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The major homeschooling lobbyist group
Excuse me, the WHAT
John Oliver taught me the biggest one is the Home School Legal Defense Fund.
Every Sunday night I sit down to learn some valuable info from John … like what a pūteketeke has to do to get laid.
Religion and the fear of “woke” things being taught to their children like evolution, sex education, history,science…
Those people exist, but you should read the article for some more perspective. Trans children who faced bullying and black families who want to avoid systemic racism in the school system are also significant groups.
Eh, there are more insidious ways children get indoctrinated in public schools.
They’re taught to:
Obey authority no matter what
Learn what other people say they should learn
Put STEM above all else
Sharing information is bad
The kids who are successful now will be the ones who are successful later
This has not been my experience as a either a public school student quite a few years back now, not as a parent of public school aged children.
Public school has its own gigantic share of problems, but the criticisms above seem exaggerated to me based on my experience.
The only one that doesn’t ring true to me (granted now from 25 years ago in the 90s) was the last one.
Your first two points apply far more to private religious schools than to public schools.
Hmmm, I’ve never been in a religious school, but those first 2 were pretty big in my public school in the 90s.
I have advanced college degrees in science/engineering, I watch electronics and chemistry videos for fun, and I wouldn’t feel qualified teaching most subjects past 6-7 grade. How some of these parents with just high school diplomas do it is beyond me.
I feel the most empathy toward the students who are taught these very myopic curriculums that are very weak in science and math (I’m looking at you young earth/creationists types) and who knows what about history (slavery gave African-Americans jobs skills?) that try to get into college. Most profs will not suffer fools like this even if by some miracle they get accepted in the first place.
In my case I found an online school where my kid can attend class live or watch recorded sessions, reach out to the teachers in those sessions for help, attend virtual study groups, etc… It really helped compared to trying to do it all myself.
I work in Distance Education at a major university (well I guess it’s called Digital Education now since even the in-person courses use it too) so you have no idea how happy it makes me to read this 😀
I do find it ironic that this never even occurred to me with respect to home schooling … duh!! I’m in IT so this pedagogy thing is for those other people right? 🤣
I pulled my kid, primarily because the local school district is awful, and because they harass kids (and their parents) into coming to school sick, leading to constant outbreaks of illness, especially since COVID. As an unexpected bonus, it was refreshing to see my kid actually enjoy learning for once.
How do you socialize your kid with people their age
He still has his friends he sees on weekends and occasionally after school.
Online. Like every other kid.
Christ kids are going to be socially fucked
Why would you think that? Do you still play by playground rules?
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So no school socialisation, and then leaving the kid with the net sociopaths.
That’s a prime reason to make home schooling finally illegal.
I don’t know about everywhere, but where I’m at state funding for schools is based on the lowest recorded attendance, so it encouraged schools to tell kids to come in sick.
It’s also why they started scheduling exit exams and shit on senior skip days.
Sometimes parents homeschool because they want their kids to learn more. Sometimes they homeschool to have their children learn less.
Right Wing propaganda, and their concerted war against public education. They do this for two reasons:
1 - They’re so greedy they hate paying taxes. Any taxes, even though they take full advantage of what taxes pay for (roads, police, fire department.)
2 - Illiterate and uneducated people will believe whatever they’re told, and take whatever is offered. Those raised Christian are programmed from childhood to blindly obey male authority figures.
In short, Republicans want to create a Neo-Feudal Theocracy, with themselves as the aristocracy.
Ive always found the idea of homeschooling utterly bizzare
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I know people who did it for religious reasons and I know people who did it because their kids needed extras to be able to attend school at all, and regular schools didn’t have the staff and/or the ability, ie: one friend has an adopted son with FAS who, when he was stressed, needed to run outside around the building a few times before he could sit still for a few more hours.
He was finally able to graduate at 21 … a crowning achievement for him and his family.
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This is a normal thought process.
Why? That’s how it was done for millennia, unless your parents were rich enough to send you to an actual school instead of learning a trade.
“That’s the way we’ve always done it!” is never a good reason on it’s own.
I knew some kids who were homeschooled.
They were smarter than most of the kids in my public school class.
Not saying that’s the case everywhere, but the modern public school system is mostly made for indoctrination and funneling taxpayer money to publishers.
The distribution of home schoolers is super bi-modal, either: “we don’t want them learning that sinful science and actual history” or “we don’t think public education will do a good job for our kids, so we’re doing it ourselves”
Actually, it’s tri-modal: “I don’t want my kid associating with those people.” Black people, gay people, non-religious people…
Thats still the first one
Idiots
Last Week Tonight recently did an episode on this.
Im just gonna make a wild guess and say because “religious” nuts, isn it?
Let me present my counter-tale to all the anti-home school comments.
My kid is autistic and the schools are some of the most poorly funded in the country. Despite this the school did an excellent job and had very good staff that did a very good job. But as my child went up in grades the resources available decreased. It was quickly heading for a point where the 1-on-1 time they would need wouldn’t be available. Then the pandemic hit. We were forced into online school when the school closed for a bit. The amount of specialist time available dropped to near-zero.
The school wasn’t prepared for online school and the sites/curriculum they used were all over the place. We supplemented with our own field trips and additional resources. But they otherwise took to it really well and were still learning.
The next school year our school still didn’t have its act together. We found a different online school that actually had good curriculum. They’ve been going to that ever since and it’s gone really well.
BIG CAVEATS: I used to be a public school teacher. My degrees are in that, and I was certified. I work in a different field now, but I still have that background to know adolescent psychology, how to evaluate curriculum, knowledge of what is grade-level appropriate, etc. My partner specialized in language and writing, while I was science, math, and tech. We take great pains to socialize our child with outside activities, and make sure they read and participate in art/creative activities. My partner is stay-at-home with the primary job of seeing to our child’s education. I help but assist in my areas of expertise.
TLDR; Home school IS used as a way for a lot of parents to enable hyper-religious or abusive behavior, but that’s not universal. In some cases it can be the best solution for the child.
My child is also autistic, and my local school board was a nightmare. My kid is taking the GED this week, so we are thankfully at the end of that nightmare.
To me, all of your arguments just point out faults in the education system. I know you can’t change the system all on your own and I think you’ve made the right decision for your family. I just feel like all the arguments I’ve read on this post in support of home schooling aren’t the best solution for students, they’re just workarounds for the deficiencies of our schools.
Former Autistic Child here, now Autistic Adult. My public school years were the absolute worst. I had a 504 Plan and despite that, everyone ignored it except for me being able to leave class 5 minutes early to skip the passing time and get to class early. After looking into college, there was a specific guy I got to talk to for accommodations and everything was MUCH better. Recently dropped out with the hope to go into Aviation Maintenance, though I’m still waiting for approval.
Fingers crossed for you!
Thank you!!
Would you say that a parent’s ability to successfully homeschool is largely impacted by the resources available to that parent from their state and other governmental bodies?
I’m curious because of another comment on a different post from a parent in Florida who said their homeschooling curriculum and resources are really god and well charted/planned out.
I would say it is largely impacted by available resources, but not necessarily limited to government. Some locations have great non-profit organizations dedicated to exactly this sort of thing. I’d say a lot of places have those sorts of resources, but often are hard to find.
For us it was 1) our work schedules weren’t conducive to taking kids to school as there is limited bus service in CO and 2) we both went to the best public schools in our area of NoVA and they could have done better in a lot of ways. Neither of us are fans of the public school system having been products of them.
Fair enough. Unfortunately, homeschooling in the US has become a breeding ground for religious extremism.
How do you do home schooling if your work schedules interfere with the typical school schedule?
Anecdote: the lady nextdoor is fucked in the head and couldn’t let her kid have a normal childhood experience until the 7th grade (I think).
