My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

https://www.fast.ai/2022/09/06/homeschooling/

by alexdong • 4 years ago

92 100 4 years ago

awinter-py• 4 years ago

... key differences: Each child could work at their own pace, largely through playing educational games and apps that adapted to where they were. There was no particular endpoint that the kids needed to get to at the end of the semester.

if self-pacing is possible, not doing it seems like a huge unforced error in education policy

xyzzyz• 4 years ago

Only if you assume that having learn as fast as they are able to is a goal in education policy. In fact, it is not. Having some kids ahead of the others is not a desirable outcome of public education as it actually exists. Instead, it operates under assumption that all kids are interchangeable tabula rasas, and if some kids are ahead, that only means that the education is under serving those who are behind them.

As a result, great amounts of efforts are spent to get these slower kids to the pace of faster kids. It never actually has any non-superficial effect. If it seems to, it’s almost universally some more or less apparent selection bias going on.

This disappoints the educators greatly, especially as they are under pressure to deliver the equal outcomes they promised. The outcome is that more and more resources are spent on the slower kids, at the expense of the faster kids. At this point, parents of the faster kids (who very often are people of means, and this is by no means an accident) remove their kids from public education, and move them to private schools. This is often decried as some kind of moral failing, as if they and their kids owe something to the schools that fail to serve them, and for which they continue to pay anyway, despite not using them.

This is not unforced error, this is the result of the incentives embedded in the education system, which are, in turn, a result of unreasonable expectations put on it. We shouldn’t expect that everyone learn the same amount at school. This is never going to be the case, and is hurting everyone in the system.

candiodari• 4 years ago

This is never going to be the case, and is hurting everyone in the system.

Yeah, and changing it will cause revolt. It would be going back to saying people "just aren't equal", ie. the idea of nobility. And if there's one guarantee in life: it very quickly won't be actual achievement that determines if you get ahead in such a system.

rwbt3• 4 years ago

Homeschooling is interesting. I like the idea, but I'd be more worried about lack of socialization with other children or any kind of group learning. Even more so if the child is slightly introverted.

This is less of an issue if children are raised in the nuclear families like in the olden days, but these days what other avenues are left where children can learn something in a group and form long term friendships other than a school?

kiba• 4 years ago

Sport clubs, local neighborhood.

In particular, I retained a childhood friend who was a street playmate. The rest of my friends last through middle and high school until they moved away, and in some case drifted apart.

lax4ever2• 4 years ago

Homeschooling is not the isolation that most people think it is. In fact, the vast majority of parents who homeschool (myself included) join forces with other parents who homeschool for events, activities, and learning opportunities, all of which bring with them natural socialization while still allowing for a far more tailored learning experience than you can get in any classroom. In addition, homeschool kids typically spend more time around adults and get a better understand of the socialization standard that is expected of them, allowing them to build mature relationships easier.

rwbt3• 4 years ago

I'm glad to hear first hand experience. Where does one find other parents who are homeschooling their children?

bearmode3• 4 years ago

In school we were socialising for 6+ hours a day, every day, plus any time after school or on weekends, alongside our school work. We also had hundreds of peers that we could make friends with if we wanted to.

Compared to that I'd absolutely say homeschooling (even with occasional events and activities) is quite isolating.

gpm• 4 years ago

I was home schooled for several years as a child. Socialization wasn't really an issue, because there was a community of home schoolers and we went to a ton of group events with other home schoolers.

Things like a chess club, book club, lego robotics team, renting out a gym, doing science experiments, playing dungeons and dragons, and so on. This was slightly before the era of kids having cell phones, but we made use of landlines to keep in touch as well.

That said, it obviously depends a huge amount on the parents, and requires a huge amount of time and effort on their part. While I think it was a mostly positive experience for me, there are very few people I could recommend do it with their kids. The strong impression I got was also that it became less effective as you became high school aged, but I went back to a regular school before that.

sfink3• 4 years ago

My kids did very well in school academically, and weren't particularly bullied (which is not to say that it didn't happen at all, just that it wasn't a big part of their experiences.) They were both fairly popular amongst both students and teachers (for somewhat different reasons), and we loved most things about the school philosophy and staff.

We still pulled them out and are now homeschooling them, largely because of the "socialization" at the traditional school. My oldest in particular was retreating behind a social facade, and his innate interest in just about everything was dwindling, choked off by the social pressures of both his classmates and the sick game of "achievement" that schools present.

I'm not going to say that everything is perfect or even that everything is better. We're a family of introverts, and we all struggle with socialization, but for him the social situations that we seek out are doing far more for him than the forced interactions of traditional school.

And you really have a huge amount of control and opportunities for socialization when you're homeschooling. There are get-togethers with other homeschoolers. There are in-person classes. There are things that would traditionally be called "extracurricular" but we see as core parts of what a childhood should involve. Some people form microschools, or have parents teach rotating topics. The online stuff isn't disconnected from other humans, and as the author of this piece says, it's not the "let's transplant our usual methods on top of Zoom!" bullshit that so many people have suffered with.

There certainly are tradeoffs and tension. If you want self-paced, it's hard to stick with a known cohort of other kids. It requires quite a bit of privilege to have the time and opportunity to shepherd this stuff through. I am greatly indebted to my wife for setting things up and managing them. There's no way it would happen if we were both still working full-time. And it won't work as well for some people—it's not the same for every kid or every family.

That's kind of the whole point.

ckz• 4 years ago

-Strong- introvert here, so take this with a grain of salt, but socialization is actually one of the strong points. :)

My homeschool upbringing included team sports, solo sports clubs, debate leagues, sleepovers, group field trips, scouting, community college, and various co-op models over the years.

Here's the difference--you're more likely to have mixed-age groups (particularly for elementary) and, critically, you're going to have much heavier adult involvement and guidance.

This gives a huge benefit: The social culture isn't defined by the kids. You have highly engaged adults acting as role models and vetted by the community. There's no critical mass of same-age peers defining the culture despite the best efforts of a handful of overworked administrators.

Additionally, there's usually a large amount of community collaboration and resource sharing. A key co-op for me in later years was essentially a group of local professionals who each taught their respective fields (writing, design, forensics, mathematics, etc.). Some were other parents with kids in the program, others were local experts. You still have a peer group spread between the classes--I had perhaps 20 in my immediate circle of a similar age, and a few hundred I met statewide during competitions--but by high school, the education essentially becomes student-led private tutoring with parental guidance, with a small-group shell and social extra-curriculars.

rayiner2• 4 years ago

This gives a huge benefit: The social culture isn't defined by the kids. You have highly engaged adults acting as role models and vetted by the community. There's no critical mass of same-age peers defining the culture despite the best efforts of a handful of overworked administrators

Absolutely. This is completely dysfunctional and unnatural and I don’t know how anyone thought it was a good idea.

numeri• 4 years ago

You seem to have described my home schooling experience to a T. It really was a wonderful way to learn and interact with expert adults in my community. I had a lot of good role models and mentors that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

rayiner2• 4 years ago

School isn’t a proper place to socialize children. It completely breaks the natural model by segregating children rigidly by age group and limiting interactions between children of different ages. Instead of older, more knowledgeable kids helping socialize the ones below them, you get kids learning from equal aged peers who know nothing themselves.

It’s the reason we spend a lot of money to send our kids to private school. I don’t actually think curriculum, etc., makes a tangible difference. But our school puts K-12 all on one campus with small grade level sizes and lots of opportunities for older kids to teach younger kids. (E.g. summer camp activities for elementary school students where most of the counselors are high school students.)

8f2ab37a-ed6c4• 4 years ago

Not surprising that the kid of two extremely successful and intelligent parents -- at least technically and academically -- is suffocated by the pacing of public schooling. It's supposed to accommodate the needs of the general population and its standard deviations of nurture and nature. I wonder if this will become a more common pattern for the cognitive elite.

ido• 4 years ago

It’s not about the cognitive elite. The mass-education public school system is designed for an average with very little deviation that doesn’t actually fit that many pupils - it’s not a single int stat like in d&d, kids have different capabilities & interests and aiming for some sort of generalized lowest common denominator is going to be a bad experience for pretty much everyone.

The only solution IMO is the expensive one - more individualized curricula, smaller classes, more personal attention from the teacher to the pupil and less focus on standardized tests and grades.

koonsolo4• 4 years ago

There is another way, and I know they sometimes use it in Belgium: let the smarter kids help out the ones that still struggle with the material. That way they learn how to properly explain things, teach others. Maybe they don't see more material than the other kids, but they sure learn other usefull skills.

jay_kyburz• 4 years ago

I've said it before, but I think software could do a lot to customize curriculum for students without disrupting the the traditional classroom too much.

The kids could be tested with games, then presented new stuff or roll back to some older stuff based on how well they are progressing.

froh• 4 years ago

the solution actually is an inexpensive one: provide age appropriate self learning materials and make the teachers coaches in navigating those. Montessori schools work like that and we have a public school using that to accommodate both very quick and very slow learners and all those in between. the trick is that most students spend two years in that class, slow learners stay for three and the quick kids move on after just one year. individualized learning and mixed age groups. cheap and works like a charm.

xattt• 4 years ago

I wonder if this will become a more common pattern for the cognitive elite.

In Canada, French immersion is an option in public schools starting from kindergarten. Personally, I think it’s a good proxy for sorting classrooms where parents care versus English-only classrooms where the parents seem less involved.

I’ve heard comments from parents who deliberately avoided French immersion for various reasons but these often stemmed from a lack of a growth mindset (it’s confusing for my child, I won’t be able to help them with homework, etc.). This obviously has implications about how kids conduct themselves beyond their home.

renewiltord2• 4 years ago

I learned pretty much everything I know from reading by myself since I lived out in the country. My parents did my homework with their left hand when I was young so I'd have time for more productive pursuits like exploring or reading. Worked pretty well for me. I aced almost every exam in my childhood. And I am quite successful.

In many ways, school just slows you down. But I liked my parents' way. That let me go to school and have that shared experience with other kids while not holding me back.

I wonder how I can do that for my kids. Unfortunately, homework is part of the grade and you can't tell the teachers to skip it for your kid. Or maybe you can.

ekianjo• 4 years ago

In many ways, school just slows you down.

Yes, and that's not even accounting for bullying if you are unlucky

rwbt3• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, homework is part of the grade and you can't tell the teachers to skip it for your kid.

This is the biggest curiosity killer. Instead of helping them it somehow teaches the kids to become a bunch of obedient rule followers. Maybe that's the intended effect.

trophycase• 4 years ago

idk where you went to school but the "homework" and worksheets I got before high school I could do with my eyes closed. The teachers would hand it out, I'd complete it in 2 minutes then not worry about it. It never even reached my parents. They had already taught me how to read a clock, how to do multiplication and long division, etc. "Homework" as a concept basically didn't exist for me before AP classes.

renewiltord2• 4 years ago

Oh my homework was sheets of that stuff. The constraint was writing speed honestly. It would take hours of work just to write it out. I was talking to my parents the other day and they laughed about how many pages of cursive text they had to fill just to let me off the hook. But who knows, maybe you're better than me.

It's definitely one thing I like very much about American education: it appears to be much less mechanical. Though unless you go to magnet schools or specific private schools, the peer group is usually weak.

j7ake• 4 years ago

Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. This individualised form of education may be making a return over the next years as apps and material become more personalised.

PaulDavisThe1st• 4 years ago

This morning on our local public radio station here in Santa Fe, I heard a report on salaries in education. Private tutors were the highest paid category, above all "actual" teachers in terms of mean salaries (median would have been better). Apparently Santa Fe was rated #2 of all US metro areas in this category.

seanhunter• 4 years ago

Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors.

Yes. As a fun aside, my understanding is that is the reason for a baffling (to people outside the UK) anomaly.

In the UK, if you there is a school you have to pay for (ie not a government school) that is called a public school. Everywhere else in the world that would be called a private school - a much more logical-sounding name.

The reason is that if in say the 15th century you were well off but weren't quite rich enough to pay for tutors for your children you might be able to send them to a public school (eg Eton college) instead. There were no government schools at the time, so schools that were open to the public were called public schools to differentiate from private tuition.

walthamstow• 4 years ago

Not quite. Harrow, Eton and Winchester are public schools but somewhere like Bromley High School and most other no-name fee-paying schools are called independent or private schools. Nobody would refer to one of these as a public school.

A school that you don't pay for is usually referred to as a state school.

kasperni• 4 years ago

Outside of the Anglosphere homeschooling is not really a thing [1]. Coming from Europe I've personally never meet anyone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_st...

wisemanwillhear• 4 years ago

I've come to learn that homeschooling is illegal in some European countries. That may be a big reason why.

E.g. Germany

https://amp.dw.com/en/european-court-rules-against-german-ho...

phillc73• 4 years ago

It is possible in Austria though. We’ve met a group of people who’ve kept at it post-COVID enforced periods of lockdown homeschooling, because it worked so well for their children. The parents take turns supervising the group and I think they also employ a part-time private teacher for oversight.

GordonS• 4 years ago

It's a thing in the UK - relatively rare, though still amounting to something like 100,000 kids across the whole UK.

thrown_222• 4 years ago

Home schooling sounds great until you start talking to the people who home school. There's always something weird about them. This lady is no exception:

I have been disturbed to follow the ever-accumulating research on cardiovascular, neurological, and immune system harms that can be caused by covid, even in previously healthy people, even in the vaccinated, and even in children. While vaccines significantly reduce risk of death, unfortunately they provide only a limited reduction in Long Covid risk. Immunity wanes, and people face cumulative risks with each new covid infection (so even if you’ve had covid once or twice, it is best to try to avoid reinfections). I am alarmed that leaders are encouraging mass, repeated infections of a generation of children.

I'd love nothing more than to spend time going over areas I find fascinating with a child but I know I have my own idiosyncrasies and multiplying them for the next generation isn't doing anyone any favors. Being exposed to multiple ideas is a good way to keep you from going off the deep end.

In short: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTsIPRgWUAALz4v?format=png&name=...

whatshisface2• 4 years ago

Did you read that, or did you scan for the keyword "vaccine"? It's widely accepted that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time.

thrown_222• 4 years ago

Being raised by someone who has numerous medical issues to the point where they can't function in society any more will not lead to a well functioning adult.

She's welcome to raise her kids however she wants. But you should keep in mind that this is very much not someone who you want to copy unless you're also basically an invalid.

Markoff• 4 years ago

TBH homeschooling is promoted by both vaxxers (they are paranoid and don't feel safe about their children being around other children) and antivaxxers (they don't want vax/mask mandates and other nonsense like eating lunch in freezing cold outside enforced on their kids). So vax preference here ain't really definition of "weird".

My kid spent pretty much continously like 1.5 month in 4-5 quarantines from school and guess what, he got COVID in between anyway, completely pointless waste of everyone's (parents/chidlren) time, because some parents had nothing better to do than ruin it for everyone else.

Btw. there is nothing really wrong with being weird, most of the people are stupid falling for whatever they are fed. Although it doesn't mean everyone weird is smart or better than majority.

pnathan5• 4 years ago

I was homeschooled: k-11. I have a graduate degree. My sibling has a similar path. The academics I received as a homeschooler were, frankly, probably 90th percentile, maybe more. Yet, simply going to a good school district with good teachers and supportive parents would, in all likelihood, have given me similar outcomes. And now, looking back twenty-plus years later, I don't think that it produced a materially different effect than others of my age group. Certainly my family's homeschooling did wonders for our academics; others in the homeschool group variously finished high school or did minor college. Nothing remarkable. Just like the public school kids - some did great, some did ok, some scraped by.

Barring some _exceptionally_ unusual cases - lets say 4th std dev cases, I feel, sharply, that homeschooling is a bad idea.

On a broad social level, it removes expected bodies of knowledge suitable for having a useful society; on an individual level, it leaves them in a bad place for interacting with peers. I also believe that most parents are not qualified to actually supervise modern education past a certain grade level- being a parent is a remarkably easy thing to start doing, after all.

The social interaction is a profound and subtle problem. There's this thing about dealing with the mass of peers that homeschooling doesn't teach - but the work world and other situations require. This is not going to come with homeschooling.

I also note, in passing, that I am assuming that parents are _trying_ to do exceptional education and are not trying to play particularly ideological games. In other words, something roughly analogous to normal schooling goals. However. This assumption does not hold true in much of homeschooling discourse. Much of homeschooling is an explicit religious approach; some of the homeschooling curricula and groups are actually a religious-political project attempting to build political power with an alternative education system outside. So discussions of homeschooling have to address that elephant in the room.

Also in passing, any homeschooling policy worth its salt should ensure that children are simply not being educationally or personally neglected; those cases do exist, unfortunately.

tl;dr: don't homeschool. take it from a former homeschooled kid. send the kid to a good public school, please.

jph004• 4 years ago

Having not gone through it yourself, you may have an overly-rosy view of school.

Personally, I hated school, and I think it had a strongly net negative impact on me. It's not for everyone.

pnathan5• 4 years ago

In my teens, I had public school friends who succeeded, some who failed. Some who abused the system. The textbooks were lousy as a rule, stuffed with low-entropy material and images. Teachers varied, wildly. Some bad. Some good.

What I learned then and over time is the difference parents make for someone who cares. Looking back, that was a critical difference why my family had great academic success and other families - same homeschool group, my friends - struggled. My parents expected academic performance. Not just "doing ok", but "knowing". Some years ago, my dad laughed that they were "Tiger Parents", around the time Dr. Chua's book came out.

I do think that my generation - late 70s - late 80s kids - is reaching an age and life stage where we can reflect on our homeschooling and assess whether it was good or bad, not just looking at the "k-12" time but holistically and how it affected our course of life.

I actually loved _being_ homeschooled, at the time. It's only as I've aged that I've grown more and more negative about it.

anyway, peace.

ARandomerDude• 4 years ago

The glaring deficiency of public school is the inability to train your child's character for most of the day. You hope that the teachers and students have similar values to you. Some do, many don't.

I want my children to be honest, thoughtful, compassionate, diligent, respectful, and courageous. These aren't society's values today so I homeschool.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

This is why the majority of homeschool parents do it. It’s borderline control freak behaviour if not over the line most of the time. Usually to force some kind of religious beliefs on their kids and keep them away from any kids with other opinions.

pnathan5• 4 years ago

I want my children to be honest, thoughtful, compassionate, diligent, respectful, and courageous. These aren't society's values today so I homeschool.

The number of people who have good values who don't homeschool demonstrates that it is not required.

gnicholas3• 4 years ago

tl;dr: don't homeschool. take it from a former homeschooled kid. send the kid to a good public school, please.

This is a bit of a false dichotomy. Wealthy people can send their kids to good public/private schools because they can afford to live places with access. But less-wealthy people may not have the option.

The social interaction piece is interesting, and may be addressed by the fact that there is massive growth in homeschooling right now. It's also easier to connect/coordinate with other families (remote or local, based on interests/age). Not a bad idea for a startup, actually!

sfink3• 4 years ago

Yeah, but it also requires some degree of wealth to homeschool. Two parents working full time, or a single parent working full time, are going to be hard-pressed to set up a decent homeschooling environment. You can rely on the "non-location based charter school"'s curriculum and staff quite a bit, but then (1) you won't be that different from traditional schooling, and (2) they can't provide all-day supervision or anything close (for younger ages when it's necessary).

pnathan5• 4 years ago

I'm keenly aware that some public school districts do really badly. E.g., Albequerque PS has 75% of kids under grade level in math - one reason why we didn't move there!

On the policy level, removing the option to legally homeschool without some sort of court order would be my choice to start improving that; to force alignment between wealthy and poor (the wealthy don't get the option to shrug and send their kid to a good charter/private school - they have to work to improve the district). There are other angles around funding that are well known to be problematic.

I don't believe that a million homeschoolers all doing things differently is the right thing for society or for learning interaction. The point I am trying to make is that "dealing with the Public is an important skill that you don't get when its just your little clan"

matheweis• 4 years ago

It’s rather surprising to me that, despite what was an apparently net positive outcome for you and your immediate family, you would have such a negative opinion of homeschooling.

For the others reading the thread (relevant bits of which are linked in the article) consistently shows that on average homeschooled students perform several percentage points higher on academic achievement tests, and a moreover a majority of studies on social development of show positive outcomes for homeschoolers compared to traditional schools. For minorities the net positives are apparently even more profound; the same article mentions a > 20% increase in academic achievement test scores for black students.

Yes, there are good and there are bad situations in all kinds of school, public and private and homeschool alike, but the data appears to be overwhelmingly in favor of homeschooling when compared to a public school.

watwut4• 4 years ago

Some of those are rosy studies designed to be rosy tho. As in, many of those studies are are as independent as cigarette company paying for research on smoking and health. Also, a lot of effort goes into insulating religious homeschooling families from any independent sight at all.

The elephants in the room he mentions is very real thing too. Fair amount of homeschooling is explicitly social/political project. It is meant to shape both how family structure looks like (who is head of the house) and also meant to create young people that change larger society into religious one. ( Partly you can see it when you listen to homeschoolers talking about public school or even non religious people in general - frankly they often sound like aliens who got the idea from movies. )

pnathan5• 4 years ago

apparently net positive outcome for you and your immediate family

My point is I don't think it was net positive. I'd estimate a net negative. I actually think I spent 10 years overcoming serious limits in post-homeschooling areas in social areas. Now, 20 years after I finished homeschool, I don't see any difference in the end between now-peers and myself, even comparing with the homeschool group I was involved in (as I mentioned, I'm on the upper end of "society's success" with that group... most were far less academic than my family).

BeFlatXIII• 4 years ago

I agree about the point where most parents aren't qualified to supervise homeschooling past an elementary age, but I don't agree with the conclusion about social interactions. Traditional schooling is ineffective at teaching healthy coping mechanisms. My interactions with peers in the workplace and college were nothing like my peers in high school: perhaps filtering out the bottom 50% of the population made socializing with peers worthwhile.

jph004• 4 years ago

Hi all. I'm Jeremy, the husband of the author of this post. We really didn't expect to see this get any particular attention -- but I'm happy to answer questions about homeschooling you might have.

As my wife Rachel said in the intro, this post is really about our particular experiences. It's not an attempt to convince anyone else to do the same thing.

Home-schooling is very different to what I expected. There are things today that just weren't available to previous generations. In particular, there's a lot of well-designed adaptive apps and websites that take kids through topics at a speed that's appropriate for them. This has meant, in our case, that our daughter has avoided the extreme boredom that she faced when she was at a traditional school, and is now enjoying her learning much more. It's particularly good for topics like mathematics, where if you start getting behind it can become nearly impossible to make progress, and if you're ahead then you might just zone out.

Also, Zoom is a game-changer. Our daughter gets tutoring in coding from an MIT computer science grad (who also minored in music and teaches her piano too), in physics from a physicist, in art from a professional artist, in Japanese from a native Japanese speaker, and so forth. Her tutors are from all over the world and are extremely diverse. This has been a lot of fun for her, and has opened her eyes to different ways of thinking about the world. Without Zoom and friends, we'd have been restricted to people that are in our local geographic area. We've had a lot of help from Modulo (https://www.modulo.app).

Another nice thing about Zoom is that the vast majority of her learning occurs in a social environment with 1-5 other kids. We've found that this is a great group size, and is more social than most larger classrooms -- the kids are never told to keep quiet, but instead encouraged to have lots of discussion and ask questions whenever they come up. There's lots of diversions to follow whatever the kids get interested in along the way.

I've personally spent a lot of time reading academic papers and books about education and listening to lots of interviews with teachers. There are all kinds of fascinating insights that just haven't been brought into regular schools so far, but we're able to take advantage of in all our daughter's lessons. For example, we use a lot of spaced repetition, and teach her tutors how to take advantage of it too (e.g see http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html).

gnicholas3• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing your story! How did you find the various tutors, and what percent of the teaching do you do yourself? About how many hours a day are you actively working with your child? Do you expect to homeschool indefinitely?

jph004• 4 years ago

We generally found our tutors via modulo.app. The percent I spend personally varies quite a bit. We'll homeschool as long as it seems the best for our child and as long as she wants to.

8f2ab37a-ed6c4• 4 years ago

Hey Jeremy, what sorts of apps have you found most useful with your daughter? You mention using a few math ones that you found to be a good fit for her.

PS. thanks for the excellent fast.ai course!

jph004• 4 years ago

I helped curate this list: https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/bestappsforlearning

Glad you liked course.fast.ai :D

As_You_Wish• 4 years ago

With everything about what I've been reading about public schools recently, no way in heck would I want my child in a public school, where instead of teaching the basics, they are more about indoctrinating children into a specific political worldview.

I'm neither liberal or conservative, I'm neither. But from what I'm reading, the agenda at public schools is about as hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible. I don't want my children to be indoctrinated to the left or right. I wouldn't have my kids go to a public school where they push religion, either.

Both suck.

Just...no thanks.

pjc50• 4 years ago

hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible

What does this even mean? Examples? Who told you this? How do you think that's maintained in opposition to whatever your local district politics is?

PointlessLogin• 4 years ago

from what I'm reading, the agenda at public schools is about as hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible.

Where are you reading this, and why do you choose to believe it?

amanaplanacanal• 4 years ago

I suspect the people telling you this are doing so for their own political purposes.

tibbydudeza• 4 years ago

Myself and the wife don't have the skills, time or frankly the patience to be a teacher.

My eldest is studying to become a K12 teacher and it is a 4 year degree course so I don't think Zoom and parents are going to replace her soon.

My youngest is a "aspy" and when she went to high school it was a disaster - she ended up in a clinic for treatment of depression and one of the triggers was high school.

Square peg in a round hole.

We fortunately found a tutor that had taught kids with learning disabilities and was close to home and enrolled her in an online school platform for the materials and exams.

She had to drop Physics/Chemistry as there was no way for her to do practical lab work even at another place.

She went to the tutor's home during the day - helped other kids when not busy and completed Grade 12 over two years - she is now studying IT programming first year at a university.

It was the best decision we made ever - home schooling but letting a professional do it and for the right reasons - "We don't trust the govt" or "install my morality/belief system" is shitty reasons IMHO.

My family’s unlikely homeschooling journey

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