10 ms·

My Parents Were Home-Schooling Anarchists (2011)

96 points by akbarnama 11y ago

michaelfeathers 11y ago
More upbeat than the story of the Paskowitz family, as told in the documentary Surfwise. They said they never had trouble with the authorities because their kids never started school. Dropping out of the system is tougher than never entering it. The kids, as adults, were quite resentful that they lacked an educational background that could've helped them.
zekevermillion 11y ago
Why doesn't NYT let hackernews links through their soft paywall? I guess I will go and google the headline so I can read the article...
- dylanjermiah 11y ago
  Why should HN be an exception?
  - zekevermillion 11y ago
    It's in NYT's interest to allow people to read linked articles. I'm never going to subscribe to NYT just to follow a link from Google or any other source. But maybe if I read enough interesting pieces linked from other sources, I'll shell out $100 to see what else is in the publication, access archives, etc.
- karzeem 11y ago
  Opening the link in an incognito window also works.
abecedarius 11y ago
Does the author resent staying out of school because... it didn't prepare them for the awfulness of school? I kind of got that impression. Imagine if all the state money that went into your schooling were invested instead for your minimum basic income: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-speech/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - macspoofing 11y ago
    I guess it depends on what you want out of life. If you just want to hang out at the beach and have enough for basic shelter and food, you don't need to work a lot, or even at all. If you want a nice car, a condo, laptop/smartphone, nice dining room set, etc., you're going to have put some hours in.
- rmk2 11y ago
  > Does the author resent staying out of school because... it didn't prepare them for the awfulness of school? I kind of got that impression. No. The author resents staying out of school because it also meant staying out of more diverse and more regular social interaction. Successful social interaction requires shared values (which wasn't really the issue) and, at least to a degree, shared social experiences. If two people have hitherto had experiences that are so divergent that ego cannot understand any of the structures or references alter uses, then social interaction becomes very difficult. Accordingly, fitting in was difficult because of their non-standard upbringing, and while the parents might not have minded that they did not quite "fit in", the children did not have a choice of their own or even the necessary experience that would have enabled them to make an informed choice in the first place. What is described is the removal from the Zeitgeist, which becomes a problem if others simply assume a shared set of conventions and experiences or if you would like to be part of a group that is based on different premises. That school was (at least partially) awful was merely a symptom of this underlying social schism, not a cause.
  - 1123581321 11y ago
    I've observed that it's easier for homeschooled students to mimick being products of the zeitgeist than for products of the zeitgeist to gain the benefits of customized education. Raising a child in a beneficial environment gives them more options as an adult in that way (I.e. I'm not making a broader point.)
  - 11y ago
VLM 11y ago
Its an interesting story but I would summarize it more as being extremely poor as children in the 70s, also they happened to home school although that wasn't a substantial part of their story. Or if they somehow attended stereotypical K-12, however impossible it would have been logistically, wouldn't have changed the overall story very much. Also, in the olden day, people, both kids and adults, were more creative.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  > Also, in the olden day [sic], people, both kids and adults, were more creative. Wat? [citation needed] It probably depends on who you hang out with. Granted, i wasn't there in the 70s, but there are some mighty creative individuals in my sphere of experience, both local and remote.
ctlaltdefeat 11y ago
This is not what the modern definition of "Anarchists" means at all.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  This assertion would be more interesting if it included some supporting detail. What is that "definition"? Why should we use it rather than some other definition? How does the situation in TFA not qualify? Don't worry, I'm not attached to any particular definition of any particular political philosophy. I'm just curious about what you're trying to say.
lordnacho 11y ago
From what I can tell as a non-expert, kids cannot learn certain things very well until they reach a certain age or maturity, but after that age it's very easy. My gripe with the education system is that early on, there's too much focus on learning things that people are going to learn regardless. If your kid learns the alphabet at 4 or at 8, what's the difference? Can anyone not learn how to read a newspaper by the time they leave school? Later on, when the kids get to the teenage years, they are able to learn a great deal of stuff. But then nobody is really teaching them when they can learn. There's a whole load of scientific stuff that's quite interesting that ends up getting crammed into a few years of high school, and crammed in a way that turns kids off. And culture classes (literature, history) are so horrific some people never pick up another book. There's also not enough emphasis on motivation. The emphasis is on passing tests. If you're motivated, you can learn anything. You'll even spend your own time and money learning. My guess is the home schoolers have figured this out and that's why they're not that far behind ordinary schools.
- macspoofing 11y ago
  >There's also not enough emphasis on motivation. The emphasis is on passing tests. If you're motivated, you can learn anything. My problem with education is that there is no 'one-size-fits-all' policy. Some kids fail hard in a structured system that puts emphasis on passing tests, other thrive in it but fail in a less structured 'find-your-own-motivation' system. Like a pendulum we just keep swinging back and forth and realize we keep missing a portion of the kids. I don't know how you fix it because it's expensive to tailor education to a kid. I guess it's all up to the parents.
  - codingdave 11y ago
    Your last sentence is exactly how you fix it - as parents, you are responsible for each child's education. We have, at times, homeschooled each child, and also sent each of them to school, exactly because of the issues you and the other comment raised. They went to kindergarten to learn how to listen to people other than their parents and make friends. My social daughter came home for 6 months, then went right back to public school. My introverted and shy son came home for 2 years, and is going back to school this coming year because we're not doing well at teaching him... we see our failures there, and don't want to exaggerate them any more. Plus, he wants more friends, too. We expect they will probably all skip jr. high, as they will be old enough to learn on their own, and the social scene is just painful at the age, and then I'll leave it to them if they want to do the high school experience, or just get a GED and move on to other adventures in their teens. There also are online teacher-led schools in most states now. Both private and public There are home schooling groups that meet together so each parent can teach a groups of kids in their areas of expertise. There are online curriculum you can purchase, and hard copy curriculum. On short, there are choices. Many, many choices. As parents, we need to help our children find the path that is right for each one of them, and it is a more complex decision than a one-time choice to either home school or attend the public schools. As in most things, a middle ground is often a better, if more complex, answer.
macspoofing 11y ago
There are multiple strains of Anarchism, each as valid as the next, and some diametrically opposed to the other (eg. Anarcho-Capitalism vs. Anarcho-Communism). People are going to self-identify in ways you may not agree, so just focus on the content not the label.
wyager 11y ago
First, an anecdote about home schoolers: I am good friends with three people who started home-schooled and did not enter the traditional school system until later on (two in high school, one in college). I don't think any of them regret it, and they are all very well off academically. There seems to be a popular conception of home schooling parents as crazy religious zealots or something, which I think has little basis in reality. Honestly, having spent about half my pre-college years at public schools, I would much rather be home schooled than public schooled. The primary reason is that it seemed like public school classes were always geared towards the lowest common denominator of the class. I hardly did any work (and hardly learned anything) because we spent so much time banging on the same concepts for the benefit of the slowest people in the class. When I finally went to private school, we suddenly started targeting at least the middle of the class. I finally started learning things in school! The secondary reason is political. Even from a young age, I was very aware of the fact that the public school system didn't treat me like a human being. I'm better at articulating why I felt that way now; it's because the public school system is alarmingly close to the prison system. As a child, you are legally required to attend school, under threat of force (directed at your parents). Since many people can't or won't do home or private schooling, this amounts to forcing many children to attend public school. Upon arriving, you are not permitted to leave of your own free will. You are subject to the arbitrary directives of non-elected officials. You are stripped of many basic human rights on campus (in particular, the right to free speech and the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures). There is a healthy judicial tradition in the USA of taking away the rights of school children. I'm sure there's a list of relevant supreme court cases around. Public schools in the US also do tons of political indoctrination, like saying the pledge of allegiance on a regular basis. Growing up in that environment was extremely deleterious to my critical thinking; by the time I was in sixth grade, I had all sorts of authoritarian leftist ideas of exactly the sort I'd been subjected to by my teachers and my schools of the last seven years. It wasn't until I finally switched to private school, where they treated me like a human, that I realized I had been imprisoned about half the days out of every year. Finally, I was free to leave campus of my own accord. Finally, discourse, rather than blind obedience, was the norm. If private school wasn't an option, I'd much rather homeschool my children than expose them to the academic and psychological clusterfuck that is every public school I every attended.
OmarIsmail 11y ago
The thing that stood out most to me in this article is the tale of abuse and torment the kids received when going back to the formal school system. The concept of teasing and abuse was foreign to them. Obviously it's just one datapoint, but I'd love to see a study that checks whether the school system makes children meaner and more cruel. Imagine the damage being done to society if it really is the case that traditional schools result in meaner people.
- jcranmer 11y ago
  n=1 anecdote, but my experience is that I had equally-bad (if not worse) bullying experiences outside of school than inside. What I suspect is happening is that the school environment mixes people of different "cultures" much more thoroughly than non-school environments, which greatly increases the possible exposure of would-be bullies and would-be bully targets.
  - waterhouse 11y ago
    The other obvious thing that comes to mind w.r.t. school and bullying is that one fallback option for dealing with bullying is leaving the situation, but in school, if you want to switch classes or even schools to avoid a bully, I think you would basically have to ask some adults for permission, and if they don't grant it, tough luck--you're still forced to spend N hours per weekday there. Non-school activities seem less likely to be so compulsory (though if the activity is "walking in your neighborhood and encountering your bully", complete avoidance would require moving), which would seem to put some upper limit on how bad a case of ongoing bullying can get. Could you comment on how the above relates to your experience?
    - jcranmer 11y ago
      In middle school (the only time when I had any sort of bullying problem at school), the problems all stemmed from gym class. The school system had decided to send both the GT and the emotionally-disturbed students to the same school, but the only place where the two groups ended up mixing was gym class. Well, maybe some elective courses as well, but I never had any problems there. I think that the bullying only really ended up happening (both in and out of school) when there was no adult supervision. I'm not entirely certain, though, since I have tried to purge my memories of what happened during those times.
deckiedan 11y ago
My brother and I were home educated from end of primary up to 18 years old or so. My brother totally believes in home education, and (not but!) is now a primary school teacher, after having gone on to do his degree and masters in universities in the UK. We found European home educators are often much more "anarchist" in the sense of this article, liberal, free-thinking, non-conforming, often of non-traditional religion / spirituality, who think the state system is too narrow, limited, and structured. In the States it's much more right-wing religious exclusionists who think the system is too liberal, unstructured, and ungodly. A very very weird difference of culture. My mum wrote a lot about home education, here's her site with all kinds of info about getting started, details about what we did, etc: http://home-ed.info/ http://home-ed.info/ I loved it, and it was perfect for me. My brother loves regime and structure, so would probably have done fine in school. I'm much less academic, and do a whole mixture of jobs (acting, teaching, programming, writing, A/V, electronics, etc.) in a non-profit organisation. Almost all stuff that I learned as a kid, with the oceans of free time that I had, and my friends in school didn't. I worked in a theatre company for 3 years, and did school-work in the evenings, or when I had time. I taught myself to code. With our kids now, my wife (non-home-educated) is a bit skeptical of her ability to home-school. Our son is still too young (he's one). I certainly wouldn't object to him going to school - providing it doesn't interfere with his education too much. :-)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sopooneo 11y ago
I have seen this happen. To me, it is all legitametely wonderful, except for the naiveté of the parents in thinking they can drop their kids into the churning river of public school without any instruction on how to get along. That challenge can be addressed, but only if you acknowledge it exists.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
"didn't they need to be with their peers and suffer all the harsh experiences that entails" Around some people, there's a belief that "doing time makes your a person" But you know what. Regular folks avoid going to prison. Moreover, they avoid doing things leading to that outcome. Why would you submit your child to prison-like environment? It's not like adults are routinely exposed to that kind of experience. Certainly not required for leading a productive life.
- learc83 11y ago
  I've never understood this at all. Outside of public school, I've only encountered one other similar environment--my first retail job after high school. After that, social interactions have been nothing at all like what school prepared me for.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    Worse still, school un-prepairs you from healthy interactions. You grow all kinds of needles, you become wary of people and insecure. It takes literally years of your life to overcome that. Sometimes forever.
- adrusi 11y ago
  Because even the social environments that don't resemble schools are created by, operated by, and comprised of people who learned how to interact socially in the school environment. This means that many of the subtle conventions that underly the more visible dynamics will be intuitive to someone with a school background, and inaccessible to someone without it. The issue is exacerbated by the fact that the school environment is unnatural and irrational, and so its customs will never follow from common sense. Also, not sharing a huge formative experience with the rest of the population makes it harder to empathize with them.
  - toothbrush 11y ago
    > comprised of people who learned how to interact socially in the school environment. [...] This means that many of the subtle conventions that underly the more visible dynamics will be intuitive to someone with a school background I am sceptical. I think that these effects are, as you say, subtle, and given how people are able to emigrate/immigrate when adults and still manage to fit in with foreign customs, etc., seems like evidence to me that it isn't all that bad. All foreign customs are unnatural and irrational when viewed by the outsider—i experience this daily in the country where i'm currently living (been here 3 years, it still seems bizarre sometimes, even though i'm reasonably integrated with local friends and SO etc). Anyway, perhaps i'm comparing apples to oranges :).
willchang 11y ago
I generally sympathize with homeschoolers, but these parents seemed pathologically unable to doubt themselves or admit to mistakes. They were unable to see that their son, James, needed help learning to read, and even seemed to minimize his unhappiness. They did nothing to prepare their children for public school, despite professing to know how unpleasant the social environment can be. When James was picked on by his classmates, he never let his parents know — presumably because they were so unattuned to their children's experiences that it would have been pointless. These parents doubtless believed they were virtuous in rejecting the culture of the times, but they went quite a bit farther and were basically delusional. People like that should not homeschool.

96 points by akbarnama 11y ago

More upbeat than the story of the Paskowitz family, as told in the documentary Surfwise. They said they never had trouble with the authorities because their kids never started school. Dropping out of the system is tougher than never entering it. The kids, as adults, were quite resentful that they lacked an educational background that could've helped them.

zekevermillion 11y ago

Why doesn't NYT let hackernews links through their soft paywall? I guess I will go and google the headline so I can read the article...

dylanjermiah 11y ago
Why should HN be an exception?
- zekevermillion 11y ago
  It's in NYT's interest to allow people to read linked articles. I'm never going to subscribe to NYT just to follow a link from Google or any other source. But maybe if I read enough interesting pieces linked from other sources, I'll shell out $100 to see what else is in the publication, access archives, etc.
karzeem 11y ago
Opening the link in an incognito window also works.

abecedarius 11y ago

Does the author resent staying out of school because... it didn't prepare them for the awfulness of school? I kind of got that impression. Imagine if all the state money that went into your schooling were invested instead for your minimum basic income: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-speech/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- macspoofing 11y ago
  I guess it depends on what you want out of life. If you just want to hang out at the beach and have enough for basic shelter and food, you don't need to work a lot, or even at all. If you want a nice car, a condo, laptop/smartphone, nice dining room set, etc., you're going to have put some hours in.
rmk2 11y ago
> Does the author resent staying out of school because... it didn't prepare them for the awfulness of school? I kind of got that impression. No. The author resents staying out of school because it also meant staying out of more diverse and more regular social interaction. Successful social interaction requires shared values (which wasn't really the issue) and, at least to a degree, shared social experiences. If two people have hitherto had experiences that are so divergent that ego cannot understand any of the structures or references alter uses, then social interaction becomes very difficult. Accordingly, fitting in was difficult because of their non-standard upbringing, and while the parents might not have minded that they did not quite "fit in", the children did not have a choice of their own or even the necessary experience that would have enabled them to make an informed choice in the first place. What is described is the removal from the Zeitgeist, which becomes a problem if others simply assume a shared set of conventions and experiences or if you would like to be part of a group that is based on different premises. That school was (at least partially) awful was merely a symptom of this underlying social schism, not a cause.
- 1123581321 11y ago
  I've observed that it's easier for homeschooled students to mimick being products of the zeitgeist than for products of the zeitgeist to gain the benefits of customized education. Raising a child in a beneficial environment gives them more options as an adult in that way (I.e. I'm not making a broader point.)
- 11y ago

VLM 11y ago

Its an interesting story but I would summarize it more as being extremely poor as children in the 70s, also they happened to home school although that wasn't a substantial part of their story. Or if they somehow attended stereotypical K-12, however impossible it would have been logistically, wouldn't have changed the overall story very much. Also, in the olden day, people, both kids and adults, were more creative.

toothbrush 11y ago
> Also, in the olden day [sic], people, both kids and adults, were more creative. Wat? [citation needed] It probably depends on who you hang out with. Granted, i wasn't there in the 70s, but there are some mighty creative individuals in my sphere of experience, both local and remote.

ctlaltdefeat 11y ago

This is not what the modern definition of "Anarchists" means at all.

jessaustin 11y ago
This assertion would be more interesting if it included some supporting detail. What is that "definition"? Why should we use it rather than some other definition? How does the situation in TFA not qualify? Don't worry, I'm not attached to any particular definition of any particular political philosophy. I'm just curious about what you're trying to say.

lordnacho 11y ago

From what I can tell as a non-expert, kids cannot learn certain things very well until they reach a certain age or maturity, but after that age it's very easy. My gripe with the education system is that early on, there's too much focus on learning things that people are going to learn regardless. If your kid learns the alphabet at 4 or at 8, what's the difference? Can anyone not learn how to read a newspaper by the time they leave school? Later on, when the kids get to the teenage years, they are able to learn a great deal of stuff. But then nobody is really teaching them when they can learn. There's a whole load of scientific stuff that's quite interesting that ends up getting crammed into a few years of high school, and crammed in a way that turns kids off. And culture classes (literature, history) are so horrific some people never pick up another book. There's also not enough emphasis on motivation. The emphasis is on passing tests. If you're motivated, you can learn anything. You'll even spend your own time and money learning. My guess is the home schoolers have figured this out and that's why they're not that far behind ordinary schools.

macspoofing 11y ago
>There's also not enough emphasis on motivation. The emphasis is on passing tests. If you're motivated, you can learn anything. My problem with education is that there is no 'one-size-fits-all' policy. Some kids fail hard in a structured system that puts emphasis on passing tests, other thrive in it but fail in a less structured 'find-your-own-motivation' system. Like a pendulum we just keep swinging back and forth and realize we keep missing a portion of the kids. I don't know how you fix it because it's expensive to tailor education to a kid. I guess it's all up to the parents.
- codingdave 11y ago
  Your last sentence is exactly how you fix it - as parents, you are responsible for each child's education. We have, at times, homeschooled each child, and also sent each of them to school, exactly because of the issues you and the other comment raised. They went to kindergarten to learn how to listen to people other than their parents and make friends. My social daughter came home for 6 months, then went right back to public school. My introverted and shy son came home for 2 years, and is going back to school this coming year because we're not doing well at teaching him... we see our failures there, and don't want to exaggerate them any more. Plus, he wants more friends, too. We expect they will probably all skip jr. high, as they will be old enough to learn on their own, and the social scene is just painful at the age, and then I'll leave it to them if they want to do the high school experience, or just get a GED and move on to other adventures in their teens. There also are online teacher-led schools in most states now. Both private and public There are home schooling groups that meet together so each parent can teach a groups of kids in their areas of expertise. There are online curriculum you can purchase, and hard copy curriculum. On short, there are choices. Many, many choices. As parents, we need to help our children find the path that is right for each one of them, and it is a more complex decision than a one-time choice to either home school or attend the public schools. As in most things, a middle ground is often a better, if more complex, answer.

macspoofing 11y ago

There are multiple strains of Anarchism, each as valid as the next, and some diametrically opposed to the other (eg. Anarcho-Capitalism vs. Anarcho-Communism). People are going to self-identify in ways you may not agree, so just focus on the content not the label.

wyager 11y ago

First, an anecdote about home schoolers: I am good friends with three people who started home-schooled and did not enter the traditional school system until later on (two in high school, one in college). I don't think any of them regret it, and they are all very well off academically. There seems to be a popular conception of home schooling parents as crazy religious zealots or something, which I think has little basis in reality. Honestly, having spent about half my pre-college years at public schools, I would much rather be home schooled than public schooled. The primary reason is that it seemed like public school classes were always geared towards the lowest common denominator of the class. I hardly did any work (and hardly learned anything) because we spent so much time banging on the same concepts for the benefit of the slowest people in the class. When I finally went to private school, we suddenly started targeting at least the middle of the class. I finally started learning things in school! The secondary reason is political. Even from a young age, I was very aware of the fact that the public school system didn't treat me like a human being. I'm better at articulating why I felt that way now; it's because the public school system is alarmingly close to the prison system. As a child, you are legally required to attend school, under threat of force (directed at your parents). Since many people can't or won't do home or private schooling, this amounts to forcing many children to attend public school. Upon arriving, you are not permitted to leave of your own free will. You are subject to the arbitrary directives of non-elected officials. You are stripped of many basic human rights on campus (in particular, the right to free speech and the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures). There is a healthy judicial tradition in the USA of taking away the rights of school children. I'm sure there's a list of relevant supreme court cases around. Public schools in the US also do tons of political indoctrination, like saying the pledge of allegiance on a regular basis. Growing up in that environment was extremely deleterious to my critical thinking; by the time I was in sixth grade, I had all sorts of authoritarian leftist ideas of exactly the sort I'd been subjected to by my teachers and my schools of the last seven years. It wasn't until I finally switched to private school, where they treated me like a human, that I realized I had been imprisoned about half the days out of every year. Finally, I was free to leave campus of my own accord. Finally, discourse, rather than blind obedience, was the norm. If private school wasn't an option, I'd much rather homeschool my children than expose them to the academic and psychological clusterfuck that is every public school I every attended.

OmarIsmail 11y ago

The thing that stood out most to me in this article is the tale of abuse and torment the kids received when going back to the formal school system. The concept of teasing and abuse was foreign to them. Obviously it's just one datapoint, but I'd love to see a study that checks whether the school system makes children meaner and more cruel. Imagine the damage being done to society if it really is the case that traditional schools result in meaner people.

jcranmer 11y ago
n=1 anecdote, but my experience is that I had equally-bad (if not worse) bullying experiences outside of school than inside. What I suspect is happening is that the school environment mixes people of different "cultures" much more thoroughly than non-school environments, which greatly increases the possible exposure of would-be bullies and would-be bully targets.
- waterhouse 11y ago
  The other obvious thing that comes to mind w.r.t. school and bullying is that one fallback option for dealing with bullying is leaving the situation, but in school, if you want to switch classes or even schools to avoid a bully, I think you would basically have to ask some adults for permission, and if they don't grant it, tough luck--you're still forced to spend N hours per weekday there. Non-school activities seem less likely to be so compulsory (though if the activity is "walking in your neighborhood and encountering your bully", complete avoidance would require moving), which would seem to put some upper limit on how bad a case of ongoing bullying can get. Could you comment on how the above relates to your experience?
  - jcranmer 11y ago
    In middle school (the only time when I had any sort of bullying problem at school), the problems all stemmed from gym class. The school system had decided to send both the GT and the emotionally-disturbed students to the same school, but the only place where the two groups ended up mixing was gym class. Well, maybe some elective courses as well, but I never had any problems there. I think that the bullying only really ended up happening (both in and out of school) when there was no adult supervision. I'm not entirely certain, though, since I have tried to purge my memories of what happened during those times.

deckiedan 11y ago

My brother and I were home educated from end of primary up to 18 years old or so. My brother totally believes in home education, and (not but!) is now a primary school teacher, after having gone on to do his degree and masters in universities in the UK. We found European home educators are often much more "anarchist" in the sense of this article, liberal, free-thinking, non-conforming, often of non-traditional religion / spirituality, who think the state system is too narrow, limited, and structured. In the States it's much more right-wing religious exclusionists who think the system is too liberal, unstructured, and ungodly. A very very weird difference of culture. My mum wrote a lot about home education, here's her site with all kinds of info about getting started, details about what we did, etc: http://home-ed.info/ http://home-ed.info/ I loved it, and it was perfect for me. My brother loves regime and structure, so would probably have done fine in school. I'm much less academic, and do a whole mixture of jobs (acting, teaching, programming, writing, A/V, electronics, etc.) in a non-profit organisation. Almost all stuff that I learned as a kid, with the oceans of free time that I had, and my friends in school didn't. I worked in a theatre company for 3 years, and did school-work in the evenings, or when I had time. I taught myself to code. With our kids now, my wife (non-home-educated) is a bit skeptical of her ability to home-school. Our son is still too young (he's one). I certainly wouldn't object to him going to school - providing it doesn't interfere with his education too much. :-)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

sopooneo 11y ago

I have seen this happen. To me, it is all legitametely wonderful, except for the naiveté of the parents in thinking they can drop their kids into the churning river of public school without any instruction on how to get along. That challenge can be addressed, but only if you acknowledge it exists.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

"didn't they need to be with their peers and suffer all the harsh experiences that entails" Around some people, there's a belief that "doing time makes your a person" But you know what. Regular folks avoid going to prison. Moreover, they avoid doing things leading to that outcome. Why would you submit your child to prison-like environment? It's not like adults are routinely exposed to that kind of experience. Certainly not required for leading a productive life.

learc83 11y ago
I've never understood this at all. Outside of public school, I've only encountered one other similar environment--my first retail job after high school. After that, social interactions have been nothing at all like what school prepared me for.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Worse still, school un-prepairs you from healthy interactions. You grow all kinds of needles, you become wary of people and insecure. It takes literally years of your life to overcome that. Sometimes forever.
adrusi 11y ago
Because even the social environments that don't resemble schools are created by, operated by, and comprised of people who learned how to interact socially in the school environment. This means that many of the subtle conventions that underly the more visible dynamics will be intuitive to someone with a school background, and inaccessible to someone without it. The issue is exacerbated by the fact that the school environment is unnatural and irrational, and so its customs will never follow from common sense. Also, not sharing a huge formative experience with the rest of the population makes it harder to empathize with them.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  > comprised of people who learned how to interact socially in the school environment. [...] This means that many of the subtle conventions that underly the more visible dynamics will be intuitive to someone with a school background I am sceptical. I think that these effects are, as you say, subtle, and given how people are able to emigrate/immigrate when adults and still manage to fit in with foreign customs, etc., seems like evidence to me that it isn't all that bad. All foreign customs are unnatural and irrational when viewed by the outsider—i experience this daily in the country where i'm currently living (been here 3 years, it still seems bizarre sometimes, even though i'm reasonably integrated with local friends and SO etc). Anyway, perhaps i'm comparing apples to oranges :).

willchang 11y ago

I generally sympathize with homeschoolers, but these parents seemed pathologically unable to doubt themselves or admit to mistakes. They were unable to see that their son, James, needed help learning to read, and even seemed to minimize his unhappiness. They did nothing to prepare their children for public school, despite professing to know how unpleasant the social environment can be. When James was picked on by his classmates, he never let his parents know — presumably because they were so unattuned to their children's experiences that it would have been pointless. These parents doubtless believed they were virtuous in rejecting the culture of the times, but they went quite a bit farther and were basically delusional. People like that should not homeschool.