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This is a fundamental change of life, and it’s astonishing that it’s so persistent. It is pretty misleading for this article to talk about homeschooling being

This is a fundamental change of life, and it’s astonishing that it’s so persistent. It is pretty misleading for this article to talk about homeschooling being a “fundamental change” without mentioning that homeschooling was the default practice for most of human history. If anything, this is just a return to a long-established practice, not a fringe movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling

jwestbury 3y ago
There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  What a weird example. Sacrifices have not been common in the west for thousands of years and the majority in the Middle East for over half that time as well. Seems like a bad faith gotcha
- keiferski 3y ago
  If animal sacrifice became common again, I would expect articles to mention the fact that it was a human practice for millennia – and not pretend it's just a fringe thing those pesky Other People invented. Homeschooling was also the default thing a ±century ago, while you'd need to go back pretty far to find true animal/human sacrifice in European/European-American culture.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    The default thing in preindustrial societies was no formal education for the vast majority of the population. The elite - a small slice of the population - was homeschooled by private tutors, and artisans (also small % of population) went into apprenticeships. This isn't really analogous to a vision of the world where the majority of the population is schooled at home.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Humanity was mostly illiterate and sheltered to a small community. Going back isn't always a win.
- tivert 3y ago
  > There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance. I better example might be freedom from surveillance. It's a totally fringe lifestyle to not be tracked everywhere you go, at least in a developed country. But your rhetoric might be useful for shooting down privacy advocates during the next dust-up. Privacy may have been common in the past but now its fringe, just like animal sacrifice. Key escrow is the future!
  - bombcar 3y ago
    What's sad is the "fringe privacy" lifestyle has been getting easier and easier, because so many privacy invading things assume you have a GPS enabled phone on you at every moment, and are constantly connected to the Internet. Make those two untrue and it's like you never existed.
  - jollyllama 3y ago
    >It's a totally fringe lifestyle to not be tracked everywhere you go, at least in a developed country. You're proving GP's point, that was the norm in developed countries 100 years ago and to a relative degree 50 years ago. The organs of the state and of capital which effected surveillance or tracking were tiny and isolated compared to what they are now.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Human sacrifice is an interesting example, since there are several public school proponents throughout this discussion arguing that good parents have an obligation to send their bad schools to thereby improve the quality of those schools for the other children. This amounts to human sacrifice.
brodouevencode 3y ago
It's a fundamental change versus the Prussian model, which provided a basis for much of the educational theory in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
- keiferski 3y ago
  It's funny how so much of social conflict today basically boils down to: industrial systems put in place in the 19th century aren't working anymore.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    It's constantly going to be with us. These systems weren't "put into place" they generated "higher profits" when implemented. As such, the people profiting from their existence are willing to use some of those profits in preventing the advantages of technological advancement from reaching the populations they currently enjoy power over. This is part of the reason why business monopolies are social poison.
lom888 3y ago
It's interesting that we treat kettling children up indoors by age cohort with little movement and making them solve math problems ad nauseum as if it were the most natural thing in the world and treat those who can't sit still and learn in such an environment (or understand the purpose of doing all of those math problems for 13 years) as if they are an aberration.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Surely, this can't be true. For most of human history, children may have learned to do whatever their parents did behaviorally or vocationally, whether that be to become a forager, farmer, peasant, nobility, whatever, but almost nobody ever received any kind of general-purpose, primarily academic education, and whatever they learned, they learned by following their parents around and doing it, not by structured, formal curricula. I'm sure homeschooling can work out fine, but that is hardly assured by simply being inline with historical tradition. If you go to war with broadswords and spears, you're going to lose. If you insist on living without indoor plumbing or refrigerated food storage, you're likely going to have your kids taken away, and rightfully so, in spite of the fact humans lived that way by default longer than not.
ouiouibaguette 3y ago
The majority (non-aristocratic, non-clergy) were illiterate for most of human history.
watwut 3y ago
Default state for most human history was that only small minority of people can read and write. It also meant that majority of people have no say in public affairs.
MrRolleyes 3y ago
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jwestbury 3y ago

There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance.

edgyquant 3y ago
What a weird example. Sacrifices have not been common in the west for thousands of years and the majority in the Middle East for over half that time as well. Seems like a bad faith gotcha
keiferski 3y ago
If animal sacrifice became common again, I would expect articles to mention the fact that it was a human practice for millennia – and not pretend it's just a fringe thing those pesky Other People invented. Homeschooling was also the default thing a ±century ago, while you'd need to go back pretty far to find true animal/human sacrifice in European/European-American culture.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  The default thing in preindustrial societies was no formal education for the vast majority of the population. The elite - a small slice of the population - was homeschooled by private tutors, and artisans (also small % of population) went into apprenticeships. This isn't really analogous to a vision of the world where the majority of the population is schooled at home.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Humanity was mostly illiterate and sheltered to a small community. Going back isn't always a win.
tivert 3y ago
> There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance. I better example might be freedom from surveillance. It's a totally fringe lifestyle to not be tracked everywhere you go, at least in a developed country. But your rhetoric might be useful for shooting down privacy advocates during the next dust-up. Privacy may have been common in the past but now its fringe, just like animal sacrifice. Key escrow is the future!
- bombcar 3y ago
  What's sad is the "fringe privacy" lifestyle has been getting easier and easier, because so many privacy invading things assume you have a GPS enabled phone on you at every moment, and are constantly connected to the Internet. Make those two untrue and it's like you never existed.
- jollyllama 3y ago
  >It's a totally fringe lifestyle to not be tracked everywhere you go, at least in a developed country. You're proving GP's point, that was the norm in developed countries 100 years ago and to a relative degree 50 years ago. The organs of the state and of capital which effected surveillance or tracking were tiny and isolated compared to what they are now.
mcpackieh 3y ago
Human sacrifice is an interesting example, since there are several public school proponents throughout this discussion arguing that good parents have an obligation to send their bad schools to thereby improve the quality of those schools for the other children. This amounts to human sacrifice.

brodouevencode 3y ago

It's a fundamental change versus the Prussian model, which provided a basis for much of the educational theory in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

keiferski 3y ago
It's funny how so much of social conflict today basically boils down to: industrial systems put in place in the 19th century aren't working anymore.
- akira2501 3y ago
  It's constantly going to be with us. These systems weren't "put into place" they generated "higher profits" when implemented. As such, the people profiting from their existence are willing to use some of those profits in preventing the advantages of technological advancement from reaching the populations they currently enjoy power over. This is part of the reason why business monopolies are social poison.

lom888 3y ago

It's interesting that we treat kettling children up indoors by age cohort with little movement and making them solve math problems ad nauseum as if it were the most natural thing in the world and treat those who can't sit still and learn in such an environment (or understand the purpose of doing all of those math problems for 13 years) as if they are an aberration.

nonameiguess 3y ago

Surely, this can't be true. For most of human history, children may have learned to do whatever their parents did behaviorally or vocationally, whether that be to become a forager, farmer, peasant, nobility, whatever, but almost nobody ever received any kind of general-purpose, primarily academic education, and whatever they learned, they learned by following their parents around and doing it, not by structured, formal curricula. I'm sure homeschooling can work out fine, but that is hardly assured by simply being inline with historical tradition. If you go to war with broadswords and spears, you're going to lose. If you insist on living without indoor plumbing or refrigerated food storage, you're likely going to have your kids taken away, and rightfully so, in spite of the fact humans lived that way by default longer than not.

ouiouibaguette 3y ago

The majority (non-aristocratic, non-clergy) were illiterate for most of human history.

watwut 3y ago

Default state for most human history was that only small minority of people can read and write. It also meant that majority of people have no say in public affairs.

MrRolleyes 3y ago

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