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One thing I've never understood with homeschooling: How come parents think they have the competence to be a teacher? Just because you are educated doesn't mean

• ecshafer 2y ago
  I had numerous teachers that won local and regional teacher of the year awards that were, too put it bluntly, terrible at teaching. The actual pedagogical education that teachers receive is not good, and when you look at the rigor in their degree programs it would be found extremely wanting compared to just about any hard science degree program. There are numerous examples of pedagogical research being neglected to be included in programs for dogmatic reasons, and the usage of such methods like whole word reading over phonics would indicate large scale failure. Anecdotally, if I were to stack rank my education in k-12 based on quality of teacher, it would essentially be all professors followed by k-12 teachers, with those receiving more teacher instruction being lower on the list. I was once instructed by a history teacher, to not use examples on a history essay that we didn't learn in class, because she had to look them up. I find it incredibly easy to believe that I can teach my children better than the average teacher.
• netdevphoenix 2y ago
  Hundred percent. They vastly underestimate teaching in the same way that people resorting to homeopaths for serious illnesses underestimates the training and knowledge doctors go through.
• demosthanos 2y ago
  We don't think we have the competence to be a teacher. We would never presume to teach someone else's kids. We think we have a relationship with our own child that allows us to understand what they need and how to communicate with them in a way that works for them. We think we have the time (assuming one parent is full time parenting) to give our child the attention they need to excel. And we believe that a combination of relationship and individual attention goes further in K–12 than any amount of formal training in education.
  • spiderfarmer 2y ago
    You can do all that on top of a normal education.
    • ndriscoll 2y ago
      If you do that, the normal education is redundant. You wouldn't put a university student in class to learn multiplication; it's an insulting waste of their time. Why would you do the same to a 10 year old who mastered it years ago?
    • ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      Not really. There are only so many hours in the day. The time between school and bedtime is extremely limited and involves other time consuming activities such as after school sports and eating dinner. I work on homework with my kid every day and after all those things it's not like we have time (or she has energy) to fill in holes in her at-school learning
      • spiderfarmer 2y ago
        I teach my kids valuable lessons in the car, during dinner and on evening walks. But I’m not in a country that is starving their education system.
        • ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
          This is asinine. Next time you're in the car, try teaching your kid about solving systems of equations where both are linear vs one is linear and the other is parabolic. It's a lot easier to sketch it out on scratch paper than to pontificate from the driver's seat.
          • esafak 2y ago
            Try talking about history, philosophy, literature, religion, sociology, or physics while driving. Audio books exist, after all.
• ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  >Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator. 100%. But this also applies to people with degrees in education, teaching certs, and employment at your local school. How do parents judge the ability of local teachers to be a good (pedagogical) teacher? If they discover a bad teacher, what is their recourse?
  • s0kr8s 2y ago
    Agreed. Titles and credentials do not mean what they used to, in education and a lot of other fields. Sufficient erosion in the meaning and value of 3rd party teaching credentials then diminishes the relative value of outsourcing the process vs. doing it in-house: literally.
• SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Educators are trained to teach any kid effectively. Parents have the much easier problem of teaching a handful of specific kids, who they've spent their entire lives with and share half their DNA.
• nataliste 2y ago
  One thing I've never understood with public schooling: How come teachers think they have the competence to be in loco parentis? Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator.
  • bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > How come teachers think they have the competence to be in loco parentis? Multiple members of my wife's family are teachers in the local public school system. From what they have told me: they don't want to be in that place. Parents demand it of them, despite their strong attempts to push back and say "hey this one is your job as the parent to solve". So that's the reason in at least some cases, although probably not all.
  • defrost 2y ago
    Here in this country it's not teachers that assess their own compentence to be educators, it's their mentors that guide and grade them through a university Bachelor of Education Course and their first year trials of "live" teaching in the wild.
• EA-3167 2y ago
  I'm generally not a fan of home schooling in a lot of cases, part of what school does is expose you to a vertical slice of humanity, and you will almost certainly be dealing with that for the rest of your life. HOWEVER... remember that "home schooled" doesn't mean "as a parent you are the only teacher" right? You can hire tutors, you can form teaching groups with other parents, you can use online resources, etc. If done WELL and with a sense of one's own limitations, and the need to socialize your child, homeschooling can work. It's just unfortunate that so often homeschooling is used as a way to ensure that no outside influences interrupt a parent's particular brand of ideological indoctrination... although in the narrow case of tech parents, I suspect that's less of a driving force.
  • hilux 2y ago
    > part of what school does is expose you to a vertical slice of humanity I love that phrasing! I think I'm going to use it – thank you.
• spiderfarmer 2y ago
  The USA hasn’t had a healthy education system for decades, so parents who have gone through that system are a) not very well educated and b) think they can do better.
  • rmk 2y ago
    This is a weak argument. The US has a patchy K-12 system whose quality varies from abysmal to world-beating, depending on many factors. It has, indisputably, one of the world's best universities. Lots of people who have gone through the former but are also products of the latter. They can be very well educated, and do better than credentialed teachers (let's face it, the only difference is that; also a known fact that brighter, higher-IQ people do not gravitate toward K-12 teaching).
• cloverich 2y ago
  The same logic applies to teachers, and can be applied against your own question. As an example i once lost a mark on a math test because when rounding to the nearest whole number, i put 3.0 as the answer. Wrong. 3 is a whole number, 3.0 is not i was told, and threatened with suspension on protest. That kind of thing sticks with you. I agree with your sentiment however, i just dont think its a powerful retort.
  • NDizzle 2y ago
    Well, you were technically wrong. Which is wrong. var wholeNumber = 3.0; - what type will be assumed for that value?
    • JohnHaugeland 2y ago
      The class is mathematics. In mathematics, numbers do not have types. You also shouldn't try to mention INT_MAX, negative zero, rounding error, or other computer science topics which do not exist in mathematics.
      • bluGill 2y ago
        Type theory comes from math. Numbers in math do in fact have types. Most of the time we ignore it but numbers in math have types. math also has the concept of max number rolling back to zero ogain something anyone who has studied types in math would know. Rounding error is studied in several different math fields. negative zero isn't in any math I know of. It is only in obsolete computer science though.
        • ndriscoll 2y ago
          Mathematicians generally work with sets, not types. The first thing you do after defining the reals is agree that the naturals, integers, and rationals are subsets. From a type theory perspective, they are all type ℝ, and, roughly, the naturals satisfy the proposition "n:ℝ is a natural number".
• wrenky 2y ago
  I was homeschooled from 2nd - 8th grade. My elementary school was trying to put my brother on adderall and my class had sorted me into the "blue" group of readers (colors of the rainbow for reading ability). I apparently came home talking about how I was slow and it was okay because we all learn at our own pace. Definitely not a great school! both my brother and I ended up going to college and getting engineering degrees, and had zero issues with academics in high school. My mom did a pretty okay job but it was absolute hell on her, I entered high school ahead on mathematics/history but pretty behind on writing and science. The science I dont blame my mom for, all the curriculum at the time was insanely religious, so the ones we could find were very dry.
• from-nibly 2y ago
  That's like half your job as a parent: teaching your kids stuff ( the other half being: keeping them alive). You are THE most qualified person on the planet to teach your own kids anything.
  • esafak 2y ago
    Alas, not every parent is well educated.
    • from-nibly 2y ago
      So?
      • esafak 2y ago
        So they're not the most qualified person to teach children, contrary to the claim.
  • blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    This is exactly why I dislike the push to erode parental rights or attack homeschooling, which is happening in many blue states. Parents know best, not a civil worker (teachers) or bureaucrat or the “state”.
  • xboxnolifes 2y ago
    Well, maybe not best, but it's also not something I would advocate for taking away from parents. It's silly to pretend parents need a degree to teach their kids something when teaching their kids how to live life is half of the job.
  • vel0city 2y ago
    I am absolutely not the most qualified person on the planet to teach my kids quantum physics. I'm also absolutely not the most qualified person on the planet to teach them geology. Probably also not the most qualified person to teach them advanced biochemistry.
• ndriscoll 2y ago
  We haven't really decided what we're going to do with our kids. I personally think I'd enjoy homeschooling them, but I don't know what their preferences will be. Their mom would appreciate the break. That said, 1. Teachers develop skills in managing rooms of ~30 kids. I believe this is completely different from tutoring someone 1:1 and likely has very little overlap. 2. Part of my day job is already mentoring/teaching. I enjoy that part of my work. I've received feedback that I'm good at it. Actually when I was younger I thought I'd switch into teaching after building up some savings with programming. I've since heard/read enough about the realities of being a teacher that I can't imagine doing that job (especially with public school). Homeschooling or teaching a homeschool pod seems like the best way to actually be able to teach if that's your inclination. 3. The k-12 curriculum is not really much to cover. Schools move at a pace appropriate for the slower kids in the room. It doesn't seem like a high bar to beat, and most of what I've found looking into it indicates that homeschool parents generally do outperform schools with a fraction of the time spent. 3a. I've already been teaching my 3 year old phonics and reading when she's in the mood. She doesn't really have the attention to sit and focus for more than ~5 minutes, but that's okay, and it's still going alright. I expect she'll already be years ahead of the school curriculum before it's even time to start. So initial results have been promising and suggest I am indeed capable of teaching a child. 4. When it comes to more advanced/in-depth understanding, I don't expect teachers to have the background. Like just looking at the math education program at my alma mater, there's no requirement for real analysis or algebra. There's no requirement for science courses (physics, chemistry, etc.). All of the options in the math department except education require at least a minor in another STEM subject. It's no surprise that a common trope is that teachers (particularly math) don't know how to answer how something gets used in the real world, but that's insane to me as a status quo. There are tons of applications of pretty much any math you might learn before graduate level in pretty much any field you examine (conic sections stand out to me as a niche thing that we covered in high school. Not that they don't have applications to e.g. orbits, but they don't seem to apply to other fields, and I don't believe the connection to physics was made in my high school class anyway (presumably because math teachers where I grew up aren't required to learn physics)). Honestly I think school is mostly more useful for socializing and something like arts/crafts that entail mess and require a bunch of energy to do at home, especially before high school/AP classes. The academic part seems trivial. Once you've reached that conclusion, it makes sense to ask whether there are alternatives that are better suited/are more aware of and aligned to their purpose as enrichment.
• TheFreim 2y ago
  > Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator. This applies equally to paid teachers, along with numerous downsides that don't apply to parents (i.e. being able to tailor education to a single individual, developing a relationship that lasts close to two decades, ability to slow down and speed up course material where necessary, and more). Paid teachers, contrary to semi-popular mythology, are not special and don't do anything that an average person couldn't do (they are not extra-"competent"). In the natural course of being a parent you learn how to interact, guide, and teach your children. This argument also fails in many concrete situations. For example, where I grew up there is a decent homeschooling community made up of people with average levels of education, low to average income, and yet the kids perform very well academically and are well socialized. Saying that these parents are not competent because didn't get a badge (education-related degree) is absurd considering they do as well as the people who did get that badge.
  • poulsbohemian 2y ago
    Great, I'm sure you'll have no problem using the services of a self-taught doctor, lawyer, or engineer then. After all, why would they need to be taught by a professional? Go spend some time in a classroom and get a fucking clue how much more there is to teaching than what your layman's view entails. You, and this disrespect for our educators and the potential of what we could be offering in our public schools is why we are the laughing stock of the developed world.
    • theamk 2y ago
      Teaching twenty kids of wildly different levels is always going to be harder that teaching a single kid, so parents have a great advantage by default. Yes, there are educators who are so great they can teach all 20 kids amazingly well, but those are super rare. Most likely kids who are learn much faster or much slower than the rest will be left behind. If you child is in this group, it's better off to stay away from public school. (It could have been much better if there were advanced classes, "magnet" schools, etc.. but in many states those programs are being cancelled and everyone is being forced into rigid programs.)
    • 2y ago
• evantbyrne 2y ago
  Depends on the parents because a lot of them are more than qualified. The typical education major isn't exactly a scholar, but that is also true of most people.
• StanislavPetrov 2y ago
  When I was in school for my master's degree some years ago, several of my classes were heavily populated by teachers (New York State requires teachers to have or get a master's degree within 5 years of being certified). All were humanities teachers (English, Social Studies, ect - no STEM). At least half of them had great difficulty simply writing a one page essay. With one or two exceptions, reading comprehension was absolutely abysmal. At least two of them were functionally illiterate (in a master's program!). All were certified teachers who were actively working in schools. The fact is that in many places school standards have been so low and social promotion has been going on for so long that we now have people coming out of high school and college that have never achieved anything academically. Many of these people go into teaching (even when schools were academically rigorous, majoring in education was always regarded as one of the least challenging areas of study). That isn't to say that there aren't good teachers, or that there aren't smart teachers - there certainly are. It is to say that having an education degree or a teacher's certificate does not mean that one is qualified to do anything. Does this mean every parent is smart enough or cut out to properly home school their child? Of course not! What it means is that (many) schools have effectively failed as institutions and until they are improved many people are going to look for alternatives.
  • defrost 2y ago
    > It is to say that having an education degree or a teacher's certificate does not mean that one is qualified to do anything. It absolutely does in Finland. It absolutely carried meaning when I was educated in my (non Finnish, non US) country. What is revealed here is that a New York State teachers certificate doesn't mean much.
• Matticus_Rex 2y ago
  I'm a former public school teacher -- maybe I can explain. There's a lot of competence necessary to teach two dozen kids with different backgrounds and mastery levels, even in the rare moments when 2-4 of them aren't actively trying to derail the entire class. The base level of competence necessary to go through a curriculum with one/a few of your own children is much, much lower. Could I do better with one/a few of your children given as much time and attention? Pretty definitely. Can I do better if your kid is in my classroom? In most cases, no. Sure, there are things I could explain or guide a kid through because of my background and skills that homeschooling parents can't (though it mostly just takes more time and effort), but there's a huge amount they can do because of their relationship, access, and ability to devote time and attention that I couldn't hope to. And with modern homeschooling resources, tutors/group microschooling, online courses and group study, etc., the deficits have never been easier to overcome. Also, two underdiscussed points: 1. An untrained, literate adult probably needs less than two hours to help a kid through what they'd learn in an eight-hour day at school. That time can go to other things. If they're productive, great. If they're not, no huge loss. 2. People significantly overestimate the level of care and competence average teachers have. You remember some fantastic ones. If fantastic and caring was the norm, you were quite lucky.
• logicchains 2y ago
  The average public school teacher is somewhere in the average top 40-30% in intelligence/academic achievement. Anyone who's a top performer academically is going to be much more competent than the average public school teacher.
• purplethinking 2y ago
  Teachers in most countries are, at best, mid-wits with no practical or real world experience. I know teachers who barely passed math in high school who are now match teachers. It's like a basketball teacher who went to "Basketball Teaching School", who's never played basketball in his life, teaching kids how to play basketball.
• anon291 2y ago
  I dunno... what qualifies them to be a parent?