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It is, and article hit pieces like this are exactly why it will continue to expand. Newsflash, there’s an actual large portion of the population that more and m

It is, and article hit pieces like this are exactly why it will continue to expand. Newsflash, there’s an actual large portion of the population that more and more doesn’t want what is taught to their children regulated by the government.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Yeah, there are a number of people out there who only want to teach their kids what's in the Bible. We should all be so lucky as to be a bunch of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidts. Obviously I'm presenting an extreme example, but society at large has a vested interest in ensuring that children, broadly, are educated. I'm not saying there are no problems with regulations, but I hate how the "deregulate everything!" crowd conveniently ignores the reasons those regulations were created in the first place.
- _blz2 3y ago
  People are making a choice for their kids, whether they want the after effects of religious or public school 'brainwashing'. For many, its a clear cut choice, one way or the other.
  - mikeyouse 3y ago
    It's weird to strip the kids of any agency or consideration, but you've phrased it well. People are making a choice for their kids -- parents don't own their kids, they have something akin to justified paternalism over them. Society should care whether parents are providing a base level of education and opportunity to these kids. It's pretty apparent from the discussion here who grew up around e.g. fundamentalist Mormons or Baptists where homeschool kids were often abused as a matter of 'doctrine' and those whose experience with homeschool kids is more like the Bay Area version of precocious children learning in nature.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > Society should care whether parents are providing a base level of education and opportunity to these kids. And society should also care whether government-run public schools are doing this--not to mention whether they are indoctrinating children with values that many parents disagree with.
      - mikeyouse 3y ago
        Society does care about that, hence why the public school standards are all public, school boards are elected, and there's broad democratic oversight.
        pdonis 3y ago
        The standards are public, yes, but that does not mean they are standards that a majority of the public agrees with. They are set by unelected bureaucrats. School boards are elected, but I don't think "broad democractic oversight" is a fair description. In any case, none of the things you mention prevented the US public school system from being explicitly set up to indoctrinate children, as explicitly described by the people who set it up. So to the extent that society in the US cares about educating children, it cares about educating them according to a particular political agenda that many people do not agree with. That is a major reason why homeschooling continues to increase in popularity.
- ike2792 3y ago
  I'm sure this varies by state, but where I live in MN home schooling parents have to register with the state and meet certain curriculum standards. Homeschooled students also have to take standardized tests and show certain standards of proficiency. The parents need to keep diligent records and be in regular communication with the school district. We have a lot of friends that homeschool (although we don't ourselves), and in general most homeschooled kids seem to be meeting or exceeding where their public- or private-schooled peers are at.
- politician 3y ago
  If you just taught kids the Bible, at a minimum they would have amazing literacy skills.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > there are a number of people out there who only want to teach their kids what's in the Bible Not all homeschoolers are like this. There are plenty of other good reasons for parents not to want their kids to go to public schools. > society at large has a vested interest in ensuring that children, broadly, are educated Yes, but for whose definition of "educated"? In the US, at least, the government was not supposed to decide that. Individual families and communities were. And, as I have posted elsewhere in this thread, the people who set up the US system of widespread, compulsory public education were quite explicit about what they meant by "educated", and that included plenty of things that any reasonable person would consider to be indoctrination, not education--and that was on purpose.
- bloaf 3y ago
  With the laws Florida is toying with around trans youth in education, you think people here would be more understanding of the desire to be able to give the government's regulations the finger. Saying that the cost of giving persecuted minorities an out is "then we might not be able to persecute the minorities that I've decided actually deserve it" just feels fundamentally unconvincing.
burkaman 3y ago
Will it continue to expand? This article makes the case that the large increase in 2020 was driven by temporary pandemic conditions, and explicitly not by politics or school quality. The graph shows it has already started to decline. Longer-term data shows a small peak in 2012 followed by a slow decline until the pandemic: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_206.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_206.10.a.... In the article's district lookup tool, most districts follow this same pattern of a pandemic spike that begins to decline, whether you pick a stereotypically liberal or conservative district.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Yeah, there are a number of people out there who only want to teach their kids what's in the Bible. We should all be so lucky as to be a bunch of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidts. Obviously I'm presenting an extreme example, but society at large has a vested interest in ensuring that children, broadly, are educated. I'm not saying there are no problems with regulations, but I hate how the "deregulate everything!" crowd conveniently ignores the reasons those regulations were created in the first place.

_blz2 3y ago
People are making a choice for their kids, whether they want the after effects of religious or public school 'brainwashing'. For many, its a clear cut choice, one way or the other.
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  It's weird to strip the kids of any agency or consideration, but you've phrased it well. People are making a choice for their kids -- parents don't own their kids, they have something akin to justified paternalism over them. Society should care whether parents are providing a base level of education and opportunity to these kids. It's pretty apparent from the discussion here who grew up around e.g. fundamentalist Mormons or Baptists where homeschool kids were often abused as a matter of 'doctrine' and those whose experience with homeschool kids is more like the Bay Area version of precocious children learning in nature.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > Society should care whether parents are providing a base level of education and opportunity to these kids. And society should also care whether government-run public schools are doing this--not to mention whether they are indoctrinating children with values that many parents disagree with.
    - mikeyouse 3y ago
      Society does care about that, hence why the public school standards are all public, school boards are elected, and there's broad democratic oversight.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        The standards are public, yes, but that does not mean they are standards that a majority of the public agrees with. They are set by unelected bureaucrats. School boards are elected, but I don't think "broad democractic oversight" is a fair description. In any case, none of the things you mention prevented the US public school system from being explicitly set up to indoctrinate children, as explicitly described by the people who set it up. So to the extent that society in the US cares about educating children, it cares about educating them according to a particular political agenda that many people do not agree with. That is a major reason why homeschooling continues to increase in popularity.
ike2792 3y ago
I'm sure this varies by state, but where I live in MN home schooling parents have to register with the state and meet certain curriculum standards. Homeschooled students also have to take standardized tests and show certain standards of proficiency. The parents need to keep diligent records and be in regular communication with the school district. We have a lot of friends that homeschool (although we don't ourselves), and in general most homeschooled kids seem to be meeting or exceeding where their public- or private-schooled peers are at.
politician 3y ago
If you just taught kids the Bible, at a minimum they would have amazing literacy skills.
pdonis 3y ago
> there are a number of people out there who only want to teach their kids what's in the Bible Not all homeschoolers are like this. There are plenty of other good reasons for parents not to want their kids to go to public schools. > society at large has a vested interest in ensuring that children, broadly, are educated Yes, but for whose definition of "educated"? In the US, at least, the government was not supposed to decide that. Individual families and communities were. And, as I have posted elsewhere in this thread, the people who set up the US system of widespread, compulsory public education were quite explicit about what they meant by "educated", and that included plenty of things that any reasonable person would consider to be indoctrination, not education--and that was on purpose.
bloaf 3y ago
With the laws Florida is toying with around trans youth in education, you think people here would be more understanding of the desire to be able to give the government's regulations the finger. Saying that the cost of giving persecuted minorities an out is "then we might not be able to persecute the minorities that I've decided actually deserve it" just feels fundamentally unconvincing.

burkaman 3y ago

Will it continue to expand? This article makes the case that the large increase in 2020 was driven by temporary pandemic conditions, and explicitly not by politics or school quality. The graph shows it has already started to decline. Longer-term data shows a small peak in 2012 followed by a slow decline until the pandemic: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_206.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_206.10.a.... In the article's district lookup tool, most districts follow this same pattern of a pandemic spike that begins to decline, whether you pick a stereotypically liberal or conservative district.