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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 p

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]
  - defrost 2y ago
    > Your stereotypes about home schooled children are just wrong: in the opinion of Brendan W Case, someone deeply embedded within a particular Christian PoV who prolifictly writes about such things . . . > let’s talk about the toxic individualism and narcissism you learn in secular public schools. Another of Brendan's opinions, or one of your own then?
    - rayiner 2y ago
      > in the opinion of Brendan W Case, someone deeply embedded within a particular Christian PoV who prolifictly writes about such things He’s talking about the results of a Harvard study. When Harvard studies support a Christian viewpoint, Christians are going to write about the findings. What’s your point? > Another of Brendan's opinions, or one of your own then? No, my personal opinion. Compared to Mormons secular Americans are just awful. I don’t even have a dog in that hunt, I’m from a Muslim country. But having seen the school system here I’m not surprised. It’s just “me, me, me, do what you want, be who you want to be.”
      - defrost 2y ago
        So .. just absolute truth, black and white right|wrong with no possibility of a value judgement then. Or self reflection either. Got it. I have nothing to add as a clearly narcissistic product of a public secular school.
  - throw46365 2y ago
    Yes, I went to a good school with Mormons. There’s not much toxic individualism and narcissism in British state schools. Our education culture is a bit more inclusive and outward-looking. Homeschooling is unusual here simply because people don’t feel (with good reason) schools are poisoning their kids or risking getting them shot. But I would concede that the culture of homeschooling may be more fringe here precisely because of that.
rayiner 2y ago
I think your anecdotal experience with homeschooling is skewing your perspective about how bad public schools are on average. Statistics show that, on average, home school students outperform public school systems, for example on the ACT: https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info-Brief-2015-2.pdf https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info.... According to a Harvard study, home school students also do better on various measures of well being: https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-schoolers-schooling-are-doing-right-education-parents-bartholet-harvard-parenting-11636577345 https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-schoolers-schooling-are-do...
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  That's not a study...that's an opinion article published by a conservative-leaning news outlet. Chen hasn't published in four years, and I don't see a single paper title that seems relevant: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=J_LdHBIAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=J_LdHBIAAAAJ "More likely to attend religious services with their parents" was one of their criteria for well-being. Another was the likelihood of attending religious services in adulthood. That's an absurd yardstick for well-being. The same two authors produced another opinion piece for the WSJ that basically says "marriage makes women happier": https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-scholars-marriage-makes-women-happier-and-healthier/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-scholars-marriage-make... The center where she works ( https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu ), here are two of their upcoming 'workshops': > World Congress on Moral Injury, Trauma, Spirituality, and Healing > Early Christianity and Flourishing Workshops Here's the staff directory for the "institute" at Harvard where the study was done: https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/our-people https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/our-people Notice that a rather large number of people in the department came from a religious university or have degrees that are related to religion? Chen's bio includes: > Her other work and interests include a) social disparity in the distribution of well-being; b) the biological and behavioral mechanisms linking childhood familial experiences to health in adulthood; c) the influences of religious participation on individuals’ subsequent health and well-being.
  - rayiner 2y ago
KennyBlanken 2y ago
Of course it's great for the kids in families where there is enough wealth for one parent, who is highly educated. The studies that claim homeschooling is better are of laughably poor quality in terms of basic research methodology, and make no effort to adjust for factors like socioeconomic conditions in the household or even the education level of the parents. Guess who funds most of the research into homeschooling? Homeschooling organizations. It gets worse. A lot of the studies compare tests in school that are standardized or written by professional educators...to tests produced and graded by the parent of the home-schooled kid: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202109/the-research-homeschooling https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator... Even Brian Ray's daughter says homeschooling doesn't work: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/11/brian-ray-homeschool-student-outcomes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/11/brian-ra... Things are even worse in religious private/charter schools. The vast majority of Yeshivas are turning out students who fail to meet New York's equivalency standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Hasidic_education_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Hasidic_education_con... That's impressive given religious schools don't have to accommodate special needs students (ranging from physical disabilities to learning disabilities) which are incredibly expensive, can boot out students who are simply difficult to teach, and can boot out students who have disciplinary issues, disrupting their peers. When religious schools that are allowed to cherrypick the cheapest-to-teach, brightest students end up producing kids who fail the floor (minimum state standards) that is astounding.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  > Of course it's great for the kids in families where there is enough wealth for one parent, who is highly educated That's still pretty useful information if you're in that demographic though, right? Seems like the OP author and their readership might be, so it's reasonable for them to report their experiences for others like them (who might be overrepresented on this forum, for example) to ponder.
phil21 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. This more or less sums of my feelings on the subject as well. A properly home schooled kid is likely to excel to incomparable levels to the same kid in the lowest-common-denominator setting the public schooling system as become. If taught correctly and intensely. Unfortunately home schooling tends to self-select for many parents who have the worst possible intentions. When I was home schooled my parents were extremely actively in the local home schooling groups. There might have been exactly one other family there that were in it for the actual better/accelerated education vs. indoctrination and shielding kids from reality/greater society. The community is also absolutely rife full of outright child abuse excused and swept under the rug in the name of religiosity and minding your own business. I have very mixed feelings on the subject. On one hand, my home schooling until 5th grade likely got my all the way through high school in terms of academics. On the other hand, it certainly put me so far behind my peers socially I never really caught up to this day. This wasn't due to lack of trying or effort on my parents - it was due to the socializing being with a very specific segment of the population. Of course every group and area is wildly different. That's kind of the point of home schooling. If I had another kid I would consider it strongly, but with a whole heck of a lot of professional support. I wouldn't even remotely consider it without having either an unlimited amount of time or a very high budget to augment what I can not realistically teach effectively.
dxbydt 2y ago
> trust American public schools, which are actually very competitive with the best in the world Patent nonsense. Absolute rubbish. There are kids in mud huts in India, right outside the lower middle class home I grew up in, with no proper electricity or water supply, who would outcompete the American public school kid in every STEM metric. Kids over here pass shoddy 5-pointer AP calc exams and don't even know basic trig.They have to take remedial calc as freshmen. I know, I taught them as a TA. Best in the world ?!
- watwut 2y ago
  That is not just true dude.

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]
- defrost 2y ago
  > Your stereotypes about home schooled children are just wrong: in the opinion of Brendan W Case, someone deeply embedded within a particular Christian PoV who prolifictly writes about such things . . . > let’s talk about the toxic individualism and narcissism you learn in secular public schools. Another of Brendan's opinions, or one of your own then?
  - rayiner 2y ago
    > in the opinion of Brendan W Case, someone deeply embedded within a particular Christian PoV who prolifictly writes about such things He’s talking about the results of a Harvard study. When Harvard studies support a Christian viewpoint, Christians are going to write about the findings. What’s your point? > Another of Brendan's opinions, or one of your own then? No, my personal opinion. Compared to Mormons secular Americans are just awful. I don’t even have a dog in that hunt, I’m from a Muslim country. But having seen the school system here I’m not surprised. It’s just “me, me, me, do what you want, be who you want to be.”
    - defrost 2y ago
      So .. just absolute truth, black and white right|wrong with no possibility of a value judgement then. Or self reflection either. Got it. I have nothing to add as a clearly narcissistic product of a public secular school.
- throw46365 2y ago
  Yes, I went to a good school with Mormons. There’s not much toxic individualism and narcissism in British state schools. Our education culture is a bit more inclusive and outward-looking. Homeschooling is unusual here simply because people don’t feel (with good reason) schools are poisoning their kids or risking getting them shot. But I would concede that the culture of homeschooling may be more fringe here precisely because of that.

rayiner 2y ago

I think your anecdotal experience with homeschooling is skewing your perspective about how bad public schools are on average. Statistics show that, on average, home school students outperform public school systems, for example on the ACT: https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info-Brief-2015-2.pdf https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info.... According to a Harvard study, home school students also do better on various measures of well being: https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-schoolers-schooling-are-doing-right-education-parents-bartholet-harvard-parenting-11636577345 https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-schoolers-schooling-are-do...

KennyBlanken 2y ago
That's not a study...that's an opinion article published by a conservative-leaning news outlet. Chen hasn't published in four years, and I don't see a single paper title that seems relevant: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=J_LdHBIAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=J_LdHBIAAAAJ "More likely to attend religious services with their parents" was one of their criteria for well-being. Another was the likelihood of attending religious services in adulthood. That's an absurd yardstick for well-being. The same two authors produced another opinion piece for the WSJ that basically says "marriage makes women happier": https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-scholars-marriage-makes-women-happier-and-healthier/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-scholars-marriage-make... The center where she works ( https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu ), here are two of their upcoming 'workshops': > World Congress on Moral Injury, Trauma, Spirituality, and Healing > Early Christianity and Flourishing Workshops Here's the staff directory for the "institute" at Harvard where the study was done: https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/our-people https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/our-people Notice that a rather large number of people in the department came from a religious university or have degrees that are related to religion? Chen's bio includes: > Her other work and interests include a) social disparity in the distribution of well-being; b) the biological and behavioral mechanisms linking childhood familial experiences to health in adulthood; c) the influences of religious participation on individuals’ subsequent health and well-being.
- rayiner 2y ago

KennyBlanken 2y ago

Of course it's great for the kids in families where there is enough wealth for one parent, who is highly educated. The studies that claim homeschooling is better are of laughably poor quality in terms of basic research methodology, and make no effort to adjust for factors like socioeconomic conditions in the household or even the education level of the parents. Guess who funds most of the research into homeschooling? Homeschooling organizations. It gets worse. A lot of the studies compare tests in school that are standardized or written by professional educators...to tests produced and graded by the parent of the home-schooled kid: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202109/the-research-homeschooling https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator... Even Brian Ray's daughter says homeschooling doesn't work: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/11/brian-ray-homeschool-student-outcomes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/11/brian-ra... Things are even worse in religious private/charter schools. The vast majority of Yeshivas are turning out students who fail to meet New York's equivalency standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Hasidic_education_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Hasidic_education_con... That's impressive given religious schools don't have to accommodate special needs students (ranging from physical disabilities to learning disabilities) which are incredibly expensive, can boot out students who are simply difficult to teach, and can boot out students who have disciplinary issues, disrupting their peers. When religious schools that are allowed to cherrypick the cheapest-to-teach, brightest students end up producing kids who fail the floor (minimum state standards) that is astounding.

ndriscoll 2y ago
> Of course it's great for the kids in families where there is enough wealth for one parent, who is highly educated That's still pretty useful information if you're in that demographic though, right? Seems like the OP author and their readership might be, so it's reasonable for them to report their experiences for others like them (who might be overrepresented on this forum, for example) to ponder.

phil21 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. This more or less sums of my feelings on the subject as well. A properly home schooled kid is likely to excel to incomparable levels to the same kid in the lowest-common-denominator setting the public schooling system as become. If taught correctly and intensely. Unfortunately home schooling tends to self-select for many parents who have the worst possible intentions. When I was home schooled my parents were extremely actively in the local home schooling groups. There might have been exactly one other family there that were in it for the actual better/accelerated education vs. indoctrination and shielding kids from reality/greater society. The community is also absolutely rife full of outright child abuse excused and swept under the rug in the name of religiosity and minding your own business. I have very mixed feelings on the subject. On one hand, my home schooling until 5th grade likely got my all the way through high school in terms of academics. On the other hand, it certainly put me so far behind my peers socially I never really caught up to this day. This wasn't due to lack of trying or effort on my parents - it was due to the socializing being with a very specific segment of the population. Of course every group and area is wildly different. That's kind of the point of home schooling. If I had another kid I would consider it strongly, but with a whole heck of a lot of professional support. I wouldn't even remotely consider it without having either an unlimited amount of time or a very high budget to augment what I can not realistically teach effectively.

dxbydt 2y ago

> trust American public schools, which are actually very competitive with the best in the world Patent nonsense. Absolute rubbish. There are kids in mud huts in India, right outside the lower middle class home I grew up in, with no proper electricity or water supply, who would outcompete the American public school kid in every STEM metric. Kids over here pass shoddy 5-pointer AP calc exams and don't even know basic trig.They have to take remedial calc as freshmen. I know, I taught them as a TA. Best in the world ?!

watwut 2y ago
That is not just true dude.