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There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events wher

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that. Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it because they thought the public schools were too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution. They were all polite about it, but it started making me wonder if all of these other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination. Maybe those kids are fine, I didn't quiz them, but it did raise an eyebrow.

llbeansandrice 3y ago
It's really difficult because a lot of the resources and groups are created by and supported by this very religious group that homeschools. There is still a very wide margin though. My wife was homeschooled because she did gymnastics at a fairly high level when she was young and so scheduling was easier for her that way. Her older sister wasn't homeschooled hardly at all though.
- jandrese 3y ago
  Yes, no more recommendations for "excellent PragerU material", please!
- petertodd 3y ago
  > It's really difficult because a lot of the resources and groups are created by and supported by this very religious group that homeschools. ...and why do those groups create so many resources? Because they tend to be people trying hard to replicate the traditional schooling experience, with high academic standards and expectations. Evangelicals are rarely the ones doing unschooling. Source: was mostly(1) unschooled as a kid, but spent a lot of time around evangelical Christian homeschoolers because we'd go to the gym classes and other organized events they ran. The evangelicals didn't seem to have any issues with the fact that I was 100% an atheist. 1) A key exception being reading and writing. The main reason why I ended up being homeschooled was the school systems useless "whole word" approach to reading was failing me. So I was drilled intensively on phonics and other traditional techniques, and finally learned how to read and write fluently much later than I should have. Meanwhile, I had no problem learning math and science with much less structure.
  - llbeansandrice 3y ago
    They're not doing unschooling I guess but they are pulling their kids out of public and private schools because they teach things like evolution. I suppose it's up for debate which is worse: kids attempting to learn in an unstructured environment or a structured environment that's religious propaganda and entirely wrong.
verisimi 3y ago
> religious indoctrination indoctrination is a given. Do you prefer your secular type, the religious type or the government type?
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  I prefer the Reaper type, myself.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    you exist because we allow it, and will end because we demand it
    - c0pium 3y ago
      For those who don’t know, this is a quote from Mass Effect. If you are reading this and didn’t know that, you are in for a treat.
- efd6821b 3y ago
  All education is intertwined with indoctrination. At least religious indoctrination is a known quantity, unlike other less self-aware forms.
  - gameman144 3y ago
    This is a pretty strong take. I'd be curious whether you believe that education is inherently indoctrination, or whether all current education approaches are just also indoctrinating? I disagree on both counts, but it seems like the claims there are pretty different in how extreme they are.
  - Guvante 3y ago
    Are you saying "I believe it is true so it is fine to indoctrinate that way"? I can't find any definition of known quantity otherwise given how extremely wide the variations on religious teaching is only focusing on science let alone other topics like history. Let alone that there isn't only one religion in the world. If your perspective is "if the parent says it is correct it is correct" you cannot say that is different in any meaningful way.
xyzelement 3y ago
// other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination I was raised totally secular but I now understand that religion is about fundamentally aligning yourself to the highest aspirations ("what kind of man does G-d want me to be?") and even w/o actual faith, I am starting to think that's preferable to the current mode of "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions." So yeah I am not surprised that parents aren't dying to throw their kids into an environment that fosters the latter. I used to think religion was about deep fear, now I see it more as about deep care. You may still disagree with what they care about but I find that harder and harder to do, personally.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  The question ”what kind of person should I be?” could be answered by god, I guess, but the alternative would be to answer it yourself, and/or consult society, possibly friends and family. Not "anything goes". Putting it in the hands of god means anything goes, and you just say that's how you thought god wanted you to be. You'd have to trust that society encoded the proper set of values and morals into the religion. Which sounds like "ask society" but with extra steps, and also you're asking the society of 1,000+ years ago instead of the society of today.
  - ksenzee 3y ago
    Not necessarily. For me it’s a subset of “answer it yourself”: it’s a way of asking myself “what is my potential? What was I put here for? If I had a perfect parent, what would they expect of me?”
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      It's the same for me, since none of those questions require a god or religion to answer. So, I'll have to disagree again with the premise that the alternative is "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions". If anything, that is more representative of religion, as long as you say that's what god wanted (e.g. discriminating against LGBT people, trying to overthrow the government, etc.) In contrast to non-theists, you simply employ a different way to ask yourself and society (albeit a subset of society which more rarely evolves their belief system to comport with the rest of society).
lolinder 3y ago
Where was this? How did you find the events? How many families were involved? Did they find the events through the same channels you did, or did the others all know each other ahead of time? In my experience not only is OP correct that there are different kinds of homeschooling, but the people involved in the different segments don't really interact at all. My wife and I were both homeschooled, living less than a mile away from each other for 10 years, but we didn't meet until we were adults. Her circle was much like you describe, but ours was far more secular, and there was very little overlap. If you accidentally found your way into the local religious-homeschooling circles, I can understand how it would be eyebrow-raising, but that doesn't mean that the other circle isn't close by.
CaptWillard 3y ago
// other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination. While this may technically fit the definition of "indoctrination", that's a pretty loaded way to describe what parents teach their own children. // they thought the public schools were too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution. Really? In 2021, the hot-button issue among religious parents was evolution?
- vel0city 3y ago
  I personally know multiple people who homeschooled their kids to avoid discussing evolution. There's even been debate at state board of education levels about how evolution is taught in public schools. There's absolutely a lot of people who want to teach their kids humans and dinos existed at the same time.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    I think their point wasn't that religious parents wouldn't be concerned about evolution too, but that in 2021 they would have expected LGBT issues to be at the forefront of the religious right's fears surrounding public schools. For the parental fears to center on evolution either suggests either that the parents were censoring their larger concerns for OP, or it's an anachronism that brings the chronology into question.
- petsfed 3y ago
  I mean, you pick the subject, there's a hot-button issue. Could be evolution in the science side of things, the legacy of slavery or colonization in the history side of things. Math is generally pretty safe, although I do see a steady stream of "I'm so glad I'm homeschooling my kids, I can't believe what $currentEducationalBogeyman is trying to pass off as education" when presented with some way to understand math that I had to teach myself, in college, to do the math faster in my head. Composition is pretty safe, but as its frequently combined with literature (that is, the study of rhetoric in other people's writing) which also has a lot of self-censorship. It's also unsteady ground, as the Bible should be study as literature as well as religious tome, but that can lead to kids thinking about the humans who wrote the bible and what rhetorical outcome they were reaching towards. Physical education is safe so long as it limits itself to exercise, but health topics like human sexuality are obviously going to raise some hackles. I think it really depends on the parent what is the absolute bogeyman of public schooling, but evolution has posed the most consistent existential threat to the stereotypical fundamentalist who is looking to avoid "sinful" public schools.
wskinner 3y ago
I don't know where you live, but my anecdata from being homeschooled starting ~20 years ago in the Bay Area contradicts this. I was part of a group of more than 50 homeschooled children of various ages. Our parents all had their own reasons for homeschooling us, but to my knowledge, none of them did it because they thought the public schools were too secular and teaching "sinful" science. We were aware of families homeschooling for religious reasons, but not in the Bay Area.
- jandrese 3y ago
  Absolutely, all politics is local and the plural of anecdote isn’t data. I only homeschooled for a single year. I fully expect the communities to vary by region. To be fair the topic of evolution only came up because the arborist made an off hand comment about how a particular tree had evolved from a tree that is native to warmer climates to survive in our area and it caused a bit of a stir with the parents. I think the park service got some sternly worded letters afterward.
ahhppahjh6698 3y ago
I mean you can laugh about the most ridiculous component of that groups worldview (which of course is not representative of many religious homeschoolers), but I think thats probably a good sign in comparison to the stuff a lot of parents sending their kids to public school think. Not believing in evolution isn't a morality issue, a lot of the stuff that those folks are probably trying to avoid by homeschooling is. In other words, I wouldn't be worried about my kids spending the night at the house with the very conservative non-evolution believing family. That definitely counts for something.
rayiner 3y ago
> They were all polite about it, but it started making me wonder if all of these other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination. Maybe those kids are fine, I didn't quiz them, but it did raise an eyebrow. Multiple studies show religious people are happier, healthier, and have greater civic engagement. Mormons, who you probably consider extremely “indoctrinated,” live 5-10 years longer than other whites, are tied with Jews for happiest, and have among the highest upward social mobility of anyone in the US. So those kids are probably in better shape than the public school kids.
shadowgovt 3y ago
Even if it is, the thing about America is that religious indoctrination is not only accepted, it's enshrined in the First Amendment. If people want to homeschool because public school won't reinforce in their kids that God is great, that's their right as long as they also clear the geography requirements.
nostrademons 3y ago
What geographic location? I grew up homeschool-adjacent in Massachusetts (I wasn't homeschooled myself but had common activities with many children who were), and the homeschooled families I knew were atheist, atheist, atheist, Unitarian Universalist, and Jehovah's Witness. All except the Jehovah's Witness were doing it because they felt the public school system wasn't serving their kids well (and usually also because the mom was a housewife with an educational or academic background), which kinda underscores the homeschooling diversity point of the grandparent.
gunapologist99 3y ago
> a whole lot of religious indoctrination And just like that, a discussion about homeschooling veers wildly off-topic into a flame war.
Simon_ORourke 3y ago
> too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution Kids shielded from this kind of actual reality tend, IMHO, are never really then equipped for going out into society of the workplace, where teaching evolution is small change compared to the kind of "sinning" going on all about. Admittedly some public school systems are just a mess, and private schools are out of the budget for most folks, so home schooling becomes the default. However, unless there's a social education alongside lots of other kids, this is just kicking problems down the road.
graemep 3y ago
Very American problem, probably regional even there. Definitely not the case here in the UK where home education is also growing rapidly. Also, the growth probably comes from a more representative cross section of society.

llbeansandrice 3y ago

It's really difficult because a lot of the resources and groups are created by and supported by this very religious group that homeschools. There is still a very wide margin though. My wife was homeschooled because she did gymnastics at a fairly high level when she was young and so scheduling was easier for her that way. Her older sister wasn't homeschooled hardly at all though.

jandrese 3y ago
Yes, no more recommendations for "excellent PragerU material", please!
petertodd 3y ago
> It's really difficult because a lot of the resources and groups are created by and supported by this very religious group that homeschools. ...and why do those groups create so many resources? Because they tend to be people trying hard to replicate the traditional schooling experience, with high academic standards and expectations. Evangelicals are rarely the ones doing unschooling. Source: was mostly(1) unschooled as a kid, but spent a lot of time around evangelical Christian homeschoolers because we'd go to the gym classes and other organized events they ran. The evangelicals didn't seem to have any issues with the fact that I was 100% an atheist. 1) A key exception being reading and writing. The main reason why I ended up being homeschooled was the school systems useless "whole word" approach to reading was failing me. So I was drilled intensively on phonics and other traditional techniques, and finally learned how to read and write fluently much later than I should have. Meanwhile, I had no problem learning math and science with much less structure.
- llbeansandrice 3y ago
  They're not doing unschooling I guess but they are pulling their kids out of public and private schools because they teach things like evolution. I suppose it's up for debate which is worse: kids attempting to learn in an unstructured environment or a structured environment that's religious propaganda and entirely wrong.

verisimi 3y ago

> religious indoctrination indoctrination is a given. Do you prefer your secular type, the religious type or the government type?

bigstrat2003 3y ago
I prefer the Reaper type, myself.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  you exist because we allow it, and will end because we demand it
  - c0pium 3y ago
    For those who don’t know, this is a quote from Mass Effect. If you are reading this and didn’t know that, you are in for a treat.
efd6821b 3y ago
All education is intertwined with indoctrination. At least religious indoctrination is a known quantity, unlike other less self-aware forms.
- gameman144 3y ago
  This is a pretty strong take. I'd be curious whether you believe that education is inherently indoctrination, or whether all current education approaches are just also indoctrinating? I disagree on both counts, but it seems like the claims there are pretty different in how extreme they are.
- Guvante 3y ago
  Are you saying "I believe it is true so it is fine to indoctrinate that way"? I can't find any definition of known quantity otherwise given how extremely wide the variations on religious teaching is only focusing on science let alone other topics like history. Let alone that there isn't only one religion in the world. If your perspective is "if the parent says it is correct it is correct" you cannot say that is different in any meaningful way.

xyzelement 3y ago

// other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination I was raised totally secular but I now understand that religion is about fundamentally aligning yourself to the highest aspirations ("what kind of man does G-d want me to be?") and even w/o actual faith, I am starting to think that's preferable to the current mode of "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions." So yeah I am not surprised that parents aren't dying to throw their kids into an environment that fosters the latter. I used to think religion was about deep fear, now I see it more as about deep care. You may still disagree with what they care about but I find that harder and harder to do, personally.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
The question ”what kind of person should I be?” could be answered by god, I guess, but the alternative would be to answer it yourself, and/or consult society, possibly friends and family. Not "anything goes". Putting it in the hands of god means anything goes, and you just say that's how you thought god wanted you to be. You'd have to trust that society encoded the proper set of values and morals into the religion. Which sounds like "ask society" but with extra steps, and also you're asking the society of 1,000+ years ago instead of the society of today.
- ksenzee 3y ago
  Not necessarily. For me it’s a subset of “answer it yourself”: it’s a way of asking myself “what is my potential? What was I put here for? If I had a perfect parent, what would they expect of me?”
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    It's the same for me, since none of those questions require a god or religion to answer. So, I'll have to disagree again with the premise that the alternative is "anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions". If anything, that is more representative of religion, as long as you say that's what god wanted (e.g. discriminating against LGBT people, trying to overthrow the government, etc.) In contrast to non-theists, you simply employ a different way to ask yourself and society (albeit a subset of society which more rarely evolves their belief system to comport with the rest of society).

lolinder 3y ago

Where was this? How did you find the events? How many families were involved? Did they find the events through the same channels you did, or did the others all know each other ahead of time? In my experience not only is OP correct that there are different kinds of homeschooling, but the people involved in the different segments don't really interact at all. My wife and I were both homeschooled, living less than a mile away from each other for 10 years, but we didn't meet until we were adults. Her circle was much like you describe, but ours was far more secular, and there was very little overlap. If you accidentally found your way into the local religious-homeschooling circles, I can understand how it would be eyebrow-raising, but that doesn't mean that the other circle isn't close by.

CaptWillard 3y ago

// other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination. While this may technically fit the definition of "indoctrination", that's a pretty loaded way to describe what parents teach their own children. // they thought the public schools were too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution. Really? In 2021, the hot-button issue among religious parents was evolution?

vel0city 3y ago
I personally know multiple people who homeschooled their kids to avoid discussing evolution. There's even been debate at state board of education levels about how evolution is taught in public schools. There's absolutely a lot of people who want to teach their kids humans and dinos existed at the same time.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I think their point wasn't that religious parents wouldn't be concerned about evolution too, but that in 2021 they would have expected LGBT issues to be at the forefront of the religious right's fears surrounding public schools. For the parental fears to center on evolution either suggests either that the parents were censoring their larger concerns for OP, or it's an anachronism that brings the chronology into question.
petsfed 3y ago
I mean, you pick the subject, there's a hot-button issue. Could be evolution in the science side of things, the legacy of slavery or colonization in the history side of things. Math is generally pretty safe, although I do see a steady stream of "I'm so glad I'm homeschooling my kids, I can't believe what $currentEducationalBogeyman is trying to pass off as education" when presented with some way to understand math that I had to teach myself, in college, to do the math faster in my head. Composition is pretty safe, but as its frequently combined with literature (that is, the study of rhetoric in other people's writing) which also has a lot of self-censorship. It's also unsteady ground, as the Bible should be study as literature as well as religious tome, but that can lead to kids thinking about the humans who wrote the bible and what rhetorical outcome they were reaching towards. Physical education is safe so long as it limits itself to exercise, but health topics like human sexuality are obviously going to raise some hackles. I think it really depends on the parent what is the absolute bogeyman of public schooling, but evolution has posed the most consistent existential threat to the stereotypical fundamentalist who is looking to avoid "sinful" public schools.

wskinner 3y ago

I don't know where you live, but my anecdata from being homeschooled starting ~20 years ago in the Bay Area contradicts this. I was part of a group of more than 50 homeschooled children of various ages. Our parents all had their own reasons for homeschooling us, but to my knowledge, none of them did it because they thought the public schools were too secular and teaching "sinful" science. We were aware of families homeschooling for religious reasons, but not in the Bay Area.

jandrese 3y ago
Absolutely, all politics is local and the plural of anecdote isn’t data. I only homeschooled for a single year. I fully expect the communities to vary by region. To be fair the topic of evolution only came up because the arborist made an off hand comment about how a particular tree had evolved from a tree that is native to warmer climates to survive in our area and it caused a bit of a stir with the parents. I think the park service got some sternly worded letters afterward.

ahhppahjh6698 3y ago

I mean you can laugh about the most ridiculous component of that groups worldview (which of course is not representative of many religious homeschoolers), but I think thats probably a good sign in comparison to the stuff a lot of parents sending their kids to public school think. Not believing in evolution isn't a morality issue, a lot of the stuff that those folks are probably trying to avoid by homeschooling is. In other words, I wouldn't be worried about my kids spending the night at the house with the very conservative non-evolution believing family. That definitely counts for something.

rayiner 3y ago

> They were all polite about it, but it started making me wonder if all of these other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination. Maybe those kids are fine, I didn't quiz them, but it did raise an eyebrow. Multiple studies show religious people are happier, healthier, and have greater civic engagement. Mormons, who you probably consider extremely “indoctrinated,” live 5-10 years longer than other whites, are tied with Jews for happiest, and have among the highest upward social mobility of anyone in the US. So those kids are probably in better shape than the public school kids.

shadowgovt 3y ago

Even if it is, the thing about America is that religious indoctrination is not only accepted, it's enshrined in the First Amendment. If people want to homeschool because public school won't reinforce in their kids that God is great, that's their right as long as they also clear the geography requirements.

nostrademons 3y ago

What geographic location? I grew up homeschool-adjacent in Massachusetts (I wasn't homeschooled myself but had common activities with many children who were), and the homeschooled families I knew were atheist, atheist, atheist, Unitarian Universalist, and Jehovah's Witness. All except the Jehovah's Witness were doing it because they felt the public school system wasn't serving their kids well (and usually also because the mom was a housewife with an educational or academic background), which kinda underscores the homeschooling diversity point of the grandparent.

gunapologist99 3y ago

> a whole lot of religious indoctrination And just like that, a discussion about homeschooling veers wildly off-topic into a flame war.

Simon_ORourke 3y ago

> too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution Kids shielded from this kind of actual reality tend, IMHO, are never really then equipped for going out into society of the workplace, where teaching evolution is small change compared to the kind of "sinning" going on all about. Admittedly some public school systems are just a mess, and private schools are out of the budget for most folks, so home schooling becomes the default. However, unless there's a social education alongside lots of other kids, this is just kicking problems down the road.

graemep 3y ago

Very American problem, probably regional even there. Definitely not the case here in the UK where home education is also growing rapidly. Also, the growth probably comes from a more representative cross section of society.