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It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren

It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren’t a lack of public school horror stories…

pixl97 3y ago
There are plenty of 'public school' horror stories because these things are public and can be audited in a great number of cases. You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you'll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you'll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bunch of religious organizations that homeschooled most of their children with educations that I'd consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap/uneducated labor they could abuse.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Sure, I don't think anyone denies that there are some home schooling horror stories. But it really doesn't seem like most public schools do a great job either, so the question is if this broken system damages more people than one dominated by home schooling.
  - klodolph 3y ago
    We have some insight into the answer to this, because public schooling is (more or less) a replacement for home schooling. Home schooling has an incredible amount of inequality built in to it. Affluent parents can hire instructors. Poor parents may not even be able to meet their children’s basic schooling needs, if it weren’t for public schools. Obviously there’s a lot of middle ground between those two extremes, and the circumstances today don’t exactly match the circumstances of the mid-19th century, which is roughly when modern public schools started appearing in the US (based on the “Prussian model”). There are a lot of different objectives that public schooling sets out to achieve. It can be too easy to focus on narrow sets of metrics like test scores, or collect a bunch of anecdotes about bad experiences in public schools (or bad experiences in homeschooling). IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      > IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead. Imagine your school district has banned teaching algebra to 8th graders, for reasons of equity. You're upset at this, since you have a child about to attend 8th grade. You go to a school board meeting, express yourself, and are at best ignored or more likely called names. What, from the perspective of a parent with a child who needs an education, do you then do? Fixing the system would be nice and all, but how do you do that before your kid becomes an adult, let alone make up for all the damage public schooling has been doing in the meantime?
      - otoburb 3y ago
        If a family is willing and resourced to (deeply) consider homeschooling because of one subject (you mentioned Algebra for 8th graders[1]), then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. Both suggestions require extra time, while still keeping your child "within the system" through attending school and (presumably?) receiving a decent-enough education in other non-math subjects. If the malaise extends to (many) other subjects, then I could see how home schooling becomes a more attractive option. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653
        petertodd 3y ago
        > then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. ...so now after your child spends hours every day at school, they have to spend yet more hours learning what they should have learned in school. You can see why so many parents decide that for more effort, they can save their child a lot of wasted time, effort, resentment, and bad influences. Particularly families where at least one parent can stay at home (and these days, working from home makes that so much easier once kids are old enough to learn by themselves).
        3y ago
  - dmazzoni 3y ago
    Are you comparing the best public schools to the best homeschools? Or the worst to the worst? Or the average to the average? I suspect that the education kids get at the worst 20% of public schools in the country is still way better than the worst 20% of homeschoolers. I also would totally believe that the education kids get at the top 20% of homeschools is better than the average public school. Public schools are far from perfect, but there are minimum standards and there are resources at the state and federal level to try to improve schools that aren't meeting those standards. My problem with homeschools is that in most states, there aren't any standards being enforced. If homeschools had surprise inspections and biannual state-run testing, I'd be fine with it.
    - biomcgary 3y ago
      The reason why many homeschoolers opt out of public schools is because of those minimum standards. Who wants their children to be taught to a minimal standard? My autistic son would still be completely non-verbal (and probably worse) if we put him into the local public school system. We saw the classroom he would have been in, it was horrific. Instead, he has a speech language pathologist working with him one-on-one three to four hours per day.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      The homeschooling crowd is so far up their own butts that they cannot accept homeschooling has horrific and hidden outcomes. It's kind of the democracy versus authoritarianism debate. Authoritarians typically look really good on paper because they can conceal their mistakes, while the democracy bears all to the populace. And yea, there are some benevolent dictatorships with great outcomes, but I don't think that a single one of the homeschoolers would think that would be a valid point because it's also the exception.
      - arkey 3y ago
        I think you're already receiving the general opinion in the form of downvotes, but for the sake of constructive debate I'll try to respond. > homeschooling has horrific and hidden outcomes Please tell me more, as a homeschooled and successful software engineer and family guy I'm interested. Several people in my family are or have been homeschooled. I could tell you where they're at right now but I've bragged enough with myself already. Yes, there can be horrific and hidden outcomes with homeschooling. Also with public education. Also with woodworking. Or having kids. Or cooking. It's about how you do something, and why you do it. Sorry for being so condescending, but your statements are offensive in their absurdity.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    One of the biggest, most important roles of public schools is to pry children away from their parents and give them baseline floor of education and independence (as well as force them to interact with the public, giving them context for what's normal and presenting opportunities for abuse to be discovered), no matter how crazy or abusive their parents are. The education can be pretty mediocre, as long as it achieves this goal. Letting parents opt out of public schools means that the most committed abusers get to sidestep this safety valve.
    - tomrod 3y ago
      Completely disagree. It's an unfortunate outcome of our society, and should not be a celebrated role of schools, to be police, meal kitchens, exercise facility, or child care. Any distraction from a school's primary mission to educate disparately impacts the people who need it most.
      - Ensorceled 3y ago
        > Any distraction from a school's primary mission to educate disparately impacts the people who need it most. School's primary mission is to serve the needs of a societies children. Inactive children don't learn as well as active children (especially boys). Hungry children don't learn as well as feed children. Abused children don't thrive. I'm deeply curious why you don't want public school children feed or protected from abuse.
        NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        > I'm deeply curious why you don't want public school children feed or protected from abuse. My children are more important to me than, well... just about anything. Including your children or anyone else's. If other people are so subhuman as to harm their own children, then that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make so that my children aren't abused by the public school system, aren't turned into idiots by the public school system, and aren't indoctrinated by the public school system. Do you think that when there's a string of tweenage suicides, that the contagion didn't spread via public schools? Am I supposed to put my kids at risk of that, just so you can pretend you'll catch the 1-in-10,000 of horrific abuse, which CPS will just ignore anyway? You offer a bad bargain. I pay everything and get nothing. Fortunately (and I mean this in a way that the words just can't do it justice... "fortune" of the sort like out of Greek mythology where the gods have smiled upon me and bestowed every blessing and boon) I don't have to take that deal.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  > educations that I'd consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap/uneducated labor they could abuse. You just described public schools, Universities, and their relationship to the student loan racket. Deficient education followed by indentured servitude through loan repayment. False advertising by public school teachers of a ticket to the easy life through any university degree. If I had a nickel for every person I've met who had their life messed up by that lie, I'd be rich
  - soco 3y ago
    I suppose you are talking about the US school system of late, right? Because even there it used to be better, and there's also an entire world outside with many different systems (possibly with their own rackets, just like homeschooling).
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. You're also not going to hear about the homeschooling horrors from the typical HN demographic. Broadly, and obviously with exceptions, there are two groups of parents who choose to homeschool: 1. Parents who have an abundance of educational resources and time and do it to provide a higher quality of education, and 2. Parents who do it for religious separatism reasons because public school gets in the way of their indoctrination. Selection bias means you're going to see a lot of the outcomes from #1 posting here, and not a lot of #2. For every example who was homeschooled with a high-quality curriculum, had great parent-run extracurriculars, socialized well, and so on, how many examples are invisibly stuck as someone's housewife who can't even be employed because their only textbook was the Bible, and they didn't learn anything past 3rd grade math? They're not posting their horror story here on HN.
  - eduction 3y ago
    Why do you presume that religious parents necessarily have bad outcomes homeschooling? I have a relative who is deeply religious. I know I would not agree with her on, for example, evolution. But she is loving and devoted and her two daughters have received tons of time and investment from her in their education, far more than they would receive in a public school. I obviously haven't, like, tested her kids, but they do seem smart and well adjusted. I'm not really worried about the limitations on their scientific learning — it's not ideal if they are skipping some evolutionary biology (I actually have no idea but I assume they are) but they are going to leave home, go to college in a very secular country and get to learn that stuff. I'm sure with the internet they are already widely exposed to what science has to say about e.g. the creation of the universe (which, honestly, how many high school students could walk you through?). By the way, I don't think there is anyone homeschooling with the "only textbook is the Bible" and in most states you need to file a curriculum every year that gets reviewed and approved.
    - throwaway626 3y ago
      > By the way, I don't think there is anyone homeschooling with the "only textbook is the Bible" They’re pretty common, in fact. Here’s a curriculum company that’ll gladly give you the tools: https://answersingenesis.org/homeschool-edition/ https://answersingenesis.org/homeschool-edition/ “The Bible is the only education you need” is a very common meme among evangelical Christians. > and in most states you need to file a curriculum every year that gets reviewed and approved. Most states have almost no recourse to reject submitted curricula, no matter how specious they are. One influential homeschool association has a 24/7 legal hotline specifically for subverting these mild attempts at accountability.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Very much so. Watching the Last Week Tonight segment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI) on this recently, in a startling number of states, a one time declaration that you're homeschooling effectively drops the kids out of the system with zero oversight from that point on. You get things like a Christian family whose "curriculum" for their daughters was: listen to classical music, bible listening 20 minutes/day, handwriting, bible memorization, exercise 15/day (not great so far, but wait for it): clean room 6/week, fold laundry 5/week, clean living room 5/week, clear off bar 6/week, tidy shelves in dining room 3/week, tidy stereo cabinet 2/week, clean brown cupboard in pantry 5/week, clean storeroom 1/week, tidy blue chest, dust piano, clean and vacuum, clean hallway, make bed...
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    It's worth noting that this segment seems tailor made to instill in we the viewer what we should feel about this topic.
    - ohdannyboy 3y ago
      That's every LWT. The whole infotainment genre does it but IMO that show is one of the worst in terms of fairness despite being very well made. It's hard to make a funny video about how obvious a complex issue is while not being very one sided.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Totally agree. My worry is this outlet is trusted (and presented) as factual, with jokes on top of facts, instead of what it actually is.
      - FireBeyond 3y ago
        I don't mind the way they do it too much. Most episodes are framed in "this is done well, sometimes, but these are some of the problems".
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Ah, yes. The "public schools as a warrantless, ongoing search by the government into parenting" model of schooling. Why wouldn't everyone want to sign up for that? I mean, it's not even expensive. Just subject your kids to bullying, bureaucracy, and bumblefuckery (call 'em the Three Bs!) and you too can be under suspicion for 13+ years.
- lobocinza 3y ago
  This goes both way. Public school success cases will be exaggerated and amplified by authorities where parents will prefer to keep their lives private.
AlwaysRock 3y ago
I don't know if that is the only relevant question. If you have a terrible time in public/traditional school, you may resent and blame a whole slew of factors. If you have a terrible time while homeschooled, you are likely to resent and blame the people teaching you or the ones who made that decision for you. Your parents. That is a pretty serious factor to weight.
scythe 3y ago
Research on the question is limited. One review found weakly positive average outcomes for homeschooled children, although they performed worse in one interesting dimension: they were considered inferior military recruits. https://www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/sites/www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/files/2022-07/The%20Social%20and%20Educational%20Outcomes%20of%20Homeschooling.pdf https://www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/sites/www.educa... Selection effects create a "blind men and the elephant" problem when considering anecdotes about homeschoolers. Homeschool children who return to public school may do so because their parents lack the resources to homeschool them effectively, so they might perform worse (academically & socially) than the average homeschool child. But homeschool children who get jobs in the technology industry and post on Hacker News are probably more successful than the average. It remains for the reader to determine whether the lack of "success" of homeschool children who join the military, in contrast to homeschooler mean success elsewhere, is due to a selection effect or a psychological effect of homeschooling.
- pitaj 3y ago
  > they were considered inferior military recruits. It's not that surprising given that the Prussian schooling system upon which ours is based was meant exactly for that.
FireBeyond 3y ago
An acquaintance of mine and his wife just started an alternative, semi-home school (hybrid system). Neither of them have any education experience, just a libertarian/anti-government mindset. They were able to franchise a school for, I believe $10-15,000 (certainly under $20K), a background check, and a 2 hour open book test for them both. I struggle to see how this is acceptable for not just "homeschooling" your own kids, but other people's kids.
rando_dfad 3y ago
The biggest US public school horror story is how we have taken a great instrument of social progress and decimated it. Public schools in countries where schools are treated well have phenomenal success. US schooling has been taken over (at the level of the state legislatures; blame goes to state Congress not to the schools) by companies selling "achievement" test. And also by charter schools whose success is based on only selecting high-achieving problem-free children? Why do teachers say they are nothing but babysitters? Maybe because they aren't allowed to teach, to inspire love of learning in the children? And their classroom budgets are so tight they buy school supplies out of their own pockets, while living on an income that is close to poverty level? While facing felony charges for having the wrong book in the shelf behind their desk??? When things like "Creme de la Creme Early Learning Center of Excellence" are real institutions instead of something from a comic dystopia, you know you have a problem.
- qerti 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - vb6sp6 3y ago
    No one was teaching this. It was a book in a library.
    - lawlessone 3y ago
      I agree with you but he is arguing in bad faith. "think of the children" is just the vehicle bigotry. Notice he isn't complaining about straight hook-up apps. You don't need a need a book to use to these apps and I have strong doubts children are queuing at libraries to read them.
      - vb6sp6 3y ago
        yeah, im just adding some additional info for any impressionable future reads who may take his statement at face value :)
      - 3y ago
rando_dfad 3y ago
Excuse prior rant. New rant beginning here: The real public school horror story is that today, in America, a "good school" is defined as one where your child won't get shot. I leave the rest of the rant as an exercise to the reader.
- userinanother 3y ago
  Getting shot is random in America schools. A good school does not have metal detectors and drug dogs

pixl97 3y ago

There are plenty of 'public school' horror stories because these things are public and can be audited in a great number of cases. You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you'll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you'll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bunch of religious organizations that homeschooled most of their children with educations that I'd consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap/uneducated labor they could abuse.

keiferski 3y ago
Sure, I don't think anyone denies that there are some home schooling horror stories. But it really doesn't seem like most public schools do a great job either, so the question is if this broken system damages more people than one dominated by home schooling.
- klodolph 3y ago
  We have some insight into the answer to this, because public schooling is (more or less) a replacement for home schooling. Home schooling has an incredible amount of inequality built in to it. Affluent parents can hire instructors. Poor parents may not even be able to meet their children’s basic schooling needs, if it weren’t for public schools. Obviously there’s a lot of middle ground between those two extremes, and the circumstances today don’t exactly match the circumstances of the mid-19th century, which is roughly when modern public schools started appearing in the US (based on the “Prussian model”). There are a lot of different objectives that public schooling sets out to achieve. It can be too easy to focus on narrow sets of metrics like test scores, or collect a bunch of anecdotes about bad experiences in public schools (or bad experiences in homeschooling). IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    > IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead. Imagine your school district has banned teaching algebra to 8th graders, for reasons of equity. You're upset at this, since you have a child about to attend 8th grade. You go to a school board meeting, express yourself, and are at best ignored or more likely called names. What, from the perspective of a parent with a child who needs an education, do you then do? Fixing the system would be nice and all, but how do you do that before your kid becomes an adult, let alone make up for all the damage public schooling has been doing in the meantime?
    - otoburb 3y ago
      If a family is willing and resourced to (deeply) consider homeschooling because of one subject (you mentioned Algebra for 8th graders[1]), then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. Both suggestions require extra time, while still keeping your child "within the system" through attending school and (presumably?) receiving a decent-enough education in other non-math subjects. If the malaise extends to (many) other subjects, then I could see how home schooling becomes a more attractive option. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653
      - petertodd 3y ago
        > then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. ...so now after your child spends hours every day at school, they have to spend yet more hours learning what they should have learned in school. You can see why so many parents decide that for more effort, they can save their child a lot of wasted time, effort, resentment, and bad influences. Particularly families where at least one parent can stay at home (and these days, working from home makes that so much easier once kids are old enough to learn by themselves).
        3y ago
- dmazzoni 3y ago
  Are you comparing the best public schools to the best homeschools? Or the worst to the worst? Or the average to the average? I suspect that the education kids get at the worst 20% of public schools in the country is still way better than the worst 20% of homeschoolers. I also would totally believe that the education kids get at the top 20% of homeschools is better than the average public school. Public schools are far from perfect, but there are minimum standards and there are resources at the state and federal level to try to improve schools that aren't meeting those standards. My problem with homeschools is that in most states, there aren't any standards being enforced. If homeschools had surprise inspections and biannual state-run testing, I'd be fine with it.
  - biomcgary 3y ago
    The reason why many homeschoolers opt out of public schools is because of those minimum standards. Who wants their children to be taught to a minimal standard? My autistic son would still be completely non-verbal (and probably worse) if we put him into the local public school system. We saw the classroom he would have been in, it was horrific. Instead, he has a speech language pathologist working with him one-on-one three to four hours per day.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    The homeschooling crowd is so far up their own butts that they cannot accept homeschooling has horrific and hidden outcomes. It's kind of the democracy versus authoritarianism debate. Authoritarians typically look really good on paper because they can conceal their mistakes, while the democracy bears all to the populace. And yea, there are some benevolent dictatorships with great outcomes, but I don't think that a single one of the homeschoolers would think that would be a valid point because it's also the exception.
    - arkey 3y ago
      I think you're already receiving the general opinion in the form of downvotes, but for the sake of constructive debate I'll try to respond. > homeschooling has horrific and hidden outcomes Please tell me more, as a homeschooled and successful software engineer and family guy I'm interested. Several people in my family are or have been homeschooled. I could tell you where they're at right now but I've bragged enough with myself already. Yes, there can be horrific and hidden outcomes with homeschooling. Also with public education. Also with woodworking. Or having kids. Or cooking. It's about how you do something, and why you do it. Sorry for being so condescending, but your statements are offensive in their absurdity.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  One of the biggest, most important roles of public schools is to pry children away from their parents and give them baseline floor of education and independence (as well as force them to interact with the public, giving them context for what's normal and presenting opportunities for abuse to be discovered), no matter how crazy or abusive their parents are. The education can be pretty mediocre, as long as it achieves this goal. Letting parents opt out of public schools means that the most committed abusers get to sidestep this safety valve.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Completely disagree. It's an unfortunate outcome of our society, and should not be a celebrated role of schools, to be police, meal kitchens, exercise facility, or child care. Any distraction from a school's primary mission to educate disparately impacts the people who need it most.
    - Ensorceled 3y ago
      > Any distraction from a school's primary mission to educate disparately impacts the people who need it most. School's primary mission is to serve the needs of a societies children. Inactive children don't learn as well as active children (especially boys). Hungry children don't learn as well as feed children. Abused children don't thrive. I'm deeply curious why you don't want public school children feed or protected from abuse.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        > I'm deeply curious why you don't want public school children feed or protected from abuse. My children are more important to me than, well... just about anything. Including your children or anyone else's. If other people are so subhuman as to harm their own children, then that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make so that my children aren't abused by the public school system, aren't turned into idiots by the public school system, and aren't indoctrinated by the public school system. Do you think that when there's a string of tweenage suicides, that the contagion didn't spread via public schools? Am I supposed to put my kids at risk of that, just so you can pretend you'll catch the 1-in-10,000 of horrific abuse, which CPS will just ignore anyway? You offer a bad bargain. I pay everything and get nothing. Fortunately (and I mean this in a way that the words just can't do it justice... "fortune" of the sort like out of Greek mythology where the gods have smiled upon me and bestowed every blessing and boon) I don't have to take that deal.
dingnuts 3y ago
> educations that I'd consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap/uneducated labor they could abuse. You just described public schools, Universities, and their relationship to the student loan racket. Deficient education followed by indentured servitude through loan repayment. False advertising by public school teachers of a ticket to the easy life through any university degree. If I had a nickel for every person I've met who had their life messed up by that lie, I'd be rich
- soco 3y ago
  I suppose you are talking about the US school system of late, right? Because even there it used to be better, and there's also an entire world outside with many different systems (possibly with their own rackets, just like homeschooling).
ryandrake 3y ago
> You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. You're also not going to hear about the homeschooling horrors from the typical HN demographic. Broadly, and obviously with exceptions, there are two groups of parents who choose to homeschool: 1. Parents who have an abundance of educational resources and time and do it to provide a higher quality of education, and 2. Parents who do it for religious separatism reasons because public school gets in the way of their indoctrination. Selection bias means you're going to see a lot of the outcomes from #1 posting here, and not a lot of #2. For every example who was homeschooled with a high-quality curriculum, had great parent-run extracurriculars, socialized well, and so on, how many examples are invisibly stuck as someone's housewife who can't even be employed because their only textbook was the Bible, and they didn't learn anything past 3rd grade math? They're not posting their horror story here on HN.
- eduction 3y ago
  Why do you presume that religious parents necessarily have bad outcomes homeschooling? I have a relative who is deeply religious. I know I would not agree with her on, for example, evolution. But she is loving and devoted and her two daughters have received tons of time and investment from her in their education, far more than they would receive in a public school. I obviously haven't, like, tested her kids, but they do seem smart and well adjusted. I'm not really worried about the limitations on their scientific learning — it's not ideal if they are skipping some evolutionary biology (I actually have no idea but I assume they are) but they are going to leave home, go to college in a very secular country and get to learn that stuff. I'm sure with the internet they are already widely exposed to what science has to say about e.g. the creation of the universe (which, honestly, how many high school students could walk you through?). By the way, I don't think there is anyone homeschooling with the "only textbook is the Bible" and in most states you need to file a curriculum every year that gets reviewed and approved.
  - throwaway626 3y ago
    > By the way, I don't think there is anyone homeschooling with the "only textbook is the Bible" They’re pretty common, in fact. Here’s a curriculum company that’ll gladly give you the tools: https://answersingenesis.org/homeschool-edition/ https://answersingenesis.org/homeschool-edition/ “The Bible is the only education you need” is a very common meme among evangelical Christians. > and in most states you need to file a curriculum every year that gets reviewed and approved. Most states have almost no recourse to reject submitted curricula, no matter how specious they are. One influential homeschool association has a 24/7 legal hotline specifically for subverting these mild attempts at accountability.
FireBeyond 3y ago
Very much so. Watching the Last Week Tonight segment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI) on this recently, in a startling number of states, a one time declaration that you're homeschooling effectively drops the kids out of the system with zero oversight from that point on. You get things like a Christian family whose "curriculum" for their daughters was: listen to classical music, bible listening 20 minutes/day, handwriting, bible memorization, exercise 15/day (not great so far, but wait for it): clean room 6/week, fold laundry 5/week, clean living room 5/week, clear off bar 6/week, tidy shelves in dining room 3/week, tidy stereo cabinet 2/week, clean brown cupboard in pantry 5/week, clean storeroom 1/week, tidy blue chest, dust piano, clean and vacuum, clean hallway, make bed...
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It's worth noting that this segment seems tailor made to instill in we the viewer what we should feel about this topic.
  - ohdannyboy 3y ago
    That's every LWT. The whole infotainment genre does it but IMO that show is one of the worst in terms of fairness despite being very well made. It's hard to make a funny video about how obvious a complex issue is while not being very one sided.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Totally agree. My worry is this outlet is trusted (and presented) as factual, with jokes on top of facts, instead of what it actually is.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      I don't mind the way they do it too much. Most episodes are framed in "this is done well, sometimes, but these are some of the problems".
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Ah, yes. The "public schools as a warrantless, ongoing search by the government into parenting" model of schooling. Why wouldn't everyone want to sign up for that? I mean, it's not even expensive. Just subject your kids to bullying, bureaucracy, and bumblefuckery (call 'em the Three Bs!) and you too can be under suspicion for 13+ years.
lobocinza 3y ago
This goes both way. Public school success cases will be exaggerated and amplified by authorities where parents will prefer to keep their lives private.

AlwaysRock 3y ago

I don't know if that is the only relevant question. If you have a terrible time in public/traditional school, you may resent and blame a whole slew of factors. If you have a terrible time while homeschooled, you are likely to resent and blame the people teaching you or the ones who made that decision for you. Your parents. That is a pretty serious factor to weight.

scythe 3y ago

Research on the question is limited. One review found weakly positive average outcomes for homeschooled children, although they performed worse in one interesting dimension: they were considered inferior military recruits. https://www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/sites/www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/files/2022-07/The%20Social%20and%20Educational%20Outcomes%20of%20Homeschooling.pdf https://www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/sites/www.educa... Selection effects create a "blind men and the elephant" problem when considering anecdotes about homeschoolers. Homeschool children who return to public school may do so because their parents lack the resources to homeschool them effectively, so they might perform worse (academically & socially) than the average homeschool child. But homeschool children who get jobs in the technology industry and post on Hacker News are probably more successful than the average. It remains for the reader to determine whether the lack of "success" of homeschool children who join the military, in contrast to homeschooler mean success elsewhere, is due to a selection effect or a psychological effect of homeschooling.

pitaj 3y ago
> they were considered inferior military recruits. It's not that surprising given that the Prussian schooling system upon which ours is based was meant exactly for that.

FireBeyond 3y ago

An acquaintance of mine and his wife just started an alternative, semi-home school (hybrid system). Neither of them have any education experience, just a libertarian/anti-government mindset. They were able to franchise a school for, I believe $10-15,000 (certainly under $20K), a background check, and a 2 hour open book test for them both. I struggle to see how this is acceptable for not just "homeschooling" your own kids, but other people's kids.

rando_dfad 3y ago

The biggest US public school horror story is how we have taken a great instrument of social progress and decimated it. Public schools in countries where schools are treated well have phenomenal success. US schooling has been taken over (at the level of the state legislatures; blame goes to state Congress not to the schools) by companies selling "achievement" test. And also by charter schools whose success is based on only selecting high-achieving problem-free children? Why do teachers say they are nothing but babysitters? Maybe because they aren't allowed to teach, to inspire love of learning in the children? And their classroom budgets are so tight they buy school supplies out of their own pockets, while living on an income that is close to poverty level? While facing felony charges for having the wrong book in the shelf behind their desk??? When things like "Creme de la Creme Early Learning Center of Excellence" are real institutions instead of something from a comic dystopia, you know you have a problem.

qerti 3y ago
[flagged]
- vb6sp6 3y ago
  No one was teaching this. It was a book in a library.
  - lawlessone 3y ago
    I agree with you but he is arguing in bad faith. "think of the children" is just the vehicle bigotry. Notice he isn't complaining about straight hook-up apps. You don't need a need a book to use to these apps and I have strong doubts children are queuing at libraries to read them.
    - vb6sp6 3y ago
      yeah, im just adding some additional info for any impressionable future reads who may take his statement at face value :)
    - 3y ago

rando_dfad 3y ago

Excuse prior rant. New rant beginning here: The real public school horror story is that today, in America, a "good school" is defined as one where your child won't get shot. I leave the rest of the rant as an exercise to the reader.

userinanother 3y ago
Getting shot is random in America schools. A good school does not have metal detectors and drug dogs