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Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?
129 points by actfrench on July 1, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 406 comments
Hi all, I’m a teacher and startup founder building a platform to support families homeschooling. I’m curious to know for those of you who have considered this approach, but not taken the leap yet, what’s stopping you and what kind of tools would make it a no-brainer/easier for you to adopt.


Social needs. Children need to learn how to be in relationship with others, it is the most fundamental need we have and is so important for the future of our planet.

If I were to homeschool, it isn't about the learning, that is easy, it is about providing an environment where children can learn to co-exist with others. That can still be done with homeschool, but it will need to be intentional with daily activities that involve being in relationship with others, in physical form.


I went to public school and would argue it's a terrible place to be socialized. You are socialized by kids your age in an environment that's more akin to prison than the real world.


Yep, high school socialisation is so far removed from real life socialisation it’s funny. When I look back at my public school years I laugh to think we were supposedly learning vital social skills!

What other part of life do you interact with only people who were born in the same year as you were (and, in the case of some schools, only your sex)?

Homeschooled children (in my experience) learn to make friends with kids a lot older and younger than they are. They also learn to look after and teach younger ones, and learn from older ones.

I went to public school myself, my wife was homeschooled (for all but two high school years), and we homeschool our five kids. There’s pretty much no reason I’d consider sending them to school, unless they want to in their high school years (so far our oldest doesn’t).


I had friends from other grades when I was in middle school - was part of sports teams and I trained for an entire summer with kids who were 2 years older than me. Initially they bossed me, but over time they really took me under their wing.

In the neighborhood I lived - had some friends who were 3-4 years older. Maybe my experience is unusual, but those were great times!


Yea, i'd have to agree with you.

What i learned in school was how awful people can be. The extremes where we humiliate and torment others. The mindless churn to be in a clique and simply fly under the radar.

Slight tangent, but: In my view a parents jobs is to let children fail with a safety net. To be there and help them recover after failures are experienced together, to grow from them.

Public School, in my view, does none of this. It attempts to educate, sure, but not in socialization. Likewise parents, even the well executing ones (by my definition) cannot share the experiences. Parents can only see the aftermath and try to mend some wounds.. but the growth is up to the child, in isolation.

I don't know the better solution. I don't have the answer. All i know is that in the context of how i judge parenting, school fails entirely on. School is lord of the flies. Many prosper. Many drown. Many could grow, if only a guiding hand existed.

Clearly i'm a pessimist here. I'm also not having children, which may not surprise you. Hah.


Public school socialization.

Humiliated by teachers.

Bullied by some people.

Small circle of friends.

Adults as the enemy.

All the homeschooled kids I've met seem pleasant, polite, comfortable around other kids and around adults. Of course this is Northern California so elsewhere the story may be different.

Oh, and homeschooling is forbidden in Germany, under a 1938 law.

1938. Get it? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, elbow in the ribs.

Just to see who doesn't like homeschooling.


If we're going with full anecdotes, all the homeschooled folks I've had to deal with have had major issues integrating with wider society. I felt a bit sorry for them, even if they weren't always the nicest or well-meaning people to actually be around. But by the time they're a bit older, I guess it's too late.


How do you know whether people you've "had to deal with" were homeschooled or not? Might that method result in selection effects?


I doubt anyone I work with or meet knows I was homeschooled unless I specifically tell them, and it’s a pretty touchy subject because of the stereotypes people like the parent commenter have. Sounds like textbook survivorship bias, since the only homeschoolers you notice are the ones who are maladjusted. I know many people who were homeschooled and the range of outcomes varies, just like it does for public or private schools.


Some public school experiences can be great. Some homeschooling experiences can be great. Likewise each can be awful. We need more data.


Agreed. I made my point badly. Data is needed, not anecdotes.


True. They had to tell me. Your points stand: they could very well have been a minor subset of the overall population. But also by the same argument, they could have been 100pct of the population. It's why I mentioned it's all anecdotal. Data is needed.


Germany banned homeschooling in 1919. The 1938 law simply standardized the start date and penalties and excluded the disabled. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht


Of course, in the US things are different when it comes to sending kids to school. Where there is the constant danger of being shot at by some psycho.

So it's better if they stay their kids at home.


I'm German and I'm glad it's forbidden, and not since 1938 but since 1919, and it has its roots not in the Nazi era but in the Prussian system and the European humanist tradition of education which emphasized that education is not just about acquisition of skills, but about civic education, teaching students not just to be pupils but to be democratic citizens and active participants in public life.


> teaching students not just to be pupils but to be democratic citizens and active participants in public life.

The subtext being that homeschooled children grow up into worse citizens than schooled children? What is the basis for that?


Depends on the motivation but I think there are some straight forward reasons. If the motivation is religious, then withdrawal is the explicit goal. The US say, has a long history of sort of apolitical, religiously secluded parallel communities that are deliberately parochial.

Another reason is that if you're not participating in common institutions you have no stake in them. If everyone goes to the same schools (in Germany the idea of the Volksschule), everyone has to participate in civic discourse about what to teach, how to fund education, and how to maintain equal standards. There is a common fabric and shared reality because everyone shares the same space.

That's obviously not to say that literally every homeschooled person is disinterested in public life, or vice versa but I think it's hard to see many other motivations for homeschooling other than to withdraw for one reason or another.


> Another reason is that if you're not participating in common institutions you have no stake in them.

What's wrong with disassociation as a motivation? In a borderless world I don't see a reason for forced participation in a place that one might not even like. So long as everyone pay their financial debts, how they live their life shouldn't be anyone's business.


From what I have been able to piece together about Germans (my wife lived there and we have had several au pairs from there), they don’t understand the situation with religion in America. In Germany, people gradually stopped participating in organized religion, but the social framework has remained largely intact. Last I checked, German public schools are still required to offer religious education under Article 7-3 of the Basic Law.[1]

In the US, secularists have made a concerted effort to scrub every trace of religion out of public life and impose French-style secularism on a country that’s as religious as Poland. And they did that not in the 21st century, but in the 1960s and 1970s, when both Germany and the United States were vastly more religious.

Folks who want to homeschool their kids for religious reasons aren’t the nuts that American media makes them out to be. They’re people who in Germany or Sweden or the Netherlands or many other places would be able to avail themselves of public options that those countries include in the mainstream.

[1] Germany appears much more content to let social mores evolve organically rather than tearing up the social fabric by rushing change. Germany is a much more liberal country than America, but the laws are much more conservative in many ways. A subset of Americans are besides themselves because the Supreme Court overturned a case recognizing a right to abortion until viability (22 weeks). Meanwhile, Schwangerschaftsabbruch I (deeming abortion to be a violation of the Basic Law’s right to life) is still the law in Germany, and decriminalized abortion is permissible only to 12 weeks. Nobody called Angela Merkel a fascist for voting against same sex marriage. Bavaria requires crosses in public buildings and hasn’t been kicked out of the country. Etc.


You (or others reason this thread) would probably be interested in the most recent Serial podcast, "The Trojan Horse Affair", which centers on the intersection of religion and public schooling in Birmingham. Religious education is apparently technically a requirement in the UK as well (though, in many places, perhaps more observed in the breach). If you're Muslim in Birmingham, your public school is probably teaches approximately as much Islam as St. Barnabas taught me Catholicism.

(It doesn't work out great for Birmingham!)


That was the Blair governments terrible idea to give public funding to all religious schools. Coming from northern Ireland where segregation in schools is pretty fundamental to the divide, I couldn't believe the stupidity in implementing this in England.


I would go back much further than Blair. The roots of that situation can be found ultimately in the British empire, which lead to the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh, and immigration from those countries into Britain (notably from Sylhet in the 1970s).

Crucially, South Asian people are endogamous, meaning that they generally prefer to marry within their communities and moreover within the family: cousin marriage is common. So there has been consistent secondary immigration from the subcontinent as South Asians marry spouses from their communities from their countries of origin and bring them to the UK.

The average Bangladeshi or Pakistani citizen's religious views are about as welcome in Britain as the average Briton's secular views would be welcome in Bangladesh. Which is to say that they are disjoint and cannot be reconciled much at all.


I don't know what you're referring to here, but 51% of Wikipedians believe that religious education (of some form) is compulsory in all UK schools.


> but about civic education, teaching students not just to be pupils but to be democratic citizens and active participants in public life.

As if that happens in American public schools lol.


It does in some more than in others. Oak Park schools did about as good a job with this as any school could have.


And how did that work out for Germany?

More seriously the Prussian system was created after the Napoleonic Wars to ensure that Prussia had a large reasonably well educated population suitable for warfare and for industry.

That system was enforced in the USA later in the 19th Century.

Read http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/


A lot of child comments are pointing out that school kids are often terrible peers and experiences there are not great, and I have had my share of similar experiences, but.. that is part of social growth too.

Making social mistakes, learning the consequences of those mistakes, and experiencing hurt when others make mistakes in interacting with you are all important life lessons.

Part of the reason “the real world” after school is so much better is because those people have already made mistakes and learned their lessons earlier in life. Of course, school isn’t the only way to learn these lessons, and many well adjusted homeschooled kids are those who are exposed to social situations in other ways.

There are many social situations that would never happen in the home, and kids have to learn about them somehow. i.e developing new relationships, dealing with unexpected conflict, meeting someone new, romance, etc.


Have you met many people from homeschooling backgrounds?

I live in a community full of them. Social interaction has not been a problem for them. As adults they're some of the most well adjusted I know. As teens some of the happiest I've ever met.

Academically they vary but I'd say it works better than school for most.


I have. My comment wasn’t a criticism of homeschooling. As I said:

> many well adjusted homeschooled kids are those who are exposed to social situations in other ways.

I was criticizing the idea the school is a bad place to learn socialization.


If you jump off a building you’ll learn not to do that again, but there’s easier and safer ways to learn.


I know not to jump off a building because I’ve fallen smaller distances as a child and I understand the consequences.

You would be negligent to let a child experience their first steps on the roof of a building.

A couple of hurt feelings in elementary school is likewise a low risk introduction to the world of social interaction.


I agree. I was treated pretty terribly at times.

I don’t think we should strive to socialize kids in school. The ones who do okay could probably still do better.

Here in North America it seems like our communities are too fragmented and fractured to facilitate socializing without something like schools, though. No idea how to address and resolve this issue, but I’m not convinced our teachers and the socializing model are anything like ideal for kids.

Not bashing teachers here either. I think they’re often doing their best but are working in the confines of a non-ideal system with limited resources.

I was very keen to get my kids into a private school which had an education model and teachers I was impressed by, but it’s incredibly hard to get in. My kids are eligible to enter, but there’s no space for years. No idea what to do. I’m happy to spend a lot to address this, but even private tutors don’t seem like a viable option here.

I’m just venting at this point. This is a hard problem. My kids are getting a bad education here in Canada and it’s upsetting. I try to do what I can to get them ahead, but I’m a nerd, not a teacher.


> was treated pretty terribly at times.

Most people were. But unfortunately you will get treated pretty terribly throughout your life.

And so you need to develop those social skills at some point.


Absolutely. I grew up with a mild disability so it might have been a little worse than average, which is why I mention it. I went through most of grade 3 with a list in in the top right of the chalk board titled “Stupid List”, and for the remainder of the year after it was written, I was the only one on there. These kinds of experiences weren’t uncommon for me.

My sister is a year older and more evidently disabled, and we were obvious targets for the kids we grew up with.

You’re right though. I lived through it fine, I’ve done okay, and the experience informed me about life and people in truly useful ways that I’ve come to value.

Ideally I’d like my kids to avoid the worst of what I experienced, but I don’t want to shelter them by any means. I think there are some forms of prolonged cruelty from peers that risks being very destructive, in particular.


The "real world" view pretty much depends on the glasses you wear and the observation point.


In public school you get in trouble for socializing


Don’t you think having those skills are important for when you are working and also forced to be around people?


Don't worry, for most people, their workplace will feel like a prison as well.


Those people would do well to learn what the word “prison” means. Your 9 to 5 might suck, but let’s try and have some perspective…


School isn't a literal prison either if you're advocating for sticking with the literal definition of the world.


Pedagogist here-- I don't have the time to gather a huge amount of materials in regard to this but it's worth pointing out that schools actually are designed to be, "like prisons" do to socioeconomic forces that turn schools into, "learn how to job" facilities. It's a natural consequence of neoliberal capitalism. Look into Foucault's, "Discipline and Punish."

http://www.we-aggregate.org/piece/schools-and-prisons https://sputniksteve.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/schools-prison...

(Excuse the relatively, "non-scholar" links; I'll dig into the literature at a further date. It's worth exploring.)


It's kind of true. This isn't going to change in the future. Neoliberalism means, "if you're not 21st century valuable you're going to be 19th century poor" and this has me troubled. The conundrum for me is how you can develop an advanced society without advanced education. It seems like technology becomes a social stratifier despite the, "advantages" that they gain the poor. This has historical precedent-- so far technological advances have done a great deal to correct social imbalances (consider working class life in the 1850s) but they have also furthered that gap between the most and least powerful in society.

It seems that human culture closely follows power laws; it might be possible that, "elites" are a natural consequence of human existence. The question is how this will be managed in a world where elites have near absolute technical powers. It's worth thinking about I thinking about.


This so much. I've met quite a few homeschooled children and almost without fail they lack some pretty fundamental social skills. Things like an apparent inability to interact with children of their own age, or behaving obnoxiously to others in ways that would be rapidly stamped out by peers.


I have the opposite experience. I've met a ton of homeschooled kids (also, I seem to attract them in the dating scene) and by and large I've found they have very sophisticated and healthy social skills, and it's "normally schooled" kids that have very twisted and often destructive social skills, probably derived from mostly interacting in the artificial social environment of "everyone is +/- 1 year from your age". Admittedly it's likely that I am suffering from selection bias based on my own social circles.

(I was traditionally schooled)


I went to a college that actively recruited homeschool students. Lots of experience with homeschoolers who just left home.

I haven’t seen the things you’re describing.

One of the most common things I saw in homeschoolers was a strong “intellectual hobby.”

They had curriculum bashed around them, so if there was a topic they liked, they could study it after year in increasing depth.

Of course, this is homeschoolers who go to college. Not necessarily representative.


How do you know that the parents didn't pull the kids out of school because lack of social skills and unusual but unctronable behavior resulted in peer bullying.


I work in educating young men and women, ages 16 up to around 60. Homeschooled kids almost never make a year in "normal" education. They fail to adjust to a small college, they are no longer the center of attention. They have to wait for others to catch up. They are not team players. It's really hard to watch.


It would be interesting to see actual statistics on this, because that doesn't match my experience at all. I was homeschooled, and went to a D1 state university, as did my siblings and numerous friends who were homeschooled. Both myself and one sibling finished with a 4.0 in dual majors. That same sibling went on to a masters program. I went on to an engineering Phd. The transition from grad school to corporate life was a bigger adjustment than high school at home to university. It just wasn't a big deal despite all the FUD.


I was also homeschooled and adjusted easily to a small college and a Masters at a top 20 university, and agree that the transition from university to corporate life was much more jarring than from homeschool to “normal” school. I only spent one day at a traditional school and honestly it was horrifying, spending 6 hours in a drab room listening to someone talk for 55 minutes, then running to the next one. The socialization issue is a concern, but there are plenty of ways to get kids involved socially while homeschooling. And normal schools also produce plenty of socially maladjusted people, not to mention bullying.


Yeah, I dunno, anecdotally all the homeschooled kids I knew were fine socially.


The world needs lots of corporate cogs who fall in line with the team. Personally I wasn't home-schooled but I can see the upside of being raised in an environment where you're not taught to be subservient to the authority of a school system, nor forced into a system where you're taught physical self defense is to be punished.

Sounds like the home-schooled may have a leg up for some tasks that require ignoring the training to fall in line with the team or authority. Their niche in life may simply be different.


Most of the "homeschool" kids I've met were definitely taught to fall in line, just with their family leaders and not with their peers. Subservience to religious or parental authority is a big reason why kids end up in those kinds of situations.


The rest sounds bad but "they have to wait for others to catch up" sounds like a win for homeschooling.


It's unsurprising that a teacher-student ratio around 1:1 could yield incredible academic results. If that so often comes at the cost of skills necessary to operate in the vast majority of real world environments though, it's kind of useless.


Schools are extremely artificial environments compared to pretty much everything else that comes later in life.


I don't disagree that schools are completely artificial environments. However what matters is that they're able to teach skills that are necessary in most real-world environments.


Have you ever heard of the fable about the tortoise and the hare? Sometimes speed isn't the most important.


Except when they try and get a job, be part of a social group or are in any sort of leadership position.

Everything in life is better when you’re a team player.


Which is why I said the rest sounds bad. But being a step ahead of your peers is something else that makes life better.


Try that with a romantic partner. Not attractive.

In a leadership role, being exasperated by half the team? Not motivating.

Also, the premise is that you are ahead of the bunch. It's also feasible that you are below the local average, and have no experience dealing with that situation. Takes guts to persist in that situation, but that's where you learn a lot.


This is personal opinion and not backed by any study or research. In all the ones I have seen, they easily adapt and actually get involved in civil societies more


As someone who was homeschooled for the majority of my childhood, I fully agree. I was able to somewhat overcome the resulting lack of social development in late high school (which wasn’t at home) and uni, but it wouldn’t be until some time between my mid 20s and early 30s that I felt like a mostly socially functional adult, and I still feel inadequacies in that department even now.

Additionally, I don’t know that I’d ever feel qualified to act as a teacher in as wide of a range of subjects as a child needs education in.


My wife and I were both homeschooled (I also attended private and public schools at various times). With homeschooling, we had a lot of positive social interactions (4-H, history club, co-operative classes with other families, neighborhood kids) and essentially no negative ones. My experience in public schools was quite negative (as well as being educationally weak). Our third son is autistic (probably my genetics) and does very well being homeschooled. Since he is nearly non-verbal, the likelihood that he would encounter abuse in a traditional setting that he could not report is quite high. Of course, having siblings contributes to socialization.


> essentially no negative ones

Negative interactions can sometimes be a help, or a part of life, or whatever is the right phrase. In Jr High one day after school some kids beat me and a friend up (for no reason that I could figure out). Of course, I won't say "it made me who I am today" or any baloney like that but it certainly helped cement a resolve to not be them.

> nearly non-verbal

Yes, for sure the individual kid is the prime thing a person worries about. I am glad to hear he does well.


I still hate bullies to this day, but there's no denying that they made me tougher.


All my life I had been taught that bullies were dumb. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at college and came across the first bully I met who was smarter than me. Much smarter than me. Didn’t make me tougher, but it made me realize even as you become an adult there are simply people to be avoided.


Yeah, I won’t deny that it can work well and produce well-rounded, socially capable adults, but it’s dependent on the parent(s) getting a lot right in doing it, which is anything but a given. Homeschooling isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly, and I think that parent(s) considering it should be honest with themselves in evaluating their ability to pull it off well.


Homeschooling does require a lot of commitment and consideration of your limitations as a parent. For example, I think there is value to cooperative homeschooling for some subjects (e.g., science, which requires equipment). Trying to "go it alone" for everything can be a bad idea. In addition, most states don't provide funding to school at home, so homeschooling parents also face an economic disadvantage.


I think everyone takes until mid 20s/early 30s to become socially functional. I went to normal school, and even day care (parents both worked), and I didn't totally overcome my social anxiety until I was 30 and had kids of my own. I still feel like I could do better.

Of course, I'm slightly biased, as we're probably going to end up going the homeschooling route. We were 50/50 before, but with COVID, we joined our church's homeschool coop, and because of that both our daughters are better socialized than peers their age. They meet every day. Older kids even meet up without their parents there (although there's always someone watching). Parents also hire tutors as groups, more like a 'pod' than traditional homeschooling. I think it'll work for us


> but it wouldn’t be until some time between my mid 20s and early 30s that I felt like a mostly socially functional adult

Just for the record, it's also common for people who attended school to not be really socially functional adults until their 20s-30s (hi!), and many people also never really even manage to realize this about themselves, so you're not necessarily worse off than an average non-homeschooled kid here.


I went to normal school and university, and despite this I still feel socially ackward.

I always blamed my dad, and my raising for my problems. My problems started being solved when I forgave my dad, and all the people that hurt me in the past.

I had to take responsibility and stop blaming others for my problems.

For homeschooled people I believe it is very tempting to blame homeschooling for their problems. It is too convenient. I don't know how to speak to women, homeschool problem. I don't know how to socialize, homeschool problem. I am alone, homeschool problem. Beware its not your case. Regards.


what's your process for forgiving someone?


It was long ago so I don't remember the details, it was part of Church process.

I recommended the following: 1. Understand that you are a sinner and that you wrong people very bad. In other words, recognize that you need forgiveness yourself. 2. Recognize that the other person is sinful as well. 3. Re-live the moment and recognize that it hurts. 4. Realize that the other person fucked up really bad. Don't apologize for them. 5. Forgive them. Thinking that if you don't, the problem will hunt you (not the other person).

Repeat this process several times during several years and you will be able to do it.


You should take the time to enumerate the topics you think a kid should know. I know that once I did this, I found many of the topics in public schooling to be BS. Some have said "the three R's-- reading, writing, and arithmetic" If you cover those extremely well, you can't ask for much more. There should be more, but you decide.


We probably agree more than we disagree, but I'll just add my own daughters as data points. When they stayed home during covid, the oldest (not a good student) did better academically with the lack of peer / social pressures. My youngest (an exceptional student) did better academically too, which has since allowed her to jump way ahead in her studies and finally be recognized by teachers as an academic prodigy, whereas before they saw her as a social misfit.

So - I agree that it is good for kids to learn how to coexist with others, I also think there are lots of ways to accomplish that and that we might all give school credit for social outcomes that aren't a reality.


I think you're confused as to the point of school. We often believe the point of school is the academics, but I would argue it's the social. Studies indicate social skills are more important to future success than academics.

A hurriedly-googled link: https://www.tcscholars.org/social-success/

And I would also argue you need excellent social skills to reach your potential academically.

So, yes, your kids did better academically when they were at home, and that's great. But that's not the point of school.


>I think you're confused as to the point of school

Actually, I think we're both wrong. During the time in my local PTA what stood out to me was the amount of time and money we spent on providing basic social services to kids - think providing meals, clothes, filtering for home and family problems etc. I would argue that in modern America, public schools are there to provide day care for working parents and to provide a modicum of social services, with education being an overarching hope and dream.


I don't think it's just an American thing that schools aren't that useful. Studies such the one linked below indicate that school choice has little impact on educational outcomes. Education is important, but I don't think anyone is particularly better at providing it in classrooms. Private tutoring and small group studies show much more impact. You could argue that is evidence that homeschooling is better, but I think that would only apply if you have subject matter experts teaching topics. Personally I think parents should focus on sending kids to schools that don't overburden children with homework and instead provide many opportunities for extracurriculars.

https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/schoolchoicel...


> We often believe the point of school is the academics, but I would argue it's the social. Studies indicate social skills are more important to future success than academics.

How much socialization do kids really get in school anyway?

They get 5 minute hallway breaks (if they are lucky) between 7 to 9 periods of classes per day. Maybe the bus ride in/out for 20-30 minutes. Lunch or recess. So how much time is that, again?

Maybe 2-3 hours/day?


I'd say group projects and class group activities with a goal are far more important forms of socialization than free time socialization.


I would argue that it is a lot easier to give a kid who is doing well academically some social interaction much better than they will get at the average public school than to take a child who is doing poorly at the public school and make them successful academically.

I would agree though that most school districts do not spend money with academics as the priority.


>We often believe the point of school is the academics, but I would argue it's the social.

It's neither. The point is propaganda and brainwashing, any other benefits are ancillary at best.

It isn't a coincidence that widespread schooling came about in a time where propaganda, nationalism and centralization and expansion of state power were on a high note, and such trends have only expanded since with the help of the propaganda and brainwashing conducted in those schools.


i can hardly think of a worse place to learn social skills than a classroom. all an intelligent kid really learns in public school is how to be cynical, detached and to maximally cheat the system.

oh and also how to sell drugs. public schools are great for learning that.


> oh and also how to sell drugs. public schools are great for learning that.

total cheap shot. s/public //

drugs follow money

at private schools what do you think you see? more expensive drug habits.


Please remember that not everyone has the same experiences, socially, in school and that for some, homeschooling is the vastly better option in that regard.


I would disagree with this. Those who do best on their own (let's imagine the stereo-typical nerd) are those who most need the social training of school to succeed in life.


Schooling only drove me further and further into hiding who I was, to great detriment. It was only upon leaving school that I got the "social training" I needed to succeed.

> Those who do best on their own

With respect, you said it yourself.


Those are also the most likely to face abuse like bullying in a school environment.


> providing an environment where children can learn to co-exist with others

Do most schools do this effectively? Kids are pretty terrible to each other and abuse is pretty much the norm from my experience. Of course its not crippling for most kids, but I remember getting made fun of, and making fun of other kids and everything in between. School is also one of the only places in life where you're likely to experience violence. It's basically a daycare.

I don't know if there's an alternative. Maybe play dates in small groups?


Public school (at least as I experienced it) is the worst possible place to learn social skills, unless you're hoping to pick up social skills for living in prison.

It's age-segregated, usually monitored by adults, extremely regimented, and often very hostile.

There are a million different contexts where kids can learn better, more useful social skills, like at church events, youth athletics, with kids in the neighborhood, etc.


Yeah I totally agree. The social skills I learned at my parochial school were none of the social needs I needed to succeed in silicon valley, for example.

My parochial school was poor working class. I learned how to talk crassly, 'shoot the shit', be prematurely sexual, to accept fate, etc. I did not learn how to speak properly, be diplomatic, set goals for life, better myself. Those I learned in college when I went to school with much better off kids and realized that all these things were things I could deliberately aim for and accomplish.

So, while attending school gave me a leg up in understanding the typical American 'everyman' (a skill which is severely lacking in silicon valley and in 'elite' circles in society), it did absolutely nothing to help me achieve becoming part of that elite. In many ways it hindered me. It taught me a worldview where everyone was coming to get me, to put me in my place, etc.


If you're concerned about this, you're not the only one, and the good news is that there are many solutions for this.

It is quite common for home schooled kids to be part of co-ops and other groups, where they may take classes together or have other activities together.

In addition, don't underestimate how important it is for children to socialize with trusted adults. Many children don't get adequate socialization even from their parents.


Father of five of which three are homeschooled here. School was oppressive and socialization was limited to minutes per day. Homeschoolers get together and the kids get a lot more time to socialize.


Imagine that there were a government program that taught infants how to walk: the infants enter the program unable to walk, and a year later just about all of them can.

Now imagine trying to kill that program, or even taking your own children out unilaterally: "But walking is so important! How could you be opposed to children learning how to walk?"

Your reaction to that is my reaction to the idea that a state apparatus is necessary for children to learn how to make friends and play.


The socialization of modern schooling is terrible and artificial. Children are age segregated and managed by a handful of adults. Which means they learn mainly from each other, instead of from older kids and adults. It’s the factory farm equivalent of raising children.

Homeschooled kids, of course, can learn social skills because they exist in societies and communities. Our neighbor’s kids are homeschooled. They’re over at our house right now. They play with the neighborhood kids, go to church, and engage in other social activities in mixed-age groups of kids.


Homeschooling without a larger community of kids can isolate the kids. I was awkward and a bit of a troublemaker. Thankfully with a really big high school there were always options to make other friends.


I mostly socialized at church, there are also homeschool co-ops.


I'd credit going to public school as helping me escape the indoctrination of church


I think that is the issue. Even if the homeschooling is completely online, you are saying that the socialization is now an extra demand placed on parents. We already saw how poorly most handled even getting their kids online for a Zoom or Google hangout. Teaching is incredibly hard work and I think we under value it. I think parents don't want this extra load and most have trouble even helping kids with homework and assignments they had specific instruction on.

In my experience (and ours are all different), school taught me a lot of lessons that had nothing to do with academics. There are good teachers and there are bad teachers (just like bosses). Sometimes you have to do work that is dumb or pointless just because that is the rule (just like work). I met kids richer than me and kids poorer than me. I met kids of other races and religions. You learn how to handle people calling you names and you learn heartbreak. Constant time together with friends you've had for years and shared lots of up/downs can't be quantified. I don't think you get the same exposure at a club that is likely socio-economically grouped and a couple of hours per week.


As a person who was homeschooled until age 13, I couldn't agree with you more.

This is what I tell friends thinking they'll take their kids out of school to give them a better education: they'll be socially unprepared in life.

Even if their social needs are supplemented, other kids will ask: what school do you go to school? And not having an answer can cause great embarrassment (I know, I've felt it myself).


The social needs argument is always made by those who went to traditional schools. Always. It's a kind of 'mesearch' argument.


Schools are a fairly recent invention, and at the onset they were meant for those children (from non-aristocratic families) who weren't getting home-schooled (and would otherwise in many cases have spent their days labouring among adults).

Now the 'default' has shifted, from home to classroom schooling, for various reasons, but you seem to confuse this with some 'natural' state.


> Children need to learn how to be in relationship with others

Isn't that what after-school recreation (both supervised and unsupervised) is for?

I always thought that after school (not to mention summer vacation!) was much better than school for interacting with friends, because we weren't stuck in classrooms where we were usually prevented from talking to each other.


I’m not convinced that school does this though, I’ve met tons of people with abysmal social skills who weren’t homeschooled.


Depends on what other kids / environment.

I asked to be pulled out and be put in private school because I knew that the public school system I was in was harming me. Social dynamics can be stunted with bullying, being denied experiences or progression or just thought of as a misfit due to demographic reasons e.g. being different.


> Children need to learn how to be in relationship with others

Can’t that be achieved with activities outside of school like a sports club, the scouts, or whatever else the kid is actually interested in?


Homeschooling itself is intentional. The only problem is when the intention is bad. It should be possible to regulate homeschooling properly to account for the bad apples.


Honestly, when they get their own house in order I'll start to care what these "regulators" think.

https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/13-baltimore...


Do you seriously think those same students would do better if they were homeschooled without supervision?


I think just about everyone would do better at home than in a Baltimore high school.


> Social needs. Children need to learn how to be in relationship with others, it is the most fundamental need we have and is so important for the future of our planet.

Funny how this argument always comes out wrt. voluntary homeschooling, and not about shelter-in-place policies impacting K-12 and college students...


I heard this argument non-stop from the very start of shelter-in-place.


Old fat people are ruling the world. It's traditional for them to sacrifice the young.


They need to learn how to be in relation to people who know and care about them, not other random kids (some of whom will be abused at home and hence abusive at school) and the teachers, some of whom will be extremely incompetent, emotionally abusive, pedophiles or all of that.

There's absolutely no way sending a kid to school is better for their social life in any way.


100% agree. I am in touch with exactly 1 (yes 1) friend from elementary / middle school. If I stretch, I can say that there are 3 that I would actually want to talk to beyond this guy.

I am a silicon valley executive making mid six figures. They're ... not, and not because they didn't have the same opportunities. Because of terrible life choices that I could easily have made myself, but, by the grace of God, did not. Amongst my classmates there's premarital pregnancies, domestic violence, lots of unemployment, prison time, etc.

The same is true of my brother and sister-in-law. She comes from an extremely poor family, but managed to make something of herself by going into accounting. Yet, her family is filled with pre-marital pregnancy, deadbeat men, and even some violence. This stuff also existed in her schools. She managed to escape by keeping her head down and avoiding trouble.

Honestly, any of us could have ended up in this 'socialized' group, but didn't. That was because we resisted peer pressure. All of us were extremely awkward kids. You'd consider us poorly socialized. Yet, we've 'made it', and the popular kids didn't.

Of course, then I think of my now-wife, who grew up in much more privilege than we did. Her parents were highly educated (post-graduate) and were extremely deliberate in her schooling, her peer group, etc. While not technically homeschooling, my mother in law carefully crafted my wife's friend group and even took her out of classes if she didn't like the kids or thought the teacher was bad. She didn't have to put up with half the crap my brother, myself, or my sister-in-law had to put up with.

I'm choosing the latter method for our kids, even if that means homeschooling them and using the public schools as a backup.

EDIT: since I've seen religion come up here. My mother-in-law was and is a staunch atheist. My parents and sister-in-laws family are devoutly religious. Not all homeschoolers are religious. While I am religious, that is not the reason we are considering home schooling our daughters


Bingo. It seems like people ignore the huge social risks that sending kinds to public entails and write it off as something children should “learn to deal with”.

Do you know who your child is spending time with at school? I hope so, because they will likely have more influence over your child’s development than you.

If your children aren’t going to a highly selective, highly supervised school, good luck. It’s a crapshoot. Maybe they befriend “good” kids…maybe not.

For example, my nephew is 6 and was playing with a female classmate who (for whatever reason) is already using sexual language and her play is inappropriate. Should my young nephew just “learn to deal” with that?


That triggers two memories for me, 1) having a classmate in middle school that would regularly boast about drinking a 'rum and coke' on his way to school in order to start the day off right, and 2) hearing that my child's school was having the 3rd grade GT class (which my child was in) teach the second graders how to read, and of course several of those second graders were older than my third grader.


This is unfortunately all too true. I have relatives that like to think they're exempt from society (witnesses) and pushed that onto their kids, those kids are almost 18 and cannot carry out basic conversations. They are socially about 12 or less. They will never be able to leave home nor persue their own interests.

Home schooling works better when kids have at least had elementary schooling. High school I would argue is where things break down a lot, and for some students there isn't a social experience outside of constant bullying and stress over things that don't matter.


I was homeschooled and I credit much of my success in life to it. It taught me to think logically, taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality. It taught me the value of hard work, of loyalty, of kindness. It kept me out of vices that many of my public-schooled friends and peers got pulled into.

In my experience, homeschooling can create well-rounded, upright people at a ratio above traditional schooling. It insulates kids from many of the extreme elements and moores of society. Homeschooling is an excellent tool to pass on values from one generation to the next.

Lack of socialization is indeed a problem. Homeschooling parents need to make a big effort to get their kids in homeschooling groups and co-ops, youth sports, etc.

I have three kids myself now, but we send our them to private school rather than homeschool. What stops us from homeschooling is, my wife didn't feel like she had the skills to homeschool. She's not a teacher and feels she doesn't have the patience for it.


It’s hard. I think a lot of parents see teachers in school and think they have to imitate that - behavioral management and direct instruction. At the best, good teachers are guides for self-directed learning and don’t need to push much at all. I wish you luck ! Let me know if you want me to talk to your wife sometime more about this :) manisha[at]modulo[dot]app


> In my experience, homeschooling can create well-rounded, upright people at a ratio above traditional schooling.

Sorry, you talk about your own positive experience with homeschooling (which is great!), but that’s clearly not an experience that would give insight into predicting aggregate outcomes more generally.

What experience are you referring to here? Did you end pursuing a career studying it or something?


Hi Judah, I wrote a blog about parents being teachers, largely inspired by your comment. I hope that it's helpful to you.

https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/parentsarethebestteache...


Awesome! Thank you.


my wife didn't feel like she had the skills to homeschool. She's not a teacher and feels she doesn't have the patience for it

Since you were homeschooled yourself, wouldn't you have been the better parent for the job anyway?


Probably have very unequal income. That's why we don't homeschool—I'd like to, but make 3x what my spouse does, and my spouse doesn't want to, so we don't.


Yes, and if I wasn't working my career, I could probably homeschool.

When my wife and I had kids, she wanted to quit her job as a nurse and be a stay-at-home mom. We agreed this was a good solution, even though she's not cut out to homeschool them.


Where I live, it's not legally possible to homeschool. My wife and I feel that the main advantage of sending our kids to school is the social aspect, and that we might actually be better at teaching them "knowledge", but we're not sure.

I mean, it could be the classic layman "oh, I could do that!" stance, and since everybody has been to school themselves they have a vague idea what the job of a teacher is like (which, of course, is in all likelihood a fallacy). That, paired with a certain cynicism about the job of a teacher in the first place (here, they've got super-safe jobs, almost no accountability, a strong lobby, lots of days off, and are mostly done work after half a day if they're so inclined) and less than stellar results of our educational system when compared internationally, gives us a certain "we couldn't do it much worse" feeling. As a matter of fact, as a homeschooler, you've only got your own kids to focus on, not a whole class of 30 children with a wide spectrum of different prerequisites.

But then again, maybe we couldn't do it very well at all. It's such a long-term commitment, one that requires consistency over years. And the relation between children and parent is different from a student-teacher relationship, there wouldn't be such a sharp distinction between what happens inside the school and the home.

Topics like bullying and other negative forms of social pressure are omnipresent in school settings, but withdrawing our children completely from such realities might turn out to be less good of a preparation for their later lives.

And lastly, without a doubt school teachings are colored by certain political world views, and they might not always be ones you agree with. But when you send your kids to school, you give up control over what they are actually taught. Of course, it is recommended to keep a close eye on that at any point in time, and also challenge contents where you think things are going wrong. But I also think it will become increasingly difficult to do this as your kids get rooted deeper and deeper in the school system, where the political and worlds views of the teachers will play as much of a role as those of the political parties that are in charge of your country's educational system.

So, whether or not to homeschool is a really tricky question - but as I said above, it does not even present itself in our case, because we have no right to homeschool where we currently live.


> taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality

Those do not sound positive at all. It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents, which matches with my preconceptions of homeschooling.


Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://qht.co/newsguidelines.html


> It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas

If your utility function is "optimize for the life outcomes of my children", experimental evidence suggests this is a good thing. If your utility function is "optimize for outcomes that are in accord with my state-secular religious beliefs at the expense of my child's life outcomes", it's not.


One can say the same thing about public and private schooled kids -- sheltered from traditional and conservative ideas.


This is a false claim of equivalence: very different things are happening. A liberal education does not 'shelter' students from religion -- instead, they are more likely to learn about it critically, perhaps in comparison with various faiths and histories.

Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts.

Perhaps something about the organizational setup of religious-based and funded programs is counterproductive for skeptical minds who might otherwise be curious.


But that's my point... I went to a normal school. Even though it was religious, I wasn't exposed to any conservative ideas (religious != political conservatism). The school kinda went along with the general zeitgeist. Perhaps your experience is different. We did a cursory (and I mean extremely cursory) view of all world religions, as I think many schools may offer, but we never went in depth.

But again, religion is not conservatism, whether political or even social (Stoicism is a 'conservative' philosophy, despite not being religious and perhaps even anti-religious).

It wasn't until I was older that I began studying these topics in any great detail.

> Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts.

That's not really germaine. Did you learn it in a public school? Because if not, I think my point stands.


>> Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts.

> That's not really germaine. Did you learn it in a public school? Because if not, I think my point stands.

I took classes in history, philosophy, and ethics at a public university (one with considerable public funding). My public high school, on the other hand, had very limited capabilities or structure for teaching liberal arts well.


Universities are different. No one here is suggesting 'homeschooling' university (whatever that means)


I'm very confused about the meaning of 'liberal' in this thread - it's quite overloaded anyway, but is it also like 'conservative' in having quite a different (or at least more specific) meaning in the US vs. UK (and especially vs. capital-C 'Conservative' party)?

But also it seems to be assumed contradictorily to imply each secular and not?


Yeah, he brought up religion for no particular reason. To be clear, when I say 'traditional' ideas, I mean those ideas that have captured the secular zeitgeist of generations before us. For example, the idea that the family is the foundational element of society today has religious connotations, but only because it is carried over from Roman times. The Romans achieved this conclusion through secular means. It's now associated with religion because the Catholic church basically is the current implementation of the late Roman empire's value system.


> Yeah, he brought up religion for no particular reason.

You do not understand why it was mentioned. Then you claim you do. Then you write words that many would consider insulting. You can do better. Try.


Sorry what's insulting about what I wrote?


> Yeah, he brought up religion for no particular reason.

Saying that someone brought something up "for no particular reason" is not respectful. Just because you don't understand the reason is not a valid justification for being dismissive.


We were talking about liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are not universally religious and liberals are not universally irreligious. What is more disrespectful is attempting to change the subject to take the discussion in a direction that, if it were headed there to begin with, I would not have engaged.


> What is more disrespectful is attempting to change the subject to take the discussion in a direction that, if it were headed there to begin with, I would not have engaged.

I'm flabbergasted by your words. I don't know your life circumstances, your age, where you live, what you've been through, etc. I do wonder if you are having a particularly bad day or week or month.

I don't mean this as an insult: if you need support, please seek it out.

Perhaps (like many) you lack some important communication skills or emotional awareness. These can be learned.


In my other comment, I expressed concern about your well-being. Here I'm discussing the substance of your comment ...

> We were talking about liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are not universally religious and liberals are not universally irreligious. What is more disrespectful is attempting to change the subject to take the discussion in a direction that, if it were headed there to begin with, I would not have engaged.

1. I've said this before -- not sure if I did on this thread -- so I'll say it again: you seem to think that you get to define what is on topic and isn't. No, you don't. People are free to discuss as they see fit.

2. Logic isn't the whole story. Your words are coming across as self-important. That will not serve you well. It repels people, including me. I'm only writing in the hopes that this will get through to you or someone else that reads it. There are too many people here lacking fundamental discussion skills.

3. Invite feedback and learn. Ask 10 wise people to read your sentence. Do not pre-bias them. Ask for their unvarnished feedback. Discuss and actively listen without defending yourself.

4. What you wrote looks like a justification to make you feel better about yourself. Almost everyone does it. Some people become aware of it. Some people learn to do better.


> I'm very confused about the meaning of 'liberal' in this thread - it's quite overloaded anyway, but is it also like 'conservative' in having quite a different (or at least more specific) meaning in the US vs. UK (and especially vs. capital-C 'Conservative' party)?

Speaking for myself, when I say 'liberalism' I usually mean (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism)

"""Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy."""


> Perhaps something about the organizational setup of religious-based and funded programs

American public schools are a religious-based and funded program; you just don't notice it because you don't even know what your own religion is.


Would you like to provide any evidence or supplementary information to support your claim?


The major purpose of establishing public schools was to fight the parochial system brought over by Irish and Italian immigrants. Perhaps that's what he's talking about?


No.


Why stop now? We were interested.


> because you don't even know what your own religion is.

Please explain. To whom are you referring with "your"? Me, whom you don't know? Someone in general?


I'm referring to you personally, but also a number of our mutual readers.

I don't need to know you at a personal level to know what your religion is; it's clear from your comments.


You are being overconfident.

Have you read enough of my writing to characterize my worldview with any degree of accuracy or precision? I doubt it.

But you are not alone -- large chunks of people use confirmation bias to judge people based on a small number of cherry-picked words.


I'm as atheist as they come, and I value liberalism and secularism extremely.

But I also acknowledge that not all humans are like me and that not everyone has a liberal mindset. They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all.

May I recommend Haidt's The Righteous Mind? It snapped me out of my "only liberalism/secularism is right" mindset.


I'd be interested in reading more about this study. Are you able to find a link to it?


> They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all.

Can you spell out your logic?

When I think about the relative merits of forms of government, I consider a large range of factors: human nature, philosophy, morality, ethics, technology, and more.


Or equivalently, state-run schooling successfully alienated you from these important values.


No, these two views are not even close to equivalent. Why? Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. (They may criticize them, but they do not claim to have absolute truth.)

On the other hand, many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand.

Studying many different philosophies leads some to conclude relativism is correct. But I disagree, as do many philosophers and ethicists. Why? There is a simple answer that captures the essence of it: start by letting in all ways of life and worldviews into a pluralistic society. Treat this as an experiment and see which philosophies do not respect the others. It is abundantly clear that some ways of life are incompatible with pluralism -- e.g. some are authoritarian, some are unnecessarily violent, some restrict freedom of thought, etc.

P.S. Homeschooling has a demonstrated connection to religious conservatives.


> many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand.

Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling.


> Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling.

No.

This seems like an attempt at a wise phrase unfortunately mechanistically generated from some recursion and word substitution.

Please try to support the claim if you actually believe it.

Research classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics, almost any field of study; they are not dogmatic in the same way that religion is.

You should read about the history of the homeschooling movement especially in the American south such as Georgia. It has been a sustained effort by conservatives to opt out of the educational system.

Perhaps you have some interesting angle on how state education is somehow parallel? But I highly doubt it. I see a computer scientist's mind at work trying to find a pattern -- a meta pattern perhaps -- to claim understanding. The problem is that I don't see any evidence that the claim has been examined up close. I don't see awareness of historical or educational context.

Tell me if I'm wrong. I see it very often here: Overconfidence without a grounded understanding.

Consider a simpler and rational explanation (for the USA at least): State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society. An effective education in democracy does not shelter people from the idea of religion but instead puts it in a context so that we can live together even though we may not have the same fundamental beliefs.


Why are you talking about

> classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics

when our conversation was about

> Liberalism and pluralism

(your words)?

> State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society

This is not an even approximately correct model for why the state bankrolls public education in the US.

Not trying to diss you here, but you very clearly have the fully-indoctrinated understanding of someone who's been inducted into the western state-secular religion and isn't even aware of it (same as most of its adherents).

> I don't see awareness of historical or educational context.

This is deeply ironic, although I don't expect you to be able to notice why.

I suggest reading Albion's Seed and A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations.


> Not trying to diss you here, but you very clearly have the fully-indoctrinated understanding of someone who's been inducted into the western state-secular religion and isn't even aware of it (same as most of its adherents).

Don't worry, I'm not insulted.

In any case, your assessment of me -- which you talk about as if it is binary (i.e. pass/fail) -- is way off the mark.

Let me suggest a productive direction. How about you tell me in more detail what this kind of indoctrination means to you. If you make a list of sub-points (perhaps questions) that roll up into some kind of indoctrination score, I'll take a look.


>> State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society

> This is not an even approximately correct model for why the state bankrolls public education in the US.

I'd be interested to hear about your model. Please tell me what kind of model you mean.

Are you familiar with the phrase: "All models are wrong, but some are useful?" In what ways is your model useful? In what ways is my model useful?

Are you irritated? What are some ways to make this a kinder discussion? I'm sorry if I insulted you somehow.


The first-order reason the current regime funds education is that it is a pork-barrel jobs program (especially for college-educated women). The second-order reason is that the regime is mostly staffed by religious adherents to state-secularism, and the public education system is their pulpit.

And no, I'm not irritated - I don't think there's an efficient way to have a worthwhile discussion about someone's religious beliefs over the internet without coming across as slightly hostile. Apologies.


> And no, I'm not irritated - I don't think there's an efficient way to have a worthwhile discussion about someone's religious beliefs over the internet without coming across as slightly hostile. Apologies.

Thanks.

Yes, it is hard without knowing much about the cultures and communication style of the other people. But I think there are some simple things that help: write, then wait a few minutes before posting. Re-read and edit if you think the tone can be fixed. Etc.


> This is deeply ironic, although I don't expect you to be able to notice why.

Are you trying to insult me?

If not, I'd suggest leaving out "although I don't expect you to be able to notice why."


No. That comment isn't really addressed at you; it's addressed at our readers. It's just that people with your parochial (in the literal sense) educational background (which I can infer clearly from your comments) habitually accuse others of ignorance, from a position of relative ignorance. I don't think this is a moral failing on your part or anything; it's just something we see all the time, and eventually you kind of just have to find it funny. Once you identify this response as a component of the state-secular-education-instilled memetic defense mechanism, it's funny to see its (frequently ironic) activation.


> ... habitually accuse others of ignorance, from a position of relative ignorance

Yes, ignorant people do sometimes accuse others of ignorance.

Consider this: If I tell someone their shoe is untied, even though my shoe was untied sometime last week, does that make me a hypocrite? No.

It is also true that people can be ignorant about different things. Minh might tell Alex he is ignorant about some topic. Alex might tell Minh she is ignorant about some other topic. No problem there. Neither is being hypocritical.

P.S. Telling someone else they are ignorant tends to not go well, but if it is done carefully and kindly, it doesn't have to be a bad thing.


Please define how you are using "parochial (in the literal sense)". Here's a common definition:

  pa·ro·chi·al | pəˈrōkēəl | adjective
  relating to a church parish: the parochial church council.
  • having a limited or narrow outlook or scope: this worldview seems incredibly naive and parochial.


> western state-secular religion

We have not using the word religion in the same way. But I know what you mean.


I think we actually are. The main difference between the current state-secular religion and, say, progressive quakerism, is that state-secularism doesn't have an identifiable God. But this is, it turns out, a pretty minor difference in practice (and it's state-secularism's primary competitive advantage in the modern legal environment).


You can define it that way, but I do not. I go with a more widely recognized definition; e.g. via M-W or Wikipedia.

I can appreciate a similarity, of course. But a person can hold a belief / value a worldview (e.g. representative democracy) without believing in a supernatural power.

Conflating similar words is often an intentional rhetorical strategy. Perhaps you are trying it because you hope to conflate political philosophy with religion? But to do so glosses over key differences between them ... e.g Which are descriptive? Which are normative? What is the nature of truth? How does one seek, find, and assess truth?


> Why are you talking about

>> classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics

> when our conversation was about

>> Liberalism and pluralism > (your words)?

I'm going to make a few points in different threads to ease replies.

First, let's step back. We are different people having a conversation. I often see people claiming the other person is off topic. Such a claim assumes that one person gets to define what on topic is. One person is not granted that power here. Not you, not me.

I have hope that better discussion is possible with a better tone. I'll do what I can to help.


I have a habit of ignoring "tone" in discussions on relatively intelligent message boards because I think most of the people I'm talking to can handle it, and it makes the discussion vastly more likely to transmit valuable information.

I'm not trying to police the topic of your commentary; I'm just not letting you swap out "liberalism and pluralism" with "classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics". I don't know if you did this intentionally or subconsciously, but this is an extremely common (and dishonest) rhetorical strategy used by your religion. Don't expect me to let it slide.


> I have a habit of ignoring "tone" in discussions on relatively intelligent message boards because I think most of the people I'm talking to can handle it, and it makes the discussion vastly more likely to transmit valuable information.

Thanks for sharing that. I can relate, but I do it in a more targeted fashion. As I get to know someone better, I adjust my communication style. This is an ongoing process. For example, I can increase my "bluntness factor" or rely on shared understandings to skip over lengthy explanations.

Paying attention to tone and emotions in communication is tremendously important. Relatively intelligent people still have emotions, and they still underly what is being said, particularly around topics close to home like religion and philosophy.

Also, paying attention to tone doesn't have to degrade the quality of information conveyed. It might require a few more words -- or a bit more clarity, such as being careful who you are addressing. (See your other comments, where your intended recipient wasn't clear.) It does require more energy and skill to pay attention to emotion and content. I happen to think it is worth it.


I think what they’re railing against is an actual truth: an important role of education has always been inducting kids into a common understanding of the society they’ll be navigating as a adults.

For modern western nations, that does means encouraging kids to think in terms of specific liberal, secular humanist values like universal human rights, pluralist nation-states, global interdependency, democratic government, capitalist economics, etc — and there are many communities throughout the world and throughout the US who have not actually bought into those values and instead value other, sometimes incompatible things.

There is a real and legitimate tension between state education vs homeschooling (regardless of the particular politics/culture at home).

I personally think too much such value fragmentation will damn us all and that a common education is necessary to keep a relatively peaceful order in what’s a constitutionally and inescapably diverse nation, but I get the complaint and worry that these other commenters are airing.


> I think what they’re railing against is an actual truth: an important role of education has always been inducting kids into a common understanding of the society they’ll be navigating as a adults.

I don't know you mean by they, but I agree that a role of education is a kind of induction.

Thank you for your comment. I would like to see more people building bridges of understanding.


> Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies.

Isn’t that what you just did?


>> Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies.

> Isn’t that what you just did?

The key is understanding what I mean by "deny".

First, I'll define liberalism and pluralism as I'm using them (from Wikipedia):

> Pluralism as a political philosophy is the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which is seen to permit the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions, and lifestyles.

> Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy.

I'm going to abbreviate liberalism as L and pluralism as P from here on.

With this said, you can see that both L and P recognize diversity and individual freedoms to a large degree. But this is not an unfettered, unbounded, nor uncritical viewpoint. Some worldviews cannot coexist together. For example, a philosophy claiming that one group is superior and therefore may inflict suffering on others is not showing respect for the ideas of P or L.

So, it is clear that neither P nor L are compatible with authoritarian philosophies.

If you want to say "P and L deny authoritarian philosophies" I suppose that is fair enough. But I don't think deny captures what is going on very well. P and L go to great length to allow many worldviews -- hopefully to celebrate them if possible and at least tolerate them to whatever extent possible. This is quite different than dogmatic religions, many of whom claim to have absolute truth.

If you want to see a more detailed articulation of why one can accept pluralism and liberalism without resorting to moral relativism, read "Through the Moral Maze" by Robert Kane. I'd expect there are other philosophers that hold similar views. His lecture series "The Quest for Meaning" is quite good -- roughly at the level of an introductory philosophy class at the US undergraduate level, more or less.


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Some people would say thank you for taking the time to explain. Others seem to belittle long answers. Which message do you want to convey? Something else? Do you want me to try again to distill it in a way that you can understand? If so, what effort have you put in to meet me halfway?

Look I'm being direct with you, but I'm not upset or attacking you. I'm just seeing the standard patterns of online discussion, and I'm pushing back. We can do better.

There's too much passive aggression wrapped in seemingly logical arguments. But one level deeper it is really clear what is bothering people. I think people don't feel heard. They want to convince people but somehow fall back into sharp criticism which just repels people.


https://qht.co/item?id=31960344


(facepalm)

The world is so interesting and nuanced! It would be tragic to expect one word answers to deep questions.


The world is too interesting and too nuanced to waste time trying to decipher a worldview obscured with wordplay.


> The world is too interesting and too nuanced to waste time trying to decipher a worldview obscured with wordplay.

Ah, yes, classic self defense when one feels threatened. Interesting that you use wordplay to criticize wordplay. I've done it too. Everyone has. But it isn't really getting us anywhere. It is a good way to protect one's ego though.

I'm sorry you don't understand it. I'm sorry if you perceived my quip as an insult. I was trying to make the point that if you ask overly simplistic questions and demand overly simplistic answers you aren't going to learn very much. If you take that personally then I'm sorry. My intent is for more people here to broaden their perspective. I see very strong signals have people been anchored in computer science but not philosophy or ethics or history. I see common tendencies for people to dig in. It is easier to defend oneself than to learn.


>My intent is for more people here to broaden their perspective. I see very strong signals have people been anchored in computer science but not philosophy or ethics or history. I see common tendencies for people to dig in. It is easier to defend oneself than to learn.

My nickname is an amalgamation of my two favorite thinkers: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Nagasena. They are from different time periods (20th century AD and 1st century BC) and philosophical traditions (Western philosophy and Buddhism). Both have very interesting philosophies especially in regards to linguistics. If you think that analyzing language won't get us anywhere, I highly suggest to read both of them.


Wikipedia's account of Wittgenstein and the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club seems quite telling about his personal attributes:

> In 1912 Wittgenstein joined the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, an influential discussion group for philosophy dons and students, delivering his first paper there on 29 November that year, a four-minute talk defining philosophy as "all those primitive propositions which are assumed as true without proof by the various sciences." He dominated the society and for a time would stop attending in the early 1930s after complaints that he gave no one else a chance to speak. ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#Cambridge_...

> ... The club became infamous within popular philosophy because of a meeting on 25 October 1946 at Richard Braithwaite's rooms in King's College, Cambridge, where Karl Popper, another Viennese philosopher, had been invited as the guest speaker. Popper's paper was "Are there philosophical problems?", in which he struck up a position against Wittgenstein's, contending that problems in philosophy are real, not just linguistic puzzles as Wittgenstein argued. Accounts vary as to what happened next, but Wittgenstein apparently started waving a hot poker, demanding that Popper give him an example of a moral rule. Popper offered one – "Not to threaten visiting speakers with pokers" – at which point Russell told Wittgenstein he had misunderstood and Wittgenstein left. Popper maintained that Wittgenstein "stormed out", but it had become accepted practice for him to leave early (because of his aforementioned ability to dominate discussion). It was the only time the philosophers, three of the most eminent in the world, were ever in the same room together.


Thanks for sharing that.

> If you think that analyzing language won't get us anywhere, I highly suggest to read both of them.

I agree that analyzing language is useful.


That does not mean it is obscured intentionally. quite the contrary -- if you read my comments I've explained my views in many different ways. I've put the effort in.


If you start with "L and P don't deny other viewpoints" and then you spend 3 paragraphs explaining why they do exactly that but you feel justified to say the opposite, it just sounds like needless obscurantism.


I see quite often that many people here on HN lack basic awareness of others, empathy, and humility. It comes with the territory. It has taken me years to recognize and outgrow those points of view. Perhaps the reason I persist is the hope that I can help others see how self-defeating such behaviors can be. Most people will not engage with people like I do -- it exacts a cost to deal with people that don't show much generosity or willingness to meet in the middle. I'm not saying this is you -- I don't know you -- only you and people that know you can reflect on it and assess. I would encourage you to ask people that know you well.

You call my writing obscurantism ("the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known: I've been accused of obscurantism and willful misdirection.") which implies that it was willful.

This is in incorrect assumption on your part. I was elaborating in the hopes that you would understand. If you re-read the comments, it is clear that I pushed back against the desire for a simplistic answer, since I think doing so is limiting and foolish. My elaboration provides context to help you understand.

Put another way, what you call obscurantism is better thought of as elaboration. You didn't understand, and then you lashed out. That was an egotistical, unkind thing to do. It is hard to admit you don't understand. It is easy to blame someone else for not explaining it well.

Also, using a term like obscurantism makes it plain that you are making assumptions about people's intentions. Another approach would be to simply ask and/or operate on good faith, which generally meshes with the HN guidelines. Being judgy won't do much to encourage people to take the time to discuss with you.

A useful approach here is to be patient and recognize that communication is a sense-making process.

Based on your other comments, I'm inclined to think you probably are aware of Theory of Mind, at least intellectually. The upshot is this: it is very hard to communicate effectively when you don't know what other people know. Acting in ways that do not build goodwill tend to make it even harder.

So that leaves a key question: why would you make it harder on yourself? Because of the human condition. Call it pride, ego, status-seeking, venting, whatever. But it doesn't really help much in the long term.

I'll try to summarize in the hopes that it will be clear this time. If you are willing to let go of the desire for simplistic questions and simplistic answers, then I hope you will be able to understand. (You don't have to agree to understand.)

Liberalism and pluralisms don't categorically deny the truth of other viewpoints. But they are incompatible with some other viewpoints.


Author here. I'll do my best to charitably respond, even though your reply was less than charitable.

It's true there is some sheltering with homeschooling. But it's not airtight or longlasting. Homeschooled kids, especially teens, will get exposed to outside influences.

I'm nearly 40 years old now, and I can look back confidently and say that homeschooling helped create the environment in which I could critically evaluate ideas, including secular and liberal ones.


Tradition, morality, spirituality, and honoring your parents don't sound positive?


Correct, they don't sound positive at all to me.

Placing inherent value in tradition impedes progress. All tradition should be examined critically. Traditions that continue to provide value should be kept, harmless traditions are unimportant, and harmful traditions should be stopped.

Valuing morality means something completely different to everyone, and as such is close to a meaningless statement. Morality is a web of biologically-borne and cultural-imparted values. By definition each person values their personal morality. That said, usually when people in the US publicly declare the importance of morality, it's code for Christian (usually Protestant) teachings, which are themselves a mixed bag of commonly-held values like community and giving and some heinous views on various marginalized groups, depending on who you ask.

As you may be able to guess, I do not value spirituality. I view any time spent seriously contemplating the supernatural past early developmental years as indicative of a loose grasp on reality.

Honor is something that people earn through their actions. If parents act honorably then they should be treated as such. If they fail to earn their child's respect then they are not entitled to it. The fact that they spawned a child is worthy of little to no honor. The manner in which they provide for and nurture the child may be deserving of honor, or it may not be. I do not view respect of one's parents as inherently good, and blind respect or honor of anyone or anything is certainly bad.

The common thread here is that these values all indicate to me an abdication of critical thought. Blind trust in tradition, an assumption of universal morality, belief in the supernatural, and unquestioning adherence to authority figures. Am I certain that these describe OP? No, but it's definitely what this collection of values sounds like to me in the context of his post.


So you're saying that it's bad to have morals and a religion? That sounds very dogmatic.


No, the commenter is not saying that. And you probably know that?

The context is right there in the comment:

> It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents

It is better to read the whole comment in context and reply charitably. See HN guidelines.


That comment blatantly implies that secularl and liberal ideas are incompatible with valuing tradition, morality and spirituality. It makes unquantified assumptions about how the person was raised and their life experiences.

There's nothing charitable about it at all.


> blatantly implies that secularl and liberal ideas are incompatible with valuing tradition, morality and spirituality

Yes, that is what I was implying. Now I will state it more explicitly: those values are each at odds with either secularism or liberalism.

> unquantified assumptions about how the person was raised

I'm not entirely sure what an unquantified assumption is, but I clearly qualified that I was making a guess about the person. Making and confirming guesses about others based on what you know about them so far is normal behavior. I am by no means certain about the accuracy of my guess, but presented it as a starting point for further discussion.


> Now I will state it more explicitly: those values are each at odds with either secularism or liberalism.

If philosophies claiming absolute truth are imposed on a pluralist society there will be conflict. In this sense, I agree they are incompatible in some cases.

However, they are not necessarily incompatible. There are religious leaders who recommend that followers live by a religious philosophy without imposing it via strict laws.

A philosopher named Robert Kane describes his views which distinguish between public morality and private morality. Pluralism as a public morality is compatible to a very large extent with most private moralities. You only get incompatibilities when the private morality tramples on the rights of other private moralities. This is a useful distinction.


I'm atheist and I value those things as well. I plan to die without ever making my beliefs public for fear of upsetting my religious family. Atheism does seem to come with a built-in rebellious "Fuck God, Fuck Jesus, Fuck Mohamed... Neither A King Nor A God" initial phase. But as that cools down a bit, you realize that religion is really optimal on many many things. Even if it got those things purely by chance or by stealing them from older traditions (because hey, every religion was once the edgy new heresy on the block that simultaneously invalidates older wisdom while secretly stealing the best parts), and even if it got a lot of other things wrong, horribly wrong.

Secularism is good for politics, because religions are a dime a dozen and any choice of which one should be the dominant is irrational and arbitrary. It was never meant to be a catch all "No religion plz" rule. Liberalism, unless you define it as anything other than the good old "Live And Let Live" of Mill and Locke, is not in obvious contradiction with any of the traditional values GP states.

-------

Most importantly, Tradition is about Family. Family is important. This is the single biggest understatement I made in a long long time. The cheapness of the Fast-and-Furious style "muh family" sentiments hides the radicalism of this shattering realization : the only force in this entire universe that is invested in your success without any direct expectation of something in return is your family.

I'm a techno-primitivist, I believe political units should be extremely small, extremely numerous, with an emphasis on blood ties as the ultimate guarantee of group cohesion and loyalty. I have a burning hatred for and deep distrust of any political unit with more than 1000 persons. There is no way to make a social organization of >1000 persons consistently fair, the rules are always arbitrary and ad hoc, a few assholes always play the meta-game and find ways around them, and somebody is always oppressed and bullied and consistently given the shorter end without a way to be heard.

Family is different, affinity for genetic similarity is deeply hardwired into your lowest level circuits, very few assholes can find their way around the rules evolution built. Every single social organization is a prisoner's dilemma come alive, why cooperate with that stranger you're never going to see again? The answers are always arbitrary and subject to abuse and evasion : Because God, Because Emperor, Because CEO, Because General. Family is the only social unit where the rules stem from your very being : Because Evolution, the very factory that built you, that encoded your love and respect for your own flesh and blood as deep inside as it encoded your liver and kidneys.

In another, and better, universe, we never built nations or states or parliaments or public school systems, every family is an autonomous unit under the leadership of its bread winner, and federations of families handle cross-cutting concerns in a way that leaves as much power to the families as possible.


In my experience, both direct and indirect, homeschooling has the effect of concentrating a parent’s influence on their children’s lives / brain development / psychology, etc.

Take that, and think about it, before you start. If you have unexamined issues like anger problems, fixations, avoidances, fears - those will have an impact on your child, and a bigger impact if you homeschool your child - purely on the basis of much more time spent together.

If you’re going to do it, i would strongly encourage you to start therapy asap. Because the more of those things you crack open and deal with, the less your child will have to deal with the consequences of them.

The school system has a ton of problems. So does home schooling. There is no magic bullet. Just choices.


I'd expand that even more broadly to say, if you are going to raise children at all, I would strongly encourage you to start therapy asap.

Some of the best parenting advice I ever got was, before you try to raise a kid, you need to get your own shit together.


I think that in general parents concentrating brainpower on their kids would be a good thing ! And there are few things more enriching for your child (and their school or homeschool community) then getting involved in their education. A lot of research supports that parent involvement in education makes a bigger impact in a child’s education and the health of their school then any other factor.

https://www.modulo.app/learning/parent-engagement

With regards to therapy - wholeheartedly agree. We’ve got to put on those oxygen masks before we assist our kids! A parent who practices self-care, is grounded and calm will be a better parent for sure hands down


> And there are few things more enriching for your child then getting involved in their education

That’s a pleasing statement that seems true, but ignores the millions of ways that parents can be a bad influence. Over pressuring, taking away agency, just being bad study partners, biasing data as it arrives, etc etc etc.

Everyone wants to believe they will be a good parent. But everyone will fuck it up in some way. One of the *good* things about traditional schooling is exposure to a lot of different influences. Bad and good. The bad teaches you to value the good, the good teaches you all the different ways that you can learn.


This is a signal vs. noise issue. Quite simply if you think your values are better than the average (and believe me - you do think this) then it makes sense to inculcate your values into your children as much as possible. A decision to not home educate your children is usually because of other considerations, usually financial, sometimes cultural, etc.

I don't want to minimize your point about mental health though. If you're struggling you have to help yourself before you can pour into your children.


I think there is a big difference between supplementing and replacing. Near total control leaves them sheltered, naive, and probably more rebellious, and of course it's silly to think that you can do a better job across the board than a bunch of professionals.

If you have the time, getting involved in your child's education is probably a huge win. Fill in some gaps you see, correct some biases. Help them get ahead in areas they are doing well in, help them catch up in areas they are not doing so well in. But just because those things are helpful doesn't mean that replacing their education entirely is going to be an improvement.


This is why I have an initial distrust for home schooling parents. Most of the home schooling parents I've personally encountered were members of various manipulative cults. They home-schooled their children because they wanted to control their child's world view as much as possible - make sure they never heard about scientific studies that would challenge their unfounded beliefs or encountered people who believed differently.

If you actually believe that your values and world view are correct, then you shouldn't be worried about your child encountering other world views. As long as you teach your child to think for themself, they should ultimately recognize your values are better.

Personally, I want my child to think I'm a terrible person, because I want them to be better than me. Our ancestors made loads of mistakes, and I want my children to recognize mine.


> If you're struggling you have to help yourself before you can pour into your children.

To be clear I think this applies to people who aren’t struggling, or don’t believe they are struggling. We all have a lifetime of accumulated damage. I hate the “therapy is for people with problems” idea. It’s not about struggling or not, it’s about repeating unhealthy patterns to a next generation - or the swinging pendulum of overcorrecting our parents mistakes. If you have or are going to have kids, please, do at least 6 sessions with a therapist you like. Worst case it does nothing, best case you save your self and your kids a lot of pain.


If you think your values are the only ones your kids should absorb, I think that is a big red flag. <-- This may have been a bit harsh, I invite further response to the below, as I'd like to understand what you mean.

edit: Upon further reflection, I disagree with the premise. I'm a product of the decade and environment I grew up in. Alot of my values probably aren't relevant to growing up today, and the types of experiences kids will be exposed to. Some things I just haven't had exposure to. Kids should be a combination of their parents values and have the opportunity to experience life such that they can develop their own values. My values are very different from that of my parents, and I suspect will be different from that of my children.


Meh... teachers can do all those things as well.


Now do this for the influence of the state's pathologies on public schoolkids.


Im focusing on the problems with homeschooling because I believe that if you’re considering homeschooling, you are probably well aware of those pathologies. You probably have lived experience of them, since odds are you went to school.

The other reason is I don’t have direct experience of the pathologies of the school system - so if someone is going to speak about them it shouldn’t be me.


>Now do this for the influence of the state's pathologies on public schoolkids.

Such as?


Zero-tolerance policies could be one example.


What's a "zero-tolerance" policy? I've only ever heard this term used in the context of guns on school campuses. Does it have some other meaning?


Suppose you are a kid who's getting bullied by a larger kid. Every day the kid takes your stuff and messes with it or something. You (maybe) complain to the teacher, but really you're scared that if the teacher leaks that you complained, the kid will beat you.

So eventually you grow tired of it, you've worked out a bit, and now you beat the kid up. Now... you get suspended/expelled, instead of the bully. That's a zero-tolerance policy.

My wife's cousin was suspended for a few weeks for standing up to her bully. My in-laws and her family decided to reward her and she got two weeks of a fun family vacation. But the school was trying to punish her, and if her parents and grandparents weren't more sensible, perhaps they would have succeeded.


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That is an insane thing to say. Qanon level insanity. Trans activism is big pharma selling HRT to kids? First off, HRT is expensive, but not that expensive. Whatever made up narrative you have for them convincing kids to support trans people would be entirely too expensive to justify. Second, trans people have existed for MUCH MUCH longer than pharmaceutical companies have existed.

Edit: oh, this poster thinks hitler was an admirable figure. Ok, nevermind, no need to entertain their words anymore: https://qht.co/item?id=31722179


So what explanation do YOU have for trans activism? It certainly isn't just "we have always had this many of them but now it's ok to acknowledge". From my experiences (which are many) it is vastly due to cultural identitarianism with a hefty side helping of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. But I still want to hear your explanation.


People have always been this way. Some points in history culture has crushed it out of almost everyone, sometimes in history culture has encouraged it to flourish. We’re in a time when culture is doing both.

Your assertion that it is certainly not aways been here, is wrong. Examples in history are plentiful. From shakepearean actors, to two-spirit people in the americas. Gender is somewhere between 50% and 100% a social construct. We construct it differently in different times, but the desire to construct it both as a binary and as a fluid spectrum are as human as breathing.


Gender and sexuality have been fluid for as long as we've recorded them. It's in all the primary sources.

Trans people (and gay people, and bi, and asexual..) exist and have always existed - it's only now that modern medicine is capable of and permitted to let them shape their body in the way that matches their identity. It also happens to be during a resurgence in anti-LGBT rhetoric that's part of the MAGA "we had it right in the '50s" dog whistle. Their activism is a natural result.


Oh, good catch.


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We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological warfare. You can't do that here.

Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

https://qht.co/newsguidelines.html


Everyone replying to my post is engaged in ideological warfare, even from previous posts even when it's relevant to the discussion.

But I do understand why libtard Americunt would look for an excuse to ban me.


How much can a parent even affect their children? I remember studies of adopted children showing it was little.

Edit: this[0] is not the study but shows something similar

> Adopted children resemble their adoptive parents slightly in early childhood but not at all in middle childhood or adolescence In contrast, during childhood and adolescence, adopted children become more like their biological parents, and to the same degree as children and parents in control families

[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.199...


This is one of those places in science where you can defend almost any arbitrary combination of nature vs. nuture not just with a paper here and a paper there, but with a slew of papers supporting your chosen position. It's just there's a slew of papers supporting all the other positions, too.

At this point, about all I'd say based on the science is that it clearly isn't 0% or 100% of either, but the data to make any grand pronouncements based on science beyond that in any direction just isn't solid enough. I'd be comfortable saying "it's more complicated" but I'm not convinced enough of any particular summary of the "more complicated" to bank on it.


Be extremely careful believing in the "it's mostly genetics, nurture is a minor factor" stuff. Most of these studies have surprisingly bad (or at least naive) methodologies, of the "we don't know what we don't know (but people like Taleb do)" kind (!).

See e.g. this study: https://elifesciences.org/articles/39725 (and that's for height, which is vastly lower-dimensional than emotional health or IQ)

Or an easier to read article: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-turmoil-over-predicting-t...

Can also see this thread: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1163435285193076737 and this tweet: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1476173796323246082. Nature-über-alles studies rely on relatively basic misunderstandings of the required math.

Of course if you want to read studies by biologists too, there's quite a few addressing the problems with twin studies (especially with high-dimensional outcomes like intelligence and emotional health). But to be clear, the problem with the nature-matters-a-lot studies isn't a biology problem; it's a math problem.

And the wider problem is that the "mostly nature not nurture" idea disincentivizes conscientious, careful parenting (since "it doesn't matter in the long run anyway").


I know a lot of people that are super heavily influenced by traumas inflicted by their parents. Homeschooling someone is a lot different then your average lifestyle (that possibly wasn't that different between the adopted families)


Are they less so traumatized by their parents when they go to school ?


Sure.

Along with respite, school gave me access to countless alternatives perspectives, influences, and people that would become part of my coping strategies.

I’m absolutely certain that home schooling is great for certain parents and certain children, but some kids are better off not being around their parents quite so much.


That’s a pretty deeply unquantifiable thing. How do you measure trauma at the scale we’re talking about? Self reporting will only reflect the trauma people are aware of, and mental health diagnosis are basically just self reporting one-step removed.

As far as I know we’re stuck in anecdote and personal opinion territory, until we have a better way of quantifying the kind of low-level trauma of a non-abusive-but-still-damaging childhood.


The studies are mixed!

Twin studies show that nurture has little impact on personality or IQ, excepting things like serious abuse.

But, they do show huge correlation between parental income and child income.

So it seems nurture can affect life outcomes a lot but not much intrinsic to who you are.


> Twin studies show that nurture has little impact on personality or IQ, excepting things like serious abuse.

I don't know anything about personality, but I do know that for IQ this is an awfully contentious topic, for a multitude of reasons. Whether that's ignoring maternal effects, the implicit assumption of independence between genetics and environment in twins reared apart, or just plain old questioning of how to interpret heritability as a statistic, it's REALLY unclear what to think. You will find serious academics in field with vastly different beliefs.

I spent an inappropriately large amount of time researching this recently, and my conclusion is that it's a lot harder to measure than people think, and that the commonly cited numbers of 0.7-0.8 for heritability should be viewed with a significant deal of skepticism. It might be right, but it's a number that I have very low confidence in. I would also say that even if those numbers are correct, that does imply a very substantial effect due to environment.

What I will say is that you have to more or less ignore the Wikipedia article on the subject. It's too political a topic for Wikipedia to perform well.


Twin adoption studies often show that effects of parenting are present but smaller than effects of genetics. However those don’t typically look at abnormal cases like homeschooling.


Very much this. Effects of current levels of variation in parenting practice ≠ effects of potential variation. Here’s the argument in full: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/no-wait-stop-parents-do-m...


I'd rather have the median homeschool parent influencing students than the median K-8 schoolteacher.

I also don't buy your notion that neuroses are directly transferable by contact. If anything, your kid will probably be so annoyed by them that they'll be exactly the opposite.


While I know some incredible public school teachers, the average homeschool parent I know is going to be much better for their kids than the average public school teacher.

Fortunately if you are homeschooling you can seek out specific teachers to help expand on things and choose those that are excellent. (Many homeschooler start taking community college classes in highschool if there are good options available.)


> average homeschool parent I know is going to be much better for their kids than the average public school teacher

This is a sampling question.

Consider that you may be looking at a bunch of well-educated parents choosing homeschooling over extra income.

I bet they're not choosing to homeschool kids with whom they have a bad relationship, don't understand, can't motivate...

Increasing the sample could produce much different results.

Admittedly salaries for public school teachers are pretty bad. There's no FAANG school with tricky interview questions and starting salaries double of what other schools are paying. I wish there were. Then you might see those 10x teachers choosing "teacher" as their profession.


I would agree that "average parent" is not the same set as "average homeschool parent." If you are saying that the "average homeschool parent I know" is better educated and better off financially than the "average homeschool parent," that is possible, but given the diverse range of homeschool parents I know across the country, probably not as likely as you would think.


I didn’t say directly transferred. Just that they have an effect and it’s usually not a positive one.


While more self-awareness and self-knowledge is always better, I think the main test for this should be "Ainsworth's Strange Situation". It's a test of your child's attachment style is; which is a good reflection of the child's (and your) emotional health.

For homeschoolers, it's probably a good idea to check if your child displays secure attachment first (since insecure attachment in the child is generally caused by the parents, and schooling your child at home might just make it worse).

And on a final note: why the hell don't we systematically test all children for attachment styles? They: a) can be detected very early, b) are much easier to correct when caught early, and c) have vast impacts for the child's whole life. You don't need any equipment except a trained psychologist!


Do we have enough psychologists in the US to systematically test all children? And does insurance cover it?


No you don't; but it would be a worthwhile investment due to the incredibly positive repercussions. See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory#Crime

See also a link between insecure attachment and addiction: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.0072...

This policy would have incredibly positive repercussions throughout society; in that sense, it would be very cheap.


I’ve got nothing against attachment theory - but there is absolutely no amount of attachment theory treatment that can solve the american system. Poverty is baked into the system - it has never existed without it and it can’t exist without it. Poverty will beget harmful upbringings and damaged attachment.


Yes; attachment-disorder screening for children is only a small (but essential) part of a functional system, and can't itself fix more deeply-rooted systemic dysfunctions.


Homeschooling was detrimental to my own social development as a child, and that of my (many) siblings. Adjusting to college life made me nearly suicidal with hopelessness that I'd ever catch up either academically or socially, and none of my other siblings managed to successfully complete it. We're all doing much better now, but none of us would ever consider putting our own children through that kind of isolation long-term.

Now I'm part of an ex-homeschooler support group where most of us had a similar story. In my own case, the "homeschooling" was a political choice by parents who were deeply paranoid about the US government. They lacked the education to even understand what all we were missing and relied on a popular curriculum program to guide them without any supplemental counseling or outside tutoring.

Academically I'm sure some more educated parents could do better and understand they need to get information from a variety of sources, but socially it would be very difficult to replicate the opportunities that school provides most kids.


One important thing about child development in isolated environments is that academically: you can catch up later. You might be older than the other students when you finally get there, but you can do it and end up doing just as well as the children who had a head start. But socially that's a very long, lonely road I wouldn't wish on anyone.

The only situation in which I'd consider homeschooling my child is if it was in the daily, sustained company of other families and involved parents. Skill-building aside: seeing other kids at the playground once a week doesn't even begin to take the edge off the loneliness.


Thank you much for sharing this experience. I’m really sorry this was the case for you and your siblings. I myself was e trembly lonely as a child despite trying public and private schools. I ended up cooped up all the time doing homework and not much time to interact in school. It wasn’t really until I went to an acting school in Paris in my twenties that I made really close friends. It was it’s a different culture that felt more conducive to socializing and community - and in my experience more inclusive of a weirdo like myself :) since then I’ve found my friends working on collaborative projects (tech accelerators) or spiritual communities (zen center, yoga)


I too was homeschooled for most of my youth all the way through high school. At the time I welcomed it due to some pretty bad undiagnosed anxiety and ADD, but it in no way prepared me for life outside my nuclear family, nor did it provide me with much of an education that I didn’t explicitly give myself. My parents took me out of school for religious reasons primarily, with this vague notion they’d protect me and my sisters from secularism, while proving us a “better education.” As it turns out they were woefully under qualified to teach us anything past maybe grade 7, after which we were handed text books and encouraged to learn, instruction not included. Meanwhile I learned very little about social survival, or science, or life outside of the home. While I may have been protected from triggers to my anxiety, it actually got worse in ways because I was never challenged to grow, and it set me back in my social and emotional development many years. Subjects that the conservative Christian community considered risky (evolution anyone?) were either omitted or presented in such a corrupted way as to be worse than useless.

I love my parents, they tried their best, but there are very few scenarios in which I would encourage someone to homeschool their kids, if for no other reason than most parents aren’t trained teachers who actually know how to educate properly.


Our kids are 11 and 6 and we've always homeschooled them. As a secular homeschooling family, our headaches aren't related to curriculums or anything academic-related (there are lots of good options and resources out there) but rather the lack of socialization options outside of the home. If your experience is like ours, you'll quickly discover is that most homeschooling families are very religious or pulled their children out of school due to some kind of behavioral issue.


That’s tough . Do you live in a rural area ? I find this is a lot easier in a place like San Francisco and NYC where there are more secular homeschoolers and more techies and teachers educating their kids at home for a better education /more mastery learning . Hopefully this will change for you as the population grows.

Have you considered reaching out to SEA homeschoolers for connecting w families near you ?

https://m.facebook.com/seahomeschoolers

I know a bunch of secular homeschoolers around the world and am happy to help you forge connections if you like :)


Socialization. Going to school is not only about absorbing academical knowledge. It's about interacting with a broader group of people, learning how to behave, how to avoid common problems, etc. I would not be able to provide this to my kids.

On top of that, the language we speak at home is not the language used by the school, or the rest of the country. There are a million problems that come with this: they would force us to use our language, which they're more comfortable with, they would be learning our broken accents, we're not super familiar with the local language so our ability to teach it would be worse, etc, etc.


Socialization is important, on that we agree. Socialization at school is not always positive or even effective. There are many ways to socialize and jamming people of the same age in a room for 6-7 hours at a time is far less effective, in my opinion, than being part of extracurricular programs, clubs, etc that often mingle kids of different ages, backgrounds, neighbourhoods, and cultures far better than any school.

I found that school is an effective way for people to be pigeonholed with labels and expectations that make it more difficult for people to explore and change. Once labelled the class clown, or the athlete, or the brainiac, or whatever, it is very hard to do or try other things so long as you are in a fixed environment. This is why, in my opinion, going to college or university is such a profound life event for people - suddenly new environments and opportunities to explore being something other than your fixed adolescent self.


I don’t really agree. An important part of school is learning to overcome obstacles. Forcing the children to be together for 6 hours everyday inevitably leads to conflict that needs to be resolved. Just doing extracurriculars doesn’t give children the multi year time horizon they need to truly bond with their peers, and they can convince their parents to let them do something else if they don’t like the kids. Dealing with people you don’t get along with is an extremely important skill.


> jamming people of the same age in a room for 6-7 hours at a time is far less effective...

This may be true, if one is raising a philosopher-king or something. In life I'm thrown into situations where I'm jammed together with people in an "ineffective" manner all the time. If extra-curricular programs are more effective they can deal with both environments. Personally I had some effective, good teachers in school as well as some ineffective team coaches.


It is notable that educational systems can both prepare people for later life situations (generally considered good) and mold them to accept suboptimal patterns that we'd rather move past.


This. Not only what you said, but also even being the part of a certain generation as that generation grows up and creates a shared culture enables one to socialize much later. Having played similar games that a generation played, having listened to same songs, having played with the same toys etc.


I would go further. Education is a secondary concern for grade school children. The main point of elementary school is 1. Figuring how to socialize/interact with peers 2. Starting to prepare children for responsibilities/solving problems without parental guidance. Education is important, but it’s mainly a way to give children these skills.


> It's about interacting with a broader group of people

A cohort within 12 months in age, typically from the same neighborhood, is not a "broader group of people".


It's much broader than none.


Because home schooled children never see anyone else at all?

I think you'll find that is not actually the case.

Also, I would argue that the distorted "society" produced by public schools is more harmful than beneficial.


Tell us where homeschooled kids get their socialization.

Church? That's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to social distortion.

Homeschooled peer groups? There's no way that's a broader population than the school in 99.9% of homeschooling scenarios.


I can answer this. Being from a non-religious family, it was the latter. Peer groups.

I can’t speak for everywhere or every time, but in the 90s in my city, those groups were diverse in some dimensions (age, economic, political beliefs, homeschooling method, schooling exposure, weird parents) and un-diverse in some dimensions (race, immigrants and 1st generation children of immigrants).

It’s important to note that I don’t think every school would get a checkmark on all of those boxes either. But where it differs the most would probably be numbers. Small schools exist in rural settings, but a peer group of 40 kids only about 5-10 of similar age to you is pretty different from most people’s school experience.


Swim lessons, camp, girl guides, soccer, art class, music lessons, part time jobs, church, etc etc etc etc etc. are you really so unimaginative as to believe that only school provides access to non-family members? Give your head a shake.


Swim lessons? Get out of here. Church? I did imagine that. Try reading.

And anyway, schooled kids do all of those things as well. Where's the advantage?

There's a reason I don't consider those activities when talking about school socialization. All of the activities you mentioned are part-time and/or self-selected. School is full-time and you don't get to choose your kids' peers. You can't pull them out easily if you don't like the other kids. Like the rest of the world, kids will need to learn how to deal with it, away from you, all day, every day. They will need to learn how to deal with bullies and spurned crushes and tribal politics and bad teachers and all the rest. And yes, that can be harsh. Yes, some kids will have a difficult time. Most will learn invaluable social skills about how to integrate themselves into society, and they will be practicing those social skills full-time at school.


> Swim lessons? Get out of here.

Spanish class? Get out of here.

Seriously dude, what’s the difference? What do you think “socialization” means? It is about being exposed to others, interacting with them, and learning social norms. Sitting quietly at desks listening to a teacher is objectively less effective than something like swimming lessons, or really anything I mentioned in my list, and that description describes the bulk of time at school.

Everything else you described makes me wonder why you think those things are essential to the human experience. Are you regularly bullied as an adult, because if so I suggest you make some life changes. Bad teachers are different from bad managers - you can’t easily quit and go elsewhere, or complain to HR.

Also, spurned crushes exist well beyond education for many people! Not sure why you suggest education is a key component of this.

> Where’s the advantage?

I am not saying there is an advantage in these elements. I am saying socialization is not a disadvantage to homeschoolers and this is really a myth.


> Swim lessons? Get out of here. Church? I did imagine that. Try reading.

I think we agree on this subject, but as a 3rd party in this back and forth I have to say that this is not appropriate discourse for this site. Please try to interpret others comments as charitably as possible. There is never a justification for saying something snarky and rude like "Get out of here" or "Try reading".


He’s the one who told me I was “unimaginative” and to “give my head a shake”. I just responded in kind. Don’t blame me for being a better asshole when he initiated that tone.

My contribution to civility here was to just stop responding.


> He’s the one who told me I was “unimaginative” and to “give my head a shake”. I just responded in kind. Don’t blame me for being a better a*hole when he initiated that tone.

Yes, you are not the only one using unkind words.

Still, most of the time, each of us (and therefore all of us as an online community) can do better. You have various options. It is tempting to fall into the attack/counter-attack posture. But instead of counter attacking, you can say something like "That was unkind" and leave it there.

> My contribution to civility here was to just stop responding.

A fair point. Doing so is preferable to adding fuel to the fire. Even better IMO is to reassert the community norms firmly without insulting the other person.


Where do state-schooled kids get their socialization? They are corralled into tightly age-bound groups, rarely befriending kids much older or younger than them. That's a very artificial and unnatural environment.


> Church? That's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to social distortion.

Can't you say the same thing of parochial schools? Given the general success of parochial schools, I would find it difficult to imagine how one would argue against their model.


> Tell us where homeschooled kids get their socialization.

Out in the real world, as opposed to an artificial environment designed to produce obedient factory workers.


> an artificial environment designed to produce obedient factory workers.

Well, no, not exclusively designed for that -- or any one thing. There are many stakeholders and it is fairly difficult to use the word design. I'd suggest evolved might serve as a better metaphor.

(People cite historic factors connecting school to factory workers. I tend to agree, but probably only because people have told me this; I haven't read primary sources on this. Anyhow, I'll grant it for sake of argument.)

Schools in the USA, as I understand them, attempt (with widely divergent success) to prepare students for a mixture of futures: perhaps college, perhaps trade schools, and perhaps general background for citizenship.


What stops me is that the socialization and peer-group relationship skills that are obtained rapidly in a public school context are not replicatable at home. Neither are the skills learned in dealing with non-family adults, independence of task skills away from home, and much else besides in that vein.

I would rather -- and do -- support the public school system in my (medium sized) city.


It’s interesting because I actually have observed that homeschooling, especially in large urban areas, is much more social than school.

A huge number of families opt out of public school because of racism and bullying.

Just like families can design their child’s education, they can design their social experiences.

School is a socially engineered environment with little opportunity for organic play.

In traditional school, kids sit in rows or at tables in same age classrooms (often not very diverse ones since they are segregated by neighborhood in public school or parent ability to pay in private school)and they get 30 minute of highly chaotic recess a day if they’re lucky.

In homeschool , families participate in highly diverse, eclectic group of children of different ages. They engage in playgroups and community gatherings, field trips, classes, collaborative projects and have plenty of time for play.

The idea that homeschooling is less social is a myth - and as the homeschool population grows increasing opportunities for organic social interactions and true community emerge.

Here’s some more that I’ve written on this topic https://manisharoses.medium.com/highly-social-homeschooling-...


I'm wondering about the economics of a household that can afford to have at least one non-working parent in San Francisco, and can maintain all those activities for their children. To me, this reads like a schedule for the children of the particularly wealthy. No one that I know who lives with kids in the vicinity could afford this.


My wife is very active in various Mom's groups. When we were living in San Francisco, she was invited to a 1 year birthday party. This was for all kids who were all having their 1 year anniversary (+/- 1 month). Met at golden gate park and there must have been at least 100 families there that day. After that there were various posts inviting folks to form smaller cliques / pods around different neighborhoods. We never got into it cause most of the ensuing invites were for weekdays and both of us work.


I personally have never found the "socialization" argument persuasive. Public school is, in fact, a highly artificial and non-representative environment. You have a group of kids, all within 12 months of the same age, and an authority figure to boss them around.

As far as I know, that kind of "society" is not replicated anywhere, with the possible exception of military boot camp.

Real societies have a mixture of people from infancy to old age. Real workplaces have a mixture of people from entry level to retirement age. Even prison has a mixture of ages!

The model of education used in most of the United States was designed in the 19th century with the purpose of cranking out factory workers who would remain on-task until a bell rang -- so even its original purpose is largely obsolete.


I broadly agree that it's a bit of an odd environment, and definitely not one that is optimized for socialization, but there are two reasons I feel that it "works."

Firstly I think that simple exposure is very important. Going to school tends to just force you to interact with a lot of different people. That could probably be replicated in other environments, just with more difficulty.

Second, I think that one of the most important facets of socialization is shared experience. Even if traditional schooling isn't an ideal setting for socialization, it is still what most experience. I think removing a child from that sets them up for a significantly more challenging time when it comes to relating to others.

So yeah I think I agree that school isn't really ideal for socialization, but I'm not sure there is a better option out there at the moment.


A military boot camp is also an educational institution, so the similarity to a school is hardly accidental.


Exactly this. Better have custom socialization, custom academics and custom childcare


> the skills learned in dealing with non-family adults

In my experience, the relationship developed with non-family adults at school is a narrow, one-sided relationship, where non-family adults are authority figures, rather than say, mentors, strangers, or even friends. Having this skill is still important but the one-sidedness can warp a kid's perception of what adults "are", so it's important to develop adult relationships outside of the school setting.

Also, your first sentence seems true to me, but I assume home-schoolers aren't always at home -- they can meet with other groups of home-schooled kids, or join groups related to sports, activities, etc. This, of course, largely depends on the parents.


I was a camp counselor for many years in my teens and into my twenties.

We could always--always--tell which kids were the homeschooled kids.


> We could always--always--tell which kids were the homeschooled kids.

With 100% accuracy in which direction? You noticed every homeschooled kid, or every kid you thought was homeschooled was actually homeschooled? Because those have very different implications.


There could be a selection effect at play. When I was growing up (the nineties), there was a social stigma around homeschooling due to its association with creationism. I went to Christian summer camps until I was a teenager, and the homeschooled kids stood out even in that environment as by far the more religious among us. Whether they were awkward because their religious practices shielded them from normal life or because they were raised by naturally awkward parents that self-selected into a highly regimented lifestyle is a mystery.


Whatever selection biases there may have been in the past, homeschooling is becoming much more popular now. COVID and remote school pulled back the curtain on the type and amount of learning that is happening in public schools, and parents of all types are opting out of the system.

What we are seeing now is a seismic shift that will result in a much more mainstream population of homeschooled kids. I doubt it will be as easy to tell which kids were homeschooled in a decade.


Can you provide data to back this claim?


> James Dwyer, a professor at William and Mary Law School and co-author of “Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice,” told me: a growing segment of “the mainstream middle class, well-educated and not on either political extreme, has been very disenchanted with public schools’ response to the pandemic.”

from https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-01-24/8-t...

There are many other articles about the growth of homeschooling during the pandemic, and the likely causes. As the author of the LA Times article notes, the data is still being gathered so experts' theories have yet to be validated with certainty.

But I've not seen anyone question the notion that the people who have recently started homeschooling are not demographically the same as those who homeschooled pre-pandemic. If you have seen such claims, I would be interested to see them!


Because they were less amenable to blindly accepting orders from arbitrary authority figures?


In my experience s/less/more/ .

I was homeschooled for several years, and have known a variety of other homeschooled people.

For me personally, I was impacted in my ability to socialize with people in my own group, and did not develop any rebellious tendencies until I re-entered public school and realized there were other options.

For some homeschooled people I know, they can't read at above a first grade level.

Others can read/write at a higher than average level, may be average or better at math, and have little capability to interact with others.

Still others are some of the smartest, most well rounded people I know.

Unfortunately, most homeschooled people in my experience sit somewhere between the first and second groups - which then means that gatherings of home-schooled families will also tend that direction.


Can you explain briefly in what way you could tell?


Would appreciate an anecdote.


Can you elaborate?


What about this is specific to public as opposed to private schools?


I was homeschooled in the late 80s / early 90s and I hated it. Though we were part of a homeschool group, we only got together with other families once or twice a week. It was really lonely and I never felt like a normal kid. Ultimately I convinced my parents to send me to public high school and had a great experience.

Watching my own kids thrive in school with lots of friends and social interaction has reaffirmed my thinking that building social skills is as much a part of schooling as the education itself.


School is great. Not all of it obviously, and more for some people than others, but overall the pain and stresses of going to school were hugely outweighed by the fun and adventure of navigating through that system and interacting with all of those different peers and teachers. I wouldn't want to deny any kid those adventures and relationships and that exposure to our culture (for better and for worse). To be fair, I also grew up in a pretty great school system.

I feel the same way about college. I understand the arguments that college is not often worth the excessive cost if you look at it in terms of financial outcomes. But I didn't go to college for financial outcomes. I went because it was going to be (and was) a uniquely amazing adventure that I could never replicate at any other time in my life. I think going to grade school is the same thing.

Nothing can replace acting awkward around your crush in the hall, learning to navigate around the bully, bonding after class with a favorite teacher, enduring the horrors of PE or the excitement of a bomb threat, to name a few nostalgic examples.


As someone who was both home-schooled and went to public school, you are buying into the mythos around school too much. I had my own experiences when I was homeschooled that were far better than "enduring the horrors of PE".


I am not "buying into" anything, I am sharing my lived experience.

And life without a little horror is not much of a life if you ask me.


I used to do it for my kids and wrote some articles on why and how on my blog here http://nibrahim.net.in/2011/09/06/homeschooling_in_india_par...

I moved towns and my main issues were 1. Lack of a like minded community who were willing to invest time and energy like I was. It's a demanding journey and not one that's easy (or even possible) to do alone. 2. Lack of insight into what the future holds esp. from the POV of higher studies. I can experiment with my own life but was scared of doing it with my kids'.


Cool! Thanks so much for sharing ! Looking forward to poring through these entries!


The main thing stopping us is that we both enjoy our careers and neither of us wants to teach. I think if there was strong evidence that homeschooling conferred significant benefits we would probably make the sacrifice to do it, but based on my research it seems like a wash.

The added factor is that my wife was home schooled, and my view of homeschooling is somewhat tainted by that. The homeschooling community she came from isn't exactly a strong advertisement for homeschooling, but I recognize there are also bad schools out there.

The strongest part of her education seems to have been the co-op classes, but those classes are really just like sending your kids to a private school. At that point I'm not sure why you wouldn't just send your kids to school outside of an ideological commitment to homeschooling.


I get this is targeted at the US, still I'm throwing this out there:

my wife and I (with combined degrees in literature, molecular biology and computer science) would have seriously considered homeschooling. But we live in Germany, and it is absolutely illegal here.


That’s definitely a problem. And even in the US families can face problems. I know great homeschool families in nys who had social services called on them by a neighbor. And many of the African American teens in our community have been stopped on the streets for “truancy” when they’d legally registered to homeschool.


Why is that a problem?


It decreases the diversity of thought. If your school system is failing, the government shouldn’t imprison parents who want to do their best to try something else.


Not sure why "diversity of thought" is axiomatically a Good Thing. When extremely religious parents homeschool their children because they want to pass on those values, that's bad for society. Some things are heterodox for a reason.


You don't get to decide that religious values are good or bad.


As a citizen in a country, you get to decide on allowing religious fundamentalists to indoctrinate their children. I choose hell no, keep religion out of schools and out of public life.


This is an authoritarian mindset common on the left but is antithetical to liberal values. Having a desire to control how other people prefer to care for their children usually doesn’t end well historically.


You're using a lot of loaded language in your response. What is a "religious fundamentalist" to you? Also you're missing the point, because the topic of discussion is religious people educating their own kids, not religion in public schools.


I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that human sacrifice is bad.


I do, and society does. Sex equality comes to mind.


I do, actually.


Diversity of thought is important for creating a robust problem-solving framework. Once a monoculture forms it becomes easy to subvert it because people tend to be vulnerable in the same way.

e.g. a monoculture is easier to abuse by corrupt leaders. Increased diversity of thought may have prevented Germany from systematically becoming entirely reliant on Russia.


You're assuming that parents who are homeschooling intend to provide their children with a good education. However, what about people who claim to "homeschool" their children but don't actually follow through, leading to uneducated adults who can't support themselves. I think that assuming good intentions for everyone is a problematic assumption, and you need to manage policies for bad actors as well.


There are always private schools you can send your kids to if you really think the public school system is failing.


Private schools often start out as homeschooling coops.


My wife and I have one child and she requested homeschooling for high school.

So we moved from Europe to Idaho, where it's supported. (I'm American.) She's been doing a hybrid model of two classes a day at the local school and the rest on her own, and it's been incredibly successful. She's going into her senior year now and is looking at top universities like Harvard, Oxford and Yale. We couldn't be happier with the experience.


> we live in Germany, and it is absolutely illegal here

Why is it illegal?


Nothing.

If I have children and they are like me (i.e on the spectrum) then I will homeschool them.

School was by far the worst time of my life and also contributed the least to my success. I succeeded in spite of traditional schooling, mostly due to the great nature of my parents (who unfortunately just didn't have the capacity or economical means to homeschool me.) Enduring my schooling years didn't make me stronger it just left me with deep emotional scars that took years to come to terms with.

My partner has early age teaching experience and we are equipped to school our children if that is how things turn out.

Socialization is definitely a concern but I think it can be adequately addressed through sports, activity groups and extended family.

Of course if my children are normal then maybe none of this will be necessary and a normal school will be what is best for them.


Same. My parents both worked, but they were so shocked by how little we learned in schools that they'd spend the evenings tutoring my brother and I, such that, by the time we learned anything in school, we had already learned it. Ultimately, we were homeschooled, and school was daycare.


As someone who was homeschooled through 6th grade and then private schooled and considering homeschool for early elementary (I have a 4 year old) I would say my main concern is actually in my wife's ability to maintain a parent/teacher balance right now.

What I mean by this is simply wearing two hats in the household is a tricky business and can be overwhelming especially when our young students have younger siblings that must be cared for. I have enormous respect for my wife but handling these responsibilities is no easy feat!

Of course my kids are very young. I have other concerns beyond elementary, mostly around an increasing need for expertise in sciences/math and properly rigorous testing ensuring mastery over subjects without access to a realistic grade curve.

My personal experience was very good but a bit unrealistic - I was taught to read by my mom who has taught kindergarten for decades. Not everyone has a professional educator as their homeschool teacher!


Thank you again for sharing these questions about me about wearing two hats in the family and the parent/teacher balance.

I thought about what you said quite a bit and wrote a blog about why I feel that parents are the best teachers for their child.

We are teaching our kids many "non-academic" skills all the time but don't see that as stepping into a specific role. I don't think that this needs to be the case either in homeschooling.

I've also included some resources which I think will address your concerns about expertise in certain speciality areas like math/science.

I didn't directly address assessment here, but there are some great ones you can use such as mobymax, cogat and others - as well as mastery-based digital learning apps that have built in assessment.

Here is the blog: https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/parentsarethebestteache...


There are a number of curriculums designed to help when you have multiple kids. It is challenging, but amazing to see how well it can work. Regarding expertise in particular areas, there are many options for that including taking a few online classes for particular subjects. If you think working through Algebra II might be a bit challenging, find an awesome teacher teaching an online class for it and sign them up. You can still help them study, bit it gives your child some interaction with another teacher (and in the better online classes) other students.

While I'm sure you mom had a lot of experience she brought to the table, it isn't uncommon to have kids reading at 3 or 4 taught by parents who didn't have a background in education and simply did some research to find the best way to do it. True it might be harder than it was for your mom, but it isn't like a parent has to just guess. There are plenty of people like your mom making information available about what seems to work and what doesn't so you can find the best thing for your kids.


Does your wife have an education background too? If not, why not take on the teaching yourself if homeschooling is important to you?


That’s a really interesting point. I imagine this could be a similar issue for stay-at-home moms who wear so many hats.


The amount of effort it would take and the quality of that effort, when I already have a full-time job.

Edit: I have 3 kids, and they all learn in quite different ways. I can't really give one presentation to all 3 on something. The pandemic gave me a little glimpse into what home schooling would be like.


I think one of the big challenges with pandemic homeschooling is that parents were trying to help kids with school work and keeping up with school , rather then necessarily directly helping them learn. One of the cool things about homeschooling is you can choose your child’s curriculum and support them learning at their own pace. I think you may even find you spend less or equal time as your child’s teacher than you do helping them with homework. And by the way , I have often found as a tutor/teacher that homework is where a lot of the only learning takes place because kids tune out in class lectures, miss vital info and fall behind. Many homeschool families I know have 4-5 kids with radically different learning styles and personalities and still only spend 1-2 hrs on direct instruction. These kids are going on to Harvard, Stanford, getting high scores on multiple AP exams because the learning goals are clear and they are able to learn at their own pace and master info before moving on to the next problem. Because kids learn so differently, I built a curriculum planner early on at Modulo to help families find the right tool for their individual child, that engages, inspires and challenges them. Also I don’t know about the dynamic of your family but older kids can help teach younger ones and “student as teacher” is one of the best ways for someone learning to really achieve mastery and a deep understanding of the subject.


A lot of families thinks this would mean sitting at the kitchen table at their kids from 9-3 but actually homeschool does not need to look like school in order to be effective academically. with mastery learning and 1-1 instruction, kids learn way faster than in a classroom setting , so often parents spend max 1-2 hours guiding their kids through math and ELA with many of the great secular homeschool curriculums available and then cobble together a bunch of afterschool activities /skill shares , social activities and pareht swaps. Sometimes more affluent parents hire tutors but it’s not necessary. And there are some great digital tools kids csn use to largely teach themselves like khan academy - not to mention good old-fashioned books !


So you’re looking for ways to reduce the effort …at not too high a cost I imagine ?


I encourage you to read "The Mom Test". It is a book about how to ask questions such that you do not mislead yourself while doing market research.


Thanks !


We did remote schooling during covid. Kids don't actually like it. I never thought I'd see the day when my child would wail about not being able to go to school, but that's it.

Also as bad as kids are with learning with teachers, it's usually a lot worse with parents. It's very stressful to, say, teach a child math. I think being in a group of others doing it gives them a little more grit.


Remote schooling is not the same as homeschooling. When the children are young, it is a lot of couch learning. You sit down with the child on the couch and go through a lesson per day of reading. You have "manipulatives" like blocks to show patterns and counting. Books are often scripted so that you can just read the lesson to the child. As the children get older and more independent, the child can read the lesson themselves and answer the questions. The parents role is then to grade the work and make sure their children are doing the work. Homeschooling is not easy. It can be stressful, but it gives you the freedom to teach your kids in the best or worst way.


I'm 50, live in AZ (where home schooling is very popular) -- I didn't homeschool my kids but many of my friends did. Here's what I have seen:

1) If you are non-religious, the canned curriculum, trade shows, support groups are very few and far between. You will be much more lonely than your religious home-schooling counterparts.

2) As your kids get older, it is harder and harder to give them a proper education. By the time your kids are in middle-school, subjects get harder for a parent (or pairs of parents) to cover in a way that does each subject justice.

In the end, most of my friends who home-schooled eventually sent their kids to middle-school and or high-school... and that timing seemed about right.


> As your kids get older, it is harder and harder to give them a proper education. By the time your kids are in middle-school, subjects get harder for a parent (or pairs of parents) to cover in a way that does each subject justice.

I agree. My cousin's daughter was not home-schooled, but she was having trouble with high school math so I tutored her. At the time I was going to college for computer science. We did algebra for a year and that went fine. I still remembered it from high school. Then we got to trigonometry. The year I was supposed to learn trigonometry in high school was disruptive so I never learned it properly. So I studied the lesson and learn it myself before I would go see her. I'm supposed to be the math/CS guy too. It worked out and she passed trigonometry too - I did have to spend much more time preparing to teach trigonometry than algebra as I had never learned trigonometry. I can imagine one parent having to teach trigonometry, biology, physics, chemistry, the themes of the Scarlet Letter, French, Medieval history etc.


> As your kids get older, it is harder and harder to give them a proper education. By the time your kids are in middle-school, subjects get harder for a parent (or pairs of parents) to cover in a way that does each subject justice.

As a kid, I attended mostly private school, but when public school-educated parents express concern that they wouldn't be able to competently teach standard middle school subjects, that sounds much more like an indictment of public schooling than of the at-home variety.


Well, it's available resources about building and delivering an effective curricula across subjects and time. I have found a number of homeschooling resources, but the best organized efforts tend to be from religious perspectives (not surprising). We're not religious. My being an atheist and my wife being best described as irreligious (doesn't identify with a religion and puts approximately zero thought into the question) means much of that religious perspective is unwanted and is something I would consider detrimental. That I do seriously consider homeschooling should also make it evident that I reject public schooling as a good option; there are a number of reasons but your question implicitly assumes that to be true so I'll just restate it for others.

We do have relatives that have successfully homeschooled and I have seen groups that do their homeschooling together (homeschooling isn't necessarily about sitting at home by yourselves). So it's resources/support targeted to delivering a well-rounded homeschooled education, it's finding sufficiently like-minded others with whom to share the effort in a small group setting. With sufficient resources I could likely solve the time problem.

Absent that, we're looking at private schools for our kid. We'd probably just do this, but it's not a cheap alternative.


I actually think I may have a potential solution for you on this one. It was clear to me when I started that sifting through religious curriculum to find secular stuff and making sure it was accurate and mastery-based was very hard and time-consuming for parehts.

Over the past three years, I’ve poured over thousands of resources in 50 different subjects to help families learn at home with kids. From these, I selected the best resources that were secular, accurate and mastery-based. I’ve also conducted dozens of intake interviews with parents helping them choose the best digital app, workbook, or nature-based curriculum for learning at home, that their child would love and fit their family’s needs. With our curriculum planner, you can answer a few questions about your child’s interests and your preferences around screen time, budget, etc and it will recommend core curriculum, math and literacy tools to support your child’s education

I’ve been iterating on it and find most people find it to be a helpful starting place

https://modulolearning.typeform.com/to/VBJmkLTu


I'd welcome more tools to enable home after-schooling and home summer schooling.

A lot of the after school/summer school in person offerings are pretty expensive and usually pretty sports centric.

Full home schooling I feel could easily burn out even the most hard working parent - as there's little time for getting groceries, etc. done. And lack of socialization in the childs cohort is an issue.

I think more online tools for prepping for science fairs and other academic competitions would be great.

More tools like Khan academy would be great - I'd love it if there were resources that were able to introduce real biology, chemistry, physics prior to high school.


Thank you for these great thoughts and questions somethoughts. Awesome handle, btw

Actually I think about homeschooling more as a movement and ideology of greater involvement in education than a replacement to school. In fact, I call it “modular learning” where families can choose a variety of modules to compose their child’s education including school !

The burnout factor is real but I think that when you give yourself freedom to optimize on academics , social and childcare, you might find it’s lesss of a burnout than the grind of early morning wake-up’s, after school pickups , homework and pta meetings.

I’ve written a lot about curriculum tools to support learning at home.

With regards to physics and chemistry, it depends on your kid’s ages … some of my favorites off the top of my head are mystery science, blossom and roots science curriculum, quantum camp , mel science, Steve Spangler science


As some one interested in the space - I definitely feel providing tools to parents for home after schooling is a much, much larger total addressable market size and likely more profitable.

The average after school math tutor probably nets $90-$120 per hour, where the average school teacher probably nets $50 per hour.


If you are willing to do stuff online, the cost for a math tutor is only a fraction of what you described.


The real shame is that the material is all essentially free. The challenge as with all MOOCs and online (and offline) educational material is that its not fun and its hard to stay motivated.

And this is true doubly so for kids.

It'd be interesting to what extent the fees that normally would be spend on tutoring expenses could be spent on prizes or some other reward - without cheapening the experience (i.e. taking away their intrinsic love for learning by making it transactional and based on extrinsic rewards, etc.).


There have been some experiments of just giving kids cash for getting good grades in public schools.

Motivating your children to do things that are good for them in the long run (brushing their teeth, not hitting other people, etc.) is very much in the wheel house of parenting.


You are the tool. And there is sooo much content on the various video platforms. Teach them well.


Time.

I also think our 3 kids would struggle with the lack of separation between Teacher and Parent. Similar to how some adults struggle with working at home and separating work and home life appropriately. I know several folks who do it well and love the freedom and flexibility. But I feel it would take a lot of effort to really stay on top of it and not let things slide when it gets tough.

Not going to lie, the "babysitting" aspect of school is very nice too.


Childcare is a really big deal. One of the nice things about homeschool though is you can customize childcare for when you need it, not just 9-3


Needing to work mostly. I have the skill set to teach and considered becoming an elementary school teacher at one point in my life. I know socialization is a big factor but I feel like that can be accounted for with lots of extra curricular group programs and an active effort to introduce them to kids their own age to make social plans with.

I’m mostly interested because of the fact that private tutoring performs at roughly the 98th percentile compared to classroom teaching. I think that’s a big enough gap that I consider education an unsolved problem. Plenty of kids would be capable of going to university at sixteen instead of nineteen if they got an individually tailored education instead of being put through one-size fits all programs.


I was homeschooled and it was an isolating experience that set me back socially until I finally pleaded with my parents to let me go to public school. It took me a _while_ to catch up to my peers socially and it caused me a least a year of being a social outcast until I learned how to act "normal". Did I learn some topics ahead of other kids? Sure. Was it at all good for my development as a person? Oh god no. 0/10, would not recommend homeschooling.


I wonder if growing up in an environment with a lot of other kids might have changed your experience.


We home schooled our 4th grade daughter during the pandemic. Was very fun, she was easily able to memorize the periodic table through song, made lots of progress in understanding operators in mathematics, wrote weekly letters to family for class…

She is back in school now because it’s a great school, but if we didn’t have options we would definitely teach at home, there has never been more tools available to make it easy.

Truth is the U.S. economy is entirely built around the assumption that both parents are working full time now so there is less time to be at home to help kids learn, so we send them off to giant prison-looking buildings and hope for the best.


My sister-in-law homeschooled most of her kids. OTOH, she left her full-time job as an elementary school teacher to do that. Right after my kid brother got a new, far-better-paid job, which made that a viable option.

She's still kinda involved with homeschooling. From various comments on what that is like these days (post-1990's), there are a huge number of resources already on the web to support homeschooling.


Definitely a lot of resources are emerging though I’ve heard many parents have challenges sifting through them all


Getting the right job to homeschool is important


Honestly, I'm not well balanced enough to home school. I'm afraid taking on primary schooling would cause expectations for my kid to be too high. Also, I feel that socialization with other kids (learning to make/maintain friends), interaction with (other) adults and having a structured routine is more important.

Probably most importantly, I'm fairly confident in the competence in my local public elementary (great teachers and lots of parent volunteers)

I'd would consider co-op, but most groups are too small or unorganized.


Very helpful . The Je so much for sharing your experience ! I’m curious to know what area you live in where the co-ops are poorly organized ? Many thanks !


Educating someone requires expertise.

Being exposed to different education styles is far better than just having one teacher (the parent).

There's no way for a parent to have sufficient breadth and depth across a range of topics, never mind generic pedagogical expertise.


My wife and I were thinking of homeschooling. Socializing kept us back.

Then we joined a church with an active homeschooling group. The kids meet up multiple times a week, with and without parents. They even take classes together (parents hire tutors for a group of kids, or one parent takes a group of kids for a class).

This has alleviated our fears. I think our daughter will get more socializing here and not just in the classroom. The group regularly (>1 / month) takes field trips, goes on outings, and we're even going camping with them this summer.

So anything you can do to replicate that... would be great


I have one child who thrived learning remotely during the pandemic, and two who did not. No matter what platforms are set up, there are simply some people who work well independently/remotely and some who do not. Same as the rest of us - some of us love remote work, some never want to do it again.

My recommendation is to put some focus into helping parents identify which camp their children fall into before trying it out, to avoid kids crashing and burning as they discover it is not for them.


I was homeschooled and I truly believe it was a major factor to getting me where I am in life. With that said I’ve also seen homeschooling gone very wrong.

I think the major component of it being a great experience is the motivation of the parents for doing homeschooling. Teaching kids at home to intentionally keep them from society and indoctrinate them in some specific ideology, usually religious, can be very damaging, not necessarily because of the religion itself but because sooner or later the kid/adolescent/adult will meet the wider society and have no tools to deal with the diversity found in it. This, btw, doesn’t only happen in homeschooling but is how root of racism/sexism/etc are planted.

In my experience, and what I hope to accomplish when/if I get to homeschool is to create an space where the child can pursue her interests, nourish/encourage curiosity and use it to teach instead of ignoring it an teaching some other boring thing the kid has no interest in as sadly is often done in school just from the fact that a teacher can’t pursued the interest/curiosity of 30 students at the same time in one classroom.

Regarding the social aspect, there’s soccers, orchestra, martial arts, ymca swimming, inviting friends over often, 4h, Boy Scouts, and so many more opportunities to provide a place for the kid to socialize while hopefully minimizing the toxicity usually found in public schools.

This is by no means a critique of public schools, I think is a sad reality of our society that all we can afford for our kids is an assembly line education with very little space for diversity and with one size fits all measurements of success.


We could start with: it's incredibly expensive.

Kids need time and attention and space. Teaching is not compatible with holding down a full-time job, because it is a full-time job. Teaching one or two or three kids is not significantly less work than teaching 20.


Actually homeschoolers are on average the same or lower than the median in terms of household income. Families who go to public school have to pay a ton on childcare, summer camp and after school classes, whereas homeschoolers often choose flexible work and develop creative solutions like skill shares and childcare shares. Fostering independent learners also certainly helps.

Here’s some more I wrote on the topic of homeschooling on a budget https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/budget


I’ve never met someone who was homeschooled past elementary school and thought it was a good idea.

I think homeschooling is often cruel to children. However I think tools to help make it better for those who will choose it anyway are a good thing. Best of luck to you.


I've considered home schooling, but what stopped me was the fact that I suddenly realized I have no children.

On a more serious note, I like how you asked the question with "what's stopping you?".


Lol. Thanks for the compliment and making me laugh.

That would probably be a good reason not to homeschool ! Though you could certainly mentor your friends’ kids! I believe we can all take part in educating the next generation whether we are parents or not !


Khan Academy started out as a way to help his niece...so mentoring others is absolutely a reasonable thing to consider. :)


I think having good curricula to follow would be interesting.

I always found the International Baccalaureate interesting. It seems to be both a more rigorous (academically) and a more flexible (administratively) system than typical public schools: the main demographic I heard who were doing it did so because joining the regular system would have been difficult (because they spent a year abroad, or were travelling with their parents), but they were on average very successful in tertiary education, and they all credited the IB and its rigorous curriculum. Another advantage of the IB is that, despite its unusual structure, it has near universal global recognition, which is important because a recognized high school diploma is a formal requirement in many places.

If you were able to do something like that for distance/home schooling that would be interesting.


Glad to see people building in this space! One thing that would make us more likely to take the leap is a popular online community where 'everyone' goes to organize in-person events and meet kids with similar interests. I think there are enough similar homeschooling-curious families where I live (Silicon Valley), but I just don't know enough of them. If I knew 3x as many interested families, there's a good chance I'd have given homeschooling a try.

It would also be great to have some knowledge base-style articles about how to navigate the bureaucracy, how to get whatever funding is available, etc. I know this varies by jurisdiction, but presumably this could be crowdsourced and validated for many areas.


disclaimer: I think school is mostly inefficient and a waste of time in terms of education.

Yet, I wouldn't take my kids away from school, basically because I remember when I was a kid and meeting kids that had been homeschooled (either later in school, or in activity centers) and they were always weird. I'm wondering how they grew up, and if it was much more difficult for them to acclimate after that, or if it was actually fine. But I feel like the world is a hard place, and the more you delay the reality the harder it'll be for kids. I'd be interested in stats like, for example, rate of suicide amongst homeschooled kids vs non-homeschooled kids.


I grew up at a small college, and you could always pick the home-schooled kids out of the crowd.

I said this in an earlier reply, but I agree that school is inefficient at education, but I'd argue that's not what the benefit of school is. School is about learning the social skills to succeed in life as an independent adult. That skill helps with learning later. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true: Intelligence is no guarantee to cross the social bridge.


I was homeschooled my entire life and to this day have terrible issues with socializing. I won’t say that homeschooling is the only cause of that, but it certainly did not help.

Secondly, the relationship between a student and teacher, much like an employee and employer, is a professional relationship. It is completely different from the close personal relationship you want with your parent/child. Inserting yourself as a teacher or “boss” completely throws off this dynamic.

Thirdly, my academic opportunities were severely limited as a result. I had no ap classes, no extracurriculars, no guidance counselor, etc. I didn’t have a teacher that challenged me to achieve more. My mom only has a bachelors, and did not have the knowledge to challenge me in subjects like math past algebra. I eventually took the SATs, the ACTs, and was able to go go university and get a BS in Computer Science. However, I was severely behind in math compared to my peers. I had only taken Algebra 2 in highschool, so in university I had to start with precalc instead of Calc 1. I had no AP credits that I could use to skip gen-eds. Perhaps my parents were just unprepared for homeschooling, but they were definitely worse than a teacher. Although I admit this last point might be specific to my experience.


I'm currently homeschooling three teenagers (since the start of Covid), although one just recently graduated and will be attending University this fall. Ultimately we decided to take the leap to homeschooling because the quality of instruction and curriculum available to us through local or online schools was either not good or not a good fit.

Prior to that the two biggest things stopping us were the assumption that children have to go to an 'official' school in order to get a diploma and go to college, and the challenge in finding good curriculum.

In my opinion, the good resources include Khan Academy, IXL, and Well Trained Mind, or at least that is what has worked for us.

Tools that would make homeschooling easier would be an assignment tracker by class/subject that was easy to use. Khan supports assigning work but it's rather labor intensive to administer. For example if I have assigned tasks in a class for the next eight weeks and the schedule slides by one week then it would be nice to be able to just move all the assignments in that class back one week instead of changing every individual assigned date separately (as Khan Academy currently requires). This could even be something as simple as making a list of assignments available as a spreadsheet.

Logical progression across the units in a class is important. The Khan Academy AP Physics curriculum is a good example of what not to do in that respect.

Any attempt by the instructor/course material at getting the student excited about learning should be avoided/removed.

Grammatical errors, typos, and misspellings should never be present in anything your company makes available to students or parents.


> one just recently graduated

That's quite funny if you don't immediately recall that North Americans talk of 'graduating' school...

Anyway, do you fit this in alongside working (not as a home-teacher I mean) through some combination of relatively hands-off assignments etc. and evenings/weekends, or does it only work because you don't?


Integrated public schools are now generally recognized as having the biggest impact in reducing racism. Plus the lack of support for public schools would increasingly leave kids with disabilities out of luck. So there’s a moral angle. I’d rather my kid grow up to be non-racist and I could fix any deficiencies in their schooling


> are now generally recognized as having the biggest impact in reducing racism.

Do you have a source for that statement or is it just "common knowledge?" There seems to be at least some evidence that homeschooling produces children who are more tolerant of other views.

While one study does not prove anything, it is slightly stronger than "general recognition" without a source.

https://reason.com/2019/01/22/homeschooling-produces-better-...

On the other hand if your local public school will get your kids to whatever academic level you feel they are capable of, it is great you have a local school that meets your particular needs.


If the goal of public schools is now to create non-racists at the cost of academics then I would rather homeschool. I can teach my kids to not be [race/sex/able]ists, and I do, because I treat people with respect.

The schools should have a moral obligation to teach everyone academics first and say everyone deserves to be treated with respect. There doesn’t need to be a big agenda about racism/sexism/ableism. Trump? Treat with respect. Hilary? Treat with respect. Homeless? Treat with respect. Former criminals? Treat with respect. Anybody who’s different than you? Treat with respect. Now let’s get back to math.

I don’t want to hear any individual teachers opinion on anything other than academics. If they want to give their opinion it should be leveled and end with treating all people with respect. If they did this maybe less people would homeschool and go to private school and then schools could continue to have their much needed funding.


Expense. We looked into it when the kids were little but concluded we would need to hire at least one full time teacher (wife and I both work) and therefore would need to aggregate with several other families. At that point you're starting a school and we observed that we were already paying (handsomely) for the public school. That said we did supplement our kids education at the elementary level with a once-a-week science class from a retired teacher we know, and I spent quite a bit of time teaching them Mathematics "properly" up through 9th grade.

I made use of various tools for that, including the same problem setting software the professional teachers used, and of course Messrs Kahn and 3Blue.


Doesn't homeschooling by definition sort of presuppose one of the parents staying home and teaching? That's the only context in which I've ever heard it discussed.


It amounts to the same thing doesn't it? Either you perform the work yourself, or you work a job for which you're paid and then pay someone to perform the work. I think the essence of home schooling is schooling in the home, or outside of official education institutions.


Neither one of us can afford to stay at home and earn no income, or are temperamentally suited to such a life even if practical. I would be happy to work from home indefinitely, but I can't interrupt my coding every 20 minutes to answer questions and still get anything done. Town layout as such that even teenagers need parents to drive them everywhere, at least high school campus has library/gym/pool/various clubs.


My advice? Read the book titled "Homeschooling the Right: How Conservative Education Activism Erodes the State" by Heath Brown so you realize what you're jumping into, eyes open. It probably isn't what you think it is. And it has tremendous regional variation. In particular, get ready for parents who want to very carefully control what their kids are exposed to.


Consider reading "Dumbing Us Down" by John Gatto for anyone who isn't yet convinced about the benefits of homeschooling.


Getting buy-in from your own parents is a giant hurdle, because they need to dedicate a huge portion of their personal time to schooling you. That's not an easy undertaking.

I have not seen any efforts in developing materials that children, once they've decided they want to be homeschooled, can give to their parents to convince them that homeschooling is a good idea.


Not believing in God has really limited my kids access to the social club that is religion, which makes me uncomfortable removing the other major access to kids their own age, school. Atheists/agnostics just aren't as organized in supporting their offspring's social development, probably because they have less kids.


Time management. Work, rising youngest and teach elders is really challenge.

What is more reasonable for me is educate children in smaller group of parents, that want do homeschooling and than have ie one day per week just for teaching a small group of children among our friends. Also this could be more connected to professions of parents.


I'm too old to be homeschooled.


Hopefully you’re still learning though ! :)


I’ve heard from some that it’s Multifaceted:

* To ensure their values live on

* To take their kids out of a racist environment

* To protect their kids from the high number of sexual assaults from government teachers

* To protect their kids from bullying

* To spend more time with their kids

* Flexibility in scheduling and curriculum


Need for daycare (with busy parents) and socialization (in the absence of neighborhood friends).

When working from home, it is difficult to do serious, thoughtful work when your young children are running and playing around the house.


Well since I am not an American it's not really that common in the Netherlands. Plus as @ElijahLynn mentions: Scocial needs. I read "The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do" by Judith Rich Harris (highly recommend doing so before starting with kids). And it contains a nice example of a boy that is home-schooled by two teachers. The kids is brilliant and and 21 becomes the youngest University teacher. He writes a book on model trains that is considered to be the most boring book that exists and he offs himself. At least this is what I remember of the book. I think the example says it all... Edit: I do understand the need for home-schooling with the school shootings and all. Maybe that is why it is not that common in other countries?


I'm surrounded by people homeschooling. The only thing stopping us is the age our kids. First due in a few weeks.

I've been thinking about building tools as needed. It's my dream to work in this space.


I'm curious if there are legal hurdles to doing something between homeschooling and private schooling.

E.g. is it possible for me and a few other neighborhood families hire a private tutor for our kids?


Check the homeschooling laws in your state; as a homeschooler your can hire whatever tutors you want.

HSLDA.org has the state legal summaries


That's probably just called homeschooling. The way I described how my parents' homeschooled me in highschool is that they were a general contractor for my education. Writing classes were online, history classes were from the local community college, other activities from the co-op, calculus was from a textbook supervised from my engineer dad, etc.


I don't think so. My wife was 'homeschooled'. Her mother didn't like some of her classes in public school so pulled her out of them, such that she wasn't spending the required amount of time in the public school. Thus, my mother registered her as a homeschooler, so my wife didn't need to be in the classroom.

Of course, the public schools here have to take your child if you drop them off.

My wife is well-socialized, extremely well-educated, and way better off than her peers, so it worked.


This blog I wrote about how to start a microschool /learning pod/hybrid school might be helpful to you . Please let me know if you’ve got any specific questions I can be of support with

https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/learningpod


It depends on your state and the ages of the children involved. Sometimes it can get more tricky if kids are younger than five because that triggers DOH laws as well as DOE laws.


The law: it cannot be done legally in my country.


I homeschooled in 8th grade and I loved it.

- No commute to middle school, which returned me an hour of my day right there.

- No bullying from the soon-to-be dropouts.

- No gross school lunches or having to tote around a smelly lunchbag/box/cooler.

- No carrying a pile of books everywhere because the administration banned bookbags (drugs or weapons or something like that...), and no dealing with the worst students who always had their hands free because they didn't care if they had their books.

- I went as fast as I wanted through my Algebra textbook (doing up to 8 lessons a day.)

- Went to a science class taught every Friday in the next city over with demonstrations of chemistry and physics.

- Played my trombone the homeschool band, we performed at Disney World and local recitals too.

- Made some friends in the homeschool group.

- I disliked the English and History exercises but I did them in weekly batches to get them done. And I read lots of books from the big city's library which was far superior to the school or local city's library that I would have to use later when high school let out.

If I had stuck with the homeschooling system I could have finished my BS at the same time I finished high school by taking all my classes at the local university - but I would have probably not double-majored.

My experience with home-schooling gave me a big insight to my high school experience. I asked for privileges such as staying in classrooms during lunch or pep-rallies to play chess or read, and I usually got them because I was well-behaved, respectful, and demonstrated I could be trusted.

But I also resented the arbitrariness and capriciousness of the public school administration's dictates built around maintaining order due to worst behaving students (for example, I couldn't wear a ball-cap on a bad hair day because the resource officer caught kids hiding drugs in caps - knocking a cap off would start brutal fighting). Compared to that system, homeschooling was a kind of utopia to me.

The only downside was not being around the friends that I grew up with. Fewer birthday parties and such. But there was more hanging out with a much smaller set of friends who were all homeschooling, and making new friends in the local homeschool resource group. I went back to high school in 9th grade on the theory that I missed my friends and wanted to be involved in student government and other clubs. But they weren't as friendly as I remembered, and student government and the other clubs did basically nothing. So I spent my 12th grade year at the local university full time, which gave me the freedom I sorely missed from 8th grade. My only regret was not doing it sooner.


> finished my BS at the same time I finished high school

I suspect a high %age of people here on HN could say the same thing.

There's the Big Bang Theory effect, to portray all intellectually gifted people as neurotic social basket cases. I think that's done in many schools as well.


It takes two incomes to survive, that’s why.


Your kids need more than your life experience. They also need to learn how to get along with other kids.


I don't want my child to have zero social skills or experience with the opposite sex. That's literally why I don't do it.


I don't know much about the space but if you're just starting out, I'd pay attention to two interesting companies: 1. https://www.synthesis.com (productizing Elon Musk school) 2. https://primer.com (community for home schooled kids)


I was homeschooled from 5th grade on. The reasons people have for homeschooling their kids varies widely, from hyper-religious to anti-establishmentism to the-schools-here-suck. The types of kids people have also vary widely. So my experience is not necessarily reflective of what your kids' experience might be. That said, here's my story:

My options were home schooling or a Christian school affiliated with my parents' church. I chose to be home schooled. My mother is high school educated, not a teacher, and frankly weak on most subjects. But she loves to dig in and research options, so she did a reasonable job of finding curriculums for standard things like math. I always had a strong thirst for knowledge of certain subjects, so she left me to my own devices on those things (this was pre-internet so I think this was an especially bad strategy. How's a kid with no money going to find the best resources to learn about these things that would normally be classes?). In general, I have always loved learning, so I was relatively easy to homeschool. By 8th grade I was scoring at the 12th grade level, 99th percentile on the CAT across the board. I had more free time than my peers and more flexibility in my schedule. Field trips were a breeze. By high school I was taking community college classes and tutoring the adults, which was extremely helpful to have those credits when I went to college - I got to skip some intro courses and had the flexibility to take a year off of school when financial hardship hit.

So far it sounds great, but I would not really recommend it. If you don't have access to quality schools for your kid, you should move if you can afford it at all. There were a few major issues: - Social isolation. I had little access to kids my own age, mostly my parents' friends' kids, who were, frankly, shitheads. (Not that the Christian school was better. All but one girl in what would have been my class graduated pregnant or with a child, and therefore married or engaged to be, shotgun style) - College Admissions. I was enrolled in an online high school program at an accredited school (the first one!), but even with the transcript + 4.0 GPA in a year's worth of community college credits, colleges were deeply skeptical about homeschooling and made me jump through extra hoops. I'm fairly certain my top choice rejected me because of this. - Misinformation & bias. I know this is an issue in school too, and my alternative option of a religious school would not have been much better, but I had to unlearn so so much of what I was taught - Extracurriculars. Opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities are extremely limited. Many things are associated with a school and not open to non-students.

It's also worth noting that while I did relatively well in this setup, I have siblings who were also home schooled and never finished high school or got their GED.

If you do go down this path: - Have a strategy for how to socialize your kids beyond "well, some of my friends have kids" - Find good curriculum - Have a strategy ready for when a kid does not want to learn something - Make sure you or your spouse will have a lot of free time to supervise - Enroll them in a program that will get them a HS transcript from an accredited school. - Find ways to expose them to extracurricular activities of their choosing, beyond your own interests.


It's so interesting hearing from someone with a similar experience, thanks for sharing.

The CAT exams were the same for me, always scored really high and above my grade level. I aced the 12th grade one by age 14. My parents took that as evidence that I was doing well, and I didn't trust them enough to confide just how desperately lonely I was. The CAT (and SAT) ended up being incredibly poor indicators of preparation for college level courses, many of which I failed my first semester despite also being a self-starter who reads voraciously. It was just too much of a jump for me from the unstructured way I'd been teaching myself previously, and I was missing too much background knowledge.

Even with my high SAT scores it was really hard to get into college. I ended up at a tiny private religious school (I'm not religious) because they were the only one that accepted me, and one of the few I was even able to complete the application for because many admissions offices didn't make allowances for homeschooling in their application process (this was around 2001). After a few years there I managed to bring my GPA up high enough to transfer to a state school.

In retrospect, I believe things could have been really different if I'd had access to a councilor with academic experience to explain how the system worked and tell me what paperwork I would need for college applications or what subjects would be necessary for the program I wanted to do. Even in 2001 with internet access I just wasn't able to navigate that on my own and ended up making a lot of costly (time, money, embarrassment) mistakes. And I was a pretty smart kid, I taught myself to code for one. It turns out being smart didn't make up for that much of a knowledge gap.


Yes correct


I know you asked for responses from people who are interested in homeschooling and this comment is going to come across as unnecessarily adversarial, but...

Homeschooling is very bad and should be banned in the US, as it already is in many other countries.




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