Home schooling is a real burden on many parents who aren't professional teachers of course and are pulled in many directions.
One of the most exciting emerging trends in home schooling is to pool the resources of multiple home schooling parents.
It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day. So home schooling parents can team up and share the load a little bit. This means the kids gather together at one parents house because many kids can learn from the person doing the teaching. "Grouped home schooling" also solves the usual criticism of home schooling which is the lack of social contact between kids.
Often as well it makes sense for the parents all to contribute a little money so that instead of the parents having to teach things that they are not expert in, the can pay as a group for someone with subject expertise to assist.
It can be problematic though gathering so many kids into one house for group home schooling, so another exciting development in modern home schooling is when a location is found somewhere in the community for it to happen. Often there's a room available at the church. Alternatively, if the parents pool an amount of money each then such a location can be leased long term and can be set up with desks and chairs for the kids to sit at.
When you combine all these forward looking advances in home schooling you can see that home schooling has come a long way since the 1970's when kids sat at the kitchen table with mum teaching the lessons.
>This means the kids gather together in one location because many kids can learn from the person doing the teaching.
>Often as well it makes sense for the parents all to contribute a little money so that instead of the parents having to teach things that they are not expert in, the can pay as a group for someone with subject expertise to assist.
>It can be problematic though gathering so many kids into one house for group home schooling, so another exciting development in modern home schooling is when a location is found somewhere in the community for it to happen. Again, if the parents pool an amount of money each then such a location can be leased long term and can be set up with desks and chairs for the kids to sit at.
This is tongue in cheek I presume, as it's sounding just like a regular school.
Something I heard a few years back put my life experience as a kid in perspective. At least for me, in the most important way possible, it doesn't sound like regular school at all.
The main deep life impacting characteristic of standard public schools is coerced unwelcome company. You're forced by law to be around the same bullies for 5, 10, even 12 years. The natural order with organic friendships (and indeed probably since antiquity) is that those who act as a bully or jerk get ostracized. It is both justice and instructive for those who get excluded from one circle and must rethink their social approach to possible get accepted in another. It is how socialization is supposed to work.
Parents won't force their kids to continue to be around others they dislike, schools are totally ok with the violation of right OTOH (basically if you have a right of free association you also have a right of non association btw).
> Parents won't force their kids to continue to be around others they dislike
Ha, you would be surprised. Parents will totally force kids to be around people they dislike. I mean my parents knew that I was bullied in my private, free association school. Even after one asshole pulled a knife on me and the school wouldn’t do a thing because he was from a rich family in my small town, they still decided to kept me in there because “it has good academic level/learning to deal with these people is good/kids will be kids/<insert other bullshit excuse>”.
But hey, maybe you are right and free association is good. After all they kicked me out because of absenteeism when I decided to bail out of school because it was living hell.
I see the importance of any argument I'm making on being the best bet for 95% of humans. No policy governing humans is ever going to make imperfect humans perfect, but policies can and do go to far to where they're a detriment to a huge percentage
It sounds like your parents were uncool or unreasonable and that sucks, sorry. But I think it's not objective to let it make you think all that was the norm as an adult.
My parents were religious nuts. But as an adult I realized how lucky I was. They actually don't have any personality defects such as powerlusting or being egotistical about respect, so as a kid I very definitely avoided all the worst experiences kids often go through growing up with just the minor annoyance of forced bible studies or church visits (in perspective really an annoyance at worst)
Exactly, while the appearance of a sufficiently modern homeschool can start to “rhyme” with public school for practical material reasons, in reality the underlying incentives are completely different.
For me, it was charter schools that saved the day. The charter school teachers couldn’t just sit on their ass like public school teachers when some little shit decided to try to ruin my day.
I don't get it. Why can't bullying exist in the group homeschool at church? It's functionally equivalent to a school. Are you making a brand new point about traditional homeschooling (parent-child) or replying to the OP in the thread?
As a child in a public school, you have no right to freedom of association, and no right to freedom from association. Your school chooses your classes, and the state will use violence to ensure you attend those classes, bully or not.
In home school, there is less people and more choice. There are no perverse incentives that value attendance over education and health.
It routinely happens in families and friends groups of parents (kids of parents friend bully the kid). It the setup described above, the kid have less choice over who friends will be.
Would "we must force parents to keep their kids in situations where they (the parents) believe the children are being abused, to make sure the kids grow up tougher than their parents desires would result in," be a solution anyone would actually want?
I think you're intentionally using term the abuse, in contrast to the words I used, to be inflammatory.
But yes, I think it's healthy for my children to experience more suffering than I, ceteris paribus, would permit them to experience, if I were omnipotent.
I'm using the word abuse because I am referring to abuse as distinct from the abstract kind of suffering that's impossible to have any opinions for or against because it might include hiking long-distance. ;)
I added the phrase "by another kid" so nobody would reply with that but it looks like it didn't work because... you might not have read to the end? :-P
Isn't the whole premise of this grouped home schooling that it makes life easier for the parents, at the expense of tying into some commitments? There surely can never be enough grouped home schooling setups in any given locality with the freedom to break existing commitments for a parent to easily swap between them. It seems like there is a strong incentive for a parent to stick to the status quo.
A) You absolutely have freedom of association in public school. There is statutory and empirical intolerance for bullying, to the point that libertarians have been complaining that there isn't enough due process for the alleged bullies.
Parents can also easily move kids to other classes to avoid unwelcome company.
B) There is, in practice, no meaningful freedom of association in the real world. Childhood is an appropriate time to learn skills to mitigate the downsides of that fact, including forcing bullies to suffer consequences.
> Parents can also easily move kids to other classes to avoid unwelcome company.
This is definitely not the case in the schools our kids go to. The class sizes/composition are shaped by the demands of the teacher's union, we recently learned.
We always thought that the parent survey the school sent out, asking about your child, was so that our kid could be put in a class with a teacher who would be compatible. Not so, we learned!
The information was used to create class cohorts that are evenly balanced, and only after this happens are cohorts assigned to teachers. But at this point in the process, the desires of 20 distinct families cannot be used to match students with teachers.
Instead of focusing on matching certain types of students (those who need more remedial work, those who need more advanced work, etc.) with teachers who are good at providing that type of learning, the school is focused on making sure that all of the teachers have the same class composition, so that none of them can claim to have a "worse" class than anyone else.
Haha no, I learned English as she is spoke at a California Distinguished School. They taught English using the whole language method, because learning grammar is literally unimportant to learning language. I’m sure you can see how good I learned in thirteen years of public school.
Funny, as a public-school attendee, I would expect the opposite given how many of my peers sailed through on cruise-control with crappy teachers who were sometimes dumber than the kids.
If a kid is a bully then the parents organizing the group can kick that kid out (as a last resort). Additionally if a child is being bullied they can tell their parents and the parents can take action directly, this can happen publicly but there's a lot of layers of administration making it non-trivial.
In a way the group homeschool can be thought of like a small private school, it's just simpler to handle personal problems in a small group.
It’s not a closed group. You can pull your kid out and put them in a different group. It’s not like public school where your kid is forced to go to the one school in your catchment area.
The parents also have the option of reorganizing the group to kick the bully’s parents out, along with the bully.
I think your article is less likely to have the investigation beginning with the post office and more likely to have affects of multiple regular people not being OK with something, and being present.
Such involved parents could never let anything happen arguments ignore how these things develop as less involved parents cargo cult. (You can't get much more blatant in a drop in actual involvement than the example in the article.)
These kinds of groups connecting themselves to actual home schooling will erode it by association.
1. What parent would approve of their kid getting bullied? What are you talking about?
2. If the parents care enough to homeschool, why would they not care about bullying?
3. Socially subservient to the bully's parents? This feels like a hopelessly contrived and niche edge case that is effectively meaningless because it would be so rare
4. I'm not convinced personal problems fester moreso in a closed group (see: armed forces), and further I'm not convinced homeschooling groups are closed in the first place
All this to say I don't think your argument has any merit and is based on convenient and unlikely hypotheticals.
No one that's going to the additional effort of finding and participating in this type of school is going to let their kid be a legitimate bully. That level of parental involvement is what's lacking from a bully's life.
Small, close communities are communities where the bonds between each participant is much stronger, making it costlier - both in terms of immediately broken relationships, and of backlash from the rest of the group - for people to sever it.
Word gets around, but not necessarily from the right people, and - if bad outcomes are not guaranteed - there is nevertheless a strong incentive for it to fall on deaf ears, stronger than it would be in a less tight-knit community.
Maybe your public school experience was mostly decent, but for a lot of people it's hell and it actively breeds misanthropy. You can learn to deal with stupid and difficult people without being exposed to soul poisoning doses of both.
Research shows that people learn well when there is the right amount of stress, and the right challenge. If the stress and challenge exceeds that amount it can quickly become destructive, which is what we see in your typical public school for any child who isn't primarily concerned with "fitting in."
At best, public school is useful. At worst, it's a massive waste of time and absolutely destructive to a young psyche. You can expose your children to that massive asymmetry, but it's not necessary, people who cared got along just fine before public education, it's really there to uplift the lowest common denominator.
"Fitting in" is no small thing. The world would be better today if more people had the ability to empathize with someone not-them, sufficiently adjust their own way of interacting to put others at ease, and generally be less abrasive and fragile.
And if we want to talk in absolutes...
At best, public school provides an opportunity to learn socialization that cannot be replicated in a home environment.
The problem with this "fitting in" narrative is that as adults we don't care about it so much, people enjoy meeting new and unusual people (as long as they're baseline socially functional), there's a huge social stigma against being bigoted so basically everyone views adult bullies as worthless assholes and the cops will arrest people for much less than bullies get away with on the school yard every day even in the face of repeated parental protest.
I would say that much of adult society still runs on "fitting in" (e.g. social groups, corporate hierarchies), ergo being able to do it deftly is a huge life skill.
There's definitely a stigma around adults engaging in specific types of bullying (physical) and bigotry (e.g. protected classes), but society as a whole rewards more subtle bullying (political power dynamics) and ignores subtle bigotry (e.g. caste, microaggression).
The point of socialization, and indeed bullying itself, in school is in no small party to teach everyone (bully and bullied) what acceptable and unacceptable forms are.
Absent that, you either get people who are worse bullies (because they never learned where the line was) or are fragile (because they never learned where the "I should/shouldn't be able to handle this uncomfortable thing" line is).
Getting knocked down then kicked every day at recess, cowering and begging for them to stop, solely because of the color of my skin, while children laughed at my misfortune, until the teacher eventually waddled over to save me was not, in fact, a great gift for me.
You can push anything to an extreme to make it bad. I'm sorry the adults around you failed you is all I can say. It doesn't mean school is a bad idea, or that going through moderate levels of crap doesn't build one's character. There's a point where adversity turns into actual abuse and that's when grown ups should support kids, either in school or in a pod or wherever.
Reality is mostly segregated. It's only in artificial environments where you have no recourse to avoid horrible people (or people that are horrible to you).
You probably was in the your tolerance margin to say that.
But I've been to 11 schools, including private ones and ones from very poor and violent places. And there are situation where the only lesson you learn is how much people can destroy you.
I can think of a guy who became a local bomber in my city who was homeschooled. He would put bombs into people's mailboxes or leave packages by their front door, my uncle's family knew them when they went to homecoming stuff together. He was eventually caught and arrested but idk homeschooling isn't for everyone.
I worry sometimes how these kids will struggle when they are faced with the real world.
Personally I loved going to a charter school and I was really excited we got to have extra large classes sometimes because you can't always fit all your friends in your grade in one class but for specific art classes we often tried too. My charter high school was really great, my college experience was definitely not... It was too small for one thing looking back now.
Also won't ostracizing a bully make them more destructive? I know a lot of them become suicidal after a while and more destructive (based on experience understanding those I know better) they did get better though, they just didn't know how to process what they were going through.
That doesn’t sound right. For all of human history bullies who were bigger and stronger made the rules. The weak were ostracized. If anything, what you’re doing in homeschooling is reverting away from the norm and creating a sheltered environment. This is a double edged sword, you can turn your kids into fragile beings incapable of dealing with a harsh world but at the same time they will probably have productive, predictable and carefree childhoods.
The best case scenario is to be rich enough so you can create a bubble for your kids that lasts from birth all the way to their graves. It’s very possible, all the wealthiest people do it.
Bullying as in age-segregated schooling doesn’t exist in the real world. Adults and older children police any antisocial children, and the community of adults polices itself (because they’re adults and have mental faculties children lack).
> The best case scenario is to be rich enough so you can create a bubble for your kids that lasts from birth all the way to their graves
You don't have to be extra rich for that. Just don't associate, that's the whole point. To avoid a bully it's enough to not go to the same building with him every weekday.
>> For all of human history bullies who were bigger and stronger made the rules.
It takes a unique character of not only being bigger and stronger, but also of being more generous and giving and sharing to become a leader or ruler. Leaders who were only bullies and cruel could maybe beat up or kill any individual man, but could not stand against a group and would be destroyed or ostracized if he was cruel enough to alienate a big enough group around him.
Definitely not advocating for bullying, just pointing out that you can’t harken back to antiquity and call homeschooling a continuation of that paradigm in this particular sense.
Firstly, what I said can be true in one scope of reference and what you say in another. It's not mutually exclusive.
I feel your perspective is more about lots of the world after the rise of nation states and dense civilization.
For me I'm actually thinking back to the Pirahãs tribe from Daniel Everett's book as how we realistically lived as tribes. Conflict might arise, but a group might split off and go live in an entirely different patch of forest permanently, at which point the conflict is done without fuss. Things can be much less pleasant with permanent settlements and all land being owned by someone else.
A couple, man and woman, possibly with children, might also do something like this and just reject the benefits of being part of a larger community as loners.
Not all conflict is existential, we all choose to live facing a certain amount but also have our limits. Kids have way less flexibility to make the call and it is the cause of much misery
I'm unsure if you're saying that coerced unwelcome company is a good or a bad thing. While kids can be mean, it's just a reflection of humans in general and this kind of behaviour doesn't go away when you block it out. People get more mature but there's a lot of similarity between how people act in high school and in the work place, it's just a lot more skillfully and subtly done. Exposing kids to this reality doesn't seem bad to me.
I really disagree with all the comments that make reference to reality - no that is not at all what "reality" is. The fact of the matter is that as an adult, I can draw a line in the sand and either leave a job or report someone who is making the workplace hostile. I can have arguments with friends, but I can also decide certain friendships are over because they've passed a reasonable max threshold for toxicity.
As a kid, you're repeatedly forced into situations where you dont have these same rights - in my experience. Schools try to trick you into
thinking they're arbitrators above the law. They incentivize victims sucking it up, because if you get punched in the face at school, both parties involved will be suspended. However, it didn't strike me until I was in my 20s - this is all a trick - I could call the cops and press charges instead. One of the deceptions of my childhood anyway. Assault is a crime, school is not a special jurisdiction outside US law.
The idea that anyone's circle of chosen friends is not reality to me is nuts, of course everyone faces some amount of conflict with friends. Why does it have to necessarily be conflict from someone you hate with all your being(at a public school) to train you for life? Someone who'll physically assault you? That seems like a made up arbitrary rule. I'm in my 40s and have yet to experience anything like what I did as a 11 year old in my adult life. what exact training for real life did I need that was so valuable to my future? etc.. School sucked!
> I can draw a line in the sand and either leave a job or report someone who is making the workplace hostile
Because you have the money and possibility of acquiring another job relatively quickly (I suppose, otherwise you would not give up your survival means for such a reason). Not an option for everyone.
> They incentivize victims sucking it up, because if you get punched in the face at school, both parties involved will be suspended.
This part is stupid, I agree. When I got beaten up at school, I punched back and explained it after. The perpetrator ended up going to juvenile prison at some point (for unrelated charges). I wasn't punished in any way since that was seen as an appropriate response. So we had different experiences.
> Because you have the money and possibility of acquiring another job relatively quickly (I suppose, otherwise you would not give up your survival means for such a reason). Not an option for everyone.
Workplace conflicts usually don’t involve assault. Lines are usually drawn by standing your ground, explaining one’s position and taking the chances and picking the battles. If it comes to getting assaulted one better be prepared.
If the manager doesn’t agree one might get fired, or it is time to look for options.
Nothing in life is a must, but there are consequences to everything and one better choose wisely. But then, the ability to make good judgements comes from experience and experience is gained by experiencing the consequences of decisions or choices one has made in the past, including bad ones.
Resigning, from a position of employment, or situations in life in general should not be the first option, at least not without considering the above.
> Exposing kids to this reality doesn't seem bad to me.
I hope your children don't get "exposed to this reality" in school, as you put it.
The sorts of harrassment that school bullies inflict on their victims is, to put it simply, not tolerated anywhere else. Why should it be tolerated when it happens in school, where the victims have no choice but to attend every day?
Is it good that children get bullied or ostracized? Obviously not. It is far preferable however to the alternative of never having experienced that humans can act like this. We're sometimes assholes to each other for poor animalistic reasons, and that's probably not going away in my lifetime. One should be prepared for other people to act like this.
> Why should it be tolerated when it happens in school, where the victims have no choice but to attend every day?
Since it's where they go to learn that this behaviour exists but is bad. You need to have lighter sanctions in order to teach people about behaviour without ruining their lives in the process.
In real life, you can choose not to associate with the same person or clique 8 hours a day 5 days a week for thirteen years. Worst case scenario would be in a job situation, but here's the thing: you can find a new job. You can't find a new school.
In public school, you can either report the abuse to an authority figure who has little or no ability to actually remedy the situation, or you can... sit there and suffer? Fight back? While outside of it, you have more ways to remedy a bad situation than "just make your abuser respect you."
> It is far preferable however to the alternative of never having experienced that humans can act like this.
Should we get our children bullied deliberately then? It is not necessary to be bullied to learn that humans can act like that. I've never been assaulted, for instance, but I know that it's possible and act accordingly.
Seems like a rather puerile form of bullying, no? With adults it looks much different. Mockery in front of peers, openly manipulative behavior, talking shit behind peoples' backs, etc etc
Is this literally about states that have poor math achievement, or is it along the lines of some states aren’t teaching math because <insert culture war things>? It’s become difficult to tell when a good faith discussion on public education is happening.
California is considering copying San Francisco's ban on teaching Algebra to 8th graders. So maybe more imagined than real, but real for a small number of people.
My experience is very old. I went to one of the most highly rated county school systems in the US. The quality of math instruction was horrible. It was called new math back in the 60’s. I think we are on at least the third iteration, new new new math. In grad school I finally had a good teacher.
Only some kids truly have an aptitude for mathematics anyway.
That's an absurdly strong and inaccurate statement that feeds into psychological walls that then get erected in the minds of the young and perpetuate ad infinitum. The psychological research here is very clear: stressing work, over some sort of ethereal innate 'talent', in ANY area makes a massive difference in skill attainment.
I don't have time this moment to get into this in any depth, and, it depends, of course, what specifically you mean by "truly have an aptitude", but, too many people have a view of math, in particular, as some kind of magical realm only "truly accessible" to a few. There's a lot that goes into forming the basis for skill in any domain - quite a lot of that likely reflects all sorts of extremely early life parameters and events prior, even, to acquisition of language. The "playing field" is never "level" in any pursuit. But, based on my own experiences and knowledge, there's a mysticism or whatever surrounding some subjects that's just bizarre, IMO.
I would personally, in light of what I've seen to date, draw a very direct analogy with the formation of an NBA player (as an example). Someone can start playing very young, become incredibly adept, and easily never get to the height, strength, etc. (typically) required to make it to NBA level. Nevertheless, these people go on to be trainers, coaches, announcers, etc. This is even more relevant in fields that aren't in the "tournament career" realm.
Often, what holds people back the most, is substantially unfounded statements like yours.
Anyone can learn mathematics. Not everybody wants to or would find it useful. I feel as if you're putting a large amount of words into my mouth which I never intended -- all I meant to say was that not learning mathematics to a high level is not that bad. Lots of people have perfectly meaningful lives knowing basically no mathematics beyond middle school level, having forgotten even high school maths.
For most people, sufficient effort can guarantee a productive carrer programming computers. The absolute maximum capacity (number of people doing a thing / total number of people) of professional basketball players is much lower, and so given the amount of interest in doing said profession you end up with criteria that are very out of line with the median as far as human traits go. The height requirements for instance are not ordinary human height requirements, they put most basketball players firmly in the top decile as far as height goes. Believe it or not, programmers are not anywhere near being that out of line with human averages (and are not collectively in the top decile of anything), and largely resemble other white collar professions demographically.
Its fair to say there is no such thing as innate ability to do math (at least to the level of the average mathematically inclined undergraduate, but I even suspect this applies furthr than that). There are definitely hard cutoffs to whether or not you will ever be allowed to play basketball professionally, regardless of the amount of effort you put in. Its very important that young people interested in computers and coming from all sorts of different environments understand that the topic is not gated biologically, and that they understand that fact as intuitively as professionals in the field. Poor education (or lack of education) is far too often equated with a lack of some kind of innate ability.
Can't really compare math with basketball. Basketball is enjoyed by millions, it is a sport that is easily accessible with a very low common denominator.
In order to truly enjoy math you have to have a particular kind of brain that you are indeed either born with or not.
Can't say that I did enjoy math that much because I've had horrible abusive teachers but even so I liked it somewhat because I was better at it than everyone in my class. I would just read the lesson from the text book and it clicked for me instantly, not even needing teachers most of the time.
I seriously doubt that literally everyone else just had mental blocks to pick up things as easily as I did. With hard work and private tutors they eventually could catch up indeed but I really doubt they enjoyed it or even needed that knowledge
True of course. I've seen estimates of about 10% (your link quotes 11%) of children (i.e., 90% of children don't have it) but the obvious question is on what basis what the diagnosis made? You can guarantee that only a few of those kids have had an MRI scan determining a brain structure indicative of a structural association with dyscalculia in the brain. Easy to jump to conclusions and miss many other possibilities which do not present apparently impassable barriers to learning maths.
No, its very different because kids do not receive their enire education at that one location, nor do they have to stick to their age group ragardless of their abilities and interests. Its not new either.
Most home educators use a mixture of ways of learning. The best is self teaching because it teaches study skills - learning how to learn is invaluable.
It us also very flexible. For thise familiar with the British system, my daughters did GCSEs in subjects including Latin and astronomy. They sat some subjects early (the older one got an a in physics at 9) which let them spread things out and is less stressful.
Socially they meet lots of people, of varied ages, in diferrent settings.
Except there is no language revolving around how you have to be there, expectations for it to form the core of your social experience, etc.
I was never homeschooled, and I think homeschooling is generally not a great idea. But there should be an alternative. Anything that doesn't have a pressure valve like that is screwed.
> It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day
This is a “tell me you don’t homeschool without telling me you don’t homeschool”
No homeschooling family I ever met has set hours, and most spend far less time than that daily. Schoolwork takes a lot less time when you cut out the crowd control, distractions, “pledging allegiance” and other nonsense
One of the very first things i learned when i began homeschooling was that 9 to 3:30 schooling simply exists for parents work schedules. We can typically knock out our school day in 2 to 3 hours altogether. Granted, my kids are still elementary age
I'm not sure that's really true. 9 to 3:30 existed when housewives were the norm (which was only one or two generations ago). It's clearly not ideal for working parents because most jobs won't let you finish work at 3:30!
Also consider school holidays. How many jobs let you take 12 weeks of holiday a year?
I've asked loads of working parents how they deal with that and the answer is always "it's impossible, you have to use grandparents, scrounge together enough holiday, try to take unpaid leave, etc.".
The biggest problem with the setup you outlined is that the central government has no say in what is being taught to kids. So no matter how similar homeschooling will look to government-controlled schooling, people with power will never stop attacking it because of that crucial nuisance.
The “I don’t want the government perspective imposed on my children” is so funny to me as a homeschooling argument.
Go to schoolboard meetings. Talk to your kids and their teachers. Understand what your kids are learning. If you feel a perspective is missing, fill in the gaps. Your kids will be better off for seeing different perspectives, understanding basic argumentation, and coming to their own conclusions.
Oh this sounds like a lot of work? Well, the alternative, pulling them out of school and designing their entire education sounds like way more work than just being reasonably engaged?
The point is that there’s no reasonable - folks doing this have deeply expressed beliefs and if you disagree you’re evil. They only sound reasonable when speaking in general terms.
I was a school board president of a catholic school that for the most part aligns with state and professional standards and added faith and cultural material not appropriate in a secular school. The kids get a solid education -
We got “invaded” by some extremely conservative folks, funded by some organization who sought to move to a curriculum derived from a homeschool program where books centered (exclusively) around classic western texts. In the K-12 curriculum kids weren’t taught about Asia until WW2. Africa and India do not exist. They were also concerned with “woke” issues, like girls being allowed to wear pants.
We were able to “beat” them, but it damaged the institution.
> The point is that there’s no reasonable - folks doing this have deeply expressed beliefs and if you disagree you’re evil. They only sound reasonable when speaking in general terms.
This is such good point about why this conversation is so frustrating.
Because in the abstract, if good faith could be assumed, there's a discussion to be had here. GP responded to me here being like "well what if they were Russian or Chinese schools" -- which does make you have to acknowledge "ok fine, if my kid were in North Korea maybe I would be really worried about what the local public school was teaching."
And so you get duped into engaging on the merits. And then you dig just a tad deeper and find out that it's never a high-minded debate about pedagogy or state imposed perspective on like the role of the Federal Reserve or treatment of the Native Americans, it's always bat-shit stupid stuff about Creationism, banning woke books, and demagoguing over gays and trans people.
I will give you a concrete example if you want one. By focusing exclusively on the "great people" of the civil rights movement, the education most kids in the US are getting does not mention the roles in future movements which they are most likely to play. You get an "it's MLK and a handful of main characters, and thousands of extras in the crowd scenes" message from every textbook I've ever seen. No mention of the fact that there were, say, individual legal battles, much less what they were over or how they were won. Kids graduate high school thinking that their only two options are being an era-defining writer or passively reading tweets.
I always found it depressing that you learned the survey level of US History a half dozen times, each time noticing the inconvenient details filtered out. My favorite whipping boy for this is the Pilgrims, who transition from guys with funny hats who liked turkey and wrapped dead fish around corn to… something else.
One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t know what people actually know, and if they’ve been lured into nostalgia for some wonderful past that doesn’t exist, they get angry. The 1619 project controversy was a great example of that. The notion that people managed their human property like property and that people who escaped that system intermarried with runaway or released indentured servants is a “duh” concept.
All of this underscores why education is important, and why academic freedom is a critical component of it.
Uh have you even tried that or know anyone who has? If you have issues with the curriculum, its not getting changed. It’s often set at a state or federal level with a lot of committees and politics.
Thanks for clarifying. One problem with this approach is that it is purely additive. What if people want to avoid something being taught? Prior to a certain age, children don’t really understand things in a cold and analytic way. The things they are told shape their moral beliefs and personality (which is why religions are always very controlling of schooling). So, they aren’t really “choosing” in the adult sense, it becomes more of a RNG for whether they will pick up the state selected value system or yours. Of course once a person is old enough they can and should be exposed to everything, to build context.
You can’t raise children as if they’re little adults. They don’t have fully developed frontal cortexes until their late 20s: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-... (“The brain finishes developing and maturing in the mid-to-late 20s. The part of the brain behind the forehead, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last parts to mature. This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions.”).
This is science. The very nature of the human animal is that children must be socialized, rather than merely presented information and allowed to make up their own minds: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8Y8R8Lo/
I remember my dad organized a group of parents to push for improvements to math and science teaching at our rural school district. Eventually that included lobbying state legislators to support distance learning, so that a group of a dozen schools could use shared services to teach or access advanced courses. My brother got to realize that - he took Calc 1 & 2, as well and intro to computer science at a state university about 100 miles away, in high school.
Passionate people with good ideas can always drive change.
This overestimates the degree to which (1) children are rational beings; and (2) parental influence determines children’s outcomes. In fact, the biggest influence comes from a child’s peers: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/a-matter-of-person...
That’s why families who can afford it send their kids to private school, where their children’s peers are carefully curated. If you can’t afford that, homeschool is a compelling alternative.
Does that line of thinking only apply to American public schools that teach values you like or would you suggest the same to Chinese, Russian and Iranian parents?
As someone who was homeschooled, I'm having a hard time coming up with an "infohazard" I avoided exposure to other than things like "the theory of evolution" or "the concept of sex" or "it turns out 'the slaves were treated quite well' isn't exactly true"
I'd imagine most info hazards come from the other kids and not the curriculum itself. Plenty of crude, incorrect, or even dangerous info coming from the other kids. Not that much different from how Hollywood portrays many topics (drugs, alcohol, sex, legal consequences, etc). So it's likely those ideas would be encountered even when homeschooling, possibly at a lower rate though.
What about the obsession with sex, sexuality, and dating in American schools, which the adults do nothing to discourage? If I had to identify one reason why poor Asians have vastly higher income mobility than poor white people, that’d be it. We literally have twice the bandwidth to focus on studying.
Explain this more to me. Presumably something so insidious you need to remove your child from even the possibility of being exposed to it. Perhaps, the existence of gay people?
The steelman version is something like the following chain of reasoning: (a) gender identity is something that everyone has that is distinct from sex, (b) with enough introspection, everyone can discover their true gender identity, (c) if you don't have a strongly felt gender identity, you need to introspect, (d) if introspection does not yield certainty then this suggests genderfluidity, or even worse that puberty ought be delayed until certainty is achieved.
Or how about: an AMAB child playing with a Barbie doll often is strongly suggestive that he might actually be trans.
Or how about: values like "being on time" or believing that a math problem has one correct answer are inherently white supremacist and racist.
That's not the steel man, that's a straw man where you just flipped the politics of the scenario.
Letting kids feel safe to introspect and question their gender expression is a good thing.
The implication that kids will be _systematically_ forced to delay puberty or undergo a transition they don't want is absurd and not a valid "chain of reasoning". Yes, I'm sure it has happened and could continue in rare instances because a) there are lots of crazy parents; b) it is a new, trending concept and people like fads. But that is really no different than other types of trauma parents and teachers give to kids across the political spectrum. You're going to have to do a lot more work to prove this is something likely to happen on a broad scale.
The fact that gender identity is now something kids are allowed to have means people will interrogate them about it. People may even attempt to coerce them (just like any other beliefs) and kids will likely change their minds over time. The ability to defend their beliefs, resist influence, have role models, receive reliable advice and mentorship, manage their relationships, make serious medical decisions, etc etc is all part of the equation. It's also not that big of a deal or the end of society.
I guess it comes down to how widespread you think the coercion that you mention is. I tend to believe the current rate of non-cis identification is at least an order of magnitude over the "natural" background rate, specifically because of a system of incentives and disincentives which have been set up. Being non-cis grants attention, care, affirmation, and deference from administrators. It is one of the few categories that administrators seem actually willing to go to the mat to protect from vicious bullying. Being cis means being boring, being tacitly oppressive, and not receiving as much attention, affirmation, or defense from administrators and teachers.
I view this all as a negative insofar as it nudges cis kids to identify as non-cis and start edging closer to risks to their mental and physical health as a result.
Maybe in 15 years this will look silly and we'll all know that 10% non-cis is totally normal and all these people will be able to live authentic lives.
But if in 15 years we reach the opposite discovery, my view is that we will have done a lot of damage to individuals and to systems along the way.
More like, learn how to evaluate those decisions and advocate for their own healthcare, which is something everyone needs to learn and practice in the US eventually.
Medical interventions for adolescents is always going to be controversial and no simple heuristic will solve it. Hopefully if kids are more comfortable expressing their identity and not comforming to traditional stereotypes then medical treatments will feel less necessary.
It's less rare than you might think, here are some statistics from US insurance claims, which is a lower bound as the wealthier may choose to pay privately:
Those numbers are still "rare" and don't tell us that kids are being coerced.
My assumption for now is that the increase is due to latent demand and wider awareness & acceptance. We need to see the steady state after a decade or so.
Several of my high school classmates (from the mid-2000s) started transitioning as soon as they could skip town and decide their own life. And it was clear they had known and wanted it for a long time prior.
Wow, that's a completely ridiculous strawman. My kids go to one of the most liberal school districts in the nation, and never once have they been told they need to "introspect their gender identity," let alone the absolutely absurd notion that "if they're not certain, they're genderfluid and/or need puberty blockers."
Literally the only thing along those lines that is taught is to respect other people's gender identity. This has been no harder for them to grasp than "Gay people exist and that's ok" was for my generation.
If you really believe that school districts out there are pushing puberty blockers, then your YouTube algorithm is probably feeding you a heck of a lot of crap.
Just to be clear: are you saying the argument is bad because these things are never taught, or are you saying that these things are good to teach actually?
That is a fair ask. To be honest, I am unwilling to devote to this discussion the time which would be required to research examples.
I will concede that if these things never happened, I personally would find the infohazard argument non-compelling, though others may have their own feared infohazards.
On the flip side, if hypothetically these were common ideas animating public school curricula and/or teacher behavior, would you consider that sufficient justification for homeschooling as being discussed here?
When it comes to public policy, I don't find myself particularly animated by hypotheticals. I think we have more than enough on our plate if we just pay attention to things that are actually happening in the large.
Would you please explain the math example? I was in school until last year (Germany tho) but I don't get it (the 4chan argument about percentages and races?)
The steelman argument for the subjectivity of math would be something like: the process of choosing how to represent/model a real world situation in mathematical terms may influence what conclusions can or will be reached under that model, because biased assumptions can sneak their way into the model.
To be clear, this is good knowledge and should be taught.
However, it is not an effective attack on the coherence of natural number arithmetic. We have to get students to a certain level of objective operational competence before they are ready to think about the subjectivity of mathematical modeling.
This is far more nuance than I remember in public schools. At a young age there is quite a bit of rote memorization of facts. Sure parents can supplement their child’s education, but at the end of the day the child will be forced to adopt the schools viewpoint on certain perspective as the “correct” answer — or suffer in their grades
Why shouldn’t the government have a say in what is taught to children? Children are not their parent’s property. These are future citizens and I would prefer that society has a say in what is taught to them. In a democratic system the government represents the will of the society.
You could have a point if the government operating at the local school level was the least bit competent let alone functional. And that’s the government, public schools are shockingly badly run. I have two in middle school and it’s one of the top magnets in DFW yet my wife and I still have to be on top of the school to the point we’ve hired an “advocate” for our kids. Basically, a consultant that makes sure the school keeps the law breaking to a minimum and the accommodations o e of our kids needs are actually made.
If we had the option we would gladly homeschool but we don’t so off to the zoo every day..
Ok but I’d rather my kids have be raised understanding and influenced by their parent’s perspective so that they will influence society along those similarly into adulthood.
Because children are not the government's property either, and society is not being asked for their opinion, so their will is not relevant. Society does not and will never care about any specific individual. The people who are ultimately responsible for the child (and therefore hold decision making authority) are the ones who caused it to be here. Pretending "society" holds that responsibility just means abdicating it entirely.
This hasn't been true in the U.S. for a century when the house reapportionment act was passed. Now the strongest voice the majority has is in the Senate. The body that was designed to give voice to the minority.
We were forced to homeschool our child due to Pandemic, and later, from desire for him to actually learn. It was eye opening! Schools are chaotic, and one of the biggest take aways for the child is conformity. In fact, I believe the entire institution of age based grades started in the militaristic state of Prussia. From the point of view of a state that needs soldiers, having standards and consistency is important. Individualism, and creativity are not very useful in a marching formation. And questioning authority, is equally frowned upon.
That depends on the state[0]. West Virginia appears to be the strictest, requiring homeschooled students to score above the median public school standardized assessment score.
> So no matter how similar homeschooling will look to government-controlled schooling, people with power will never stop attacking it because of that crucial nuisance.
Just like in Florida, where teachers now face felony charges for having the wrong book in the classroom (not as required reading, just having it in the classroom). Yup, that's people with power attacking home-schooling for sure.
"Any adult, not just a teacher, who knowingly provides a minor obscene material described in section 847.012(3), Florida Statues, could be prosecuted for a third-degree felony."
> The statute 847.012 [...] also forbids subjects of racial issues and sexual orientation [1]
> School officials in at least two counties, Manatee and Duval, have directed teachers this month to remove or wrap up their classroom libraries, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. The removals come in response to fresh guidance issued by the Florida Department of Education in mid-January, after the State Board of Education ruled that a law restricting the books a district may possess applies not only to schoolwide libraries but to teachers' classroom collections, too. [2]
So, the war is between state imposed ideology versus parental ideology, whatever the ideology might be?
What if parental ideology are whacky? What then? Yes, state ideology can be whacky as well, but at least it is in the public and in the open where that can be challenged on a field, instead of uncontested at home.
If parental ideology is whacky, one family suffers. If state ideology is whacky, million families suffer. Including those who didn’t consent.
What if someone can’t keep themselves healthy? Is it a good reason to regulate food consumption? What if someone is an alcoholic? Let’s introduce dry law?
It's also a ploy to avoid integrated schools, but I think we gave up on the Brown v. Board world a few decades ago.
e: Not saying this is the reason but it is certainly the subtextual reason in the southern urban school district I lived in that a lot of kids were homeschooled.
Home schooling isn't a 9 till 3:30PM everyday. It doesn't have to mimic the systematic school routine. It's far more flexible and beneficial for students that are being held back by school or falling behind.
So you’re saying that all the parent should each contribute a little bit of money and share responsibility for actually teaching. Heck, maybe they could even, oh, I dunno, eventually hire someone to do that teaching!
There’s nothing worth saving and more money just makes it even worse. The districts are incompetent, the school administrations are wildly incompetent and the teachers union is just ridiculous. There’s nothing in the public school system worth working on. Homeschool if you can or do your best to budget for private school.
Edit: my wife is a HS teacher of 15 years. Her and many of her teacher friends are leaving the industry. It’s just not fixable.
Think about it like work. A low level manager or individual contributor may be able to greatly change trajectory and outcomes for their small team but is unlikely to change anything for an entire global organization and the bureaucracy that comes with it. With enough successes at a low level then maybe those get recognized and the effects begin to trickle up. Or maybe not but at least you did the best you could for what you were directly responsible for.
This just sounds like school. I guess the difference is you can be very selective with what you teach and pick your own curriculum, especially if you’re a fundamentalist religious person and don’t agree with what most schools teach.
One of the most exciting emerging trends in home schooling is to pool the resources of multiple home schooling parents.
It's simply not practical for parents to commit all the hours needed for full time home schooling 9 till 3:30PM every day. So home schooling parents can team up and share the load a little bit. This means the kids gather together at one parents house because many kids can learn from the person doing the teaching. "Grouped home schooling" also solves the usual criticism of home schooling which is the lack of social contact between kids.
Often as well it makes sense for the parents all to contribute a little money so that instead of the parents having to teach things that they are not expert in, the can pay as a group for someone with subject expertise to assist.
It can be problematic though gathering so many kids into one house for group home schooling, so another exciting development in modern home schooling is when a location is found somewhere in the community for it to happen. Often there's a room available at the church. Alternatively, if the parents pool an amount of money each then such a location can be leased long term and can be set up with desks and chairs for the kids to sit at.
When you combine all these forward looking advances in home schooling you can see that home schooling has come a long way since the 1970's when kids sat at the kitchen table with mum teaching the lessons.
Exciting times for home schooling!