I wouldn't recommend this unless the previous public school experience was hellish for the kid. Honestly, home-schooling is such a weird, american idea. Like all things american, it's spreading though.
Right, like I learned how to get kicked onto the ground at recess and to make sure not to get up until they were good and done kicking or I’d get a black eye.
Or my wife learned to get back rubs from her male teacher in middle school.
All very important parts of the socialization process.
It's definitely feeling in this thread like learning to "socialize" is A.) Always positive, and B.) a fixed, shared experience We must force kids through
Right. Based on how awful my school experience was, and my wife’s, even though she could be working and commanding a similar salary to mine, we’re home schooling both of our kids.
Our older daughter is the most popular kid in the neighborhood. Everyone wants to play with her. Because she’s home school, she went over and helped a little girl who was just adopted and hasn’t started school yet feel right at home the other day.
Our other daughter is physically disabled and could hold her breath and die at any moment. If she was forced to go to a public school I have no doubt she’d be in the emergency room or worse within the course of a week.
For some it is a hellhole that pushes them to commit suicide or at least attempt it. Thankfully that is not my experience but we shouldn't ignore the bad examples of "socializing" in school and potential solutions to it.
I'm sorry to hear that, but that's just an anecdote. I've never been bullied, only attended public schools, and the idea of home schooling a kid is just beyond weird. It's not even legal where I'm from(Poland) and I believe for very good reasons.
Ah, yes. The "Socialization" argument brought up every time people mention homeschooling, as though there aren't homeschool coops and plenty of other ways to interact with people of a wide variety of ages, instead of just your own age.
And if you drill down, it usually ends up being some version of "Well, I had to deal with the fact that other kids are little shits for 12+ years, so everyone else should have to as well."
In my experience, homeschooled kids are "a bit weird" as kids, but tend to interact smoothly with a far wider variety of ages, and they tend to not stand out as anything different as adults - except perhaps a lot more interested in longer form learning. If I run into someone who's got an oddly wide range of skills, odds are good they were homeschooled.
If you homeschool then your kids can have friends with people older and younger than them and aren't subject to bullying. Isn't that more healthy than having your kid only exposed to people of exactly the same age and maturity level, and potentially develop issues from bullying?
For some reason people think homeschooling means never seeing and socializing with other kids, which is definitely not the case. I feel like people think it's a pandemic type situation.
It's not as simple as go to school and learn to socialize period.
Not all kids are the same, not all families are the same, for some it works for some others it's a ridiculous idea.
Elementary school is generally a great time for kids to make friends and generally goof off. I have a 2nd grader and 6th graders. Both really happy and it’s public school. 6th grader will head to jr high (we do k-6 elementary) so have to see how that goes. I don’t have complaints against public schools. Both my kids look forward to going.
Yes, better to leave your child's education to the state, the state would never think to damage family cohesion or try to undermine any ideas that pose a threat to its power.
yeah... and also for the most part is was default to not be able to read and write. Rising literacy levels can be directly linked to the funding of schools in the 18-20th century.
I don't have strong feelings on the subject, but I find it bizarre that you'd find what most people traditionally did for almost all of human history up to a little more than the last century a "weird, American idea." And you get most of the rest by counting "just a few kids from the local area" rather than a mass state-sponsored institution.
Homeschooling typically means one of the parents or somebody in a pool of families follows some kind of curriculum still, unschooling expects kids to learn from... something.
Honestly, all this sounds such an american, middle class thing: the public X is shit, and everything is up to the individual. I am not saying public education is great where I grew up, and I can definitely imagine doing what I wanted being better in many ways (anyway this is how it turned out to be in last classes in practice more or less), what I cannot imagine is my working class parents handling that situation, esp with like 5 kids, as they worked jobs that involved being in their workplace for 8 hours per day, and they could not get away with working for 1-3 hours on a laptop here and there and wherever the kids' activities were supposed to be.
But that is also not taking into account other things, like providing intellectual stimulation/mentors in areas where the parents are not experts/educated, which sometimes is not trivial. And while schools are indeed a hit and miss in this stuff, ime private tutoring is usually not a better choice (and adds up in the bill essentially). This could be solved in different ways granted a wide and strong social circle/community, but that is probably not what all this is about in the land of individualism.
I could say the same thing about "Let's put EduTech in front of students, as pushed by for-profit companies, with one tablet per child sort of programs."
Except, unfortunately, it's not very experimental at this point. It's well demonstrated that it doesn't do a damned thing for educational outcomes - but it is, at least, very profitable for the EdTech companies who, when pinned down on it not working, assure you that if you buy the next version, they'll fix it.
We know that the current public school approaches aren't working very well for vast numbers of students. So, yes, I'll take "experimental by parents who care."
Seems like an American problem. As an American expat, with a son in a local public school, I feel qualified to say that.
Where I live, homeschooling is illegal. Everyone goes to whichever school they want to though. There are literally 6! elementary schools within walking distance of my house, and I live in the suburbs. The playgrounds are open and the kids play after schools and on the weekends, so they have friends in-and-out of their classes.
But yeah, I agree the American schooling system has failed. Probably before I was even born.
£1382 plus missed opportunity cost depending on the job that affords them to work for X hours per day (while the kids are being unschooled?), plus cost of risk that the kids are shouldering from risk of negative impact them due to unschooling. The price tag looks attractive but the externalities weigh heavily.
Let's not forget the potentially large offsetting negative impacts from schooling! Violence, abusive peers and teachers, disinterested teachers and systems leading to wasted years and loss for love of learning, I could go on. And I don't think you mean "externalities" though you might.
I'm still quite irritated, decades later, that the end result of my high school Honors English program was to take entire groups of people who clearly loved reading, and teach them to hate books. I kept in touch with a range of them, and almost none of us read a book for fun, for a decade after high school - because HS Honors English taught us that we couldn't properly understand a book unless we sliced it into tiny pieces, analyzed all the literary metaphors, and generally we weren't any good at that anyway, only the English Teacher could properly appreciate the book. And don't you dare read ahead of the assigned section!
I don't remember the plots of stuff I read, but I remember that grass was green to symbolize new life, rebirth, hope, etc. And I learned to bullshit.
It was miserable. And after four years, nobody touched books again outside requirements. It was awful.
I remember being friends with a playwright in college. This one play we basically came up with over a few beers and laughs. It was an instant classic and did well in the theater.
So many people analyses the hell out of it. I’ll never forget after the first show when someone asked afterwords, “I love how X is such a metaphor for Y.” My friend just stared at them and said, “it isn’t a metaphor for anything, it’s just an obvious consequence of betraying your friends.”
I HATE that crap. Just enjoy it for what is, entertainment.
I asked one of my English teachers, after a particularly (IMO) tortured analysis of something about people like Hemmingway who say things like, "I sit down with a typewriter, bottle of whiskey, and tell stories."
Her response was, "Oh, well, that's why they're great writers - they do all this without even having to think about it!"
I had a high school teacher who did that with Shakespeare. More's the pity. Fortunately, it didn't decrease the enjoyment and entertainment I get from reading for pleasure, just the books that were part of the curriculum.
How do you weigh that against the risk of public school, peer pressure, bullying, drug & sex culture, and a middling career as a corporate drone?
I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as you make it out to be. There are risks on both paths. All kids are unique and what works for one may not work for another.
I’m going to try to go the unschooling route, and see how it goes.
> peer pressure, bullying, drug & sex culture, and a middling career as a corporate drone?
Unschooling doesn’t make those disappear. I knew plenty of homeschooled kids that had sex and kids before 18, who drank and did drugs, and I’m pretty sure all of them are in middling careers as corporate drones.
There will be plenty of peer pressure, bullying, drug and sex culture in their adult life, unless they are going straight from unschooling to off-grid subsistence farming.
Weird as it sounds, the earlier you come in contact with many human pathologies the better.
You might not want to be a corporate drone, being socialized differently to almost everyone is just another extreme.
Depends. Out of five schools I went to, one was crap. Schools also cycle between getting core groups of people who care, becoming good, getting reputation for being good and attracting people who don't care and stopping being good.
Still, I'd say there's way more consistency between schools than between unorthodox parents.
Bullying is _much_ worse in school than in your later life in my experience. Yes, you can still get terrible people that gang up on someone in an office, but it's much less common than in school.
Most people who are behaving like sociopaths in middle school appear to grow out of it and lead normal lives.
These kinds of arguments come up a lot when it comes to homeschooling. But would anyone follow the same logic when picking a school? There are certainly nice schools that don't have too many of these problems. Are these bad choices then? Should one find the most ghetto public school? If your country has only nice schools, how about sending your kids to a rougher country?
Having been roomates with friends who were unschooled, it definitely made later life much more challenging. College was a lot of remedial mathematics catch-up, and the way they engaged with employers, potential partners and such was much different than most people.
Quality public education can serve children much better than unschooling or poorly performing private or public schooling.
Some areas just have very little choice though, the Catholic Schools are shit, the public schools are severely underfunded and decrepit, and unschooling starts to look reasonable, despite how it seems to have stunted my friends :(
In many parts of the US, the most accessible (i.e. not as expensive) private schools are Catholic schools, dating back to a boom of Catholic immigrants who felt (and were sometimes right) that existing schools (public and private) were anti-Catholic. There are non-religious private schools in the US, but Catholic schools are everywhere.
Modern US Catholicism has, for a range of reasons, become very politically conservative (particularly in comparison to the Catholicism elsewhere in the Americas), and because Catholic schools are generally attended by the children of practicing Catholic parents whose conservative views shape their view of schooling, these private schools reflect those political views. As a result, if you aren't Catholic, many Catholic private schools are going to look like political and religious indoctrination.
I disagree, my problem with Catholic Schools is due to poor experience with the Jesuit ones I attended, they just were not staffing quality teachers (not surprising when they pay teachers $10k a year less than public schools) and each Archdiocese does things differently.
The Seattle Archdiocese has created a haven for spreading diseases unheard of in public schools by not encouraging or requiring vaccination of students. The other nearby archdiocese do not permit unvaccinated students to attend, and haven't had repeated outbreaks of once banished diseases.
You might as well just say "quality" <educational type> and leave it at that. Then crack open Zen and the Art of Motorcycle and try to figure out what quality means.
I'd be curious how large your sample size of unschooled friends was and what sort of longitudinal observations you had on their whole lives.
I vouched for you, reasonable question, I got a few pages in and expected something reasonable. The first example set of white supremacy in math read as extremely tenuous by linking pedagogical techniques to overt white supremicist philosophy. An example that stuck out to me because I also think there are better ways was the teaching of maths as a linear sequence - seems much more clearly the result of an education pipeline focused on producing physicists and engineers than white supremacy.
Readers wondering how else you would do it; more like a tree structure, some pre-reqs make sense but there is an astounding volume of useful introductory math that is approachable once you have mastered arithmetic and are comfortable performing algebra. Logic, digital logic, linear algebra, probability, statistics (we can call that three things though given that two sets of two examples are closely related). Loads of stuff
That’s not necessary. There’s no reason you can’t socialize your kids via the usual extracurricular sports and activities that they’re going to do anyway.
Are public schools always better than an echo chamber? Does homeschooling always result in an echo chamber? Do kids always have friends in public schools?
There seem to be quite a few assumptions in your thinking.
Not sure why you were downvoted. You’re kind of right about the assumption. Most folks who I know opt for homeschooling did so for religious reasons. I’m unsure if there are others. So, yes there’s assumptions built in. It’s just that I’m trying to get past them.
Yeah I have no idea about the downvotes. Internet forums gonna internet forum, I guess.
In seriousness, and without snark, I would like homeschooling to become more common explicitly because I think the US is failing so many kids (from a social perspective). Bullying is crazy, and social-political nonsense is making its way into textbooks. Not to mention the school shootings.
I think for many kids school is fine. But, speaking as a person whose schooling experience was specifically _not fine_, I would like it to be more normal to have other options.
No. We homeschooled, and kid went to gymnastics, violin group lessons and orchestra, homeschoolers park day, homeschool coop classes... Sure, you can lock your kid in a box. Most don’t.
There are active home-schooling communities where kids socialize frequently, go on camps at least once a year. And catch up informally. Also socialize with other non-home-schoolers.
An issue with most criticisms of home-schooling is they are (sometimes) true, and it depends a lot on the parents.
However, parents home-schooling are often well aware of these pit-falls and compensate, do after-school sports for e.g. So common characterizations of home-schooling often highlight all the possible down-sides and overlook many of the possible up-sides.
While not being wrong exactly, it's an incomplete picture - people talking about something they have not experienced.
School can be awful for kids in america. Schools can't keep kids safe. Bullying is rampant. Extremist political groups campaign to get history rewritten to match their agenda. It can be insanely grueling.
Certainly homeschooling isn't the only answer, but I also think most people are handwaving how terrible the school system can be for kids here.
Can you list a few "other answers"? This is a serious question. The public schools around here are terrible and the private schools (which are by no means guaranteed to be much better,) are absolute highway robbery.
With the educational resources that are available to everybody at the push of a button, homeschooling seems compelling, to me. I'd even spring for private tutors. What other options are there?
> School can be awful for kids in america. Schools can't keep kids safe. Bullying is rampant. Extremist political groups campaign to get history rewritten to match their agenda. It can be insanely grueling.
Good thing life outside of school isn't like that.
Because a lot of people in America can't get over the fact that living in a society is messy. Sure, there are bad kids at a school that may influence your child. But one day your child will be 18 without mommy and daddy and drug dealers exist. Also, kids going away to school allows them to establish their own personality outside of home life a lot more. Rather my kids do it young and learn rather than wait until they are 18 and moving out.
Although having grown up in the south and from having neighbors who home school, it is more about, "they teach evolution in school and not 6,000 year old earth."
I don't think the dichotomy you're presenting is fair? You can have bad kids, teachers, etc. bully your kid at school. For the most part, you're not going to get bullied in most office jobs (though I do not want to downplay its existence in the workplace). At the very least, given enough privilege, you can change jobs. You can homeschool children and still have them socialize (in more controlled environments until you loosen your level of paranoia).
Why is school the only place to establish a personality or develop socialization? There are plenty of communities outside of school where kids and adults can engage and grow.
If you have enough resources I don't see why homeschooling would be an invalid option. The public school system is terrible for a multitude of reasons.
I see your point, but there is a line and maybe America is actually worse. There are a lot of countries I am very familiar with where if I lived there I would not have a problem sending my kids to public schools. Here I live in a good district and am still on the fence. I am an atheist and plenty of people here are now homeschooling for nonreligious reasons, but yes that has and still does make up a lot of the homeschooling.
It's funny how people want a quick and easy answer to this question like every culture is the same and there's a secret to this.
I think it's pretty clear his method of education is something that is not for everybody right?. Not all families have the same dynamics, time and desire to teach kids. For some it works and it's great for some others it's crazy.
I know several families who do homeschooling/unschooling successfully. If you want a better answer go chatGPT it, google it, whatever, but yet you want me to surprise you with a "compelling" answer, like it's a yes or no answer.
My son is 9 and attends a standard British primary school.
Today, he was explaining that two of his friends are arguing a lot because they can’t agree on rules to a game. He’s trying to stay friends with both of them, and has figured out that getting involved in the argument makes this harder.
These are the essential lessons home-schooled kids typically miss.
I'm glad your child is learning valuable social lessons.
If anything, I learned how to appease people to fit in and make them like me at school.
It wasn't until the last 2-3 years (I'm in my thirties now) after on a startup for the past 7 years that I started to better understand, explore and comprehend my personal psychology.
It was until these last couple years that I learned that it’s not job to fix problems between people and that often it just makes things worse.
Sounds like you are human. Hello human. Men don’t really get the ability to (truly) grasp abstract ideas until the late twenties. Women get that ability earlier.
In our thirties (all humans) learn to apply that abstract thinking to ourselves. In our forties, our heart finally stops growing and we become a full adult.
Never discount your past, no matter how terrible and/or great it was. It’s part of who you are, part of what makes you, you. Embrace it, learn from it, and look forward. Yes, that is easier said than done.
It means that male-gendered people tend towards impulse and emotion rather than attempting to understand a situation and listen well into their 20s. Listening and empathy are really fucking hard, and it does not come as naturally to those heavy on testosterone, probably for obvious evolutionary reasons.
None of this is written in stone. Biology and human behavior are way to nuanced for that, but as a group, those of the male persuasion develop those skills at a later age, again, probably for species survival reasons.
I’m sorry, but that’s not how you provide a source. If you make a strong claim you should either prove it yourself or point to someone who does. You did neither.
First one has nothing to do with what you said, in addition to that the experiments are “in rats”. The second one is about cognitive decline in the elderly, presumably according to the authors because of work stress.
I mean, if you don't bother to read the sources and understand them ... then there's not really much we can discuss.
For the first source, literally in the second sentence:
> Although neurons of the PFC are generated before birth, the differentiation of its neurons and development of synaptic connections in humans extend to the 3rd decade of life.
Yes, that's how 'well known' this fact is, that it literally doesn't need a citation or even a defense ... fwiw, the first source in a broad overview of all the literature in the _difference_ between rats/humans/primates on the differences between the development of PFC (which controls 'abstract' thought).
The second compares sexes across the entire lifetime, not just in elderly. This is all so obviously well-known that you're unlikely to find a study about it, you live this well into your 40's and literally see the effects of it all around you.
Last sentence of abstract: no significant differences between the sexes.
In the introduction: points out that this is a controversial topic.
TBH just from your dogmatic and insulting tone it was clear that you’re just trying to give your opinions false justification and aren’t interested in finding the truth at all.
> TBH just from your dogmatic and insulting tone it was clear that you’re just trying to give your opinions false justification and aren’t interested in finding the truth at all.
You were very rudely asking for sources to something widely accepted since the middle ages... so... how were you expecting me to reply, exactly? I love discussing this sort of stuff, so, if we can be civil, let's discuss it!
> See this paper, which was written after yours, reviewing dozens of other papers, with a sample size of 1100 instead of 70
I'll give the paper you linked a more thorough read later on. From a cursory scan, I didn't see anything about the prefrontal cortex in the entire paper, and from what I can tell, wasn't measured. No one is saying that the brain sizes of men/women differ, only that the PFC isn't fully mature in men until later than it is for women. I don't think an MRI would show this feature, but I could be wrong (maybe myelination might be some sort of indicator?)
Like I said, I doubt there's a study specifically about this, but I could totally be wrong. I might have to call some of my neurology friends and ask weird questions lol. If you're in the medical world, you could ask too. Maybe we might both learn something new.
As someone who was homeschooled for a year by a private company, it works when it's one on one everyday and the teacher isn't someone who thinks unschooling (Taking kids away from some sort of educational framework) is a good idea.
I know that I could figure out what they mean by "unschooling" by clicking around and searching. It's just that it feels a bit annoying to read an article about it, have it mentioned several times, but not be told what it's supposed to mean. I take it it's supposed to be a cool way of saying homeschool.
That’s one definition. I like “study what you want but you must study something.”. I have also seen what I call “raised by wolves” labeled as unschooling. We homeschooled, but it was somewhere between “school at home” and unschooling. It was structured, there was a core, but kid could follow there interests, assuming core was being served.
This is absolutely correct. There really is no single definition of unschooling and even homeschooling. I know families that say they "homeschool" their kids, yet those kids attend an "academy" three days a week that provides the curriculum, teaching, and homework. The parents really just make sure the kids do their work. This is very distinct from what my wife and I did -- pulling together a curriculum ourselves, and doing 75% of the teaching.
From my experience with homeschooling groups, a great majority of homeschoolers do so for religious reasons, e.g., ensure that they're not exposed to science teaching that contradicts young earth creationism, or sex education, etc.
Or just to prevent their children from being infected by "worldly values". You'll often hear them say "Be in the world, but not of the world."
There are of course, people who do it to give their children an education that they feel is superior to the regular one, but they are a minority.
Of course, I didn't survey all homeschoolers to come up with that, I suspect you'd find clusters of secular homeschoolers in certain areas on the west coast, but elsewhere, Jesus dominates.
> a great majority of homeschoolers do so for religious reasons, e.g., ensure that they're not exposed to
> There are of course, people who do it to give their children an education that they feel is superior to the regular one
Another way to cut the cake:
- Some want to ensure high quality
- Others want to reduce bad influence
I fail to see why these motivations are much different whether religious or secular.
Kids will grow up and rebel, embrace, and take for granted parts of you they inherit.
I’m not Christian, but I’m willing to assume that the reason that Christians like to homeschool is because they care deeply about what kind of person their child becomes; homeschooling is a very conscientious move, like being a Christian. Secular homeschoolers are probably highly conscientious with a different set of norms.
As one of the people whom some on this thread seem to be fine with caricaturing and haphazardly speculating about, I can attest this is the one reply that gets it. I appreciate your intelligent and considered take. Cheers.
I live in a Rust Belt city, and most of the homeschoolers within the city are secular, and stridently so (and here there's greater overlap between homeschoolers and unschoolers). There are plenty of Christian homeschoolers as well, and their reasons for that choice are quite varied. So, you are painting with a very broad brush and making assumptions based on cultural stereotypes.
Personally, my wife and I homeschooled our kids through junior high school, in a mix of Christian cooperatives and homespun curriculum. One kid went to high school at the local Roman Catholic school, the other to a public school.
I think it originally described South American Fascism.
So not really Fascism (as you loose some power to the Church, something Mussolini refused to do), but but radical Christianity with fascist ideals (a motherland instead of a nation, you only exist through your work, the only people that matters is you and your family, stuff like that).
It didn't work great with catholics (i mean, without US state dpt, you'd have a lot less fascism in South america), because of all the cardinals and the pope, whil not the best human beings, are at least decent ones. Fascism have a hard time building power on catholicism in general, because the church power is in the Vatican, which is tolarable if you're Italian, but harder to use if you're not. You can see that during Bolsonaro authoritarian drift at the end, he was suddenly a lot less christian than he used to be when attacking gay rights and abortion rights, and wasn't able to capitalize on the church power anymore.
Historically Christofascism didn't perform great. Might be different in a non-catholic country.
I've read this and I still have no idea what unschooling is. Does the author mean that they literally pulled their kids out of school and instead they just do open university courses? That's mad. Like actually 100% mad. In fact I don't think that should even be legal.
At least in Germany, literally Hitler, not even joking. The Nazis outlawed homeschooling in 1938 and neither East nor West Germany ever repealed the law, it's still the one on the books:
I'd suggest unschooling is good if the parents are regimented, habitual, and knowledgeable or willing to put in all the work. Teachers learn how to alter teaching styles to a child, and to repeat information often. Parents have none of this training.
I see enough "hippy, uneducated types" unschool and it becomes dramatically less effective for the child. The child becomes unable to deal with routines, may be less social [depending on outside activities], very weak in the areas their parents are weak in, and often behind a grade level or two. While yes, they may be a more "creative, free spirit" at times - that only gets you so far.
There's always an obsession with how much something costs.
You could do this cheaper. It would be much more beneficial to learn about "how" you unschool, not just a receipt of extra curriculars or supplemental materials.
How much is it costing you to teach english, history, math, etc? What curriculum are you using if any? How far is your kid's natural curiosity going compared to a public standard? At least that would make this more interesting to read.
Here, I would question this more if it was 1 or 2 children, instead of 5. I've come around on this.
I've seen a variety of schooling concepts and the ones with the most group autonomy had the most motivated children. And they integrated and socialized just fine after the high school equivalent.
A significant factor in my changing thoughts comes from recognizing that socializing can be done in extracurricular activities and in your community.
What grade schools aim to prepare you for isn't necessarily relevant. ie. colleges and corporations. Even the good ones are only preparing you for that, and you also don't need grade school to be eligible for those things, or other things.
Someone from my work fell down the rabbit hole of homeschooling - her spelling and grammar was poor and she was (is) into 'alternative' therapies etc.
Each to their own but I do feel that children need to be around their peers and learning a set curriculum. By taking her 12 year old out of school, she has removed many career roles from him and limited his future (she'd argue that she's freed him, no doubt).
By all means home school but there should be a basic set of facts taught - not that antibacterial oils kill viruses (for example - a real home work she set)
I had a teacher one year in elementary school whose use of my native language was kinda bad, my mom was kinda furious that people were taken for these positions (I guess math would've been fine, but not the native language). So not sure your point holds, except for homeschooled kids if the parents can't spell they're stuck with those teachers for longer than a year. FWIW, I don't have a bone to pick with the public school system in general, although I didn't enjoy it very much in the last few years. The thing is that I doubt homeschooling (if it was allowed here) would have improved a lot.
This comment section is 99% preconceived biases and notions about homeschooling and nothing to do with the article.
Can dang or someone just preemptively run the article through a "pro" / "con" ChatGPT prompt on the overall topic and then delete comments not directly related to the article.
To avoid hypocrisy: this is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on books and crafts a month. Do they not have libraries?
Unschooling costs literally nothing. This person is talking about homeschooling-lite.
We unschooled our son from the age of 12. This is how you do it: don’t do anything other than what you normally do as a family to live your lives.
My son eventually wrote a novel, got married. And is our live-in computer builder and handyman. He, his wife, and my wife run an eBay-based jewelry store.
Anyway, unschooling is absence of any organized intervention in some else’s education. I have unschooled myself since the age of 16, and I make a good enough living.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadOr my wife learned to get back rubs from her male teacher in middle school.
All very important parts of the socialization process.
Our older daughter is the most popular kid in the neighborhood. Everyone wants to play with her. Because she’s home school, she went over and helped a little girl who was just adopted and hasn’t started school yet feel right at home the other day.
Our other daughter is physically disabled and could hold her breath and die at any moment. If she was forced to go to a public school I have no doubt she’d be in the emergency room or worse within the course of a week.
I was moved to a different school but it couldn’t undo the damaged that caused. I didn’t learn how to socialize until my second year of college.
It wasn’t until my thirties that much of the psychological damage was revealed and addressed.
Ah, yes. The "Socialization" argument brought up every time people mention homeschooling, as though there aren't homeschool coops and plenty of other ways to interact with people of a wide variety of ages, instead of just your own age.
And if you drill down, it usually ends up being some version of "Well, I had to deal with the fact that other kids are little shits for 12+ years, so everyone else should have to as well."
In my experience, homeschooled kids are "a bit weird" as kids, but tend to interact smoothly with a far wider variety of ages, and they tend to not stand out as anything different as adults - except perhaps a lot more interested in longer form learning. If I run into someone who's got an oddly wide range of skills, odds are good they were homeschooled.
It's not as simple as go to school and learn to socialize period. Not all kids are the same, not all families are the same, for some it works for some others it's a ridiculous idea.
So, to achieve peace, we have to create it ourselves. Crying about it won't bring it about, or make it last. Each one of us must go and seek it out.
Socialization you can get anywhere. From her list:
Forest School, Badminton, Swimming, Football, Gymnastics, Annual membership to Paradise Park, Annual membership to Drusillas Park
I definitely would have never learned about that 9/11 suicide compilation video a kid at school showed me.
Homeschooling typically means one of the parents or somebody in a pool of families follows some kind of curriculum still, unschooling expects kids to learn from... something.
But that is also not taking into account other things, like providing intellectual stimulation/mentors in areas where the parents are not experts/educated, which sometimes is not trivial. And while schools are indeed a hit and miss in this stuff, ime private tutoring is usually not a better choice (and adds up in the bill essentially). This could be solved in different ways granted a wide and strong social circle/community, but that is probably not what all this is about in the land of individualism.
Except, unfortunately, it's not very experimental at this point. It's well demonstrated that it doesn't do a damned thing for educational outcomes - but it is, at least, very profitable for the EdTech companies who, when pinned down on it not working, assure you that if you buy the next version, they'll fix it.
We know that the current public school approaches aren't working very well for vast numbers of students. So, yes, I'll take "experimental by parents who care."
Where I live, homeschooling is illegal. Everyone goes to whichever school they want to though. There are literally 6! elementary schools within walking distance of my house, and I live in the suburbs. The playgrounds are open and the kids play after schools and on the weekends, so they have friends in-and-out of their classes.
But yeah, I agree the American schooling system has failed. Probably before I was even born.
I'm still quite irritated, decades later, that the end result of my high school Honors English program was to take entire groups of people who clearly loved reading, and teach them to hate books. I kept in touch with a range of them, and almost none of us read a book for fun, for a decade after high school - because HS Honors English taught us that we couldn't properly understand a book unless we sliced it into tiny pieces, analyzed all the literary metaphors, and generally we weren't any good at that anyway, only the English Teacher could properly appreciate the book. And don't you dare read ahead of the assigned section!
I don't remember the plots of stuff I read, but I remember that grass was green to symbolize new life, rebirth, hope, etc. And I learned to bullshit.
It was miserable. And after four years, nobody touched books again outside requirements. It was awful.
So many people analyses the hell out of it. I’ll never forget after the first show when someone asked afterwords, “I love how X is such a metaphor for Y.” My friend just stared at them and said, “it isn’t a metaphor for anything, it’s just an obvious consequence of betraying your friends.”
I HATE that crap. Just enjoy it for what is, entertainment.
Her response was, "Oh, well, that's why they're great writers - they do all this without even having to think about it!"
I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as you make it out to be. There are risks on both paths. All kids are unique and what works for one may not work for another.
I’m going to try to go the unschooling route, and see how it goes.
Unschooling doesn’t make those disappear. I knew plenty of homeschooled kids that had sex and kids before 18, who drank and did drugs, and I’m pretty sure all of them are in middling careers as corporate drones.
Weird as it sounds, the earlier you come in contact with many human pathologies the better.
You might not want to be a corporate drone, being socialized differently to almost everyone is just another extreme.
Still, I'd say there's way more consistency between schools than between unorthodox parents.
Most people who are behaving like sociopaths in middle school appear to grow out of it and lead normal lives.
Quality public education can serve children much better than unschooling or poorly performing private or public schooling.
Some areas just have very little choice though, the Catholic Schools are shit, the public schools are severely underfunded and decrepit, and unschooling starts to look reasonable, despite how it seems to have stunted my friends :(
Could you elaborate on this?
Modern US Catholicism has, for a range of reasons, become very politically conservative (particularly in comparison to the Catholicism elsewhere in the Americas), and because Catholic schools are generally attended by the children of practicing Catholic parents whose conservative views shape their view of schooling, these private schools reflect those political views. As a result, if you aren't Catholic, many Catholic private schools are going to look like political and religious indoctrination.
The Seattle Archdiocese has created a haven for spreading diseases unheard of in public schools by not encouraging or requiring vaccination of students. The other nearby archdiocese do not permit unvaccinated students to attend, and haven't had repeated outbreaks of once banished diseases.
Could you elaborate on this a bit? I can imagine what might be different, but I'm curious what it was like in reality.
I'd be curious how large your sample size of unschooled friends was and what sort of longitudinal observations you had on their whole lives.
[0] https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
Readers wondering how else you would do it; more like a tree structure, some pre-reqs make sense but there is an astounding volume of useful introductory math that is approachable once you have mastered arithmetic and are comfortable performing algebra. Logic, digital logic, linear algebra, probability, statistics (we can call that three things though given that two sets of two examples are closely related). Loads of stuff
There seem to be quite a few assumptions in your thinking.
Nothing ever always' anything. Thinking in terms of always or never is pointless.
So with that in mind, rereading the post I responded to:
> Why would you have that happen? Serious question. Isn’t that putting kids in an echo chamber and restricting their access to friends?
The answer is obvious.
In seriousness, and without snark, I would like homeschooling to become more common explicitly because I think the US is failing so many kids (from a social perspective). Bullying is crazy, and social-political nonsense is making its way into textbooks. Not to mention the school shootings.
I think for many kids school is fine. But, speaking as a person whose schooling experience was specifically _not fine_, I would like it to be more normal to have other options.
An issue with most criticisms of home-schooling is they are (sometimes) true, and it depends a lot on the parents.
However, parents home-schooling are often well aware of these pit-falls and compensate, do after-school sports for e.g. So common characterizations of home-schooling often highlight all the possible down-sides and overlook many of the possible up-sides.
While not being wrong exactly, it's an incomplete picture - people talking about something they have not experienced.
I’m Danish, and homeschooling is imcredibly rare in Denmark, and I frankly can’t see the appeal.
What is it that makes it so compelling?
Certainly homeschooling isn't the only answer, but I also think most people are handwaving how terrible the school system can be for kids here.
Can you list a few "other answers"? This is a serious question. The public schools around here are terrible and the private schools (which are by no means guaranteed to be much better,) are absolute highway robbery.
With the educational resources that are available to everybody at the push of a button, homeschooling seems compelling, to me. I'd even spring for private tutors. What other options are there?
Good thing life outside of school isn't like that.
. . .
Although having grown up in the south and from having neighbors who home school, it is more about, "they teach evolution in school and not 6,000 year old earth."
Why is school the only place to establish a personality or develop socialization? There are plenty of communities outside of school where kids and adults can engage and grow.
If you have enough resources I don't see why homeschooling would be an invalid option. The public school system is terrible for a multitude of reasons.
Yet here you are.
Today, he was explaining that two of his friends are arguing a lot because they can’t agree on rules to a game. He’s trying to stay friends with both of them, and has figured out that getting involved in the argument makes this harder.
These are the essential lessons home-schooled kids typically miss.
If anything, I learned how to appease people to fit in and make them like me at school.
It wasn't until the last 2-3 years (I'm in my thirties now) after on a startup for the past 7 years that I started to better understand, explore and comprehend my personal psychology.
It was until these last couple years that I learned that it’s not job to fix problems between people and that often it just makes things worse.
In our thirties (all humans) learn to apply that abstract thinking to ourselves. In our forties, our heart finally stops growing and we become a full adult.
Never discount your past, no matter how terrible and/or great it was. It’s part of who you are, part of what makes you, you. Embrace it, learn from it, and look forward. Yes, that is easier said than done.
???
What does that even mean in practical terms?
None of this is written in stone. Biology and human behavior are way to nuanced for that, but as a group, those of the male persuasion develop those skills at a later age, again, probably for species survival reasons.
Let me Google that for you:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01137-9
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006...
For the first source, literally in the second sentence:
> Although neurons of the PFC are generated before birth, the differentiation of its neurons and development of synaptic connections in humans extend to the 3rd decade of life.
Yes, that's how 'well known' this fact is, that it literally doesn't need a citation or even a defense ... fwiw, the first source in a broad overview of all the literature in the _difference_ between rats/humans/primates on the differences between the development of PFC (which controls 'abstract' thought).
The second compares sexes across the entire lifetime, not just in elderly. This is all so obviously well-known that you're unlikely to find a study about it, you live this well into your 40's and literally see the effects of it all around you.
I’ll leave you with the knowledge that I’m a medical professional and none of what you wrote is true or widely believed in any way.
See this paper, which was written after yours, reviewing dozens of other papers, with a sample size of 1100 instead of 70: https://ftp.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/articles/2009/2009_-_Fje...
Last sentence of abstract: no significant differences between the sexes.
In the introduction: points out that this is a controversial topic.
TBH just from your dogmatic and insulting tone it was clear that you’re just trying to give your opinions false justification and aren’t interested in finding the truth at all.
You were very rudely asking for sources to something widely accepted since the middle ages... so... how were you expecting me to reply, exactly? I love discussing this sort of stuff, so, if we can be civil, let's discuss it!
> See this paper, which was written after yours, reviewing dozens of other papers, with a sample size of 1100 instead of 70
I'll give the paper you linked a more thorough read later on. From a cursory scan, I didn't see anything about the prefrontal cortex in the entire paper, and from what I can tell, wasn't measured. No one is saying that the brain sizes of men/women differ, only that the PFC isn't fully mature in men until later than it is for women. I don't think an MRI would show this feature, but I could be wrong (maybe myelination might be some sort of indicator?)
Like I said, I doubt there's a study specifically about this, but I could totally be wrong. I might have to call some of my neurology friends and ask weird questions lol. If you're in the medical world, you could ask too. Maybe we might both learn something new.
Very possible to learn how to navigate this kind of stuff without being in those environments, but you get a lot less exposure.
Or just to prevent their children from being infected by "worldly values". You'll often hear them say "Be in the world, but not of the world."
There are of course, people who do it to give their children an education that they feel is superior to the regular one, but they are a minority.
Of course, I didn't survey all homeschoolers to come up with that, I suspect you'd find clusters of secular homeschoolers in certain areas on the west coast, but elsewhere, Jesus dominates.
> There are of course, people who do it to give their children an education that they feel is superior to the regular one
Another way to cut the cake:
I fail to see why these motivations are much different whether religious or secular.Kids will grow up and rebel, embrace, and take for granted parts of you they inherit.
I’m not Christian, but I’m willing to assume that the reason that Christians like to homeschool is because they care deeply about what kind of person their child becomes; homeschooling is a very conscientious move, like being a Christian. Secular homeschoolers are probably highly conscientious with a different set of norms.
Personally, my wife and I homeschooled our kids through junior high school, in a mix of Christian cooperatives and homespun curriculum. One kid went to high school at the local Roman Catholic school, the other to a public school.
So not really Fascism (as you loose some power to the Church, something Mussolini refused to do), but but radical Christianity with fascist ideals (a motherland instead of a nation, you only exist through your work, the only people that matters is you and your family, stuff like that).
It didn't work great with catholics (i mean, without US state dpt, you'd have a lot less fascism in South america), because of all the cardinals and the pope, whil not the best human beings, are at least decent ones. Fascism have a hard time building power on catholicism in general, because the church power is in the Vatican, which is tolarable if you're Italian, but harder to use if you're not. You can see that during Bolsonaro authoritarian drift at the end, he was suddenly a lot less christian than he used to be when attacking gay rights and abortion rights, and wasn't able to capitalize on the church power anymore.
Historically Christofascism didn't perform great. Might be different in a non-catholic country.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/feb/24/schools.uk
Also curious to know if open university courses are not considered to be educational for teens.
I see enough "hippy, uneducated types" unschool and it becomes dramatically less effective for the child. The child becomes unable to deal with routines, may be less social [depending on outside activities], very weak in the areas their parents are weak in, and often behind a grade level or two. While yes, they may be a more "creative, free spirit" at times - that only gets you so far.
You could do this cheaper. It would be much more beneficial to learn about "how" you unschool, not just a receipt of extra curriculars or supplemental materials.
How much is it costing you to teach english, history, math, etc? What curriculum are you using if any? How far is your kid's natural curiosity going compared to a public standard? At least that would make this more interesting to read.
I've seen a variety of schooling concepts and the ones with the most group autonomy had the most motivated children. And they integrated and socialized just fine after the high school equivalent.
A significant factor in my changing thoughts comes from recognizing that socializing can be done in extracurricular activities and in your community.
What grade schools aim to prepare you for isn't necessarily relevant. ie. colleges and corporations. Even the good ones are only preparing you for that, and you also don't need grade school to be eligible for those things, or other things.
Each to their own but I do feel that children need to be around their peers and learning a set curriculum. By taking her 12 year old out of school, she has removed many career roles from him and limited his future (she'd argue that she's freed him, no doubt).
By all means home school but there should be a basic set of facts taught - not that antibacterial oils kill viruses (for example - a real home work she set)
which one ?
Can dang or someone just preemptively run the article through a "pro" / "con" ChatGPT prompt on the overall topic and then delete comments not directly related to the article.
To avoid hypocrisy: this is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on books and crafts a month. Do they not have libraries?
We unschooled our son from the age of 12. This is how you do it: don’t do anything other than what you normally do as a family to live your lives.
My son eventually wrote a novel, got married. And is our live-in computer builder and handyman. He, his wife, and my wife run an eBay-based jewelry store.
Anyway, unschooling is absence of any organized intervention in some else’s education. I have unschooled myself since the age of 16, and I make a good enough living.