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Thanks for the valuable insights! I am German and thus have very different experiences. AFAIK home schooling in Germany is still illegal (as in "not being enro

Thanks for the valuable insights! I am German and thus have very different experiences. AFAIK home schooling in Germany is still illegal (as in "not being enrolled in a school at all") because it is (edit: in the opinion of the German state, not necessarily mine) basically essential to a child's development to be part of a social classroom experience. Seeing how (a vast majority of) schools are also free and ~good, my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them.

tnorthcutt 5y ago
my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. Anecdotally, this is incorrect. Source: we have homeschooled our child in the past (though we are not right now), and we do not have extreme opinions that we want to foist upon them. I realize I am a sample size of one, but you did say only.
- pope_meat 5y ago
  I'm sure you don't, but we're mere mortals with biases and blind spots, one person's reasonable views are extreme to another. This is also anecdotal, but every nutcase I've ever met felt their views were reasonable and obvious. Maybe we're all nutcases, even.
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, that clause was meant to apply to the German legal requirements. Homeschooling a child pretty much involves taking the state to court for your right to do so. German Wikipedia estimates the number of such cases (I assume before Covid) to below 3000 (Germany has 83m inhabitants).
  - tnorthcutt 5y ago
    Thank you for clarifying, that makes a lot more sense.
  - SllX 5y ago
    Since Germany is also a Federal system, is this a state-by-state thing or is that 3000 representative of Germany as a whole? Do all States require the, as you put it above, “social classroom” experience, or is that a Federal requirement?
    - ThePadawan 5y ago
      I'm kind of sorry for quoting the 3000 from Wikipedia [0] without a primary source. Apart from that, it is seemingly indeed left to each state if and how to enforce compulsory schooling - they just all do it. They only differ in the ages/durations required [1]. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Dauer_der_Schulpflicht,_%C3%9Cbersicht_Bundesl%C3%A4nder https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Dau...
      - SllX 5y ago
        > I'm kind of sorry for quoting the 3000 from Wikipedia [0] without a primary source. Hey, we’ve all done it at some point in our lives so no worries, mate. Thanks for answering though. I’m always curious how other Federal systems tend to function compared to the one I live in.
bequanna 5y ago
> my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. In my anecdotal experience it is actually the opposite. Parents are concerned about political activist teachers forcing their beliefs onto children. Recent examples are teachers in the US who have been captured on video in the classroom bullying children or telling them that any parents who disagree with the teacher’s beliefs are “stupid”, “anti-science”, etc. Again, in my own experience there is some truth to this and some percentage of teachers purposely bring their politics (left or right) into the classroom with the intent to indoctrinate. Interestingly, this behavior is completely out in the open in US higher education classrooms. Many teachers proudly and aggressively mix their personal political beliefs into their instruction. I suppose we just accept this as the students are technically no longer “children”?
- anoonmoose 5y ago
  in my anecdotal experience anyone who is talking about "political activist teachers aggressively mixing their personal beliefs into their instruction" is most likely trying to infuse their children with extreme religious or political opinions, they just don't realize it
  - bequanna 5y ago
    Uh huh. Except pretty much everyone has personally experienced it and some us reflect on it with disgust. Assuming you were educated in the US, can you honestly say that you never witnesses a teacher/professor infuse their political beliefs into their instruction (even if you agreed)? If so, awesome, but that isn’t the experience almost everyone else has. Frankly, it is reprehensible behavior carried out by teachers who are at best, pitiful adults who are just seeking attention from children. Or, at worst, trying to groom children for their own political purposes.
    - anoonmoose 5y ago
      in high school, the only time that happened was when they unconstitutionally forced me to stand for the pledge of allegiance. in college, 90% of my classes were engineering or math, with zero politics, and the other 10%, if there was any political stuff it was negligible. i was required to take one class to become a resident assistant that you would probably consider as being mostly designed to shove political beliefs down my throat but in my opinion an understanding of those topics was relevant and necessary to being able to serve a diverse group of residents.
runawaybottle 5y ago
One thing I’ll say is that in America’s somewhat terrible urban schools, the parents are simply less involved in the child’s schooling. There can be any number of reasons, language, shitty job that you have to go to for 10 hours a day, they themselves might lack education to educate, money, etc. I suspect home schooling will be more of a thing amongst the well off. The institution of schooling, like many of our other institutions, isn’t a wild success. It’s okay, but certainly you can do better if you desire to. Edit: Home schooling or tutoring is an existential threat in China. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2021/8/23/china-crackdown-on-tutoring-sector-leads-to-protests https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2021/8/23/china-crackd... These kids are in danger (smirk) of not being nationalists.
gallamine 5y ago
> [it is] essential to a child's development to be part of a social classroom experience 2nd generation homeschooler here. Of the hundreds of home school families I've known over the last 30-ish years I don't know any that don't have their children take classes together in some form or another. The question is how much do children need to be in a "social classroom experience."
mensetmanusman 5y ago
It was assumed essential, but with the success of homeschooling in other countries, the assumption is likely incorrect unless Germans are a different type of human?
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  The state holds its opinions and inscribes them into law, then lets them be challenged. That's just how they work. The homeschooling ban has been challenged, but has most recently been upheld as valid by the European Court of Human Rights [0, unfortunately German only]. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    It seems to be a strange opinion in the modern era due to the known benefits of diversity of thought in problem solving. This is assuming a good faith argument (steel-manning) on homeschooling as normally practiced. I.e. I expect new education models to arise from parallel experiments like you see in America versus a monolith.
random_n2 5y ago
> the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. I was homeschooled K-12 from mid-80s to late 90s, part of the first generation of the modern homeschooling movement. I'd say 80% of the families matched your description, but I'd guess it's lower today as it seems to be more mainstream. But I bet a least half still match.
f7f7ryrh 5y ago
>...only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them.< The flip side of this is that school system itself is highly political in the USA and the curriculum is often a battleground between the parties for what is mandatory to advocate. Couple that with children in public school being trash pretty often and you don't lose much by homeschooling. Especially if you're a parent who's willing to put in the work to select good resources and groups for your child.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Those with extreme views certainly do exist but they tend to be pushed to the front by those who have vested interests against homeschooling. Most of the people who I've known who homeschooled did it because their child wasn't getting the attention they needed in the school system. Typically after a couple of years at home, they returned to the public school system, having caught up and developed better learning skills. What I don't understand is this comment "essential to a child's development to be part of a social classroom experience" but it is a very common view. Ignoring online schools, the largest public high school in the US has over 8,000 students and high schools with 3,000-4,000 student are common. When in human history has it been the norm for children to gather daily in such large numbers everyday away from their families, with only high level supervision from adults who aren't their parents nor have much depth of insight into their lives? It's more akin to Lord of the Flies with the occasional adult commentary than a way to learn good social skills. What they learn is the law of jungle and many people are scared for life by the experience. Even at the elementary and middle school levels, enrollment of 1,000 students in a single school is common. There's absolutely nothing natural about this. It's an absurd artificial construct and it's amazing so many people think it is somehow a good thing. Another common question is how will children make friends if not at school? For myself, most of my friends were those I met at school but about a quarter were from meeting in the neighborhood, through youth group at church, or through family or friend-of-a-friend connections. Just because someone lived in my neighborhood didn't mean they went to my public school. Some went to religious or private secular schools. Some kids at church also attended private secular schools (our church didn't have a school) or a different public school. If I had been homeschooled, I still would have met about a quarter of my friends outside of school, and probably would have met many of the same in-school friend through those friends due to common interests and geography. All of this was without me being into sports, which is another way children meet friends, even if it wasn't one of the ways I met them.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  A lot of countries place a lot of value on societal interaction and cohesion. For example, in Switzerland, you go to the school to be "swiss" (they have a lot of immigrants, so this is important), homeschooling really isn't an option in some cantons, while strictly regulated in others.
rayiner 5y ago
> Seeing how (a vast majority of) schools are also free and ~good, my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. You have to keep in mind a critical difference between Germany and the US in this regard. The German Basic Law requires religious education to be available to children in public schools. If you’re a Muslim your kid can get instruction in Islamic morality. If you’re atheist you can choose a secular ethics course. In America, any sort of religious education is illegal in public schools. So everyone effectively gets the secular ethnics course (because you can’t really teach kids without teaching some sort of moral framework). This material often contradicts even mainstream (not “extreme”) Christian or Muslim tenants. I think the German system is far preferable to the American system, and many of the religious “extremists” you talk about would like such a system.
- Tomte 5y ago
  > I think the German system is far preferable to the American system, and many of the religious “extremists” you talk about would like such a system. I think you're being optimistic. One, muslim classes in state schools are extremely rare, and those students get dispensation so they can miss those class hours and go to the local mosque for instruction instead. Only that in several cases those mosques were actually teaching rather extremist and violent things. The state tries to build up more "own" muslim classes (in cooperation with muslim organisations). Two, all those state school run classes are certainly too "mild" for extremists. I mean, the students of evangelical families (and I don't mean protestant, I mean the extreme strains of protestantism that are rampant in southern Germany) certainly send their kids to protestant classes, but at home they teach the opposite in many cases. You cannot reconcile a state school religion class with and "you need to read the bible literally, all those theological stuff at universities is baloney".
  - rayiner 5y ago
    > Two, all those state school run classes are certainly too "mild" for extremists. I mean, the students of evangelical families (and I don't mean protestant, I mean the extreme strains of protestantism that are rampant in southern Germany) certainly send their kids to protestant classes, but at home they teach the opposite in many cases. My point is that in the United States, even the “mild” Protestant or Muslim stuff is off limits in public schools. Everyone is taught secular humanist morality, often of a highly individualistic variety. So unlike in Germany, even religious people who aren’t “extremists” may want to home school their children. I’m a liberal Protestant, but I’d still consider home schooling my kids. I just want them socialized in the basics of their religion. That’s an option in public schools in much of Europe but isn’t in the United States.

tnorthcutt 5y ago

my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. Anecdotally, this is incorrect. Source: we have homeschooled our child in the past (though we are not right now), and we do not have extreme opinions that we want to foist upon them. I realize I am a sample size of one, but you did say only.

pope_meat 5y ago
I'm sure you don't, but we're mere mortals with biases and blind spots, one person's reasonable views are extreme to another. This is also anecdotal, but every nutcase I've ever met felt their views were reasonable and obvious. Maybe we're all nutcases, even.
ThePadawan 5y ago
I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, that clause was meant to apply to the German legal requirements. Homeschooling a child pretty much involves taking the state to court for your right to do so. German Wikipedia estimates the number of such cases (I assume before Covid) to below 3000 (Germany has 83m inhabitants).
- tnorthcutt 5y ago
  Thank you for clarifying, that makes a lot more sense.
- SllX 5y ago
  Since Germany is also a Federal system, is this a state-by-state thing or is that 3000 representative of Germany as a whole? Do all States require the, as you put it above, “social classroom” experience, or is that a Federal requirement?
  - ThePadawan 5y ago
    I'm kind of sorry for quoting the 3000 from Wikipedia [0] without a primary source. Apart from that, it is seemingly indeed left to each state if and how to enforce compulsory schooling - they just all do it. They only differ in the ages/durations required [1]. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Dauer_der_Schulpflicht,_%C3%9Cbersicht_Bundesl%C3%A4nder https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Dau...
    - SllX 5y ago
      > I'm kind of sorry for quoting the 3000 from Wikipedia [0] without a primary source. Hey, we’ve all done it at some point in our lives so no worries, mate. Thanks for answering though. I’m always curious how other Federal systems tend to function compared to the one I live in.

bequanna 5y ago

> my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. In my anecdotal experience it is actually the opposite. Parents are concerned about political activist teachers forcing their beliefs onto children. Recent examples are teachers in the US who have been captured on video in the classroom bullying children or telling them that any parents who disagree with the teacher’s beliefs are “stupid”, “anti-science”, etc. Again, in my own experience there is some truth to this and some percentage of teachers purposely bring their politics (left or right) into the classroom with the intent to indoctrinate. Interestingly, this behavior is completely out in the open in US higher education classrooms. Many teachers proudly and aggressively mix their personal political beliefs into their instruction. I suppose we just accept this as the students are technically no longer “children”?

anoonmoose 5y ago
in my anecdotal experience anyone who is talking about "political activist teachers aggressively mixing their personal beliefs into their instruction" is most likely trying to infuse their children with extreme religious or political opinions, they just don't realize it
- bequanna 5y ago
  Uh huh. Except pretty much everyone has personally experienced it and some us reflect on it with disgust. Assuming you were educated in the US, can you honestly say that you never witnesses a teacher/professor infuse their political beliefs into their instruction (even if you agreed)? If so, awesome, but that isn’t the experience almost everyone else has. Frankly, it is reprehensible behavior carried out by teachers who are at best, pitiful adults who are just seeking attention from children. Or, at worst, trying to groom children for their own political purposes.
  - anoonmoose 5y ago
    in high school, the only time that happened was when they unconstitutionally forced me to stand for the pledge of allegiance. in college, 90% of my classes were engineering or math, with zero politics, and the other 10%, if there was any political stuff it was negligible. i was required to take one class to become a resident assistant that you would probably consider as being mostly designed to shove political beliefs down my throat but in my opinion an understanding of those topics was relevant and necessary to being able to serve a diverse group of residents.

runawaybottle 5y ago

One thing I’ll say is that in America’s somewhat terrible urban schools, the parents are simply less involved in the child’s schooling. There can be any number of reasons, language, shitty job that you have to go to for 10 hours a day, they themselves might lack education to educate, money, etc. I suspect home schooling will be more of a thing amongst the well off. The institution of schooling, like many of our other institutions, isn’t a wild success. It’s okay, but certainly you can do better if you desire to. Edit: Home schooling or tutoring is an existential threat in China. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2021/8/23/china-crackdown-on-tutoring-sector-leads-to-protests https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2021/8/23/china-crackd... These kids are in danger (smirk) of not being nationalists.

gallamine 5y ago

> [it is] essential to a child's development to be part of a social classroom experience 2nd generation homeschooler here. Of the hundreds of home school families I've known over the last 30-ish years I don't know any that don't have their children take classes together in some form or another. The question is how much do children need to be in a "social classroom experience."

mensetmanusman 5y ago

It was assumed essential, but with the success of homeschooling in other countries, the assumption is likely incorrect unless Germans are a different type of human?

ThePadawan 5y ago
The state holds its opinions and inscribes them into law, then lets them be challenged. That's just how they work. The homeschooling ban has been challenged, but has most recently been upheld as valid by the European Court of Human Rights [0, unfortunately German only]. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausunterricht#Deutschland
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  It seems to be a strange opinion in the modern era due to the known benefits of diversity of thought in problem solving. This is assuming a good faith argument (steel-manning) on homeschooling as normally practiced. I.e. I expect new education models to arise from parallel experiments like you see in America versus a monolith.

random_n2 5y ago

> the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. I was homeschooled K-12 from mid-80s to late 90s, part of the first generation of the modern homeschooling movement. I'd say 80% of the families matched your description, but I'd guess it's lower today as it seems to be more mainstream. But I bet a least half still match.

f7f7ryrh 5y ago

>...only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them.< The flip side of this is that school system itself is highly political in the USA and the curriculum is often a battleground between the parties for what is mandatory to advocate. Couple that with children in public school being trash pretty often and you don't lose much by homeschooling. Especially if you're a parent who's willing to put in the work to select good resources and groups for your child.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

Those with extreme views certainly do exist but they tend to be pushed to the front by those who have vested interests against homeschooling. Most of the people who I've known who homeschooled did it because their child wasn't getting the attention they needed in the school system. Typically after a couple of years at home, they returned to the public school system, having caught up and developed better learning skills. What I don't understand is this comment "essential to a child's development to be part of a social classroom experience" but it is a very common view. Ignoring online schools, the largest public high school in the US has over 8,000 students and high schools with 3,000-4,000 student are common. When in human history has it been the norm for children to gather daily in such large numbers everyday away from their families, with only high level supervision from adults who aren't their parents nor have much depth of insight into their lives? It's more akin to Lord of the Flies with the occasional adult commentary than a way to learn good social skills. What they learn is the law of jungle and many people are scared for life by the experience. Even at the elementary and middle school levels, enrollment of 1,000 students in a single school is common. There's absolutely nothing natural about this. It's an absurd artificial construct and it's amazing so many people think it is somehow a good thing. Another common question is how will children make friends if not at school? For myself, most of my friends were those I met at school but about a quarter were from meeting in the neighborhood, through youth group at church, or through family or friend-of-a-friend connections. Just because someone lived in my neighborhood didn't mean they went to my public school. Some went to religious or private secular schools. Some kids at church also attended private secular schools (our church didn't have a school) or a different public school. If I had been homeschooled, I still would have met about a quarter of my friends outside of school, and probably would have met many of the same in-school friend through those friends due to common interests and geography. All of this was without me being into sports, which is another way children meet friends, even if it wasn't one of the ways I met them.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
A lot of countries place a lot of value on societal interaction and cohesion. For example, in Switzerland, you go to the school to be "swiss" (they have a lot of immigrants, so this is important), homeschooling really isn't an option in some cantons, while strictly regulated in others.

rayiner 5y ago

> Seeing how (a vast majority of) schools are also free and ~good, my very clichéd understanding is that the only parents that want to home school their children are those with extreme religious or political opinions they want to foist upon them. You have to keep in mind a critical difference between Germany and the US in this regard. The German Basic Law requires religious education to be available to children in public schools. If you’re a Muslim your kid can get instruction in Islamic morality. If you’re atheist you can choose a secular ethics course. In America, any sort of religious education is illegal in public schools. So everyone effectively gets the secular ethnics course (because you can’t really teach kids without teaching some sort of moral framework). This material often contradicts even mainstream (not “extreme”) Christian or Muslim tenants. I think the German system is far preferable to the American system, and many of the religious “extremists” you talk about would like such a system.

Tomte 5y ago
> I think the German system is far preferable to the American system, and many of the religious “extremists” you talk about would like such a system. I think you're being optimistic. One, muslim classes in state schools are extremely rare, and those students get dispensation so they can miss those class hours and go to the local mosque for instruction instead. Only that in several cases those mosques were actually teaching rather extremist and violent things. The state tries to build up more "own" muslim classes (in cooperation with muslim organisations). Two, all those state school run classes are certainly too "mild" for extremists. I mean, the students of evangelical families (and I don't mean protestant, I mean the extreme strains of protestantism that are rampant in southern Germany) certainly send their kids to protestant classes, but at home they teach the opposite in many cases. You cannot reconcile a state school religion class with and "you need to read the bible literally, all those theological stuff at universities is baloney".
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Two, all those state school run classes are certainly too "mild" for extremists. I mean, the students of evangelical families (and I don't mean protestant, I mean the extreme strains of protestantism that are rampant in southern Germany) certainly send their kids to protestant classes, but at home they teach the opposite in many cases. My point is that in the United States, even the “mild” Protestant or Muslim stuff is off limits in public schools. Everyone is taught secular humanist morality, often of a highly individualistic variety. So unlike in Germany, even religious people who aren’t “extremists” may want to home school their children. I’m a liberal Protestant, but I’d still consider home schooling my kids. I just want them socialized in the basics of their religion. That’s an option in public schools in much of Europe but isn’t in the United States.