Before COVID, the only people I saw home schooling were doing so out of ideologic incentives.

(Other than extreme edge cases).

I see no issue with home schooling receiving a negative rep.

Unless you're a trained educator, I see no benefit to home schooling children and depriving them of standard curriculums and socializing.

(I'm biased having only experienced positive public school environments in Russia and Canada. Perhaps there is some dystopia with the American Public School system, but the root problem is America, not public schools)

Not everyone has the same image or experience of school. I see School as a day care for children to allow parents to work during the day, with some inefficient learning on the side. It's very convenient, but not the only option.

Personally I learned nothing (edit: not much) in school, was bullied, it was an awful experience and all I remember is watching the clock all day waiting for it to pass while daydreaming. Elementary school was like one year to learn to make additions, one year multiplication, for how many hours in school? To finally get a lot of children struggling to read in 6th grade. Middle school was more or less the same for me. I feel like I was the subject of an ideology too.

I was similarly bullied through school and would easily get bored with the ease of the content.

I think partly because I never had the fine tuned sense of social interaction that many are naturally blessed with and paired with a dangerous tendency to let pigheaded curiosity be a guiding principle.

But, the the stuff it has taught me is indispensable. It was never taught explicitly, but without school I would have grown up completely oblivious of the invisible walls, thorns and highways that inhabit the society we live in.

Like if you want to infiltrate into a rebel base as a spy, you would want to spend a lot of time learning their mannerisms and adopting a persona. School helped me tremendously in fitting in, because my type of person would have certainly ended up an outcast in this society, if I was to be homeschooled.

Yes that's pretty much the question I'm trying to answer, and how outside activities with other kids could maybe replace that aspect of school.

Damn, Im sorry for your loss. School, like university, is not just about being looked after by more competent people. Its a place where you not only learn academic disciplines but also begin to understand how the real world works - social hierachies, networking and building relationships etc etc. To an extent, its what you make of it.

I don't question it's essential to learn what you point out, but that school as it exists and is organized now is maybe not the best, or at least the only way fit-all approach for education + socializing. On the education I'm sure it's not. On the socializing part I clearly didn't make much of it but maybe I'm lightly on the spectrum so it didn't help.

I read this essay a few years ago and it really resonated, it does obviously a way better job at putting my feeling into words: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Interesting essay. Not to pry, but how old are you? pg went to high school in the 80s, and as someone who attended more recently, most of his points read like artifacts of the time--something with more resemblance to a John Hughes movie than real life.

Are you really certain that you weren't one of the people who actually was part of the privileged clique?

My small town school had instances of missing teeth, broken jaws, one kid beaten far enough to require hospitalization for 2 weeks, etc. 10 years later, the popular kids say that there was no bullying and it was all intended in good fun. My therapist didn't even believe me at first when I discussed the things that were going on at my school, but luckily I do have some reminders of those times on visible places.

I'm 100% sure I fall under "nerd" as pg uses it--if you'd asked a random student in my year to name a nerd, it would've been me--and that's why I have trouble connecting with these stories. Neither I or my Academic Decathlon/programming/D&D friend group encountered that level of bullying. Cliques were there, but most people were in more than one, so the lines weren't very stark.

Your school sounds awful, I'm sorry. I went to a pretty diverse school with >2000 students, so there was some violence, but it was either mutual or gang-related. Petty teenager dickishness existed, but nothing like the kind of Stephen King bullies you describe. As far as I know, at least.

I admit I could've been oblivious, but for that to be possible already indicates a friendlier environment than these descriptions.

I don't necessarily disagree with you overall, but home schooling in general has one massive advantage over normal schools: the teacher to student ratio.

There are so many things that happen when you are sitting in a class of 32 students that could be far better. Delays simply due to lagging students, teachers not having time to properly explain things, or get to understand and correct holes in their students' knowledge, tailor subjects to their tastes and interests, etc. Some random acquaintance who home schooled her children pointed out to us that their biggest problem - after finishing the government mandated curriculum for the day in 2 hours - was finding things to actually keep the kids busy for the rest of the day. It makes me wonder what an optimised education system could actually achieve.

The problem I have with this is the "teacher" to "person" ratio. It doesn't matter if the teacher has more time per student to answer questions and properly explain if they don't know the answer. It's lacking in depth.

There really isn't any difficult material (at least in the UK) up to KS3. A competent tutor should be able to cover at least STEM alone, and I would be surprised if one person couldn't cover most of the rest.

There's also the issue that in a home schooling environment, the student is vastly freer to just ask questions. In a school, there's a curriculum and a lesson plan to follow, so the only questions that get answered are along the lines of "how do I do (this thing you just asked me to do)".

Another way to put that is that public schooling has the same problem, and institutionally at least the solution is to just discourage those questions.

It is not the concept knowledge that is lacking but the pedagogical knowledge. Knowing how to teach something is different from just knowing the thing. Especially when you consider that your child will have different learning needs than you did. Teaching professionals are experts at what they do.

A teacher has an entire classroom of children who rotate periodically, all of whom have different skills and learning styles.

A parent teaching their child for months and years gets a pretty good idea of how their child learns. They don't need to know how to accommodate every learning style, they just need to figure out one.

I don’t mean learning styles particular to students. I mean something specific to what is being taught: the dozens of different ways of teaching each skill.

This is quite an important point, though I would hope that someone who decides to dedicate 10 years or so of their life to the task would read up on the topic. (I mean that non-ironically, I suspect it is often lacking and doesn't happen.)

On the flipside, I have had several real teachers about whom I frequently wondered why they had chosen teaching as a profession. It was like they lacked both the aptitude for it, and had an intense dislike of students. To be fair, most were not like this, and there were a few truly excellent ones. But to make the argument that they are all highly trained, excellent professions is a bit of a stretch.

It's part of why teachers now generally stay in particular grade levels, rather than following the students or teaching multiple levels as was once standard. They become experts on the pedagogical content knowledge of their particular level, so they can apply years of experience to solving the unique challenges each kid has.

Most homeschoolers I know (I was homeschooled) would agree that its not for everyone. If you don't feel that you have the time or aptitude to teach then you should look for an alternative. Its a big commitment, both financially and in time spent.

That being said, you don't need to know all the material on day one. My mother did not know algebra when she taught it to my older brother the first time. She simply worked through the book a few lessons ahead of us, and if we ran into a problem we really couldn't answer, she reached out to friends and/or family who might be able to help. And I'm sure that wasn't the first or last time she encountered material that was new to her.

There are a significant number of resources and support organizations that can provide material, lesson plans, cooperative support, and many other things for those who aren't experts in a given field. I know many groups who collectively trade subjects leaning on friends who have a particular specialization.

If you teach your child how to learn on their own, they will be able to, at some point, take over their own education. That's what happen with myself and my two brothers. We all started taking primary responsibility for learning as we matured, and going into high school only occasionally leaned on our mom for assistance in a given subject.

The important thing here isn't that you as a parent know everything, but that you as a parent are willing to leverage the resources at your disposal and to invest time in learning when you need it.

Yes, I suspect this would depend quite a bit on both the quality of the parent as a teacher, as well as the "real" teacher we're comparing against. I've seen shocking extremes in either direction, for both individuals. I might be a bit biased in one direction, as my parents (and broader family in general) are quite knowledgeable, and could easily outdo the average teacher (as a broad average over the ones I encountered - full public school education in two different countries) on just about any topic, let alone their own areas of specialty.

It might have a worse fool to student ratio.

I find this trained educator comment awkward. For universities the main thing needed to be a professor is a PhD. While graduate programs will often require some amount of TAing (typically two semesters) that's not universally true in the US. You can complete a PhD in some schools without ever TAing. And then as applying to be a professor is judged at most schools mainly by your research and not your teaching experience it is conceivable to teach a class without prior study of teaching. The more typical case is you have been a TA for a couple semesters. I don't really consider that a high bar. My college allowed undergrads to TA for classes and I did that mostly for fun. Is that enough for me to be considered an effective teacher? I'd lean towards no, but it's pretty comparable to what graduate students typically would end up having.

As for education at high schools/middle schools, that also really depends. States usually have a teaching certificate/degree as needed, but sometimes a math degree is fine for teaching a math class even if you haven't taken any classes on education. Typically this happens in cases where there's a shortage of teachers for a subject. It doesn't help that a lot of states pay pretty mediocre for teachers.

I can say personally one of the high schools I went to, most if not all of the teachers had not done a degree in education and their background was pretty much entirely having studied the associated subject in college. I think for my other high school my teachers typically had education backgrounds, but even there I remember my chemistry teacher did not (she happened to be excellent anyway). My chemistry teacher had a chemical engineer background instead and wound up choosing to teach.

Extra anecdote I know my dad has been teaching for decades now as a professor, but back when he got his PhD he never TAed. He had 0 teaching experience/education until he taught his first class. I think TA requirements are less common in europe which is where got his PhD, although he did get it awhile ago so maybe things have changed since then.

I'm American and I was home schooled by my parents out of Ideological incentives. I also know a lot of home schooled families. My experience is anecdotal but real and somewhat informed.

Home schooling has a number of outsize advantages that neither public nor private school has:

* Individualized attention and instruction especially in the early grades.

* An emphasis on self learning and self instruction in the later grades.

* It is more time efficient allowing young children more time for play.

* It encourages development of social skills by imitating adults not you peers. In my particular circle of home schooled children this resulted in being more comfortable holding a conversation with other adults and in general less problematic social behaviors with other children.

* In many of our cases including my own personal case it resulted in a better education than the public school was capable of providing. (I was on the path to failing if my parents had not intervened in this way.)

The trade off is that our family had to be single income for most of my childhood and thus very low income. We were poor though I didn't know it at the time. My mom and dad had to sacrifice quite a bit to make it work. Home schooling requires a large investment in money and time to be done efectively.

I by no means think that home schooling is for everyone. My wife and I had to choose a different route for our family due to a number of personal circustances. However for those who are prepared and capable of doing what it takes it can be a superior education for many children.

I also do not think that public school is evil. It's an incredible tool to empower people to better themselves. But like homeschooling it's effectiveness is a function of the community and society they are in being willing to make the tradeoffs and sacrifices needed to have an effective education system.

For those families who are in a society where that is not the case home schooling can provide a way out where there might not have been any other way.

"It encourages development of social skills by imitating adults not you peers. In my particular circle of home schooled children this resulted in being more comfortable holding a conversation with other adults and in general less problematic social behaviors with other children."

When learning a language, the worst thing you can do is practice with fellow learners. It encourages propagation of mistakes, and can result in a miniature broken dialect among your group. I can see an argument that socialization is similar.

Of the children and adults I have met who were home schooled, most were inquisitive, thoughtful and open people which I found to be a stark contrast to those who were educated in institutions.

I believe that a side benefit of home education is that the process does not destroy a persons respect for learning and accomplishment.

There is a massive selection bias at play. People who need both parents working, and single parents, cannot homeschool. School is largely a matter of resources, whether it is a traditional school or homeschool.

And if you’ve never met a religious homeschooler then your sample size is quite skewed. According to the Department of Education they account for more than 66% of homeschoolers.

Outside of a few affluential areas, public school is dismal. I took the most advanced class for literature in my high school, and one of the projects was to decorate a book cover out of a cereal box. This was called "AP Literature" and was supposed to effectively be a collegiate-level class.

Interesting Caveat

affluential = affluent + influential

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affluential

There is a definition of caveat that means portmanteau?

huh, TIL. interesting

...so? There is nothing in that description that is alarming. Sounds like a fun and creative project to show what you know, while giving less-verbal learners a chance to express themselves differently than an essay. I wish I went to your school!

The project wasn't chosen in order to assist less-verbal learners, it's because it was a school in an impoverished area where elementary teachers drank alcohol during work and the building itself hadn't had any renovations since the 1970's. No one gave a shit, and they didn't challenge their students, and many of them ended up with barely grade-school level knowledge by the time they graduated. You do not wish that you went to that school.

In case I wasn't clear in the above - if you went to school in a middle or upper class area, count your lucky stars, and consider the fact that your experience may not be representative of everyone's.

Many public school programs are set up more as 'day care for older kids' than 'a place for kids to learn'. It's highly dependent on what part of a city/county you live in, at least in the US, as to whether you'll have a healthy/positive learning environment in a school.

In addition to the other problems GP describes, top-level literature classes should not include "less-verbal learners."

> socializing

This is probably the biggest factor.

I can't imagine being schooled and not being socially mal-adjusted.

The big problem is that most of the socializing we know, is never explicitly taught, rather it's implicitly imprinted on us as we go through the same stages of life. Skip one of those, and it becomes immediately visible.

In a less egregious example, in Grad School, it took less than an hour of knowing someone to intuit if they have ever had to share their private space with someone else before. (ie. if they dormed in UG or shared rooms growing up). Similarly, spending your formative years in a non-standard environments leads to mannerisms that people similarly pick up on. Often, the differences are not taken kindly.

This argument crops up pretty often when the subject of homeschooling is brought up. I'm not sure I understand it really.

Socialization has never been the exclusive domain of the School Building/Environment. I would expect the most significant factor in any person's socialization skills would be the parents, as those are the people the child spends most the first 6 years of their life interacting with. And that doesn't change when a child goes to school. They'll still spend a more significant amount of time around their own family than with other people.

And who says that a school building is the only place that a child is going to encounter people who aren't in their own family? Churches, sports, a child's own neighborhood, and a wide array of social opportunities exist outside of school yards and classrooms. All offer opportunities for a child to encounter people who are different from them.

And, though anecdotal, I have met just as many socially maladjusted people who have gone to public or private schools as I have in the homeschool communities I've been a part of.

"Because that's how everyone else does it," or "other people will think you're weird if you're different," don't seem like very good reasons to mandate a society-wide rule on how to raise a child. Not to mention those arguments would have precluded the development of classroom schooling itself in the first place.

You are just saying the idea of public schools align with your ideological incentives.

A lot of schools function effectively as childcare for parents to go to work (or do their own thing). You can hear that in what some parents are saying now that schools are closed.

You can get more effective education from a couple of hours employing an educator to work 1-1 or in small groups; you can get more effective socializing from going to sports and hobby clubs which don't have to be segregated by age and where you can leave if it isn't working out - this teaches you how to value your time.

> You can hear that in what some parents are saying now that schools are closed.

This. I haven't read a single comment on Facebook from anyone complaining that their kids will get less knowledge this year.

One obvious benefit of home schooling is that it protects children from pandemics. Mark my words, there will be more pandemics in the coming years. Maybe the next disease will hit children harder, and the quality of a child's education doesn't matter so much if they're dead. (Even if it hits adults harder, your family dying is often a serious distraction from education.)

If this flailing response from the US gov't is typical, we can expect incompetence and denial to make coordinated response to outbreaks impossible. Even a sane administration would have limited options without universal healthcare, a strong social safety net so that people can survive without jobs, and dare I say a Green New Deal to drive the economy and avoid the next catastrophe.

Antibiotic resistance is a looming threat to modern healthcare, and covid-19 may worsen it: https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-may-worsen-the-antibiot... If antibiotics lose their effectiveness, the world will not be the same.

It's also not possible to understate the threat of the potential spread of anti-science sentiment, including anti-vaxxers. Good policies could be defeated by enough people simply refusing to follow them.

TL;DR: The benefit of home schooling protecting people from disease will remain relevant.

Or some people will realize that remote work isn’t for them and others that hadn’t previously considered it will realize that it does work for them. I’ve been remote for 8 or so years now and in terms of work this pandemic period doesn’t feel different. So that leads me to believe that there will be other people who were previously working from an office but also have a space in their home that is conducive to remote work will decide that they want to continue working this way.

That describes my case quite well. I'd still prefer to be in an office or coworking space, but I've learned that I'm still capable of getting work done at home.

I might look at working remotely more often after this is over. My commute isn't bad, around 30 minutes (half of it's walking, which is nice to stretch my legs), but it might be nice to work from home just to have my own space and wear nothing but underpants for a day or two a week.

It would also be nice to go on some "workations", visiting another city/country and working during the week and doing vacation things in the evenings and weekend. I've got friends and family I want to visit, but I only get 4 weeks of paid leave a year. Most of them also work during the week so it would be a good way to spend my time.

> It would also be nice to go on some "workations", visiting another city/country and working during the week and doing vacation things in the evenings and weekend.

I haven’t visited other countries, but I do working visits every other month when I see my family. Best benefit is keeping normal structure/routine while having more time to visit.

I've done some WFH days each week in the past and been quite productive. I've been doing quarantine work for 7 weeks now and I feel like it's fucking with my head and I can barely get any work done. This sucks. I'm considering asking for a week or 2 of unpaid vacation.

The biggest challenge for me is that I've lost that sense of urgency in banging out action items. I don't have the looming deadline of getting in the car to start my commute helping to motivate me throughout the day. Now, I'm like, eh why not watch another random YouTube video, I'll just take care of that critical task later today. Before I realize it's 6pm and I still have a couple hours of work to complete before I can log off. (Haven't made up my mind yet if the extra "quarantine whiskey" is helping or hurting)

Getting into a good work pattern is very difficult. It's also hard to push yourself to communicate to the level that is required when you are at home. I've been working remotely for the last 5 years (and before that I'd done another 2 year stint a long time ago). WFH days are basically the optimal situation for a programmer I think -- you get some good time to put your head down without distractions. Full time remote can be like sensory deprivation if you don't know how to deal with it.

One of the things that a lot of people used to say before the pandemic was that chatting on Slack is wasting time. However, without something like Slack your productivity can just go down to zero. To be fair, I'm completely happy with IRC. I'm also completely happy with email. But you need to be spending time typing out those thoughts and receiving thoughts from your teammates. It seems counter-productive, but it's really important.

Especially because I'm 9 timezones away from my colleagues it's particularly tough -- there is nobody to chat to when I'm working. So what I do is just start a monologue on IRC. I start a thread (if I'm being kind... sometimes I forget) and I just type what I'm doing: "I've started story X. I ran into problem A, but I fixed it with technique T. Boy this part of the code stinks. What do you guys think about refactoring next time we get a chance? WTH??? How does B work? It just looks borken. Oh... Derp. I figured it out. I thought it did R, but actually it does S".

This makes a massive difference. One thing it does is show your colleagues what you are doing. It also shows them that you are doing something. It also forces you to do something even when you don't feel like it. But it also allows your colleagues to join your monologue and turn it into a dialog (I wonder if it used to be spelled dialogue...). Even if they only type "LOL! I know, right? That code is the worst!" it's enough. Someone has touched you. Someone cares.

In the best cases you get, "Oh wait! You need to do Y when you do that otherwise the data will be corrupt" followed by, "Hey, let's get together in chat and take a look at this together". Because otherwise you get your PR in and people are shitting all over it and you think everybody hates you (and they feel exactly the same way). In the absence of information, the mind imagines a hostile environment. I don't know why, but it just seems to work that way. So if people are not regularly touching minds, then you just end up getting more and more grouchy.

Taking some vacation can help to get your head in a better place, but just make sure that you look at your work situation and realise that you need to change it to make it better. Thinking that you will work harder (or better) and that it will solve the problem is the typical mistake. Once you have a work habit that works for you, it will not be difficult. You do not need to work harder or concetrate better. You need to work differently.

Hope that helps you out. Feel free to email me if you would like other pointers. The way you seem to be feeling is really common and I have a lot of experience with it ;-)

I think now, a lot more companies will be open to it, and will be prepared for it. I know many companies who have maintained they REALLY need onsite, but now realizing that wasn't actually a hard requirement. I'm sure some are having negative experiences. Also I think it is actually easier with everyone remote rather than some in office and some remote.

> but now realizing that wasn't actually a hard requirement.

There's going to be a lot of that. I know a couple people working in big orgs where major decisions like going paperless on certain forms -- which they had begged for for years, and had numerous meetings to work out how they could ever be paperless, and what the path to get there would look like, target dates, etc. -- suddenly happened one day to the next, because it had to be done.

Will be interesting to look at business management changes in the future. What do decisions look like if you just say they simply have to happen?

> Also I think it is actually easier with everyone remote rather than some in office and some remote.

I agree with that and would add that I think a huge part of the difficulty comes from a rift in culture. If a CEO does not consciously make an effort bridge the culture between remote and in-office work, it creates a strange divide that chokes collaboration and can even be catastrophic to turnover.

Having a mix of remote and non-remote can work great, just keep in mind there's a particularly difficult dynamic that will constantly need management and maintenance.

Speaking as someone who works remotely on a team that is only partially remote, the pandemic has made my life considerably easier. Suddenly all of the water cooler talks have evaporated and I'm on an even footing with everyone else. A colleague was also saying that he normally hates remote, but he's been finding it quite nice this time -- because the entire business has to communicate this way.

Still it's hard for people who aren't used to it.

It's worth distinguishing between homeschooling and the current situation of "at-home schooling" or remote schooling, which is quite a different beast.

My kids are being schooled by their teachers remotely, not by me - this process has little in common with "traditional homeschooling" other than the room it happens in, everything else is different.

> people will think that this is what remote work is like

Oh man, this is the truest thing I've heard since the quarantine started.

I loved that my team had a flexible WFH policy year round. On days with chores, I could stay at home and get some work done. I could travel while working. If I work up late or on the wrong side of the bed, I could avoid the trouble of dressing up and just login while brewing myself a coffee.

But now, I hate it. I've realized, I love remote work precisely because I can work from the office the rest of the time. The loss of productivity, communication and socialization doesn't feel like much if it is 1 day a week.

But, all the time. God No!

Just curious, what exactly is not representative?

For me personally, I can do my work just fine, I just miss being around other my coworkers and having a clear separation between my work environment and my home environment. I look forward to returning to my office when it's possible.

>I just miss being around other my coworkers

One outcome I expect will be fairly common is that some subset of people will happily rush back to the office as soon as it's safe to do so. And they'll find out that many of their coworkers aren't in nearly as big a hurry to shift back to the office full-time and will shift to continue working remotely a significant percentage of the time.

Will depend on the company and the work of course. But I suspect that people who really like to have their whole team physically with them on a day-to-day basis aren't going to like the shift that will happen in many cases.

Given the context of the article, one obvious difference is regarding kids.

For example, I had a good experience working from home before Covid 2-3 days of the week while the kids were at school and kindergarten; however, in the current circumstances the work from home is very, very different due to the need to combine it with doing childcare at the same time.

I mean, consider evaluating the merits and drawbacks of working in an office during a mandated "bring your kids to the office" day.

I'm more optimistic. I think there will be quite a lot of people who try home schooling for the first time and are pleasantly surprised. Doubly so for remote work.

Of course some people will hate it, but horses for courses.

I've been wfh for the last 12 months and now people are telling me "you said it aint that bad, but it's terrible", and yeah it's been terrible to be wfh AND isolated. This should not count as a real experience for anyone.

I honestly don't understand how home schooling is supposed to work. I mean, primary school maybe (though even there I seriously doubt the capacity of most parents, but whatever, we could handle that). But secondary school & beyond? Like, we're lucky that we can explain path, physics, chemistry, grammar to our kids & help them, but we struggle on some of the subjects (& gave up on others - e.g. chemistry - at highschool level). But it's one thing to help them on some subjects - and a whole different things to be able to actively teach everything: not only those, but history, geography, foreign languages, arts, music etc - that's far more than one full-time job! The only reason why teachers are able to do it is that they teach a single subject (to an entire classroom). Yeah, in primary school you (mostly) have a single teacher for the class, so home-schooling is plausible. But beyond that, I just don't understand it.

Kids who are homeschooled their whole lives quickly get used to learning from a textbook rather than a teacher. Furthermore, homeschooling textbooks are written with this in mind, and tend to be more easily accessible without a teacher present relative to mainstream textbooks. I know that by the time our child was in 2nd grade he was already doing most of his lessons without any adult intervention, calling on us only when he didn't understand something. I imagine that by the time he reached high school he would have had no trouble tackling something like Chemistry without trouble.

Furthermore, it's not uncommon for homeschooling groups to arrange to have adult tutors for some subjects, especially in the higher grades.

My kids don't really learn without some form of supervision and/or encouragement - what I have seen times and times again is kids learning from textbooks on _some_ subject, which it typically after a good teacher created interest for said subject.

> I know that by the time our child was in 2nd grade he was already doing most of his lessons without any adult intervention,

You're very fortunate. For my kids that kinda/ sorta true for the high-school one. And from what I've seen, they're not the exception. It even gets worse with teenage children, because they'll challenge your authority - so while they may work on stuff that teachers gave them, they won't easily take suggestions from you (e.g. what to study, for the high-school exams).

Adopting homeschooling as the way to educate your children involves a paradigm shift on a number of fronts.

You switch to being a single income family.

One parent, most usually the mother, gives up their career progression for the duration of their children's education.

Actual homeschooling isn't that difficult for the simple reason that there is a massive amount of resources available online - from distance learning organisations or individual tutors offering tuition on specific subjects, to distance learning organisations handling the whole curriculum, to mixing and matching DIY learning together with enlisting the help of distance learning organisations for more 'difficult' subjects - think Maths, Chemistry and Physics (the route we took).

It just depends on how deep your pockets are and your level of commitment i.e. if the homeschooling parent is willing to put in the hours to prep ahead of lessons or they'd prefer to leave it all up to a distance learning organisation and they just act as the facilitator.

We're currently putting our two girls through UK GCSEs, it's a mix of my wife teaching them English and a couple of others subjects and me teaching them Computer Studies, and us then also paying for online tuition in Spanish and the services of a local Music teacher.

I provide remote tutoring professionally but as a sole trader, and I'm quite interested in what your experience is (good and bad) of distance learning organisations.

If you, as a (presumably) successful graduate of a public school system, can't understand the textbooks and other modern resources well enough to help your own child learn basic chemistry, what did you actually get out of your public school education? And why would you want to send your child to spend years of their life there?

It's one thing to thoughtfully decide that it is best for your family to outsource education for various reasons. It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself.

Because just because I'm a computer scientist doesn't mean that my child can't be a doctor or chemist. I haven't touched organic chemistry in 20years+ ... is it really surprising that it'd take me a lot to understand? I don't have the same amount of time to invest in (re-)learning everything.

> It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself.

It's not, if they chose the same career path as I did, or my wife did. But I don't see how we could plausibly expose them to different options. Case in point - the older child plans to study architecture; the exam involves quite specialized drawing skills. Both of us would have extremely limited knowledge to guide her.

Your average high school chemistry teacher has a chemistry degree. They didn’t just take one class in chemistry in high school and become an expert.

This is a ridiculous comparison. There are a lot of things I took a class or two in that I am not qualified to teach.

Most people are not qualified to teach most subjects at s high level.

I’m a professor and there are only certain topics that I am an expert in. I could tech myself high school chemistry again, but it’s been a few decades.

What our child's secondary school is doing is giving lessons with Microsoft Teams on these kinds of subjects, then he has to do school work based on those lessons. We aren't required to "school" him at all actually. Our 6 year old on the other hand requires constant supervision and teaching for her material, and that stuff is of course quite manageable.

Coursera

Tbh I’ve never liked homeschooling so that would be ok. But agree with you on remote work.

Agreed. Both are not representative of what they actually are because of the context!

Really? Because it seems to me like the only thing people are going to realize is having kids to take care of 24/7 is a real pain in the ass, and maybe we shouldn’t be having so many.

I’d say the majority of people who are still employed and have no kids are having a fairly pleasant time at home.

Relatively speaking, yes. But even under the best circumstances, it's still draining. I just worry that it will color their perception of remote work.