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The alternative many will be forced to take will be Homeschooling + Online Courses, which is great! À la carte education sounds much more useful than a buffet

The alternative many will be forced to take will be Homeschooling + Online Courses, which is great! À la carte education sounds much more useful than a buffet of stuff selected by someone else for you.

clicks 14y ago
So, one of the big reasons homeschooling isn't more prevalent is that increasingly both parents have to work. Maybe a new, not before seen alternative is some sort of a quasi-daycare institution which has authority figures not teaching but just making sure the kids are focusing on their online courses and not horsing around! And only so occasionally answering questions the kids ask. Because you're still in an environment with other similar-aged peers, you can still have recesses to bond and mingle and have chances for having healthy socializing practices.
- rayiner 14y ago
  So, basically, private school? This is where my wife and I want to send our daughter if we ever make it back to Chicago: http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum. Basically some guy decided to home school his kid, but let other kids join in.The result was a curriculum in which kids learn formal logic in middle school.
- kamkazemoose 14y ago
  I just wonder how effective that would be. I think kids would have a hard time focusing in front of a computer, and being lectured to. I think a large part of the elementary school education is working on activities and worksheets, especially in groups. I'm not sure you can replicate that in an online course, and I just wonder how effective an online course could be for younger kids. I'd actually be interested in seeing if there have been any studies done on this.
  - erichocean 14y ago
    CAVA is the CA Virtual Academy using the K12 curriculum, and despite having a higher-than-normal number of "special needs" students, does better on standardized tests than the other public schools in CA. (CAVA is a charter school, and thus part of the public school system. Anyone with kids in CA can sign up for it, and everything is paid for -- they even pay for Internet and give you a computer.) In my experience, CAVA is very effective in all the areas you've mentioned. And they do weekly in person group activities as well, plus field trips, etc. I honestly don't know anyone in CAVA who's wanted to go back to sending their kids to day care^HHHHHHHHpublic school.
- newbie12 14y ago
  Over 1.5 million students are home schooled in the U.S. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91
k-mcgrady 14y ago
It might seem better to us but I doubt kids see it like that. Most kids enjoy being in a school environment with their friends. You lose the very important social aspect of school with homeschooling/online courses. >> À la carte education sounds much more useful than a buffet of stuff selected by someone else for you. With online courses parents would most likely select what the child learns, it will still be "a buffet of stuff selected by someone else for you". The reason being if given the choice I would be a majority of kids would decide against doing a Maths or English course.
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  Two things: 1. Parents can choose what is best for their children, instead of a "democratically" chosen buffet. 2. The social aspect can be addressed by having physical activity clubs/gatherings/groups/centers. I don't know if schools already do this, but being able to choose Skiing as a Phy Ed since grade 1, or whatever tickles your child's fancy just sounds like a much better opportunity to perhaps become a professional athlete in that field. The burden will fall to the parents to decide how well rounded or specialized they want their children to be in certain aspects - mental or physical. There could be suggested coursework by companies/industries that would help parents choose what their child needs to learn to be successful in a certain industry. Let's say my kid shows interest in becoming an Astronaut. I look up Space Company X's suggested education outline and roughly follow it instead of having my kid learn everything until they're in the later teens when they finally choose what they want to spend 8+ hours a day on.
  - erichocean 14y ago
    > The social aspect can be addressed by having physical activity clubs/gatherings/groups/centers. I don't know if schools already do this, They do. Really, the negative comments here on homeschooling are staggeringly out of date. Go look at K12.[0] That's what "homeschoolers" in the State of California use, through something called CAVA. I've got two boys in CAVA and one boy in regular public school. The K12 courses are incredibly well-designed. The education in the public school (and we're in the best school in Palmdale) is terrible. CAVA is amazingly good, way better than the education I got in public school growing up. [0] http://www.k12.com/ http://www.k12.com/
jiggy2011 14y ago
Surely with homeschooling kids are going to get even more inconsistent results due to radically varying teaching abilities and knowledge of parents? Not to mention severely biased curricular, I'm sure HN kids would all know haskell by the time they were 9 but what about poetry , sports and history?
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  1. The parents aren't the ones who are expected to teach, they are expected to select online(or off) "coursework." So a parent doesn't have to be proficient in what he expects his child to learn. 2. Does everyone have to know everything? Isn't that a line between good parenting and bad parenting. If you think your kid will benefit from arts and history and what not, you will make sure they go through those courses. Why do you need someone else to force your kids to go through that curriculum? This just sounds like an implication that parents don't know what's good for their children, so we should trust what the experts have outlined for us. Well, in the homeschool/online education setting, you still could and probably would consult education/career counselors for selection of syllabus.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    It's one thing to use online courseware as a supplement to education but another to remove a teacher who can sit next to a student and explain things they are having trouble with in different ways and work through problems with them. I think it's important to have some general grounding in a variety of subjects. I certainly wouldn't rely on all parents (who themselves may have failed in education) to be able to choose a good balanced curriculum for their children.
- guylhem 14y ago
  > Not to mention severely biased curricular, I'm sure HN kids would all know haskell by the time they were 9 but what about poetry , sports and history? A poor education in sports may reduce potential profits of future pro-athletes and students looking for a scholarship. For others, I'm not sure. Also, not knowing about poetry and history won't harm. In fact, in term of opportunity costs, it might be a better move NOT to touch these subjects altogether to spend more time on things that matter, or at least on topics that matter a little bit more than these subjects. Haskell may not be that popular at the moment, but that may change in the future (haskell-like language could emerge!) and still at the moment I'm sure there are paying jobs for people with haskell fluency than for people who are really really good in poetry and history.
pekk 14y ago
Home schooling doesn't have any quality control. That's only great if the parent makes it great. And it is often the case that parents don't make it great. A lot of parents are lazy and happy to do the minimum or less - they only home school, or pretend to, enough to keep the state off their back, and may prefer that kids do work for them. In addition, there is a strong tendency for home-schooling parents to be very ideological, so that kids who are otherwise smart and can read, write and do arithmetic end up with huge holes in areas like history, mythology and biology. I wish we wouldn't so often reduce this issue to "public school is bad in every way, so it's better if there are no common public educational services for anyone".
- erichocean 14y ago
  > Home schooling doesn't have any quality control. Neither do public schools.
  - fosap 14y ago
    Every sane public school system should. And the systems i know have a though recruiting process. Just because it's not hire and fire it's usually not laissez-faire.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    What would be the closest analogue of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District for home schooling?

clicks 14y ago

So, one of the big reasons homeschooling isn't more prevalent is that increasingly both parents have to work. Maybe a new, not before seen alternative is some sort of a quasi-daycare institution which has authority figures not teaching but just making sure the kids are focusing on their online courses and not horsing around! And only so occasionally answering questions the kids ask. Because you're still in an environment with other similar-aged peers, you can still have recesses to bond and mingle and have chances for having healthy socializing practices.

rayiner 14y ago
So, basically, private school? This is where my wife and I want to send our daughter if we ever make it back to Chicago: http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum http://www.chicagogrammar.org/curriculum. Basically some guy decided to home school his kid, but let other kids join in.The result was a curriculum in which kids learn formal logic in middle school.
kamkazemoose 14y ago
I just wonder how effective that would be. I think kids would have a hard time focusing in front of a computer, and being lectured to. I think a large part of the elementary school education is working on activities and worksheets, especially in groups. I'm not sure you can replicate that in an online course, and I just wonder how effective an online course could be for younger kids. I'd actually be interested in seeing if there have been any studies done on this.
- erichocean 14y ago
  CAVA is the CA Virtual Academy using the K12 curriculum, and despite having a higher-than-normal number of "special needs" students, does better on standardized tests than the other public schools in CA. (CAVA is a charter school, and thus part of the public school system. Anyone with kids in CA can sign up for it, and everything is paid for -- they even pay for Internet and give you a computer.) In my experience, CAVA is very effective in all the areas you've mentioned. And they do weekly in person group activities as well, plus field trips, etc. I honestly don't know anyone in CAVA who's wanted to go back to sending their kids to day care^HHHHHHHHpublic school.
newbie12 14y ago
Over 1.5 million students are home schooled in the U.S. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91

k-mcgrady 14y ago

It might seem better to us but I doubt kids see it like that. Most kids enjoy being in a school environment with their friends. You lose the very important social aspect of school with homeschooling/online courses. >> À la carte education sounds much more useful than a buffet of stuff selected by someone else for you. With online courses parents would most likely select what the child learns, it will still be "a buffet of stuff selected by someone else for you". The reason being if given the choice I would be a majority of kids would decide against doing a Maths or English course.

manaskarekar 14y ago
Two things: 1. Parents can choose what is best for their children, instead of a "democratically" chosen buffet. 2. The social aspect can be addressed by having physical activity clubs/gatherings/groups/centers. I don't know if schools already do this, but being able to choose Skiing as a Phy Ed since grade 1, or whatever tickles your child's fancy just sounds like a much better opportunity to perhaps become a professional athlete in that field. The burden will fall to the parents to decide how well rounded or specialized they want their children to be in certain aspects - mental or physical. There could be suggested coursework by companies/industries that would help parents choose what their child needs to learn to be successful in a certain industry. Let's say my kid shows interest in becoming an Astronaut. I look up Space Company X's suggested education outline and roughly follow it instead of having my kid learn everything until they're in the later teens when they finally choose what they want to spend 8+ hours a day on.
- erichocean 14y ago
  > The social aspect can be addressed by having physical activity clubs/gatherings/groups/centers. I don't know if schools already do this, They do. Really, the negative comments here on homeschooling are staggeringly out of date. Go look at K12.[0] That's what "homeschoolers" in the State of California use, through something called CAVA. I've got two boys in CAVA and one boy in regular public school. The K12 courses are incredibly well-designed. The education in the public school (and we're in the best school in Palmdale) is terrible. CAVA is amazingly good, way better than the education I got in public school growing up. [0] http://www.k12.com/ http://www.k12.com/

jiggy2011 14y ago

Surely with homeschooling kids are going to get even more inconsistent results due to radically varying teaching abilities and knowledge of parents? Not to mention severely biased curricular, I'm sure HN kids would all know haskell by the time they were 9 but what about poetry , sports and history?

manaskarekar 14y ago
1. The parents aren't the ones who are expected to teach, they are expected to select online(or off) "coursework." So a parent doesn't have to be proficient in what he expects his child to learn. 2. Does everyone have to know everything? Isn't that a line between good parenting and bad parenting. If you think your kid will benefit from arts and history and what not, you will make sure they go through those courses. Why do you need someone else to force your kids to go through that curriculum? This just sounds like an implication that parents don't know what's good for their children, so we should trust what the experts have outlined for us. Well, in the homeschool/online education setting, you still could and probably would consult education/career counselors for selection of syllabus.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  It's one thing to use online courseware as a supplement to education but another to remove a teacher who can sit next to a student and explain things they are having trouble with in different ways and work through problems with them. I think it's important to have some general grounding in a variety of subjects. I certainly wouldn't rely on all parents (who themselves may have failed in education) to be able to choose a good balanced curriculum for their children.
guylhem 14y ago
> Not to mention severely biased curricular, I'm sure HN kids would all know haskell by the time they were 9 but what about poetry , sports and history? A poor education in sports may reduce potential profits of future pro-athletes and students looking for a scholarship. For others, I'm not sure. Also, not knowing about poetry and history won't harm. In fact, in term of opportunity costs, it might be a better move NOT to touch these subjects altogether to spend more time on things that matter, or at least on topics that matter a little bit more than these subjects. Haskell may not be that popular at the moment, but that may change in the future (haskell-like language could emerge!) and still at the moment I'm sure there are paying jobs for people with haskell fluency than for people who are really really good in poetry and history.

pekk 14y ago

Home schooling doesn't have any quality control. That's only great if the parent makes it great. And it is often the case that parents don't make it great. A lot of parents are lazy and happy to do the minimum or less - they only home school, or pretend to, enough to keep the state off their back, and may prefer that kids do work for them. In addition, there is a strong tendency for home-schooling parents to be very ideological, so that kids who are otherwise smart and can read, write and do arithmetic end up with huge holes in areas like history, mythology and biology. I wish we wouldn't so often reduce this issue to "public school is bad in every way, so it's better if there are no common public educational services for anyone".

erichocean 14y ago
> Home schooling doesn't have any quality control. Neither do public schools.
- fosap 14y ago
  Every sane public school system should. And the systems i know have a though recruiting process. Just because it's not hire and fire it's usually not laissez-faire.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  What would be the closest analogue of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District for home schooling?