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This is not aimed at you, but at your wording. Controlling parents keeping their children isolated inside their own bubble, safely ensconced away from undesirab

• tokenadult 13y ago
  Well, what you write certainly isn't aimed at me, because I don't do any of "keeping their children isolated inside their own bubble, safely ensconced away from undesirable beliefs, classes and ethnicities" in my culturally diverse, community-involved, intellectually curious homeschooling family. Most homeschooling families I know, and I know hundreds all around the United States, resemble my open and free family life more than they resemble your caricature of some unknown anecdote you've encountered.
  • HarryHirsch 13y ago
    There is the homeschoolers that you know, and then there is the families you encounter in "Jesus Camp". I have no idea how to get around the Dunning-Kruger effect, but to ignore is is dishonest. I haven't made up my mind about the Amish and Hasid communities either.
    • NoPiece 13y ago
      It is dishonest to ignore it, and it is dishonest to hold it up as representative.
      • ripter 13y ago
        It didn't sound like he was holding it up as representative to me. Just that he wanted to acknowledge that both ends exists.
        • smokeyj 13y ago
          FTA: The blueprint still used for today’s schools was developed during the Protestant Reformation, when schools were created to teach children to read the Bible, to believe scripture without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. So the worst case of homeschooling is better than the ideal model of public education? As long as we're on the topic of cultish practices, I'm not very comfortable with an institution that forces its "pupils" to pledge allegiance to flag on a daily basis. I hypothesize that people who are against homeschooling pledged to flags many of times, and are probably incapable of forming opinions that aren't regurgitated to them from a figure of authority. It's just a hypothesis.
          • saraid216 13y ago
            > The blueprint still used for today’s schools was developed during the Protestant Reformation, when schools were created to teach children to read the Bible, to believe scripture without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. This came as a surprise to me, so I looked it up: http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Pa-Re/Protestant-Reformation.html http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Pa-Re/Protestant-Reformation.h... Not the most authoritative resource, but the provided bibliography is at least impressive. > I hypothesize that people who are against homeschooling pledged to flags many of times, and are probably incapable of forming opinions that aren't regurgitated to them from a figure of authority. And this is why I'm not upvoting you.
          • ikt 13y ago
            > I hypothesize that people who are against homeschooling pledged to flags many of times There are other countries besides the US you know... we don't pledge to any flag in Australia, and I'm certainly not "incapable of forming opinions that aren't regurgitated to them from a figure of authority" which funnily enough seems like an opinion regurgitated to you from a figure of authority :P I'm not against home schooling per say, I'm against idiots teaching kids poorly. This is the dilemma we have.
            • smokeyj 13y ago
      • ninguem2 13y ago
        From a purely statistical point of view (user logjam gave numbers and a link in another comment), yes it is representative.
        • ripter 13y ago
          Considering I have no idea what he may or may not have said in another comment, either before or after my comment. I still don't think that his comment made any claims that it was representative.
          • ninguem2 13y ago
            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6330874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6330874
        • icelancer 13y ago
          Just because it is "representative" does not make it an evil source. The driving force behind the stupidity is not home schooling but the faith that drives home schooling. Peanut allergies are a real problem and kill lots of people. Do we ban peanuts and sue God? Is that the plan?
    • debacle 13y ago
      Amish communities can be good and bad, just like any other community, though it's often a bit more difficult to properly "escape" them. I have no experience with Hasid communities, though.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  • jonmrodriguez 13y ago
    I was homeschooled (in Texas) and although my family was amazingly open-minded and intellectual, the vast vast majority of homeschool families we met were hyper-Christians who were homeschooling for religious reasons. Many of them were young-Earth creationist.
    • danielweber 13y ago
      Every community has at least two home schooling groups, one explicitly Christian, one explicitly secular. You can find the secular group in your town if you want it.
      • deepblueq 13y ago
        In my experience (homeschooled from about 7 to 17), there are at least two, both explicitly Christian, but one pretty far out there and one much more moderate. To be fair, this was in Kansas and Nebraska. I get along fine with everyone in the moderate group where I live, despite objectively big differences in beliefs.
  • jonlucc 13y ago
    I believe you 100%, but I find it hard to imagine how a single family can offer the diversity of experiences present in a public school. Do you have a way of addressing that?
    • tokenadult 13y ago
      I find it hard to imagine how a single family can offer the diversity of experiences present in a public school Which is why my children meet children from many other families, and ADULTS from many other families, in their community activities. What they do in the outside world spans a much wider territory than the attendance area of our friendly local public schools, and exposes them to a lot of people who are of different ages besides just their own age plus or minus one year. (This is a general response that is true of most homeschooling families. More specifically about my own family, we have lived in two different countries since our oldest son was born, and he was all over the United States and even overseas for summer academic programs before he finished his secondary education.)
      • angersock 13y ago
        Sure, sure, but how many have your kids fought, dated, and/or slept with? There's an entire other side to the socialization we find in schools.
        • cliffu 13y ago
          Yes I am sure in their community no children would ever fight in front of their parents, and they only meet up with their friends during homeschool hours. "Times up, junior, let's return to our cloister and shutter the windows for the night."
        • zhemao 13y ago
          School is not the only place one finds romantic partners. As for fights, fisticuffs are not generally an accepted method of conflict resolution in the adult world anyway.
  • logjam 13y ago
    Oh for fuck sakes, your spin that homeschooling is mostly "culturally diverse, community-involved, and intellectually curious" is really getting old. Even with your anecdotal assertions, do you really, really expect us to believe that you're unaware of the number of parents in this country who home-school their kids largely if not solely to prevent access to such dreaded concepts as, oh....evolution: "Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth's creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83% of home-schooling parents want to give their children "religious or moral instruction. "The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians," said Ian Slatter, a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "Most home-schoolers will definitely have a sort of creationist component to their home-school program."" http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-03-08-home-school-christian_N.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-03-08-home... In what way is homeschooling to suit a parent's utter stupidity not a prison?
    • argonaut 13y ago
      So.. then what? Ban homeschooling? You would remove the ability for families to teach their kids creationism while at the same time putting gifted children in schools that are largely stifling and restrictive, when they could otherwise be homeschooled (crudely put, bring up the bottom while bringing down the top), perpetuating the race towards the lowest common denominator. Oh, the irony.
      • jlgreco 13y ago
        > So.. then what? Ban homeschooling? If there is no way to effectively regulate it to ensure that the children are getting a real education, then yes. Parents should not be permitted to deny their children a real education. They can supplement that real education as they please, but not deprive them of it.
        • johndevor 13y ago
          So you show up at their doorstep with guns and demand that their kids come along? I'm with you on the need to teach rational thought, but I don't see how violence achieves or encourages that end.
  • skylan_q 13y ago
    I don't have the patience that you do. It must be the result of public schooling. ;) I can't be bothered to speak about this topic with people, who like me, suffered public education. To suggest that state-wide/nationwide education-prison system isn't the best setup causes others to give me strange stares save the staunchest libertarians and anarchists. The school system teaches us first and foremost that it is the best education system. I can't imagine an institution better designed for self-preservation than the current style of public education in the west.
    • mpyne 13y ago
      > The school system teaches us first and foremost that it is the best education system. Literally no one ever claimed that, or so much as implied that, a single year of my own public schooling. Or, for that matter, at my son's. It's a good thing too, as it would have been obviously a flawed argument (we can't all be the "#1 School" so someone is not getting the best). Even the most clueless of administrators can figure out that the kids would figure that out. Likewise I don't see PTA members going around with an agenda full of "NOTHING TO DO. THE SCHOOL IS PERFECT TODAY". So it seems to me that more than the libertarians and anarchists seem to agree that we don't yet have the best setup. Don't get me wrong but I have to wonder where these strawmen come from. Surely there's enough actually wrong with public schooling today that we don't have to stoop to anthropomorphic analogies that are trivially provided counterexamples? E.g. you could argue that public schools are probably bad for those who are talented but anti-authoritarian. I'm sure most of us could agree with that (even if we couldn't all think up proper solutions).
      • skylan_q 13y ago
        Literally no one ever claimed that, or so much as implied that, a single year of my own public schooling. No one did imply it in their comments. People just tend to live this way. Likewise I don't see PTA members going around with an agenda full of "NOTHING TO DO. THE SCHOOL IS PERFECT TODAY" No. They complain about snacks and football practice. PTAs would never do something like band together and defy/take down the DoE. The schools just say that they're subordinate to it, and that is that. Next topic: are there enough emergency eye wash stations?
  • zarify 13y ago
    Speaking only from my own experience with kids who have been home schooled coming into our high school (either directly from primary school grades or partly into their high school years), I have yet to see one for whom that has worked out well (socially, emotionally or intellectually). I suspect there might be a bit of selection bias going on with your lack of negative experiences.
    • russellsprouts 13y ago
      There's also a Toupee Fallacy effect going on -- you never see a good looking toupee - because a good looking toupee is indistinguishable from real hair. The same way, you will never notice normal homeschooling kids - because you will not know they were homeschooled. They will know the stigmas around homeschooling, and probably won't bring it up.
      • zarify 13y ago
        Eheh, I hadn't heard the term Toupee Fallacy before. But in my situation at least I'm told which schools (or lack thereof) our kids have come from.
  • Executor 13y ago
    Your idea is another extreme. On one end you have indoctrination by parents and in the other by society. Both are failures.
• RougeFemme 13y ago
  I home-schooled my kids for a little while; wish I could have done it longer. I was definitely not isolating my kids in a bubble of any sort. As a matter of fact, my kids and I are ethnic minorities - different people have guessed different ethnicities, usually incorrectly. I didn't feel comfortable with 100% student-directed, but there was definitely much more freedom than in school. My kids got plenty of socialization outside of the home - and often inside - with plenty of other people from different belief systems/classes/ethnicities, etc. And they did extremely well, both socially and academically. Also, the reality is that many schools are segregated by class and/or ethnicity, so students attending those schools - for better or worse - see no more diversity than they might see at home or in their communities.
• sigzero 13y ago
  You have a very incorrect view of homeschooling.
• ripter 13y ago
  A lot of people are saying that your view of home schooling is wrong, that they of course don't protect their children in a bubble like you say. My personal experience with friends that where home school would agree with your view. They where all home schooled to 'protect' them from undesirable beliefs and ideas. The parents (of the kids I know) would also disagree with you. No one wants to think that they are over protective and hurting their children by protecting them. I wouldn't say all home schooled kids are like that, but I wouldn't say that none of them are either.
• argonaut 13y ago
  Do you seriously think that public schooling is actually going to give children exposure to this "undesirable beliefs, classes and ethnicities" that you speak of? That kind of public school is a mythology. Public schools are by and large 1) socioeconomically homogenous, 2) racially homogenous (among one or two groups), 3) class homogenous, and/or otherwise culturally homogenous. And even in schools that lean towards heterogeneity rather than homogeneity, it's not like all the kids are harmoniously integrated into one happy family. Schools are dominated by cliques and social circles, and stereotyping is rampant. A kid in a school with Asians is going to come away with the stereotype that Asians are nerds. A kid in a school with African-Americans is going to come away with the stereotype that African-Americans steal things. And while that might not be the case in all cases, I might argue that it is as representative as your belief that homeschooling parents are "controlling," etc. etc.