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The biggest misunderstanding I hear year-over-year is homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interactio

The biggest misunderstanding I hear year-over-year is homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? Parents of healthy children should give 0 s*ts of societal/political pressure against this concept. Your kids are a bad influence for whatever reason? Not my problem to fix. Homeschoolers are some of the most resilient and well-behaved people I know. Modern academic life is only well suited to a small percent of the population. Those children who are truly happy and excelling in that setting. So much time and resources, to produce what exactly? A piece of paper and fancy picture to stare at? Forced mass education was a good idea for developing societies, but personalized education has been possible for at least a decade now, at a fraction of the cost. And to add insult to injury, there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students. Here's a famous song on the topic for those who know how to "chew the meat from the cud": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXEC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXE... * It's fascinating to watch the points on my comment go up and down a ton. Very controversial issue. I believe it highlights pressure from social and political structures in society, and/or personal experiences. They vary so much.

meheleventyone 11mo ago
I mean you’re literally explaining how your home schooled kids are separated from the real world.
- hereme888 11mo ago
  Define "real world".
  - meheleventyone 11mo ago
    The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. As a parent I get the impulse to remove my children from any potential harm but the real world has sharp edges. They need to be confident in that world not just smothered. And really as the person who used the term it’s really up to you to define what you mean.
    - seneca 11mo ago
      > The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. That's just not true though. Your job isn't going to force you to interact with people who disrupt the environment constantly. Those people are fired and removed from the group.
      - meheleventyone 11mo ago
        My job isn’t the totality of my life and you have very strange ideas about how quickly disruptive people actually get fired. You get plenty of unfiltered interaction in life. If anything I’d say the sort of thing you describe sounds more like an insular cult. Although even there you get misanthropic people, abuse and so on.
        seneca 11mo ago
        > My job isn’t the totality of my life and you have very strange ideas about how quickly disruptive people actually get fired. You get plenty of unfiltered interaction in life. In what environment are you, as an adult, forced to interact with everyone who happens to show up? The only instances I can think of are other government-run institutions like the military or prison, and I don't think anyone would argue those are standard modes of "real life". > If anything I’d say the sort of thing you describe sounds more like an insular cult. Name calling isn't an argument.
        BrenBarn 11mo ago
        > In what environment are you, as an adult, forced to interact with everyone who happens to show up? Have you heard of customer service?
        meheleventyone 11mo ago
        Anywhere you happen to be in public essentially. I also didn’t call you names just stated that your description sounded cult like. If your environment is so controlled to not have a good mix of people in it then that sounds even more cult like!
- superconduct123 11mo ago
  Public school doesn't really represent "the real world" for everyone anyway If you go to university and into a professional career you end up in a different bubble of people than say going into trades
afavour 11mo ago
> homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? ...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it? I think your view is a very black and white one. Kids in public school are exposed to society at large, in both good and bad ways. My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there. The sad reality of parenting is that you're never going to be able to hand-pick your child's experience all the way through life. Sooner or later they're going to be exposed to the "hostile flowers" you describe. Personally I think learning to be around those people and still thrive is a part of childhood that prepares you well for adulthood. It may be more valuable than some of the academic work kids do.
- hereme888 11mo ago
  I think your reading is very black and white. Add some leeway to what I say. Hand-picked obviously doesn't mean all friends go through a psych screening on a daily basis, or that you have to helicopter-parent and tell your kids who to be friends with...
  - afavour 11mo ago
    > or you have to helicopter-parent and tell your kids who to be friends with... Isn't that essentially what you're describing, though? You literally talked about "healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children". No, you don't have to tell them who to be friends with... but you've pre-selected the pool of potential friends, so there's no instruction necessary.
    - all2 11mo ago
      Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals.
- seneca 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
dzonga 11mo ago
there's was a famous paper written by a former school teacher which advocated for home schooling ? I been trying to find it ever since
- hereme888 11mo ago
  I don't agree with all of Piotr's writings, but here's an extensive list of famous educators, maybe yours is among them. John Locke, John Holt, Peter Green, and: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/The_Greatest_Minds_in_History_Opposed_Coercion_in_Education https://supermemo.guru/wiki/The_Greatest_Minds_in_History_Op... https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Tom_Durrie https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Tom_Durrie
joshstrange 11mo ago
> Homeschoolers are some of the most resilient and well-behaved people I know. I'm sure they exist, they may even exist as the majority, I will say for my part the homeschooled kids I knew through my church growing up were not any of these things. I would quite literally use the opposite of both those to describe them. I'm not saying they represent the majority but they do exist and they were not well adjusted IMHO. As with many topics I feel like "Yes, if you want to devote yourself fully to X thing you can do much better than Y professional", the problem is, again from my own experience, the people I knew who homeschooled their children were not professionals, they were not capable, and their children suffered for it. I want to stress, I fully believe it is possible for certain people with certain mentors/teachers to do better outside of the public (or private) school system. I just also believe that the odds of most people (making that decision for their children) to meet that bar are low. I also think that some of the better homeschooled experiences that I've seen are simply a super-private school by another name (various parents being or being subject experts and taking turns teaching coupled with many "field trip"-type trips with other homeschooled kids). > there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students. Wait till you hear what the parents believe... I don't agree with everything taught or the way it's taught but being exposed to other types of people and ways of thinking is critical. I can guarantee you that had my parents been able to, they would have shielded me from a great number of ways of thinking. I worry that many homeschooled children grow up in a small echo chamber (we all live in echo chambers of difference sizes). Can public school suck? Absolutely and I acknowledge that homeschooling might be the answer for some people, but only if you can afford to pay (with time or money) to educate your children completely which is almost certainly going to require working with other homeschooler parents to, essentially, build your own school. If you can bring in tutors/mentors/teachers that you vet and agree with and expose them to the world and new ideas/experiences then yeah, you are probably going to have good outcomes. If you plop them in front of a computer to follow a curriculum just to shield them from the "evils" of the world, well, I think you are going to have a bad time. Obviously there is a whole range of people in between those 2 extremes, I just feel that, on average, people trend towards the lower end of that spectrum. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXEC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXE... Interesting song and I do agree with many points. For many years I've complained about lack of teaching basic skills (everything from home ec to budgeting and more), many of which I heard in this song. I think there was a little of the baby going out with the bathwater but overall I enjoyed it.
FireBeyond 11mo ago
I get that on one hand, such regulation is one of the reasons some parents do so, but the wide diversity of "oversight" is challenging. In Washington, homeschooled students still have to occasionally connect at an actual school, or do some baseline testing. In Louisiana, you just tell the state "we're homeschooling" and the state is "have fun with that" and the child is essentially off the grid. Not for nothing, instances of child abuse/CSA in many correlates with the laxness of educational oversight in home schooling. > And to add insult to injury, there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students. Ahh, this chestnut. A short jump to "teachers are training preschoolers to be furries and LGBT" and litterboxes in the classroom/bathroom. For all your anecdotes my step daughter has plenty too. 10th graders who are barely literate, cannot do elementary math. Who when asked about their homeschool regime talk of waking at 10, 10.30, playing Fortnite or going on Tiktok for a few hours, and occasionally logging into some website to pretend like they've been working, or doing some mind numbingly simple exercise to show "participation".
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  > Ahh, this chestnut. A short jump to "teachers are training preschoolers to be furries and LGBT" and litterboxes in the classroom/bathroom. Exactly. Notice how, when people complain about the "deranged ideologies" that teachers are teaching their kids, they either 1. stop short of actually naming those ideologies or 2. spout fever dreams that are statistically vanishingly rare.
bgnn 11mo ago
What you define here is isolation from the real world. There seems to be a misunderstanding of your understanding of misunderstanding.
- gosub100 11mo ago
  Children's world view is shaped early on. They shouldn't have to suffer just because poor, violent, should-have-been-aborteds are legally required to go to public schools. Children should experience carefree happiness at least once, in their formative years so they know happiness is possible.
  - 5upplied_demand 11mo ago
    > They shouldn't have to suffer just because poor, violent, should-have-been-aborteds are legally required to go to public schools. Yikes! Good thing these people, whom you so clearly despise, will cease to exist after school and will never have to be dealt with in regular life. I guess the rise in homeschooling is not surprising when we openly view our fellow civilians as inherently poor/violent and shouldn't exist.
    - gosub100 11mo ago
      They can be avoided later in life just like they can be avoided in public schools. Freedom to choose was established 50 years ago, sorry if you dislike it.
      - 5upplied_demand 11mo ago
        No need for the apology, as I never said I disliked anything and you certainly don't seem sorry. I'm not sure how you are avoiding all of the people working at or frequenting coffee shops, the DMV, car mechanics, the grocery store, airports, or any other scary place where you might be forced to interact with real people. Not to mention co-workers, school parents, sports parents, family members, in-laws, and more whom you may have to spend your valuable time around. Enjoy the life of avoidance.
aeturnum 11mo ago
> Your kids are a bad influence for whatever reason? Not my problem to fix. Not your problem to fix for sure - but it is your problem to equip your child to comfortably weather. There are bad influences out in the world and they generally have outsized effects on their social and professional scenes. In fact, the kind of curated, limited community you're advocating for is one where bad influences thrive. > So much time and resources, to produce what exactly? A piece of paper and fancy picture to stare at? I certainly agree the degree is whatever - but I think you're really under-valuing the social-gauntlet aspect of school. You will have classmates who kind of (or really) suck. You will need to do your work anyway. You will be incentivized to learn perseverance and a self-centered locus of control. These are valuable skills that only come from actual exposure to bad influences. Someone who's perfect in perfect conditions is going to struggle because the world is not perfect. The aims you highlight here make me think less of homeschooling than I did before.
array_key_first 11mo ago
My general experience is that homeschool children have self esteem and confidence issues precisely because they've been around 'hand picked' people... forever. They've never experienced assholes, or people who think their personality is grating, or whatever. Thick skin needs to be built up, to a degree. I'm not saying bullying is good, but being exposed to the unwashed masses definitely can be.
- scoofy 11mo ago
  I mean… the issue is you have incredibly well educated kids that have an awkward time dealing with assholes. Given the state of our education system, that seems like an obviously worthwhile trade off. Especially for parents in underperforming school districts and even entire regions.
- oxag3n 11mo ago
  I watched my kids becoming a median of their classmates. After changing to a private school it was noticeable after a month - different lexicon, mimics, attitude. It's not thick skin they are developing around assholes, it's them incorporating that behavior to some degree. There was nothing I could do to change that - talks, good example, nothing worked, only surrounding change.
  - hintklb 11mo ago
    Underrated comment because I have seen exactly the same thing. Us as parents don't have as much nurture on our kids as we would like to think.
  - atoav 11mo ago
    And I grew up among median kids till I was 19 and never did adjust to the median (neither did my group of friends foinf to the same school). My younger brother however did. There are kids who will have the tendency to adjust to others and there are kids who don't. This has to do with the self-confidence they bring with them before they enter their first day of school, friends they have/had outside school and it is not necessarily a thing a parent can always control in a predictable manner. For all we know in your case it could even be that your kid learned they have to follow the others in private school and then applied that lesson in the next one. What I am saying here is that having learned the lesson "you need to adjust to your peers" is the problem, not that the peers are the "wrong" ones.
codingdave 11mo ago
> increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students. You really might want to explain that further. At face value, that sounds like parroted right-wing rhetoric.
- decremental 11mo ago
  [dead]
- AlexeyBelov 11mo ago
  He is a real rightoid based on other comments. HN disappointed me today, since you're the only one who noticed, others silently tolerate this behavior.
cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
The problem is that what constitutes “healthy” varies so greatly between individuals (especially these days) that it barely carries any objective meaning, and the odds are heavily against any one person’s definition being correct. If I put myself in the shoes of a parent, I wouldn’t trust myself on the matter enough that I’d feel good shaping my childrens’ entire world to match it. It’s such a wildly difficult thing to get right, and I’d rather they get a glimpse of the world through wide variety of viewpoints and hope they’ll use the values I’ve instilled in them to construct their own view.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
subpixel 11mo ago
Where I live the schools are quite good and the homeschoolers are fundamental religious families who won’t send their kids to schools where gay pride flags are allowed. I’d pull our child out of school if the standards dropped but I think the majority of homeschoolers align with out of the mainstream poltical / religious views.
Nextgrid 11mo ago
> hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children Unless you can magically guarantee (or have enough money to fund their whole life) your children will never have to interact with "problem" people, they will need to learn to deal with those people one way or another. And it's better to do so in a low-stakes situation like school.
- bentley 11mo ago
  Childhood and youth are anything but “low‐stakes.” The social experiences I faced in public school were far worse than even the worst parts of my adult life. The direction I was headed was one of dark cynicism and misanthropy thanks to the bullying I faced and the lack of care from the adults in the system. When I switched to homeschooling, I began interacting with rational adults (my parents’ friends) and in turn learned what functioning human relationships look like. My ability to weather the difficult storms of adulthood in a healthy way came from the social growth I gained through homeschooling, not the regressive “socialization” that public school inflicted on me.
  - hintklb 11mo ago
    I had exactly the same experience. I was in a public school full of assholes and teachers that couldn't care less about any bullying taking place. Those few years were probably the worse years of my life. I grew significantly and became a different person when I was moved to a different school. I still think it taught me a lot about the world and how people really are. I really lost a lot of faith in humanity in those few years and still see the world as cynical in which all people are in it for themselves. Did it make me stronger? Maybe. But also I wish I could see the world more positively as a lot of people that have been shielded from those experiences seem to do.
    - fzeroracer 11mo ago
      On the opposite end of the spectrum I grew up near a Mormon family whom exclusively homeschooled their children. Their 'homeschooling' mostly consisted of using the older children to assist and babysit the younger children as they had about ten or so children, and naturally could not equally provide schooling for such a wide range of needs. They were a nice family, but when I was in community college I had a chance to talk with one of the eldest who was there getting her GED. Last I recall, she held some resentment towards her parents because she was held back fairly significantly by her upbringing. Well, except for the fact that they were wealthy which helps smooth some of the problems.
atoav 11mo ago
> Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? A gardener who understands that after that short grace period that plant will have to grow amongst those sick and hostile ones essentially and not only that, it will have to form a thriving ecosystem with them. I get the idea of wanting to protect your child at all cost and wanting the best possible education for them. Rarely have I found that former students with over-protective parents that put them down a funnel of other kids from the same social and ideological background have really thrived. And I work in university level education meaning I get to see first hand what is usually the first phase in a persons life where they can decide for themselves how to do it. The people with self-confidence and stable roots who make the best, are usually those who "have seen it all", while those with alternative schooling backgrounds are either completely in their own world (often with rude awekenings) or constant feelings of inadequacy and comparison with others. That is anecdotal evidence by one educator, so details may matter. Aside from those individual aspects, there absolutely is a societal aspect to that. If gated communities are the solution, then your society has to be in what is already a pretty dystopian position. Having those isolated silos mean in a world of isolated social media silos, we give our kids even less possibility to experience the reality of other members of the society we expect them to repair. That shoulders them with an impossible task. My deep believe is that the goal of education is to prepare people for their life, but also to give them the tools to make the world they are sent into a better place. That requires a healthy dose of "knowing what is", especily if what is, is ugly.
- synecdoche 11mo ago
  >> Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? > A gardener who understands that after that short grace period that plant will have to grow amongst those sick and hostile ones essentially and not only that, it will have to form a thriving ecosystem with them. If, on the other hand, the gardener knows from experience that the flower will be suffocated, then it's pointless at best and cruel at worst.
class3shock 11mo ago
If schools are problematic or have kids that are problematic, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on investing in them to make them better, adding resources to support difficult kids, to help parents who are not doing well? As opposed to disengaging from them?
- bentley 11mo ago
  If the school system is damaging kids, it’s good to work to improve it, but you won't see results (if any—effecting systemic change is hard) until after your kids have already graduated, facing irreversible damage in the process. If you’re willing to homeschool well, the positive impact on your kids is immediate.
- programjames 11mo ago
  It is pretty hard for one parent to change things for the better, even if just for their child in one classroom. The administration and teachers have so many other things to deal with. It's much harder to change the entire school culture. You can volunteer, and you should!, but you still won't make as large an impact on your child's education as you would hope. In some ways, this is good, because there are lots of crazy parents out there who you don't want making impacts on your child's education, but it's also bad if you're not that crazy parent.

meheleventyone 11mo ago

I mean you’re literally explaining how your home schooled kids are separated from the real world.

hereme888 11mo ago
Define "real world".
- meheleventyone 11mo ago
  The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. As a parent I get the impulse to remove my children from any potential harm but the real world has sharp edges. They need to be confident in that world not just smothered. And really as the person who used the term it’s really up to you to define what you mean.
  - seneca 11mo ago
    > The one that exists with problem children and opinions you don’t like. That's just not true though. Your job isn't going to force you to interact with people who disrupt the environment constantly. Those people are fired and removed from the group.
    - meheleventyone 11mo ago
      My job isn’t the totality of my life and you have very strange ideas about how quickly disruptive people actually get fired. You get plenty of unfiltered interaction in life. If anything I’d say the sort of thing you describe sounds more like an insular cult. Although even there you get misanthropic people, abuse and so on.
      - seneca 11mo ago
        > My job isn’t the totality of my life and you have very strange ideas about how quickly disruptive people actually get fired. You get plenty of unfiltered interaction in life. In what environment are you, as an adult, forced to interact with everyone who happens to show up? The only instances I can think of are other government-run institutions like the military or prison, and I don't think anyone would argue those are standard modes of "real life". > If anything I’d say the sort of thing you describe sounds more like an insular cult. Name calling isn't an argument.
        BrenBarn 11mo ago
        > In what environment are you, as an adult, forced to interact with everyone who happens to show up? Have you heard of customer service?
        meheleventyone 11mo ago
        Anywhere you happen to be in public essentially. I also didn’t call you names just stated that your description sounded cult like. If your environment is so controlled to not have a good mix of people in it then that sounds even more cult like!
superconduct123 11mo ago
Public school doesn't really represent "the real world" for everyone anyway If you go to university and into a professional career you end up in a different bubble of people than say going into trades

afavour 11mo ago

> homeschoolers are "not exposed to the real world". Isolation exists for some, but my extensive interaction with homeschoolers is they are immersed in healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children. Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? ...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it? I think your view is a very black and white one. Kids in public school are exposed to society at large, in both good and bad ways. My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there. The sad reality of parenting is that you're never going to be able to hand-pick your child's experience all the way through life. Sooner or later they're going to be exposed to the "hostile flowers" you describe. Personally I think learning to be around those people and still thrive is a part of childhood that prepares you well for adulthood. It may be more valuable than some of the academic work kids do.

hereme888 11mo ago
I think your reading is very black and white. Add some leeway to what I say. Hand-picked obviously doesn't mean all friends go through a psych screening on a daily basis, or that you have to helicopter-parent and tell your kids who to be friends with...
- afavour 11mo ago
  > or you have to helicopter-parent and tell your kids who to be friends with... Isn't that essentially what you're describing, though? You literally talked about "healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children". No, you don't have to tell them who to be friends with... but you've pre-selected the pool of potential friends, so there's no instruction necessary.
  - all2 11mo ago
    Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals.
seneca 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

dzonga 11mo ago

there's was a famous paper written by a former school teacher which advocated for home schooling ? I been trying to find it ever since

hereme888 11mo ago
I don't agree with all of Piotr's writings, but here's an extensive list of famous educators, maybe yours is among them. John Locke, John Holt, Peter Green, and: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/The_Greatest_Minds_in_History_Opposed_Coercion_in_Education https://supermemo.guru/wiki/The_Greatest_Minds_in_History_Op... https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Tom_Durrie https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Tom_Durrie

joshstrange 11mo ago

> Homeschoolers are some of the most resilient and well-behaved people I know. I'm sure they exist, they may even exist as the majority, I will say for my part the homeschooled kids I knew through my church growing up were not any of these things. I would quite literally use the opposite of both those to describe them. I'm not saying they represent the majority but they do exist and they were not well adjusted IMHO. As with many topics I feel like "Yes, if you want to devote yourself fully to X thing you can do much better than Y professional", the problem is, again from my own experience, the people I knew who homeschooled their children were not professionals, they were not capable, and their children suffered for it. I want to stress, I fully believe it is possible for certain people with certain mentors/teachers to do better outside of the public (or private) school system. I just also believe that the odds of most people (making that decision for their children) to meet that bar are low. I also think that some of the better homeschooled experiences that I've seen are simply a super-private school by another name (various parents being or being subject experts and taking turns teaching coupled with many "field trip"-type trips with other homeschooled kids). > there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students. Wait till you hear what the parents believe... I don't agree with everything taught or the way it's taught but being exposed to other types of people and ways of thinking is critical. I can guarantee you that had my parents been able to, they would have shielded me from a great number of ways of thinking. I worry that many homeschooled children grow up in a small echo chamber (we all live in echo chambers of difference sizes). Can public school suck? Absolutely and I acknowledge that homeschooling might be the answer for some people, but only if you can afford to pay (with time or money) to educate your children completely which is almost certainly going to require working with other homeschooler parents to, essentially, build your own school. If you can bring in tutors/mentors/teachers that you vet and agree with and expose them to the world and new ideas/experiences then yeah, you are probably going to have good outcomes. If you plop them in front of a computer to follow a curriculum just to shield them from the "evils" of the world, well, I think you are going to have a bad time. Obviously there is a whole range of people in between those 2 extremes, I just feel that, on average, people trend towards the lower end of that spectrum. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXEC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXE... Interesting song and I do agree with many points. For many years I've complained about lack of teaching basic skills (everything from home ec to budgeting and more), many of which I heard in this song. I think there was a little of the baby going out with the bathwater but overall I enjoyed it.

FireBeyond 11mo ago

I get that on one hand, such regulation is one of the reasons some parents do so, but the wide diversity of "oversight" is challenging. In Washington, homeschooled students still have to occasionally connect at an actual school, or do some baseline testing. In Louisiana, you just tell the state "we're homeschooling" and the state is "have fun with that" and the child is essentially off the grid. Not for nothing, instances of child abuse/CSA in many correlates with the laxness of educational oversight in home schooling. > And to add insult to injury, there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students. Ahh, this chestnut. A short jump to "teachers are training preschoolers to be furries and LGBT" and litterboxes in the classroom/bathroom. For all your anecdotes my step daughter has plenty too. 10th graders who are barely literate, cannot do elementary math. Who when asked about their homeschool regime talk of waking at 10, 10.30, playing Fortnite or going on Tiktok for a few hours, and occasionally logging into some website to pretend like they've been working, or doing some mind numbingly simple exercise to show "participation".

ryandrake 11mo ago
> Ahh, this chestnut. A short jump to "teachers are training preschoolers to be furries and LGBT" and litterboxes in the classroom/bathroom. Exactly. Notice how, when people complain about the "deranged ideologies" that teachers are teaching their kids, they either 1. stop short of actually naming those ideologies or 2. spout fever dreams that are statistically vanishingly rare.

bgnn 11mo ago

What you define here is isolation from the real world. There seems to be a misunderstanding of your understanding of misunderstanding.

gosub100 11mo ago
Children's world view is shaped early on. They shouldn't have to suffer just because poor, violent, should-have-been-aborteds are legally required to go to public schools. Children should experience carefree happiness at least once, in their formative years so they know happiness is possible.
- 5upplied_demand 11mo ago
  > They shouldn't have to suffer just because poor, violent, should-have-been-aborteds are legally required to go to public schools. Yikes! Good thing these people, whom you so clearly despise, will cease to exist after school and will never have to be dealt with in regular life. I guess the rise in homeschooling is not surprising when we openly view our fellow civilians as inherently poor/violent and shouldn't exist.
  - gosub100 11mo ago
    They can be avoided later in life just like they can be avoided in public schools. Freedom to choose was established 50 years ago, sorry if you dislike it.
    - 5upplied_demand 11mo ago
      No need for the apology, as I never said I disliked anything and you certainly don't seem sorry. I'm not sure how you are avoiding all of the people working at or frequenting coffee shops, the DMV, car mechanics, the grocery store, airports, or any other scary place where you might be forced to interact with real people. Not to mention co-workers, school parents, sports parents, family members, in-laws, and more whom you may have to spend your valuable time around. Enjoy the life of avoidance.

aeturnum 11mo ago

> Your kids are a bad influence for whatever reason? Not my problem to fix. Not your problem to fix for sure - but it is your problem to equip your child to comfortably weather. There are bad influences out in the world and they generally have outsized effects on their social and professional scenes. In fact, the kind of curated, limited community you're advocating for is one where bad influences thrive. > So much time and resources, to produce what exactly? A piece of paper and fancy picture to stare at? I certainly agree the degree is whatever - but I think you're really under-valuing the social-gauntlet aspect of school. You will have classmates who kind of (or really) suck. You will need to do your work anyway. You will be incentivized to learn perseverance and a self-centered locus of control. These are valuable skills that only come from actual exposure to bad influences. Someone who's perfect in perfect conditions is going to struggle because the world is not perfect. The aims you highlight here make me think less of homeschooling than I did before.

array_key_first 11mo ago

My general experience is that homeschool children have self esteem and confidence issues precisely because they've been around 'hand picked' people... forever. They've never experienced assholes, or people who think their personality is grating, or whatever. Thick skin needs to be built up, to a degree. I'm not saying bullying is good, but being exposed to the unwashed masses definitely can be.

scoofy 11mo ago
I mean… the issue is you have incredibly well educated kids that have an awkward time dealing with assholes. Given the state of our education system, that seems like an obviously worthwhile trade off. Especially for parents in underperforming school districts and even entire regions.
oxag3n 11mo ago
I watched my kids becoming a median of their classmates. After changing to a private school it was noticeable after a month - different lexicon, mimics, attitude. It's not thick skin they are developing around assholes, it's them incorporating that behavior to some degree. There was nothing I could do to change that - talks, good example, nothing worked, only surrounding change.
- hintklb 11mo ago
  Underrated comment because I have seen exactly the same thing. Us as parents don't have as much nurture on our kids as we would like to think.
- atoav 11mo ago
  And I grew up among median kids till I was 19 and never did adjust to the median (neither did my group of friends foinf to the same school). My younger brother however did. There are kids who will have the tendency to adjust to others and there are kids who don't. This has to do with the self-confidence they bring with them before they enter their first day of school, friends they have/had outside school and it is not necessarily a thing a parent can always control in a predictable manner. For all we know in your case it could even be that your kid learned they have to follow the others in private school and then applied that lesson in the next one. What I am saying here is that having learned the lesson "you need to adjust to your peers" is the problem, not that the peers are the "wrong" ones.

codingdave 11mo ago

> increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students. You really might want to explain that further. At face value, that sounds like parroted right-wing rhetoric.

decremental 11mo ago
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AlexeyBelov 11mo ago
He is a real rightoid based on other comments. HN disappointed me today, since you're the only one who noticed, others silently tolerate this behavior.

cosmic_cheese 11mo ago

The problem is that what constitutes “healthy” varies so greatly between individuals (especially these days) that it barely carries any objective meaning, and the odds are heavily against any one person’s definition being correct. If I put myself in the shoes of a parent, I wouldn’t trust myself on the matter enough that I’d feel good shaping my childrens’ entire world to match it. It’s such a wildly difficult thing to get right, and I’d rather they get a glimpse of the world through wide variety of viewpoints and hope they’ll use the values I’ve instilled in them to construct their own view.

deleted 11mo ago
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subpixel 11mo ago

Where I live the schools are quite good and the homeschoolers are fundamental religious families who won’t send their kids to schools where gay pride flags are allowed. I’d pull our child out of school if the standards dropped but I think the majority of homeschoolers align with out of the mainstream poltical / religious views.

Nextgrid 11mo ago

> hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children Unless you can magically guarantee (or have enough money to fund their whole life) your children will never have to interact with "problem" people, they will need to learn to deal with those people one way or another. And it's better to do so in a low-stakes situation like school.

bentley 11mo ago
Childhood and youth are anything but “low‐stakes.” The social experiences I faced in public school were far worse than even the worst parts of my adult life. The direction I was headed was one of dark cynicism and misanthropy thanks to the bullying I faced and the lack of care from the adults in the system. When I switched to homeschooling, I began interacting with rational adults (my parents’ friends) and in turn learned what functioning human relationships look like. My ability to weather the difficult storms of adulthood in a healthy way came from the social growth I gained through homeschooling, not the regressive “socialization” that public school inflicted on me.
- hintklb 11mo ago
  I had exactly the same experience. I was in a public school full of assholes and teachers that couldn't care less about any bullying taking place. Those few years were probably the worse years of my life. I grew significantly and became a different person when I was moved to a different school. I still think it taught me a lot about the world and how people really are. I really lost a lot of faith in humanity in those few years and still see the world as cynical in which all people are in it for themselves. Did it make me stronger? Maybe. But also I wish I could see the world more positively as a lot of people that have been shielded from those experiences seem to do.
  - fzeroracer 11mo ago
    On the opposite end of the spectrum I grew up near a Mormon family whom exclusively homeschooled their children. Their 'homeschooling' mostly consisted of using the older children to assist and babysit the younger children as they had about ten or so children, and naturally could not equally provide schooling for such a wide range of needs. They were a nice family, but when I was in community college I had a chance to talk with one of the eldest who was there getting her GED. Last I recall, she held some resentment towards her parents because she was held back fairly significantly by her upbringing. Well, except for the fact that they were wealthy which helps smooth some of the problems.

atoav 11mo ago

> Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? A gardener who understands that after that short grace period that plant will have to grow amongst those sick and hostile ones essentially and not only that, it will have to form a thriving ecosystem with them. I get the idea of wanting to protect your child at all cost and wanting the best possible education for them. Rarely have I found that former students with over-protective parents that put them down a funnel of other kids from the same social and ideological background have really thrived. And I work in university level education meaning I get to see first hand what is usually the first phase in a persons life where they can decide for themselves how to do it. The people with self-confidence and stable roots who make the best, are usually those who "have seen it all", while those with alternative schooling backgrounds are either completely in their own world (often with rude awekenings) or constant feelings of inadequacy and comparison with others. That is anecdotal evidence by one educator, so details may matter. Aside from those individual aspects, there absolutely is a societal aspect to that. If gated communities are the solution, then your society has to be in what is already a pretty dystopian position. Having those isolated silos mean in a world of isolated social media silos, we give our kids even less possibility to experience the reality of other members of the society we expect them to repair. That shoulders them with an impossible task. My deep believe is that the goal of education is to prepare people for their life, but also to give them the tools to make the world they are sent into a better place. That requires a healthy dose of "knowing what is", especily if what is, is ugly.

synecdoche 11mo ago
>> Who would plant a flower next to a sick or hostile one? > A gardener who understands that after that short grace period that plant will have to grow amongst those sick and hostile ones essentially and not only that, it will have to form a thriving ecosystem with them. If, on the other hand, the gardener knows from experience that the flower will be suffocated, then it's pointless at best and cruel at worst.

class3shock 11mo ago

If schools are problematic or have kids that are problematic, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on investing in them to make them better, adding resources to support difficult kids, to help parents who are not doing well? As opposed to disengaging from them?

bentley 11mo ago
If the school system is damaging kids, it’s good to work to improve it, but you won't see results (if any—effecting systemic change is hard) until after your kids have already graduated, facing irreversible damage in the process. If you’re willing to homeschool well, the positive impact on your kids is immediate.
programjames 11mo ago
It is pretty hard for one parent to change things for the better, even if just for their child in one classroom. The administration and teachers have so many other things to deal with. It's much harder to change the entire school culture. You can volunteer, and you should!, but you still won't make as large an impact on your child's education as you would hope. In some ways, this is good, because there are lots of crazy parents out there who you don't want making impacts on your child's education, but it's also bad if you're not that crazy parent.