...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it?
I think your view is a very black and white one. Kids in public school are exposed to society at large, in both good and bad ways. My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there.
The sad reality of parenting is that you're never going to be able to hand-pick your child's experience all the way through life. Sooner or later they're going to be exposed to the "hostile flowers" you describe. Personally I think learning to be around those people and still thrive is a part of childhood that prepares you well for adulthood. It may be more valuable than some of the academic work kids do.
It very much is. No where else in life are people forced to mixed with the general unfiltered public. "The real world" is highly filtered social circles and freedom of association. The idea that it's somehow an automatic good to force healthy kids to mix with everyone who happens to show up, regardless of whether they have severe behavioral or social issues, is pretty questionable.
> My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there.
You can expose your kids to different cultures without leaving them wide open to everything else. It's not a binary. The point is that home schooling lets you pick and choose.
I'm baffled by this. Many workplaces? Mass transit? Walking down the sidewalk? At a concert? Buying groceries? True, there don't all expose you to the full sweep of human existence at once but, in aggregate, it seems pretty similar to what you'd encounter at most public schools. What if they want a career in a hospital, or law enforcement, or social services, ... the list goes on.
You might hope that your child will live a privileged existence unbothered by the rabble, but it seems to me they need to be prepared for a future where they encounter all kinds of people. I'm sure this can be compatible with homeschooling but I can't see how it's not generally a disadvantage. (Though perhaps onerous clearly outweighed by other advantages, depending on the situation.)
That's the kind of thing that is very much not like the "real world." It's more than just being "exposed" to less optimal peers (like you would on a bus), it's an entirely different social experience.
Most workplaces are highly filtered. The whole interview process is specifically geared towards filtering out undesirable people.
This just isn't true or is born from a standpoint of extreme luck. Like have you genuinely paid attention to the people you work with? Coworkers, CEOs, the stuff people say in slack channels or the things people gossip about at work? The only way I think someone can genuinely hold an opinion like this is by being so unaware of what workplace politics that they are unaware that most workplaces are like Highschool 2. Even the professional ones. Especially the professional ones.
You are pointing out behavior that is different, but not undesirable. Which is not being discussed. i.e., kids who distrust other kids learning is undesirable. As would people who create hostile work environments, or are inefficient, or unreliable, or don't have the right connections.
In my place of work people nearly universally went to top end universities, a much larger proportion than the normal population have phds. you think that's random? And more locally if you work on a sales team you are going to be hired to work directly with people that have certain shared traits that make them effective sellers. It's so obvious that interviewing is an active filter I'm not even sure what to do to convince someone that thinks otherwise.
I'm not sure how you equate any of that to workplace politics or gossip. Even if it was relevant, the fact that it is not a perfectly effective filter doesn't make it not a filter.
I think it's telling that the other responses seem to focus on exactly this; the idea that their child will exist in a class apart from the rabble, and will not have to interact with them.
It seems to speak to two very different views of community. On the one hand, there is community as a collection of all the people in a space: people who share local resources, frequent the same local businesses, and have the same local concerns. On the other, there is a community of choice: people who share the same social class, and possibly the same religion or cultural beliefs. I think it's fair to say that you can have both, but trying to say that you can belong solely to the communities you choose and treat everyone else as beneath notice sounds quite problematic, and it will absolutely not give children a correct or complete view of the world.
I think "forced" is doing a lot of work there. No, you're not forced to work alongside someone problematic. But quitting your job is quite an escalation to deal with the issue. Same with a troublesome neighbor. To say nothing of public transit, taking flights, interacting with other drivers on the road...
School isn't their only exposure to life. You will get exposure to other people and non-healthy people outside of school.
"Kids in public school are exposed to society at large, in both good and bad ways. My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in th"
When I was a kid, I was exposed to kids that should have been in prison..and many of them ended up there. My life probably would have been better if they weren't there.
"My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there."
This can still be done with home schooling.
"The sad reality of parenting is that you're never going to be able to hand-pick your child's experience all the way through life. Sooner or later they're going to be exposed to the "hostile flowers" you describe."
I disagree. If someone is hostile and aggressive all the time, I wouldn't be around them as an adult. I hand pick my friends, and you probably do too. I also still get exposed to the assholes of the world.
"Personally I think learning to be around those people and still thrive is a part of childhood that prepares you well for adulthood. It may be more valuable than some of the academic work kids do."
If you are at work and someone is sexually harassing all of the women there or generally causing issues for everyone around them (preventing most other people from getting their work done). Do you think they should stay, so everyone can learn to be around them?
You seem to think everyone is a reasonable person that might just have a few issues. This is far from the truth and many times, public schools will just keep these kids there, preventing everyone around them from learning.
It's also a burden to the teachers and staff.
Isn't that essentially what you're describing, though? You literally talked about "healthy communities, hand-picked by parents to keep away problem children". No, you don't have to tell them who to be friends with... but you've pre-selected the pool of potential friends, so there's no instruction necessary.
Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals.In addition to peer socialization and mobility, the flexibility in scheduling allowed me to work a day job through my high school years, exposing me to yet more real-world experience. The constant interaction with adults and folks from other walks of life was a huge boon that allowed me to function as a well-adjusted adult right out of the gate. The high-school drama that people suffer and then bring with them into adulthood is very disappointing and seemingly unnecessary.
Probably because well run homeschooling groups tend to have high parental involvement which means the child learns how to socialize not from other children but from watching how the adults they are around handle interactions.
[Edited for clarity in some sentences]
You are aware of teachers, yes?
> Probably because well run homeschooling groups tend to have high parental involvement
Everything I've read shows that putting absolutely all else aside, parental involvement is key to a child's success. So perhaps the reason your by the numbers evidence shows home schooling to be better is simply because it's a self-selecting group of involved parents.
You can't learn the application of hand-picking your people and environments if you don't first see the outcomes when such application is neglected, and understanding its importance from there. If you have the hand-picking done for you as well, you risk not learning the ability to do it yourself. Or how to handle the situations where you can't.
It's much closer to the real world though, isn't it? Your child is likely going to live most of their life in similar communities to them, not a wide cross section of the public.
John Locke, John Holt, Peter Green, and:
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/The_Greatest_Minds_in_History_Op...
In Washington, homeschooled students still have to occasionally connect at an actual school, or do some baseline testing.
In Louisiana, you just tell the state "we're homeschooling" and the state is "have fun with that" and the child is essentially off the grid.
Not for nothing, instances of child abuse/CSA in many correlates with the laxness of educational oversight in home schooling.
> And to add insult to injury, there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students.
Ahh, this chestnut. A short jump to "teachers are training preschoolers to be furries and LGBT" and litterboxes in the classroom/bathroom.
For all your anecdotes my step daughter has plenty too. 10th graders who are barely literate, cannot do elementary math. Who when asked about their homeschool regime talk of waking at 10, 10.30, playing Fortnite or going on Tiktok for a few hours, and occasionally logging into some website to pretend like they've been working, or doing some mind numbingly simple exercise to show "participation".
Exactly. Notice how, when people complain about the "deranged ideologies" that teachers are teaching their kids, they either 1. stop short of actually naming those ideologies or 2. spout fever dreams that are statistically vanishingly rare.
As a parent I get the impulse to remove my children from any potential harm but the real world has sharp edges. They need to be confident in that world not just smothered.
And really as the person who used the term it’s really up to you to define what you mean.
That's just not true though. Your job isn't going to force you to interact with people who disrupt the environment constantly. Those people are fired and removed from the group.
In the military, say, you don't get that option.
In your neighborhood, you can move, but that's a fairly difficult and expensive step. When someone moves in whose kids want to be gang members, or who wants to verbally abuse people out jogging, or whatever other antisocial behavior, you have to deal with it, at least for a while.
So you can't completely avoid the brokenness of the real world. (Note well: I am not saying that throwing a six year old into the deep end is the best way to prepare kids for this.)
Agreed! And that is exactly what home-schooling families are doing. Choosing to leave a dysfunctional environment.
> In the military, say, you don't get that option.
Yep, and other government institutions, like prison. I don't think those are what anyone would call a typical life environment though.
> In your neighborhood, you can move, but that's a fairly difficult and expensive step. When someone moves in whose kids want to be gang members, or who wants to verbally abuse people out jogging, or whatever other antisocial behavior, you have to deal with it, at least for a while.
That's another dysfunctional environment, and also what the police are for.
> So you can't completely avoid the brokenness of the real world. (Note well: I am not saying that throwing a six year old into the deep end is the best way to prepare kids for this.)
You're right, you can't. The world has a lot of dysfunctional environments, and I agree that people need to learn how to deal with them. Knowingly forcing your child to be in one of those environments full-time for many years seems like a pretty horrible way to teach them that though, bordering on abusive.
And, to be clear, EVERY workplace will have people you don't like. Every. Single. One. No exceptions.
Kids needs to be taught resiliency and healthy mindsets, to a degree. They need to learn to live and let go, to learn their value isn't derived from what people think of them, to learn that embarrassment is self inflicted.
You just can't do that if you're only around people who don't challenge you. If you're in a nice, cushy, social bubble, you will develop self esteem and confidence issues.
In what environment are you, as an adult, forced to interact with everyone who happens to show up? The only instances I can think of are other government-run institutions like the military or prison, and I don't think anyone would argue those are standard modes of "real life".
> If anything I’d say the sort of thing you describe sounds more like an insular cult.
Name calling isn't an argument.
Have you heard of customer service?
I was a paramedic. Every single day.
I also didn’t call you names just stated that your description sounded cult like.
If your environment is so controlled to not have a good mix of people in it then that sounds even more cult like!
Holding literally any job ever? I was a software engineer and I frequently had to interact with a wide range of folks for the sake of my professional career. QA, contractors, internal and external teams. I was paid to do so, unless you argue that I have the option to quit or something in which my response is I need to in fact eat and have stable income.
Why is it more „natural” if the school does the picking? Besides, parents can’t command anyone to join. It’s not The Truman Show.
Is marriage not “real life” because you chose your partner? Does you choosing prevent disagreement, struggle, pain and growth? I don’t think so.
> As a parent
I guess you still want them to go to a good school, not a ghetto one. And most likely you don't want them to be brainwashed with ideas that you personally don't like.
If you go to university and into a professional career you end up in a different bubble of people than say going into trades
I'm sure they exist, they may even exist as the majority, I will say for my part the homeschooled kids I knew through my church growing up were not any of these things. I would quite literally use the opposite of both those to describe them.
I'm not saying they represent the majority but they do exist and they were not well adjusted IMHO.
As with many topics I feel like "Yes, if you want to devote yourself fully to X thing you can do much better than Y professional", the problem is, again from my own experience, the people I knew who homeschooled their children were not professionals, they were not capable, and their children suffered for it. I want to stress, I fully believe it is possible for certain people with certain mentors/teachers to do better outside of the public (or private) school system. I just also believe that the odds of most people (making that decision for their children) to meet that bar are low. I also think that some of the better homeschooled experiences that I've seen are simply a super-private school by another name (various parents being or being subject experts and taking turns teaching coupled with many "field trip"-type trips with other homeschooled kids).
> there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students.
Wait till you hear what the parents believe... I don't agree with everything taught or the way it's taught but being exposed to other types of people and ways of thinking is critical. I can guarantee you that had my parents been able to, they would have shielded me from a great number of ways of thinking. I worry that many homeschooled children grow up in a small echo chamber (we all live in echo chambers of difference sizes).
Can public school suck? Absolutely and I acknowledge that homeschooling might be the answer for some people, but only if you can afford to pay (with time or money) to educate your children completely which is almost certainly going to require working with other homeschooler parents to, essentially, build your own school. If you can bring in tutors/mentors/teachers that you vet and agree with and expose them to the world and new ideas/experiences then yeah, you are probably going to have good outcomes. If you plop them in front of a computer to follow a curriculum just to shield them from the "evils" of the world, well, I think you are going to have a bad time. Obviously there is a whole range of people in between those 2 extremes, I just feel that, on average, people trend towards the lower end of that spectrum.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXE...
Interesting song and I do agree with many points. For many years I've complained about lack of teaching basic skills (everything from home ec to budgeting and more), many of which I heard in this song. I think there was a little of the baby going out with the bathwater but overall I enjoyed it.
Yea, the guy later made a video clarifying he never meant to throw the baby out, just the bathwater.
Yikes! Good thing these people, whom you so clearly despise, will cease to exist after school and will never have to be dealt with in regular life.
I guess the rise in homeschooling is not surprising when we openly view our fellow civilians as inherently poor/violent and shouldn't exist.
I'm not sure how you are avoiding all of the people working at or frequenting coffee shops, the DMV, car mechanics, the grocery store, airports, or any other scary place where you might be forced to interact with real people. Not to mention co-workers, school parents, sports parents, family members, in-laws, and more whom you may have to spend your valuable time around.
Enjoy the life of avoidance.
Not your problem to fix for sure - but it is your problem to equip your child to comfortably weather. There are bad influences out in the world and they generally have outsized effects on their social and professional scenes. In fact, the kind of curated, limited community you're advocating for is one where bad influences thrive.
> So much time and resources, to produce what exactly? A piece of paper and fancy picture to stare at?
I certainly agree the degree is whatever - but I think you're really under-valuing the social-gauntlet aspect of school. You will have classmates who kind of (or really) suck. You will need to do your work anyway. You will be incentivized to learn perseverance and a self-centered locus of control. These are valuable skills that only come from actual exposure to bad influences.
Someone who's perfect in perfect conditions is going to struggle because the world is not perfect. The aims you highlight here make me think less of homeschooling than I did before.
They've never experienced assholes, or people who think their personality is grating, or whatever. Thick skin needs to be built up, to a degree. I'm not saying bullying is good, but being exposed to the unwashed masses definitely can be.
Given the state of our education system, that seems like an obviously worthwhile trade off. Especially for parents in underperforming school districts and even entire regions.
It's not thick skin they are developing around assholes, it's them incorporating that behavior to some degree. There was nothing I could do to change that - talks, good example, nothing worked, only surrounding change.
There are kids who will have the tendency to adjust to others and there are kids who don't. This has to do with the self-confidence they bring with them before they enter their first day of school, friends they have/had outside school and it is not necessarily a thing a parent can always control in a predictable manner.
For all we know in your case it could even be that your kid learned they have to follow the others in private school and then applied that lesson in the next one. What I am saying here is that having learned the lesson "you need to adjust to your peers" is the problem, not that the peers are the "wrong" ones.
The same applies to teaching "street smarts" to kids. You don't do it by throwing them in a hostile environment where they'll be prey to hostile people without having any defenses built up first.
You really might want to explain that further. At face value, that sounds like parroted right-wing rhetoric.
If I put myself in the shoes of a parent, I wouldn’t trust myself on the matter enough that I’d feel good shaping my childrens’ entire world to match it. It’s such a wildly difficult thing to get right, and I’d rather they get a glimpse of the world through wide variety of viewpoints and hope they’ll use the values I’ve instilled in them to construct their own view.
I’d pull our child out of school if the standards dropped but I think the majority of homeschoolers align with out of the mainstream poltical / religious views.
Unless you can magically guarantee (or have enough money to fund their whole life) your children will never have to interact with "problem" people, they will need to learn to deal with those people one way or another. And it's better to do so in a low-stakes situation like school.
I grew significantly and became a different person when I was moved to a different school.
I still think it taught me a lot about the world and how people really are. I really lost a lot of faith in humanity in those few years and still see the world as cynical in which all people are in it for themselves.
Did it make me stronger? Maybe. But also I wish I could see the world more positively as a lot of people that have been shielded from those experiences seem to do.
They were a nice family, but when I was in community college I had a chance to talk with one of the eldest who was there getting her GED. Last I recall, she held some resentment towards her parents because she was held back fairly significantly by her upbringing. Well, except for the fact that they were wealthy which helps smooth some of the problems.
Assholes are a dime a dozen. Homeschooling doesn’t exempt your kids from learning how to deal with them.
A gardener who understands that after that short grace period that plant will have to grow amongst those sick and hostile ones essentially and not only that, it will have to form a thriving ecosystem with them.
I get the idea of wanting to protect your child at all cost and wanting the best possible education for them. Rarely have I found that former students with over-protective parents that put them down a funnel of other kids from the same social and ideological background have really thrived. And I work in university level education meaning I get to see first hand what is usually the first phase in a persons life where they can decide for themselves how to do it. The people with self-confidence and stable roots who make the best, are usually those who "have seen it all", while those with alternative schooling backgrounds are either completely in their own world (often with rude awekenings) or constant feelings of inadequacy and comparison with others. That is anecdotal evidence by one educator, so details may matter.
Aside from those individual aspects, there absolutely is a societal aspect to that. If gated communities are the solution, then your society has to be in what is already a pretty dystopian position. Having those isolated silos mean in a world of isolated social media silos, we give our kids even less possibility to experience the reality of other members of the society we expect them to repair.
That shoulders them with an impossible task. My deep believe is that the goal of education is to prepare people for their life, but also to give them the tools to make the world they are sent into a better place. That requires a healthy dose of "knowing what is", especily if what is, is ugly.
> A gardener who understands that after that short grace period that plant will have to grow amongst those sick and hostile ones essentially and not only that, it will have to form a thriving ecosystem with them.
If, on the other hand, the gardener knows from experience that the flower will be suffocated, then it's pointless at best and cruel at worst.
If you’re willing to homeschool well, the positive impact on your kids is immediate.
Homeschoolers are some of the most resilient and well-behaved people I know.
Modern academic life is only well suited to a small percent of the population. Those children who are truly happy and excelling in that setting.
So much time and resources, to produce what exactly? A piece of paper and fancy picture to stare at? Forced mass education was a good idea for developing societies, but personalized education has been possible for at least a decade now, at a fraction of the cost. And to add insult to injury, there's an increasing torrent of deranged ideologies teachers and professors share with students.
Here's a famous song on the topic for those who know how to "chew the meat from the cud": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0&list=RD8xe6nLVXE...