8 ms·

Homeschooling (2021)

67 points by ivanech 2y ago

jschveibinz 2y ago
This is an interesting article and there are some interesting connections with education theory (not practice) based on my masters program. 1. Engagement. Learning is hard unless you are engaged. 2. Self-directed. Mastery education--independent mastery of the learning objectives-- was tried in the 1930's (Winnetka System) and it was very successful where it was tried. But it didn't match the goals of the education unions... 3. Montessori. The Montessori program emphasizes "self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play." This is a popular approach to learning. 4. Vygotsky. Social engagement is important in learning. Homeschooling as described in the article without peers goes against this theory. 5. Scaffolding. A theory of learning by constructing with prior knowledge. The article notes "going down rabbit holes" and that would agree with this theory. 6. Gardner. Theory of using "multiple intelligences" (kinetic, visual, logical, etc.) to learn. The described approach in the article would seem to agree with this theory. 7. Project-based. Using projects as a way to discover and learn. Again, the article seems to agree with this theory/approach ...and more In short, "unschooling" as described in the article seems to have support in major theories of education. However, the social aspect is not well supported. A curriculum is not a bad thing, it's a set of learning objectives which is necessary. What is not necessary for learning is the institutional aspect of school--which is what the author is trying to avoid and has discovered is not necessary. I believe that we are moving as a society to two norms: the "haves" will educate their children using various homeschooling approaches augmented by AI, and the "have nots" will be forced to attend institutions where the emphasis is discipline and not learning.
- popalchemist 2y ago
  If by "haves" you mean anyone who can work from home, then yes. But that is a large percentage of the population already and it seems to be increasing.
  - riehwvfbk 2y ago
    I think you mean those that can "kinda work from home", and that set of people is small. Teaching is a full time job. So is a job. Doing at a half-decent job as a teacher means taking a step back from the main job, and not every employer will tolerate this.
    - KerrAvon 2y ago
      I think the idea here is that AI will teach, like in the Asimov story “The Fun They Had” (IIRC). (Not endorsing.)
- glitchc 2y ago
  The haves also constitute enrollees of private schools, where the school's pedagogy is aligned with the parents'.
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  Thanks for writing this up. I studied education in college and was a middle school teacher at a public school before growing so jaded I had to become a software engineer (that and I couldn't afford to pay my student loans). So many people have no idea about education theory and incorrectly assume public schools are the most efficient because they are taught by trained educators. Unfortunately, trained educators were all taught NOT to teach this way and are prevented from doing what is most effective by the administration and the state. Our schools are designed to stamp out creativity, critical thinking, strong collective bargaining and solidarity, democracy, and the love of learning. https://cantrip.org/gatto.html https://cantrip.org/gatto.html
dkz999 2y ago
I agree that classical schooling has fallen far away from learning (as the author defines it). That has even crept more and more into "higher education". This is a travesty and produces worse people, citizens, what have you. But i'll still make this point: its an oversimplification to say that education (as defined) is bad. No matter how much it doesn't align with your passion, you will need to have a basic set of book smarts to hope to thrive in the world. If for no other reason than there will almost certainly be some aspect of that passion that touches on those missing rudimentary skills. I also personally don't want to live in a world where a significant portion of people don't know basic history or understand eating tide pods is bad.
- Kamq 2y ago
  > I also personally don't want to live in a world where a significant portion of people don't know basic history As quizzes on late night talk shows have shown for the past 20+ years, the current education system doesn't accomplish this. Additionally basic numeracy drops of _severely_ after leaving school, which means a majority of people aren't really absorbing anything beyond arithmetic on the math side.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    The loss of numeracy also reflects the vast majority of adults never using high school math or greater… like, ever, at all. I used to be Ok at math. I would now fail any math test past 10th grade (forget college), and I’m not so confident about 8th or 9th either. I also used to be pretty good at French. I’ve lost most of it. Rarely having a reason to use a skill means you lose it.
    - bradleyjg 2y ago
      So why do we spend enormous amounts of time and money teaching people things we know most will quickly lose?
      - vundercind 2y ago
tkuraku 2y ago
I was homeschooled from 3rd through 8th grade And then attended public high school. I think home school can be great. however, I've never met anyone who is obviously advantaged because of home school, but I've met a few that were obviously disadvantaged.
llmblockchain 2y ago
I've been struggling with this as well. I feel like my kids go into elementary school and spend ~7 hours (most of the day) not really learning anything. They come home and do "home work" only for myself and my spouse to teach them only for them to eat, sleep and do it again the next day. I feel like it has eradicated much of the family time for bonding. The only reason we hesitate to take them out of school is the socialization aspect.
- trust_bt_verify 2y ago
  > The only reason we hesitate to take them out of school is the socialization aspect. You really hit the nail on the head for me here. I see that kids need to work with large, consistent, groups of their peers for years to learn all of the skills needed to be socially competent (work and play). Many don’t get this and it can really show when they move into adulthood.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    It is interesting that the OP wrote "not really learning anything", then talked about the social aspect. That _is_ learning. For most people in this world, they won't be on the STEM track. In these cases, having well-developed social skills is crucial to your adult life. And, even the STEM track, those with better social skills are usually more successful, excluding the extreme minority of "head-down" STEM types who barely need to talk with anyone to be very successful.
    - watwut 2y ago
      Well-developed social skills matter for kinds on STEM track as much. It is not just that you get more successful if you don't have them, it is that you become impossible to work with.
  - JackMorgan 2y ago
    Everyone I know who was homeschooled in grade school went to college and learned how to socialize like an adult there. That's an environment that's ideal for learning how to socialize. Not a few brief minutes a day on the bus or in between classes.
caseyy 2y ago
This is somewhat concerning to me, a software engineer in the games industry. It's true that the schooling system has failed in many parts of the world to the point that it might harm kids in many ways, even stunting them academically. And it's great that the author's kid likes to program games and is great at Photoshop and 3D. But the usual curriculum at schools provides a breadth of general knowledge that I don't think parents or online tutorials would ever substitute for. While this kid may be the next John Carmack, are they now robbed of the opportunity to gain enough knowledge in other disciplines to ever succeed in being a doctor, a lawyer, a mathematician or a historian? I believe so. Kids are really good at learning from anything they have access to, but online content is heavily skewed to entertainment (such as video games), and almost totally non-existent in other areas. Before I ended up in games, I tried a few different disciplines. I went to med-school and learned things I would have never learned on YouTube because they would have simply been demonetized. Simple biology is often a controversial topic on ad-supported platforms, let alone any kind of injury or most illnesses. Health topics are very muddied by grifters to the point that patients self-diagnosing by YouTube are often very confused. So this kid would have a serious disadvantage if they ever wanted to be a doctor if this is where they learned about it. And this is assuming they would be capable of reconciling the misleading knowledge with real knowledge to be good enough at the discipline, anyways. So all in all, I can see the benefits, but it is also very concerning to me that a kid is seriously using online content for unsupervised learning. We have all recently got a taste of how unsupervised learning on online content goes. And it's not just detrimental in learning, the world view itself online is very skewed. I am not necessarily very good at education though, so take this with a pinch of salt. It is not impossible that someone's parents, with the help of the internet, could indeed provide better education than traditional schools. I think there are such parents, although probably few and far in between.
- glitchc 2y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly. Technology is only good at teaching material related to technology. Sometimes the link is tenuous at best, but as long as one exists, it works. In any other subject matter areas, the kid will pick up a bunch of half-truths and whole lies.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
smeej 2y ago
In unschooling circles, that "detox" period is called "deschooling," and is estimated to take about a month per year of formal schooling. If you've ever taken a break from work, you've probably experienced something like it. At first, you drive yourself crazy, because you don't know what to do with yourself now that you're outside the routine you've "always" had and "everybody" else seems to have. Then there's a period of mental stagnation. To me, it feels kind of like defragging my brain. It needs not to be doing much else as it processes all the stuff it's just knuckled down and gotten through over the years, trying to craft some sort of self narrative about it that integrates it and makes it into a (semi-)coherent set of desires and character traits. Eventually you come out of it and start wanting to do stuff again. It might be the same kinds of projects. It might not. It might change pretty frequently, because you're still testing your new ideas against this new self narrative, and iterating on both. I think not doing this periodically ruins people's lives. That's how you end up with death bed regrets about never becoming the person you wanted to be. The first few times I did it, I really got worried about the early stages, but now I'm realizing there's a pattern. It comes together in the end, and I'm always better off for having done it! If you can teach this to your kids early on, their lives will be so much better for it.
- caseyy 2y ago
  A lot of people realize they have been missing this in their middle-age crises and then they go off to the Himalayas, the Oceania, the Amazon, and so on. Our brain gets mothballed by routine and the years fly by without us doing what matters to us, or why we even got jobs in the first place. We also get convinced, with every passing day, that this is good for us. That routine provides structure, stability, safety. Then at some point, we are so convinced we don't have the capacity to doubt it anymore. Some of us will get shocked out of it by some kind of a trigger, like a death, financial shock, physical ability changes, etc. But not everyone.
- xkgt 2y ago
  The author did enroll his kid into school for freshman after a break. Is this normally considered beneficial? Having a period of unschooling followed by traditional school?
frithsun 2y ago
I'm a homeschool parent, and we wouldn't have it any other way for our family. But one thing I've learned is that most homeschool parents are even worse than public school and the risk of permanently harming your child through neglect is dreadfully real. Most of the flattering literature for unschooling is, as with the link, a case where the parents and child are naturally gifted and curious, and they credit whatever they ended up doing with the kid's relative success. Even gifted and curious kids run into situations where some structured learning that won't be immediately rewarding needs to happen. There needs to be an adult paying attention and intervening, even in the best cases. Every parent should have the right to homeschool. But from what I've seen, most parents should go ahead and trust American public schools, which are actually very competitive with the best in the world after adjusting for the familiar, stubborn demographic realities.
- throw46365 2y ago
  > But one thing I've learned is that most homeschool parents are even worse than public school and the risk of permanently harming your child through neglect is dreadfully real. Right. Here in the UK it is an unusual thing but I think the majority of homeschoolers who are not doing so for reasons of child ill health or significant neurodiversity are, unfortunately, irresponsible or ignorant. I am not saying that I believe it is impossible for a child to be homeschooled well, especially by well-to-do parents who can hire tutors, but what I find is that those parents usually believe one or more other extremely outlying thing —- antivax, sovereign citizen, fear of radio frequencies, or extreme religion —- that is a kind of intellectual abuse, and is at odds with the kind of basic pedagogical commitment that is needed to make education work. Kids mostly cannot learn effectively from people who do not spend time thinking about the business of teaching. Some of the “homeschooling circles” around majority wealthy towns like the one I live in are just unbelievably silly people who are raising admittedly charming, polite, but borderline uneducated children who will have to rely on their parents’ networking skills to get anywhere in life and who are in for a shock at which doors do not open for them.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    [flagged]
bleakenthusiasm 2y ago
I like the entire structure that they put up for their kids to learn and I think it would work for many children. However, I doubt it would work for many parents. The author already pointed out that it worked because they both worked from home. To most this is an unimaginable luxury. The parents didn't strictly supervise or guide the kid in this case but I strongly assume that they engaged if the kid had questions or just wanted to talk something through. They also apparently had specialized software and a 3d printer at hand or were ready to buy one without long preamble. The kid's interests were rather easy to handle up until a pretty high level of skill. With writing games and building small stuff you can get very far without a large workshop, risky activity, rare or hard to buy supplies etc. I'm not at all saying the public education system can hold a candle to the effectiveness of what was told in this article and we could definitely improve a gazillion things about it. I'm just saying that this kid a lot of lucky factors coming together for it to work out THAT well.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

67 points by ivanech 2y ago

This is an interesting article and there are some interesting connections with education theory (not practice) based on my masters program. 1. Engagement. Learning is hard unless you are engaged. 2. Self-directed. Mastery education--independent mastery of the learning objectives-- was tried in the 1930's (Winnetka System) and it was very successful where it was tried. But it didn't match the goals of the education unions... 3. Montessori. The Montessori program emphasizes "self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play." This is a popular approach to learning. 4. Vygotsky. Social engagement is important in learning. Homeschooling as described in the article without peers goes against this theory. 5. Scaffolding. A theory of learning by constructing with prior knowledge. The article notes "going down rabbit holes" and that would agree with this theory. 6. Gardner. Theory of using "multiple intelligences" (kinetic, visual, logical, etc.) to learn. The described approach in the article would seem to agree with this theory. 7. Project-based. Using projects as a way to discover and learn. Again, the article seems to agree with this theory/approach ...and more In short, "unschooling" as described in the article seems to have support in major theories of education. However, the social aspect is not well supported. A curriculum is not a bad thing, it's a set of learning objectives which is necessary. What is not necessary for learning is the institutional aspect of school--which is what the author is trying to avoid and has discovered is not necessary. I believe that we are moving as a society to two norms: the "haves" will educate their children using various homeschooling approaches augmented by AI, and the "have nots" will be forced to attend institutions where the emphasis is discipline and not learning.

popalchemist 2y ago
If by "haves" you mean anyone who can work from home, then yes. But that is a large percentage of the population already and it seems to be increasing.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago
  I think you mean those that can "kinda work from home", and that set of people is small. Teaching is a full time job. So is a job. Doing at a half-decent job as a teacher means taking a step back from the main job, and not every employer will tolerate this.
  - KerrAvon 2y ago
    I think the idea here is that AI will teach, like in the Asimov story “The Fun They Had” (IIRC). (Not endorsing.)
glitchc 2y ago
The haves also constitute enrollees of private schools, where the school's pedagogy is aligned with the parents'.
JackMorgan 2y ago
Thanks for writing this up. I studied education in college and was a middle school teacher at a public school before growing so jaded I had to become a software engineer (that and I couldn't afford to pay my student loans). So many people have no idea about education theory and incorrectly assume public schools are the most efficient because they are taught by trained educators. Unfortunately, trained educators were all taught NOT to teach this way and are prevented from doing what is most effective by the administration and the state. Our schools are designed to stamp out creativity, critical thinking, strong collective bargaining and solidarity, democracy, and the love of learning. https://cantrip.org/gatto.html https://cantrip.org/gatto.html

dkz999 2y ago

I agree that classical schooling has fallen far away from learning (as the author defines it). That has even crept more and more into "higher education". This is a travesty and produces worse people, citizens, what have you. But i'll still make this point: its an oversimplification to say that education (as defined) is bad. No matter how much it doesn't align with your passion, you will need to have a basic set of book smarts to hope to thrive in the world. If for no other reason than there will almost certainly be some aspect of that passion that touches on those missing rudimentary skills. I also personally don't want to live in a world where a significant portion of people don't know basic history or understand eating tide pods is bad.

Kamq 2y ago
> I also personally don't want to live in a world where a significant portion of people don't know basic history As quizzes on late night talk shows have shown for the past 20+ years, the current education system doesn't accomplish this. Additionally basic numeracy drops of _severely_ after leaving school, which means a majority of people aren't really absorbing anything beyond arithmetic on the math side.
- vundercind 2y ago
  The loss of numeracy also reflects the vast majority of adults never using high school math or greater… like, ever, at all. I used to be Ok at math. I would now fail any math test past 10th grade (forget college), and I’m not so confident about 8th or 9th either. I also used to be pretty good at French. I’ve lost most of it. Rarely having a reason to use a skill means you lose it.
  - bradleyjg 2y ago
    So why do we spend enormous amounts of time and money teaching people things we know most will quickly lose?
    - vundercind 2y ago

tkuraku 2y ago

I was homeschooled from 3rd through 8th grade And then attended public high school. I think home school can be great. however, I've never met anyone who is obviously advantaged because of home school, but I've met a few that were obviously disadvantaged.

llmblockchain 2y ago

I've been struggling with this as well. I feel like my kids go into elementary school and spend ~7 hours (most of the day) not really learning anything. They come home and do "home work" only for myself and my spouse to teach them only for them to eat, sleep and do it again the next day. I feel like it has eradicated much of the family time for bonding. The only reason we hesitate to take them out of school is the socialization aspect.

trust_bt_verify 2y ago
> The only reason we hesitate to take them out of school is the socialization aspect. You really hit the nail on the head for me here. I see that kids need to work with large, consistent, groups of their peers for years to learn all of the skills needed to be socially competent (work and play). Many don’t get this and it can really show when they move into adulthood.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  It is interesting that the OP wrote "not really learning anything", then talked about the social aspect. That _is_ learning. For most people in this world, they won't be on the STEM track. In these cases, having well-developed social skills is crucial to your adult life. And, even the STEM track, those with better social skills are usually more successful, excluding the extreme minority of "head-down" STEM types who barely need to talk with anyone to be very successful.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Well-developed social skills matter for kinds on STEM track as much. It is not just that you get more successful if you don't have them, it is that you become impossible to work with.
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  Everyone I know who was homeschooled in grade school went to college and learned how to socialize like an adult there. That's an environment that's ideal for learning how to socialize. Not a few brief minutes a day on the bus or in between classes.

caseyy 2y ago

This is somewhat concerning to me, a software engineer in the games industry. It's true that the schooling system has failed in many parts of the world to the point that it might harm kids in many ways, even stunting them academically. And it's great that the author's kid likes to program games and is great at Photoshop and 3D. But the usual curriculum at schools provides a breadth of general knowledge that I don't think parents or online tutorials would ever substitute for. While this kid may be the next John Carmack, are they now robbed of the opportunity to gain enough knowledge in other disciplines to ever succeed in being a doctor, a lawyer, a mathematician or a historian? I believe so. Kids are really good at learning from anything they have access to, but online content is heavily skewed to entertainment (such as video games), and almost totally non-existent in other areas. Before I ended up in games, I tried a few different disciplines. I went to med-school and learned things I would have never learned on YouTube because they would have simply been demonetized. Simple biology is often a controversial topic on ad-supported platforms, let alone any kind of injury or most illnesses. Health topics are very muddied by grifters to the point that patients self-diagnosing by YouTube are often very confused. So this kid would have a serious disadvantage if they ever wanted to be a doctor if this is where they learned about it. And this is assuming they would be capable of reconciling the misleading knowledge with real knowledge to be good enough at the discipline, anyways. So all in all, I can see the benefits, but it is also very concerning to me that a kid is seriously using online content for unsupervised learning. We have all recently got a taste of how unsupervised learning on online content goes. And it's not just detrimental in learning, the world view itself online is very skewed. I am not necessarily very good at education though, so take this with a pinch of salt. It is not impossible that someone's parents, with the help of the internet, could indeed provide better education than traditional schools. I think there are such parents, although probably few and far in between.

glitchc 2y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. Technology is only good at teaching material related to technology. Sometimes the link is tenuous at best, but as long as one exists, it works. In any other subject matter areas, the kid will pick up a bunch of half-truths and whole lies.
ndriscoll 2y ago

smeej 2y ago

In unschooling circles, that "detox" period is called "deschooling," and is estimated to take about a month per year of formal schooling. If you've ever taken a break from work, you've probably experienced something like it. At first, you drive yourself crazy, because you don't know what to do with yourself now that you're outside the routine you've "always" had and "everybody" else seems to have. Then there's a period of mental stagnation. To me, it feels kind of like defragging my brain. It needs not to be doing much else as it processes all the stuff it's just knuckled down and gotten through over the years, trying to craft some sort of self narrative about it that integrates it and makes it into a (semi-)coherent set of desires and character traits. Eventually you come out of it and start wanting to do stuff again. It might be the same kinds of projects. It might not. It might change pretty frequently, because you're still testing your new ideas against this new self narrative, and iterating on both. I think not doing this periodically ruins people's lives. That's how you end up with death bed regrets about never becoming the person you wanted to be. The first few times I did it, I really got worried about the early stages, but now I'm realizing there's a pattern. It comes together in the end, and I'm always better off for having done it! If you can teach this to your kids early on, their lives will be so much better for it.

caseyy 2y ago
A lot of people realize they have been missing this in their middle-age crises and then they go off to the Himalayas, the Oceania, the Amazon, and so on. Our brain gets mothballed by routine and the years fly by without us doing what matters to us, or why we even got jobs in the first place. We also get convinced, with every passing day, that this is good for us. That routine provides structure, stability, safety. Then at some point, we are so convinced we don't have the capacity to doubt it anymore. Some of us will get shocked out of it by some kind of a trigger, like a death, financial shock, physical ability changes, etc. But not everyone.
xkgt 2y ago
The author did enroll his kid into school for freshman after a break. Is this normally considered beneficial? Having a period of unschooling followed by traditional school?

frithsun 2y ago

I'm a homeschool parent, and we wouldn't have it any other way for our family. But one thing I've learned is that most homeschool parents are even worse than public school and the risk of permanently harming your child through neglect is dreadfully real. Most of the flattering literature for unschooling is, as with the link, a case where the parents and child are naturally gifted and curious, and they credit whatever they ended up doing with the kid's relative success. Even gifted and curious kids run into situations where some structured learning that won't be immediately rewarding needs to happen. There needs to be an adult paying attention and intervening, even in the best cases. Every parent should have the right to homeschool. But from what I've seen, most parents should go ahead and trust American public schools, which are actually very competitive with the best in the world after adjusting for the familiar, stubborn demographic realities.

throw46365 2y ago
> But one thing I've learned is that most homeschool parents are even worse than public school and the risk of permanently harming your child through neglect is dreadfully real. Right. Here in the UK it is an unusual thing but I think the majority of homeschoolers who are not doing so for reasons of child ill health or significant neurodiversity are, unfortunately, irresponsible or ignorant. I am not saying that I believe it is impossible for a child to be homeschooled well, especially by well-to-do parents who can hire tutors, but what I find is that those parents usually believe one or more other extremely outlying thing —- antivax, sovereign citizen, fear of radio frequencies, or extreme religion —- that is a kind of intellectual abuse, and is at odds with the kind of basic pedagogical commitment that is needed to make education work. Kids mostly cannot learn effectively from people who do not spend time thinking about the business of teaching. Some of the “homeschooling circles” around majority wealthy towns like the one I live in are just unbelievably silly people who are raising admittedly charming, polite, but borderline uneducated children who will have to rely on their parents’ networking skills to get anywhere in life and who are in for a shock at which doors do not open for them.
- rayiner 2y ago
  [flagged]

bleakenthusiasm 2y ago

I like the entire structure that they put up for their kids to learn and I think it would work for many children. However, I doubt it would work for many parents. The author already pointed out that it worked because they both worked from home. To most this is an unimaginable luxury. The parents didn't strictly supervise or guide the kid in this case but I strongly assume that they engaged if the kid had questions or just wanted to talk something through. They also apparently had specialized software and a 3d printer at hand or were ready to buy one without long preamble. The kid's interests were rather easy to handle up until a pretty high level of skill. With writing games and building small stuff you can get very far without a large workshop, risky activity, rare or hard to buy supplies etc. I'm not at all saying the public education system can hold a candle to the effectiveness of what was told in this article and we could definitely improve a gazillion things about it. I'm just saying that this kid a lot of lucky factors coming together for it to work out THAT well.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]