher. Public school systems are a symptom of chronic underfunding and mismanagement.