11 ms·

I can't say my public school experience was great, I was bullied and didn't really click with the popular kids, but being around a cross section of actual Ameri

I can't say my public school experience was great, I was bullied and didn't really click with the popular kids, but being around a cross section of actual American kids in my age group (my school district mixed middle class with lower class neighborhoods) helped me shape my worldview and learn to deal with people who didn't look or talk like me. I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch your mouth around specific people. I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them.

gred 11mo ago
> I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. Popularity is not an exclusively American concept. Just as public school broadened your horizons, so will traveling (or living) abroad.
- zdragnar 11mo ago
  Too many CO2 emissions for that to be practical for the billions of people who don't have public transit access to another nation.
  - beeflet 11mo ago
    not if you send em by boat
Redster 11mo ago
The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman. Other factors seem to play a much larger factor in the things you are (rightfully!) concerned about. As long as the parents have "the will to have nice things" (to refer to Patrick McKenzie's concept), then these are very surmountable problems. Respectfully, A grateful dad who was homeschooled and who will homeschool. P.S. Of course I will do some things differently than my parents, but it was an amazing gift and I had an extremely vibrant and stimulating time, including with peers (and adults!) outside of my parents' network who pushed me, challenged me, thought very differently than me, etc.
- valar_m 11mo ago
  >The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman. How do you do that? Seems like it would be impossible to replicate the experience of learning to navigate daily social interactions in a mixed group of people, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.
  - simeonf 11mo ago
    Easy - homeschooling may include but does not require "in the home" any more than "homework" is required to be done in your house. I was homeschooled and have homeschooled my three kids. Never has that meant "only at home and only with my family". My kids have been in co-op classes, taken classes from Art or Technical instruction centers (piano lessons, voice classes, programming, robotics), enrolled in community classes via private institutions and the local JC (cooking classes, performing arts) and been enrolled in independent study charter public schools which have some in-person classes. And in high school they start taking in-person JC courses. There is lots of regular exposure to a variety of other people in all of that!
    - lazyasciiart 11mo ago
      Just redefine homeschooling to include enrollment at schools and community colleges, tada.
  - synecdoche 11mo ago
    > especially when it comes to dealing with conflict. What makes you think school is a good environment for that? Kids can be very cruel to each other with often the most societally maladapted dominating for reasons that have no bearing in real life.
swannodette 11mo ago
If you can afford it! "Grass-roots segregation hits records numbers" would be an equally fitting title.
- nlavezzo 11mo ago
  What leads you to believe the reason parents are willing to dedicate huge amounts of their time and money to homeschool their children is racism? Maybe it's: - the terrible educational state of the school system? - the fact that device and social media addiction is a prevalent and growing problem that they don't want their kids brains rotted by? - they want to provide their kids an education based on experiential and project based learning rather than filling out worksheets? - they don't want their kids to be forced to wait for the slowest / least interested kids in class to catch up before moving on to more challenging material?
  - verdverm 11mo ago
    Are they going to spend huge amounts of time & money? I'd be willing to bet that we'll hear some stories about how they outsourced the effort to AI
  - 7thaccount 11mo ago
    Not sure why you're being down voted. I'm sure there are some folks homeschooling because of things like racism, but that has always existed just like evangelical christians have always been big into homeschooling. If there is a big uptake, it's likely due to the ever present threat of school shootings coupled with all the things you said above. I have to teach my kid a lot outside of school and they go to what is considered a good one. The only reason I send them is my spouse and I work and my kid needs to learn social skills. If I won the lottery, I'd homeschool them myself and do it for a few other families as well so that my kid can get the social aspect too.
  - sevensor 11mo ago
    I’m sure these motivations do play out in some circles. However, every single homeschooler I know personally, and I know quite a few, does so because they want their children to have a very specific kind of religious education. Often the way this plays out is that they homeschool for a while, transition to a denominational school, and then depending on the family they may stay there or make a second transition to public school around 9th grade. I think this tendency is heavily dependent on where you live. We have great public schools that will track advanced children aggressively if the parents push for it, so the motivations you list are unusual in my area.
noboostforyou 11mo ago
As the parent of a small child, there is a very noticeable difference in social skills that develop immediately as a result of my child being in a daycare interacting with other children of a similar age. Compared to my friends' same age children who are mostly staying at home and babysat by a grandparent. (as a disclaimer, the daycare has very good teachers/caregivers from what I can tell so I'm sure that's part of it as well)
- mtrovo 11mo ago
  Daycare quality is a spectrum, the same way as babysitting at home. My smaller one just started daycare, and we settled for one that actually does stuff with the kids (forest school style). But I can tell you, we've visited lots of places that are basically just making sure the kids are not dead by the time you pick them up. Same for babysitting with grandparents; there's the hyper-social grandpa style that's always doing something, and the couchpotato with +10k hours on Cocomelon.
  - noboostforyou 11mo ago
    Yes, I'll admit that my sample size for comparison is relatively small so I'm mostly offering anecdotal evidence. And I totally agree on the quality of daycares being a spectrum. Just like how one single, good teacher who actually cares can really change a student's school experience (even if the school itself is not that great).
- mordnis 11mo ago
  In my opinion, grandparents are the worst. They completely spoil them.
  - Tade0 11mo ago
    Or have bad habits like playing shovelware games on their phones.
  - razeh 11mo ago
    Every human being should have the experience of unconditional, unadulterated love from someone else. But not 24 by 7.
ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago
>cross section of actual American kids So many factors have led this to be a major liability for young people now. School is not what it was 20 years ago.
jeffbee 11mo ago
[flagged]
- bentley 11mo ago
  My public school experience was that the ones beating up other kids were usually the jerks.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
ecshafer 11mo ago
My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. There is the neighborhood kids, you have sports and clubs kids can join, religious groups. Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. Some people "homeschooling" I know are groups of parents getting together to educate their children together in small groups of ~5 kids to share the responsibility, and hiring a tutor to fill in the gaps. Monday they go John's house, his mom has a philosophy degree and teaches them. tuesday they go to Janes house, her dad is a Mathematician and teaches them. etc.
- skeeter2020 11mo ago
  It's going to depend greatly on your geo location and socioeconomic circumstances, but a homeschooled kid who interacts a lot in the neighbourhood (big "if", IME; those kids all have a lot of school friends) is still going to miss out on broader social, cultural, racial and financial exposure. Example: my white, middle-class kids have a lot of people exactly like them in community groups and sports clubs, but lots of eastern european & asian immigrants in their school classes. This is super-important in elementary school when they're far less aware and insular about interacting with people who are "different" IMO
  - damascus 11mo ago
    The venn diagram of 'homeschooled' and 'goes to church regularly' is not quite a circle but its not far off. Moderate to large churches also provide a great deal of socialization in this same way. Cross-socio-economic, racial, and other bases, all with a shared value system that creates a localized high trust environment that affords a greater degree of freedom for child autonomy.
- andyjohnson0 11mo ago
  Having a degree in philosophy or mathematics or whatever does not automatically make someone a good teacher. Teaching - particularly with young children - is a skill that is almost orthogonal to subject knowledge.
j45 11mo ago
There is some realy valid things to consider here. The thing it leaves me wondering is how many kids from elementary through high school a child really keeps in touch with, and if college is currently the place where many students finally get to start to be themselves.
usefulcat 11mo ago
There are certainly tradeoffs, but it's not all negative. In my experience, what it boils down to is that home-schooled kids tend to have more experience with adults and less experience dealing with a wide variety of other kids, particularly assholes. When I was a kid in public school, there was no shortage of assholes and I definitely would have preferred to not have to deal with them. OTOH, I don't doubt that there is also some value in that experience, not to mention interacting with all the other people. Also, we didn't have social media or semi-regular school shootings when I was a kid. So yeah.. to me, it's not at all obvious which set of tradeoffs is preferable nowadays.
- BobaFloutist 11mo ago
  You're forgetting that public school also exposes you to more adult assholes, including ones with direct power over you that can screw you over for no reason. It's important to know how and when to advocate for yourself and others, when to escalate through proper channels and when to escalate outside of proper channels, and when to back down and let them be an asshole because they're frankly not worth your time.
  - JoshTriplett 11mo ago
    In particular, learning "pretend to lose now, win later" is a useful skill. But I think there are healthier ways to learn that skill than on a live-fire course.
- ghssds 11mo ago
  What happens to asshole kids? Do they become regular adults or asshole adults? Do they become soldiers or prisonners never to be seen again by normies? Do they even reach adulthood? Are they even a stable group or were we all asshole kids to some other kids?
  - ksclarke 11mo ago
    Some become President of the United States. Others probably grow out of it?
OneLeggedCat 11mo ago
In the rural areas that I've lived in, it's mostly about a strong desire to supplant science and history with religious ideas and principles.
- satvikpendem 11mo ago
  That is exactly what I've seen, to keep kids in their brainwashing bubble.
  - TaupeRanger 11mo ago
    Where I live in the Midwest that is absolutely the case. The homeschool "groups" are almost all religiously oriented in some way.
    - marcus878 11mo ago
      Lived in the Midwest too when I was younger, wasn't till I grew up that I saw how religiously linked it all was.
  - UltraSane 11mo ago
    You are light gray but creating a bubble is actual expressed reason for many home schoolers like with young earth creationists.
- alphazard 11mo ago
  I hear this a lot, and it may be true, but I am very skeptical that it matters. The statistics about home-schooled children don't support the idea that they have horribly inaccurate models of the world guided mostly by religious thinking. Or if they do it doesn't seem to affect life achievement in any important way. Instead home-schooled children are typically more advanced at graduation and have higher lifetime achievement metrics than their public school counterparts. As an athiest, and a bayesian, it's difficult for me to worry about other peoples religious beliefs that don't seem to negatively affect them or me. Especially when there is propaganda taught in the public schools that does warp the students' world views in ways that harms them and me.
alphazard 11mo ago
> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them. The older I get, the more I think that helping your kids avoid interactions with others who aren't with the program is for the best. Ideally your children's friends should be people that you think are good kids, kids that you would go to bat for. Then when you are teaching your kids to compromise and play nice and forgive, you can legitimately feel good about it. I think my default assumption about a negative interaction with a public school random would be that they are basically a wild animal to be avoided.
- brailsafe 11mo ago
  The world is messy for all sorts of reasons, that may not be the way anyone would like it to be but it's the way it is, and imo it's best to learn it when the stakes are low rather than when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on, or they're being taken advantage of at work or in an adult relationship. I wouldn't fault someone for wanting to situate their kids among peers and adults that help them grow at a similar level rather than hinder it, but I think it's also best to be a guiding hand rather than a applicant tracking system when it comes to the non-academic side
  - MisterMower 11mo ago
    > when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on If you think homeschooling makes kids grow up to be prejudiced, you should just say that, instead of insinuating it.
    - brailsafe 11mo ago
      > If you think homeschooling makes kids grow up to be prejudiced, you should just say that, instead of insinuating it. Absolutely not what I was insinuating. I was suggesting that explicit isolation from potential peers that come from different levels of wealth or backgrounds based on pre-existing prejudice has the potential to reinforce those prejudices. I'd wager this would overwhelmingly come from private schools and suburbs, not homeschooling, but it's more of a matter of where the desire to control the exposure comes from if that's part of the reason. So no, I was making no direct association between homeschooling and prejudice.
jfreds 11mo ago
I was homeschooled until high school. I couldn’t agree with you more. The value that the socialization the public school offers is underestimated. Learning activities with other homeschooled kids is ok but not enough. A tight-knit neighborhood of friends is huge, but not enough. You need to develop a thick skin and a sense of self-assurance. I have no counterfactual of course, but I think much of the social anxiety I’ve had to unlearn as a young adult came from homeschooling. And I had great circumstances
- pyuser583 11mo ago
  I was horribly bullied in high school. It was really bad. The worst part was being ostracized. The school had anti-bullying policies, but they don’t force anyone to be your friend. Strangely, I was elected to lots of student government office, and held leadership in lots of clubs. Maybe my memory is just off, but I don’t think so. I think I was really good connecting with the grownups who ran the school, so they made sure I got leadership positions. I was always much better at being the kid in class the teacher liked - same with principals, etc. Probably one of the reasons the other kids didn’t like me - but that went over my head. I think it’s really easy to overestimate how important the socialization in public schools is. We go to so many movies where the plot is based on the dynamics of public high school, we assume it’s normal. We see so much of terrible stuff downplaid like it doesn’t matter. Just rewatched Back to the Future which laughingly brushes off every kind of violence as long as it’s done at the prom.
- DennisP 11mo ago
  And I've always felt that most of my social anxiety came from public school. Maybe we were both just prone to it. (I unlearned it too, but it took quite a while.)
- cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
  As someone else who was homeschooled except the last three grades, I also agree. Additionally, the effect is multiplied if the kid in question lives in a rural or semi-rural area rather than a suburb or city. For the majority of my adult life I’ve been playing catchup. Even now, barreling towards 40, there’s aspects of social capabilities where I come up quite short relative to my peers. If I’m ever to be a parent, I won’t homeschool. Depending the circumstances I might not send my kids to public school, but their schooling situation will at minimum involve social exposure comparable to that of public school.
inetknght 11mo ago
> I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch your mouth around specific people. Unfortunately this encourages people to have a blind eye regarding bullying. I would be much more happy if more people intervened against bullies and liars. Maybe we'd have better people in politics today if 40 years ago schools punished bullies and liars and sent them to have their behavioral problems addressed.
DennisP 11mo ago
Paul Graham pointed out that public school is a weird and degenerate microcosm that isn't much like the real social world at all. > I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow. > When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage. > ...If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie...Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners. https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html?viewfullsite=1 https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html?viewfullsite=1
- gbacon 11mo ago
  Perhaps unlike in some ways, but some aspects of school life persist in so-called adult life, e.g., jocks, nerds, freaks, party animals, slackers, and teacher’s pets are all still around — now with zeros on the end.
  - Der_Einzige 11mo ago
    In fact, those sterotypes and type-casts get even more extreme, and often they are enflamed by the very groups that claim to be the most egalitarian.
  - DennisP 11mo ago
    And PG didn't deny that. He just said the dynamic is very different when the group is larger, doing things that matter, and needs people who can get the right answers.
- tayo42 11mo ago
  Probably like 90% of the time it feel like I'm perpetually in high school and it never really ended.
perrygeo 11mo ago
Fully agree. The foundation of education is learning how the world actually is, not how we wish it would be.
calmbell 11mo ago
The public school experience in the U.S. depends so much on your ZIP Code. I attended the best public schools in my state while my wife attended the worst in the same state. I am genuinely pro-public school, but there is a point where the benefit of being around different people is overshadowed by distractions and low standards. My wife had to be diagnosed with a learning disability in college to receive test accommodations when she discovered that you cannot stay after class indefinitely to finish an exam. Her teachers never raised any concerns about her taking 50% as long with exams compared to the other students, and she was the valedictorian of her huge urban high school. The lack of concern is bizarre until you consider that her teachers were preoccupied with students graduating and showing up to class. Many of her classmates ended up getting pregnant, and the school had a large daycare for the children of high school students. My wife didn't end up taking the SAT or ACT because she attended a relatively strong local university with a full-ride scholarship and a test-optional policy. The MCAT exam initially denied her request for accommodations because she was only diagnosed with a learning disability in college. We successfully appealed by writing an essay arguing that my wife wasn't diagnosed with a learning disability in K-12 because her schools sucked (we submitted documentation that proved that her schools tested among the worst in the state, her elementary school was literally the worst in the entire state, when she was a student), and her teachers had much bigger concerns than why the smart, studious kid takes a long time to complete exams. If the wife had gone to the K-12 school system that I attended, her learning disability would have been addressed in elementary school, and she would have been spared much angst. I was a very poor reader in early elementary school, and received almost daily one-on-one attention at my school from instructional aides and volunteers (mostly highly educated parents and grandparents) for years. I received a perfect score on the ACT reading section in high school.
- linkregister 11mo ago
  The set of ZIP codes to geographical school assignment is neither 1:1 nor onto. Actually, (just kidding) I agree that school assignment is highly variable. I'm glad your wife managed to get her appeal approved. It's unfortunate she even had to go through that process to begin with.
- WalterBright 11mo ago
tshaddox 11mo ago
This is a common sentiment, but how much do you really know about the counterfactual? It's not obvious to me that you would have been unable to deal with people who didn't look like you if you had been homeschooled. It also seems to me that a lot of public school environments surely contain kids who look different from each other, form cliques based on physical appearance, and learn to base how they treat people largely on physical appearance.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
rayiner 11mo ago
Except homeschooled people I know are lovely and well adjusted.
pfannkuchen 11mo ago
I had a similar experience growing up to what you describe, but in my adult life I ended up living around all upper middle class and wealthy people and I don’t think my earlier experiences have really been very relevant or helpful. So I think it might depend on what the child’s expected adult environment will be like? Like do we need to be around or interact with the sort of people you need to stay away from or watch your mouth around?
typeofhuman 11mo ago
Popular misconception of homeschooling. At least in my experience. We homeschool our children. We do a couple of hours a day of curriculum. The rest is being a member of a few homeschool coops. Parents are close, yet it's big enough that there are still "groups". Kids are making friends and socializing in a much more fruitful way than the chambers of public school. There's play, then there's exploration. We go on nature walks and clean ups, the theater, the naval base, we have soccer, gymnastics, and jiu jitsu, we go to the museums, libraries, and recycling plant. Our kids have friends. We have made friends (tough at our age). And our kids are 1-2 years above their peers on diagnostics.
- typeofhuman 11mo ago
  Not sure what would cause someone to downvote my post without reply. Guess they're upset about their own performance and/or that of their kids.
hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
> I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. This is generally not true, as far as popularity correlates to having better social skills and a better understanding of social dynamics. Not saying income is the sole definition of success, but here is one study that found that teenagers with more friends earned more as adults: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27337 https://www.nber.org/papers/w27337
themafia 11mo ago
> I frequently saw fights, so I learned So this part of your education was entirely self-guided? And you're worried if children don't see fights and just sort of 'figure out' how to deal with them on their own they won't develop properly? > I was bullied [...] learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. So the institution valued popularity to the point of allowing you to be abused because you didn't possess it. Another self-guided lesson. I can never understand why people defend schools. They're terrible environments for learning. We clearly need a school setting for book learning and an _entirely separate_ one for social learning. This seems easily surmountable.
phyzix5761 11mo ago
> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them. Most research does not support the idea that homeschooling inherently creates social bubbles or makes children unable to interact with others. Studies generally find that homeschooled children perform as well as or better than traditionally schooled peers on standardized social skills measures and often participate actively in community groups, sports, etc. Long term studies of adults who were homeschooled also show no meaningful deficits in life outcomes or social functioning. The main caveat is that homeschooling varies widely: children in highly isolated or restrictive environments may have fewer opportunities to practice mainstream social norms, but this is a function of the specific homeschooling approach, not homeschooling as a whole. Overall, the literature suggests that social problems arise from lack of social exposure not from homeschooling itself.
gregjor 11mo ago
> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them. We already have this problem with the population at large, only a tiny minority of whom got homeschooled. Right here on HN you can read daily accounts of severe introversion and social anxiety. You can see that out in public, at work, among friends and family. Many Americans, children and adults, take medications (licit and otherwise) to cope with anxiety and things like ADHD. Many Americans self-diagnose as "on the spectrum" and "introverted." Do you have any evidence to support the idea that homeschooled children suffer more from these common afflictions?
eucyclos 11mo ago
Speaking of bullying, high school caused me to greatly overestimate how important unarmed combat would be to my future success in life. It's nice to not worry about it on the rare occasion that I go to sketchy places, but it also highlights that dealing with a cross section of our country's population is not necessarily relevant to the kind of life we build when we can choose our peers.
jhawk28 11mo ago
This is the most common myths about homeschooling. In reality, the kids at public school sit at a desk most of the time. They don't get to socialize. Most activities are structured. Homeschoolers have CO-OPs, field trips, weekly PE visits, real interactions with adults, and actual free time. They are the most socialized kids in the US. The diversity in the homeschool relationships is quite large which you can see when a homeschooler has discussions with adults while their public school peers just quietly talk amongst themselves.
- ethbr1 11mo ago
  You're straw-manning the worst public school experience against the best possible homeschool experience. > They are the most socialized kids in the US. Bullshit. You know how I know? Because on average parents are terrible at exposing their kids to Things Not Like Them and Things They Don't Approve Of. There are great homeschooling parents and crazy ones, but maybe it's not the worst idea to give kids a few hours a day outside their family-approved bubble? Just in case it's the latter. Or am I mistaken and all homeschooling in the US requires the child's consent?
  - next_xibalba 11mo ago
    > Bullshit. You know how I know? <provides unsubstantiated and only tangentially related opinion> People should be able to bypass public schools if they want.
    - hooskerdu 11mo ago
      I don’t disagree with your final statement, but they’re also not wrong. Growing up it was well-known that homeschool kids were strange, intelligent in some ways, and completely inept in most ways that mattered. People who desire to completely shield their children are just as detrimental to their children’s development as those who over-expose. However, in my purely anecdotal experience, the ones who were over-exposed were better off than the former. And the middle road led to better outcomes overall.
everdrive 11mo ago
>I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. It's always felt like a quirk of biology, in the same way that most people are now too fat. (ie, we didn't evolve in an era with constant excess calories and for the most part we can't cope with the situation) In that same way, people engage in this vicious fight for status between middle school and high school, only to be whisked away to colleges and then whisked away to wherever the jobs are; the fight for status never mattered and you can reinvent yourself in ways which would have never been possible in our ancient kin groups. But, we just cannot stop fighting for that status, and don't even give it much though. It's a huge waste of energy.
rmbyrro 11mo ago
Empirical research [1] [2] shows that your worry is unfounded. [1] Homeschooled Children’s Social Skills: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED573486.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED573486.pdf [2] Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited: https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socialization-2013.pdf https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socia... Edit: if I had to bet (don't know any research), schools nowadays are the main producers of intolerance, with the indoctrination and teaching kids to only respect civil discourse, ideas and opinions if they agree with the mainstream world model.
youcancook 11mo ago
[dead]
seec 11mo ago
In my opinion you are just more likely to run into bad influences that not only won't bring value but might as well send you a pretty bad path. The socialisation aspect of school is very largely bullshit, just like the diversity propaganda nonsense. There are actually studies on this is you want to look it up. Homeschooled children, do better in social settings later in life, not worse.

gred 11mo ago

> I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. Popularity is not an exclusively American concept. Just as public school broadened your horizons, so will traveling (or living) abroad.

zdragnar 11mo ago
Too many CO2 emissions for that to be practical for the billions of people who don't have public transit access to another nation.
- beeflet 11mo ago
  not if you send em by boat

Redster 11mo ago

The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman. Other factors seem to play a much larger factor in the things you are (rightfully!) concerned about. As long as the parents have "the will to have nice things" (to refer to Patrick McKenzie's concept), then these are very surmountable problems. Respectfully, A grateful dad who was homeschooled and who will homeschool. P.S. Of course I will do some things differently than my parents, but it was an amazing gift and I had an extremely vibrant and stimulating time, including with peers (and adults!) outside of my parents' network who pushed me, challenged me, thought very differently than me, etc.

valar_m 11mo ago
>The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman. How do you do that? Seems like it would be impossible to replicate the experience of learning to navigate daily social interactions in a mixed group of people, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.
- simeonf 11mo ago
  Easy - homeschooling may include but does not require "in the home" any more than "homework" is required to be done in your house. I was homeschooled and have homeschooled my three kids. Never has that meant "only at home and only with my family". My kids have been in co-op classes, taken classes from Art or Technical instruction centers (piano lessons, voice classes, programming, robotics), enrolled in community classes via private institutions and the local JC (cooking classes, performing arts) and been enrolled in independent study charter public schools which have some in-person classes. And in high school they start taking in-person JC courses. There is lots of regular exposure to a variety of other people in all of that!
  - lazyasciiart 11mo ago
    Just redefine homeschooling to include enrollment at schools and community colleges, tada.
- synecdoche 11mo ago
  > especially when it comes to dealing with conflict. What makes you think school is a good environment for that? Kids can be very cruel to each other with often the most societally maladapted dominating for reasons that have no bearing in real life.

swannodette 11mo ago

If you can afford it! "Grass-roots segregation hits records numbers" would be an equally fitting title.

nlavezzo 11mo ago
What leads you to believe the reason parents are willing to dedicate huge amounts of their time and money to homeschool their children is racism? Maybe it's: - the terrible educational state of the school system? - the fact that device and social media addiction is a prevalent and growing problem that they don't want their kids brains rotted by? - they want to provide their kids an education based on experiential and project based learning rather than filling out worksheets? - they don't want their kids to be forced to wait for the slowest / least interested kids in class to catch up before moving on to more challenging material?
- verdverm 11mo ago
  Are they going to spend huge amounts of time & money? I'd be willing to bet that we'll hear some stories about how they outsourced the effort to AI
- 7thaccount 11mo ago
  Not sure why you're being down voted. I'm sure there are some folks homeschooling because of things like racism, but that has always existed just like evangelical christians have always been big into homeschooling. If there is a big uptake, it's likely due to the ever present threat of school shootings coupled with all the things you said above. I have to teach my kid a lot outside of school and they go to what is considered a good one. The only reason I send them is my spouse and I work and my kid needs to learn social skills. If I won the lottery, I'd homeschool them myself and do it for a few other families as well so that my kid can get the social aspect too.
- sevensor 11mo ago
  I’m sure these motivations do play out in some circles. However, every single homeschooler I know personally, and I know quite a few, does so because they want their children to have a very specific kind of religious education. Often the way this plays out is that they homeschool for a while, transition to a denominational school, and then depending on the family they may stay there or make a second transition to public school around 9th grade. I think this tendency is heavily dependent on where you live. We have great public schools that will track advanced children aggressively if the parents push for it, so the motivations you list are unusual in my area.

noboostforyou 11mo ago

As the parent of a small child, there is a very noticeable difference in social skills that develop immediately as a result of my child being in a daycare interacting with other children of a similar age. Compared to my friends' same age children who are mostly staying at home and babysat by a grandparent. (as a disclaimer, the daycare has very good teachers/caregivers from what I can tell so I'm sure that's part of it as well)

mtrovo 11mo ago
Daycare quality is a spectrum, the same way as babysitting at home. My smaller one just started daycare, and we settled for one that actually does stuff with the kids (forest school style). But I can tell you, we've visited lots of places that are basically just making sure the kids are not dead by the time you pick them up. Same for babysitting with grandparents; there's the hyper-social grandpa style that's always doing something, and the couchpotato with +10k hours on Cocomelon.
- noboostforyou 11mo ago
  Yes, I'll admit that my sample size for comparison is relatively small so I'm mostly offering anecdotal evidence. And I totally agree on the quality of daycares being a spectrum. Just like how one single, good teacher who actually cares can really change a student's school experience (even if the school itself is not that great).
mordnis 11mo ago
In my opinion, grandparents are the worst. They completely spoil them.
- Tade0 11mo ago
  Or have bad habits like playing shovelware games on their phones.
- razeh 11mo ago
  Every human being should have the experience of unconditional, unadulterated love from someone else. But not 24 by 7.

ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago

>cross section of actual American kids So many factors have led this to be a major liability for young people now. School is not what it was 20 years ago.

jeffbee 11mo ago

[flagged]

bentley 11mo ago
My public school experience was that the ones beating up other kids were usually the jerks.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

ecshafer 11mo ago

My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. There is the neighborhood kids, you have sports and clubs kids can join, religious groups. Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. Some people "homeschooling" I know are groups of parents getting together to educate their children together in small groups of ~5 kids to share the responsibility, and hiring a tutor to fill in the gaps. Monday they go John's house, his mom has a philosophy degree and teaches them. tuesday they go to Janes house, her dad is a Mathematician and teaches them. etc.

skeeter2020 11mo ago
It's going to depend greatly on your geo location and socioeconomic circumstances, but a homeschooled kid who interacts a lot in the neighbourhood (big "if", IME; those kids all have a lot of school friends) is still going to miss out on broader social, cultural, racial and financial exposure. Example: my white, middle-class kids have a lot of people exactly like them in community groups and sports clubs, but lots of eastern european & asian immigrants in their school classes. This is super-important in elementary school when they're far less aware and insular about interacting with people who are "different" IMO
- damascus 11mo ago
  The venn diagram of 'homeschooled' and 'goes to church regularly' is not quite a circle but its not far off. Moderate to large churches also provide a great deal of socialization in this same way. Cross-socio-economic, racial, and other bases, all with a shared value system that creates a localized high trust environment that affords a greater degree of freedom for child autonomy.
andyjohnson0 11mo ago
Having a degree in philosophy or mathematics or whatever does not automatically make someone a good teacher. Teaching - particularly with young children - is a skill that is almost orthogonal to subject knowledge.

j45 11mo ago

There is some realy valid things to consider here. The thing it leaves me wondering is how many kids from elementary through high school a child really keeps in touch with, and if college is currently the place where many students finally get to start to be themselves.

usefulcat 11mo ago

There are certainly tradeoffs, but it's not all negative. In my experience, what it boils down to is that home-schooled kids tend to have more experience with adults and less experience dealing with a wide variety of other kids, particularly assholes. When I was a kid in public school, there was no shortage of assholes and I definitely would have preferred to not have to deal with them. OTOH, I don't doubt that there is also some value in that experience, not to mention interacting with all the other people. Also, we didn't have social media or semi-regular school shootings when I was a kid. So yeah.. to me, it's not at all obvious which set of tradeoffs is preferable nowadays.

BobaFloutist 11mo ago
You're forgetting that public school also exposes you to more adult assholes, including ones with direct power over you that can screw you over for no reason. It's important to know how and when to advocate for yourself and others, when to escalate through proper channels and when to escalate outside of proper channels, and when to back down and let them be an asshole because they're frankly not worth your time.
- JoshTriplett 11mo ago
  In particular, learning "pretend to lose now, win later" is a useful skill. But I think there are healthier ways to learn that skill than on a live-fire course.
ghssds 11mo ago
What happens to asshole kids? Do they become regular adults or asshole adults? Do they become soldiers or prisonners never to be seen again by normies? Do they even reach adulthood? Are they even a stable group or were we all asshole kids to some other kids?
- ksclarke 11mo ago
  Some become President of the United States. Others probably grow out of it?

OneLeggedCat 11mo ago

In the rural areas that I've lived in, it's mostly about a strong desire to supplant science and history with religious ideas and principles.

satvikpendem 11mo ago
That is exactly what I've seen, to keep kids in their brainwashing bubble.
- TaupeRanger 11mo ago
  Where I live in the Midwest that is absolutely the case. The homeschool "groups" are almost all religiously oriented in some way.
  - marcus878 11mo ago
    Lived in the Midwest too when I was younger, wasn't till I grew up that I saw how religiously linked it all was.
- UltraSane 11mo ago
  You are light gray but creating a bubble is actual expressed reason for many home schoolers like with young earth creationists.
alphazard 11mo ago
I hear this a lot, and it may be true, but I am very skeptical that it matters. The statistics about home-schooled children don't support the idea that they have horribly inaccurate models of the world guided mostly by religious thinking. Or if they do it doesn't seem to affect life achievement in any important way. Instead home-schooled children are typically more advanced at graduation and have higher lifetime achievement metrics than their public school counterparts. As an athiest, and a bayesian, it's difficult for me to worry about other peoples religious beliefs that don't seem to negatively affect them or me. Especially when there is propaganda taught in the public schools that does warp the students' world views in ways that harms them and me.

alphazard 11mo ago

> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them. The older I get, the more I think that helping your kids avoid interactions with others who aren't with the program is for the best. Ideally your children's friends should be people that you think are good kids, kids that you would go to bat for. Then when you are teaching your kids to compromise and play nice and forgive, you can legitimately feel good about it. I think my default assumption about a negative interaction with a public school random would be that they are basically a wild animal to be avoided.

brailsafe 11mo ago
The world is messy for all sorts of reasons, that may not be the way anyone would like it to be but it's the way it is, and imo it's best to learn it when the stakes are low rather than when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on, or they're being taken advantage of at work or in an adult relationship. I wouldn't fault someone for wanting to situate their kids among peers and adults that help them grow at a similar level rather than hinder it, but I think it's also best to be a guiding hand rather than a applicant tracking system when it comes to the non-academic side
- MisterMower 11mo ago
  > when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on If you think homeschooling makes kids grow up to be prejudiced, you should just say that, instead of insinuating it.
  - brailsafe 11mo ago
    > If you think homeschooling makes kids grow up to be prejudiced, you should just say that, instead of insinuating it. Absolutely not what I was insinuating. I was suggesting that explicit isolation from potential peers that come from different levels of wealth or backgrounds based on pre-existing prejudice has the potential to reinforce those prejudices. I'd wager this would overwhelmingly come from private schools and suburbs, not homeschooling, but it's more of a matter of where the desire to control the exposure comes from if that's part of the reason. So no, I was making no direct association between homeschooling and prejudice.

jfreds 11mo ago

I was homeschooled until high school. I couldn’t agree with you more. The value that the socialization the public school offers is underestimated. Learning activities with other homeschooled kids is ok but not enough. A tight-knit neighborhood of friends is huge, but not enough. You need to develop a thick skin and a sense of self-assurance. I have no counterfactual of course, but I think much of the social anxiety I’ve had to unlearn as a young adult came from homeschooling. And I had great circumstances

pyuser583 11mo ago
I was horribly bullied in high school. It was really bad. The worst part was being ostracized. The school had anti-bullying policies, but they don’t force anyone to be your friend. Strangely, I was elected to lots of student government office, and held leadership in lots of clubs. Maybe my memory is just off, but I don’t think so. I think I was really good connecting with the grownups who ran the school, so they made sure I got leadership positions. I was always much better at being the kid in class the teacher liked - same with principals, etc. Probably one of the reasons the other kids didn’t like me - but that went over my head. I think it’s really easy to overestimate how important the socialization in public schools is. We go to so many movies where the plot is based on the dynamics of public high school, we assume it’s normal. We see so much of terrible stuff downplaid like it doesn’t matter. Just rewatched Back to the Future which laughingly brushes off every kind of violence as long as it’s done at the prom.
DennisP 11mo ago
And I've always felt that most of my social anxiety came from public school. Maybe we were both just prone to it. (I unlearned it too, but it took quite a while.)
cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
As someone else who was homeschooled except the last three grades, I also agree. Additionally, the effect is multiplied if the kid in question lives in a rural or semi-rural area rather than a suburb or city. For the majority of my adult life I’ve been playing catchup. Even now, barreling towards 40, there’s aspects of social capabilities where I come up quite short relative to my peers. If I’m ever to be a parent, I won’t homeschool. Depending the circumstances I might not send my kids to public school, but their schooling situation will at minimum involve social exposure comparable to that of public school.

inetknght 11mo ago

> I frequently saw fights, so I learned that you just stay away and watch your mouth around specific people. Unfortunately this encourages people to have a blind eye regarding bullying. I would be much more happy if more people intervened against bullies and liars. Maybe we'd have better people in politics today if 40 years ago schools punished bullies and liars and sent them to have their behavioral problems addressed.

DennisP 11mo ago

Paul Graham pointed out that public school is a weird and degenerate microcosm that isn't much like the real social world at all. > I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow. > When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage. > ...If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie...Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners. https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html?viewfullsite=1 https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html?viewfullsite=1

gbacon 11mo ago
Perhaps unlike in some ways, but some aspects of school life persist in so-called adult life, e.g., jocks, nerds, freaks, party animals, slackers, and teacher’s pets are all still around — now with zeros on the end.
- Der_Einzige 11mo ago
  In fact, those sterotypes and type-casts get even more extreme, and often they are enflamed by the very groups that claim to be the most egalitarian.
- DennisP 11mo ago
  And PG didn't deny that. He just said the dynamic is very different when the group is larger, doing things that matter, and needs people who can get the right answers.
tayo42 11mo ago
Probably like 90% of the time it feel like I'm perpetually in high school and it never really ended.

perrygeo 11mo ago

Fully agree. The foundation of education is learning how the world actually is, not how we wish it would be.

calmbell 11mo ago

The public school experience in the U.S. depends so much on your ZIP Code. I attended the best public schools in my state while my wife attended the worst in the same state. I am genuinely pro-public school, but there is a point where the benefit of being around different people is overshadowed by distractions and low standards. My wife had to be diagnosed with a learning disability in college to receive test accommodations when she discovered that you cannot stay after class indefinitely to finish an exam. Her teachers never raised any concerns about her taking 50% as long with exams compared to the other students, and she was the valedictorian of her huge urban high school. The lack of concern is bizarre until you consider that her teachers were preoccupied with students graduating and showing up to class. Many of her classmates ended up getting pregnant, and the school had a large daycare for the children of high school students. My wife didn't end up taking the SAT or ACT because she attended a relatively strong local university with a full-ride scholarship and a test-optional policy. The MCAT exam initially denied her request for accommodations because she was only diagnosed with a learning disability in college. We successfully appealed by writing an essay arguing that my wife wasn't diagnosed with a learning disability in K-12 because her schools sucked (we submitted documentation that proved that her schools tested among the worst in the state, her elementary school was literally the worst in the entire state, when she was a student), and her teachers had much bigger concerns than why the smart, studious kid takes a long time to complete exams. If the wife had gone to the K-12 school system that I attended, her learning disability would have been addressed in elementary school, and she would have been spared much angst. I was a very poor reader in early elementary school, and received almost daily one-on-one attention at my school from instructional aides and volunteers (mostly highly educated parents and grandparents) for years. I received a perfect score on the ACT reading section in high school.

linkregister 11mo ago
The set of ZIP codes to geographical school assignment is neither 1:1 nor onto. Actually, (just kidding) I agree that school assignment is highly variable. I'm glad your wife managed to get her appeal approved. It's unfortunate she even had to go through that process to begin with.
WalterBright 11mo ago

tshaddox 11mo ago

This is a common sentiment, but how much do you really know about the counterfactual? It's not obvious to me that you would have been unable to deal with people who didn't look like you if you had been homeschooled. It also seems to me that a lot of public school environments surely contain kids who look different from each other, form cliques based on physical appearance, and learn to base how they treat people largely on physical appearance.

deleted 11mo ago

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rayiner 11mo ago

Except homeschooled people I know are lovely and well adjusted.

pfannkuchen 11mo ago

I had a similar experience growing up to what you describe, but in my adult life I ended up living around all upper middle class and wealthy people and I don’t think my earlier experiences have really been very relevant or helpful. So I think it might depend on what the child’s expected adult environment will be like? Like do we need to be around or interact with the sort of people you need to stay away from or watch your mouth around?

typeofhuman 11mo ago

Popular misconception of homeschooling. At least in my experience. We homeschool our children. We do a couple of hours a day of curriculum. The rest is being a member of a few homeschool coops. Parents are close, yet it's big enough that there are still "groups". Kids are making friends and socializing in a much more fruitful way than the chambers of public school. There's play, then there's exploration. We go on nature walks and clean ups, the theater, the naval base, we have soccer, gymnastics, and jiu jitsu, we go to the museums, libraries, and recycling plant. Our kids have friends. We have made friends (tough at our age). And our kids are 1-2 years above their peers on diagnostics.

typeofhuman 11mo ago
Not sure what would cause someone to downvote my post without reply. Guess they're upset about their own performance and/or that of their kids.

hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago

> I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. This is generally not true, as far as popularity correlates to having better social skills and a better understanding of social dynamics. Not saying income is the sole definition of success, but here is one study that found that teenagers with more friends earned more as adults: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27337 https://www.nber.org/papers/w27337

themafia 11mo ago

> I frequently saw fights, so I learned So this part of your education was entirely self-guided? And you're worried if children don't see fights and just sort of 'figure out' how to deal with them on their own they won't develop properly? > I was bullied [...] learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. So the institution valued popularity to the point of allowing you to be abused because you didn't possess it. Another self-guided lesson. I can never understand why people defend schools. They're terrible environments for learning. We clearly need a school setting for book learning and an _entirely separate_ one for social learning. This seems easily surmountable.

phyzix5761 11mo ago

> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them. Most research does not support the idea that homeschooling inherently creates social bubbles or makes children unable to interact with others. Studies generally find that homeschooled children perform as well as or better than traditionally schooled peers on standardized social skills measures and often participate actively in community groups, sports, etc. Long term studies of adults who were homeschooled also show no meaningful deficits in life outcomes or social functioning. The main caveat is that homeschooling varies widely: children in highly isolated or restrictive environments may have fewer opportunities to practice mainstream social norms, but this is a function of the specific homeschooling approach, not homeschooling as a whole. Overall, the literature suggests that social problems arise from lack of social exposure not from homeschooling itself.

gregjor 11mo ago

> I worry this move to homeschooling and micromanaging children's social lives just creates bubbles and makes children incapable of interacting with those outside of them. We already have this problem with the population at large, only a tiny minority of whom got homeschooled. Right here on HN you can read daily accounts of severe introversion and social anxiety. You can see that out in public, at work, among friends and family. Many Americans, children and adults, take medications (licit and otherwise) to cope with anxiety and things like ADHD. Many Americans self-diagnose as "on the spectrum" and "introverted." Do you have any evidence to support the idea that homeschooled children suffer more from these common afflictions?

eucyclos 11mo ago

Speaking of bullying, high school caused me to greatly overestimate how important unarmed combat would be to my future success in life. It's nice to not worry about it on the rare occasion that I go to sketchy places, but it also highlights that dealing with a cross section of our country's population is not necessarily relevant to the kind of life we build when we can choose our peers.

jhawk28 11mo ago

This is the most common myths about homeschooling. In reality, the kids at public school sit at a desk most of the time. They don't get to socialize. Most activities are structured. Homeschoolers have CO-OPs, field trips, weekly PE visits, real interactions with adults, and actual free time. They are the most socialized kids in the US. The diversity in the homeschool relationships is quite large which you can see when a homeschooler has discussions with adults while their public school peers just quietly talk amongst themselves.

ethbr1 11mo ago
You're straw-manning the worst public school experience against the best possible homeschool experience. > They are the most socialized kids in the US. Bullshit. You know how I know? Because on average parents are terrible at exposing their kids to Things Not Like Them and Things They Don't Approve Of. There are great homeschooling parents and crazy ones, but maybe it's not the worst idea to give kids a few hours a day outside their family-approved bubble? Just in case it's the latter. Or am I mistaken and all homeschooling in the US requires the child's consent?
- next_xibalba 11mo ago
  > Bullshit. You know how I know? <provides unsubstantiated and only tangentially related opinion> People should be able to bypass public schools if they want.
  - hooskerdu 11mo ago
    I don’t disagree with your final statement, but they’re also not wrong. Growing up it was well-known that homeschool kids were strange, intelligent in some ways, and completely inept in most ways that mattered. People who desire to completely shield their children are just as detrimental to their children’s development as those who over-expose. However, in my purely anecdotal experience, the ones who were over-exposed were better off than the former. And the middle road led to better outcomes overall.

everdrive 11mo ago

>I learned that the BS American value of "popularity" doesn't translate into successful futures. It's always felt like a quirk of biology, in the same way that most people are now too fat. (ie, we didn't evolve in an era with constant excess calories and for the most part we can't cope with the situation) In that same way, people engage in this vicious fight for status between middle school and high school, only to be whisked away to colleges and then whisked away to wherever the jobs are; the fight for status never mattered and you can reinvent yourself in ways which would have never been possible in our ancient kin groups. But, we just cannot stop fighting for that status, and don't even give it much though. It's a huge waste of energy.

rmbyrro 11mo ago

Empirical research [1] [2] shows that your worry is unfounded. [1] Homeschooled Children’s Social Skills: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED573486.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED573486.pdf [2] Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited: https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socialization-2013.pdf https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socia... Edit: if I had to bet (don't know any research), schools nowadays are the main producers of intolerance, with the indoctrination and teaching kids to only respect civil discourse, ideas and opinions if they agree with the mainstream world model.

youcancook 11mo ago

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seec 11mo ago

In my opinion you are just more likely to run into bad influences that not only won't bring value but might as well send you a pretty bad path. The socialisation aspect of school is very largely bullshit, just like the diversity propaganda nonsense. There are actually studies on this is you want to look it up. Homeschooled children, do better in social settings later in life, not worse.