7 ms·

When the topic of school comes up on HN, there’s always a few people who believe that the school environment is in fact detrimental to children and everybody wo

by pavlov 4y ago

When the topic of school comes up on HN, there’s always a few people who believe that the school environment is in fact detrimental to children and everybody would be better off home-schooled with remote learning to fill the gaps. Does this result provide enough evidence to the contrary, or was the pandemic too much of a special circumstance?

anm89 4y ago
As someone who to some degree falls in the category you describe, I'd say you are potentially misunderstanding the argument. I certainly wouldn't argue that spending time in a public school math class correlates negatively with math learning. I have no doubt that some math education takes place in public school math classes. I think the argument is that it doesn't do a great job teaching most students most of the time while simultaneously having serious issues like requiring young children to sit still for extended stretches and punishing kids who aren't well suited to this. I'm not saying that's the whole argument, just an example
jhanschoo 4y ago
This is the first I've heard of such a position. But I do think that remote learning home-schooling with adequate supervision can be comparable. My understanding is that home-schooling with private tutors > the typical school environment > remote learning without supervision.
- kajaktum 4y ago
  >My understanding is that home-schooling with private tutors > the typical school environment > remote learning without supervision. In pure academics, maybe. What about your children's social/well-being from not interacting with their peers?
  - Foobar8568 4y ago
    Have you seen today kids? Well-being is to be far away from them.
    - yywwbbn 4y ago
      I don’t know. Kids to today seem to be generally nicer than those in the past.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    Some peers are a pain to interact with, so results may be mixed. Also, some communities, like online games, provide serious amounts of social interaction set around reaching a common goal to willing peers.
    - kingkawn 4y ago
      Online interactions do not come close to the bandwidth of stimulus from irl engagement with other people
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > What about your children's social/well-being from not interacting with their peers? I don't know. It seems like there's plenty of kids suffering at school precisely because they have to interact with other kids. Getting bullied at school is probably something almost everyone's experienced at some point.
    - sweezyjeezy 4y ago
      I was bullied, but find it hard to believe that not interacting with kids was the solution. The root cause of the bullying (from my side) was because at the time my social skills were lagging behind my peers', and I don't regret not being taken out of that situation.
      - DSingularity 4y ago
        The results of bullying vary I guess
      - klibertp 4y ago
        Stockholm syndrome? There's really no excusable "cause" for bullying; it's like saying you don't regret getting raped because, at the time, your sexual drive was lagging behind your peers. That's a rationalization and a way to cope with trauma for the victim. From the other side it's simply blaming the victim.
        sweezyjeezy 4y ago
        I'm in no way grateful that I was bullied, I didn't enjoy my school years. But part of the reason why I was singled out for bullying was because I spent a lot of my school years buried in math books rather than being with my peers. When I started to understand how badly behind I was socially at around age 14, I started to make the changes necessary to catch up. This meant talking and listening to to the kids at my school a lot more. I didn't realise this because of the bullying, but they were clearly related. The bullying was damaging I agree, but I think taking me out of school completely would have been so much more harmful.
  - q-big 4y ago
    > What about your children's social/well-being from not interacting with their peers? With "social skills", you mean either tolerating bullying or becoming a bully? (Compulsary) school is a prison, so the only social skills that children learn in school are about surviving in this prison.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Society is a compulsory prison too, and even in adulthood you can't always run away from a situation, so being able to survive in a suboptimal environment is a worthwhile skill. Even if we assume you had unlimited money and could literally buy an island and live on it, you will still have to deal with bullies - just that they will generally have much more resources and will be less shy in resorting to violence or significant crime. Not saying this is right, but you can't change the world (neither as a parent nor as a kid), so adaptation is the best strategy.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    There’s lots of social activity available for homeschoolers. Field trips, athletics, and lot of other stuff geared for social development. Homeschool parents are usually very connected to each other and make sure there’s lots of social time for their kids.
  - klibertp 4y ago
    There are group activities you can take part in that have nothing to do with school. Actually, you should take part in it anyway, but with private tutors you have much more time to spend with a peer group of your choice. Not sure how scouting works elsewhere, but in my country it is well organized, more or less well funded, teaches a lot of very useful skills, and most of all gathers kids who want to be there. You have to actually experience it to feel how huge is the difference in atmosphere in a group like this versus one where participants are forced to attend. Private tutors are the best there is and you won't beat it. Whatever is lacking, can and should be supplemented. It doesn't even need to be a 1-1 with a tutor: 3-5 kids are still a manageable group. 25-1 or sometimes 35-1 is absolutely horrible and it shows in the results. Remote learning without help and care (honestly, "supervision"? The heck? Are they your child or inmates serving time for the crime of being born?) is obviously even worse than going to school. So, to my eyes, the GP got it right with that quote.
- cm2187 4y ago
  If you have teachers coming to your mansion, all you have done is to build a personal private school. Completely out of reach to 98% of the population.
  - crummy 4y ago
    It's one tutor, Michael. How much can it cost, $100,000?
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      As with the banana, tutors are much cheaper than that.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    The typical student:teacher ration is what, 25:1? 1:1 is a lot better (around 25x, probably) but this is all just on a spectrum. I'd wager that 25 parents banding together to hire a tutor might outperform a typical classroom, if it was a biased sample towards people who care. I'd trust my parents and a group of like-minded parents to pick out a good educator better than the typical teacher, teachers aren't the sort of people I would recommend to teach children how to think.
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    That is what home-schooling is, a personal private school. Whether the person doing the teaching is paid for it doesn't change that.
    - cm2187 4y ago
      Well, that's my point, private tutors is effectively a private school. But the vast majority of families can't afford it (either cannot pay for a tutor or cannot afford not to have both parents working, when there are two parents). Remote learning is not though.
  - msmenardi 4y ago
    "Private tutors" can be anything from an after-school karate class to visiting a piano teacher's house for an hour of instruction. It doesn't have to be solely for elite people.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Homeschooling and remote schooling while the parents are in another room trying to work are two different things.
- kbelder 4y ago
  Yep. My daughter remote schooled, and it would have been far more effective if the school had just mailed my wife and I the curriculum and had us teach it. I'm sympathetic towards public schools; they have to deal with a wide variety of kids and families, and what works for my family might be a disaster for another. I'm less sympathetic to the politicians who vastly underestimated the harm from closing the schools. The schools were nowhere near prepared or equipped.
brobdingnagians 4y ago
This depends heavily on parent involvement, dedication, and education. Even in public school the outcomes are heavily dependent on parents. If your father is an engineer who helps you with your homework and wants you to go to university, you will do much better. Home school with parents who do not want to, don't have time, or are incapable of helping or teaching will not do much, and the child would be better off with a school teacher who is motivated and trained--- but, if parents are heavily involved and capable then they are a teacher with very high motivation and can give very personalized instruction suited to the temperament of the pupil. So it all depends.
christophilus 4y ago
I know a lot of homeschoolers who are now adults. They tend to think independently, work hard, and are... fine. One of them worked for NASA before choosing to be a stay-at-home mom. One is a pediatrician. One is an electrical engineer. The rest are similar-- well-adjusted, successful adults. They're all fine, if a bit socially awkward. I think the socialization thing is probably the biggest drawback to homeschooling. It also probably depends entirely on the personality of the kids. Some kids thrive in huge group environments. Some don't. I guess it would also depend on how good and available your parent is, but most homeschoolers have very engaged parents from what I've seen.
- FullStackAda 4y ago
  Are you sure you are not self-selecting? Are those people represent a random set of homeschooled adults or just the ones who were successful despite it? Also, who is homeschooling in the set up of two working parents? Or we are going to pretend this work does not exist as we do with other household chores?
  - christophilus 4y ago
    I'm sure I'm self-selecting. It's a total anecdote and not worth much other than to point out that home schooling isn't an obvious failure to be written off as the OP seemed to be indicating by his / her tone. It might not be for everyone-- I'm not homeschooling my kids-- but I've seen it work, and I hope it's an option that remains legal.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Socialization is the main point of elementary school. Missing it is a gigantic drawback.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    Home school families organize frequent socialization opportunities, and they are likely far better than school-based. And anyway, unless you live in some sort of jerk-run school district, the public school system welcomes home school kids for band, athletics or any other after-school program.
odessacubbage 4y ago
i do not think there is a single homeschooling or unschooling advocate who would've told you that keeping kids locked indoors on conference calls all day is a good method for educating children.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
detrimental is a single dimension valuation, but there are definitely some severe downsides that you don't see while you're there. The way those kids are treated was a completely shock to me, and I went through the system. They're treated like subhumans and it's done right out in the open because it's so normalized (I usually hate that word, but it applies here). I did a brief stint as a dell person who was sent out to a few schools (for extra money towards the end of my college career) and what I saw there was very eye opening. It was very eye-opening. The other part that was very eye-opening was having a kindergarten teacher interacting with me almost as if I was an overly tall kindergarten teacher. It made me realize these people interact with kids all day, every day, and it sort of becomes ingrained in them. They themselves probably don't even realize the extent to which interacting with kids every day affects how they socialize.

by pavlov 4y ago

anm89 4y ago

As someone who to some degree falls in the category you describe, I'd say you are potentially misunderstanding the argument. I certainly wouldn't argue that spending time in a public school math class correlates negatively with math learning. I have no doubt that some math education takes place in public school math classes. I think the argument is that it doesn't do a great job teaching most students most of the time while simultaneously having serious issues like requiring young children to sit still for extended stretches and punishing kids who aren't well suited to this. I'm not saying that's the whole argument, just an example

jhanschoo 4y ago

This is the first I've heard of such a position. But I do think that remote learning home-schooling with adequate supervision can be comparable. My understanding is that home-schooling with private tutors > the typical school environment > remote learning without supervision.

kajaktum 4y ago
>My understanding is that home-schooling with private tutors > the typical school environment > remote learning without supervision. In pure academics, maybe. What about your children's social/well-being from not interacting with their peers?
- Foobar8568 4y ago
  Have you seen today kids? Well-being is to be far away from them.
  - yywwbbn 4y ago
    I don’t know. Kids to today seem to be generally nicer than those in the past.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Some peers are a pain to interact with, so results may be mixed. Also, some communities, like online games, provide serious amounts of social interaction set around reaching a common goal to willing peers.
  - kingkawn 4y ago
    Online interactions do not come close to the bandwidth of stimulus from irl engagement with other people
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > What about your children's social/well-being from not interacting with their peers? I don't know. It seems like there's plenty of kids suffering at school precisely because they have to interact with other kids. Getting bullied at school is probably something almost everyone's experienced at some point.
  - sweezyjeezy 4y ago
    I was bullied, but find it hard to believe that not interacting with kids was the solution. The root cause of the bullying (from my side) was because at the time my social skills were lagging behind my peers', and I don't regret not being taken out of that situation.
    - DSingularity 4y ago
      The results of bullying vary I guess
    - klibertp 4y ago
      Stockholm syndrome? There's really no excusable "cause" for bullying; it's like saying you don't regret getting raped because, at the time, your sexual drive was lagging behind your peers. That's a rationalization and a way to cope with trauma for the victim. From the other side it's simply blaming the victim.
      - sweezyjeezy 4y ago
        I'm in no way grateful that I was bullied, I didn't enjoy my school years. But part of the reason why I was singled out for bullying was because I spent a lot of my school years buried in math books rather than being with my peers. When I started to understand how badly behind I was socially at around age 14, I started to make the changes necessary to catch up. This meant talking and listening to to the kids at my school a lot more. I didn't realise this because of the bullying, but they were clearly related. The bullying was damaging I agree, but I think taking me out of school completely would have been so much more harmful.
- q-big 4y ago
  > What about your children's social/well-being from not interacting with their peers? With "social skills", you mean either tolerating bullying or becoming a bully? (Compulsary) school is a prison, so the only social skills that children learn in school are about surviving in this prison.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Society is a compulsory prison too, and even in adulthood you can't always run away from a situation, so being able to survive in a suboptimal environment is a worthwhile skill. Even if we assume you had unlimited money and could literally buy an island and live on it, you will still have to deal with bullies - just that they will generally have much more resources and will be less shy in resorting to violence or significant crime. Not saying this is right, but you can't change the world (neither as a parent nor as a kid), so adaptation is the best strategy.
- chasd00 4y ago
  There’s lots of social activity available for homeschoolers. Field trips, athletics, and lot of other stuff geared for social development. Homeschool parents are usually very connected to each other and make sure there’s lots of social time for their kids.
- klibertp 4y ago
  There are group activities you can take part in that have nothing to do with school. Actually, you should take part in it anyway, but with private tutors you have much more time to spend with a peer group of your choice. Not sure how scouting works elsewhere, but in my country it is well organized, more or less well funded, teaches a lot of very useful skills, and most of all gathers kids who want to be there. You have to actually experience it to feel how huge is the difference in atmosphere in a group like this versus one where participants are forced to attend. Private tutors are the best there is and you won't beat it. Whatever is lacking, can and should be supplemented. It doesn't even need to be a 1-1 with a tutor: 3-5 kids are still a manageable group. 25-1 or sometimes 35-1 is absolutely horrible and it shows in the results. Remote learning without help and care (honestly, "supervision"? The heck? Are they your child or inmates serving time for the crime of being born?) is obviously even worse than going to school. So, to my eyes, the GP got it right with that quote.
cm2187 4y ago
If you have teachers coming to your mansion, all you have done is to build a personal private school. Completely out of reach to 98% of the population.
- crummy 4y ago
  It's one tutor, Michael. How much can it cost, $100,000?
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    As with the banana, tutors are much cheaper than that.
- roenxi 4y ago
  The typical student:teacher ration is what, 25:1? 1:1 is a lot better (around 25x, probably) but this is all just on a spectrum. I'd wager that 25 parents banding together to hire a tutor might outperform a typical classroom, if it was a biased sample towards people who care. I'd trust my parents and a group of like-minded parents to pick out a good educator better than the typical teacher, teachers aren't the sort of people I would recommend to teach children how to think.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  That is what home-schooling is, a personal private school. Whether the person doing the teaching is paid for it doesn't change that.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    Well, that's my point, private tutors is effectively a private school. But the vast majority of families can't afford it (either cannot pay for a tutor or cannot afford not to have both parents working, when there are two parents). Remote learning is not though.
- msmenardi 4y ago
  "Private tutors" can be anything from an after-school karate class to visiting a piano teacher's house for an hour of instruction. It doesn't have to be solely for elite people.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Homeschooling and remote schooling while the parents are in another room trying to work are two different things.

kbelder 4y ago
Yep. My daughter remote schooled, and it would have been far more effective if the school had just mailed my wife and I the curriculum and had us teach it. I'm sympathetic towards public schools; they have to deal with a wide variety of kids and families, and what works for my family might be a disaster for another. I'm less sympathetic to the politicians who vastly underestimated the harm from closing the schools. The schools were nowhere near prepared or equipped.

brobdingnagians 4y ago

This depends heavily on parent involvement, dedication, and education. Even in public school the outcomes are heavily dependent on parents. If your father is an engineer who helps you with your homework and wants you to go to university, you will do much better. Home school with parents who do not want to, don't have time, or are incapable of helping or teaching will not do much, and the child would be better off with a school teacher who is motivated and trained--- but, if parents are heavily involved and capable then they are a teacher with very high motivation and can give very personalized instruction suited to the temperament of the pupil. So it all depends.

christophilus 4y ago

I know a lot of homeschoolers who are now adults. They tend to think independently, work hard, and are... fine. One of them worked for NASA before choosing to be a stay-at-home mom. One is a pediatrician. One is an electrical engineer. The rest are similar-- well-adjusted, successful adults. They're all fine, if a bit socially awkward. I think the socialization thing is probably the biggest drawback to homeschooling. It also probably depends entirely on the personality of the kids. Some kids thrive in huge group environments. Some don't. I guess it would also depend on how good and available your parent is, but most homeschoolers have very engaged parents from what I've seen.

FullStackAda 4y ago
Are you sure you are not self-selecting? Are those people represent a random set of homeschooled adults or just the ones who were successful despite it? Also, who is homeschooling in the set up of two working parents? Or we are going to pretend this work does not exist as we do with other household chores?
- christophilus 4y ago
  I'm sure I'm self-selecting. It's a total anecdote and not worth much other than to point out that home schooling isn't an obvious failure to be written off as the OP seemed to be indicating by his / her tone. It might not be for everyone-- I'm not homeschooling my kids-- but I've seen it work, and I hope it's an option that remains legal.
colinmhayes 4y ago
Socialization is the main point of elementary school. Missing it is a gigantic drawback.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  Home school families organize frequent socialization opportunities, and they are likely far better than school-based. And anyway, unless you live in some sort of jerk-run school district, the public school system welcomes home school kids for band, athletics or any other after-school program.

odessacubbage 4y ago

i do not think there is a single homeschooling or unschooling advocate who would've told you that keeping kids locked indoors on conference calls all day is a good method for educating children.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

detrimental is a single dimension valuation, but there are definitely some severe downsides that you don't see while you're there. The way those kids are treated was a completely shock to me, and I went through the system. They're treated like subhumans and it's done right out in the open because it's so normalized (I usually hate that word, but it applies here). I did a brief stint as a dell person who was sent out to a few schools (for extra money towards the end of my college career) and what I saw there was very eye opening. It was very eye-opening. The other part that was very eye-opening was having a kindergarten teacher interacting with me almost as if I was an overly tall kindergarten teacher. It made me realize these people interact with kids all day, every day, and it sort of becomes ingrained in them. They themselves probably don't even realize the extent to which interacting with kids every day affects how they socialize.