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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,

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).
      - p1esk 3y ago
        You seem to imply that most parents who decided to homeschool actually do a good job at it. Is there any data to back that up?
        Draiken 3y ago
        From what I've read, there's almost no data in it since it's all done in private with little to no oversight. This makes the comparison very hard, since one side is has all of its successes and failures critiqued in public, and the other side is only ever talked about with anecdotal data. Personally I believe there should be some sort of periodic standardized test for homeschooled kids too. Even if it's not for "passing" a grade, so we know in which level of learning they are compared to everyone else. If we can't compare them, how can we evaluate its merits and flaws?
- sfink 3y ago
  > the circumstances today don’t exactly match the circumstances of the mid-19th century That's a bit of an understatement. I'm not great at history, but my understanding is that the mid-19th century was a little lacking in videoconferencing software, educated people with the resources to be on the other end of that video link, population density to have enough other like-minded kids within driving... uh, horse-riding range, up to date books, parents who weren't gone to the factories or fields during the day, etc. > There are a lot of different objectives that public schooling sets out to achieve. Agreed. There is a smaller set of objectives that they actually do achieve. > IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead. I would assert that it's impossible to fix this broken system, and I can cite a lot of past history. I would also assert that replacing it entirely with homeschooling (which is not a single thing, but whatever) is also a guaranteed path to failure. The only hope I see is for exploration to be possible, and for people in the different situations to learn from each other. The public school institutions do try to experiment, but are incredibly restricted in all sorts of ways. Homeschoolers have the training wheels off and are much more free to crash straight into the bushes or off a cliff, but in practice plenty don't and plenty come up with a lot of different ways of doing things, some of them that seem to be working quite well in practice — academically, socially, etc. I agree that sucking resources out of public schools to benefit the privileged few is very troubling and worrisome. But so is the current state and trajectory of public schooling, and holding everyone back may be short term fair but long term disastrous. We're homeschooling one of our kids (both until recently, when one went to a public charter high school). We've seen the institutional effects firsthand. Simple example: we found excellent math resources, but they weren't "A-G" accredited for University of California entrance requirements. Which gave us pause, since we wanted to leave that option open. We ended up going through a A-G accredited program, the best of what we could identify, for a semester. It was crap: rote memorization of algorithms exactly matching to the state standards, lots of repetitive exercises, minimally useful feedback from teachers and their assistants. My son passed all of their tests and got an A+ grade, and is now a semester behind in math because none of that stuck in a way that is useful for building on. It was a waste of time. We gave up on it and the whole accredited path, and went back to an online program that is far more conceptual, rigorous, and just plain effective. (His earlier public school experience was somewhere in the middle, Again he did quite well there according to the state tests.) My guess is that it's yet another form of enshittification: A-G accreditation is very valuable, but once you get it there's no profit in increasing quality, only in growing your student base. There aren't enough accredited places to provide any competition on quality, especially when there's so much disagreement about what "quality" is in the first place, and as usual any useful definition ends up being expensive. Non-accredited places have to compete on quality. (For anyone who finds value in my personal opinions: Silicon Valley High School math bad, Art of Problem Solving math good.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Consultant32452 3y ago
  I think the mistake you are making is in believing the public schools are failing in any way. You cannot fix something that is not broken. In my opinion the schools are working exactly as intended which is why anyone who can should get their children out of them. "Mistakes of this size are never made innocently." ~Ayn Rand
- K0balt 3y ago
  There is a huge amount of inequality in the quality of education that home schooling can achieve, that is definitely true. So maybe we work on the inequality. Inequality of education is a symptom of a self reinforcing broken economic system. Meanwhile, if I can provide a superior education and social experience for my children, Im glad to have the opportunity to do so. I’ve seen bad outcomes and good ones from homeschooling, and in my particular case I am absolutely delighted with the results (now that my children are adults) But to achieve that my wife and I invested our entire lives, uprooting ourselves and living experiences with our children as part of their education, sailing around on a boat we rebuilt and going to local schools in other languages as their cultural preparation. It was a bit hellish for my wife and I but the 6 years we invested in that paid unbelievable dividends for our children. Most people can’t or won’t do that. We weren’t (financially) rich, but I have always prioritized my freedom over material wealth, and you can do amazing things on a modest (60k/year was our passive income from contracting at that time) budget if you have complete control of your time.
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.

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).
    - p1esk 3y ago
      You seem to imply that most parents who decided to homeschool actually do a good job at it. Is there any data to back that up?
      - Draiken 3y ago
        From what I've read, there's almost no data in it since it's all done in private with little to no oversight. This makes the comparison very hard, since one side is has all of its successes and failures critiqued in public, and the other side is only ever talked about with anecdotal data. Personally I believe there should be some sort of periodic standardized test for homeschooled kids too. Even if it's not for "passing" a grade, so we know in which level of learning they are compared to everyone else. If we can't compare them, how can we evaluate its merits and flaws?
sfink 3y ago
> the circumstances today don’t exactly match the circumstances of the mid-19th century That's a bit of an understatement. I'm not great at history, but my understanding is that the mid-19th century was a little lacking in videoconferencing software, educated people with the resources to be on the other end of that video link, population density to have enough other like-minded kids within driving... uh, horse-riding range, up to date books, parents who weren't gone to the factories or fields during the day, etc. > There are a lot of different objectives that public schooling sets out to achieve. Agreed. There is a smaller set of objectives that they actually do achieve. > IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead. I would assert that it's impossible to fix this broken system, and I can cite a lot of past history. I would also assert that replacing it entirely with homeschooling (which is not a single thing, but whatever) is also a guaranteed path to failure. The only hope I see is for exploration to be possible, and for people in the different situations to learn from each other. The public school institutions do try to experiment, but are incredibly restricted in all sorts of ways. Homeschoolers have the training wheels off and are much more free to crash straight into the bushes or off a cliff, but in practice plenty don't and plenty come up with a lot of different ways of doing things, some of them that seem to be working quite well in practice — academically, socially, etc. I agree that sucking resources out of public schools to benefit the privileged few is very troubling and worrisome. But so is the current state and trajectory of public schooling, and holding everyone back may be short term fair but long term disastrous. We're homeschooling one of our kids (both until recently, when one went to a public charter high school). We've seen the institutional effects firsthand. Simple example: we found excellent math resources, but they weren't "A-G" accredited for University of California entrance requirements. Which gave us pause, since we wanted to leave that option open. We ended up going through a A-G accredited program, the best of what we could identify, for a semester. It was crap: rote memorization of algorithms exactly matching to the state standards, lots of repetitive exercises, minimally useful feedback from teachers and their assistants. My son passed all of their tests and got an A+ grade, and is now a semester behind in math because none of that stuck in a way that is useful for building on. It was a waste of time. We gave up on it and the whole accredited path, and went back to an online program that is far more conceptual, rigorous, and just plain effective. (His earlier public school experience was somewhere in the middle, Again he did quite well there according to the state tests.) My guess is that it's yet another form of enshittification: A-G accreditation is very valuable, but once you get it there's no profit in increasing quality, only in growing your student base. There aren't enough accredited places to provide any competition on quality, especially when there's so much disagreement about what "quality" is in the first place, and as usual any useful definition ends up being expensive. Non-accredited places have to compete on quality. (For anyone who finds value in my personal opinions: Silicon Valley High School math bad, Art of Problem Solving math good.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Consultant32452 3y ago
I think the mistake you are making is in believing the public schools are failing in any way. You cannot fix something that is not broken. In my opinion the schools are working exactly as intended which is why anyone who can should get their children out of them. "Mistakes of this size are never made innocently." ~Ayn Rand
K0balt 3y ago
There is a huge amount of inequality in the quality of education that home schooling can achieve, that is definitely true. So maybe we work on the inequality. Inequality of education is a symptom of a self reinforcing broken economic system. Meanwhile, if I can provide a superior education and social experience for my children, Im glad to have the opportunity to do so. I’ve seen bad outcomes and good ones from homeschooling, and in my particular case I am absolutely delighted with the results (now that my children are adults) But to achieve that my wife and I invested our entire lives, uprooting ourselves and living experiences with our children as part of their education, sailing around on a boat we rebuilt and going to local schools in other languages as their cultural preparation. It was a bit hellish for my wife and I but the 6 years we invested in that paid unbelievable dividends for our children. Most people can’t or won’t do that. We weren’t (financially) rich, but I have always prioritized my freedom over material wealth, and you can do amazing things on a modest (60k/year was our passive income from contracting at that time) budget if you have complete control of your time.

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.