8 ms·

Sure, that's one model. The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. Similarly, there is household in my neighborhood that home schools. The kid

by 303uru 3y ago

Sure, that's one model. The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. Similarly, there is household in my neighborhood that home schools. The kids (all 8 of them) never leave the house. They have a 8ft. fence and 1 acre yard where I assume they get some outside time. No one visits. Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird.

brodouevencode 3y ago
For this anecdote I can provide you with about 20 anecdotes that are the complete opposite in nature. There is no regulation, but does there need to be? Homeschoolers take the same standardized tests as everyone else - that's about as regulatory as it needs to be (and even that's questionable).
- rjbwork 3y ago
  This is just not the case. In many states it's nearly completely unregulated, and the home school lobby is working diligently to strip even those regulations.
  - colpabar 3y ago
    You didn't answer his question - why are regulations on teaching your own children in your own home so necessary?
    - 303uru 3y ago
      Stripping myself of my morals and ethics, sure. Maybe I don’t need to give a shit whether someone else’s kid has any future. I’d rather care.
      - brodouevencode 3y ago
        This assumes government schools has everyone's morals and ethics in mind.
      - whatshisface 3y ago
        What we see in the education debate is a consistent lack of care for the kids who get ahead (why'd they get ahead of my kids?) and a consistent care for the kids being left behind, and that produces a trend to regulation and centralization that extinguishes anything good. The same forces that take children away from highly dedicated parents and put them into underfunded districts take advanced course tracks and the creativity of teachers away from them when they get there.
        eduction 3y ago
        This is an insightful way of framing things. It had not occurred to me to look at it this way. It describes my own issues with school growing up and my own interest in homeschooling — the chance to provide individualized instruction and to tap into play and creativity. Schools can provide a baseline but for bright, motivated students they can be like a straightjacket. It's interesting and I suppose logical that the arguments against homeschooling focus on the idea that the practice dangerously removes that baseline. (I don't find those arguments particularly convincing because I had troubled peers who I went to public school with, and the school system helped precisely none of them substantially improve their lives.)
        whatshisface 3y ago
        On top of that there is an element of "liability control" where putting troubled kids in the same unsuccessful system as the other troubled kids makes the kids the problem, while putting them in a different unsuccessful system, which counts as an action in the non-utilitarian trolley problem ethics of our culture, and leads to some fraction of blame falling on the individual who tried to change the outcome.
    - CryptoBanker 3y ago
      Because one day those children are going to grow up, leave the home, and interact with other members of society. At that point it becomes a public interest.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        > At that point it becomes a public interest. This doesn't seem to be so self-evident. Why do I care about the education of those around me?
        alistairSH 3y ago
        An educated populace... ...generates more economic activity ...understands basic civics and government
        bigstrat2003 3y ago
        > ...understands basic civics and government The public school system isn't doing that for our fellow citizens already. I fail to see why it would be worse if the failure happens at home rather than in a government building.
        alistairSH 3y ago
        My comment was a direct response to the question "why should I care if my neighbors are educated?" And that's a fair criticism of some public schools. And some home-schoolers. And probably some private schools.
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        Because they're going to be your neighbors, your co-workers, and your fellow voters. That's also why you care about the state of the public school system, even if you have no kids (or they don't attend public school).
        illirik 3y ago
        A well-educated population is generally considered to be a good thing. That’s why schooling is compulsory in almost every country in the world.
    - rjbwork 3y ago
      Because one of the biggest ways that child abuse is detected and abated is by interaction between students and children. Isolating children in insular communities is a really great way to abuse them and hide the evidence of it. Regular interaction with non-custodial adults provides more opportunities for child abuse to be uncovered and stopped. You can go on youtube and hear myriad testimonials from former homeschooled kids that were abused for years on end. And nobody knew. Nobody even had a chance to know.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      Because children aren’t parental property and their education is a obligation parents have to them, not a service for the benefit of the parent. Standards for education of children in the home are needed for the same reason as other standards for care, conditions, and treatment of children in the home are.
- watwut 3y ago
  Homeschooling famillies do not do the same tests. And especially families whose kids are less likely to ace those tests will avoid them when they are voluntary.
  - daddylongstroke 3y ago
    In most states, they absolutely do the same tests. We are, most often, required to by the state. The tests are provided (mostly) by the same two companies that provide the testing materials for the majority of end of year public school testing.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Homeschoolers take the same standardized tests as everyone else Varies a lot by states. Some states have no assessment requirement for honeschooled students at all, some have a requirement to keep a portfolio which may or may not be reviewed, some have an standardized testing requirement with more flexibility and lower frequency than public schools, and some have homeschool students take the same standardized tests as everyone else. https://education.uslegal.com/homeschooling/homeschooling-laws-by-state/ https://education.uslegal.com/homeschooling/homeschooling-la...
edgyquant 3y ago
> underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature No that’s literally the main benefit. People actually get to teach their own kids without state indoctrination (either left or right.)
- spacephysics 3y ago
  Fully agree, this is the primary benefit.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  I love that when a parent tells a kid that Jesus rode a velociraptor it's "teaching" but when a school tells a kid the universe probably started with a big bang, it's "indoctrination".
  - dheerajvs 3y ago
    India is facing a different kind of indoctrination by state education — masquerading mythology as science: https://www.deccanherald.com/india/scientists-flag-ncerts-misleading-chandrayaan-content-demands-withdrawal-2748583 https://www.deccanherald.com/india/scientists-flag-ncerts-mi... I definitely wouldn't want this kind of "regulated" education for children.
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      Not sure worse… that, or Florida’s “slavery was good for blacks” crap.
BurningFrog 3y ago
Public schools are highly regulated, and are on average horrible. I'd bet a lot on parents caring more about their kids welfare than regulators.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  There are many bad public schools - but it seems a bit hyperbolic to say the average public school is "horrible".
  - giantg2 3y ago
    I guess it depends on how you measure it. If we go by percent of kids meeting the standards and a passing grade being 70%, you could justifiable say the schools are horrible on average.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    Agreed. I could have phrased that better.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    40% of American adults can't do basic arithmetic[0], which seems like a disaster to me. 88% are apparently incapable of doing things like reading a simple table or comparing two documents and identifying sentences that express the same ideas between them[1][2]. Over 50% apparently can't scroll through a list of information about books and identify the author of a specific book they're told to find. I'll never forget that in 12th grade I took non-AP government, and we were still spending significant time going over the three branches of government again (I'm quite sure this was covered in elementary school) and somehow people were not getting 100% on everything. Other tasks included--not joking--coloring pictures of animals, which the teacher put up around the room. My school was actually rated decently for the area. Not the best, but pretty good. [0] https://phys.org/news/2018-03-high-adults-unable-basic-mathematical.html https://phys.org/news/2018-03-high-adults-unable-basic-mathe... [1] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp [2] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_section=5 https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_...
akira2501 3y ago
> The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. I didn't need your permission to give birth to my children, why do I need your permission when deciding how I educate them? > Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird. If you feel these children are legitimately being abused in some way, I'm guessing there are plenty of state resources to address that challenge. Do you actually feel there's abuse happening? Or, is it that you just find them unusual?
- throwaway2203 3y ago
  This is my thing, like what right does a public school have to regulate when I can and won't send my kids to school? If I decide to take a trip abroad for a month, that's on me... why do i have to worry about truancy court and CPS breathing down my neck?
  - 303uru 3y ago
    Your kid has a right to education, you don't get to deny them that right. It's funny how rugged individualism seems to end with self and extend to happily stomping on others.
    - throwaway2203 3y ago
      Sure, and it's my responsibility to provide it without the state nanny'ing over me. The homeschoolers get a free pass to do literally whatever... don't you see a dichotomy with what you're preaching?
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    Why should you have to feed your kid when they're hungry? Why should you have to make a space on your home for them to sleep and be warm? Why should you have to get them medical care when they are sick? Why can't you just do anything you want, regardless of the effect it has on your dependents?
    - 3y ago
whatshisface 3y ago
I have got bad news about that, the majority of abusive households send the kids to school and scare them into silence. Regulations against abusive households do exist but enforcing them completely would require a degree of inescapable surveillance that cannot exist.
- ARandumGuy 3y ago
  That may be true, but way more kids get sent to school then are home schooled, so that doesn't mean much on its own. The issue is that when a kid's at school, there are many people who may notice something's wrong. From teachers, school nurses, school administrators, and even other kids. This is by no means perfect, and many, many cases of abuse slip through the cracks. But it is something, which is more then many home schooled kids have. While I'd wager most home schooled kids aren't abused, the fact of the matter is it's much easier for an abusive parent to cover up their abuse if their child is home schooled. You may still feel home schooling is a net positive, but this aspect is very hard to deny.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    Homeschooling requires some degree of investment in the child, even just to keep them occupied or tolerate their presence. School provides free childcare for long periods of time. I don't think the majority of abusive parents will ever homeschool their children, because most are not believers in teaching an abusive ideology but rather have simple personality disorders. "Homeschool makes it easier to hide abuse" presupposes that abusive parents are planning or organizing abuse which is plainly not true in the majority of cases. Like the Satanism panics of the 1990s demonstrate, elaborate imaginings of complex sadistic rituals that are necessarily rare[0] bordering on nonexistent, tend to capture the public mind and suck oxygen away from treating the totally unattractive (not even in the capacity of making for a true crime special) real problems. If you want to see this on TV, the last season of The Wire was about it. [0] There were actually a spate of ritual killings in Liberia through the 1970s, proving humanity capable at least and making the issue to be one of reasonableness.
    - 3y ago
xtat 3y ago
I find the word unregulated a bit loaded in this context- analogous to "unfreedom"
m463 3y ago
> completely unregulated nature. From what I can tell, homeschooled kids are given a curriculum with books/workbooks for both the student and the teacher. They are also tested by the state and must meet certain criteria. so there seems to be guidance and verification.

by 303uru 3y ago

brodouevencode 3y ago

For this anecdote I can provide you with about 20 anecdotes that are the complete opposite in nature. There is no regulation, but does there need to be? Homeschoolers take the same standardized tests as everyone else - that's about as regulatory as it needs to be (and even that's questionable).

rjbwork 3y ago
This is just not the case. In many states it's nearly completely unregulated, and the home school lobby is working diligently to strip even those regulations.
- colpabar 3y ago
  You didn't answer his question - why are regulations on teaching your own children in your own home so necessary?
  - 303uru 3y ago
    Stripping myself of my morals and ethics, sure. Maybe I don’t need to give a shit whether someone else’s kid has any future. I’d rather care.
    - brodouevencode 3y ago
      This assumes government schools has everyone's morals and ethics in mind.
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      What we see in the education debate is a consistent lack of care for the kids who get ahead (why'd they get ahead of my kids?) and a consistent care for the kids being left behind, and that produces a trend to regulation and centralization that extinguishes anything good. The same forces that take children away from highly dedicated parents and put them into underfunded districts take advanced course tracks and the creativity of teachers away from them when they get there.
      - eduction 3y ago
        This is an insightful way of framing things. It had not occurred to me to look at it this way. It describes my own issues with school growing up and my own interest in homeschooling — the chance to provide individualized instruction and to tap into play and creativity. Schools can provide a baseline but for bright, motivated students they can be like a straightjacket. It's interesting and I suppose logical that the arguments against homeschooling focus on the idea that the practice dangerously removes that baseline. (I don't find those arguments particularly convincing because I had troubled peers who I went to public school with, and the school system helped precisely none of them substantially improve their lives.)
        whatshisface 3y ago
        On top of that there is an element of "liability control" where putting troubled kids in the same unsuccessful system as the other troubled kids makes the kids the problem, while putting them in a different unsuccessful system, which counts as an action in the non-utilitarian trolley problem ethics of our culture, and leads to some fraction of blame falling on the individual who tried to change the outcome.
  - CryptoBanker 3y ago
    Because one day those children are going to grow up, leave the home, and interact with other members of society. At that point it becomes a public interest.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
      > At that point it becomes a public interest. This doesn't seem to be so self-evident. Why do I care about the education of those around me?
      - alistairSH 3y ago
        An educated populace... ...generates more economic activity ...understands basic civics and government
        bigstrat2003 3y ago
        > ...understands basic civics and government The public school system isn't doing that for our fellow citizens already. I fail to see why it would be worse if the failure happens at home rather than in a government building.
        alistairSH 3y ago
        My comment was a direct response to the question "why should I care if my neighbors are educated?" And that's a fair criticism of some public schools. And some home-schoolers. And probably some private schools.
      - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        Because they're going to be your neighbors, your co-workers, and your fellow voters. That's also why you care about the state of the public school system, even if you have no kids (or they don't attend public school).
      - illirik 3y ago
        A well-educated population is generally considered to be a good thing. That’s why schooling is compulsory in almost every country in the world.
  - rjbwork 3y ago
    Because one of the biggest ways that child abuse is detected and abated is by interaction between students and children. Isolating children in insular communities is a really great way to abuse them and hide the evidence of it. Regular interaction with non-custodial adults provides more opportunities for child abuse to be uncovered and stopped. You can go on youtube and hear myriad testimonials from former homeschooled kids that were abused for years on end. And nobody knew. Nobody even had a chance to know.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Because children aren’t parental property and their education is a obligation parents have to them, not a service for the benefit of the parent. Standards for education of children in the home are needed for the same reason as other standards for care, conditions, and treatment of children in the home are.
watwut 3y ago
Homeschooling famillies do not do the same tests. And especially families whose kids are less likely to ace those tests will avoid them when they are voluntary.
- daddylongstroke 3y ago
  In most states, they absolutely do the same tests. We are, most often, required to by the state. The tests are provided (mostly) by the same two companies that provide the testing materials for the majority of end of year public school testing.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Homeschoolers take the same standardized tests as everyone else Varies a lot by states. Some states have no assessment requirement for honeschooled students at all, some have a requirement to keep a portfolio which may or may not be reviewed, some have an standardized testing requirement with more flexibility and lower frequency than public schools, and some have homeschool students take the same standardized tests as everyone else. https://education.uslegal.com/homeschooling/homeschooling-laws-by-state/ https://education.uslegal.com/homeschooling/homeschooling-la...

edgyquant 3y ago

> underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature No that’s literally the main benefit. People actually get to teach their own kids without state indoctrination (either left or right.)

spacephysics 3y ago
Fully agree, this is the primary benefit.
alistairSH 3y ago
I love that when a parent tells a kid that Jesus rode a velociraptor it's "teaching" but when a school tells a kid the universe probably started with a big bang, it's "indoctrination".
- dheerajvs 3y ago
  India is facing a different kind of indoctrination by state education — masquerading mythology as science: https://www.deccanherald.com/india/scientists-flag-ncerts-misleading-chandrayaan-content-demands-withdrawal-2748583 https://www.deccanherald.com/india/scientists-flag-ncerts-mi... I definitely wouldn't want this kind of "regulated" education for children.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Not sure worse… that, or Florida’s “slavery was good for blacks” crap.

BurningFrog 3y ago

Public schools are highly regulated, and are on average horrible. I'd bet a lot on parents caring more about their kids welfare than regulators.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
There are many bad public schools - but it seems a bit hyperbolic to say the average public school is "horrible".
- giantg2 3y ago
  I guess it depends on how you measure it. If we go by percent of kids meeting the standards and a passing grade being 70%, you could justifiable say the schools are horrible on average.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Agreed. I could have phrased that better.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  40% of American adults can't do basic arithmetic[0], which seems like a disaster to me. 88% are apparently incapable of doing things like reading a simple table or comparing two documents and identifying sentences that express the same ideas between them[1][2]. Over 50% apparently can't scroll through a list of information about books and identify the author of a specific book they're told to find. I'll never forget that in 12th grade I took non-AP government, and we were still spending significant time going over the three branches of government again (I'm quite sure this was covered in elementary school) and somehow people were not getting 100% on everything. Other tasks included--not joking--coloring pictures of animals, which the teacher put up around the room. My school was actually rated decently for the area. Not the best, but pretty good. [0] https://phys.org/news/2018-03-high-adults-unable-basic-mathematical.html https://phys.org/news/2018-03-high-adults-unable-basic-mathe... [1] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp [2] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_section=5 https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_...

akira2501 3y ago

> The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. I didn't need your permission to give birth to my children, why do I need your permission when deciding how I educate them? > Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird. If you feel these children are legitimately being abused in some way, I'm guessing there are plenty of state resources to address that challenge. Do you actually feel there's abuse happening? Or, is it that you just find them unusual?

throwaway2203 3y ago
This is my thing, like what right does a public school have to regulate when I can and won't send my kids to school? If I decide to take a trip abroad for a month, that's on me... why do i have to worry about truancy court and CPS breathing down my neck?
- 303uru 3y ago
  Your kid has a right to education, you don't get to deny them that right. It's funny how rugged individualism seems to end with self and extend to happily stomping on others.
  - throwaway2203 3y ago
    Sure, and it's my responsibility to provide it without the state nanny'ing over me. The homeschoolers get a free pass to do literally whatever... don't you see a dichotomy with what you're preaching?
- RoyalHenOil 3y ago
  Why should you have to feed your kid when they're hungry? Why should you have to make a space on your home for them to sleep and be warm? Why should you have to get them medical care when they are sick? Why can't you just do anything you want, regardless of the effect it has on your dependents?
  - 3y ago

whatshisface 3y ago

I have got bad news about that, the majority of abusive households send the kids to school and scare them into silence. Regulations against abusive households do exist but enforcing them completely would require a degree of inescapable surveillance that cannot exist.

ARandumGuy 3y ago
That may be true, but way more kids get sent to school then are home schooled, so that doesn't mean much on its own. The issue is that when a kid's at school, there are many people who may notice something's wrong. From teachers, school nurses, school administrators, and even other kids. This is by no means perfect, and many, many cases of abuse slip through the cracks. But it is something, which is more then many home schooled kids have. While I'd wager most home schooled kids aren't abused, the fact of the matter is it's much easier for an abusive parent to cover up their abuse if their child is home schooled. You may still feel home schooling is a net positive, but this aspect is very hard to deny.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Homeschooling requires some degree of investment in the child, even just to keep them occupied or tolerate their presence. School provides free childcare for long periods of time. I don't think the majority of abusive parents will ever homeschool their children, because most are not believers in teaching an abusive ideology but rather have simple personality disorders. "Homeschool makes it easier to hide abuse" presupposes that abusive parents are planning or organizing abuse which is plainly not true in the majority of cases. Like the Satanism panics of the 1990s demonstrate, elaborate imaginings of complex sadistic rituals that are necessarily rare[0] bordering on nonexistent, tend to capture the public mind and suck oxygen away from treating the totally unattractive (not even in the capacity of making for a true crime special) real problems. If you want to see this on TV, the last season of The Wire was about it. [0] There were actually a spate of ritual killings in Liberia through the 1970s, proving humanity capable at least and making the issue to be one of reasonableness.
  - 3y ago

xtat 3y ago

I find the word unregulated a bit loaded in this context- analogous to "unfreedom"

m463 3y ago

> completely unregulated nature. From what I can tell, homeschooled kids are given a curriculum with books/workbooks for both the student and the teacher. They are also tested by the state and must meet certain criteria. so there seems to be guidance and verification.